For information,
– ut99 : pad 50a/50% absorption, armor 100a/75% absorption, belt 150a/100%– ut2004 : small shield 50a, large shield 100a, with possibility to stack both up to 150. Absorption : 50% under 50a, 75 between 50 and 100a, 100% above 100a
– UT3 : Same than ut99 with helmet, except belt is 100a and not 150a land can be combined with the other armors to stack up to 200a
– quake live : 25/50/100a armors with same absorption equals to 2/3. Maximum armor is 200. If you have more than 100, then it will slowly decrease back to 100
Conclusion : quakelive seems simple and works apparently pretty well
The reason ql armor works well for duel is not heavily related to the absorption amounts, max stack or tickdown. Sure they play a part, but overall are not the primary reason. In addition the game (quake) really needs mega/keg to work decently in duel so the (often) suggested “just use ql armor” is broken because ql without mega the armor will be lacking. This also applies to q2.. qw.. reflex and the quake spin offs. How many duel maps have no mega? Every qw/ql duel map has mega and from memory popular q2 ones did. How many of the quake spin offs copy quake almost 100% in this aspect? Taking the armor only is not going to “fix” ut duel. Removing mega from quake duel is a sure fire way to break it.
Weapons being on a longer spawn in ut is not a substitute as a conflict for driving player interaction unless a weapon is “required” – in which case it would be considered OP.
Compare how armor+health load has progressed in q3/ql maps since 1999. Originally q3 duel maps were quite light, with maps like t2, dm6 or t4 (two 50a + 2minute mega) being popular. t4 was possibly unique in a way because the map features a long spawn weapon, something not done often in q3/ql. Early on this was because the maps that shipped with q3 we fairly lacking duel wise. As time has passed this lighter load out has fallen to the way side, with most maps sporting at minimum RA, YA, Mega and in almost all cases an extra YA or multiple GA as as more shards than earlier maps. There were some early expection, dm13 from id and bloodrun from ztn – the latter coming to the game slightly later than stock.
If you look at older quake titles you get an understanding where this lighter load out comes from. The armor system in quakeworld was tiered and binary. You pickup an armor and you have max stack for that armor type. You could trade up but not down unless the lower pickup offered more protection than your current armor type (eg 90RA replaced by 150YA). Add to this that armor respawn was 20second means having more than 2-3 armors per map was enough for duel. One RA, one YA and a GA worked ok. Quake2 had a similar system to q3/ql but with tiers. A player could stack within a tier and different tiers had different absorption+max stack. However overall maps had the medium armor type in pickups worth 50 each – much like q3.
So the previous two games were quite light on pickups and this was continued into the stock maps, nothing overly surprising there. However q3/ql moved away from that, to the point that the older maps are not really played.
What is the main ut gripe about armor and duel? Control is too strong and is too hard to break. The game snowballs too much. The defensive nature of duel is (imo) due to weapons rather than the armor, however having more, faster spawns would alleviate the problem of being destacked as the out of control player and then needing to spend an excessively large amount of time to stack back for what is a relatively small benefit. If it was possible to restack faster players could be more aggressive because losing stack would not incur such a large time penalty. In addition if there were more frequent “in control” armors the in control player can be more aggressive as well because they are less “scared” of losing stack from a failed fight.
Think of duel like a round based gametype. Each spawn cycle is a round and in order to compete the out of control player needs to spend a “round” stacking and obtaining pickups. When the next “round” starts the out of control player can then attempt to contest larger items. There is no hard reset between each round and rounds do not always proceed in the same way. Players could take more than one round to prepare to attack – if they die and have trouble obtaining a weapon and getting pads/helmet they are out of combat for longer. On the flip side the in control player has a round “reset” with belt and 100a pickups up to three times per minute.
This is a quite important point – engaging on the pickup is detrimental to the out of control player, yet not engaging on the pickup is difficult because outside of these times there is no reason for in control player to not leave. If the out of control player does not have the 100a then the in control player will contest it to ensure it is not taken.
The primary problem with armor discussions on the forum is that posters feel the root cause of problems is max stack, absorption (in a major way, not the small edge cases of 5hp belt pickups) or similar. A lot of this is based on the feels – players are frustrated when they lose a belt fight to a player that picks it up at 5hp. In reality this does not occur all that often. The topic of these discussions would “fix” the game to a degree but at the same time would remove a decent amount of potential depth. One large problem with ut armor is the difficulty in obtaining stack that adds a meaningful amount to the out of control players survive ability – this is why max stack is often the discussion point. If the max is lowered then the stack differential is less and the out of control player needs to deal less damage to have a fight on even-ish footing. Keep this in mind.
