# Homefront **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 9, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065 "2011-03-09T17:25:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/21 "2011-03-15T16:13:58Z")
Amazon has it as a $40 digital download. Given that it’s a Steamworks title, you should be able to just throw the key into Steam and you’re set. While 1-day reactions are never the best, people seem to not hate the multiplayer side of things. Single-player seems to be short and generic. Doesn’t look worth it if that’s all you’re interested in. ---
**Author:** ![Cowboy8467](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@Cowboy8467](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cowboy8467)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/22 "2011-03-15T16:15:59Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > What the hell, I went ahead and preordered it. I feel silly spending $50 on a game - well, two games actually - considering I already have about a billion I need to play more. But I’m taking a shot that this might be great, and for multiplayer driven games it’s always cool to get in on day 1 and learn with the community. If not, I guess I can’t feel too bad for giving some money to the guys who gave me the great desert combat for free, and THQ is one of the publishers that doesn’t seem like pure evil. > > One thing I know will drive me nuts is that the game has almost no recoil, even less than the silly COD recoil. At that point you might as well be using lasers or something instead of bullets. My only hope is that they’ll balance the PC controls differently and give the guns more recoils, since for some reason all the preview videos are from consoles. > > This is actually the first time I’ve preordered a game in… I don’t know how long. Lots of years. I normally wouldn’t take the risk, but metro 2033 and a silly but valuable hat was enough of a preorder package to sway me. You can actually get the same bundle (homefront+2033) on direct2drive for $40 using their spring sale 20% off coupon. No hat in that case. I got your message on Steam last night and I have to say that upon checking it out I was very tempted to pre-order Homefront, but held off at the last minute just because I have so many other games that I’m playing right now. If you guys that have already purchased think it’s worth the money though, I may go ahead and buy it to play the multiplayer with everybody. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/23 "2011-03-15T19:02:16Z")
I’ve put some hours into it. Good so far, not blown away. The biggest thing is that the players have almost no health, which I don’t mind for realistic games, but for run and gun games it’s a little too low. People die about as fast or faster than hardcore mode in COD. But COD is much more closed off - this game has larger maps with more firing angles, so you tend to get instantly one shot killed from a wider variety of directions, so death feels more sudden and random than in COD hardcore. The weapons have almost no recoil which dissapoints me. There’s no reason to single shot or burst - just hold down the trigger and aim at the target and you’ll get him, even 100+ yards away. Combined with the low hit points and the game features fast and frequent deaths. It’s pretty fun though. The battle points system is cool. The battle commander is cool although for some reason most servers are running game modes without the commander on and I can’t understand why. I can only hope as they get more time to configure them they’ll switch it over. Hit detection seems fine which is good since that’s something that can totally wreck a game. The matches are too short - the whole idea behind escalating warfare, with everyone starting out with just infantry, maybe a small drone or a rocket launcher - and eventually as people save up you start seeing helicopters and tanks is definitely cool. But the rounds are so short that you rarely reach a point of heavy vehicle warfare - usually only a few people will have managed to save up for a vehicle by the end of the round, and not all at once. The maps are interesting. They’re very dense with cover, objects are all over the place - but they aren’t boxed in by walls and obstacles everywhere like the COD game. So there’s plenty of cover, but you can have firefights at 100+ yards pretty easily. I’ll post more later when I have more experience with it. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/24 "2011-03-16T04:10:55Z")
WTF? I beat it in ~4 hours, that’s bullshit. The multiplayer better be kick-ass. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/25 "2011-03-16T04:45:21Z")
