please read this (a lot of ideas/suggestions)

[Nukeproof]

Hello Infiltration-team,

first of all I'd like to thank you for this fanatastic and unique mod! I'm already looking forward to 2.86, 2.9 3,0...

Let me share some of my impressions with you:

Deathmatch works fine, especially with maps like cuba_dawn, peru.. (2.8 why did you remove it in 2.85 ?).

Weaponhandling is close to perfect, there is no other game out there that gives you a more realistic feeling of handling a real gun.

The new breathing system is pretty cool and I really like the SIG especially with laser pointer attached.


Here are some suggestions / problems i recognized:

All the UT gametypes like CTF, Assault and Domination don't really work with infiltration too well.
This is obviously because of much more lethal weopons and the limitation of fast movement. Defending your flag is so much easier than in regular ut, and the long way back to your capture point in maps like border or extreme_prejudice don't really help to make a capture.(btw: where is that second flag in extr._prj.?)
It's the same thing with assault... attacking is real hard!

In all games I played (with even teams) captures were nearly impossible to the point were one of the teams ran out of reinforcement. And that's the point were the game starts to get boring (for both, those who are out and those who face no defense).

So in my opinion gameplay has to be tweaked.

Maybe scoring a capture when only grabbing the enemy flag could help...
For Assault it might be a good idea to limit the reiforcements of the defending team (while giving unlimited to the attackers).
As I read you are working on some kind of vehicle code... it could definitly strengthen the position of the attackers to give some sort of armed vehicle to them ...and it would be extremly cool ;-)

In your 2do charts you wrote that you are working on an advanced assault-mode with more complicated mission goals. I don't think that this will help to improve gameplay and teamwork. I'd rather think that the opposite -real simple mission goals- could help. When the goals are already that complicated, there is not much left for planing and tactics, because coordination is so difficult.

Just look at CS (I assume that you don't like beeing compared to CS, but it could help to explain what I mean). Missiongoals are real simple in CS, maps are rather small (compared to giants like extreme_prejudice), players play several rounds on the same map, but that is what it need to develop strategy and tactic. Most of the assault maps in original UT were already too complex, so the attacking team ended up searching the map for the last missiongoal. You get bored of it, before you know the map good enough to make good use of strategy and planing.

Infiltration could offer a lot more tactical depth than CS could, but it needs very good map & mission design, to make use of this potential.

A simple mission like defending some sort of castle (from inside) and the other team trying to enter that castle would put a stress much more on coordination, tactics...



Here are some more (easier to explain) ideas:

A lot of maps really need more respawn points to be usable in deathmatch. (for ex. extreme_prejudice, shooting_range, kosovo...) Right now it's just a huge masacre around the few resp. points.

Shotgun reloading is a mess rightnow: instead of reloading every single bullet manually, the reload button should start a complete reload, with the ablity to interrupt the procedure with the fire button (just like CS). In my eyes the reloading procedure is way to slow to make the shotgun usefull.

On the other hand the shotgun seems to be too precisely at distance.

The recoil effect doesn't seem perfect to me. Instead of just aiming higher after every shot, the aimpoint should althoug bounce a little more to the left/right.

I'm not an expert, but the aimpoint-attchment of the mp5 doesn't make too much sense to me right now, shouldn't the pointer work more like the one of the SIG? A handgun with laserpointer would be cool thing as well.

The bulk should have a bigger impact on the players moving speed.

The shootingrange doesn't work anymore (at least with the M16), the bullets don't leave any mark.
Behavior was really strange in 2.85 as well. At 100m nearly every shot hit the target, at 200m non of the bullets hit, even when lying prone, holding breath and aming little higher. This was true for M16, SIG plus scope and PS1. only the robar rifle managed to hit the target at distances greater than 100m. (or leave a sign on the target)

The map 'Kosovo' looks superb, but it is real slow, even on a fast machine and it seems to get slower and slower the longer you play it. My machine (TB900/GF2_64Pro/256MB ram) doesn't produce smooth framerates even at 640x480x16 (both d3d/oGL) after 5 minutes of playing.

In prone position the maximum turning speed should be reduced (to be realistic).

It would be a cool thing to be able to fine-adjust the duck-position (by getting closer to the ground/moving upward in little increments while not moving), to find best shelter behind any kind of cover.

When liying prone, beeing able to role from side to side might be a cooler movement instead of leanig left an right (which is pretty diffcult when lying on the ground)

Beeing able to give assistant fire when hiding behind cover (by staying in safe position, holding the gun over the head and firing without aiming exactly) would be another cool feature.

