Dev Update for July 2020

[Kishoot 36]

18 hours ago, Reaps989 said:

I think he's stating it based on the fact a small female's hitbox is considerably smaller than the smallest male.

Easiest fix would be to allow the male's slider to go even further to equal them out, rather than having dead-spots in a male's hitbox or hitboxes for female characters outside of their visible frame. As long as it's damn near even, it should be enough.

This is the case in The Division. A good option.

[cyasoon 31]

all quite on the forum atm,its like sneaking tru a pvp zone you know damn well someones watching ready to pounce

[Warg86 38]

Fingers crossed  , maybe next year we can return our favorite Post apocalyptic wasteland.

[SmilyFace 300]

Good to see progress has been made. Can't wait to get back in there.

[ZenRoyal 47]

On 7/21/2020 at 12:05 PM, MattScott said:

I can't wait. Maybe this time, now that there's less bias behind the scenes I can step forward as a volunteer GM in between when I may or may not be deployed or busy on a duty station.

 

On 8/22/2020 at 6:54 AM, Kishoot said:

This is the case in The Division. A good option.

Curious, which is better between the two. Equal hitboxes based on slider position (equating to the male body as to not create a visual cluster bomb? OR just mess with the male slider limitations so that you can make the lollipop guild remastered?

[Creeping Vulture 14]

Visually the Division example above sucks, imo. As long as there are more then one human anywhere, there's gonna be opinions though.

Some "phantastic" ideas from the near future? Welp, u can try something outta this place.

Whenever character in a pvp zone/sports or flagged, u can "buff" him/her with medium body size/height, for everyone)

Not sure how the visuals react to that though, and on which stage body params load. If game engine can just render this any given moment without goin to char screen, then its fine.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Creeping Vulture

[slerk 6]

Well all I can say is there should be no difference in hit box per gender only in height.

 

[Warg86 38]

I played  pvp on my cheese laptop against small female toons.  Actually all you  needed was skill. Shotgun and good heals was all you needed .  Yes i know some may think i dont know what Im talking about . But i played FE since 2012  ,tested all kinds of builds and saw so many players  who pvp-d.  Game need anticheat and a good one thats all. Hitbox wont matter much if you know what are you doing.

[Creeping Vulture 14]

On second thought, if my memory serves me right, there's actually a quest item in deadfall that changes ur look to one of the shiva's.

Hence, I think the idea is more then viable, and u can simply copy and tweak that script.

[Sinfa 2]

I understand the neat to match hitbox's for 'fairness', but honestly I never felt FE was a e-sports grade twitch shooter... it felt pretty fair in terms of using the wrong weapon for the right opponent like said above. Having hard time hitting someone running and jumping, shotgun is your friend. Their standing still or running right at you, well anyone can hit a target like that... but I'm off topic here.

 

I personally found division (and similar games) enforcement of making female character hit box's match males... has a huge negative effect on visual appeal/customization. For a FPS lobby shooter, it makes sense thats where you cut your corners... but an crafting/exploration MMO? Are what you getting back with 'fair' hit box's worth the 'massive' turnoff for every female player being unnaturally bulky?

For example another MMO faced the same issue. "Pirated of the burning Sea" they too decided to match the female skeleton/hitbox to the males... and the visual effect of it was a large point of contention (which I think lasted the full life of the MMO). Though in their case I believe the choice was not made for PvP in mind, but saving animation time but using same animations for both sex's.

I have played the division games, and playing a female character in them is a 'terrible' experience. I hope the same dose not happen to FE. Please 'PLEASE' do not throw customization and uniqueness out the window trying to balance the game to a e-sports degree. Players adapt, and I do not think small/skinny female characters were ever as bad as Oddjob from Goldeneye 64. Of course I have never seen any PvP analytics saying small female characters were a problem. Just speaking from my own experiences in FE.

Going off on a tangent though, I always felt conventional balance has never been the best course of action for RPGMMO's. Sure everyone 'should' have an equal footing, but where dose it say a player can't chose to handicap themselves with a drawback? Games allow hardcore mode, or other similar changes. Some have special modes to enable to make for a more challenging experience. My point is, if a player wants to play a short/skinny character they can... but a small skinny character 'logically' would less resistant to damage, or can carry's less weight (Like a small race in a DnD campaign). FE as an RPG could implement such boons and cons. A big buff character might be slower, but carry more and deal better melee damage, a smaller character faster, but can't carry as much and easily effected by melee. The balance would be a nightmare... but that is part of the fun of making a unique character. Ideally such a system would need far more pro's and cons, like how you allocate attribute points on a table top character. Instead of tying it all to stat blocks/traits, could be a rebel and tie it to appearance. Its a fun pipe dream to imagine in anycase.

