Screenshake 2.0

[Twerking_Alpacas]

   Things are constantly being changed and improved in warframe, sometimes for better or worse. Screenshake is something that hasn't been touched for years, so I decide it's time to make some noise. To start off, I have to put it out there that I love this game, because you might get the misconception that I hate everyone at DE after reading this. No I don't. Warframe is a fun game, and I come back every so often and put a few real bucks down to try out the shiny new guns and stuff. With that cleared, lets get right to it:

Since the days of the Penta, screen shake has been tied with recoil and explosions - a bad decision to start with. Look at any worthy 3rd person shooter title, e.g. Gears of War, Tom Clancys, do they throw a Go-Pro inside a washing machine? No? Because that's what warframe feels like right now. If I wanted to throw up playing a game then I'd go play sanic spin 2006 for realism.

http://gamejolt.com/games/sanic-spin-2006-first-person-sim/134912#close

   NUMBER ONE. I would guess the screenshake was designed this way because Warframe is a merge of both fps and tps. You turn into pseudo first person with the click of a right mouse button. Some keyboard warriors are frothing at the mouth and want to lurch at me now. Just put on some recoil mods they said, all weapons have some sort of drawback they said. I'm not talking about individually offending weapons here, I'm talking about the bigger picture - THE screenshake with a T. H. E. in the front. But since we touched on weapons here let me rant for a bit. The guns with the worse recoil in the game coincidentally feels like they should have way less in our scientific understanding: Dual Cestra and Zhuge. One fires a weightless light wave and the other arrows. Isn't it curious that a full auto machinegun AKA Soma only wobbles the reticle while a crossbow raises it to the sky?

    NUMBER TWO. As far as I see, the problem does not stop with recoil only. Did something explode a mile away? Screenshake. Did an infested volatile runner accidentally touch you in the crowded transit? Screenshake. Was it cold that day when you were peeing outside? Screenshake in real life. The amount of random occurrences that jointly happen with a screenshake is only indicative of an overzealous design. It's like someone ticked all the boxes when it came to decide which things should shake the player's screen. Melee attacks - tick, abilities - tick, buzlok - tick tick tick.

Since nobody is trying to snipe a maggot 1000 yards away, and that most of the fighting is done in close quarters. I suggest complete amputation of the FPS component and its current zoom-in mechanic. It's a little brave but I think it has to be done. Since Warframe players spend so much time farming in-game, at least we deserve this little QoL. Just slap on the zoom like the other 900 third person shooter titles out there, it works and its stood the test of time and never deducted the magic from any enjoyable shooter. Of course, in order to preserve some of that sweet action, door-kicking, emotional, explosive feeling, we have to draw the line somewhere. E.g. If you busted a corpus window and all the air is being sucked out the cockpit, yes there should be some shaking.

   NUMBER THREE. With the removal of screenshake and recoil there is now one glaring problem: Totally IMBA weapons. Honestly if you were a DE designer and asked to hold all three baskets: The accuracy, The recoil, The Lets-Not-Make-Players-Puke basket. What would you do? Push comes to shove and I have to make a choice, I'd drop the recoil one and put all the eggs in the accuracy basket. If the screen is superglued to the reticle and you can't portray recoil with camera jerking, i'd say do something with the reticle. Make weapons have increasingly large spread or completely detach the screen with the reticle (though I would KMS if the latter became a thing because doing parkour in that system would be insane).

 

Conclusion. Remove or tune down the screen shakes for better player experience. It needs to be done now. With all the things that screw up your eyes and induce seizures in warframe (Looking at you VAUBAN with the stupid color palette), recoil is the worst offender and needs to be addressed.

 

P.S.

1. Other suggestions: ENLARGE grenade projectiles, tonkor/penta. ENLARGE beam weapon projectiles, convectrix flux rifle...etc. Corrupted enemies spawn too bright and shiny.*

2. What happens to people who paid plat for scope mods like argon scope/laser sight? The mods can stay and so can zoom, but camera jerking is a nono.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Twerking_Alpacas

[AdunSaveMe]

I don't know why anyone would think screen shake, especially Warframe's special kind of screen shake, is a good thing.

