Dual wield

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

This has been covered before, but here it is again.
“dual wielding” as in holding a pistol in each hand and firing both simultaneously is NOT going to be effective (I’m not saying it won’t go in, just that if it does it will be ludicrously ineffective because of pelalties). The rationale for why this is so have been well-outlined already in the thread and I’m not going to get into it. This will probably be represented in a very high rate of accumulation of recoil if you try to do this.

“holding something in your off-hand” is something I want to support.
If you’re holding something in your off hand and a gun (even a small pisol) in your primary hand, you’ll have a penalty assessed due to lack of stability. Probably based on the weight/volume of the carried item, so e.g. a small flashlight or a small melee weapon might have a minimal penalty, but another pistol is relatively heavy and might cause you problems.

Along with adding support for holding items in the off-hand, we’ll get stricter about tracking how many free hands you have to perform actions, and automatically perform the actions needed E.g. if you want to light a stick of dynamite and throw it while you are wielding a gun, the actual actions performed will be:
'a’ctivate dynamite ->
put up gun, take out dynamite, take out lighter, light dynamite, put up lighter
(you end up holding dynamite (lit) in your primary hand)
't’hrow dynamite ->
throw dynamite, draw gun
You may notice this sort of thing will “waste” some time by performing unnecessary actions sometimes, for example maybe you want to light and throw several sticks of dynamite in a row, in that case you’ll want to holster the gun first to avoid triggering the item swapping stuff.

On the other hand, this buffs pisols, as it’s much faster to holster/draw a pistol (especially if you have a hoster)

Even for simple stuff, like opening a door, if you have both hands occupied, it will put up an item, open the door, take out the item again.

I want to stress that when this happens (which will be a while, it’s pretty invasive and complicated), we will be VERY careful to not cause disruptions to doing things simply, with the extra actions just costing in-game time. If you’re in a hurry though and need to make every second count, it will be better to think ahead about a sequence of actions and try to minimise this sort of overhead.

22

Kevin’s pretty much covered the core of what we want - a multi-handed system rather than dual-wielding.

If we do have dual-wielding, it will end up being a side effect of that (most likely) and at least for guns probably won’t be any more effective, especially with the “cost to adjust aim” we’ve been talking about including. It would essentially be extra bullets for more than the cost of an extended magazine, meaning you’re almost always better off with a single weapon out at a time. Even pistols are properly meant to be fired with 2 hands, after all.

I would like to see more interesting stuff done with melee, because let’s be honest, if you’re fighting well in real life you’re almost always going to be using both hands. This doesn’t mean you’re always going to be holding two weapons, of course - using both hands to support one weapon, using your off-hand to grab and hold, wielding an offhand defensive tool.

At the very least, I’d like to be able to add support for the “lock and strike” approach that is so integral to my own fighting style. (Hold, whether with hand or weapon, THEN stab!) But honestly, it’s going to require a good, high quality proposal describing something that’s legitimately worth implementing, and adds to gameplay without detracting from it. Despite how much I want something like that, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve yet to see such a system that is more than what’s described below.

What we’ll probably end up doing is simply allowing you to swap your “primary hand” at will, and give a defensive block bonus for (some) items held in the off-hand. That’s fairly straightforward to implement across weapon types, works equally well for swords or pistols, and gains most of the benefit people would like to see, I think. We might implement a penalty for your non-dominant hand just so we can have the ambidexterous trait, heh. But I think that’s really the extent of what we’d want to see.

23

I would like to see the ability to select left/right handedness at the character screen and then an ambidextrous trait. Though of course the game itself would just handle things with a “primary/offhand” metaphor (though I could see it having an effect for damage where if your right side gets hurt then you might have more problems as a right-handed character then a left handed one).

24

Re arcade games: True, BUT IME they also send out twice as many hostiles and change up hit tracking. Never saw an arcade shooter programmed to permit one player using both guns.

Re off-hand: Bear in mind…

Re mutations: that payers with 4 or 8 Tentacles really ought to have multiple off-“hands”, if not possibly other primary hands. (I’d favor multiple off-hands, with Multidexterity available as a seperate upgrade from Ambidexterity.)

25

Why does this need to be realistic again? We ARE talking about a zombie game, after all. A zombie game where half the mutations are beneficial. A zombie game with fusion powered robots guarding bionics that can allow you to become invisible or teleport or shoot lasers from your finger. A zombie game where half the crafting recipes don’t make any sense. Turn 4 shotgun slugs + superglue + gasoline into FIVE explosive slugs that are as powerful as 40mm grenades? Turn a pipe, 2x4s and nails into a submachinegun? I don’t even see how you’d make a pipe rifle without springs, which are in the game but not in the recipe for some reason, let alone a self-loading firearm. I say bring on the gun kata!

