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please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP
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ScrappedBeat Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:31 pm Posts: 409	please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP This game has a huge amount of core physics issues and frankly I'm baffled you are going open beta before cleaning them up. Each one of these has had numerous threads dedicated to it so I'm not going to go into much detail or discuss solutions; My goal with creating this thread is to increase awareness of all these issues and compile them into one thread. Most of these make the game appear sloppy or give a major advantage to those who go onto forums to understand how the physics of this game work. Now that the game is transitioning to open beta all of these issues need to be addressed immediately if you don't want to frustrate new players. Jet-packs I think the entire forum agrees that the jetpacks in their current state are unacceptable. They're anemic and unintuitive. Will a new player understand that jetting forward or backward makes you go HIGHER than jetting straight up? Will a new player understand that jamming on the jets makes you turn in tighter circles than just holding it down? Will a new player understand that your jets literally stop functioning at 72 kmh and start acting completely differently, like jetting you DOWN if you're falling fast enough? Will a new player not feel frustrated when he slips off a ledge for a split second but is unable to even come close to recovering and falls to his death, despite wearing a JETPACK? This issue is first because I believe its THE major issue. I believe the jet physics need to be completely gutted and reconstructed, with an actual drag model and not this "tiered" garbage. Making the jet function the same no matter what should be priority here. Add other factors such as friction to compensate Laokin wrote: Currently Jetpack power precap is 12kp/s. A magnitude of 11x stronger before 72kp/h. Jet pack gets 11 times weaker after you hit 72. How stupid is this? This is why the game feels like you are flying through sludge. Obviously if hi-rez got rid of all caps to jetpack acceleration and general acceleration there'd be nothing stopping people from getting to infinite speeds because of frictonless skiing. But instead of capping the acceleration of jetpacks find another way! Add drag, add friction to skiing. Even leaving the soft cap at ~180 but removing the 72 jetpack cap would go a long way to making this game much more fun and competitively balanced. ppproj wrote: Thrust vectoring or something resembling it needs to be put in for movement depth. One of the problems with air combat is that the only way to move around in the air is by slowly air strafing, so you can’t really juke chainguns or MA’s properly, just slowly strafe left or right in a relatively predictable fashion. There’s also no resource management in the current system, which means there’s very little skill involved in moving through the air. Inheritance I don't know of anyone who is satisfied with the current inheritance across the board. Some are fine with certain values, and I'm not going to get into what I think should be done. Something needs to be done though because its a mess. Some weapons have 50%, some have none, and some have fishpatch. How do you think this feels to a new player? Frankly its just sloppy. At the very least completely phase out the fishpatch and add some consistency. Jumping As most of you are probably aware, or should be aware, jumping on an up-slope takes a large chunk out of your speed. Any serious player has jet bound separately because of this. However the default is to just have jumpjet on the right mouse, so new players are at a serious disadvantage if they don't understand this, and really the only way to understand it is to learn it from someone else. Heavy walking Currently heavies walk like they're on the moon. They should thunder across the ground when they walk. Right now they float around like pretty little faeries. I think this is because they're forced to walk artificially slow to compensate for having a huge stride, which should rightfully make them walk fairly quickly. Explosion splash Splash often delivers no damage despite clearly being a solid hit. Obviously lag is a part of this, but that's not all of it. Often someone can be right next to an explosion but take no damage because he was behind a tiny bump in the ground that redirected the splash. Often stickies/arx will do no damage even when stuck directly onto a player. "Artillery" Ballistics The arx can shoot across the map while the mortar has pitiful range and takes far too long to reach its target, which is in large part due to the fact that it falls like a deflated balloon. It's supposed to be a super heavy mortar round, why, as WerTicus pointed out, is its terminal velocity so low? There's issues with the grenade launcher as well. Explosive Jumping Not much to say here, its pretty unanimously agreed that spinfusor jumping STILL needs a major boost. edit: after thinking about it I think spinfusor jumping is fine, the problem is the jump from a standstill takes you to 72 km/h at which point your jets become 12x weaker and you're left travelling in a very steep straight line, instead of curving out and accelerating across the horizontal properly. "Floaty" players As raptorak pointed out, and this was probably the first thing I noticed when I first played the game, players just feel floaty as if you have no weight. Gravity is simply not strong enough on players, it needs to accelerate them downward fast and hard. Ideally this would be coupled with changes to jet-pack making it more potent, to really speed up the pace of the game by allowing fast vertical movement. Sollick wrote: It's kind of silly to see people jellyfishing around when they try to accelerate. If anyone else has something I should add to this just post it. These core issues need to be addressed before adding any more new weapons, new maps, and certainly before trying to balance the game. viewtopic.php?f=313&t=61176&st=0&sk=t&sd=a this thread underlines how crucial making changes are. If the game continues on without refining itself it WILL die. That's not a threat; I love the game and don't want it to come to that which is the reason I created this thread in the first place. Last edited by ScrappedBeat on Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:51 am, edited 17 times in total.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:42 am