-Really looking forward to the return of FE, have missed it dearly.

[nC_mixam 8]

18 hours ago, Sinfa said:

I understand the neat to match hitbox's for 'fairness', but honestly I never felt FE was a e-sports grade twitch shooter... 

The only compromise i see in that situation is really just making characters in blood sports having identical sizes\hitboxes, while leaving their original hitboxes in open world.
That way all who want fair pvp will just go to BS (because let's be honest, when open world pvp was fair? It's just the "who sees who first" type of deal) and those who dont want it, or want the "old style" pvp will just remain in open world.

[Ripperblade 1]

@MattScott

It is nice to observe some progress on FE reboot work. Thank you for update. The render looks awesome.

 

On separate note i wonder if you go for prioritization of selected items in case if they need manual re-detalization? I mean, if any manual work was spent, you have to be aware that this PvP gear set became obsolete after adding G.O.R.E. , the potential new player would have no use or need to grind for it again,  ... well unless you have plans for re-do gear progression and wipe progress.

 

[Ardenn 41]

I remember the day I found out specific outfits and shoulder pads were proven to alter your hitbox size in combat and folks went from big burly suits full of heavy armor stats, to rushing the vanity tabs to put on T-shirts to reduce the size of the hitbox around the shoulders. Fallen Earth was a weird, janky old engine.

If we're going to mention how much GORE destabilized PVP, though, we also have to address how positively badly balanced Heavy Weapons were, to the point that I accidentally forced the previous Devs hands to make them virtually unusable. Remember Snipers having a 90m range you could push a little with good aim to about 120? Remember Heavy weapons had bullets that didnt despawn no matter the travel distance so you could shoot them further than targets could render? Remember when I sold all my build info to the Enforcers because the CHOTA were running out of people to fight, and they made a 30 man army to keep The Dump under their control with a mass line of torpedo style explosives in any direction? All I ever hoped for was they'd be unusuable in zones under 40 and the old Devs responded by completely locking the levels that could participate in open towns period.

I really miss the hybrid pvp play and the community that let in a dirty casual roleplayer in to their games, and kept inviting me back. Once splash damage and oneshot kill mechanics were implemented, it was chaos.

[Creeping Vulture 14]

I feel like throwing in another stone, so lets just slow down and recall that this game doesnt revolve around pvp for starters)

Whichever way that problem will be solved, it's far from being one of the big ones this game have.

And, on the other note, I forgot to throw in another solution, cz u can use sports team color code system, and instead use it to make hitbox both same size for everyone and visible thru everything, armor or body, this way there's no way to cover it. I, personally, wouldnt care which solution fits better, or feels less cheaty to some. Then again, if same body size buff looks as a "clunky" solution (poof - and ur bigger/smaller), u can always force respawn char in nearest pod (don't forget, that this could be potentially exploited to ft anywhere from under fire, so to speak. needs some...conditions, like not bein attacked at a moment by any creature, as usual) to make the transition seamless.

[Kishoot 36]

I respect the choice of those who do PvE and RP so respect those who do PvP.
If FE is not a PvP game then it is neither a PvE or RP game. Who are you to decide? More tastes are in the game better it is.

This game offered a unique combat experience, that boxing fight feel with pistols.

It is often those who have lack of openness who give lessons, and are unfortunately most often heard.
When I hear that we should only have the arena of balanced or be reduced to play shotgun you don't understand anything. You close the door to open world and variety of gameplay it's the worst thing.
The arenas can be just as unbalanced as the open world. It is not only a question of numbers but of who is fighting, where and why. Turning in an arena is cool 5 minutes. And what is better to win a fight lost in advance?

Also that the difference between a male and female toon is not huge is that you really haven't fought and played the game and you can stay mediocre for years.

There is a huge difference, maybe 30% also accentued by the ping and the fact that you don't one or two shot. (Probably why this guy talked about the shotgun) You need a string of successful shot with pistols.

