I kind of mentioned this already in my previous post, but there are people who engage in pvp who already do this. By traveling in the same direction as your target, at the same angle, you are effectively aiming by reducing your transversal.
As I already mentioned, we do have control over our aim. The fact that it’s slower should make aiming even more feasible, not less. In terms of combat, Eve is basically a space version of world of warships, with auto aim. Sure the computer makes the final calculations, but you can make its job easier by steering your boat more effectively.
Soo… apart from the addition of an annoying extra combat feature you also want the combat experience to be inconsistent by having arbitrarily different rules for it in different parts of the game?
That isn’t a solution, it makes the suggestion worse in my opinion.
It sounds like you’ve never been in large fleet fights, yet you wish to introduce a mechanic that is mainly relevant (and disastrous) in large fleet fights.
I recommend you get more fleet combat experience before you continue this suggestion.
As already mentioned, we do not have any fine control over our aim such as you would have in a first person shooter.
All we have is a (delayed) timing on activating weapons and a (delayed) positioning, both affected by ticks, which we have some control over with move commands.
That is not manual aiming. That is timing our shots.
Combat is already inconsistent due to the different rules of engagement based on security status. Its not like you couldn’t warn players if they’re moving into a pvp zone through the ui, and what the rules of engagement are in those zones. For example, any stations involved in a war would be red in the overview, and a pop up (which the player could voluntarily disable) would warn the player about the low or null security status around those stations.
But as I mentioned, it would likely be easiest to disable the feature in highsec to get around the issue of dealing with concord.
I have fleet experience. If you understand anything about how people react to changes like this, you would know it would force them to adapt by spreading out. CCP has, in the past, looked for ways to penalize zerg behavior in favor of small gangs, and this would be a rather elegant way of doing it. (That’s why we have fw warfare complexes rather than them being an open grid.)
I will give you this: if this feature were implemented, fleet commanders would need a new set of tools to be able to direct the fleet instead of the current “anchor up” tactic. Broadcasting direction of flight would be chief of those features which is something that should be implemented anyway.
You’re moving the goal post of this conversation. Why does not having “fine control” prevent us from the stated objective of being able to enjoy a fully simulated combat experience?
They’re not that delayed (unless you’re specifically referring to tidi.) And to be frank, if CCP developed the tech to be able to handle this feature, those delays would get even shorter in terms of server latency. Not to mention, fleets will likely be smaller due to the challenges you’re mentioning.
What do you do when you’re aiming? Time your shot for when you’re best lined up to the target.
I’m not moving the goal posts, I was talking about aiming.
Objects obstructing line of sight is fun when it is you aiming the guns. When you have no control whatsoever over the aim of your weapons, just a press of a button to let your ship automatically shoot at your target, objects obstructing your line of sight isn’t very fun when your ship doesn’t automatically shoot around those objects.
‘Game is inconsistent already so let’s make it even more inconsistent’ is not a compelling argument.
I would like to see more consistency and removal of many of the existing inconsistencies, not to make the existing situation even worse.
‘lined up to the target’ is the keyword here. We have zero control over lining our weapons up to the target, as our weapons line up automatically if they aren’t tracking disrupted.
EVE combat already has a lot of depth and complexity, but the combat has been designed around those gameplay elements like ‘tracking’ ‘range’ ‘signature radius’. Adding another layer of complexity that the game is not designed for by making shots randomly miss because a fleet member happened to get in front of it just the tick you wanted to fire your weapon is not an interesting nor fun mechanic, it’s just going to lead to frustration.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this is false. If you are traveling in the same direction as your target, your transversal is zero. I have seen many experienced pvp players do this on stream, even to the point of holding their shot until the appropriate time, so it’s not like its an unknown mechanic.
This is what you actually said:
My initial comment on aiming:
Your rebuttal by moving the goalpost of the argument:
I’ve already proven you can aim, but then you switched to the “fine control” argument effectively admitting my point about there being some ability to aim.
This is merely an opinion. The same could be said for the combat style of EVE in general in comparison to an fps. I have a good friend who doesn’t care for EVE for this very reason but there are plenty of people who do like the gameplay.
This is also not a compelling argument. Variety of the spice of life as they say, and while I’m not against removing inconsistencies, I don’t believe that should be the goal. The goal is to make a compelling gameplay experience, the method we take to get there is irrelevant.
Clearly, what “compelling” means is going to vary from person to person, but game designers have to straddle that divide all the time, its what they get paid for.
Another opinion. “Its hard, so it’s not fun” isn’t indicative of the player base CCP has cultivated over the last 19 years. You do realize this exact situation can happen in those fps games you’ve been referring to, yes?
I do agree that the mechanic would lead to some frustration initially, but people will get used to it and adapt. That happens every time a major feature is changed by the way, even if the feature is improved. Imagine the crying that will happen when mission agents finally get nuked in favor of another PVE system.
What you’re talking about is managing transversal to increase your hit chance, an interesting mechanic which already is in the game.
What I’m talking about is lining your weapons, like in a first person shooter, which isn’t feasible in EVE as we’re (1) not playing first person mode so it’s really hard to see whether an object is blocking the line between two other objects without zooming in all the way and moving camera to ‘follow target’ any time you shoot and (2) we’re not actually aiming our weapons.
At most you could press a button when you see your ship currently has a clean sight on your target and hope that no third moving object appears in between the other two moving objects within the next tick.
I seriously doubt that will lead to fun interesting gameplay.
But you seem to disagree with that and I cannot convince you, so let’s keep it at this: I do not think this is a good idea.
I think the wrinkles and complications you mention on the player side are exactly what would make it a good gameplay decision. EVE would cease to be a game where you can just click the default maneuvers, and engaged piloting would become a core part of the game.
Between all the comments havent read all of it but honestly with lore of systems one big way to deal with the issue of this is simply guns “not fireing” if line of the shot is blocked just saying the computers refuse to shoot if there is no lock on and they lock on by bouncing waves off the enemy (different ones depending on faction) so the guidance /lock computers know if something is in the way they hold their round till an opening presents itself… with the implementation of the fleet formations from a while back this realy could add strategy to fights