But... isn't it what you just did extensively regarding my point of view ? You can, it's ok for you, but I can't ? Something I missed here ? And what is not "excusable" here ? I kept it short to make it easy to grasp, and by the content of your long post I would safely bet that you got it, at least what you wanted to get from it. I'm not much into comparing apples to oranges, nor into trying to show that oranges and apples are the same thing. And just on that point, a short quote from your lengthy post : So when you propose that some mysterious WAD from these old games can do as much as Empyrion, I'm just a tad skeptical. I could say you sound like "shooting down" my suggestion and "contradicting" it. But I'm not going to be offended by this because it's all part of "discussion". Just not your best argument, I would even dare to say it's exaggerated. For the sake of discussion, I stop when posts start requiring mousewheel scroll for too long. It's rather a monologue than a discussion at that point, and not possible to address all content without it getting out of proportions. Some like it, I don't. And I'm very confident that the developer will not waste much time on these walls of text either.
No. At least not what I intended. A lot of stuff I said I kind of already said in previous posts, I tend to reiterate if I think I've not made myself clear enough. The buggy AI. Followed by the clunky weapon handling. See above; I guess I've not made my point clear enough. And I'm not either. But it came across like you're saying that because Empyrion isn't any of the other games mentioned, that none of the examples of functionality are valid. Which again, I tried to make clear that the mention of other games isn't to say "Eleon add this" but to say "this works because of X and Empyrion appears to attempt a similar thing but falls short because of Y." Every shooter or game with shooting in it will inevitably be compared to well-known shooters because all shooters need certain basic functionalities to... well, function. Your implication, and now statement was that Doom likely cannot handle the things Empyrion can. First of all, I don't see the point of mentioning that as it seems to be an argument that if Doom can't handle drone attacks, bases, vessel combat, that Empyrion doesn't need to be good as a shooting game. My response tongue-in-cheek as obviously it would be pointless to add such things to Doom it doesn't even aim to be that, yes. But also and as an aside, the modding community for Doom is decades old and has made some crazy stuff so I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone actually did add those things. But as an aside, I wasn't claiming that there is such a WAD since I'm not gonna look and it wouldn't matter if there were. See above for a response that's not an attempt at injecting some humor. Fair enough. I'm aware I tend to get rather wordy, but I have no plans to stop. I shall attempt to be more concise. I figure since these are forums and people can read at their leisure and are not bound to time constraints or requirement to read the whole thing in the first place, that I can write as much as I want and if someone chooses to read it and respond, great. I do hope that if the devs see I've played their game for a few hundred hours and have written a several paragraphs of commentary that they might do me the honor of reading it. I don't think it would be a waste of time at all. I tried to make all of my responses to your comments relevant to the discussion of gunplay. A significant portion of your responses to me and others have been more about the methods used to argue a point than to even address the point itself. If you had a point to make about the gunplay, I missed it. In any case, I've said more than enough for now.
If you were looking for an echo chamber you chose the wrong place. I'm not stupid and the developers either, and all you wrote has been mentioned already hundreds of times, the forum archive is full of it, in all its forms. Anyone who can read will see what I already stated clearly on the topic, and if they want to waste more time they may see what you did of it, but honestly who cares at that point. If making short, clear statements doesn't succeed into conveying a simple point across, how can you expect that grasping at straws for page-long posts will get better results. You're good and I'm not ? Suit yourself if that's your kick...
True, but even in games like Ghost Recon Wildlands which does have good fun gun play, if combat has gone loud, I will often do similar by slinging a grenade inside a room to clear it and/or force the enemies to dive for cover before running in and shooting them. In any kind of combat this is what anti-personnel explosives are useful for - clearing out / scaring unseen enemies without placing yourself int he line of fire. Of course in this it would be much better (more fun) if we had grenades or at least the enemies would take an appropriate reaction to having a rocket land near them without killing them (ie dive on floor, dive behind cover etc). I would even like to be able to throw the detpacks. About the best we have is planting on near a door, opening it to get seen and then running off hoping the idiots follow and get blown up I wish we had something if even basic stealth mechanic in this too - ie remain unseen and unheard so that enemies will not engage you until evidence of your presence is discovered (bodies, explosions, un-silenced gunshots or a turret sees you etc). Realistically however, above mentioned in post above, there are far more serious issues to sort out, like enemies standing on top of each other trying to walk through a wall etc before even the combat gets improved.