Bots seem to recognize a player too easily. Even at a low difficulty level, when hiding totally calm in a dark corner they shoot me from far distance. A human player has great difficulty to even find out where a shot came from.

The player should be able to switch off 'last man standing mode' in deathmatch.

I personally prefered the scoring system from 2.82 (points per hit, not per kill).

I would love to see more special equipment in Infiltration like Nightvision-goggles, mortar, Antitank-weapon, bodyprotection (that could bring a strategic component to gameplay, as you have to compromise between protection and movementspeed) and it would be fun to be able to set up a trap.

Beeing able to put up a big stationary machingun with the help of a teamate would be fun as well and could put stress on teamwork.

I read you are planing to implement different player classes. Maybe it would be fun to let the player choose between several physical soldier characters, with different moving speed, carrying and shooting ability...
It could also be interesting to give the player something else (beside weaponry) to spend money on. For example you could offer some sort of special trainig that improves aiming, moving speed, swimming etc. of your charcter to make cheap weapons more attractive to players. (It's a shame to make such an amount of fine weapon models, with 90% of the players just using 20% of them).


So enough for now, thanx a lot for your attention/patience and apologies for my little imperfect englisch and this huge list of wishes and critics, I love Infiltration even if you don't pay attention to any of my suggestions...



Andi

[Zundfolge]

Hello andi2.



I'm not on the Infteam, but I think I can answer some of your questions.



Deathmatch works fine, especially with maps like cuba_dawn, peru.. (2.8 why did you remove it in 2.85 ?)

Infiltration is a team game.



All the UT gametypes like CTF, Assault and Domination don't really work with infiltration too well...So in my opinion gameplay has to be tweaked.

Tweaks are already in the works :D



For Assault it might be a good idea to limit the reiforcements of the defending team (while giving unlimited to the attackers).

One of the primary goals of Infiltration is realism. With that in mind, real men don't play with reinforcements. :)



Shotgun reloading is a mess rightnow: instead of reloading every single bullet manually, the reload button should start a complete reload, with the ablity to interrupt the procedure with the fire button (just like CS). In my eyes the reloading procedure is way to slow to make the shotgun usefull.

Actually that's how the shotgun used to be, several people requested that it be changed to what it is now (I generally don't use the shotgun...and probably won't until the aiming is fixed with it...so I can't really comment on the shottie)



The bulk should have a bigger impact on the players moving speed.

That's already in the works :D



When liying prone, beeing able to role from side to side might be a cooler movement instead of leanig left an right (which is pretty diffcult when lying on the ground)

This has been discussed before, and the problem with rolling is that with a pack on it makes rolling pretty much impossible.



I do agree that rotation speed should be limited while prone (maybe even the degree to which you can rotate should be limited too)



Bots seem to recognize a player too easily. Even at a low difficulty level, when hiding totally calm in a dark corner they shoot me from far distance. A human player has great difficulty to even find out where a shot came from.

This is an Unreal Engine problem that I don't know if the Inf team can fix :( (not even the amazing and godlike coding skills of Beppo have cracked this one yet)



I would love to see more special equipment in Infiltration like Nightvision-goggles, mortar...

Much of that stuff is in the works (although I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an anti-tank weapon...there's really no point in it until we get tanks that you need to shoot anyway, the weapons in INF are mostly anti-personnel not anti-equipment)



you could offer some sort of special trainig that improves aiming, moving speed, swimming etc.

I think that's the idea behind the training level. If you want to get better YOU have to practice.



So enough for now, thanx a lot for your attention/patience and apologies for my little imperfect englisch and this huge list of wishes and critics, I love Infiltration even if you don't pay attention to any of my suggestions...

If everyone who had criticisms of and suggestions for Infiltration where to post well thought out and usefull posts like yours we'd almost never see a flame war :D

[Colte[LiveWireFreak]]

Good post, andi2

[Tuttle INF]

Nice post andi2.

And thankyou Zundfolge. I didn't want to have to type a reply to that.

[Nukeproof]

Hi and thanx for attention to a newbie (in fact I had some posts to 2.75 and 2.8 times as "andi" but my account got lost somehow..)


I've been reading the forums for a while and I really wonder what players pay most attention to... implementing one gun or another won't change gameplay much IMO.
I like most guns the inf team has chosen although I rarely use any other than the M16 & the Robar.


I found few more issues:

Beeing forced to carry the knife seems annoying to me since I never use it and it slows down weaponchanging.

