The HLL hipfire mechanic is rigged and busted (tested+explained)

[Jumpscare Myers]

I wanted to create this discussion out of the frustration i have for hipfire shooting in this game, so i took it upon myself to conduct many tests on the practice range with all 4 factions to "test" hip fire accuracy on all pistols available to the medic classes for consistency, since that's more of a last ditch type of weapon, one that'd you fire at close range, maybe even hipfire frantically to kill whoever is in front of you, so i felt it was a logical choice.

Now for my test methodology, i would use the assistance of an on-screen reticle that i could adjust x and y coordinates through integers to align my firing arc, so that when i would fire i would adjust the reticle to where the bullet landed, until i received 100% hipfire precision, so the bullet would exactly land wherever i pointed the reticle.

I conducted the test at a 10m range from any of the target practice boards, i would aim for a bullseye deadcentre, adjusting the reticle to compensate for shots that didn't align, until i had it in a position where it would hit 100% of the time.

Once i had that done, i would test it at farther ranges, for this i used the target dummies and aimed for the heads, firing at a dummy at 30 meters was accurate and would hit 100% of the time.

Firing at ranges at up to 50m would not always gaurantee a headshot, but would still accurately hit the torso, i wouldn't recommend hip firing at 50m with a pistol but for the sake of the test i did so.

Another thing to note, if you are not completely at rest e.g (Moving around or rapidly firing) your accuracy will obviously suffer, firing at a 10m range whilst firing one after the other in rapid succession would create a large cone with less than half "or" more than half of the shots missing or landing (to be expected with recoil).

Now since i had already saved all the x, y coordinates of every factions available pistol to a notepad, i could interchangeably assign those coordinates to my reticle depending on which faction i'm currently playing, sounds simple right? No.

HLL seems to "Randomize" Hipfire patterns, and the reason i know this is because after concluding one test, we'll use the Luger for example, you can get 100% accuracy in 1 instance, but as soon as you leave the practice range and rejoin whilst using the exact same setup, it doesn't work, the rounds being fired seem to be assigned at a random position on the screen, leaving you to have to manually input and align the co-ordinates every single time you load in.

Because of these tests i can safely say that if you are relying on hipfiring in any situation, only do so if you are within breathing distance, since every match you play you will be subject to a random firing pattern that changes every single time, which is absolutely horrible for muscle memory, so you will never be able to train for it.

When i used to play Heroes and Generals, a now defunct free to play WW2 FPS, i absolutely adored being able to run around hipfiring people to death since anyone can agree with me it is much faster to just shoot rather than Aim+Shoot, you will always have that advantage if you were to play in that way, since you're excluding setup time.

But because of the way HLL has coded Hipfiring, it seems pointless, the game actively punishes you for doing so by randomly generating firing patterns everytime you load into a game, i can't say if it "rolls the dice" every time you die though, that is something i didn't test, as i wanted consistency across all my tests.

What is everyone else's thoughts on hipfiring? after reading through my explanation, you might think that it's wrong of me to use reticles in the first place, you might even call it cheating, but please, this was for the sake of testing, and given that i've already explained that hipfiring is completely random it wouldn't even matter using a reticle unless at the beginning of every game you want to manually align to your weapons firing arc, then sure, go ahead, but that's just tedious and annoying.

Idk why the Developers have made hipfiring this way, maybe it's to deter cheaters, i don't know. What i would like however is having the weapon arc of fire be centred to your screen, just like it is in other FPS titles, not only would it be consistent but it helps build up each players individual muscle memory, i rest my case.

[Jumpscare Myers]

Reserved.

[Andy]

Originally posted by Morphine Man:

What is everyone else's thoughts on hipfiring?

There's a time and a place for hip firing, thats when you're point blank range or when your playing COD.

Idk why the Developers have made hipfiring this way,

Some point in the past this game had aspirations of being a more realistic experience. For that you need to encourage weapon play in an accurate manner. Given the increasing popularity of monitors with built in sights. It's fairly obvious that people with that feature could hold a significant advantage in short - medium engagements over those without whilst using the weapons in an unrealistic manner.
Many years ago, there was a thread complaining about the opposite. That the hip fire was being abused as it was always going to the same spot. Allowing even MGs in hip fire to head shot people at 50 meters as the first shot was always accurate.
Don't remember how they tested it, or how accurate it was. But, it seems likely the devs have changed this, it's working as intended for the reasons i've already spoke about.
Not sure why anyone would prefer it any other way unless they were indeed trying to get an advantage while using the weapons like some cheap hollywood movie.

