Chief Chat and New "Tsihu Fight Back" Demo Build drops this Friday 2 pm P.D.T. March 19th, 2021!

[Pandagnome]

- perhaps fewer missiles, but more damage modes (aoe - splash, suppress-shrapnel, HE - high emplosive) and load outs.

How fun would that be and i hope it has a voice when changing mode type like how the judge dredd gun lets you know what ammo type you are using

I believe when there are multiple people around there needs to be a sense of expected difficulty, sacrifice, or valor. Simply eliminating all enemies is fine...?most of the time?...but when every scenario is solved simply by gunning everything that moves, there's no sense of pressure or need for drastic decisions. Removing Tsi-Hu portals as a group should be a more dynamic experience such as planting explosives, hacking a system, building a portal disruptor while your teammates keep you alive.

Yes i think that would make it much more fun for other class types too

-DLSS More than doubles 1% and 0.1% framerate which is amazing and having all 3 bars be so close together means a much more consistent gameplay experience
-More testing will be needed

When Amd brings out their FidelityFX I wonder how it will be compared to dlss

 

[Raijek]

Doing great so far! Its nice to finally be shot at and reacted to. Here are some things of note that I found could use some work:

The few times I was in close range I didn't really have as many issues as I did at long range. The Tsi-Hu are a lot more reactive at close range.

1. Spawns. I came across multiple spawns where the Tsi-Hu spawned inside of each other. They were unable to move and or shoot really. Maybe adding a minimum spawn distance from eachother would help? IDK Im not a coder lol.

2. Using Terrain to my advantage. While this is a general rule of thumb in shooters its OVERLY effective against the Tsi-Hu. I boosted up to the gigantic Fungus multiple times and just rained death from above. The Tsi-Hu barely reacted to me when doing this. Maybe it has something to do with Aggro ranges? Other times while at long range I was able to just aggro one at a time and their buddies didn't really seem to help out unless I missed and hit them as well. Maybe adding chain aggro or something will help this.

3. I know its super super early and this is probably a basic AI demo but the enemy needs to be able to react with better tactics. Surround/Lockdown/Cover Use etc. While acceptable for now being a super early demo it'll become more and more important later on.

4. Grappler = Yellow Tsi-Hu with the whips? They really didn't do much to me tbh. Kinda just whipped the air in front of them at range while the others shot at me. They made no attempt to run up to me or anything. Maybe adding a pull to the grapplers would be a more "fun" and deadly option? IDK maybe I just didn't get hit by anything out of sheer luck or because I like snipe from far away and duck behind cover after every shot or two.

I usually play a very long ranged playstyle so my experience might be very different from others who like to get in close and mess stuff up. So this whole list is bias toward a long range playstyle. I may have seen issues others have not and they may have seen stuff I have not.

Overall I'm happy with everything so far! I know you guys are a small team and the progress you've made so far is really good. I'm looking forward to further demos

 

[Raijek]

The demo feels drastically different now that there are enemies fighting back. I enjoyed my solo-play time for what is currently available but struggled to enjoy 30+ player hectic combat environment.

During the new demo launch the gameplay was truly hectic. Bullets were flying in every direction and so were the players. The whole experience did feel similar to a Firefall invasion however in some ways the experience was not great. The hectic experience that transpired is not something I would replay over and over. Obviously this is the current state of the game but in the future there needs to be at least some direction for the AI and the players. The whole thing was just a turkey shoot with no goal of developing a safe zone or advancing an offensive line and no sense of teamwork. It was exciting that players were everywhere, enemies were everywhere, and nowhere was safe but to me that can be exhausting; I do not feel accomplishment when there's no end, objective, or reason for why the situation has gone bananas.

I believe the Tsi-Hu need to come across as more rooted to a central location. Grummz mentioned the possibility of phasing in terrain from the Tsi-Hu world and that would definitely provide visual representation of a central location. The current Tsi-Hu spawn style and aggression is okay and it's fine when playing solo. However the solo gameplay is a little shallow. Once the Tsi-Hu are eliminated with purely bullets the Tsi-Hu just vanish; the end result kinda feels empty when it's all done; there were no objectives like "destroy the generator" or "defeat their leader", the Tsi-Hu come across as aimless and become more of a pestilence. But as a solo player perhaps the extra objectives would be too difficult or strange without teammates?

Ultimately I believe players as a group should be aware that decisions need to be made when dealing with Tsi-Hu portals. I believe when there are multiple people around there needs to be a sense of expected difficulty, sacrifice, or valor. Simply eliminating all enemies is fine...?most of the time?...but when every scenario is solved simply by gunning everything that moves, there's no sense of pressure or need for drastic decisions. Removing Tsi-Hu portals as a group should be a more dynamic experience such as planting explosives, hacking a system, building a portal disruptor while your teammates keep you alive.