Anyway, I don’t see it really being so far-fetched compared to pretty much everything already in the game. Yeah, if you had 2 pistols you probably wouldn’t fire them both at the same time except in an emergency. But it’s still, assuming you can fire well enough one-handed with your off-hand, twice the ammunition with the ability to “burst fire” at close range. Would it be a pointless complication (in terms cost/benefit ratio for the feature) to just alternate firing between them with an added dual-fire burst mode for point-blank emergencies? As for accuracy penalties, I wouldn’t think dual-wielding would affect it that much as long as you aren’t also dual-firing as well. If you were using the other arm to brace the one firing, I would only expect a small difference.

Do you think Rick on TWD would hesitate to pull a second pistol if he had one in any of the many situations where he’s forced to shoot zombies point-blank while crawling under a car or some other obstacle? You also have to consider that the reason it’s unrealistic to use 2 pistols is that handguns are for hunting people, and people fight back in cunning ways, like using long distance to screw up your dual-wielding aim. Zombies don’t have that cunning. Unless people are going to become the primary antagonists of the game (personally I wouldn’t mind that, I didn’t watch TWD for the zombies), I think dual-wielding would be a useful and reasonable addition. And the cool factor ranks up there with beneficial mutations and bionic implants.

26

Hrm.

Don’t really like dual wielding. But there are cases where it makes sense.

Fencing (real fencing) is historically a dual-wielding style, using a rapier and a dagger. There was a famous female warrior-general in Chinese history who fought with two small swords. But most of the time a free hand is better than a weapon.

Dual wielding guns is silly. Maybe pistols, but that’s right out of the movies.

You could make dual wielding really not worth it unless you take some perk for it like Ambidextrous. But really what I want out of this is offhand support for makeshift (and riot) shields. But that’s been talked about at length in other threads.

27

On the other hand, I would like to dual wield finger lasers.

28

No imagination. :wink: Mutate to 8 Tentacles first and install 8 of the things, Granfaloon GlyphGryph.

29
Tentacles
Shouldn't tentacles have a problem with wielding any thing, let alone guns. They are a long, strong, single finger....That is all.

Holding basic melee weapons should work fine but any thing else should have a major accuracy drop.
Bladed weapons should have a lower critical chance. Due to lack of articulation.
Guns should need two arms to use at all.

On the other hand if you have 8 arms rapped around a rifle you should have damn good control and stability.

Guns akimbo is retarded and only in media.
Holding two pistols is insanely useful if used correctly.

There was a famous hitman, “Gunner”, between the 20’s and 50’s that used two m1911’s. He never fired them at the same time. He never missed. He ALWAYS got a head shot. He got a hit for his mate then went crazy and shot him 80 odd times… That’s right 12~ magazines.

He got arrested for his friends murder. Went to trial and said it wasn’t him, he is a one hit killer. Then got nailed for all the other hits.

I just tried to fact check and unfortunately Google thinks I want to know about codename47 and his hardballers…
If any one knows of him, back me up please.

One technique I have seen used on youtube is “pointing”.
Putting your index finger parallel with the barrel and using you middle finger for trigger pull.
Pros:
Easy, accurate (for dual wielding), fluid.

Cons:
Recoil is amplified, apparently it is uncomfortable, unusable on certain pistols due to slide action.

30

[quote=“TheRealTenman, post:29, topic:1268”]

Tentacles

Shouldn’t tentacles have a problem with wielding any thing, let alone guns. They are a long, strong, single finger…That is all.

Holding basic melee weapons should work fine but any thing else should have a major accuracy drop.
Bladed weapons should have a lower critical chance. Due to lack of articulation.
Guns should need two arms to use at all.

On the other hand if you have 8 arms rapped around a rifle you should have damn good control and stability.
[/quote]

I’d be satisfied with Grabs and maybe Sweep (=Trip) attacks. As it is, Tentacles can slap, and certainly do slow down reloading.

One problem is that it’s not entirely clear what sort of Tentacles the mutated PC has. Large thick ones with suckers on (I think Slax has an avatar with some??), thin ropy ones that would justifiably be low-ST, or something else?

31

For those of you who live countries with lax gun laws, I’d suggest hitting up a range and renting a 9mm so that you can get some experience with how guns work in the real word.

First, yes, dual-wielding is pretty much limited to media because most threats that people face in the real world are very different from threats people face in media. I’m very much a realism-in-games person but I feel the need to chip in for dual-wielding in Cataclysm anyway.

To start off, it’s perfectly possible to shoot accurately a pistol one handed from standing position, especially if you’re familiar with pistols in general. Similarly it’s perfectly feasible to fire with your off-hand. You won’t be winning any match-shooting competitions but any average shooter could still hit a human target at a reasonable distance.

