Easy to learn, Hard to Master - M&E | KIM | Forums

[Andre202]

Ehhh... That's what we discussed the whole time..... one wanted to have a customizable M&E with the difficulties the game offers and the other one wanted the player to adjust to the difficulty of the game the devs are giving and especially are giving to the feature. Ahh... well nevermind.

@SolidSage:
I don't think that this is such a huge problem. As Knot3D said you will be encouraged to use M&E on different positions. The M&E and KIM are only used while standing or crouching in the Blacklist demo too. With all the mobility you have, you aren't required to use the feature at the right time where every NPC is standing in range and at the right spot. You can move around and look when every mark turns red and execute. M&E utilizes the CAR system and you cannot use the CAR system on the ledge or on pipes. That's how the devs presented that feature. They more often executed when on the ground. There is only the instance in the Conviction demo where you execute two guys through a window but they are near by each other. The right utilizations of Sam's skills with the CAR system might be a strong point to limit it through the difficulty too and I do think a lot of people would understand this decision.

[SolidSage]

^
Yes you can wait for arrows to turn red, the decrease in range will make it much harder to get all arrows red on the hardest difficulty, so it still works.

Yes CAR is reasonable but Sam is fighting in a somewhat unrealistic manner, and always has to a point. Will we be unable to manually shoot AI while hanging one handed from a ledge or pipe too? Because isn't that just as unrealistic? No M&E'ing 4 guys quickly from a ledge but we can hang there indefinitley and manually one hand shoot as many as we like?
Do you see the contradiction?

I just think it's pointless to modify difficulty by removing or limiting tools that have been developed to be played with. Much better to add or increase elements to improve difficulty IMO, and allow the play tools to still be played with if one so chooses.

[Andre202]

Yes CAR is reasonable but Sam is fighting in a somewhat unrealistic manner, and always has to a point. Will we be unable to manually shoot AI while hanging one handed from a ledge or pipe too? Because isn't that just as unrealistic? No M&E'ing 4 guys quickly from a ledge but we can hang there indefinitley and manually one hand shoot as many as we like?
Do you see the contradiction?

Yes I know, there is the contradiction, though there is still a big difference when you kill them manually or all with M&E in 3 seconds. In my opinion Sam has to much mobility when it comes to gun control on ledges or pipes. When you use M&E, through the CAR system Sam supports his arms through his whole body to have nearly no recoil. The body is heading the way where the weapon is heading when you shoot. In previous games for example you couldn't use the pistol on the ledge at all, but you were able to do it on pipes. But even then you couldn't use the pistol to 360 degrees. There were spots you couldn't go with your aiming, because Sam isn't in the position to do these shots and so he had a limited mobility there. In Conviction, on the ledge or on a pipe you can go full 360 degree and as far as I know Sam is not even changing the pistol position from lefthand to righthand or the other way around.

When you are standing or you are crouching and you shoot, Sam will always position himself to the direction you shot, automatically. His body is always there to support the shot, now when he is limited in movement through the ledges or some pipes the limited movement also needs to be reflected by the use of his weapon. When he is at the ground he can move freely around, on the ledge or on a pipe, you have to move along that pipe or ledge. So the shooting positions can be only placed that way so his body can still support it, like in the Conviction Demo where Sam killed two guys through the window. Sam's body is heading directly in the direction where the pistol is heading.

You know that move from previous Splinter Cells where Sam would take the shot head over from a pipe? Pipes and ledges mean less mobility and therefore you got a penalty which was that the accuracy wasn't that high and you couldn't aim everywhere either. In Conviction you can aim everywhere and you don't get any accuracy penalty for that, although everybody knows that the highest accuracy comes when your whole body is supporting your arms to hold your pistol steady.

I just think it's pointless to modify difficulty by removing or limiting tools that have been developed to be played with. Much better to add or increase elements to improve difficulty IMO, and allow the play tools to still be played with if one so chooses.

But that's what games always do, isn't it? Use the Portal Gun example. It's developed to be played with but the more you get through the puzzles the more it's use is limited. It's there to have more complex puzzles to get the player to think of different tactics. The same would go for Deniable Ops if you choose not to use any gadgets and a secondary weapon. The amount of enemies is the same and I don't think it should increase. It would brake the game for other gamers. So rather then increasing elements which will affect everybody (although it's meant to be just for the M&E and KIM) you limit M&E. So you have the same amount of elements but need to think different to achieve your plan, you will be encouraged to think of other plans.