[Jumpscare Myers]

Originally posted by Andy:

Originally posted by Morphine Man:

What is everyone else's thoughts on hipfiring?

There's a time and a place for hip firing, thats when you're point blank range or when your playing COD.

Idk why the Developers have made hipfiring this way,

Some point in the past this game had aspirations of being a more realistic experience. For that you need to encourage weapon play in an accurate manner. Given the increasing popularity of monitors with built in sights. It's fairly obvious that people with that feature could hold a significant advantage in short - medium engagements over those without whilst using the weapons in an unrealistic manner.
Many years ago, there was a thread complaining about the opposite. That the hip fire was being abused as it was always going to the same spot. Allowing even MGs in hip fire to head shot people at 50 meters as the first shot was always accurate.
Don't remember how they tested it, or how accurate it was. But, it seems likely the devs have changed this, it's working as intended for the reasons i've already spoke about.
Not sure why anyone would prefer it any other way unless they were indeed trying to get an advantage while using the weapons like some cheap hollywood movie.

Yes all of that may be true, i'm not trying to compare HLL to CoD, but you'd think that where you'd point your mouse you'd expect your shots to go in that direction, even in my tests some of the firing patterns after every reload would have rounds going into the stratosphere.

The point i wanted to make is that whatever changes they made, however long ago, seems to be too much, after realising this information i don't think hipfiring is ever valuable unless you want to take a gamble.

And for the people that want to invest in a better monitor that has built in reticles why should that even matter, i wouldn't class purchasing hardware that gives inherit advantages a form of cheating or being unfair, that's just a matter of having more money to spend than other people.

Like for example, would HLL have to nerf sounds in the game because people like myself uses a soundcard? They can't keep band-aiding every hardware innovation that comes into the market, people are always going to spend money on better quality equipment, will they start forcing people all play @60hz because having a strong GPU capable of putting out hundreds of frames and the monitor to back it up is considered unfair for people with lower end computers? seems kind of dumb when it's put that way but that's exactly what it is.

You could argue pay to win is something that's scummy, but when it comes to computer hardware i'd call that the exception, locking people out from taking full advantage of their Computer is never the answer.

[TasteDasRainbow]

Bullets come out where barrel is pointing from most estimations, no camera lined hipfire in this game.

[Andy]

Originally posted by Morphine Man:

Originally posted by Andy:

There's a time and a place for hip firing, thats when you're point blank range or when your playing COD.

Some point in the past this game had aspirations of being a more realistic experience. For that you need to encourage weapon play in an accurate manner. Given the increasing popularity of monitors with built in sights. It's fairly obvious that people with that feature could hold a significant advantage in short - medium engagements over those without whilst using the weapons in an unrealistic manner.
Many years ago, there was a thread complaining about the opposite. That the hip fire was being abused as it was always going to the same spot. Allowing even MGs in hip fire to head shot people at 50 meters as the first shot was always accurate.
Don't remember how they tested it, or how accurate it was. But, it seems likely the devs have changed this, it's working as intended for the reasons i've already spoke about.
Not sure why anyone would prefer it any other way unless they were indeed trying to get an advantage while using the weapons like some cheap hollywood movie.

Yes all of that may be true, i'm not trying to compare HLL to CoD, but you'd think that where you'd point your mouse you'd expect your shots to go in that direction, even in my tests some of the firing patterns after every reload would have rounds going into the stratosphere.

The point i wanted to make is that whatever changes they made, however long ago, seems to be too much, after realising this information i don't think hipfiring is ever valuable unless you want to take a gamble.

And for the people that want to invest in a better monitor that has built in reticles why should that even matter, i wouldn't class purchasing hardware that gives inherit advantages a form of cheating or being unfair, that's just a matter of having more money to spend than other people.

Like for example, would HLL have to nerf sounds in the game because people like myself uses a soundcard? They can't keep band-aiding every hardware innovation that comes into the market, people are always going to spend money on better quality equipment, will they start forcing people all play @60hz because having a strong GPU capable of putting out hundreds of frames and the monitor to back it up is considered unfair for people with lower end computers? seems kind of dumb when it's put that way but that's exactly what it is.