Everyone said not to buy it for SP. It’s a real shame that it’s getting hammered in reviews from people who didn’t play its real mode or are dismissing it as a Battlefield or CoD clone. I didn’t grab it, but I played it over at my buddy’s place and it’s pretty good. I’ve already ordered some TIM so I can cook my 8800s. If that works, I’ll pick it up. My car is leaking coolant into the engine, so buying real cards ain’t going to happen. I saw some DICE employees ragging on the game on twitter. You know what, DICE? At least Homefront has a working service browser. I agree with **SenorBeef** above. Health is too low or weapon accuracy is too high. Probably both. Sniper rifles are ridiculous. Rounds are too short. The fundamentals are there though, so hopefully Kaos Studios stays in business long enough to ride out the release storm and get it tweaked nicely. Turns out getting this with Metro 2033 was a steal. ---
**Author:** ![buckgully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb9ed0/32.png) [@buckgully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buckgully)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/26 "2011-03-16T15:21:15Z")
Finished single player in about 4 hours. I like the atmosphere and the gameplay, but damn, way too short. My main complaint with single player, though, was with the ammo system. You can pick up ammo only from fallen guns of the exact type you’re carrying even though most of the guns in the game use M16 mags. I don’t know why this bothered me so much. Single player is fun, especially since people are still working out the good weapon combinations and tactics. I havent seen any obvious overpowered builds (akimbo 1887s, anyone?) but that’s probably just a matter of time. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/27 "2011-03-16T16:10:22Z")
Alright, so more thoughts. There’s a lot of good stuff about the multiplayer. The maps are diverse and big. The vehicles are reasonably well balanced - it takes a lot of resources to call in a tank or helicopter so they’re relatively infrequent (especially with the short default rounds), and powerful, but still fairly vulnerable. The airborne drones are a little underpowered if anything - but it’s better to go in that direction than to give people like ac130s with magical targetting boxes. The fundamental mechanics of the battle points system and battle commander are good - although I’d like to see more variety of missions from the battle commander. Most of them are of the “this guy is killing a lot of people, so kill him” type without enough go capture this/defend this/spot people/etc. type. Though strangely the majority of servers are running non-battle commander modes. As far as battle points, price wise, the vehicles are pretty well priced and the drones generally are. Body armor is too expensive for its ineffectiveness, the hellfire strike doesn’t seem remotely worth its cost, and some of the other stuff I haven’t unlocked yet. The perks system is kinda cool with being able to combine high and low value perks instead of having fixed perk slots, but I haven’t played enough to get a feel for whether or not they’re balanced. The main problem in multiplayer is the lethality of the guns. Fights are almost always won by the first guy to see the other. Sometimes this can work - for example in the cramped maps of call of duty, you can play hardcore because chances are you and the other guy will see each other at roughly the same time and then the twitch skill wins. But the homefront maps are much bigger and more open than the call of duty maps - so very often you have very little chance of seeing the person that spots you, and then they 1-2 shot kill you. This incentivizes camping because moving makes you more obvious and you can park yourself in a place with large fields of fire. The power of the sniper class amplifies this. The scope view isn’t too restrictive, there’s a semi-auto rifle, and you can get 1 hit kills in the head or chest. There’s plenty of little cover spots to hide in. Unlike COD games, firefights can frequently occur at a range where the zoom is useful. Really - sniper classes ruin any game they’re in. Is there any game where they actually add to the gameplay? No - it always caters to people who just want to camp and rack up a kill:death ratio while never actually paying attention to team objectives or anything. It’s nothing but a drain on games and I don’t know why games feel it necesary to always include them. There’s also a prone function which makes it easy to hide in little bits of cover. I know some games have tried to remove prone and everyone whines about it. Obviously it’s unrealistic to not be able to go prone - but these run and gun shoot em up games only have a passing relation to realism. If you’re going to have people sprinting across the map throwing grenades and spraying their weapons wildly and reloading in a quarter second, are you really that concerned about the realism of your games? By all means, keep prone in arma 2 and serious shooters, but for the run and gun games they’d be better without it. This goes for the lethality in the game too - people say “oh right because you’re supposed to be able to survive 4 shots to the chest” - yeah, well, you’re not playng a sim here, you’re playing a run and gun game. You’ve obviously already made a ton of compromises of fun over realism, so why not this one? It’s fun to have firefights with people, to