Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by Harabeck 

No, but the animals are infected by the A.S.H.E.S. virus which gives them extreme adaptability/ toughness.

How would that affect the guns' rate of fire?

It needs to build up energy or scan the creature to do any noticeable damage. Who cares? A lore reason can be found.

And why is it bad mechanics? No one complains that a bow and arrow does not fire continuously, yet people like to play archers. No one complains because that's just how a bow and arrow works.

Right. As a matter of fact, I really enjoy playing archers in Warhammer, becuase their shots mostly have 'cast times' representing pull-back and aiming. Much better than WoW bows.

Well guess what, that's just how these weapons work too. Not everyone wants a spray and pray fpsmmo, ER is more of an rpg even if it does have some more action elements than usual.

"Because" isn't much of an answer. People expect guns to fire faster than spells or bows. These aren't muzzle-loading muskets, right? Let reloading take up time, but when an advanced weapon fires more slowly than a six-gun from 1890, you're going to have a problem with believability.

Why is it hard to believe that a laser might have to charge a capacitor before firing a high energy burst? And it's not just a "because". The real reason is technical and gameplay. To insure server stability with high numbers of people fighting in a small area, some things must be slower than they would be in an fps twitch game. Further, a slower ("slower"here is relative, a game can be pretty fast while being slower than an fps) game is more tactical than twitch, which is what ER is aiming for. Those are the real reasons, if you want a lore reason to make them as acceptable as bows, then I've given a few, and given time could come up with multitudes more.

Originally posted by Harabeck 

Why is it hard to believe that a laser might have to charge a capacitor before firing a high energy burst? And it's not just a "because". The real reason is technical and gameplay. To insure server stability with high numbers of people fighting in a small area, some things must be slower than they would be in an fps twitch game. Further, a slower ("slower"here is relative, a game can be pretty fast while being slower than an fps) game is more tactical than twitch, which is what ER is aiming for. Those are the real reasons, if you want a lore reason to make them as acceptable as bows, then I've given a few, and given time could come up with multitudes more.

If your general view is "who cares?", I'm not sure why you are posting at all.

I agree with your point about capacitors. HOWEVER - If you're going for believability, then laser shots shouldn't even be seen in most conditions. Also - I haven't seen any gameplay videos with lasers, but do they fire 'bolts' like the guns in Star Wars? I ask because lasers don't work that way. Lasers fire beams which (over the ranges involved) would be instantaneous, having effectively NO travel time.

If it's technical considerations forcing such design, that's fine. Just be honest about it. Honestly, though, if the system can't handle real lasers, then don't have lasers in the game. It's not Star Wars, right?

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

OP, you make a good point. Think of the film 'Starship Troopers'. The marines were fighting the bugs with machine guns! Any current modern military could do better than they were equipped. They had no air cover (think what four helicopter gunships could have done at the settlement defense). In the book, the Marines had power armour suits. No tanks? Get serious. Hell - WW2 armour and aircraft would have eaten those bugs alive. But, how can you have ANY kind of story when you pit a non-tech race against a high-tech race?

 

The reason plot-wise for it is that if the gloves were off, the bugs would have had no chance. There wouldn't have been any tension, as Humans would have destroyed the bugs with very few losses. Even a small technological advantage will translate into a huge military advantage.

OMG, sorry to jump on this point but that movie was a total piece o'garbage an abomination and did not justice to the original book written by Robert Heinlein in the 1950's.

The "troopers" wore power armor...all of them, they used portable nukes and the bugs did use high tech equipment including starships.

www.amazon.com/Starship-Troopers-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441783589/ref=sr_1_2

OP, Sci-Fi MMO's have rarely been any good for a few reasons.

• far fewer are made then fantasy, fantasy doesn't rate much better, there are not exactly a whole lot of "great" ones out there out of the hundreds that have been released.
• the few that were made have had massive tech issues for the most part.
• Current MMO technology isn't to the point it needs to be to make a fairly good Sci-Fi game. Swords, bow and magic missiles are one thing, Star Ships, Power armor, long range tactical missiles, short range fire and forgets, ECM, ECCM, balistics and all of that are much more complicated if you want to do it right.

Sure you could do what a few MMO's have done and just give a power suit the equivilant of a fireball but it always ends up garbage because you just can't reskin a fantasy game with Sci-Fi models. It's tacky.

Originally posted by Torak

• Current MMO technology isn't to the point it needs to be to make a fairly good Sci-Fi game. Swords, bow and magic missiles are one thing, Star Ships, Power armor, long range tactical missiles, short range fire and forgets, ECM, ECCM, balistics and all of that are much more complicated if you want to do it right.

Sure you could do what a few MMO's have done and just give a power suit the equivilant of a fireball but it always ends up garbage because you just can't reskin a fantasy game with Sci-Fi models. It's tacky.

