Em-8er Movement demo is LIVE!

[PIghead Elderberry]

Late reply due to travel...

RUNNING ON LANDING
I very much like the way we drop into a short run on landing BOTH forwards and backwards. That is really nice. It didn't take long to get used to it to be able to land well. The only trouble is that for a very short landing place (like a coral tippy top) at first it made it a little trick to "stick" the landing - at first. However, I soon found I could jump and jet to land as I wanted on the tops of the land pimples quite reliably.

I really like the feeling of the running on landing! Did I say that?

JETTING
Overall the responsiveness felt a little sluggish, and as others have said turning in midair or stopping forward motion to hover did not feel as responsive as I would like. In particular, changing directions seemed really sluggish while jetting in the air.

Popping up while running into a jet flight felt good and smooth.

The biggest complaint I would have was that it felt hard to jet up and then see a target spot and land if it was not in line with my motion - moving left/right and slowing felt awkward.

Finally, when jetting, it felt like I could not "jet" forward at all. I could jet up with quite a bit of acceleration, but if I tried to use my jets in midair to propel myself forward, it seemed to not do so much at all. To compare, for example, in Warframe when you blast your jets to move horizontally it really feels powerful. Here, it seemed the opposite - like they did nothing when I was trying to jet horizontally.

BUT

Is this a top end tweaked jet system? Is this the starter system?

If this is the BASIC starter system with no improvements, then it is damned good!

If this is to represent an ADVANCED jetting system, it is pretty sucky!

GLIDING
Great. It felt like it was great for the default/start and I could see farther and faster for lighter frames. Good for heavy frame with some improvements/mods added like a decent starter (not mods/improvements) for med/light starter. I could see med and light getting better with mods and improvements and light getting way better with mods/improvements.

EDIT: The above for gliding was BEFORE gliding from some higher spots. Gliding from high spots maybe was a bit too long and far for a heavy without mods. I could see a fully modded up Heavy to be this way, but then that doesn't leave a lot of room from improvement for a maxed out light frame - unless that light frame really zips around and is super responsive... then it would be big contrast. Rate of drop and distance felt perhaps a bit generous for a heavy...

 

[DefenestrationX]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/452776022

Thought i had read through everything and haven't seen a post about this..

Once you hit the pad there is no cancel value for the glider to activate after landing without activating.

If you nose dive back into the pad, you go turbo until you glitch through the pad.

 

[Wyntyr]

I'm glad the pad is kaput.

 

[KoeksHewran]

Having tested the movement demo, I must say it brings back to good old vibes from Firefall of being allowed to run about and go wherever you please, be that onto a weird looking plant standing around.

On to what I feel needs to be kept in mind going forward.

General:
Mouse sensitivity & acceleration. It is difficult to judge how well transients feel at the moment, as the camera control can quite easily freak out and do a 180° on you. It would be awesome if there could be a slider to set sensitivity, and it feels like there is some acceleration which excacerbates the issue which would be lovely if one could opt out of.

Walking, Crouching and Running:
There must be a zero tolerance for unseen game elements that make you stop dead in your tracks.
Currently there are bushes which have the infamous "invisible wall" trick with an appearance that makes them look like I could smash through them given the weight and inertia of the omniframe while running. Such elements should be avoided at all costs but when you run into something that does stop you in place, for example a rock with too high inclination to continue across, you would either want to slow down before the dead stop, or redirect some speed sideways to keep going if possible.

The animations and transitions between them need to be better defined. Currently if you run in a circle using w, a, s, d repeat, there transition between walking/running animations are very non-fluid which in my opionion has a severely negative impact on immersion. A similar issue occurs if you run into such a rock or wall and keep moving forward. As the walking animation appears to be selected purely based on camera orientation and current velocity relative to that vector, if you shake your mouse laterally there are very funky animations going on. I believe this forced coupling between camera orientation and omniframe orientation limits the fluidity of movement quite severely and should receive attention somewhere down the line. I would assume that animation fluidity comes at a far later stage, but I was suprised myself how much this affected me while running around. Covering half the screen where the Omniframe is provided a much improved experience running around, especially for moving in circles while holding the camera steady, so I would say that the movement itself, speeds and inertias/ramp-ups seem pretty on point.

The crouch animation also needs to be reconsidered from the ground. When sitting crouched, the Omniframe and pilot make sense, but when moving forward the Upper body of the frame leans forward even more and pretty much puts the upper body of the pilot parallel to the ground. Apart from the legs absolutely smashing the poor pilot to pulp, I doubt the FoV of the battlefield is of any use, even if you feel like you are sneaky. If you can't see anyone, no one can see you, right? I am not convinced that a crouch for sneaking is actually important, considering the size of these mechs and the massive wings. My perceived feeling is far closer to controlling a battle mech compared to Firefall, where it felt like you had a set of armor on with thrusters in your boots, ie a pilot operated mech vs an iron man suit, if you will.

