TL;DRThey disagree: snipers get longer ADS time, bigger hip fire and higher damage, and no-scoping can have more spread and recoil, so quickscoping and running around shouldn't be viable.
No, because we're increasing sniper ADS time as well. So snipers will have a longer ADS time, because if you've played against them in close quarters at the moment, they're very oppressive. So they're also going to have bigger hip fire and things like that. But they're also going to have much higher damage profiles than they currently have. The falloff on them is very strong and things like that. So leaning into the power fantasy elements of the sniper while making sure that, hey, I'm playing Star Citizen, I don't expect to die to some guy who's running around with a sniper rifle, because that's not the FPS experience that we really feel.
And you don't need ADS if you're no-scoping. So if you're trying to quickscope, that's where the ADS is. If you're just no-scoping, it doesn't affect you.
We adjusted no-scoping as well a little bit. With the whole recoil thing that we added with these FPS improvements, the snipers got their recoil pass as well, I think. Obviously this is still a work in progress, but spread and recoil when no-scoping can be different from spread and recoil in ADS. So when you're not ADSing, no-scoping can be adjusted by increasing spread or increasing the recoil there to make it harder to hit.
We are investigating this. It is sadly an armor issue. When we go into ADS, our armor clips in due to animation, because we're not bringing the weapon to our eyes. We're looking into that, and we're planning on releasing a temporary fix for this for 3.23. It's not final yet. We're looking into other options to make it a permanent good solution, because the current solution has a few not-so-pretty things about it, a few issues. In the future there will be the perfect no-clipping, hopefully. We'll look into that later on.
TL;DRYes, many grenade types are prototyped or implemented, starting with classic ones like smokes and flashes, with more sci-fi items such as area-denial devices to follow, while balancing for PvP is considered.
Yes. We have a lot of grenade types already prototyped or implemented for Squadron. The basic FPS grenade types that you know: smokes, flashes and whatnot. And from there on, we're going to move on to the more sci-fi things and other FPS devices as well.
Yeah, so obviously we've got the flash done, like Pascal mentioned. With the flash grenades or even the stun grenade, concussion grenade, we're playing around with different ideas of how exactly we want to do it with Squadron, and obviously with PvP as well you've got to be careful with balancing and stuff like that. But we have played around with the idea of the angles of where it goes off. So obviously if your flash goes off directly in front of your face, how long that would have that effect on screen, as opposed to if it just happens in your peripheral vision to your right-hand side, and how long that would have an effect, and then after-effects. And obviously, we've got a really great health system, like the BDL system, in our game. And we looked at some of the effects that we could produce on the eyes, the after-effects of being stunned, and how that all plays into it as well. And again, smoke grenades: it's so different between PvE and PvP. How long does the smoke last, performance-wise? So we're obviously looking into all the different factors of bringing something from a single-player experience into a multiplayer experience. We're not going to reinvent the wheel necessarily. They're going to be what you expect for those classic items. But then, like Pascal mentioned, we are going to start introducing some more sci-fi elements, things like area-denial types of devices as well.
They will make a light, the flashbang especially, but I'm not sure if you count this as glint. If you look really close into the scope, it might flashbang you.
TL;DRLaser attachments should stay useful when not wearing a combat helmet, such as in environmental suits or other armor types, though armor archetype designs are not concrete yet.
Yeah, obviously. There are other situations where you might not want to wear a combat helmet. Like, we have these environmental suits. And in these scenarios, you might want to wield a weapon or a tool and equip a laser pointer to it to know where you're aiming. Or further down the line, with different armor types equipped, like a medical helmet or whatever. I'm not sure what the design is for all of these armor types; Nick can go into detail about this. But there are definitely situations in our game, and we will create even more situations along the line, where the laser pointer will still be necessary or useful.
Like I said in ISC, this is kind of the start of our branching off into the archetypes for armors. So as Pascal mentioned, we do have different ideas. We're still playing with ideas. Nothing's concrete right now. And Rich talked about this in 2019 at CitizenCon on stage: for example, medic gameplay, what would that visor look like? Would they see the vital signs of their teammates? Or if you're a miner: if you're just wearing a combat helmet and you do a scan, maybe it'll just tell you the type of rock it is, but if you're wearing a mining helmet, maybe the visor will give you extra details like the clarity of the material or how efficient the rock will be to break down, and stuff like that. Or even a specialist: if you're pinging as a bounty hunter, maybe you get to ping further and get a bit more of a head start on who you're trying to track. I don't think we touched on this in the ISC, but we also looked at the HUD, for example, with backpack reloading. With the combat helmets, obviously, it gives you the information of the magazines on your suit and the backpack. We may actually lose that information when you use, for example, the environment suit. To answer your question, I think the laser sight still has a very viable path, because if you are doing a profession, let's say you want to be a miner or you want to be salvaging or whatever, obviously we're in a PvP environment. You just don't know what's going to happen. If you still want that freedom of knowing exactly where your barrel is pointing when you're getting jumped by an enemy team or whoever, then it still has that choice when you're outside of a combat helmet scenario.
