AVAST YE LANDLUBBERS!

First post on the board, first line all caps. Do I care? Hell no! That's just how I roll.

Yeah. So I'm enormously excited about Running With Rifles - it looks like it's going to be something pretty close to the Cannon Fodder/Operation Flashpoint mashup I've wanted all these years, but the way it works out aiming and elevation is stopping me from going and making an immediate purchase. I've personally found that the way the target dot flits about all over the place constitutes about 50% of the difficulty in shooting people, not helped by having landscapes that primarily seem to be gradually rolling hills and, further, from having relatively little visual feedback about the height of the terrain. I had a search here and found a mention of improving visual feedback by removing lighting and just using the height map, but to me the actual aiming is prohibitively unsatisfactory.

Obviously RWR is presently very much in the making and I did see a dev say that even the current demo is a ways behind where they are now, but is there an acknowledgement that this is a problem and are there any intentions (or better yet firm plans) to update this part of the game?

Danke,

Eduardo del Mango

Hi Eduardo,


Actually the aiming needs a bit of practice to get the feeling since at first you indeed often shoots through the ground on bumpy terrain
For the height visuals you have those slight visual lines but after a while it's more or less all about a feeling. For myself I only have rarely troubles with shooting through the ground.
The main issue users may encounter is when you shoot from a low elevation to someone placed on top of a hill like illustrated on this picture:



For that you'll have to aim at him directly (the higher the better, of course) instead of aiming at a spot behind him, what is often done on flat terrain. Those situations aren't happening too often and on such locations where the guys up the hill have a slight advantage it's better to maybe just start a flank from a more flat side or at least steady heightening.
I'm afraid to say that this "problem" you mentioned will probably not be updated. The bullet is moving straight to the crosshair location and if there's land between it, the bullet will stop as in real life, most likely.
We are listening very carefully to the feedback of our community, so I will discuss that with pasik to maybe have at least an option in the menu to make the height lines more visible if that would help. Maybe an other option would be to flatten a bit those bumpy heightenings. We'll let you know!

Jack

PS: does anyone else think that this is a big issue which should be updated?

I don't find this as a huge issue, but as an issue yes. But I have no idea how to solve the issue without sacrifying graphics.
EDIT: I was playing on map2 and noticed that the elevation shadowing makes a big difference. There was a time of day when it'd be obvious where the bumps were, and time of day when there was no elevation shadowing at all and it was impossible to see the bumps without shooting. Maybe this effect could be lessened, or completely removed, and only left to objects?

Hi guys, thanks for your responses!

Jack - yeah, I think I might have been treating it a bit too much like Cannon Fodder and wanted to be able to machine-gun everything within visual range and considering it a flaw in the game rather than as a challenge in and of itself. I'll take that on board and have another practice - I can still imagine that there might be some room for improvement in the game itself in this regard, but I'll have another go - once I've got the hang of it a bit better I might be able to suggest something a bit more constructive. Perhaps something like having optional contour lines, as on a map, might work if that's possible?



We've got a thread started about RWR over at Rock Paper Shotgun which is overwhelmingly positive (everyone loves the game 'cos it's awesome), but there was one guy there who found the aiming an issue as well (he and I thought that the 'rolling hills' map kinda wasn't suitable, but again that was before reading your comment here).

Oh, and always encouraging when a newly registered account's first post gets a reply from someone involved in the game's development.

Cheers!

good morning!

First of, it's important to play a bit more than a few minutes to get used to the game. It usually can take up to a few hours to get used to all kind of stuff which can be frustrating at first.
The only "problem" I see with those "rolling hills" is with the MG since you have to prone to be able to shoot. Enabling the ability to shoot while standing is probably not an option though since prone it was makes the weapon so different and else it would be imbalanced anyway. On Map2 for example you never have such issues with the rolling hills.
But in general, I don't see that as a big deal and as I said, we will discuss this and let you know!

Have a nice day,
Jack

Hey it's my first post so first off love the game, well worth the beta buy-in price.

I gotta say though I also think it's annoying that you have to draw a perfect bead (and not aim past or in front of) a guy if he's uphill and only if he's uphill. I can't imagine the technical difficulties of sorting target z-order in this game, so I don't know how easily it could be solved, but I was really hoping for a Doom-like vertical auto-aim.

It sort of makes sense and could be useful mapping to have an advantage to fighting downhill, but that's just what it does, makes it easier to fight downhill because you can aim past guys.

Yes, but this would also make picking off more important targets at first impossible, which would become very annoying in quick and dangerous situations which require fast decision.
You will get used to the system in a few days, I used to find aiming quite hard too at first, but today I can get the perfect shot with just twist of a muscle and reflex.

I also don't think that this game should become too easy.

Hello.
To start of, I haven't played the game yet, but I'm fairly interested in it. I was just watching a few videos and got the same question you did. The mechanics of the shooting seem to be fair, but the field of vision, in my opinion, is a bit misleading.
What I mean is, would you be able to see an enemy behind a hill, car or any other cover? I don't think so. Unless the cover is too small, short which requires you to go prone to hide behind it.
What I would suggest is a "fog of war" feature, which would solve a lot of problems of elevation. And, in theory, it would add more aspects to gameplay, like stealth, ambush and tactical play.
I do understand that my suggestion isn't valid, because I didn't play the game, but it's the first think I thought about when I saw the game.

Hello and feel free to play the free demo before deciding to purchase or not. Much more informative than a video I would say

About your fog of war discussion. This idea has been brought up in the past and discussed in quite some detail. While the general consensus is that a fog of war would indeed add to the game, the implementation will take a while to be completed.

The fog of war discussed is that you can only not see someone that is behind a building or directly behind you. Essentially, your view is an arc such that the rear 130 or so degrees are blind spots. Trees and small cover like crates/fences/low walls/hills/cars will not prevent view but anything that is a building does.

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it

This could be a mod at some point, but I doubt this will happen anytime soon, if at all. It would remind me a bit of frozen synapse