I feel the following list would be a good direction:

+Tsi-Hu portals now gradually build into miniature bases. They slowly become stronger and more built the longer they exist
+Tsi-Hu will be seen completing objectives within this miniature base such as moving power cores, ammunition, ect to erect turrets, barriers, fortifications, ect.
+Tsi-Hu will put up defenses that are too dangerous for players to fly over and therefore the players need to take cover and coordinate (bring in the big guns).
+On occasion while players are attacking these Tsi-Hu strongholds the server AI will randomly spawn reinforcements or Tsi-Hu dropships behind or on top of players. This will help recreate that bananas environment for players who enjoy that and also reduce a sense of repetition.

The current state as a solo play the game is fine. I enjoyed it for what is currently available. I hope in the future the solo play is not as shallow but not so difficult that solo play is impossible.

Other thoughts:

Current Tsi-Hu bullets are fine. It was asked if their weapons should be hit-scan or remain as projectiles. My answer is they should not be hitscan; it's cool being able to air dash dodge them. However I will say perhaps the bullets are too slow because a simple sidestep is enough to dodge the bullets.

Missile Swarm is too slow in locking onto targets. Their projectile speed is also too slow.

I love all these ideas but I think the objective of the demo was to gauge just the enemy combat AI. I could be wrong but yeah, adding these ideas would be a good help to make the game feel more "alive." But I understand we are in super early pre-alpha demo phases so I don't mind targeting one issue at a time and testing it .

 

[antiqwiz]

Did not get any achievment after 1000 kills

 

[Pandagnome]

AI demo but the enemy needs to be able to react with better tactics. Surround/Lockdown/Cover Use etc.

I'd like to see a crouch option i like playing sneaky, yes if enemies covered and had different tactics would be more smarter.

I love all these ideas but I think the objective of the demo was to gauge just the enemy combat AI. I could be wrong but yeah, adding these ideas would be a good help to make the game feel more "alive."

Your not wrong its best place to spew your ideas

Did not get any achievment after 1000 kills
View attachment 4338

Its not the best but here \o/

 

[Faeryl]

For some strange reason (unless im an idiot), could'nt find the call down button for THMPR, even checking in key binds.

Nope, don't feel bad. It's kind of hidden unless you know about the radial menu.

I encourage everyone to check out the NEW #demo-controls text channel on Discord. This houses the latest list of controls on the demo! To my knowledge, the controls should be the same as the previous build "Tsi-Hu Grappling Demo" list.

If you're not on Discord, check out a screenshot of the channel below:



I hope this helps!!
~ Faeryl

 

[Faeryl]

On a personal note, I finally was able to test out the demo!! A lot of the feedback I had was already mentioned in this thread, which is AWESOME!!

Overall, I really enjoyed FINALLY being required to dodge being shot at by the Tsi-Hu!! I can't WAIT to see what's next!!

THAT IS DEFINITELY SOME AWESOMESAUCE WORK DEV TEAM!!
GET ON BOARD THE EM-8ER HYPE TRAIN, CHOO-CHOO!!

I just couldn't resist.

 

[serverfrog#5472]

If the Inventory is closed and open up again. All the Resources that are current in it have then duplicated entries.
If it is done again, the duplicated entires get further duplicated.

Resource|Quality|amount

In the Inventory at the beginning = one entry of Fillmorium|449|132
open and Closed = two entires of Fillmorium|449|132
open and Closed again= four entires of Fillmorium|449|132

 

[PartTimeJedi]

Looks like all the glitches I found have already been stated..sooo.
An observation.
I figured out why Fighting while THMPing in this new Demo feels different than fighting while THMPing in Firefall.
Its because we are not defending the THMPR, we are in active combat WHILE trying to THMP.
The great thing about Firefall was there were 2 distinctive fights.
1) Defending the Thumper. Enemies would attack the THMPR and only attack you if you got to close.
2) Actively Fighting against Enemies. If you randomly encountered a creature/Chosen it would attack you. BaneClaw encounters. Fighting Chosen squads that would attack you.

I hope in the future of Em8er development when you drop a Thumper the creatures/Tsi-hu would be drawn to the Thumper and attack it trying to destroy it. They attack us ONLY if we get to close. It would be our job to defend it and collect resources.
Then-
Random encounters with Tsi-hu/creatures when NOT THMPing, retaking bases, invasion etc etc..they would attack us directly like they do in this Demo.