 

I agree that it's tacky, but it would stil be playable, and that's what we're going to get from SWTOR. Plus the finger-lightning.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by Harabeck 

Why is it hard to believe that a laser might have to charge a capacitor before firing a high energy burst? And it's not just a "because". The real reason is technical and gameplay. To insure server stability with high numbers of people fighting in a small area, some things must be slower than they would be in an fps twitch game. Further, a slower ("slower"here is relative, a game can be pretty fast while being slower than an fps) game is more tactical than twitch, which is what ER is aiming for. Those are the real reasons, if you want a lore reason to make them as acceptable as bows, then I've given a few, and given time could come up with multitudes more.

If your general view is "who cares?", I'm not sure why you are posting at all.

If we're talking about gameplay, why make a big deal over the lore reason? I'm not saying I don't care about this discussion.

I agree with your point about capacitors. HOWEVER - If you're going for believability, then laser shots shouldn't even be seen in most conditions. Also - I haven't seen any gameplay videos with lasers, but do they fire 'bolts' like the guns in Star Wars? I ask because lasers don't work that way. Lasers fire beams which (over the ranges involved) would be instantaneous, having effectively NO travel time.

 Irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The devs have in fact named no specific weapons. I just said "lasers" as a generic sci-fi weapon. Also, a laser would be visible at high enough energy levels.

If it's technical considerations forcing such design, that's fine. Just be honest about it. Honestly, though, if the system can't handle real lasers, then don't have lasers in the game. It's not Star Wars, right?

Who has been dishonest about it? The devs have never said that they could or couldn't make them game work machine guns like weapons.

Maybe ER's weapons are plasma based, maybe they're analogous to Star Wars blasters, stop bringing up lore objections because there an infinite number of possible explanations and many can be directly copied from other franchises that have similar weapons!

In fact, in Star Wars, personal shield generators are not standard issue to soldiers. So why not have constant firing lasers that can just chop people up? Any sci-fi franchise makes many many breaches of "reality" in order to make the world more interesting. How were the rebels able to sneak around Endor? At the Star Wars level of technology, building sensors capable of tracking everything within the forest around the installations should have been child's play.

And you can't make gameplay objections without calling in to question the gameplay of any game that has weapons slower than machine guns. Who cares about the lore of crossbows? It's poor gameplay so why can't they fire as fast as machine guns? Why should a story in a different time period have weapons exactly like our own? In fact, today's soldiers are trained to use small controlled bursts instead of spraying in most situations. So why is it so hard to believe that future weapons might give up full auto-fire in order to increase other attributes like power, range, etc?

So, there is no story based reason to object, no gameplay reason that Ive seen yet, and there are indeed technical reasons to have slower rof weapons in an mmo. So from whence comes the objections? That is nothing about Sci-fi themes in general that dictates weapons should have a high rof.

Originally posted by Harabeck

Maybe ER's weapons are plasma based, maybe they're analogous to Star Wars blasters, stop bringing up lore objections because there an infinite number of possible explanations and many can be directly copied from other franchises that have similar weapons!

In fact, in Star Wars, personal shield generators are not standard issue to soldiers. So why not have constant firing lasers that can just chop people up? Any sci-fi franchise makes many many breaches of "reality" in order to make the world more interesting. How were the rebels able to sneak around Endor? At the Star Wars level of technology, building sensors capable of tracking everything within the forest around the installations should have been child's play.

And you can't make gameplay objections without calling in to question the gameplay of any game that has weapons slower than machine guns. Who cares about the lore of crossbows? It's poor gameplay so why can't they fire as fast as machine guns? Why should a story in a different time period have weapons exactly like our own? In fact, today's soldiers are trained to use small controlled bursts instead of spraying in most situations. So why is it so hard to believe that future weapons might give up full auto-fire in order to increase other attributes like power, range, etc?

We have had specialized weapons like sniper rifles and RPGs for a long time. That has not precluded the development and use of machine guns.

So, there is no story based reason to object, no gameplay reason that Ive seen yet, and there are indeed technical reasons to have slower rof weapons in an mmo. So from whence comes the objections? That is nothing about Sci-fi themes in general that dictates weapons should have a high rof.

It's a real world issue. IF you have weapons that approximate real life ones, then they had better work in a similar fashion. One of the prime advances in personal weapons is increasing rates of fire (along with lower weight and higher accuracy).

This game is designed for large battles evolving around territorial conquest and base-sieges, so the number of players will be very high, as this game will have no instances.

Try to fight in a base-siege with 100 vs. 100... that's simply not possible with FPS-mechanics and high RoF. The server won't be able to handle it... not even close to be playable.