You could argue pay to win is something that's scummy, but when it comes to computer hardware i'd call that the exception, locking people out from taking full advantage of their Computer is never the answer.

There's 3 fundamental things wrong with what you've posted.
FIrst is that your comparisons to sound card are trivial, and not in the same league in terms of advantage that a monitor based sight would give.
Also, regarding FPS and faster computers. Slowing the play style and the gunplay down that you see in this and more tactical shooters like Squad, ArmA atc negates some of the advantage of FPS. Where having a monitor based sight though means short to mid distance engagements you have a massive advantage over others as you can get accurate shots off significantly quicker. Having a few FPS extra in a tactical shooter is not in the same league of difference as having a sight while hip firing.

The second is you've you've not talked about what i believe is the main driver of this, in that the devs are trying to create a more realistic gun play.
What would be the point of devs ever trying to make more realistic game if people could just go round hip firing everyone..

Third, the devs have creative control over this game and can choose to make the game how they want, and it's a saturated market. If you don't like it, there's other options.
It's also not unique, many FPS games on console prevent the use of keyboard and mouse, locking hardware bought for consoles from some games because it gives such an advantage.

As a side note, you yourself suggest people might consider what you do to be cheating. And that locking you out of hardware you bought is wrong (somehow??)
But hardware hacks are becoming more common, and are still cheating. Doesn't matter that it's hardware rather than a software crack.
I suspect you're going to be a bit lonely on this hill.

[TheCrazyCanuck]

No damn way I'll read all that, I'll go find a good book instead.

[tmo97]

Back in the day, people would pop a marker in the center of their screen to act as a makeshift reticle.

From what I can tell, you're saying that every time you join a match, your hipfire aiming point is offset from the center of the screen by a random (x,y). Well, that doesn't seem too bad. If you can figure out where your bias is, you can use that for the rest of the match.

That said, yeah. Hipfire is wack. I could be right in front, pointing dead center mass, and somehow the bullets would find their way around the enemy. Other times, I would just headshot someone at range. I get that it's supposed to be less predictable, but man, this is not realistic and this is not fun gameplay. It's too wack.

Make it have some use. There are ways to control hipfire for a full-auto weapon that don't take as much time as aiming through ironsights, and that can feel satisfying, too.

The same goes for the MG, really. It feels weird that it recoils in such a strange diagonal offset. Yeah, sure, that's logical for where you hold it, but irl you can hold that thing in a way that it settles back to its original position. In-game, you're supposed to move the mouse back to the original position, even though in every other situation, your character does so automatically. That's confusing, and possibly done for game balancing, but man.

I know where the center of my screen is, and I can hipfire headshot people at range. It's in the game, you really can just do that, it's just made inconvenient. It's inconvenient because I don't have that reticle, and I'm supposed to use 100% of my mental GPU to try and find the exact center of my screen and align that imaginary dot with the enemy's head and then time it repeatedly.

If the game had a dot in the center of the screen, that'd fix that problem, but then you'd see how nonsensical the recoil of a hipfire MG in HLL is. It would just be annoying to reset it, and you'd only disadvantage people who don't have their mouse sensitivity set to infinite in order to not run out of mousepad as they twist their joints to repeatedly get that gun back in position.

Instead of letting me use this thing as a hipfire sniper at the cost of massive user inconvenience, just give it some spread and let it recenter itself.

As for hipfire in general, I don't use it other than as a funny gimmick, or when I really don't have the time to aim, like running into a house and hearing Mr. Over There ninjitsuing around my face. I like the fact that this game has me think about whether I'll have enough time to aim, letting me invest in either positioning or firing capability. Other than that, I'm just annoyed that devs seem to think bullets magically vanish into thin air when you hipfire. Yes, it's inaccurate, no, it's not impossible magic, maybe for people with zero spatial reasoning.

[Jumpscare Myers]

Originally posted by tmo97:

Back in the day, people would pop a marker in the center of their screen to act as a makeshift reticle.

From what I can tell, you're saying that every time you join a match, your hipfire aiming point is offset from the center of the screen by a random (x,y). Well, that doesn't seem too bad. If you can figure out where your bias is, you can use that for the rest of the match.