Removing all armor outside of 50a would “fix” the problems ut duel is perceived to have – it would be less snowbally. It would be easier to come back. This is because the 50a alone, without stacking does very little for the player in “control”. Having said that it is so inconsequential that players putting themselves in danger because of the 50a would be laughable. However this solution would make the game exceptionally shallow. Like ut99 with NA rules in 2000.
What is never discussed that actually matters? Respawn times, stacking “rules”, number of items, how these items influence what the players do and how the game and the potential differences between player stack.
The UT system has essentially been the same since ut99 in the way it drives fights and what the in control player is concerned with. The in control player concentrates on the two larger items and the out of control player can use the rest.
There are two ways to go here.
———
Basically you could stack yourself temporarily to 200 hp and 200 armor which would slowly decrease to 100 each, forcing you to keep maintaining control while still having an edge over the opponent.
Let me requote cunni regarding quake armor.
quake live : 25/50/100a armors with same absorption equals to 2/3. Maximum armor is 200. If you have more than 100, then it will slowly decrease back to 100
His conclusion is that “quake live is the best” and the numbers/details provided is this quote are assumed to cover everything great/relevant about the system. Since it is without a doubt the best.
1. There are three armors
2. Absorption is 2/3
3. Maximum armor is 200
4. Decay over 100
And you have selected decay as the primary reason quakelive armor system is good. Decay does not cause the bold section of your quote to occur. It forces nothing. Self stacking (after taking damage) or denial are the primary reasons for pickup up stuff. You can maintain 200 stack with 25 armor pickup per “cycle”, which is nothing. The shards hallway on ztn keeps you at 200. This is the extent of how unimportant decay is. You want stack advantage over your opponent so you take it to increase yours and decrease what they have available – this is what “forces” the game to flow the way it does.
Not decay.
Having said that none of the stats that cunni has listed play a huge role in why ql armor is good for duel, however it is unlikely a discussion would actually occur outside of the narrow view of max stack or absorption.
Not to say that I don’t think quakelive armor/health is good for quakelive (or even ut) duel, but the reasons given to use it are strongly lacking in cunnis post. Case in point “Decay forces you to keep control” as discussed above. Decay was added to limit heavy +back without contesting pickups which appeared in some later q2 competitions. It did not really achieve this in q3 as 100/100 is enough to play quite defensively.
It does not make players behave the way you think it does. It is overall a very minor aspect of the system, which I would not be against but does not make the ql armor setup the amazing system that it is.
Just grabbing the armor from ql and dropping it in ut will not fix the situation because the mega is also quite important to the whole shebang. In fact I would almost argue that ql armor only in ut could be worse because it lacks mega – ql armor only in ut could have some unintended consequences
Now health packs and vials are more part of the strategy. In that sens, it is more complex.
Health packs and vials have always played a part in the “strategy”. However neither of these items have the ability to reliably setup fights in duel every ~30 seconds or so. Health packs can have influence over player behavior which could be useful, but not in a horns clashing manner of larger armors or health.
Armor and mega/keg pickups create focus points for players – they create fights and drive player interaction. Quad does the same thing in TDM. Without these pickups there is little reason for players to fight which was one of the major showdown gripes that was never really addressed. These are really the only items that do this. You could argue that ut is played with weaponstay off and thus weapons can also make this occur (making up for no mega), however unless there is one weapon that players must turn up for every single spawn (ie it is OP) it becomes difficult. There are too many weapons, it would be similar to breaking out armor to 8 pickups per map – it does not focus players enough. They can never drive fights reliably as armor/mega. We have over 15 years of duels to look at and the only example I have ever seen cited is controling lg+shock on rankin in 2k4 – and that is as an alternative control “method” rather than the lg/shock actually creating fights.
What you need to look at:
1. Respawn times
2. Number of items
3. Item split for in/out of control players
4. Stack differential over time between both players.
5. Cost to time spend of pickups – this applies to players spending time bothering to pick up the item as well as contesting it. eg players will contest the belt but rarely contest the helmet.