take cover and try to out-shoot your enemy. It’s not terribly fun to die before you even know where the fire is coming from over and over again. I know I tend to blame a lot on consoles, but I have to wonder if this sort of thing came up because the balance/playtesting was done on consoles. When you’re looking at a 1000x600 image rendered on a TV across the room, you can’t even really see guys crawling around at 100+ yards away from you, and you don’t have the controller accuracy to quickly get a shot off at them. So I’m guessing on consoles people camping and sniping others from far across the map isn’t as big a problem - there’s less incentive to camp and less disincentive to move. I haven’t found a fix for the mouse acceleration in this game. Who the hell is it that actually likes mouse acceleration that every game apparently caters to? At least it has a relatively high threshold, so it doesn’t throw off small aiming movements too much - but still, what the hell? I can sort of maybe see having an option for it, with the default being off, but there’s no way to turn it off that I can figure out. Ironically, when aiming down the sights, it turns the acceleration off - so they understand that acceleration ruins aiming, yet decided to force it in the rest of their game. The mouse controls work great when aiming down the sight - which makes it so stupid that they work badly for everything else. It actually ruins what would’ve been a good option too - it has a seperate mouse sensitivity for aiming down the sights, as a fraction of your normal sensitivity - so you can custom set how much slower your aiming mouse speed is, if at all. And in theory, if you wanted to keep aiming the same, you’d just set it to 1.0, 100% of mouse speed. Except because it’s accelerated while not aiming down the sights, but accelerated otherwise, setting 1.0 actually makes the ADS speed way slower than normal mousing speed. So you need to choose - do you want your normal mouse speed preference while not aiming, or while aiming? Can’t have both. Gah, so stupid. Anyway, the fundamentals of a fun game are here. If they release the dev kit and allow people to mod the game, the community could turn this into a very good game. Right now the level of camping isn’t too bad - most people still move around - but I think as people learn the game, and realize how much incentive there is to camp, there’s going to be a camping arms race until the game eventually turns into a lame ass sniper battle with drones being the only thing moving. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/28 "2011-03-16T16:30:23Z")
So after a little experimentation I figured out a fix for the mouse issue. These two settings will substantially improve your mouse controls. I can’t confirm that they 100% turn off acceleration because something still feels a little bit funky about it, but it’s a huge improvement over default. Go to your \steam\steamapps\common\homefront\engine\config directory. Make a copy of all those files before you change anything just for backup purposes. Then open baseinput.ini - at the top of the file is a section called [Engine.PlayerInput] Under that section, you will see “bEnableMouseSmoothing=true”, change this to “bEnableMouseSmoothing=false” Then right under that, in the same section, add the line “bViewAccerlationEnabled=false” After this your in-game mouse settings may reset, or you may have to adjust your sensitivity because non-accelerated sensitivity is different. But after that, you should notice the mouse control is much improved. It doesn’t quite feel like 100% direct mouse input to me - something is going on - but it’s massively better than the default. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/29 "2011-03-16T16:44:39Z")
More thoughts: So far most of the weapons feel pretty samey. The submachine gun can function decently at long range, the assault rifles feel like they have roughly the same accuracy/recoil/power/etc. Another issue with snipers in this game is that quickscoping is effective and there’s not much sway. There are essentially none of the limitations that other games try to put on snipers to keep them under control. But even if the sniper rifles were gone, the game would still be fairly camping friendly. The lack of recoil makes blasting away at full auto at a target 100+ yards away way too effective anyway, and it only takes 1-2 of those shots to land to kill them. If you’re controlling a UAV and someone kills you, your control over the drone immediately ends. Seems obvious and good - but in COD when you’re controlling a killstreak it doesn’t matter if someone kills your body holding the briefcase, you’ll finish the killstreak out. The game actually has a somewhat tough unlock schedule. You need to invest 20+ hours before you get some basic stuff like grenade launchers (which I haven’t actually even seen in action yet) and having access to all the drones and airstrikes and stuff. I mean - 20-30 hours isn’t that much, but most games with persistent unlocks usually give you access