Tank lets you go inside it after throwing rock

[alexiscoutinho]

It seems like the Tank gets stuck in an animation after throwing the rock at someone else. It lets you go inside it and mess it up. https://youtu.be/vIoSk4UGJuU?t=2152

[Nesciuse]

This is not something that should ever get touched. Along with the minigun drawing the tank. This is a thing since l4d1 and melee fighting tank relies on this a lot. I would seriously get behind fixing a bunnyhop rather than this.

[alexiscoutinho]

:/ Sadge. So was this always intended then...? But even if melee fights "rely on it a lot", it is not necessary nor is the majority of the melee aspect. Kiting the Tank, which I think is the most used albeit highest skill technique, doesn't abuse it. At least visually this technique doesn't make the Tank look broken, it just looks noob. @Nesciuse What do you think?

[Nesciuse]

I am not sure if it's intended or why it happens. Or if it's an animation issue. It's just tank has locked aim or something like that little while after he throws rock. So making him throw a rock and then running at him to the side is one of the ways to start a melee fight. I've seen it used many times in speedruns to run around the tank. Imo it should be considered part of tank's behaviour and not a bug whatever is the reason it happens. This is one of those things where the only acceptable time period to change it was before the game released.

[alexiscoutinho]

I understand. I will just emphasize and quote you that it is just "one of the ways" to start a melee fight or run past it. There are others which don't look nearly as broken (https://youtu.be/A788Fd0IZ2w?t=125). Do you think the community would have the power to vote/decide on this behavior to justify a medium change years after release? Regardless, I would like to hear from some others before closing...

[Nesciuse]

The fight in the video you linked relies on this behaviour of tank having locked aim after throwing rock

[alexiscoutinho]

But the player waited for the Tank to come at him (reset state, no looking at someone else). I even set the timestamp up so that it showed the fight initiated long after the rock. The fight was initiated because he dodged the Tank's first punch, not because the Tank was looking at someone else and was chill with him blasting it on its back for a couple of seconds (which would have been enough time for more than 2 melee hits). While the behaviors may be related, they can probably be dealt with separetely. It doesn't even look like the Tank is stuck in an animation in the second video, it just looks like he's recharging the next punch (which is enough time for only 2 hits [not broken]).

[Nesciuse]

It's the same behaviour. The punch can't be dodged like that without the locked aim after rock throw. Only additional thing in the first video is the player hid behind the tree so the tank changes target and starts throwing rock at someone else.

[alexiscoutinho]

Hmmm, didn't know about that. I will look more into it.

[alexiscoutinho]

@Nesciuse You are right. The only reliable way to initiate a Tank melee fight is after it throws a rock and the two videos use the exact same Tank behavior. So the mechanic can't be scrapped, but I will still propose to tweak it a bit. I suggest that the extra cooldown time gained after throwing a rock gets decreased the closer someone stands to the Tank. So there will still be, say, 5 seconds of grace period after the rock if everyone is far away. If there is someone right beside it after the rock, there would be just enough time for him to get away (dodge punch) or a minimum of 2 secs. This would allow the fight of the second video to happen because there would be just enough grace time for him to dodge the punch, even if he charged sooner, and would prevent the Tank from chilling like in the first video as it would start attacking him as soon after he touched it. In other words, the grace period phase could be cut short and immediately switch to the 2 hits per 2 seconds normal fight cycle/phase if someone charges the Tank.

[Nesciuse]

I really see no reason why you would want such changes. This is a thing that if changed would just annoy people that use this mechanic and people who don't use the mechanic wouldn't even know anything changed.

[alexiscoutinho]

It would mostly be an aesthetic and realism change, but would also make Tank fights a little bit longer as a team with guns might miss some shots if they have to stay a bit farther away from the Tank and because a melee team would need one, two or three extra 2 hits/2 secs cycles since they wouldn't be able to abuse the prolonged grace period. And I don't think annoying some melee players a little bit at first is relevant, by itself. A bunch of players got annoyed when those many boost spots and unclipped props were patched and their complaints don't really matter. And there were no alternatives for all those people. The Tank behavior in those specific instances I mentioned could be considered as broken, unintended and unrealistic as those spots prior to the TLS update. Furthermore, the hardcore melee group is small and they would quickly adapt too.

I think being small is a virtue for this change.

[alexiscoutinho]

The suggestion is invalidated, however, IF the reason behind the fixed 5 secs timer is to represent the extra strain on the Tank's arms due to throwing the rock ("physical" limitation), instead of some arbitrary limitation for balance. If Valve views it this way, then the most I can suggest is for the Tank to not charge survivors if it is at the beginning of the cooldown. Sure the Tank is yolo and dumb, but maybe it is too dumb if it waits the super long recharge kissing a machete (or several). The Tank could even be tweaked to avoid/run away from super nearby survivors if it's in the beginning of the recharge, say, in the first 2 seconds (3 to go). This wouldn't make a difference most of the time because survivors are usually not beside the Tank when it throws the rock. This change would allow the survivors to do melee fights, but would prevent them from abusing that bizarre Tank behavior.

This fight/flight phase threshold could be controlled via a cvar, similar to #62 (check the advantages there). For example, if the threshold value is infinity, the Tank would never run away; if at 3.0 (good), the Tank would start charging super close survivors (remember the Tank doesn't change for medium distance+ survivors, it doesn't avoid them) when it has 3 secs to go to recharge the punch; if at 1.0 (bad!), the Tank would break the 2 hits/2 secs cycle since it would run away from the melee guy in the first second, initiating fights would probably be impossible aswell, unless the survivor corners the Tank or is using adrenaline. Most importantly the cvar would allow players and addons to test the change while retaining the classic behavior as default (at first).

[alexiscoutinho]

:(

No reply?!

[Tsuey]

:(

No reply?!

I'd probably suggest raising this issue (and others like it) in the future, once we have rebooted with a public Discord server. We're still in the early stages of this, and it's likely to happen, but I can't promise until it happens.

Sometimes discussions can get very heated over seemingly trivial things -- during TLS dev we spent like 8 hours arguing over the c11m3 plywood exploit fix alone. Last night we argued hours over silly wrongway signs.

A future Discord server would likely be more conducive (than clunky Issues used as a forum). <3

[alexiscoutinho]

Alright. Though what made me especially surprised was that other similarly controversial issues requiring cvars like #62 and #91 didn't get the boot.