That's also the reason, why there will be a softlock-mechanic, that helps you to aim, after you landed your first hit, because in laggy situations you wouldn't be able to aim with FPS-mechanics otherwise.

---

The reasoning for low RoF-weapons is allready there, if you'd bother to read up on the game.

All players will have a combat-suit that creates a shield around you and powers your weapon with energy.

To penetrate the shield-systems, you need to have high-damage weapons, and high damage allways goes along with low RoF. Even today it work this way. High-damage, armor-breaking weapons have low RoF.

---

And then there's skills and abilities to activate, which will influence your shots. Like an ability to power up your weapon even more that gives you a very high alpha-strike etc...

With FPS-mechanics and high RoF it wouldn't be able to have skills and abilities like this, but these are needed for tactical group-play.

---

Seriously. Read up on the game first, before you make any comments about it.

Originally posted by jrs77

Try to fight in a base-siege with 100 vs. 100... that's simply not possible with FPS-mechanics and high RoF. The server won't be able to handle it... not even close to be playable.

PlanetSide has been capable of what you've deemed impossible for six years.  And it has dozens of ground and air vehicles.  And it's 300 vs 300, not just 100 vs 100.

It runs smooth as glass.

Originally posted by lkavadas

Originally posted by jrs77

Try to fight in a base-siege with 100 vs. 100... that's simply not possible with FPS-mechanics and high RoF. The server won't be able to handle it... not even close to be playable.

 

PlanetSide has been capable of what you've deemed impossible for six years.  And it has dozens of ground and air vehicles.  And it's 300 vs 300, not just 100 vs 100.

It runs smooth as glass.

Yeah, some of those planetside skirmishes early on were pretty amazing fun...I've never run out of ammuntion in any fps before, simply because of having to shoot at so many things - the good ol' days :)

One big reason that SCI-FI RPGs are usually not attempted is balance.  Laser beams vs. medieval weapons tend to be a hard thing to get around, not in numbers...but in immersion and overall combat style.  Regardless, I like seeing attempts at SCI-FI RPGs...because beyond the polictical / ship style game like Eve, there has yet to be a massively popular sci-fi mmo on the ground (and yes I am one of few that enjoyed Tabula Rasa & wish it was still around).

Originally posted by lkavadas

Originally posted by jrs77

Try to fight in a base-siege with 100 vs. 100... that's simply not possible with FPS-mechanics and high RoF. The server won't be able to handle it... not even close to be playable.

 

PlanetSide has been capable of what you've deemed impossible for six years.  And it has dozens of ground and air vehicles.  And it's 300 vs 300, not just 100 vs 100.

It runs smooth as glass.

Unfortunately I made total different experinces with Planetside in this regard. It got nearly unplayable (atleast for alot of the european players) with more then 50 players in a fight.

There was something amiss on your end then.  I played PlanetSide for years and never had any lag or FPS issues in the middle of the heaviest pop locked battles.

The European server host must have really blown or something.  We never had any issues like that on the North American side.  Damn shame too, you missed out on some great stuff.  As far as straight up virtual combat goes the it's the best multiplayer one I've ever played and second only to Operation: Flashpoint/Armed Assault overall.  It was a truly amazing game at one time.

jr77

At this time and age there are no EXCUSES for Earthrise combat mechanics.

Stop trying to defend it, you are being ridiculous.

We can kick your ass without even trying to argument about it.

Its all about emphasizing it over and over untill they change it or rot because we destroyed it from inside out in the internet communities.

Originally posted by Interesting

jr77

At this time and age there are no EXCUSES for Earthrise combat mechanics.

Stop trying to defend it, you are being ridiculous.

We can kick your ass without even trying to argument about it.

 

Its all about emphasizing it over and over untill they change it or rot because we destroyed it from inside out in the internet communities.

ER's mechanics are far more twitch than 95% of the games out there, and they're making major changes to it. Go troll elsewhere.

Originally posted by Yamota

Why sci-fi combat RPG are rarely good

Because (mainstream) companies rarely develop them. Period.

 Maybe because future laser weaponary creates huge amounts of heat that need time to disperse and cooldown until it can be fired again? Maybe the weapons need extra time to create the next compressed laser round. There's plenty of reasons and it can keep you immersed.

Gameplay wise, I find it extremely boring.

Originally posted by Yamota

Is that the techonology used in the so called future are sometimes vastle inferior to what exist right now.

For example, I read about this weapon cooldown nonsense and compared to existing assault rifles. For example the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_AUG which has about 11 rounds/sec and an effective range of 300 metres. How can you then realistically have futuristic weapons with much lower firerate and range?

For spaceship weapons it would work since there is no such thing in RL to compare with but for handheld weapons?

  The company actually listen to the people so the reworking the combat system also take into account the game is still in beta. besides i think we play mmo to get away for bit