to most of the basic forms of weaponry before that point. The game has a lobby/intermission which is just annoying. This isn’t a console game, nor does it lack servers - so why do we need to sit in the lobby at the end of every round? You can switch around your loadouts in that time, but by the time you settle into the game you won’t change those every rounds, and besides that, you can just change them before/after you leave the server. Or you could just be able to do it from the options menu like COD4. The squad system doesn’t seem to actually do anything in this game. You can join squads like in BC2, but you can’t spawn on each other and you don’t get special information about your squadmates or rewards for helping them. The only thing it does is give you a seperate comms line to your squad, which I guess is useful, but bc2 did this much better. The spawn areas are actually relatively fixed, which is too bad. One of the great things COD does is having a dynamic spawn system that keeps you close to the action but without being in danger when you spawn. When people learn the maps better, I wonder if spawn camping will be a bigger problem. This game doesn’t have as many random fun challenges and stuff like COD series, which is something I liked. It basically just has a kill counter for every weapon/vehicle/drone, and if you get X kills with a weapon you unlock a new accessory. But it doesn’t have all of those fun “kill a guy who’s engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation by hitting him in the face with a flashbang right as he blows his load” type challenges like COD. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/30 "2011-03-16T16:59:09Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Then right under that, in the same section, add the line “bViewAccerlationEnabled=false” Woops, should be: bViewAccelerationEnabled=false I don’t have a precise enough mousing surface to confirm that this 100% turns off acceleration (it still feels weird to me, though better) but it helped. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/31 "2011-03-18T04:45:30Z")
The ending was stupid. In order to let the air assets know where the enemy and friendlies were Connor grabbed the flare and ran towards the enemy and told the planes to bomb the flare. That’s stupid, that’s not how they do things in the military. They did this in Blackhawk Down with the strobe and that was stupid as well. What they would have done was say, “Shoot everywhere that’s _not_ the flare.”. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/32 "2011-03-23T22:48:24Z")
After a week of playing I have found that I enjoy the multiplayer a lot better than I did. I gave up on sniper and have been focusing on SMG, which is crazy fun. My complaint is that it’s possible to kill someone from far away with just a pistol. You don’t have to lead a target or worry about drop, which I think would make sniping a lot harder. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/33 "2011-03-23T22:53:24Z")
This is a really bad game. The servers are horrendous, it’s very difficult to join someone else’s game, there’s a very rudimentary lobby system, the graphics are weak, but I can overlook that with good gameplay, which it doesn’t necessarily have. Unseen geometry stops bullets and there’s some head glitching, with people being on one side of an obstacle being able to shoot the hell out of you, and you not being able to return the favor, despite seeing their head (the B objective point on one map comes to mind. It’s the point with the gas station. If someone is on the other side of that white fence, I’m not sure you can kill them from the gas pumps.) However, it’s got some interesting ideas. I like how they meter out their perks, and I’ve been hoping that Call of Duty does something similar for two games now. I thought it’d be a horrible vehicle fest, but it’s really not that bad. Unfortunately, I’m trading it in. It’s pretty bad. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/34 "2011-03-23T23:38:35Z")
I wouldn’t say it’s “really bad” because it could be fixed into being a good game with some patches. The battle commander and battle mechanics are good. Not sure how your lobby system/server thing works but it’s fine on PC. The maps are fairly interesting, although they should have more areas to put capture points in to better use the full size of all the maps. I like the drones and the level of vehicles. The weapon lethality/recoil/hitscan issue is the biggest problem, and the invisible walls issue is definitely a problem. I wouldn’t recommend it for $50 (or $60) definitely, but I’m happy with getting that and metro 2033 for $25. Maybe after some patches and a 50% off sale it’d be worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2011, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/35 "2011-03-24T00:48:00Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I wouldn’t say it’s “really bad” because it could be fixed into being a good game with some patches. The battle commander and battle mechanics are good. Not sure how your lobby system/server thing works but it’s fine on PC. The maps are fairly interesting, although they should have more areas to put capture points in to better use the full size of all the maps. I like the drones and the level of vehicles. > > The weapon lethality/recoil/hitscan issue is the biggest problem, and the invisible walls issue is definitely a problem. > > I wouldn’t recommend it for $50 (or $60) definitely, but I’m happy with getting that and metro 2033 for $25. Maybe after some patches and a 50% off sale it’d be worthwhile. At 10 bucks, it might be worth a spin. By that time, the population of folks playing it would be tiny, though. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/36 "2011-03-25T17:27:05Z")