6. Amount of time each player dedicates to building/maintaining stack and thus how much time they have available
Duel is heavily about time and controlling what players can and cannot do to each other by offering them options that pull them away from just shooting their opponent. This might sound counter intuitive
Define “in control.”
Traditionally from ut99 onwards I would say control is when one player has the “big” and “second big” armors and is making the pickups. This depends on the map in ut99 as it could be the belt+100a on deck, belt+50a on curse. This applies in 2k4 and ut3 as well, however the latter attempted to “fix” the system by addressing max stack. Overall I would argue that it was a buff to control in ut3.
This is control because having these two items give you significant stack advantage over your opponent. Having belt while your opponent has 100a gives you a stack advantage over your opponent.
Watching ut4 casters/youtubers talk about control being lost when a player who has taken the last X belt/100a pickups takes heavy damage is annoying. Stack, itself, is not control – the opponent needs to capitalise and take the next pickups for.. this is where the post stops.
Build fights, what are they and why were they fun
Build fights were the crowning glory of Fortnite Battle Royale.
Build fights occur when two players or teams meet then build for high ground.
This often involves starting to “Ramp up” when 8-6 tiles away from each other.
This ramp up can end up deciding the fight as one player ends up lower than the other.
After the two sets of ramps meet players build upwards while keeping track of their opponent.
The goal is to keep high ground over your opponent and take opportunities to shoot them when they are vulnerable.
Building is considered one of the higher skilled aspects of Fortnite BR and a build fight is considered the high point of this skill. Two players/groups, toe to toe, skills only.
The current meta – epic buffing C4 and explosives
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/counterplay-and-play-styles?sessionInvalidated=true
In patches since late June 2018 Epic have buffed and nerfed weapons and mechanics in an effort to allow different variations of counter play.
You could interpret this in many ways.
If you were a sweaty tier reddit poster this is epic trying to make the game easier for bad players by adding SMGs that can laser players from 400m.
If you were a decent player who could build you might blame epic for trying to nerf building.
If you were truly switched on you would understand that this is epic struggling to fix the underlying problems of the game.
Granted it is failing to do what epic wanted but the discussions are fun to watch regardless.
Lamenting the current meta is what people are doing
Players are lamenting the loss of whatever meta they liked previously.
This has accelerated over the past month with Epic going a bit full retard on changes.
The weapon meta was stagnant for a long time with the first major changes attempted by epic being the double pump fix in patch 3.0.0 – February 21 2018
Prior to this patch the meta was stable with weapon additions from epic not leaving lasting impressions. This lasted for around six months while the game matured.
The meta changed, but not because of weapon additions/changes, more because players were discovering how to play. The meta evolved organically. This is important to remember.
You could argue that double pump was a change in the meta, and it was, however it had been there since day 1.
It changed how people were playing, but not because epic had tried to change anything.
Is the current meta really causing the fall off in build fights?
Yes and no.
The game is moving away from build fights for a number of reasons.
On the surface it looks like epic trying to change weapon balance and weapons that destroy buildings easily.
My stance is that this is a minor aspect, the weapons themselves are not super important provided players use them.
Take the new SMGs for instance. They shred(ded) structures and players. They have been nerfed since the introduction of the compact SMG but building has not changed much overall.
However the original SMG, even the first one that was vaulted, destroyed structures quickly.
In fact before the recent hotfix (week starting 23rd July) that rolled back the P90/new SMG ridiculousness the older SMGs were potentially more effective vs structures than they are now.
Granted you needed to be at the right range due to bloom for it to be effective but it was still useful.
New weapons make people try new things. When something is obviously quite strong it will get use.
If the current new SMGs were removed and the game rolled back to pre-SMG buff weapon balance players would start taking the old SMGs to destroy buildings.
Why? Because they now understand that it is possible, however to get more people/most people actually using the weapon the game needed to add something that was more.. better.
Current Fortnite meta of passive play
The game has been moving towards passive play in 1×1 for at least the last season. Probably longer.
Players will turtle and stay away from their opponents, moving as the storm forces them to.
Late game before the new circles that can be in the storm (excellent change epic), perhaps circle 4-5 it is now common for players to simply build a small 1×1 and wait to move.
Even peeking opponents at this point can be dangerous so playing safe and sitting in your box/tower is becoming more common.
In the past players may have pushed their opponents.
Aggressive play is more dangerous and playing like this can lead to death or taking unnecessary damage.
In a scenario where two players can see each other and have boxes built one will have an advantage of some kind.