The same goes for KIM, when it comes to mobility, running and shooting is not possible in Conviction and I sure as hell think it's the same case in Blacklist. You can run and gun with KIM, but you can't do it manually, which would make the use of KIM overpowered and so we need to use the limited mobility again because his body is heading one side and so need the gun positions be in that direction too. So if you run through such a cluster have already missed one or two guys which are now behind you, Sam would need to stop running at one direction to be able to turn his body to the direction of these two enemies to be able to kill them. So you would need to stop pushing the forward button so Sam is able to do these kills.

[SolidSage]

@Andre
Yes mobility may have been restricted but you could still hang there indefinitely, waiting for guards to come into your firing arc. That manual option is no more believable.

I didn't play Portal.

When I mentioned "not taking away" I meant from the specific tool. It just seems too involved and like there would be too many ramifications if we got into adjusting each tool for each difficulty setting. Way TOO much diversity almost.
I think it would be much better to just include an option to turn M&E or KIM OFF. Then the game is adjusted to the Player's liking without making many changes to the tool.
If that option isn't appealing it then appears that we are asking for an unrealistic level of customization that would allow every individual Player to fine tune the game to their own specific desires to an amazing degree.
That kind of build out can only end in chaos if it carries over into co-op or MP modes.

Too many options, modes and variations dilute the player pool to a point where there is no online community to speak of. You have to play with the few players that have your same specific tastes. Whereas turning gadgets or M&E or KIM off, or doing pistols only achieves a similar kind of parameter without going into micro tuning and balancing.

I'm not vehemently against changes to M&E but I feel they should be across the board, not a different M&E for each difficulty setting. So if Sam's arc isn't correct and needs to be limited like in older games, that's fine, but it should be that way in all difficulty settings, not allowing him to do 360's on easy but only 120's on hard. Does that make sense?

[MerriIl]

In my opinion Sam has to much mobility when it comes to gun control on ledges or pipes. When you use M&E, through the CAR system Sam supports his arms through his whole body to have nearly no recoil. The body is heading the way where the weapon is heading when you shoot. In previous games for example you couldn't use the pistol on the ledge at all, but you were able to do it on pipes. But even then you couldn't use the pistol to 360 degrees. There were spots you couldn't go with your aiming, because Sam isn't in the position to do these shots and so he had a limited mobility there. In Conviction, on the ledge or on a pipe you can go full 360 degree and as far as I know Sam is not even changing the pistol position from lefthand to righthand or the other way around.

I was playing DA (1st gen) the other day and it really dawned on me how realistic Sam's abilities and movements were while climbing or hanging. You could almost sense the weight and it felt very real. Just like you said, in Conviction climbing was too mobile. Terrible physics. It doesn't make any sense, he isn't some superhero. Sure we want to have Sam be more "able" than anyone else in the game, but I for one do not want it to feel unrealistic. I don't much like the climbing in SCC at all. I hope that is fixed in SCB.

[Andre202]

@Andre
Yes mobility may have been restricted but you could still hang there indefinitely, waiting for guards to come into your firing arc. That manual option is no more believable.

I didn't play Portal.

When I mentioned "not taking away" I meant from the specific tool. It just seems too involved and like there would be too many ramifications if we got into adjusting each tool for each difficulty setting. Way TOO much diversity almost.
I think it would be much better to just include an option to turn M&E or KIM OFF. Then the game is adjusted to the Player's liking without making many changes to the tool.
If that option isn't appealing it then appears that we are asking for an unrealistic level of customization that would allow every individual Player to fine tune the game to their own specific desires to an amazing degree.
That kind of build out can only end in chaos if it carries over into co-op or MP modes.

I was against the customization from the beginning. It's the devs taking the shots, making the balance for every difficulty and look if there are any tools that require some tweaks. The thing is a pistol is also a tool but the most important thing about the pistol is the ammunition an that's getting limited in a lot of games. In Blacklist this will become one of the things which are tied to the difficulty setting. Easy has unlimited ammo, while Normal will get a specific amount of ammunition.