Recoil is the one that annoys me the most but I can't see them ever doing something about it. It would require our crosshairs to actually not just be a static overlay on the screen; they would need to expand with spread, and move with recoil, to reduce the amount of eye-murdering, stomach-churning, vomit-inducing screen wobbling that everyone seems to think improves games.

Like, you can have functional, challenging, effective recoil WITHOUT pointing my camera up and down like I've just crested a tsunami every time I fire. It just takes a bit of effort. And it doesn't just make things less sickening; it makes the game more satisfying to play.

[Twerking_Alpacas]

Yes, something needs to be done with screenshake. The sooner the better.

 

It's not impossible to do/remake, since third person shooters are around for a while. There are a ton of action packed games that don't nauseate the player. Issac stomped through a thousand necromorph babies without experiencing so much as a screen wobble. So I'm not sure why Tenno has to get shaken to shoot a crossbow. (OH WAIT stomping necromorph babies do shake the screen a lot GG)

Edited December 9, 2016 by Twerking_Alpacas

[Kiochy]

1 hour ago, Twerking_Alpacas said:

Remove or tune down the screen shakes for better player experience.

I get why people may dislike screenshake.

at the other hand, I love it and I nevel felt hurt by it.

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by Kiochy

[Inarticulate]

2 hours ago, Twerking_Alpacas said:

The guns with the worse recoil in the game coincidentally feels like they should have way less in our scientific understanding: Dual Cestra and Zhuge. One fires a weightless light wave and the other arrows. Isn't it curious that a full auto machinegun AKA Soma only wobbles the reticle while a crossbow raises it to the sky?

Most sci-fi "laser" guns that fire localized slow-traveling projectiles are explained by noting that the projectile is actually plasma held together by a containment field. The nature of the containment field is left unexplained, but this is prevalent enough in sci-fi that no one will really bat an eye at it. If this is, in fact, the case with the Cestra, then there should be no reason why firing said projectile would not result in recoil.

Secondly, while light is "weightless", light has both energy and momentum (and is affected by gravity despite having no mass). In physics, it's a well-known phenomenon that particles emitting light will recoil when doing so. Sure, a laser bolt would not cause recoil on the order of magnitude seen on the Cestra, but to say it does not cause recoil at all is false.

As for the comparison between the Soma and the Zhuge, the Soma is a lot larger and more massive than the Zhuge. The high weight of the Soma compared to the low weight of the bullet and the low weight of the Zhuge compared to the high weight of the arrow would result in a greater recoil on the Zhuge (yes, I know the arrow is a lot slower than the bullet). Furthermore, the small size of the Zhuge would naturally mean that it is harder to add stabilization features to the weapon (or that the design sacrificed stability in exchange for aesthetics) to redirect the recoil momentum to a vector passing through the fulcrum of the effective lever.

[Twerking_Alpacas]

30 minutes ago, Inarticulate said:

Most sci-fi "laser" guns that fire localized slow-traveling projectiles are explained by noting that the projectile is actually plasma held together by a containment field. The nature of the containment field is left unexplained, but this is prevalent enough in sci-fi that no one will really bat an eye at it. If this is, in fact, the case with the Cestra, then there should be no reason why firing said projectile would not result in recoil.

Interesting take on the matter of physics and recoil, and im enlightened by the containment field theory. We're space ninjas, afterall. That also explains why we're still bashing and punching with primitive weapons such as clubs and gloves.

As on the matter of recoil, im just tired of the endless screenshaking that makes the game and certain weapons disgusting for me. I have a 5 forma akbronco which has 0% mission participation rate just because how how badly it jerks the camera. And it is that jerking which i believe to be a serious problem.

1 hour ago, Kiochy said:

I get why people may dislike screenshake.

at the other hand, I love it and I nevel felt hurt by it.

 

Which brings me back why it hurt me: Akbronco.  I have a 0.01 second left click macro on my mouse, which i use to conveniently fire semi-auto weapons like the Akvasto/Acrid/Simulor so my index finger doesn't get damaged. Try it and i guarantee you get sicker than on a rollercoaster.

Also long press F to equip melee and try that macro. Thing is, they added shaking to every little thing including melee channeling, which puzzles me.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Twerking_Alpacas