WerTicus Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:39 am Posts: 2620	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP I was going to make this thread Lastnight in live chat with bart we found out that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance with those. This limitation needs removing. Free air control needs to go too: it should require jet pack energy to move in the air and they can simply tweak the amount of fuel you have to compensate. _________________ "The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people."
Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:05 am

sparkest Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2011 6:04 pm Posts: 1425	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP WerTicus wrote: We also found out lastnight in live chat with bart that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance, and you can shoot yourself in the foot. This limitation needs removing. yup. After this revelation, my mortar is much improved. The mortar is only effective at minimal vertical angles. If you lob it, you get very little range benefit and its takes much much longer to land. Quote: also free air control needs to go: it should require energy to move in the air and they can simply tweak the amount of fuel you have to compensate. yeah, along with completely eliminating air steering. I think the air steering is the biggest problem. Cappers don't need to use the terrain to turn.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:22 am

Tocs Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2011 10:54 pm Posts: 335	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP I don't agree with all of this... the heavies area is whatever. But your'e right, these issues need ironing.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:28 am

GSGregory Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 2:59 pm Posts: 158	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP Totally agree.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:18 am

MachDelta Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:21 pm Posts: 112	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP WerTicus wrote: Lastnight in live chat with bart we found out that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance with those. As for OP I agree with pretty much all of it. There are lots of quirks to this game that simply need not be. Not only for consistency and ease of use but also because games that devolve into "whoever knows the most secrets/bugs/tricks wins" tend to rapidly alienate players.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:45 am

slith Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:25 am Posts: 23	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP 100% Agree This post makes far too much sense to be read and or considered. _________________ FPS-config // Nobody is perfect but I'm pretty f***' close
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:46 am

Schottingham Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:07 pm Posts: 644	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP GSGregory wrote: Totally agree. _________________ - Fix Jetpack Physics (video) (video) - Remove regen, bring back health kits - Buff explosive jumping - 100% inheritance for "bullet" weapons (nova blaster included)
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:47 am

tumiii Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:16 am Posts: 205	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP +1 _________________ Things to-be done.. ..ASAP: netcode ..directly after: (jet)physics, weapon handling, targeting laser ..before really out of Beta: com.circ., map optimization, balance ..eSport-viable: better custom server control, demos
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:55 am

raptorak Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:36 am Posts: 1271	Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP Every time I log on to Ascend after Quake Live I get the nasty impression that my guy feels "flaky" and without weight. Using the jetpack lacks tangibility and spin-jumping lacks significant acceleration and weight. This is a different game and no mistake, but I think that they really need to nail the physics down well, because right now they have a decent game that just doesn't "feel right". I think players should have less movement in the air that allow them to dodge perfectly aimed spinfusor shots with little to no effort. If they were to alter the air physics to be more akin to a stone that happens to have a jetpack stuck to it being thrown I think it would be better. I agree air movement should be controlled by jetpack energy or the lack of, as well as thruster pack. Our characters seem to lack appropriate inertia as well as momentum, jets appear to be anti-gravity devices and lack thrust, not to mention the weak jetting sound effect that needs more ROAR.
Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:45 am

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please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

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ScrappedBeat

Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:31 pm
Posts: 409

please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

This game has a huge amount of core physics issues and frankly I'm baffled you are going open beta before cleaning them up. Each one of these has had numerous threads dedicated to it so I'm not going to go into much detail or discuss solutions; My goal with creating this thread is to increase awareness of all these issues and compile them into one thread. Most of these make the game appear sloppy or give a major advantage to those who go onto forums to understand how the physics of this game work. Now that the game is transitioning to open beta all of these issues need to be addressed immediately if you don't want to frustrate new players.