This would bring back that ol FF feeling and break up the styles of attacks by enemies instead of them attacking us 100% of the time.

 

[lile4guy#5714]

Bug: flying/stacked enemies

Occasionally on spawning enemies, they are stacked within each other and will fly up upon being shot with plasma cannon

 

[punkbuzter#6186]

Reporting in with a couple issues, it's a collective one as I don't wanna make a clutter.

1. My left ear enjoys the demo more than my right ear, even in first person. Strafing left makes footstep sounds in my left ear but strafing right makes me hear it in both with a crossfade between L and R, like the audio source wasn't aligned with the camera.

2. I got a 60Hz monitor, and V-SYNC works fine most of the time but I get a spike above 100 FPS every 5 second when looking down. This setting is set in the game and not in Radeon Software.

3. Mouse sensitivity sliders feels wacky with the scaling that's happening, I first thought it was a bug as the slider centrated itself with new min/max values each time I changed it... If nobody gets what I mean, I mean the sliders goes 5>4>3>2>1>0, and not 5>0, if I'm at 5.0, I have to drag the slider several times to the left to reach the lower values. Either way I don't know who would play with anything above 1.0, the scale is insane haha.

4. At a comfortable mouse sensitivity, even if pretty low like 0.400 out of the 5.000 available, moving the camera around feels jaggy and it makes it hard to aim smoothly. This gets worse the higher the sensitivity goes and it's scaling with the in-game settings, if I max my hardware acceleration and lower it in the game settings panning around gets smooth. It'd be nice if the accuracy wasn't degrading as much so I don't have to toggle between settings tabbing in and out of the game.

--------------
Unrelated to the Shooter Demo:

5. The login screen does not recognize the TAB key to switch fields between email and password. This has been an issue in all the demos.

6. (This one is edited)
The default font style during thread creation and editing is not the same as the one when it's posted. The one during creation/editing is not listed in the dropdown menu so I don't know which one it is, custom maybe? Either way, the unlisted font during creation/editing is hurting my eyes as I can't tell the difference between i, I, and l.

(sorry for a lot of editing, I'm done editing now) xD

 

[Thorp]

5. The login screen does not recognize the TAB key to switch fields between email and password. This has been an issue in all the demos.

actually need to press Tab twice to get from the user field to the password field. I assume the first Tab input selects the Password Text and the second tab selects the Password field. That's how it works for me on W10 anyway

 

[Faeryl]

Today for the first time (at least for me), I discovered some Grummz Gold at 816 quality ... but due to the fact that it was INSIDE the boulder, sadly I could not drop a THMPR to mine it. And YES, I did try all over the place to drop the THMPR.

Here is a screenshot:

. . .

 

[Grummz]

This is good feedback, ty.

I wanted to point out that there is no current "objective" or point to the combat as people have noted. This is because the rifts were never meant to be an encounter but more of a test-bed for spawning.

The real goal is to have the waves attacking as you try to mine, and defending your THMPR from destruction. This was the event we set out to do for the vertical slice, and the one that will be shown in the KS demo. That the encounter that is the staple of the mining activity. Invasions are for the shipping game and won't be part of the live demo but will be mocked up in the KS movie.

Once there is a "reason" for combat, things change

Also this was the very first iteration of Tsi-Hu shooting. They didn't even predictively fire. They were shooting at where you were, not where you were moving towards. Predictive fire is hooked up now in our internal builds.

But all things aside, we can improve a lot with the AI and we have been. There is a new demo dropping soon and while it won't address everything, it does make numerous changes and improvements. The "encounter" part will be in a future build.

Thanks and keep the reports coming! We're looking for stuff that needs fixing and even early impressions about the combat are very, very valuable!

 

[uthyrr#6526]

So there’s a bug I’ve gotten where there’s an endless enemy lock-on but no enemy even when flying around the map. Relogging in fixes the bug, but it seems to pop up most often when using the missile barrage (the attack that defaults to "2")

 

[uthyrr#6526]

With regards to weapons, the assault rifle is for short range and the plasma cannon is for med- under long range right? I'm having difficulty using the former that often during the current build ( its not broken so no worries on that end)- It just doesn't seem to have significant impact on the current enemies as fast as the missile swarm and plasma cannon esp when considering the risk with the grapplers and number of enemies that come out of the gates. Im almost to 2k enemies killed, so I've tried various tactics. The assault rifle and the deathstryke ( seems to be the same ability as the E button right now- so that included) just seem too risky for use per the damage dealt. This means I either must spam missile swarm with the assault rifle and/or use the deathstryke to finish off the last enemy rather than as a mid fight tactic.