New Commander Change Is A Downgrade! Please Revert!

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by Sgt.Slaughterer:

GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS

We heard your feedback about the changes to the commander call-ins. It has been tweaked to make the feature more intuitive for new players.

• Added a directional indicator for the autocannon strafe and Apache fire support call-ins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE8nMyhq5J4

The old system of how to control the direction of fire support was never explained in-game. Thus, most players, even today, aren't even aware they could do such a thing. So, when they saw the new announcement, they are in favor of this new bad change (I'll explain why it's bad) since they think this is a new capability that wasn't possible before. I'm sure there are also players who knew how the old system worked, but may find this new change as "quality of life" improvement, because they fell for the fancy terrible visual indicator, so it really only look good on the surface, but in practice it is inferior to the old system in every way! Here's why (in no particular order):

1. The new visual indicator is hard to use and can be confusing and disorienting, this would work fine if the game was a top-down game.
   
2. The old system is significantly more precise. Some of us need that level of precision.
   
3. The commander is very vulnerable when they put down their gun and pull out the binocs. So, in the new system it is extremely risky spending too much time (it is very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slow!) exposing yourself defenselessly in the open while working out the angle. In the old system you can just click on the target you want and quickly go back to cover and decide the angle there. And even back then you could still get killed sometimes, but it was a good balanced trade-off, right now it's just unnecessarily way too risky.
   
4. The old system is more flexible for when you needed to delay the call if you accidently clicked too soon or if you accidently marked the wrong position or if you just decided to change your mind. Good luck doing that in the new system.

There is absolutely nothing positive about the new system. At first I thought the one thing that's better is that it explains itself better, but even that is not true. I couldn't even figure out how to bring the visual indicator until I read somebody's comment. You need to hold the left mouse button and move the mouse left/right. It is terrible in practice, give it a shot and see for yourself.

I suggest to revert to the old system and just create a video lesson and/or a dedicated commander tutorial where say you place the player in Hideout on top of the building overlooking the bridge and explain how to strafe along that bridge which is at an angle so it's perfect to demonstrate this.

If you are a new player or never knew you could control the angle back then, I assure you it was superior in every way and easy to understand and use in practice, sadly you can't test it now, but there are many guides/videos that explain it, here's an old video I found as an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmT0KO2K4TY
Please revert or at least add a toggle in the settings to choose which system we want. Alternatively, make the game dynamically switch between either system based on player input of hold (use new system) vs. tab (use old system) of LMB.

TL;DR

Controlling the angle of fire support in the new system is cumbersome, imprecise, inflexible, too slow and dangerous to use in practice. In other words, it's so useless I wouldn't even want to bother with controlling the angle anymore. Old system can do everything the new system can and do so more efficiently! PLEASE REVERT or give us the option to use the old system.

[Marksman Max]

The old system doesn't make that much sense and was never explained in-game anywhere.

That being said, the new system actually makes even less sense than the old system and still isn't explained at all in-game. I 100% agree with pretty much this entire post.

I don't know why New World loves coming up with different solutions to a broken feature when we just wanted the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanic to go back to the way it worked before.

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by "Marksman" Max:

The old system doesn't make that much sense

I agree, but honestly it doesn't have to, it worked, and that all that matters. This is one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" type thing, especially since we had it that way for over 3 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ years, why ♥♥♥♥ it up now? All they had to do was explain it, if they wanted to improve the game they could've made a new tutorial or something.

I don't understand how they can't see this is inferior, and sadly because of the game fault of not explaining the old system, NWI are receiving positive feedback from players that didn't know. So, when you combine that with the default adamant nature of NWI, good luck convincing them to revert.

[Shane]

Originally posted by "Marksman" Max:

The old system doesn't make that much sense and was never explained in-game anywhere.

On the surface, it doesn't, but it's very intuitive once you understand it. If you used it in conjunction w/ the compass, it was super easy.

This new method... is much more difficult to interact with, more imprecise, and takes a lot more risk from the commander.

They have glaring, horrible bugs that persist in the game for long periods of time w/ no discernible action taken, and they "fix" "bugs" that NO ONE is complaining about or even understands.

2 more examples:
1. You can't plant mines "on the run" anymore. Why? In the 1.11 notes it talks about some animation bug. What bug? Who the F ever complained about anything related to that? So, to fix some bug that is basically unknown to the public they took out a very useful feature.

2. Molly's no longer killing on impact. While not a bug, this was only an issue in PVE. Why not fix it there? Mollys are the hardest of the grenade "types" to use. You can't bounce them off a wall, can't prime them, etc... so the "instant" kill aspect was a nice offset to the incendiary which, while not a 1 hit kill, is MUCH EASIER to control.

Honestly these are 3 solutions in search of problems.

It's very unfortunate that they can't leave things like this well enough alone.