As an experienced shooter I would say that dual-wielding pistols would have a useful place in a ‘zombie horde’ scenario. Zombies are easy targets to hit because they just sluggishly move right at you. They are tons of them in a group so if you miss, so what? You’ll hit the other zombie next to your target.

However, recoil should increase much faster, limiting it’s long term / long range useful and you shouldn’t able to reload without putting one of the pistols away.

tl;dr: Against a horde, dual-wielding isn’t impossible or even necessarily a bad idea. The problem is not really accuracy but recoil.

Edit; I’d make the Pistols skill influence this heavily. Perhaps make it not even possible to dual-wield without atleast 1 point in Pistols.

32

Not if you shoot one hand at a time, one recovers while the other aims…

...Perhaps make it not even possible to dual-wield without atleast 1 point in Pistols.

As a strong believer of “you should be able to do anything in a roguelike, no matter how stupid” I disagree whole wholeheartedly.
Being uneducated about guns doesn’t physically stop you picking two up…in fact it compels you to.

33

Yeah, you’re right, lack of pistol knowledge shouldn’t stop you from doing it.

Basically, I was just thinking that using weapons should be more cumbersome with 0 weapon knowledge.

Someone who has never used a gun before won’t naturally know how to pick up and use an M1911. They definitely wouldn’t know the difference between loading an M1911 and loading a Glock-19.

Especially if you get it out of a gun store. You’d have to turn off one, maybe two, safeties, load a magazine with bullets, insert the magazine into the weapon properly and then prepare the weapon to fire which, for most pistols, would just require racking the slide. As a final note, you may need to disengage the slide lock.

Someone who has never used a gun before wouldn’t instantly know how to do all of this. Even someone who has might need a minute to figure it out, I’ve never operated a Glock 19 and have no idea how the safety works.

34

Well I have never handled a single firearm in my life. My only experience with them is from games and google…
So I am a fairly good example of someone who could operate a gun given time but doesn’t actually KNOW them.

Lets say I just found a M1911 and a few loaded mags,
I put the magazine in the handle and pull the slide…or flick a switch near my thumb till it “works”. I look for the safety as another switch by the thumb, maybe the same one. I would most likely waste at least one bullet.

To take out the mag I flick buttons and switches till the it falls out, if it doesn’t then I do the same but pull the mag out.

Squeeze the trigger don’t pull it. Keep hands clear of moving parts. Don’t finger the gun till you want to shoot.

Wouldn’t that work with most guns?

I think it would take an absolute maximum of 2 minutes of poking shit before I can say I can “use” it. Ie shoot & reload, use safety.
In game that is about 30 steps…

However I have no idea about 2 safeties…That may take a bit longer to figure out.

35

Most pistols will have that safety by your thumb that you can easily flick. Some have a safety built-in to the trigger that has to be pulled a certain way. Many export/import guns will have a safety bolted onto the side of the gun to comply with some law or another and those can be very difficult to use.

Many pistols have a slide-lock and I imagine that would stump a few people.

Not too difficult, though. Pistols are simple after all.

Now, for more complicated things, how about an M249, SKS or M24? That’s going to take a bit more tinkering to make sure you actually have the gun ready to fire.

Furthermore, how does a novice know the gun is ready to fire? By shooting it in the gun store and attracting attention? Or by waiting until they need it, not really know whether or not it’s going to work.

36

Well, the “pro” argument (against all your cons) was always that, and I will try and quote:
"If a well trained marshal artist can put in use just about any tool and body part, why can’t a gun freak hold two sub-machine guns and burst into trouble?"
I agree with this logic; wielding two hand-cannons (.44) is stupid, matching m4a1 rifles in both hands should be disabled, but skill branching was obtained by some of the games in the genre. KOTOR had a wonderful system, both balanced and plentiful.

37

There are MP7s in the game, are there not? Those would actually be handy for dual-wielding. Low recoil, high rate of fire, light.

38

I personally would shoot it.

Either in complete safety or in panic at the incoming hulk.

As for more complicated weapons, more time based on the gun. Unless one read about it in a GUNS magazine…
Wink wink nudge nudge possible solution

39

Dual-wielded shotguns. The worst idea ever, but If a hulk were bearing down on you, I’m sure someone would try it.

Now, whats stopping us from adding shields? Things that you could add (like firearm mods) to a melee weapon, giving you extra attacks/blocks/otherstuff, at the cost of damage/movesperattack/somethingelse(because you’re using an arm for it). And they’d still make a good weapon in a pinch, I suppose.

40

I thought of shields as well, although my thought was for it be an apparel item that encumbers you.