I think most of you have had the experience of being attacked by a smaller enemy and being completely unable to land a hit on it with a melee weapon, then you throw the very same weapon you couldn't that thing with and score a headshot. This is because of the way the to-hit chance is handled at close quarters.
Apparently the closer you are the esaier it is to hit your target, with point-blank shots hitting almost always. However when taking into account that the enemies are moving it should probably be harder to shot them at that much proximity, especially with long weapons.
My suggestion is that upon a certain proximity ranged weapon accuracy actually falls off because of increased angular speed of the target. For eaxmple, when shooting an oponent with a pistol point-blank you would most likely be pressing the gun against it and pulling the trigger, this would take about the same amount of skill as stabbing it with a knife.
Also, the way encumberance affects attacks should be modified. Currently it doesn't affect any kind of ranged attacks, however, if encumberance throws you off balance, it should affect ranged attacks that rely on the movement of the body, such as throws, whiplashes and reach attacks with spears.
Finally I would like a more visible indicator of encumberance in the interface. I had a situation in which I was fighting zombies with my spear, killing them with the reach attack, then a skeleton comes along so I switch to the crowbar. After I failed to hit it several times I remembered I was still wearing a duffel bag (which did not affect the spear reach attacks). Maybe a reminder of your encumberance in the safe-mode "enemy spotted" alerts would be nice.I do agree that the aiming thing needs to get tweaked. Point blank shots have a notorious tendency to miss, from what little I’ve heard about shooting, cuz anyone can still wiff a perfectly good shot if they’re close enough to bump their forehead on the end of the barrel. Panic happens, knee-jerk reaction happens.
There should be an ideal range where you’re actually very likely to hit the target outside of melee range, because to be quite honest that’s what most of my experience with guns have been: ranged melee fights. I don’t dare fire until they’re dangerously close because of how precious ammo tends to be, and anything that has relatively cheap ammo is, in essence, a melee weapon anyway, because I can’t ever reliably hit something at any appreciable range.
TL:DR; I’m dissatisfied with the aiming mechanics. I should never be able to ALWAYS hit something, but when I usually can and when I usually can’t right now doesn’t feel right. I don’t have much respect for ranged weapons as a result because most of them are borderline useless and to be honest, I’d rather just take two steps forward with a shovel than blow a round of my sniper rifle that I can only ever use as a shotgun anyway.
It would be nice to have a reason, besides the lack of ammo, to have a pistol with you for those close encounters where your rifle would be useless.
Could do the same with grappling also.