[UncleBourbon]

@Shane, they either "improve" something by making it worse or delete a slightly broken feature to avoid having to fix it. The removal of being able to throw mines you mentioned resonates perfectly with the technical removal, which they lied about the reason when they stated it was causing performance issues, but then they unintentionally revealed the real reason, which they said it was about the wonky physics.

So many unnecessary "fixes."

[TayLord]

Both are unintuitive and cumbersome. I still can't figure out the new method after many tries. The video they showed didn't explain how to get it so that the strafe is free range with the mouse. It seems its just a delay thing you are adjusting the start of the strafe with your mouse. I feel like it should just be a click for the normal 90 degree strafe or click and hold till the end of the strafe and release.

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by LittleTaylors:

Both are unintuitive and cumbersome.

That's not even remotely true for the old system, once it is explained to you and with few practicing calls you'll realize how FINE it was. As for the new system, IT'S TERRIBLE! And I'm so pissed!

Originally posted by LittleTaylors:

I still can't figure out the new method after many tries. The video they showed didn't explain how to get it so that the strafe is free range with the mouse. I've tried holding, but can only ever get the arrows to go cross ways.

Move the mouse left or right while holding LMB.

[W@lsh]

I feel their decision makers don't play this their own game very often. I'd say any seasoned commander in this game wouldn't like this change. It basically crippled the capability of a commander.

With the previous mechanism, it only took me 2 seconds to call in an air strafe. I could pop up my head to mark the target and duck behind cover to change direction. I could even pull it off while chasing after a newbie observer who doesn't want to cooperate with me. I could open up the map after I marked the target and use it as an reference to do some precise calculations then change the direction accordingly.

The new mechanism is a total disaster. It takes at least 5 seconds to finish a call-in, and you can't do anything during that time. You have to have the objective in your sight the whole time, which makes you fully exposed to enemy fire. You have to have an very cooperative observer following you and waiting for you, which is quite rare if you play with random people on the Internet. Most importantly, the direction indicator is not intuitive nor reliable at all. I'd rather close my eyes let my muscle memory to handle the direction adjustment.

They really should have done a poll before this kind of change. They once limited the choice of weapons in COOP game, and nobody liked it. They rolled it back in the next patch. However I don't think the majority of the players are experienced enough with the commander role. The developers will probably ignore our moans and call it a day.

[=TAC= Stuermer]

The idea behind this commander-looks-through his binos is certainly a balance idea. The commander is a powerful role, with powerful air-support. The time the commander plans his airstrike, he has to be covered by teammates, at least by his observer.

That's how I "read" the mechanics behind this role.

Wouldn't make any sense otherwise. Airstrikes in rl aren't planned through binos ;)
In the beginning we asked for being able to use the map for airstrikes, but apparently, it has to be balanced or they wouldn't be interested in a realistic way to guide airstrikes.

Regarding this, the new system is consistent. It takes even more time to plan and seeing and understanding if the arrows point towards or away from you, isn't really intuitive.

Nonetheless, if you figured it out for the first time, it takes about 2-3 sec. to plan a NON-STANDARD strike, so that's ok in my eyes. Why they wouldn't use easy to understand symbols you scroll through is beyond me, can only explain this with "with the new system you can do really precise strikes if you take the time for it, because it's stepless".

For those who haven't understand the new system yet:
- click and hold left mousebutton
- if you move your mouse to the left, the airstrike direction will turn towards you
- if you move your mouse to the right, the airstrike direction will turn away from you
(move mouse means continuously move the mouse, it's kinda slow and smooth)

Examples:
1) Airstrike over your head from behind (6 to 12): move mouse to the right until arrows are in the middle (aligned with indicator)
2) Airstrike towards yourself (12 to 6): move mouse to the left until arrows are in middle
3) Airstrike standard: just click, comes from right, moves to left (3 to 9)
4 Airstrike left to right: move mouse to the left until you see a horizontal arrow line pointing to the right

So in a way this system is very flexible. Yes, it's slow, yes it's unrealistic. But it fits into the balance idea they probably have and it can be used effectively.

[Marksman Max]

Originally posted by Shane:

Originally posted by "Marksman" Max:

The old system doesn't make that much sense and was never explained in-game anywhere.

On the surface, it doesn't, but it's very intuitive once you understand it. If you used it in conjunction w/ the compass, it was super easy.

My only complaint is that the angle is picked once the call is confirmed and not when the Observer actually starts the call, which makes more sense to me IMO (although you would have far less time to angle the shot in that case). It still worked fine once you actually understood how it worked and making a simple Lesson on aiming fire support could've fixed this entire problem rather than making up a new mechanic that's worse.

Originally posted by Shane:

2. Molly's no longer killing on impact. While not a bug, this was only an issue in PVE. Why not fix it there? Mollys are the hardest of the grenade "types" to use. You can't bounce them off a wall, can't prime them, etc... so the "instant" kill aspect was a nice offset to the incendiary which, while not a 1 hit kill, is MUCH EASIER to control.

