Soldiers!
As promised, we'd like to share with you detailed information regarding damage in the game. In this article, we will analyze the most common cases that are not clear to players. Moreover, we will share the statuses or plans for the improvement of each of these points.
The "crouch/stand up" and "prone/stand up" commands
If you are an active participant of the Ranked Matches or of other dynamic game modes, you have surely faced players using the “crouch/stand up” and “prone/stand up” commands (spamming the X/Ctrl buttons). These actions lead to the following situation: from the player's point of view, when crouching, the character model barely moves, while from the third person view, it starts to twitch more noticeably. It is difficult to hit such a fighter not only during a face-to-face shootout, but also when they crouch behind an obstacle (the enemy crouches and sees you, while you do not see the opponent).
Status: active work is well underway; it is aimed not only to radically change the animation, but also to rule out the very possibility of using these commands repeatedly. You can learn details in a separate publication.
The enemy did not shoot, but made a kill
You could have found yourself in situations when the enemy killed you although there was no shooting animation. You did not understand how this could have happened, so you may well think that no damage was dealt to the enemy. In fact, the shot was missing only from the graphical point of view (the animation was lacking). In other words, it was out of sync with the visual effect; it is a game bug that used to occur due to the work of the network code.
Status: the bug has been fixed, so this is unlikely to be encountered now. However, if you notice something similar, please report it to our technical support.
Player positions
You may have encountered situations when an enemy killed you, but you saw them only when dying. This is partly due to the geometry of objects and characters. For example, some parts of the character's body (the top part of the head, elbows, knees, etc.) can be visible to the enemy although you do not see that from the first person view. Upon dying, you can see only what the kill camera shows you; so you may consider that a kill behind an obstacle, although the enemy had just jumped up, seen part of your character and made an accurate shot. There is another case when a character model may be visible to the enemy before you see the opponent.
The thing is that your character's head is shifted to the right like in real-life aiming conditions. That's why, at some points, the enemy standing in front of you sees you a bit earlier than you can spot them. It is worth taking this fact into account to choose the best shooting position.
Status: these are not bugs, but the normal physical conditions of objects and characters. We will continue to change the geometry of objects to eradicate such cases. For example, in one of the previous updates, the geometry of objects on in-game levels was tweaked.
Kill behind a wall
Sometimes the enemy kills you after the character model has already gone behind the wall. This problem is encountered in all shooters, including Warface. It is due to latency. To put it simply, this is a certain time interval that often appears due to latency if the user has a poor Internet connection or low-end hardware. In this way, you see your character model already hidden behind the wall, although the enemy had spotted you before and managed to shoot. In perfect conditions, this system works well when the player enjoys a good connection, but we cannot significantly limit those users who do not have a perfect connection. We have to look for some kind of the golden mean to ensure a comfortable environment for all players. That's why cases of kills behind the wall can seem more frequent in our game.
Status: we go on in our work aimed to improve synchronization. We would like to remind you that last year the speed of information exchange between the client and the server (TickRate) was increased to 60 Hz, which improved accuracy of character positioning in PvP matches.
I made a shot, but it did not get registered
Sometimes your shots may not get registered. In this situation, there is blood, but in the first person view, the the player sees no damage indicator. This is indeed an issue; in this case the damage indicator and blood are not synchronized. It becomes more difficult for you to understand what happened in the battle. At the moment, we advise you focus on the damage cross as a more reliable metric because it is validated by the server.
Status: we have already started working on improvements, so we will try to eliminate this problem in the near future. Later on, we plan to transfer blood and cross metrics to the server side. Then the damage dealt will be shown only when the server part of the game confirms the hit. This is how the damage cross indicator works. The following logic will apply: there is damage indicator, there is blood, meaning that the server registered the hit.
Sometimes damage really doesn't get registered
The error when there is no damage at all looks different: the enemy does not die for a very long time when being impacted, and the damage cross is absent. Such situations can now take place only when one of the players has packet losses while being connected to the Internet. If you find yourself in such a situation, be sure to send a video and information about the match (its approximate time) to our technical support. We will promptly respond to reports and identify what went wrong.
Status: we do not like the fact that well-connected players find themselves at a disadvantage in such situations, so fixing the issue is very important. At the moment, we are not aware of any cases when all players had excellent connection, but still there was no damage registration. Enable in-game indicators to track your connection and other metrics. They will help you determine packet loss due to a bad connection.
What about dealing damage to lagging models?
Previously, you could come across players who twitched or even got teleported. Indeed, damage dealt to them was hardly registered, which caused a lot of inconvenience.
Status: currently, players with bad connection are not displayed as lagging. At the beginning of 2020, the server parts of the game were fine-tuned and this problem was solved. If you observe a different situation and still encounter lagging character models, please send information on such occurrences to our technical support.
Kill lag
After one of our updates, players used to experience a kill lag. It was manifested by the fact that the player performed a shot, and the damage cross appeared on the screen in a few seconds (there was also a delay in making a kill).
Status: the bug is now fixed and should not be reproduced if your Internet connection is stable. This was due to the limit on the number of received packets in the firewall.
