So I tried out the new movement system over the weekend. I tried it out on 4 different builds: an inline hover punisher, an inline hover scorpion, an inline bigram punisher, and a banana style omni cyclone build.
The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t turn lock rotation to camera on, but keep the old strafing controls on, I found this highly disappointing. While I can see the appeal of using the left stick to strafe having to pair the 2 options together forces a greater learning curve and provides less flexibility. I think it’d be much better if the look controls and strafing controls were separated more.
The second thing I noticed pertains to all the inline builds I tested (and I assume this would apply to any boxed in horizontal build that can black out on the far left/right sides of aiming). When rotating quickly to follow an opponent the game does not properly recognize when your guns aren’t able to fire and won’t rotate enough to get all of them shooting. It also didn’t appear to me that the build was just not able to rotate fast enough to stay on target, it was just that the aiming/rotating mechanic seems to be happy with being slightly off center when rotating and won’t try any harder to maintain absolute dead center, this needs improvement in my opinion. I think this is the #1 issue with this new aiming system, the game needs to prioritize always being 100% straight alignment towards your crosshair whenever possible.
The third issue I noticed which also applies to builds that are armored in and have limited firing angles. If you turn the camera quickly behind you (for example 180), your vehicle will try to rotate at max speed to catch up but even if you’ve been aiming at the same spot for awhile now, waiting for your build to catch up (aka not continuing to spin the camera), the game doesn’t properly decelerate your vehicle to stop at the stop your aiming at, it’s keep turning beyond that point, catch itself late, and then rotate back, sometimes over rotating a 2nd time and then finally stabilizing on the 3rd pass. This isn’t an okay thing, as this is something I can easily control on my own with the old controls.
Lastly, on my cyclone banana build (would apply to any banana really), this style of build runs into some issues and it’s very viable with this camera system (which means I’d need to switch from omni to regular wheels). Specifically that you can’t aim to the sides when you want, as there is no button I can hold (unless I missed something) to “free aim” unlocking my camera from my vehicle turning. Which means one of the best aspects of my build goes away, the ability to sit at a 45 degree angle on the backside of a hill and get all my guns shooting over the hill just fine.
All these reasons combined are why I’d say that in the current state of things the new camera system has limited application and is basically training wheels for the old system. I can see it being helpful to new players, but it is definitely not viable for experienced players who really want to push the game/system to it’s limits.
Edit: I got caught up in the critique side of things and forgot to mention what I liked about the new system. When the rotation of the build kept up with where my crosshair was and I was able to shoot on target accurately, it was much much simpler and more natural than having to combine aiming and rotating the build together to stay on target. So, if some of the above issues get ironed out, I could see this being the preferred way to play the game.