High ground is one of the primary advantage.
In this situation the player with the advantage will not want to give it up (unless required) to attack their opponent.
At the same time the player in the less than ideal position does not want to attack because they are disadvantage.
While they may be less advantaged right now the circle might push their opponent from the high ground into them.
And while they might be disadvantaged unless their opponent has significant height advantage they can sit happily in their 1×1 and not take damage.
In this way the game goes forwards in an overall passive manner with players not wanting to give up advantages or take risks from disadvantaged situations.
Weapon and material changes have borne the brunt of blame for this.
(Material drop chances in floor loot reduced by 33%. Material stack sizes in floor loot reduced by 33%. https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v4-3-content-update)
Some numbers for the floor loot change were kicking around reddit subs when the adjusments were implemented.
The total loss could be 1-200 over the course of a game.
This was based on a rough guess at the number of floor loot stacks they would pickup themselves + killed opponents.
This amounts to 2-4 pallets, 5-6 trees or 5-6 large rocks.
This means players have to spend an extra 1-2 minutes per game gathering. Maximum.
Fortnite has a lot of down time, even in games where the circle does not favor the player.
This is especially true in a heavily competitive environment where teams try to avoid fights as much as possible.
This is not a convincing argument for the decline of build fights.
The maximum impact this had was early game for players who did not gather any resources and relied on killing opponents.
SMG changes and the drumgun were also blamed.
Is explosives/C4 causing this?
Along with SMG and shotgun changes Epic also buffed explosives and C4.
Explosives now deal damage through structures. This means the ramp inside your 1×1 will be damaged by a rocket or grenade hitting the wall in front of it.
It means that C4 with its larger range destroys multiple “cubes” worth of structure.
The AOE size of C4 has been dialed back since its original buff, however it is still very effective and nullifies player 1x1s easily.
This is especially true of towers three high, where the attacking player can destroy the structure and deal damage while their opponent falls before they can build again.
As we can see the explosive changes should make turtling late game less effective, however if anything it is used more than previously.
The reason is simple – while it is easier than ever to destroy a players 1×1 the risk in doing so remains the same.
In the past when you pushed a good player a build fight would occur as both players fight for high ground.
Now if you push and your opponent does not build up you are left holding your dick.
The material gathering rate
What else could cause it? Could it be the base game
Were build fights ever required?
Build fights – get highground and win. Get highground and never lose it.
Side bar : is building skillful.
If its not the cu
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/category/patch%20notes
V.3.0.0 PATCH NOTES 2.21.2018
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/v3-0-0-patch-notes
Double Pump nerf
V.3.1.0 PATCH NOTES 2.28.2018
Hunting rifle Added
V3.2 PATCH NOTES 3.8.2018
V3.3 PATCH NOTES 3.15.2018
C4 Added
V3.3 PATCH NOTES 3.15.2018
llamas added
V3.4 PATCH NOTES 3.28.2018
Guided missle
V3.4 CONTENT UPDATE | 4.4.2018 2.21.2018
VENDING MACHINE
First shot accuracy + damage falloff
Floor Loot adjustments – Materials drop rate increased 50%.
Resource gathering rates adjusted.
– Increased most Wood resource values by about 10%.
– Reduced variance of resources from objects. Was +/- 30%, now +/- 15%.
This meant that an object with a base 100 resource value could have been anywhere between 70 and 130 resources. Now it would give between 85 and 115.
V3.5 PATCH NOTES 4.11.2018
Added port-a-fort
Added replays
Added a short equip time to many weapons (particularly, those with a slower rate of fire).
– This will reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst-damage.
– Removed the reloading animation on the Pump Shotgun.
Prior to this change things were screwed with
Added new SCAR audio
V3.5 CONTENT UPDATE 4.19.2018
Light Machine Gun
Peeking is being reverted back to how it functioned prior to v3.5. – not included in the 3.5 notes
V3.6 PATCH NOTES 4.24.2018
Clinger
V4.0 PATCH NOTES – SEASON 4 IS HERE! – patch notes on epic site are missing here
INFINITY GAUNTLET 5.8.2018
V4.1 PATCH NOTES 5.8.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
V4.2 PATCH NOTES 5.15.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
FAMAS
V4.2 CONTENT UPDATE 5.22.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
jetpack
V4.3 PATCH NOTES 5.25.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
Shopping carts
V4.3 CONTENT UPDATE 6.5.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
bounce pads
V4.4 PATCH NOTES 6.11.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
Thermal AR
V4.4 CONTENT UPDATE 6.19.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
Gas grenade
COUNTERPLAY AND PLAY STYLES 6.22.2018
This post
V4.5 PATCH NOTES 6.27.2018 – patch notes on epic site are missing here
Dual pistols
V4.5 CONTENT UPDATE
Drum gun
We shouldn’t give epic a free pass on the shit decisions they’ve made unless they’ve given us a reason for it
But it is obvious.