We should not be reduced to play what is efficient but what we like while having all our chances.
I understand that a lot of people don't like "The Division" solution, it's not even my favourite but it's not that shocking when you play it (far less than the picture) and you don't even notice it right away.

There remains the "APB" solution.

 

The disadvantage comes more from the width of the hitbox than from the height.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Kishoot

[Reaps989 17]

On 8/29/2020 at 6:13 AM, RN86 said:

I played  pvp on my cheese laptop against small female toons.  Actually all you  needed was skill. Shotgun and good heals was all you needed .  Yes i know some may think i dont know what Im talking about . But i played FE since 2012  ,tested all kinds of builds and saw so many players  who pvp-d.  Game need anticheat and a good one thats all. Hitbox wont matter much if you know what are you doing.

Actually the fact a male is roughly 15% larger than a female is kinda a big deal when pistols/snipers are involved. Melee/shotgun, not so much but it is still a major factor.

The option is there to allow males to be made smaller via slider at creation, which originally could be exploited (and was not detected unless someone reported it, which obviously was harshly punished) but Tiggs running around on a toon that was always super tiny was a good example. Tho, that was a manual input... if the client and server allow the scaling then a male can be closer to a female's hitbox.

Not saying a female toon should get larger, simply the male slider should have a wider range to allow them to be smaller. That being said, a female toon should also be allowed to scale up to the size of a large male toon.

Why? Because sometimes I want a big patootie wall of a toon with 1.6k HP bodyblocking furballs

[Warg86 38]

On 9/4/2020 at 1:22 PM, Reaps989 said:

Actually the fact a male is roughly 15% larger than a female is kinda a big deal when pistols/snipers are involved. Melee/shotgun, not so much but it is still a major factor.

The option is there to allow males to be made smaller via slider at creation, which originally could be exploited (and was not detected unless someone reported it, which obviously was harshly punished) but Tiggs running around on a toon that was always super tiny was a good example. Tho, that was a manual input... if the client and server allow the scaling then a male can be closer to a female's hitbox.

Not saying a female toon should get larger, simply the male slider should have a wider range to allow them to be smaller. That being said, a female toon should also be allowed to scale up to the size of a large male toon.

Why? Because sometimes I want a big patootie wall of a toon with 1.6k HP bodyblocking furballs

Tested  character who were lvl 25 something , armor was lvl 5  if even that nothing special , duster, sneakers, fingerless gloves , leather pants and shirt.  Tested group missions wich usually needed 2 person team. Specialy when boss was sponge and high tier healt . I wanted to see how is possible survive and do such missions without real armor . It was doable  and wasnt big diffrence if you use armor or not.  I wanted to see how all these medicine and food buffs works + science injectors like vitamin shot and etc. Adding calibration , healing both stanch wound and benevolence. And most important you weapon style., rifle ,pistol worked perfectly . You can do pvp in that outfit and build if you have  good pc  and good broadband connection, wich  was huge factor in that game. Most of us felt lag and died very fast against pvp-rs.  Everything in that game was doable ,whatever path you chose and how you wanted to play game without getting bored. Reason i reply that is because i know what im talking about, seen it all and tested all what that game offers.

[NysekZePope 33]

50 minutes ago, RN86 said:

Tested  character who were lvl 25 something , armor was lvl 5  if even that nothing special , duster, sneakers, fingerless gloves , leather pants and shirt.  Tested group missions wich usually needed 2 person team. Specialy when boss was sponge and high tier healt . I wanted to see how is possible survive and do such missions without real armor . It was doable  and wasnt big diffrence if you use armor or not.  I wanted to see how all these medicine and food buffs works + science injectors like vitamin shot and etc. Adding calibration , healing both stanch wound and benevolence. And most important you weapon style., rifle ,pistol worked perfectly . You can do pvp in that outfit and build if you have  good pc  and good broadband connection, wich  was huge factor in that game. Most of us felt lag and died very fast against pvp-rs.  Everything in that game was doable ,whatever path you chose and how you wanted to play game without getting bored. Reason i reply that is because i know what im talking about, seen it all and tested all what that game offers.

 

A male toon, of course, can PVP or PVE. The statement is that both should be on equal terms (at least if a player wishes to) as hitbox matters in PVP.

 

The rambling above sounds like PVE, even if not the fact remains equal footing as an option is hardly a bad request.