Already mentioned in a other forum: preconfiguration of weaponsettings (incl. attachments), startingweapon, Quick-A. would be fine.

More maps in outdoor/jungle style would be cool. By the way: the strike-force guys managed to design amazing trees, (no palmtrees)

It would be cool to be able to deal more realistic damage to the enviroment. A tree should drop when hit by a grenade and killing a sniper by blowing up the whole house he is hiding inside, with a massive grenade attack would increase tactical possibilities. (I know this is not an easy task...)

I never saw a bot using the running mode.

Aiming should be affected even more by your actual stamina (some sort of shaking after running), a hit should reduce your stamina significantly.

The point a bullet hits should not be totally predictable, there should be a small factor of random (maybe by little unpredictable shaking) and bullets should spread more in a cricle not just on a line upwards.



To the most important point: Teamplay

I understand Inf is about realism. Real men don't have a second, third... life but military units do have reinforcements!

Of course few lives to spend prevent people from playing rambo-style, but as a cause of realism cautious movement is already necessary.

Let's face it: Beeing dead is pretty boring (at least in a shooter) and beeing dead while playing on an (expensive) online connection is simply annoying!

Realism is cool where it improves gameplay and fun but one should always remeber: This is a game, no one would like to see the hospital period implemented into Inf.

I see few options beside reinforcements to prevent the fallen from getting bored:
1. Short rounds just like CS, but therefor very complicated mission objectives won't work!
2. Give dead players something to do: Put them in a chatroom with a tactical map to plan the next round or let them assist their living teammates by guiding them (many think of this as cheating).


As a result of high realism the defenders position is much stronger than the attackers.
I once read an article about the fall of Berlin at the end of ww2. Although the russion forces had better weaponry/supply, they lost 10 times more soldiers than the german defenders... and the situation is roughly the same in Inf.

The interesting teambased modes like ctf, assauls (with equal reinforcements) will end up beeing played like teamdeathmatch to the point when one team is dominating. That's when the objectives can be taken care of and that's when half of the players (likely to be attackers) are already waiting for a new round for quite a while.

I recently played ctf on extr. prej. in Lan.: it took several lives of the whole attacking crew to even find out where the enemy snipers were hiding.

Of course there are other possibilities to weaken the defenders position (at least in assault).
Ammunition and weaponry could be very limited and teamsize could be reduced (difficult when switching sides).
This works fine for Dm as well: In LAN match veteran players had to start with a handgun only as a kind of handicap.

I remeber playing TFC on a simple map (3rd party) called 'King of the hill' which was a lot of fun to play. It was like Domination with only one controlpoint, which could only be occupied by carrying a flag from homebase to the point. The flagcarrier was moving at half speed and the controlpoint offered quite a bit of shelter.
The interesting thing we found out, that a team of weaker players (they didn't stand a chance in deathmatch) was able to win just by good coordination and advanced tactics and that's what Inf has great potential of, but won't work without reinforcement and some more tweaking.

Another interesting idea I've thought of before:

Include something like a preparation round. The Defending team (or both in CTF style game) will have time to prepare their stronghold. They should be able to place sandbags, barricades, mines and traps and to set up stationary machine guns. Giving the player the possibility to alter the surrounding (like chopping trees..) could help even more.
After that you have the fighting round and afterwards you prepare again to change strategy...

You could even put dead players inside the preparation area.... not an easy task, I know, but it would put so much more to gameplay.

To ease teamcoordination you might consider respawning dead soldiers near the place they died. The teammate would have to do some sort of reanimation to their body immediately. Players would not need to cross the whole map again and the team stays together until they are killed all together. This would strengthen the attackers position as well.
This could simulate war situations where a fieldmedic has to treat a wounded soldier under heavy fire.

I'm sorry this one grew so long once more, but I hope you consider some of my ideas to be good....

Thanx Andi

[Lord_Bunker]

on the randomness to the recoil thing. that's not exactly realistic. think about this, would you want to use a rifle if you didn't know where the bullet was going to go. recoil in inf assumes that your holding on to the gun with a noodle grip and basically letting it go where it wants to. try fighting it and you may find that jumping around you want.

i agree with some of the rest of what your saying some of it i don't

one thing i'd like to see implemented for ctf and such is there used to be a mutator that awarded your team a flag capture if you wiped out the other team instead of just resetting the round.

[ShakKen]

Yo andi 2,

Lemme see if I can answer a few of your questions:)

Carrying a knife annoys me too, why we're forced to drag it along is beyond me;) Personally I'd prefer it if it was not directly selectable via weapon cycling but by hitting a 'knife' key. I'll see what the rest of the team thinks.