A walking toggle would also be a nice touch. On a similar level as crouching I could imagine, but being able to walk at a sensible pace when not in combat would be nice for immersion. I suppose you can do it already by spamming w at a suitable frequency. If you time it right, the walking animation looks rather badass already, but then my fingers started complaining.


Jetting, Jumping & Gliding:
The gliding with mouse steering feels quite good, although you are currently allowed to change directions far to quickly. Currently if you flip 180° you maintain your velocity in this new direction, which feels very awkward considering the amount of inertia the Omniframe appears to have when landing or running in terms of the slow-down time to 0 again. There should be a limit to how quickly you are allowed to yaw and pitch, which most likely would need tuning individually. I can imagine you would expect and want to have quite rapid pitch control to be able to finetune your descent angle and catch up speed when approaching a stall, while yaw rate should be speed dependant in terms of maintaining your speed. Perhaps a similar mechanic to pitch could be implemented, where if you lose to much speed you stall, and sharper turning radius means losing more speed, rather than having a pure limit to yaw rate.

For the interface, I would expect some sort of horizon marker and pitch angle, to go along with the ever so menacing "down" arrows when I am trying to maximise my glide. Perhaps a level/horizon marker and one for maintaining constant speed would be quite nice to have, albeit that might over-simplify the minigame of maximising your glide distance. In order to feel in control over the gliding I would also put in a request for a current speed indicator. It feels like that would be a quite basic GUI for pilots of a futuristic flying mech suit, to have a nav-ball and a speedometer.

Jetting is definately missing animation details, where moving straight up or falling straight down feels completely lifeless as your character completely stops moving. The jets have some life to them, but the Omniframe goes from being an asthmatic after a marathon when standing still to completely locking up when jets are engaged. Just utilising the current animation as a placeholder and setting a periodic moving to and from end-position makes it look far nicer in my opinion (ie spamming spacebar at an appropriate frequency while jetting straight up). Some arm and leg waving while falling back down would definately not go amiss either.

The landing itself also feels very uneventful when you land straight down. Depending on fall height, I feel like there should be some delay before you can start running, rather than directly to the standard ramp-up transition that there is now. Animation here as well, falling you fall with left leg ahead of right, landing is perfectly on both legs at the same time. Feels odd.

Now what I really liked: Rocket assisted bunny-jumping. I'm claiming that as my freshly coined term and no one can prove otherwise. Or something. Anyway, jumping, holding space until jetpack engages, letting go, jumping right as you hit ground again and repeat to build speed. As a mean of travel. I believe I will receive a bike when the game goes live. It may spend quite some time gathering dust if the RABJ works as now with some improvements (it's a thing now!). There appears to be some issues with timing as pressing early can activate jets and completely break the flow. This makes sense that you would need to time it properly, but it currently feels like there it can activate the jets even if you have landed on the ground. This feels far more engaging than jet-gliding across the ground as in Firefall. I think this could be quite an interesting feature, if it was developed as a mechanic.

That kindof went on it's own way. Anyway. I am really impressed with this demo, it really captures the spirit of what I loved in Firefall in terms of free movement. Very excited of what's to come!

 

[Morihaus]

I really overall love the movement right now. The running when landing is an interesting idea. Rather neutral on it personally, but it's a good kind of pace change from Firefall. I do have one minor gripe with the jet-pack movement (personal preference rather than serious issue). When you start going one direction with the jet-pack, and try to turn around mid-air, it takes too long to stop and start moving in the new direction. When you do start, you're only slightly going in that direction, mostly only going up. You'd need to land and lift off with a running start gain any momentum. While I'm sure it's realistic, it does feel slightly stiff to me.

I like being able to redirect quickly in the air, with a good bit of control, but also not so much control that I feel I'm a magician instead of a pilot... If that makes sense. I hope that makes sense enough to clear up what I mean, at least. On a 1-5 scale, (1 being too stiff with 5 being too easy to control), in my personal opinion a 4 is ideal, and it's at a 3 in the demo right now. If a good compromise between freedom of in-air movement and realism was your aim, your jet-pack is definitely spot-on.

Of course this is, again, just my opinion. No serious complaints otherwise, controls roughly as I'd expect going in (I mean that in a really good way). Easy to learn and hard to master. Everything besides what I've mentioned feels great, in my humble opinion. Keep up the great work.