Shotgun damage
In social networks and on the forum, we have seen reports that damage dealt with a shotgun does not get registered. We would like to clear up the situation. The shotgun is a unique and hard-to-predict weapon. The pellet spread when firing is now random, so there is a chance that you will have 95% of your scope aimed at a character, shoot, but all pellets will hit the remaining 5%, and the enemy will not die. Thus, you may conclude that the damage did not get registered, although this happened due to the shotgun shooting mechanics, which at the moment interferes with the gameplay.
Status: we don't want to improve it via changing the amount of blood, because damage is more informatively displayed with the help of a damage indicator. We plan to make the shotgun pellet spread more predictable. We are developing a system that will be based on the following rule: the more accurately you aim at the enemy, the greater the probability of killing him or her. For example, if a medic aims 80% of the crosshair at the enemy and shoots, 80% of the pellets will hit the target, which significantly increases the chance of killing.
It's worth noting that a number of algorithms have recently been reworked; and now the response of the damage indicator when firing shotguns has accelerated. Previously, when hitting an enemy with a shotgun, damage was registered separately for each pellet. So, in some cases, the processing time increased and there could be delays in the damage cross display.
First-person view camera
Many of you follow your allies via the first-person view camera. You can observe the damage cross, blood, and the player position. However, this information is not always correct. In some cases, the camera shows you things that have already happened a moment earlier before you saw them. Therefore, it may seem that there were some issues with hit damage registration. In fact, it depends only on the operation of the first-person view camera.
Status: in most cases the camera works correctly, but there is still a 1% of false information if the player experiences short-term connection latency.
Kill cam
To begin with, let's explain how the kill camera works. When you are killed, your angle of view (field of view) starts moving towards the killer; this camera movement takes certain time. For example, if you are killed in the back, the camera needs to rotate 180 degrees. During this time, the killer also moves, and when your camera reaches him or her to show the moment of death, the opponent is already located in a different place. Thus, sometimes, it can seem that the killer was behind the wall. In fact, the rival had not been there, but while the kill camera was moving he or she shifted to another point.
Status: we would not like to change the speed of the camera movement, because it can cause inconvenience. We could develop a mechanic that will show only your character, without the enemy. But in this case it can greatly affect the gameplay, because it will be impossible to provide information about the enemy. We would not like to follow this path, so we will further study the matter.
Major improvements of 2020
Of course, last year we introduced important changes that helped us get rid of some problems. Here are the most important ones.
- Tweaks to the Game Center. We noticed that some fighters (accidentally or on purpose) did not choose the optimal region when starting the game, which hindered comfortable gameplay not only for them, but also for other players due to a large difference in ping. Therefore, to prevent such situations, we prepared an update. Now you will always get matched in the most comfortable conditions: with soldiers from your region or a neighboring one.
- Reworked damage indicator. Now it is not related to damage dealt by individual hits, and its size reflects the current state of the enemy in combat. The damage cross includes both indicators: damage made to health and damage dealt to armor. The closer the enemy is to death, the larger the indicator gets with each next hit. The full damage cross means the death of the enemy. You can read more about this in the dedicated news.
- Last year, an important game server indicator - TickRate - has been modified: it was increased to 60. We remind you that this is the speed of data exchange between the server and the game client. The more often data are exchanged, the more accurately actions of a player and of other users are reflected.
- Improved synchronization system. The system was tweaked to make playing with users experiencing difficulties (for example, with an unstable Internet connection) more comfortable.
- Eliminated "load peaks" in server algorithms.
- Some of the root shooting algorithms were completely reworked, and some of them were transferred from the game client to the server.
Why is it important to contact technical support?
First, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the person who discovered a bug is required to provide additional information. A video confirms that the problem does exist; but this is most likely will not be enough to reproduce the bug.
QA specialists say "If an error cannot be reproduced, then it does not exist." And if the localizer forwards to the developers only a video demonstrating a bug, it can take a huge amount of time to reproduce the error.
Your logs which are constantly requested by the technical support come to the developers' aid. These little files can save a lot of effort while identifying exact causes of an error. Thus, the developers will have time to do more useful things for the community.
The same goes for some visual bugs. The cause may well be one specific video card model. In this case, developers will have to check various custom configurations in an attempt to reproduce the bug and find out the cause of the problem, whereas a file with the user's computer configuration, where an error occurred, will greatly reduce the search time.
Please note that in this case, you will spend about the same amount of time filling out the report fields as it will take you to create a thread on the forum.
Second, reports to technical support are one of the ways to collect general statistics on the project. We need to receive tickets in order to understand how many players have encountered a bug. Important: it makes no sense for one user to open two or more tickets on the same error.
We would like to answer the most popular saying "The developer simply shifts responsibilities to players." It is completely erroneous. By contacting technical support, you save time both for the developers and for yourself. After all, the sooner a particular issue is fixed, the sooner the game will become more comfortable for you. The work on fixing bugs will go on without users' requests, but with your help everything will be settled much faster.
Some players say that they cannot record a video because their PCs simply cannot handle the load. Currently, video programs do not require many resources, so if 100% of your PC performance is consumed only by the game, some difficulties can arise precisely due to performance limits.
Thank you for your understanding, we appreciate all your feedback.
Have a nice game!