The game until around July was quite static. Many weapons and items were introduced, most were useless. They did not change the game significantly. The biggest “change” from release was mainstreaming double shotguns, which was present from day one. Shotguns and players learning to build. The meta changed organically.
Epic addressed that in the first “big” change, the original double pump nerf in February. However even past this point two shotguns still reigned supreme.
Even with lowering of shotgun damage via fall off, headshot multiplier two shotguns were common carry.
It was not until the current cludge of delay after swapping back to shotgun were multiples finally not worth carrying.
Building up to this patch there were other changes. Explosives ammo nerfed, the explosives buffed. If epic were trying to address passive play they would not have nerfed the ammo. At this point epic are unaware of pro meta, even though it should have been obvious in a game with little reason to fight.
Up to this point epic are doing heaps of stuff, all the time but nothing changes. They don’t care. Competitive players know how to play, casual players get new weapons to play with almost every week which they like (but no comp players do) and overall people are happy. There is variety if you want it and the “way” to play if you don’t. Some aspects are toned down but overall the game is reasonably stable.
Announcements for esports were made, divisions private keys were revoked and epic become aware of the elephan in the room. The pro meta. This is bad for esports play, it is bad for competitive (because they want it to be exciting) and overall it is bad they discovered it AFTER their esport 100mil announcement because now they need to fast track a solution.
They made posts about wanting players to be able to play in different ways after this – and then went ahead and removed the base SMG, removed FSA from the tac smg and turned the silenced SMG into a laser (Jun 27th). This was the patch where stuff started to change significantly. This patch was the turning point, but we were not there yet because you could still use two shotguns. This is important because they wanted to allow multiple ways to play and this was essentially it. The tac SMG change in this patch was fine – it always shredded buildings but now you could kill playres with it. This patch did not get a long enough life to see how it would play out – epic are now in full retard change shit panic mode.
Next we have the addition of the drum gun, which makes minimal waves for the next week until..
The next patch, the launch of season 5 was the killer for shotguns. After firing a shotgun, another shotgun cannot be fired for a very short time. Double shotguns are not no longer worth carrying in most circumstances.
The next important patch was the new SMG+P90 was introduced and the tac removed was the turning point. However this was not heavily required as the previous patch with the tac SMG change had already started the ball rolling. Had players had sufficient time to play with the previous tac it would have ended up in a similar place. My theory here is that changing an existing weapon has different impact to adding a new one. By adding a new basic SMG and the P90 variant, Epic draw attention to the new weapon and significantly increase the uptake of it.
We know what goes from here.
Now you might be saying “yes, this all points to them trying to nerf shotguns” and you would be correct. However there is a long time period there where they are changing thing but at the same time not changing things.
After this and the realisation that esports was going to be totally fucked by the pro meta they have gone turbo retard changing things.
If you think that all the changes have been because they want to “give people different ways to play” you are delusional. It is because they don’t want to look like total idots on the world stage with 60 players in the last circles. For a few reasons : Server performance, dryness of leadup to last circle, impossibleness to follow late game with so many people alive.
We are seeing their inept flailing to address lack of interaction drivers and the broken material economy while thinking that the problem is “players are too passive/defensive”. Thus they load the game up with things to kill buildings (SMGs) and play a more mobile game.
The meta we see has been there since day one and would have matured down the path it has taken because of other, larger, underlying problems than “Shotguns are OP”.
Few weapons have made it into meta load outs over the games past ~year. There are other items added obviously but because I said weapons I will only look at that.
Historically meta loadout went something like this:
1. Shotgun, AR, Sniper + 2 meds or 1med + explosive
2. Double shotgun. Until 7.12.2018
3. Spray meta evolved after the addition of the compact SMG but could have started after the first SMG revamp. To be honest we could have had the spray meta with the original SMGs, at least the building breaking aspects. But this never happened.
Here is the history.