TL;DRAn opacity slider for the Dynamic Crosshair is being looked into, but it isn't guaranteed for 3.23 and further customisation depends on time and priorities.
Since ISC, we actually did a few adjustments already to the crosshair, and we are now looking into adding maybe an opacity slider or something like that, so you can at least say, oh, I don't want it fully visible, or just half visible, so it doesn't really obscure my vision. And later down the line, let's see what the future brings, right? If we find the time, I would like to do it, but maybe we have other things that need more fixing or more help from our side.
It's always a matter of priorities. When you say that since ISC you've begun working on opacity stuff, those are technical explorations, and that's not you saying these are guaranteed to be in 3.23?
All this season, since we came back, we've been talking about all these tremendous things that are being targeted for 3.23. There is still a go/no-go process. And if it comes to the point of whether Dynamic Crosshair goes in and we don't have the opacity slider, that's not the thing that's going to stop it from being a go. So it's definitely something we're exploring. It's definitely something we want to work at. There's just no guarantee that the opacity slider you just mentioned will be a 3.23 thing; it's just something down the line we're looking into. Dynamic Crosshair, though, I think that's working really nicely. Our guys had a lot of fun with it when they were doing the stuff for ISC. I don't think we have to worry about that not being in 3.23.
Yeah, it's really amazing. When I first implemented this, obviously I liked it. But nowadays, every time I don't have a combat visor on, I feel like something's missing. I really enjoy it. I hope you guys enjoy it too. It's a really great thing.
TL;DRA go/no-go is a late review before a patch where combined features are checked for readiness, and anything causing more trouble than it's worth can be held back.
We develop all of these features in silos: this team working on this, and this team working on this, and this team working on this. And those all come with their own struggles, their own bugs, their own things where, oh, we tried to get this to work and we just never found it. Or we got it to work and then we found out it wasn't fun, so we want to do it differently. Then when you start to combine them all in a bigger patch, you find a whole new series of bugs from different interactions: oh, this worked great on its own and this worked great on its own, but when you put it together, we've got two piles of bugs. So we need to do more work and more adjustments, and that's where the go/no-go process comes in. It allows us to look at these things and determine whether they're ready for prime time, whether they should go into the patch or whether they should not go into the patch. Very few things generally fail a go/no-go. I think the last one we talked about was the last Xi'an ship that was supposed to be in a patch, and it failed a go/no-go. Nobody liked the cockpit. It wasn't a good experience and they held it back. There's a couple other examples like that, but for the most part, that's what the go/no-go is. It's how we attempt to prevent things from causing more trouble than they're worth. Do we always succeed? No. But having the process and trying is better than not having the process at all. So that's what a go/no-go is, and that process happens much closer to the release of the patch.
Sometimes they're really beneficial as well, because you'll get a point of view from someone from a completely different department, like you just mentioned, who brings something up, and you think, actually, that's a really good point. And then it leads you down another path. So it's very, very important that we do these.
And then you'll get the other end of that, where, for example, we talked about optic zoom, which was on the inner side of sights, but then we had issues with upscaling. So we've had to take out the inner optic zoom on the optics, which we showed off at CitizenCon, because it just doesn't work with upscaling. So, like Jared was saying, when you work on a bunch of different stuff and all of a sudden it comes together, you're like, oh, oh no.
Quickly adding on to that inner zoom thing that Zach mentioned: we're still trying to get this back in, because we like the look of it, right? And the graphics guys are currently looking into solutions to that problem to give you that zoom effect on the actual scope. For 3.23, it's probably not going to happen. Let's see what they can come up with.
Yes, there is a possibility. I actually worked on the ballistic shield. We have it for Squadron. We are not sure when we'll bring this to the PU, but it's there. And let's see when this will spill over.
Let me tell you as well, it's not as straightforward as it sounds, because obviously in our universe... I really hope we can get it into the PU soon, because it's very cool. But let me just tell you, it was tough.