Oh no, that was absolutely a great change so they stop being used as stupid instakill grenades. That's not their intended purpose. Area denial is their purpose.

Now my only issue with Molotovs is the fact that they're complete garbage at area denial. I can run through a Molotov twice without dying at full health, and only died on attempt #3. I have some ideas to fix this:

-> Make Molotovs and Incendiary Grenades do the exact same tick damage; however, Incendiary Grenades do tick damage at a faster rate since it uses hotter burning chemicals and has a much smaller radius.

-> Reduce the radius of Incendiary Grenades because it's still laughably larger than what the actual fire sprite shows.

-> Fire now does very low damage per tick for both incendiary grenades.

-> If you take three ticks of fire damage within a short time period, you are set on fire and burn to death in 1-2 seconds (sort of like how flamethrowers in Day of Infamy worked).

-> (Optional) Reduce your movement speed while standing in the radius of either incendiary grenade and make sliding/melee charging through either incendiary grenade instantly set you on fire.

-> (Optional) If an incendiary grenade detonates in close proximity to an enemy, they have a much shorter time window before they are set on fire.

These changes would keep the damage minimal if you bumped into a lit grenade's radius, but would result in death if you simply tried to ignore it.

I'm honestly not even against making Molotovs kill you near-instantly if they directly hit you by immediately setting you on fire and causing you to burn to a crisp. I think that would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dope and would add to the immersion. I'm just against the old instakills where it just looks like you tripped over a can or something.

[SushiJaguar]

The newest change to it is how it always should have worked - the angle is communicated in-game and not in an obtuse fashion, and you have to be sure of your call before you send it.

Remind yourself that this game used to be tactical and punished mistakes.

[Marksman Max]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

The newest change to it is how it always should have worked - the angle is communicated in-game and not in an obtuse fashion, and you have to be sure of your call before you send it.

Remind yourself that this game used to be tactical and punished mistakes.

Except it's incredibly hard to tell what the angle is currently set at, it feels very unintuitive and slow, and it still isn't listed anywhere in-game as an actual feature.

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

is certainly a balance idea. The commander is a powerful role

I talked about that in the OP in point number 3. Old system was balanced enough, new system is way too risky, trying to make use of this new "feature" will only get you killed in practice.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

he has to be covered by teammates, at least by his observer.

Yeah, good luck with that. Even in the old system the observer got me killed so many times.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

the new system is consistent

What do you mean by that? Are you implying the old system was inconsistent? If anything the old system was more consistent since you can take advantage of the compass.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

It takes even more time to plan and seeing and understanding if the arrows point towards or away from you, isn't really intuitive.

Yes, that's a bad thing.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

it takes about 2-3 sec

No, new system could easily take 5+ sec if you're gonna bother with specific angle you're after. Old system was significantly faster and at the same time you could take your time deciding the angle safely behind cover. On top of all that, thanks to the compass, it was at least 10 times more precise and I'm not exaggerating.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

Why they wouldn't use easy to understand symbols you scroll through is beyond me, can only explain this with "with the new system you can do really precise strikes if you take the time for it, because it's stepless".

Yes, more precision is important, but old system was way more precise without being disorienting/confusing unlike the new system. As I mentioned in the OP in point number 1, this type of visual indicator doesn't give good visual cue in 3D space, this type of indicator only works in top-down perspective.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

For those who haven't understand the new system yet

Trust me, I know exactly how both system work and I can tell you the old system is far superior in every way, I can't even comprehend how this is even an argument.

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

So in a way this system is very flexible

Hell, no! How is it very flexible? It's super inflexible compared to the old system.

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

The newest change to it is how it always should have worked - the angle is communicated in-game and not in an obtuse fashion, and you have to be sure of your call before you send it.

The game failure to teach the player how the old system worked is where your opinion has some validity, other than that, you're objectively wrong. No offence.

Originally posted by SushiJaguar:

Remind yourself that this game used to be tactical and punished mistakes.

This applies to both systems, invalid argument.

[=TAC= Stuermer]

Originally posted by UncleBourbon:

...[snip]
Hell, no! How is it very flexible? It's super inflexible compared to the old system.

Ok, ok, I get it, you don't like it ;)
Still I think they WANT the commander to be in the open to balance it. Just a guess, but why should they make you watch through binos in the first place?

[UncleBourbon]

Originally posted by =TAC= Stuermer:

Ok, ok, I get it, you don't like it ;)

I HATE IT!!! It's so dumb.

Since the damage has already been done, reverting to the old system would certainly bring another backlash from those who don't know how the old system worked or even those who do know but somehow find this "an improvement." How about you combine both system? Since the new system requires you to hold LMB, you can keep the new behavior when LMB is held, but if we only tab it, make the game use the old system.

I'm trying to be reasonable and inclusive here, work with me people.