After playing a couple of times with the backer build, I have some thoughts on the free aim feature. I am very happy of its inclusion, but I think it is very rough as of now. I think there are 4 main issues:
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In some cases, free targeting does not acknowledge enemies which are visible (i.e., they do not “glow orange” when placed within the aiming circles). I do not know if this is a bug, or if it is related with the range of the LoS.
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The enemies have idle animations – i.e., they move their bodies while being targeted. This gives me the impression that if you want to maximise your likelihood to hit a certain body part, you may need to wait and “time” your shot right. It seems odd that better reflexes or timing give you an advantage in a tactical game. This also slows pacing down.
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It is unclear to me if enemies move (i.e., continue their idle animation) after a shot is fired. If this is the case, this adds an additional layer of randomness added to the shot (in addition to the bullet spread shown by the aiming circles). Furthermore, there is no way to know how much the idle animations taking place between the bullet being shot and the bullet hitting affect chance to hit.
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I find it hard to exactly understand how likely I am to hit an enemy just by looking at the two aiming circles. This is especially the case because enemies may have irregular shapes (i.e., I might be aiming at two legs of the Alien queen). It would be great to have an indicator showing the shares of the red circle and of the yellow circle which are occupied by the enemy (e.g., an indicator telling you that the enemy occupies 2/3 of the orange circle and/or 1/3 of the red one).I think this might provide a rough estimate of the chance to hit. Still, I have no idea if this would be practical or even possible to implement. I guess idle animations would be a problem for this too.