HALF of the game issues could be fixed with relatively simple means of weapon re-balancing (number tweaking) and ammo/weapon decoupling. EDIT: Again, giving weapon nieches and making them distinct isn't that hard with just numbers tweaking, but you do even better with special properties. For example: enemy resistances to thermal/kinetic Then different calibers with different armor penetration values. Then different weapon properties or behavior - for example, plasma damage might fall off with distance. Lasers might not need reloading at all, drawing from your entire energy storage (making them good in prolonged fight). The proper minigun would be a TTK monster, but eat trough ammo like crazy, making it something you use sparingly. A pulse rifle should be all about RoF and ammo capacity (60 bullet capacity, min). In comparison, an assault rifle would be longer-ranged, higher-caliber, harder hitting, but less ammo. etc..
You know for vanilla Empyrion single player you are totally correct. But for Reforged Eden multiplayer, those guys managed to change the way the AI of the npc's work and its a lot better than vanilla, I was shocked. I am not a 100% sure if its a Reforged Eden thing or if it was the USG server I was playing on if the owner of that server had access to the npc config files and changed them but either way it was waaay better than vanilla.
I may not have this correct but... I'm pretty sure all of the AI changes come from Vermillion's Reforged Galaxy overhaul. (That is, I don't know if any notable tweaks were made as part of Project Eden, since some enemies are native to Project Eden.) Anyway... He's done wonders for the challenge, that's for sure. I can't currently make up my mind which I like better, the Reforged or the Eden part of RE; probably doesn't matter. However, I'm pretty sure the changes to the AI are simply changing their range of view in distance and angle, reaction times, move and turn speeds, and of course damage and health. I personally think that yes, it's noticeably better than vanilla. Not exactly the way I'd tweak it, but then I'm not the one doing the tweaking and I'm not 100% sure what options there are for swapping things like damage types or whatever -- as said earlier in the thread, I'd love to see more actual projectiles and less hitscan. That and maybe turn speeds a little lower for Zirax so it doesn't feel like they're trying to make flickshot montages for CoD. But it does address the complaint in the post you quoted about enemies always hitting. I think Vermillion said a lot of them are less accurate, but do more damage. So in that sense it's down to a dice-roll, which is better than guaranteed damage. Not to say they don't still sometimes just wreck you when all those chances line up not in your favor. Granted, it doesn't alleviate the AI just breaking down, but it helps. It does at the very least feel noticeably different to take on, so it's a fun thing to try out at the very minimum. (not even mentioning any of the other countless tweaks to weapons and stuff.)
May own experiences with gunplay seem to be quite different from a lot of what I hear here. Fights with legacy creatures tend to be very fast and furious, knowing they can, and often do, come from multiple directions at once, reminiscent of combat scenes from Aliens. Zirax battles tend to be far more tactical - using sniper rifles at range, closing the distance to make use of shotguns in close-quarters, dodging incoming rocket fire and keeping a watch for laser-rifle soldiers, using structures, rocks or trees for cover while reloading, or ducking behind corners or crates (and now with crouching, actually ducking for cover), popping out with a quick, point-blank shotgun blast, and using your drone to both scout enemy positions, as well as draw the attention of turrets, which generally stay pointed in whichever direction they managed to blow up your drone - often buying time enough to slip past them as they reorient to you, or baiting zirax away enough to switch to a rifle and pop a head. I actually find this sort of combat quite decent, though there is room for improvement to be sure. AI tactics are largely lacking - they simply know where you are, and close in, even rocket-launcher troops will turn into "suicide bombers", blowing you and themselves up if you let them, and closing a glass door in their faces usually leaves them standing there, looking quite perplexed. I certainly don't miss minigun soldiers and commanders jamming their weapons through a wall to shoot you anyways, but bugs are bound to happen.