I ran into my first cheater the other day. Or at least, I think he was cheating. The person with the second highest kills had 34. This guy had 9 deaths and 140 kills. And when they’d show him running around after he killed me he was all jumpy. It looked like really bad lag, but he was fast. Vehicles aren’t really a problem, at least I don’t think. If it were just me and a tank I’d be able to take out the tank. It starts sucking because of all the support infantry are killing me while I’m distracted. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/37 "2011-03-31T07:04:47Z")
For any that still care there’s supposed to be a pretty big [patch](http://www.homefront-game.com/blog-post/homefront-pc-patch-103-announced) to be released early next week. The big things, to me at least, include: [ul] [li]Easier way to report cheating[/li][li]RPG’s now deal additional damage to HMMWV’s[/li][li]Lowered m200 and m110 sniper rifle damages. The only 1 shot possible is now headshots.[/li][li]Flak jacket now has a lower BP cost, and a slight effectiveness buff.[/li][li]Text chat is now possible in the kill cam, spawn selection, and intermission lobby screens.[/li][/ul] I’m really glad about the lowered sniper damages and the cost for flak jackets. They’re also lowering accuracy while jumping, which I think is good. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/38 "2011-03-31T09:45:46Z")
Not enough changes to save the game. They need to rework the lethality of all guns pretty fast, although the sniper changes are welcome. The flak jacket needs more than a slight buff - it’s effectively useless so far as I can tell. Nice to see they’re adding an option to fix the mouse acceleration. Who in their right fucking mind likes that? ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/39 "2011-03-31T18:43:50Z")
Think all of the guns need to be turned up or down, as far as damage goes? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065/40 "2011-04-01T01:08:00Z")
Down. Easy to shoot, highly lethal weapons and maps with lots of long distance shots are a terrible combination. This is something I wrote when I was talking to a guy who works at digital extremes: > [@Me](#): > > Thanks for the response. > > I do wonder what “hardcore” means here. It can be such an ambiguous word. Does it mean unforgiving - as you can die suddenly from anywhere? In this context it seems to, but I’m not sure that’s what the hardcore gamers want. > > In my experience, the people who want to demonstrate their skill at shooter games want to prove that they can aim and move and shoot and coordinate with teammates, the whole package. They want to be able to have firefights with other players - for both players to be aware of each other, and for one to move better, to aim better, and win. > > That is essentially the opposite of the current state of the game, where the first person to see the other wins. There’s not really any chance to have a firefight - if you’re spotted, you die. And if you move, you’ll get spotted - which disincentivizes movement. There’s not a lot of hardcore twitch skill in that… you merely have to aim at a guy who doesn’t see you. Instead of having the player with better tactics, aiming skill, and movement skill winning, we have the guy who hides the longest and waits for someone else to move winning. > > “Hardcore” PC shooters have a history of games like the Quake and UT series where the firefights involve a lot of movement and aiming, the quintessential shooter skills, and relatively little camping. > > Call of Duty games do have a hardcore mode, which is a lot like this game’s default mode - where people die very quickly. The big difference here is that call of duty tends to be a much more closed off game. Smaller maps where you are boxed in more frequently with walls and obstructions. There are fewer places that people can shoot you from as you move from area to area. You have a reasonable idea of where the enemy might be coming from and can keep an eye on it - you aren’t always vulnerable in almost every direction for dozens or hundreds of yards. COD also has a much more dynamic spawn system, where you can spawn in many more places. In Homefront people have a much better idea of where you’re coming from, which makes camping more effective. > > Even