We got some spiffy outdoor maps of our own planned. I can't say anything more about that without being keehauled by Warren.

As for destruction of the enviroment, we can only do as much as the UT engine lets us. Unfortunately, that is admittedly farely limited at this point in time. We'd all love to blow a tree down with a 40mm, see a sapling get splintered by a 7.62mm bullet or see a tent catch fire, but we'll have to see what we can do=)

Bot's are currently unaware of what they are capable of. They have an understanding with the team; come along, and learn what you can.

Gun wavering will be tied directly into stamina in later versions. The more tired you are, the harder it will be to keep your sights on target.

Our bullets follow a simple rule; where the barrel points, the bullet goes. In later versions, bullets will have slight deviations depending on the ballistic stability of the round in question. Gryphon is working on those as we speak. As for recoil, we believe we handle it rather well at this time.

Our recoil is seperated into two elements; muzzle rise and side to side drift. You'll also note that when firing a real weapon, unless you pull the muzzle down while firing in full auto, you're shots will simply track straight up into the ceiling. Just like in Infiltration, if you're looking for that elliptical spread pattern, just remember to pull your muzzle down from the recoil.

In future versions, were experimenting the possibility of recoil kicking stocked weapons up and into the direction of your handedness. If you have had the pleasure of firing an AK-47(or one of it's many deviritives) you'll do well to note that the recoil impulse of the stock against your shoulder has the tendency to knock your shots to the right(if you are right handed) and up. All shoulder weapons have this effect to some degree, some more than others.

As for you're gametype idea, we've already got something in the works. Again, I can't say anymore.

Thanks for taking an interest!

[Nukeproof]

I'm not talking about totally chaotic bumping around of the barrel. What I mean is that recoil effects should be unpredictable.
At least when firing some sort of heavy machine gun in full auto you end up losing control where the bullets go... that's what others wrote in the forum, who were already firing real guns.

On the other hand even a perfect sniper isn't able to hold his gun totally calm.

If you don't like random you might use some sort of complex bumping pattern that is hard to foretell to the player...

In the end it should come down to this: the longer you shoot in full auto the wider the bullets will spread.

But this one isn't too important to me, what do you think of my teamplay suggestions? Do you think this sort of 'preparation round' is possible?

[ShakKen]

With REAL guns, recoil effects are actually NOT unpredictable. Nor does recoil make subsequent shots less controllable. It's simply a matter of bringing your muzzle back on the target. Whether you manage to do so before the next round leaves the barrel is a differant matter entirely.

If you were to pick up an assault rifle, say an M16A1, and liesurely squeeze off a clip in full auto. If you did not bother to hold the recoil down you will NOT get the nice circular shot dispersion you are looking for, but instead a nice slice of shots tracking up to the sky.

That is my experiance, having already fired real guns.

Take an MP5/40 to the firing range in Infiltration and shoot at the 50 meter target. The longer you shoot, your bullets WILL spread wider=) But due to your own attemps to keep the bullets on the target, not due to "chaotic bumbing" or anything similar.

Like I said, we already have something planned.

[Nukeproof]

Hi Shacken and thanx for detailed explanation.

I was missing your first reply since I was dealing with browsing, downloading at the same time I tried to post (so I already started writing before your post was online)

I was misunderstanding the concept of treating recoil. I thought Inf was simulating a well trained soldier who is already trying to compensate recoil best he can and the effect the player has to deal with is just what's left through human imperfection...

This proofs me to be a guy who has never shot a real gun (beside some small caliber long ago... I'm more of a pacifist in real life ;-)

So as I realize what Inf is exactly trying to do (leaving recoil compensation completely to the player) I see I should not have been complaining.

But one point is definitly incorrect: When I lay down shoting a whole clip (for ex. with the SIG) and I don't try to compensate at all, Inf will leave in a position shooting vertically into the sky... my back would have been broken before or I had already dropped the gun. But that's of course a small detail and you are right: Inf is treating recoil rather well.

Thanx Andi

[ShakKen]

You get it alright ;)

When I first tried out the system I too was rather taken aback. Then I started to cosider that not everybody handles the effects of recoil like everybody else.

The current system focuses heavyly on the individual skills of each player. Some will choose to ride the muzzle fire in short bursts, others will try spray their target full of holes by compensating while firing.

Whatever suits you best^_^

[Shag]

Just wanted to say I love the new reload for the shotgun! If you want to fully load it, just hold down the reload button. :)