Yeah, it was tough, the technical difficulties behind getting it working like we intended it to work. But now we've got it somewhat. And let's see when it spills over. It will be great.
TL;DRChallenges named include scopes versus armor vision, sprinting and movement feel, per-weapon sprint-to-fire, recoil smoothness and HUD clarity, with 3.23 addressing many of them.
I think we've kind of already brushed on it, but I will just quickly say: we put so much work into our scopes, and we've got such a wide range of armor sets, and having, as Pascal mentioned, the armor sets completely block the vision, and then having to do that workaround, and making sure... Especially when you make a game for PC, you've got to think about different FOVs and different setups and how it will impact different players. So I think that's been a bit of a pain point, but I think the change that we're doing now, and eventually down the line, hopefully, the change we make later on, will really be so beneficial. So that would be my point.
Just to add on to that, obviously the biggest one for me personally is sprinting and general movement and how that feels. Sprinting is a prime example of one of the improvements that we're planning to make. When you run, the gun goes below the camera, there's not too much head shake and things like that. So the overall feel when you're sprinting, especially if you're on a planet, it doesn't ever feel like you're properly sprinting. Again, that ties into how much stamina that takes, because it's not too expensive or painful to sprint at the moment, and that plays into how much weapon sway you have. Some stuff I mentioned earlier: tracers, more obvious muzzle flashes, improvements to how we do medical gameplay, and some other stats we need on the weapons, like sprint-to-fire, which is a big one. At the moment, all the weapons use the same sprint-to-fire, which is a big reason why the P6LR was a very big offender in 3.22. And if you basically say, okay, cool, it actually takes you time to shift your LMG from the sprinting pose to the return pose, then LMGs are not as good in CQC. And we can make them slap incredibly hard over those 40-meter ranges, because the LMG person is already prepped. They're aiming at you, they will shred you. Because LMGs at the moment feel like assault rifles with big mags, where everyone uses LMGs. These are examples of things that we're looking at to say, hey, this is how we improve our weapon sandbox and overall get something where the weapon variety feels very intentional, just like we're doing with armor.
Pascal and Atil, I know these are the designers and they get to set a lot of direction, but as programmers, there's got to be some things that you want to get in there to really bring the experience up. What have you got?
Honestly, from my side, I have put a lot of focus on the clunkiness, and the biggest point I always had was that firing the weapon doesn't feel really smooth. And now we've worked on the recoil; that's the great thing about the procedural recoil, right? I did the tool, and Zach has to do all the work now, bringing in the recoil. So that's a nice benefit of being a programmer. I don't actually have to do the work. I just do a small bit and then Zach suffers. But this was, for me, the biggest gripe about our game. The HUD also was always a little bit not too clear to me. We're improving that as well with 3.23. And for now, we have all of these new improvements going in, and all of my biggest concerns have been answered or addressed, and I don't really know what I want to improve at this point in time. Obviously, when I play more, I will start picking up on the more minor annoyances and then want to improve those, until they eventually become a major annoyance for me. But for now, I'm way happier with 3.23 and don't really have anything that I must do.
Well, I'm going to mirror Pascal here. For example, the combat HUD was a really good addition, a really good improvement. Now we convey information way more accurately, and a lot more useful information, to the player. For example, from time to time we play Star Citizen in the office and I see the old UI, and when I'm working on this new HUD, the difference is unimaginable, really. And it's going to feel really different. And especially what the guys were working on with the recoil and the new scopes also made a difference. So probably this particular update brought a lot of things closer to our golden standard. I will probably get a more concrete opinion on how awesome we made things after a few more playtests, but it's really, really promising.
What a question. So the big thing I want is a slug shotgun, easily. It's my favorite weapon type in games. I absolutely love them. I also want an incredibly quick...
Man, what a question. I would love some sort of gameplay kind of weapon. Maybe shoot a mini black hole and they all get sucked into the middle and then something happens. I'd love that. Something really out there.
There was a funny thing with Pascal's answer, actually, because he says chainsaw, the most Doom thing. When we were making the procedural recoil, when Pascal was testing it, he would always hip-fire the weapons and say, hey, look how cool this looks, because he basically only plays boomer shooters. So we were in a feedback loop of him making recoil purely from a hip-fire perspective, because obviously you can't ADS in a lot of boomer shooters.
It's E1M1 from the original Doom. It's not for the public, but I just took the map layout to learn our editor, right? I had to learn it at one point, and I know how E1M1 looks.