so, hardcore COD tends to be more camp-friendly, but there’s far less disincentive to move than in homefront, where snipers can cover a much larger area, and there are too many places for you to be potentially shot from to really have a reasonable chance at spotting your attacker regularly. > > The problem tends to snowball too. If you’re running around trying to accomplish objectives, and you die from across to a map to a guy laying prone in a bush that you had no chance of seeing - over and over - eventually you say “screw this, I guess I’ll do it too” and you grab a sniper rifle and hide in a bush. Then the next guy starts doing the same thing. Suddenly you’ve got a map full of snipers in every hiding spot, watching over the whole map, and anyone that dares move is instantly killed. > > I would suggest to you that the “hardcore” shooter crowd would actually prefer that there be movement and firefights. Epic battles where teams are taking cover and shooting back and trying to flank each other. Instant, brutal death may seem on the surface to be “hardcore” but it would be more accurate to describe it as punishing. > > You need to create more incentive for people to move around and accomplish objectives by giving them a chance to be able to fight back even if someone else gets the drop on them. Even if they’re at a disadvatange in that fight, if they get the chance to at least fight back, it won’t feel so frustrating and punishing. You’ll at least feel like you have some control. And that’s a big deal - feeling like there’s nothing you could’ve done, that you just randomly died to a threat you had no chance of seeing - is demoralizing and sucks the fun out of it. > > And you need to create less incentive to camp. The weapons need to be harder to use. You should need to score headshots for instant kills. The guns need more recoil so that people have to be better to get multiple hits. Because quite honestly with almost every gun in the game right now, even at medium and long range, I just put my sight over the target and hold down full auto. There’s no other game I play like that - the other games all have too much recoil for that to be a good strategy - but in this game, the minimal recoil combined with knowing if only 2, sometimes 3 of my rounds hit I’ll score a kill just keeps me pointing in the general direction of the enemy and holding down the trigger. This is definitely not a “hardcore player” feature - people want to have their aiming matter, their burst control matter. > > Specifically, the sniper class has to be reduced in power too - by removing quickscoping, by toning down lethality, especially on the semi-auto rifle, by adding rifle sway and perhaps a more narrow field of view and various other features to reduce their effectiveness. Maybe some creative solutions like, for example, making the buzzard rockets do extra damage against people who are prone, so that it starts to get more utility as a sniper killer. > > But even putting the sniper aside, the other changes I mentioned above really need to be made to get people moving, because even the other rifles are too instantly lethal and are too easy to kill with, especially at long range. > > Nothing sucks the fun out of a game like dying over and over and feeling like you had no chance to do anything about it, that you were helpless, that your only recourse is to do what they do and hide and wait for some other sucker to come into your field of view. > > At the very least, offer a normal and hardcore mode like COD does, and see where your fanbase likes to play. The people who like it like this could stick to hardcore, but the people who want more dynamic firefights and more movement can move to the other mode. Or get some dev kit tools released so that the community can work out the balance issues themselves with mods. > > I had a 10v10 game earlier today where, just spontaneously, no one decided to camp. Everyone was out and moving and trying to fight over the objectives. There were 0-2snipers around. It lasted a round or two like that before some new people came in and started camping, and in response the other team started camping, and the game turned into a camping fest and all those fun moving, close range fights over the victory points were gone. It was easily the most fun I’ve had playing this game while it lasted - but it’s also the only time that has happened. It’s rare and unusual for a game to play out like that. But that’s what this game should be encouraging. > > You’ve got a good game here underneath the problems - fix it now and it can have a long life. Leave it as it is and it’s going to end up a camping sniper fest which only appeals to the small fraction of your potential fanbase who enjoys camping sniper fests. People that are interested in having more active, dynamic fights will move on to other games. > > Thanks for reading the feedback anyway - I’d like the community to do its part to make this game as good as it can be. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homefront/574065.md?page=3)