That is true, but like i also said i'm pretty sure in online servers they have other modifiers that penalise hipfiring since i can find the random x,y in the practice range but that'll
only stick for as long as i'm in that same instance, as soon as you quit it gets reset again.

But in online servers the ability to do that simply doesn't exist, and you can never get the x,y since it seems to change everytime you fire, i already tried to replicate what i did on the practice range but it just doesn't work.

Originally posted by TasteDasRainbow:

Bullets come out where barrel is pointing from most estimations, no camera lined hipfire in this game.

And there's another thing, some guns i've played around with will fire in the direction of the barrel and some don't, some fire completely off to the right, or completely off to the left, up, or down, as if when the bullet exits the barrel somehow there is such massive turbulence that the bullet trajectory will instantly change by like 30-60 degrees, which doesn't seem right.

Originally posted by Andy:

There's 3 fundamental things wrong with what you've posted.
FIrst is that your comparisons to sound card are trivial, and not in the same league in terms of advantage that a monitor based sight would give.

I would actually have to disagree with that, since depending on your sound card, (I have a soundblaster AE-7) you can hear enemies that are 40-50m away from you, so usually i spend more time taking things slow and waiting a few seconds of covered distance to where i need to go to listen out for footsteps, and i can always anticipate and triangulate where people are, vision is great but for a game that focuses a lot on situational awareness, Audio is a very critical component as well.

Originally posted by Andy:

Also, regarding FPS and faster computers. Slowing the play style and the gunplay down that you see in this and more tactical shooters like Squad, ArmA atc negates some of the advantage of FPS. Where having a monitor based sight though means short to mid distance engagements you have a massive advantage over others as you can get accurate shots off significantly quicker. Having a few FPS extra in a tactical shooter is not in the same league of difference as having a sight while hip firing.

I would like to point out that Framerate is comparable to response time or input lag on a monitor, the higher your framerate, the less input lag you receive, as long as your fps is 1:1 with your monitors refresh rate, and you aren't using v-sync or a framerate limiter, you will have extremely low response times, but it also heavily depends on the pixel response time of your monitor as well, and in todays market you can buy IPS panel monitors with a 0.1ms response time at a 1080p resolution that go up to 500hz i believe, which can make a massive difference.

Originally posted by Andy:

The second is you've you've not talked about what i believe is the main driver of this, in that the devs are trying to create a more realistic gun play.
What would be the point of devs ever trying to make more realistic game if people could just go round hip firing everyone..

There were plenty of cases in the second world war where infantry would use hipfire in order to storm a position, among other examples, but a submachine guns whole purpose was to be fired from the hip at close range, they aren't designed for long range engagements. and they definitely didn't have any sights to warrant them to be used in that manner.

The German MP40 is a perfect example of a submachine gun that was designed to be hipfired, but in HLL it's treated as any other weapon and you can kill someone at a range of 100+ meters or more which i find ridiculous, for a game heavily emphasising on realistic gunplay they are doing a poor job of handling it when it comes to each weapons specific role, submachine guns good for close range, assault rilfes good for close to medium range, rifles good for medium to long range etc.

Originally posted by Andy:

Third, the devs have creative control over this game and can choose to make the game how they want, and it's a saturated market. If you don't like it, there's other options.
It's also not unique, many FPS games on console prevent the use of keyboard and mouse, locking hardware bought for consoles from some games because it gives such an advantage.

Consoles aren't exclusive to the PC platform, and you're paying for a console that you're acknowledging that you can't use at 100% functionality, when i build a computer i expect to be able to use every facet of it and if developers are going to create games on the PC platform they have to acknowledge that they can't control how people use their computers because it's a whole other league above console they aren't worth comparing, PC's are designed to be modular and interchangeable, if i wanted to buy the best of the best in terms of Hardware but the developers say "Nuh uh your hardware is simply too good it's an unfair advantage, so we're deliberately going to put what is essentially a speed limiter on your components so it's fair for everyone else" isn't really a good sales tactic nor is it a great way to ensure you attract anyone and everyone to your game, Especially the PC community which will always be modular and diverse.

Originally posted by Andy:

As a side note, you yourself suggest people might consider what you do to be cheating. And that locking you out of hardware you bought is wrong (somehow??)
But hardware hacks are becoming more common, and are still cheating. Doesn't matter that it's hardware rather than a software crack.
I suspect you're going to be a bit lonely on this hill.