Jet-packs
I think the entire forum agrees that the jetpacks in their current state are unacceptable. They're anemic and unintuitive. Will a new player understand that jetting forward or backward makes you go HIGHER than jetting straight up? Will a new player understand that jamming on the jets makes you turn in tighter circles than just holding it down? Will a new player understand that your jets literally stop functioning at 72 kmh and start acting completely differently, like jetting you DOWN if you're falling fast enough? Will a new player not feel frustrated when he slips off a ledge for a split second but is unable to even come close to recovering and falls to his death, despite wearing a JETPACK? This issue is first because I believe its THE major issue. I believe the jet physics need to be completely gutted and reconstructed, with an actual drag model and not this "tiered" garbage. Making the jet function the same no matter what should be priority here. Add other factors such as friction to compensate

Laokin wrote:

Currently Jetpack power precap is 12kp/s. A magnitude of 11x stronger before 72kp/h.

Jet pack gets 11 times weaker after you hit 72. How stupid is this?

This is why the game feels like you are flying through sludge.

Obviously if hi-rez got rid of all caps to jetpack acceleration and general acceleration there'd be nothing stopping people from getting to infinite speeds because of frictonless skiing. But instead of capping the acceleration of jetpacks find another way! Add drag, add friction to skiing. Even leaving the soft cap at ~180 but removing the 72 jetpack cap would go a long way to making this game much more fun and competitively balanced.

ppproj wrote:

Thrust vectoring or something resembling it needs to be put in for movement depth. One of the problems with air combat is that the only way to move around in the air is by slowly air strafing, so you can’t really juke chainguns or MA’s properly, just slowly strafe left or right in a relatively predictable fashion. There’s also no resource management in the current system, which means there’s very little skill involved in moving through the air.

Inheritance
I don't know of anyone who is satisfied with the current inheritance across the board. Some are fine with certain values, and I'm not going to get into what I think should be done. Something needs to be done though because its a mess. Some weapons have 50%, some have none, and some have fishpatch. How do you think this feels to a new player? Frankly its just sloppy. At the very least completely phase out the fishpatch and add some consistency.

Jumping
As most of you are probably aware, or should be aware, jumping on an up-slope takes a large chunk out of your speed. Any serious player has jet bound separately because of this. However the default is to just have jumpjet on the right mouse, so new players are at a serious disadvantage if they don't understand this, and really the only way to understand it is to learn it from someone else.

Heavy walking
Currently heavies walk like they're on the moon. They should thunder across the ground when they walk. Right now they float around like pretty little faeries. I think this is because they're forced to walk artificially slow to compensate for having a huge stride, which should rightfully make them walk fairly quickly.

Explosion splash
Splash often delivers no damage despite clearly being a solid hit. Obviously lag is a part of this, but that's not all of it. Often someone can be right next to an explosion but take no damage because he was behind a tiny bump in the ground that redirected the splash. Often stickies/arx will do no damage even when stuck directly onto a player.

"Artillery" Ballistics
The arx can shoot across the map while the mortar has pitiful range and takes far too long to reach its target, which is in large part due to the fact that it falls like a deflated balloon. It's supposed to be a super heavy mortar round, why, as WerTicus pointed out, is its terminal velocity so low? There's issues with the grenade launcher as well.

Explosive Jumping
Not much to say here, its pretty unanimously agreed that spinfusor jumping STILL needs a major boost.
edit: after thinking about it I think spinfusor jumping is fine, the problem is the jump from a standstill takes you to 72 km/h at which point your jets become 12x weaker and you're left travelling in a very steep straight line, instead of curving out and accelerating across the horizontal properly.