[Creeping Vulture 14]

Oh my, I just responded to this with some opinion and tips, and almost started some holywar shitstorm, some of u guys most def almost make me feel like I am the troll in this one. We discussed new update, and where did it ends up once again, what a coincidence...

Anyway, what I actually meant, not what some of u make it look like, is that this is not some br, or cs(quake/ut/tribes if we're goin for other old names) kind of a game, its an mmo with some pve/rp lore, and not some competitive pvp shooter, though yeah, most mmo's got such content in them, just like here, as a side dish. And, uh, yeah, I got it. Some strive for this exp here and everywhere, and yet, there is pve community here too, they had theirs. The one and only pvp is in irl anywho, games r just some weak resemblance)

 

So, even if this hitbox problem got solved (since, it does have some correlation with pve content in this game, cz some or even most of the mobs and, obvi, even bosses have pretty tricky edges literally, and hitting them where u actually meant to, might lead to a miss, as in, even mobs here have hitboxes that doesnt fit their model(s) properly, this was a topic for a long time), I believe there's bigger concerns at top-10 list here, though I got some lesser concern in mind rn.

 

Think of it...there's a 25 day limit to a clan leadership system. And serv was off for way more then that. If it isn't turned off, when they launch the serv again, there's a very big chance some players may lose not only their clan, but their shit in its vault, that they put in there, in the first place. Plus, you know, its a name thing too. U can create another one, but the name is taken, innit?) I do get it, that there's workarounds, but my point bein is that this system is pretty useless in the very first place. Cz, the only upside it gives, is that u can steal shit from the clan vault. And clan name on top of it. Since, u can take all alive players to another clan, new one. It's one of the problems too, and...it became a pressing one, since serv is off atm.

 

It's like...still having pvp zones, though u can flag everywhere. Which leads to only one result - pve players ganked in there under current mechanics(deleted books, no mat piles, certain mats in pvp zones only, that one's a topic for quite some time too), builds difference not giving em any chance if u will(even if it's just my imo), they're just some meat. Call it whatever u like, but naming it as is, thats griefing. If they'd wanted it, they'd flag. And, imo, that was a downfall for this project. Like for a few dozens of other ones. Pvp community throws in cash, bidding on solutions made by team, pve community leaves, no meat, pvp players leave, project dead. It happens all around the net, a bunch of games died like that, that's a fact. Just google it. Some of u might had a chance to witness this with your own eyes prolly, aside from here even. Ftp game like this lives off marketplace, and on this one I strongly believe, at least 90-95% of all marketplace stuff is pve oriented, strictly. This project wont earn any bills with pve community running outta here cz of griefers, end of story.

 

Welp, just pointing it out, cz, it might be, there is a part of community here that holds it higher than this hitbox problem. Or zip guns in other thread. Or current skills system...and so on.

Opinions, right? Was it a pve player opinion? Hell yeah it was) Doesn't make it a lie, or less truthful though.

 

P.S. - I never wanted it to be such a long story, sry guys)))

Edited September 7, 2020 by Creeping Vulture

[Esproc 4]

On 8/25/2020 at 9:12 PM, cyasoon said:

all quite on the forum atm,its like sneaking tru a pvp zone you know damn well someones watching ready to pounce

God you just reminded me of how well the sneaking system worked with removing your map dot.  Used to ambush people in Haietta all the time.

sigh.

[cyasoon 31]

i miss our game

[Owenator 1]

Thanks for the update!

[Kishoot 36]

On 9/5/2020 at 1:51 PM, NysekZePope said:

 

A male toon, of course, can PVP or PVE. The statement is that both should be on equal terms (at least if a player wishes to) as hitbox matters in PVP.

 

The rambling above sounds like PVE, even if not the fact remains equal footing as an option is hardly a bad request.

I'm confident if Nysekjesus tell it, LO will do it.

Edited September 10, 2020 by Kishoot

[Sang 66]

On 9/7/2020 at 12:19 PM, Esproc said:

God you just reminded me of how well the sneaking system worked with removing your map dot.  Used to ambush people in Haietta all the time.

sigh.

I used to crawl around Haietta all the time for them tasty nodes that was as rare as bear feathers elsewhere. Nice to see you still lurking old friend. 

[Jacksporrow9 2]

I can't wait for FE to come back and i know that APB has bit more funding on it but FE has more people who would rather see FE be live. IF there was anyway to donate Money to bring back FE faster i would because i would rather play FE then APB.