At the moment I cannot think of any other game or example like Portal. The limitations though are actually there to encourage to think differently and find new ways to tackle a situation. As I said in the suggestion, the range is something I am really not sure how to balance it, because limiting the range to much and having the M&E only working when the whole body is able to support your shots might make it really uncomfortable as a feature. That's where the devs has to play with, but I do think it's ok to set these limitations. You would play Realistic, so you would get the Realistic version of M&E which works only with the right utilization of the CAR system.

I'm not vehemently against changes to M&E but I feel they should be across the board, not a different M&E for each difficulty setting. So if Sam's arc isn't correct and needs to be limited like in older games, that's fine, but it should be that way in all difficulty settings, not allowing him to do 360's on easy but only 120's on hard. Does that make sense?

Ohh if you haven't any problems with that. It's not that I asked that mobility being part of the difficulty. It could be part of it if people want still to have the 360 mobility. But if people are fine with that we could implement that limitation on every difficulty. The thing is that you will see that there might be some difficulties to use the M&E feature in those instances when you can only aim in a range of 120 degrees.

I was playing DA (1st gen) the other day and it really dawned on me how realistic Sam's abilities and movements were while climbing or hanging. You could almost sense the weight and it felt very real. Just like you said, in Conviction climbing was too mobile. Terrible physics. It doesn't make any sense, he isn't some superhero. Sure we want to have Sam be more "able" than anyone else in the game, but I for one do not want it to feel unrealistic. I don't much like the climbing in SCC at all. I hope that is fixed in SCB.

I think we all wanted a bit more fluidity but not for the price of losing Believeability for example.

[SolidSage]

@Andre
Making M&E more realistic wouldn't be bad.

It doesn't really matter much what I think and I don't doubt that M&E could be made better, but 3 variations of it is going to consume a lot of time and I think kind of make the feature get too much attention in design. When really I think we all want it to be that kind of optional feature that doesn't demand all that attention.

It might work for some people it would just seem weird to me if Sam could shoot under his armpit from a ledge on Rookie but couldn't on Realistic. Yes, it would BE more Realistic and justify the name of that difficulty setting but then it would just highlight that Sam was super human on Rookie, and therby create this sort of inconsistency in the Character himself. That's why i suggest limiting it to no under arm shots on all settings (for example).

I guess it's no different than limiting the amount of gadgets he can carry though is it? Like on Realistic Sam's back pack got smaller or something

[Andre202]

@Andre
Making M&E more realistic wouldn't be bad.

It doesn't really matter much what I think and I don't doubt that M&E could be made better, but 3 variations of it is going to consume a lot of time and I think kind of make the feature get too much attention in design. When really I think we all want it to be that kind of optional feature that doesn't demand all that attention.

The same argument I used for the customization. I don't see it as there are three versions though. Yes it would require some playtesting but at the end it would be worth it. You wouldn't need to make this work for the next titles which are coming. Since it was one of the pillar features I do think it needs some rework if you level it down to be balanced with all the other features and maybe put in a bit of realism/believeability. It already utilizes the CAR system so that's a nice base construction for that feature. It's not for asking an extreme version. Balance is the key word.

It might work for some people it would just seem weird to me if Sam could shoot under his armpit from a ledge on Rookie but couldn't on Realistic. Yes, it would BE more Realistic and justify the name of that difficulty setting but then it would just highlight that Sam was super human on Rookie, and therby create this sort of inconsistency in the Character himself. That's why i suggest limiting it to no under arm shots on all settings (for example).

That's great.

Maybe you let him have the 360 but give a penalty for that mobility with a bad accuracy and making the use of M&E risky in those instances. So your position would be more important when you use M&E

[Dieinthedark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mYPCyBVPvM

At 3:24 - maybe I'm looking too much into this but Max says, "after mastering Sam's ablities..." perhaps meaning that M&E needs to be used in the game before you as a player are good/accurate with it? It won't just automatically be perfect like SCC, maybe you have to "master" it, like use it...what do you guys think?

[oO_ShadowFox_Oo]

Ya, I think you're reading too much into that Dieinthedark.

I think what Maxime means by "Master Sam's Abilities" is "able to use the controls proficiently".