9.12.2017 – BR release
11.29.2017 – Smoke grenades (a)
12.24.2017 – Boogie bombs (a)
1.2.2018 – Silenced Pistol
2.1.2018 – Minigun*
2.8.2018 – Crossbow
2.13.2018 – Impulse Grenade (a)
2.21.2018 – Hand cannon – Used now but until FSA and recent changes but was not useful and not taken
2.28.2018 – Hunting Rifle
3.15.2018 – C4 added (1)
3.28.2018 – Guided Missile
FSA patch here somewhere
4.4.2018 – FSA
4.19.2018 – LMG*
4.24.2018 – Clingers
5.15.2018 – FAMAS – Used now but not useful until after burst changes
6.11.2018 – Scoped thermal
6.19.2018 – Gas grenade (a)
6.27.2018 – Dual Pistols – SMG Rework
7.3.2018 – Drum gun
7.12.2018 – After firing a shotgun, another shotgun cannot be fired for a very short time (b)
7.17.2018 – SMG
7.24.2018 – Compact SMG (c)
8.7.2018 – Double Barrel
8.7.2018 – Heavy Sniper
9.6.2018 – Burst Change
9.11.2018 – Silenced SCAR
10.10.2018 – Quad launcher
11.6.2018 – Heavy AR
11.19.2018 – Six shooter
Missed the silenced SMG. Probably missed some others.
In short we have from release till 7.12.2018 of weapon additions that were either not used, did not change the meta or were not swapped out when a superior weapon of the same type was found (eg swapping out hunting rifle for bolt). The weapon type changes in bold buffed some weapons which were previously unused.
(a) grenades are useful but rarely worth taking over other, permanent items in an inventory slot. This has an odd effect of making lower quality items better because you are more likely to find a full stack.
(b) To this point nothing made in roads into the meta because two shotguns.
(c) This is where the spray meta started, however it could have occurred almost a month before with the SMG changes. Not until the introduction of the (originally) OP compact did the possibilities click for players. In addition players could have been using the LMG for structure breaking prior to this. Or the SMGs the game had originally, but likely only in the better variants.
Overall new weapons have not been used. In the past something like the hand cannon was trash due to lack of FSA, making it useless in most cases. Even after FSA the hand cannon was not used overly much until the more recent buffs, finally making its way into players inventories. Some of these aspects have been tweaked over time but these changes have taken a long time.
It is only since the SMG changes and compact SMG that weapons are actually getting use.
Many games benefit from playing with a low sensitivity. Lowering sens is a common method of improving lower skilled players aim. This article is not to debate or pitch that idea to you. Fact: Some players want low sens. Fortnite building cockblocks this to a degree. Buckle up because this requires a massive preface due to how gaming in general treats mouse acceleration.
If you play with low sensitivity in fortnite your building game may suffer. This is primarily because there is ~zero delay between placing build pieces, meaning you can spin around really fast and build a 1*1, stairs, floor and whatever. It is gated by the speed you can rotate. Sure it spazzes out at time and fails to build but overall it is ok. Having a low sens is also a detriment in close in fights where players can get behind you, which happens reasonably often because of building. In other games a low sens from this perspective can make little to no difference. The enemy approaches from the same direction and cannot get behind you outside of very usual circumstances.
The biggest downside to low sensitivity in fortnite is building. There have been posts on reddit about good streamers and the sensitivity they use. Often it is relatively high compared to what good players in other games use. The posters in these threads generally agree that higher (to a point) is better, primarily because of building. While you can get used to anything, low, high or medium, it may come at a trade off for you. Mouse acceleration is a way to mitigate this and allow you to have two sensitivities.. sort of.
Any mouse or aim guide worth its salt will tell you to disable mouse acceleration. These mouse setup guides will show you how to disable it in your drivers, in windows, using registry patches, using mikec mousefix.. and so on. And these guides are correct. Windows acceleration (Enhanced pointer precision) or driver acceleration is in general horrible. It is uncontrollable and so unless it happens to be the type of accel you like it is quite useless. And at this point you don’t know what you do like, or why you even want mouse acceleration. You don’t want this acceleration and unless you happen to play quake 3/live (and take it quite seriously) it is highly unlikely you have ever seen the type of acceleration you want.