A "Hardware hack" can have a very broad definition, I've modified the BIOS on my GTX 1080ti to make it think it's a different card so i can crank up the Core speed to 2100mhz and the memory speed to 6264mhz whilst also unlocking power and voltage control to give my card as much power as it needs without throttling or limiting my overclock, which is something i can't do on the base BIOS that my card comes with.

Would something like that be considered cheating? Is bypassing a Hardware vendors specifications for a product to get even more performance out of it cheating? Is using unsigned community drivers for a GPU that is no longer supported just to be able to continue using it in the current day and age cheating?

When you say something like "Hardware hacks is cheating" you need to be more specific with that statement, there are plenty of hardware hacks anyone can do that doesn't involve cheating, like soldering a resistor onto another resistor to create a shunt to bypass GPU voltage controls, or modding your mouse to operate at a higher polling rate not designed nor originally intended to run at, or using programs and methods to access Hidden BIOS settings for your motherboard to enable or disable hidden features isn't cheating either.

[Andy]

Originally posted by Morphine Man:

There were plenty of cases in the second world war where infantry would use hipfire in order to storm a position, among other examples, but a submachine guns whole purpose was to be fired from the hip at close range, they aren't designed for long range engagements. and they definitely didn't have any sights to warrant them to be used in that manner.

The German MP40 is a perfect example of a submachine gun that was designed to be hipfired, but in HLL it's treated as any other weapon and you can kill someone at a range of 100+ meters or more which i find ridiculous, for a game heavily emphasising on realistic gunplay they are doing a poor job of handling it when it comes to each weapons specific role, submachine guns good for close range, assault rilfes good for close to medium range, rifles good for medium to long range etc.

I'm going to leave most of this, we don't agree and we're not going to change each others opinions on this. But, this statement needs addressing.
SMGs were absolutely not designed to be fired from the hip. Lets take a look at that MP40. It's got a shoulder stock, a feature designed for pressing the gun in the shoulder and aiming down the sights. It's also got a lip on the barrel for resting on armoured Vehicles.
Firing from the hip can be done, and was trained. But certainly wasn't thier designed purpose. For reference, British soldiers by 1944 were trained to fire the no4 firing from the hip, using the thumb and first finger to operate the bolt and middle finger to fire for CQB. It was trained as unusual siuations arise and must be trained for. No one is going to suggest the no4 was 'designed' for firing from the hip though. And it's the same with SMGs, shoulder stocks and sights and the majority of training was for it's proper use of small aimed bursts.
And, firing from the hip was wildly inaccurate from anything other than very close range. Which, still can be achieved in game without the need or requirement for a screen mounted sight.
The screen integrated sight doesn't by any stretch of the imagination give you realistic shooting abilities. It gives you accuracy beyond what was capable in real life.
This bizare a-historical nonesence shows your being totally disingenuous. No point carrying on with this. Goodbye.

[Jumpscare Myers]

Originally posted by Andy:

The screen integrated sight doesn't by any stretch of the imagination give you realistic shooting abilities. It gives you accuracy beyond what was capable in real life.
This bizare a-historical nonesence shows your being totally disingenuous. No point carrying on with this. Goodbye.

The point of my post was not to say people should use an integrated sight on their monitor, i was only highlighting the fact that HLL uses random firing cones each time you load into a match, one firing cone will be completely different from another firing cone when you're in another game, the on screen reticle was used only for testing purposes, nothing more.

Due to the randomised nature of the firing arc it just makes firing from the hip inconsistent at all levels, you can fire from the hip in real life if you are at rest and in a stable position, and aim for a target that is far away "Provided" you know how your are holding and angling your weapon, and the projectile will go in that direction.

The point i am laying down is that you can point the gun in a direction in hipfire, but the projectile will just go anywhere it pleases, like the barrel is bent or as if the projectile itself shatters upon leaving the barrel since the spray pattern is so irregular and so unrealistic it is nothing how it should function.

And that needs to be fixed.

[Jumpscare Myers]

I might even have to create a whole guide including gif images showcasing quite clearly what i'm trying to explain, and also i'm not trying to antagonize you, i can tell you're getting upset because you don't fully understand what i'm putting down and that's fine, but maybe after i have all the material together to show you exactly what i'm talking about you'll change your opinion, but even then your opinion is your own and i'm not saying your wrong, so please don' take it the wrong way.