"Floaty" players
As raptorak pointed out, and this was probably the first thing I noticed when I first played the game, players just feel floaty as if you have no weight. Gravity is simply not strong enough on players, it needs to accelerate them downward fast and hard. Ideally this would be coupled with changes to jet-pack making it more potent, to really speed up the pace of the game by allowing fast vertical movement.

Sollick wrote:

It's kind of silly to see people jellyfishing around when they try to accelerate.

If anyone else has something I should add to this just post it. These core issues need to be addressed before adding any more new weapons, new maps, and certainly before trying to balance the game.

viewtopic.php?f=313&t=61176&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

this thread underlines how crucial making changes are. If the game continues on without refining itself it WILL die. That's not a threat; I love the game and don't want it to come to that which is the reason I created this thread in the first place.

Last edited by ScrappedBeat on Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:51 am, edited 17 times in total.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:42 am

WerTicus

Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:39 am
Posts: 2620

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

I was going to make this thread

Lastnight in live chat with bart we found out that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance with those.

This limitation needs removing.

Free air control needs to go too: it should require jet pack energy to move in the air and they can simply tweak the amount of fuel you have to compensate.

_________________
"The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people."

Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:05 am

sparkest

Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2011 6:04 pm
Posts: 1425

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

WerTicus wrote:

We also found out lastnight in live chat with bart that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance, and you can shoot yourself in the foot.

This limitation needs removing.

yup. After this revelation, my mortar is much improved. The mortar is only effective at minimal vertical angles. If you lob it, you get very little range benefit and its takes much much longer to land.

Quote:

also free air control needs to go: it should require energy to move in the air and they can simply tweak the amount of fuel you have to compensate.

yeah, along with completely eliminating air steering. I think the air steering is the biggest problem. Cappers don't need to use the terrain to turn.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:22 am

Tocs

Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2011 10:54 pm
Posts: 335

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

I don't agree with all of this... the heavies area is whatever. But your'e right, these issues need ironing.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:28 am

GSGregory

Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 2:59 pm
Posts: 158

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

Totally agree.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:18 am

MachDelta

Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:21 pm
Posts: 112

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

WerTicus wrote:

Lastnight in live chat with bart we found out that there is a speed limit on the fall speed of mortars and grenades. Which is why they dont seem to have proper consistent inheritance with those.

As for OP I agree with pretty much all of it. There are lots of quirks to this game that simply need not be. Not only for consistency and ease of use but also because games that devolve into "whoever knows the most secrets/bugs/tricks wins" tend to rapidly alienate players.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:45 am

slith

Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:25 am
Posts: 23

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

100% Agree

This post makes far too much sense to be read and or considered.

_________________
FPS-config
// Nobody is perfect but I'm pretty f***' close

Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:46 am

Schottingham

Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:07 pm
Posts: 644

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

GSGregory wrote:

Totally agree.

_________________
- Fix Jetpack Physics (video) (video)
- Remove regen, bring back health kits
- Buff explosive jumping
- 100% inheritance for "bullet" weapons (nova blaster included)

Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:47 am

tumiii

Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:16 am
Posts: 205

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

_________________
Things to-be done..
..ASAP: netcode
..directly after: (jet)physics, weapon handling, targeting laser
..before really out of Beta: com.circ., map optimization, balance
..eSport-viable: better custom server control, demos

Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:55 am

raptorak

Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:36 am
Posts: 1271

Re: please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP

Every time I log on to Ascend after Quake Live I get the nasty impression that my guy feels "flaky" and without weight. Using the jetpack lacks tangibility and spin-jumping lacks significant acceleration and weight. This is a different game and no mistake, but I think that they really need to nail the physics down well, because right now they have a decent game that just doesn't "feel right".

I think players should have less movement in the air that allow them to dodge perfectly aimed spinfusor shots with little to no effort. If they were to alter the air physics to be more akin to a stone that happens to have a jetpack stuck to it being thrown I think it would be better. I agree air movement should be controlled by jetpack energy or the lack of, as well as thruster pack. Our characters seem to lack appropriate inertia as well as momentum, jets appear to be anti-gravity devices and lack thrust, not to mention the weak jetting sound effect that needs more ROAR.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:45 am

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please address the many CORE PHYSICS ISSUES ASAP