Many top players in quakelive (and quake3, only referencing live from this point) use mouse acceleration in one form or another. Most use accel. Some use low sens with higher acceleration, others use mid-high sens with low acceleration. The game has built in acceleration support that give players control over how the accel curve is setup. Windows acceleration (enhanced pointer precision) is a flat curve which suddenly doubles the pointer speed. Logitech acceleration is linear but never caps the speed, leading players to spin out. Quakelive gives players the ability to set the base sensitivity, rate of acceleration, sensitivity cap and accel offset. Sensitivity cap sets the maximum sens the mouse can accelerate to which stops the aforementioned problem of unlimited acceleration. Acceleration offset allows players to put a delay before the acceleration curve kicks in. This means your mouse moving at 10cm/s behaves the same as 20cm/s and then from 20-40cm/s has accel. This allows much more control over what you get. If you are interested there is a good discussion here that includes math.
Until somewhat recently this has only been available in quakelive or other games influenced by it. This is a very limited market and even if you liked mouse accel in quakelive using it is a potential detriment unless you only play quake as you could not easily bring it into other games. There are other reasons as well – Modern shooters do not benefit much from acceleration as much as faster, arenafps style games. A solution has existed for a while outside of quake in the form of a driver, however after windows 7 this broke and needed to be run in test mode. The barrier to entry was far too high.
This is a perfect opportunity for epic to implement mouse acceleration in fortnite. They have done so partially in unreal tournament 4 and fortnite players could benefit from it hugely.
You can have more than one sensitivity. You can have low sens for aiming and higher sens for building in a way that is seemless. You could use a dpi switch/toggle but this tends to be jarring. Simply moving the mouse faster to rotate faster becomes intuitive very quickly.
In short.. no. If this was the case the top quake players would not be using acceleration. Acceleration in the form of advanced pointer precision or logitech accel can have a negative effect because it is uncontrolled. Being able to set where accel starts, how quickly acceleration is applied and where it stops is important. Muscle memory is generally the argument levelled against mouse accel and in the cases of “bad” accel this is possibly true, although people can get used to anything if they want to. Perhaps the argument is that mouse speed is not linear with accel and this stops muscle memory from forming – however there are many things in lift that muscle memory applies to that are not linear like static mouse speed so this argument doesn’t really hold up. Being able to control acceleration allows you more flexibility with your setup. You can aim slow and build faster. You can have slow long range tracking and closer range snappy shots.
It will take some getting used to, but not as much as you might think given you don’t use ridiculous numbers.
There is now a driver that that uses intercept. This means that you no longer need to run test mode in windows. Installation and setup is straight forward. Readme.txt in the download file has the simple installation instructions. Upon launching the interface application (2. application (64 bit)) and you will be presented with the following window. Do not touch the fields flagged orange. Power is the style of acceleration and in general you want to try linear first and probably not change it. The assumption on setup is that you have your base sensitivity set low and want to have accel for building and quickly turning. If you already have mid-high sens you need to lower this in game first. Strongly suggest not changing the sensitivity setting in this app and leaving it at 1. This makes adjusting the graph much easier.
The checkbox at the bottom turns the driver on/off.
We are going to segue a little and “find” a number for low sens. Firstly set your mouse DPI to >2000 if you use lower than this usually. There is a technical reason for this due to how the driver implements acceleration. If you were previously happy with your sens and simply want to add acceleration on top of it you can work out your new in game sens with higher dpi. If you used 0.2 in game and double your dpi you need to halve your sens. Make sure to set your in game sens before continuing. If you want to pick a low sensitivity number to use have a decent sized mousemat, between 40 and 50cm wide, go ingame and set your sens to a number that allows you to start on one side of the mat and turn around 360degrees. This gives you a sensitivity that allows you to turn 180 from almost anywhere on your mat without running out of space. If you are new to low sens this is a good place to start.
Although I don’t imagine there will be many high sens players reading this if you are and want to try low sensitivity and mouse acceleration in fortnite I strongly recommend playing without mouse acceleration at low sensitivity first. Generally I dislike the idea of changing sens incrementally in order to get used to it (build muscle memory @20cm, lower sens, build muscle memory@25cm, lower sens, etc) but accel is next level changes and you won’t be able to accurately adjust acceleration without playing low sens sans accel first. The change from using your wrist to using your arm is something you need to get used to first.
Finally on to the newly installed driver and app.
