Ophichius

Just to clarify for the record, the bug I experienced was not identical to Cyrus123's video. His video has normal sight behavior while aiming, but the weird jello arms otherwise. I was experiencing that behavior at all times. (And I'm currently re-installing and hoping his fix works for me too.)

Well I can re-verify the cache, but I'm running vanilla, so it's not mods.

I'm not seeing the sharp shuddering, but the overall movement is very similar, especially the way the stock of the weapon floats all over the screen.

I just tried this again and couldn't replicate it to the same degree, so it may have been something that the last update fixed. I was running the Armed Assault showcase, and using the MXC + RCO that you're issued. I was getting a recoil rise that put the crosshairs roughly halfway between the center of my screen and the top of the screen. Previously it actually disappeared off the top of my screen. Unfortunately I don't have access to video recording software, so I can't show a good example of it in action. Yeah, my first post was posted in a state of disgust after 60+ minutes of running into glitches and foul-ups in the showcases, culminating in a firefight where I was fighting my weapon more than the enemy. It really feels like the gunplay has gone backwards since the alpha, and the gun bobbling all over is cartoonish, but I didn't express that clearly because at the time I was fuming over things.

It can actually change how people perceive it. Part of why I was asking was that I truly did not understand how people could like the current devbranch mechanics. Froggyluv made a solid point that people are cautiously excited because it will be iterated upon many times, and you helped me understand that people are more interested in the way it affects the decision-making process of choosing weapons. I still don't really like the current mechanics, but I think I have a better understanding of why someone could like them. I guess my question is, if the mechanics can be brought closer to real world behavior, while also presenting a complex shooting experience (i.e. realism AND complexity) shouldn't that be a better goal than 'realism OR complexity'?

No it is core mechanics. If you cannot see your sights to use them, and cannot accurately estimate how far off (and in which direction) your aim is, you cannot hit anything. Watching my scope reticule drift off the top of my screen during a burst is patently absurd. Similarly, having the rear sight drifting around robs me of any effective means of gauging how far off my aim is, and in which direction. If they implement inertia as an actual directional offset (i.e. overswing) rather than a simple increase in shot dispersion, that bit of information will be crucial in tight situations. In a game about shooting things, sight behavior is absolutely a core mechanic and should be addressed seriously.

Okay, so in a nutshell the answer is that you defend the intentions, not the implementation. My issue is that the intentions can be achieved while removing a number of the issues with the implementation. I think if I had to focus on a single gripe it would be the weapon model movement. It's not right, it doesn't feel or look right, and it doesn't have to be that way. In reality when a weapon is shouldered, the shoulder acts as the fulcrum of a lever. Your eye is positioned slightly forward of that fulcrum (5-6 inches typically, varies by individual.) with the rear sight positioned 4-6 inches in front of that. In order to get rear sight movement like what is seen in the current model, you would need to have the gun come 30+ degrees out of alignment with the shooter's line of vision, which simply doesn't happen. The eye tracks the sight line, even if the weapon itself swings away from the body line. Furthermore, the current implementation has the front sight remaining relatively static while the rear sight swings about, which is exactly the inverse of what you would see were you actually looking down the sights. The rear sights remain more or less static compared to the shooter's field of view, while the front sights are more prone to drift as they are at the end of a long swing arm. The way the sights move about in game right now is bizzare, it's as though the weapon is not actually shouldered, but merely being held in front of the body with every effort made to keep the front sight on target regardless of the position of the rear sight. Hence why I said it feels like you're Cpl. Jello Arms. Ideally, the rear sight should be more steady within the player's FoV, with the front sight drifting around to indicate misalignment. Similarly, recoil mechanics with scopes currently induce unrealistic levels of misalignment between the sights and the center of the FoV (I am aware this may be an issue that will be addressed in the future via scope shadow and other more subtle, accurate mechanics.)

So to all those saying they like the sway and inertia changes, I have to ask: Why? Are you actually enjoying the unrealistic wobble and bobble of your sights around the screen, or do you just like the idea of forcing people to slow down and be more methodical? I've seen a lot of people simply dismissing critics out of hand and fervently defending BIS' 'vision' of what they want with no real justification or rationale behind their responses. Meanwhile a number of the people who have raised complaints have done so citing actual issues where the game now diverges from actual shooting methodology. Furthermore, those who are defending sway using the pithy statement "Go back to CoD" to dismiss criticism are ignoring that the current sway and inertia mechanics are just as artificial as any mechanic in BF4 or CoD. They bear no relation to actual weapon handling, being arbitrary values picked to enforce a certain play style upon players. So again I ask, why defend this change? What appeals to you about it?

With this latest update the sway and recoil issues have become bad enough that I'm not likely to pick the game up again until they're fixed. It's both jarring and incredibly irritating the way that both scopes and iron sights wobble around your screen as though your soldier is Cpl. Jello Arms. A proper shooting stance does not allow that much relative movement between the eye and the rear sight.