The acceleration field will be the first stop. This defines how fast acceleration occurs. A higher number equates to faster acceleration. A high enough number causes this to behave in an almost binary manner. To start set this to 0.025 > Press preview changes – an additional line will be drawn to show the acceleration value you have added. 0.025 should be a gradual increase. To feel this press the Save Changes button. You now have accel. This is a mild version of logitech driver accel which is much more agressive. Not super useful. You can test this by moving the mouse slowly, taking note of how far you rotate in game and moving the same distance quickly and noting the amount of rotation.
Next we will set the Sensitivity Cap. This is the maximum speed the mouse can gain. Set this to 1.5 which gives you a maximum of one and a half times your base sensitivity. We can now see that the graph is clipped at 1.5. This may be harder to feel depending on your setup but should be visible when you move the mouse faster – it stop accelerating and moves at a constant speed. You can come back and change this later.
You can play with this, however because fortnite has a decent amount of long range pixel aiming I suggest putting in some sort of offset. Think of this as a deadzone on a joystick, however for the mouse and acceleration it is setting the speed where acceleration start. This way you can move the mouse slowly for longer range pixel shots without acceleration interfering. Now this is a personal choice and needs some tweaking and fine tuning. Have it set high enough so you can aim at longer range without accel kciking in.
Another way to go about setting this is to have a setting..
Wrote this ages ago, never finished.
but it also has some very extreme snowballing/slippery slope behaviors If you move games away from mechanics then you push it onto other factors, like economy. If you get an early lead and hold down some key terrain, it very easily translates into more resources, a stronger army, and a much stronger lead that is difficult for an opponent come back from.
One word : Economy.
RTS economies are generally over an entire match. If both players earn resources at a (potentially) similar rate and one player loses units in an early encounter then the obvious occurs – they are at a disadvantage. The solution to this is quite difficult because it involves being able to identify that you are in a bad situation during a fight and being able to break it off to fight another day. In most games that involve player vs player this is a fairly high level idea. Most players simply fight until they die, respawn and go from there. In this way a player losing a fight in an RTS is always at a disadvantage, always on the back foot. This is really just part of RTS but what other economies are there?
I like FPS and so that is what I am most familiar with. You also have economies in RPGs, where mana and cooldowns are the “economy” during an encounter. Games are about interaction of economies.
All games have economies. CS has an economy that last one half but fluctuates round to round. Quake duel has an economy of time that translates into armor/health (resources) a player can accrue and then attempt to kill their opponent. Simply attacking off spawn yields less chance of winning. However the economy here can be viewed as the amount of time it takes to stack to a decent amount in order to contest a large item spawn. If you want two 50a + shards + 2-3 weapons this is about 50s of time spend. You can then “spend” this time contenting the next 100a or mega spawn. This is quite hidden though, as the mechanic requirement of the game is steep, as is positioning.
Overwatch has an economy as well. Each attacking side has a limited number of pushes per round, gated by the time limit and respawns. Ideally teams should all push together, and having a player picked means you need to commit to an imbalanced fight (5v6) or wait for them to respawn. The same applies to the defending team, where a player being picked gives the attackers a numerical advantage until that player respawns and returns to their team. It has other, faster economies around ultimates and cooldown on normal abilities. So we can see that in the context of some popular FPS the economy is not the duration of the entire game but broken down into smaller, bite sized pieces over the course of a match.
Warcraft 3 resource drag and similar concepts have been mentioned, but imo these are not there to prevent snowballing as much as force players to action. If you have a lead then you should capitalise on it before your opponent catches up. It rewards a player that has superior economy management with a limited advantage – the time it takes their opponent to catch up. This creates urgency. It also plays into unit upgrades and spends there rather than simply buying more.
Company of Heroes has squad based infantry and gives the player the ability to “retreat” their units at high(ish) speed to their base where they can then be reinforced back to full strength. This allows players to disengage from encounters that they are not likely to win at the cost of time + reinforcements (if any individual soldiers are killed). This cedes territory to the opponent and gives them time to do other things. Reinforcements are cheaper than buying a whole new squad. In addition there are other upgrades that keep early game units relevant until endgame, both purchasable as well. So by keeping units alive you negate some resource loss when losing fights. You also benefit from keeping the units alive because they are still viable late game. In addition one of the three resources (manpower) is penalised as you have more units on the field.
However it hinges on the aforementioned player requirement to retreat the units, which isn’t immediately obvious and takes time to recognise lost causes instead of just fighting to the last man. Even still the “run away” function is much more reliable and less mechanics involved over other RTS.