Is it possible to display individual hitboxes on infantry and vehicles? I'm trying to figure out the exact dimensions of some of the stranger hitboxes in the game (like the Hunter's fuel tank), and this would be really handy.

PS2 is far from flawless, suffered from massive performance issues at launch, and still suffers from poor performance now. It also does significant corner cutting, for example, in large battles it will only render a subset of all players to each other, something which would be unforgivable in Arma. It also has very imprecise position code and a very, very poor server tick rate (200ms between ticks). The only reason it 'feels' smooth is because it uses client side hit detection and motion prediction. If Arma went that route, it would be even more of a mess than the current MP situation. Imagine being hit and killed by a friendly vehicle that looked like it was driving past you 10m away on your screen. That happens all the time in PS2, because vehicle and player position is only updated on clients once every 200ms, leading to a massive desync between apparent and actual positions. PS2 manages to have huge battles because it has incredibly low precision, not because it has a better design.

Jester made a tutorial video on HC that explains everything you need to know:

I'd love to see Zeus mode steal some UI elements from various RTSes, as a way of lowering the workload on Zeus. Those of you familiar with Supreme Commander will note a huge number of these are functions implemented in SC. Quick select groups: Let players bind groups of units to a quick recall key to later select them all again with one keypress. Camera location bindings: Let Zeus bind specific camera locations to quick recall keys, so they can snap their camera back to an area of interest instantly. Patrol orders: Give Zeus the ability to issue a series of waypoints that will be circled in order until canceled. This lets players quickly set units in motion and ensure they stay in motion without constant babysitting. Even if it's just a squad walking up and down a road endlessly. Relocatable waypoints: The ability to pick up a waypoint and relocate it is incredibly useful. Sometimes just for adjusting a patrol or move order that's not quite going where it ought to be, other times for rapidly redirecting large numbers of forces without having to re-select them all. (e.g. A player band-box selects 8 squads and orders them to move 5km, if they wind up spread out or separated, hunting them all down for another group selection to re-adjust their waypoint takes extra time. It's easier to just pick up the waypoint and move it.) Waypoint binding (I don't really know a better term, sorry.): Allowing units to 'stick to' a waypoint chain as their own. For instance if I order Squad 1 to move to waypoints A, B, and C in order, then select Squad 2 and order them to waypoint bind to A, Squad 2 will now also move to A, B, and C in order. (And in keeping with relocatable waypoints as above, if I move A, B, or C both squads will move towards the relocated waypoints.) Pre-placement attribute adjustment: Let players pick the stance, formation, and caution level of units before spawning them. Similarly, let players pre-adjust heading and altitude. Coordinated move orders: This would require waypoint binding, but a coordinated move waypoint would cause all units bound to it to adjust their speed to arrive at the waypoint at the same time. For instance, you could bind an infantry squad and a helo to the same waypoint, and the helo would arrive exactly when the infantry does. LZ/pickup zones (Stolen directly from SC): Allow designating a LZ and pickup waypoint for transport vehicles. Any infantry unit waypoint bound to the pickup waypoint will be transported to the LZ waypoint by the transport, and vice versa. When not transporting units, transports loiter at the pickup WP. This allows for easy creation of air assaults. Halt/Pause waypoints: Waypoints that a unit will pause at for a set amount of time before continuing. Waypoint diversity improvment in general. Think of anything a squad leader might order their squad to do and allow a waypoint for it. Attack terrain (for CAS/artillery bombardment/suppression fire), retreat (move with rear facing towards the waypoint), dig in (orders units to find cover as maximum priority and only return fire after having found good cover.), etc. A simple trigger system. Let Zeus place trigger zones with a simplified set of conditions (If entered by <faction>, if entered by <unittype>, if empty) which can then be attached to halt/pause waypoints. So one could cue up an infantry squad at a halt waypoint, attach an 'if entered' trigger to it, and the squad would halt until triggered. Allow triggers to trip other Zeus effects as well. For example, place a set of inactive distant battle sounds and tracer effects, tie them all to a trigger, so players tripping the trigger will cause ambient battle noise to spring up. (For grins, one could theoretically make a trigger tied to a lightning bolt, allowing semi-automagic smiting.) ZvZ(vZ?) mode: Basically a full-on RTS mode with competing Zeuses (Zeusii? However you pluralize that). Think of it like CTI, but with commanders using the Zeus interface instead of having to go through High Command or menu-based interfaces. This would need some tweaking of the Zeus interface, including some sort of fog of war/sight line mechanic, but could be really neat. In general, I think Zeus has awesome potential, but to really be a flexible, powerful tool for on-the-fly use, it needs to reduce the workload on the player considerably. It's the same problem faced by macro-scale RTSes, and could really benefit from some of the same solutions of automation, powerful waypoint flexibility, and creation templating.