Jonesy89: I just got finished getting my ass handed to me in a firefight that I absolutely should have won. The Obakon is a fairly good rifle at long range, or at least it was in SoC; now, it seems like even when aiming down the sights through a scope, each shot has an equal chance of veering off to the edge of the scope's FOV or hitting in a nonvital area that was nowhere near where I was aiming, despite me being prone and firing off single shots. The enemy, armed with the same weapon, stood in an upright position and leisurely fired on full auto from the hip while strafing and missed me twice, maybe three times, while the vast majority of his bullets had no trouble finding my face.

Distressed that my weapon had decided to have a much larger spray than the AI's, I spotted a pile of pipes behind the enemy encampment. I began rubbing my hands together in glee as I plotted to flank the enemy while a band of friendlies kept them distracted, blowing them away from the safety of cover with slugs and darts fired from the long barreled double shotty I keep on me for just such an occasion; after all, it has an almost perfect accurracy rating, which should make it easy to nail enemies at a few paces.

I got into position, delighted that the enemy hadn't spotted me, and I leveled the barrel right at the top of a dude's torso. The shot veered up and over his head to the right. I fired again, and this time the shot went just past his left ear. I kept firing like that for five minutes, and failed to hit a target that by all rights should have been dead six minutes ago. I tried a scavenged Vintorez, and was bewildered to see that this one had a comparable accuracy rating, yet the crosshair tightened up far more. Not that it mattered much, since I had yet another repeat of the shenanigans with shots at near point blank range coming nowhere near close.

At first I thought that the issue might be that my weapons had degraded, but then I remembered that degradation only affected the chance of the weapon to jam; at least, that's what it did in SoC, and I find it hard to believe that GSC would have turned around and have it start impacting accuracy in CS. Either way, I am far beyond the start of CS, and I am still experiencing a measurable imbalance between the AI and player accuracy to a degree that I never saw in SoC.

UniversalWolf: 1) SoC is a FPS, not a RPG, at all, in any way whatsoever.

2) If you've ever done any real-world shooting, it's quite apparent that all the guns in SoC are unrealistically inaccurate.

3) The AI doesn't have some magically increased accuracy over the player, but it does have faster reflexes and tendency to expend lots and lots of ammo in the player's direction. Once you get a rifle with a scope, you can kill them from far enough away that they'll miss most of the time even though they keep shooting at you.

4) SoC is a FPS, not a RPG, at all, in any way whatsoever.

jefequeso: Don't forget that a target shooting situation is much different than an actual combat situation, and your accuracy is significantly reduced under duress.

UniversalWolf: 1) SoC is a FPS, not a RPG, at all, in any way whatsoever.

UniversalWolf: 2) If you've ever done any real-world shooting, it's quite apparent that all the guns in SoC are unrealistically inaccurate.

UniversalWolf: I don't think that washes as a rationalization, because the human factor is built into the fact that you have to aim the weapon yourself, and you already get more sloppy as the tension of the game increases. If there's an added abstraction in the inaccuracy of the weapons, it's redundant.

jefequeso: I'm not sure I agree with #2. Don't forget that a target shooting situation is much different than an actual combat situation, and your accuracy is significantly reduced under duress. Lacking a good way to simulate all the details of weapon handling that you could screw up under stress (such as proper trigger pull, which can actually have a huge effect on accuracy), it would make sense to simply make the weapons less accurate than they would be in target practice.

UniversalWolf: I've read that difficulty settings below Master make a percentage of bullets simply disappear (though they're still visible), both for you and the AI. If that's the case, I would definitely recommend playing on Master. It's probably easier, as a matter of fact, since your own hits won't be negated for no reason.

UniversalWolf: I don't think that washes as a rationalization, because the human factor is built into the fact that you have to aim the weapon yourself, and you already get more sloppy as the tension of the game increases. If there's an added abstraction in the inaccuracy of the weapons, it's redundant. Besides, if you try sniping you really notice the problem. You can do that from a distance while taking your time, but the groupings you shoot are still pathetic. That's not realistic at all. To demonstrate it even better, you can try shooting at a stationary target. You're not even in combat at that point, and the accuracy still stinks.

Don't get me wrong; true realism wouldn't work in SoC. The areas simply aren't big enough. But the guns in SoC are very unrealistically inaccurate across the board. You just have to learn to deal with it (or change it with a mod, I suppose).

I've read that difficulty settings below Master make a percentage of bullets simply disappear (though they're still visible), both for you and the AI. If that's the case, I would definitely recommend playing on Master. It's probably easier, as a matter of fact, since your own hits won't be negated for no reason.

F4LL0UT: Dang, I had actually skipped your post when replying to UniversalWolf. It's funny, we basically thought the same thing. We didn't convince the guy but still: *brofist*

jefequeso: And no, the player being under duress doesn't necessarily translate into realistic "under stress" weapon accuracy, because there's a lot more happening physically when you fire a gun in real life than when you click the left mouse button.

Jonesy89: ...the player's own limited reflexes and mistakes that they tend to make when confronted with character death are significant; trying to impose total realistic inaccuracy via stats on top of that is an overkill...

UniversalWolf: Yes, exactly. The OP's complaint about the game is valid in this regard.

Real world firearms with rifled barrels don't spread bullets in a cone (well, technically they do, but it's a cone small enough to be practically insignificant in most cases). If you fix them in place mechanically, you can shoot them over and over again and the bullet travels almost exactly the same trajectory. That trajectory may or may not line up with the sights on the gun, but it doesn't vary much.

As Jonesy89 says, it makes much more sense when it's tied to movement and stance and things like that.

Jonesy89: That may be, but the player's own limited reflexes and mistakes that they tend to make when confronted with character death are significant; trying to impose total realistic inaccuracy via stats on top of that is an overkill, unless the inaccuracy were to scale with things like movement and positioning. As it stands, going prone and staying still does help narrow the window of where a bullet will go, but the way it still leads to missed easy shots is inexcusable at times; I get limiting effective weapon range due to not wanting the player to be able to nail guys in the head from a mile away with a pistol or shotgun, but when I take my sweet time to line up my first shot from an assault rifle against an unaware enemy, there is no reason in the world that I shouldn't be able to nail him in the head with a single bullet.

UniversalWolf: The problem is, if you can do everything right and still miss two feet to the left, how do you ever learn to get better at the game?

I used the ZRP to reduce the scatter effect dramatically, and the game is better for it.

jefequeso: Because it's not a game of precise aim, it's a game of positioning and risk/reward assessment. So you learn to get better by moving more effectively in combat and understanding when it's a good idea to play it safe and when it's a good idea to take a chance in favor of a better position. Your strategy shouldn't revolve around getting surprise headshots on enemies from far away. That's just not what Shadow of Chernobyl is about.

But hey, if you have more fun with modified accuracy, more power to you.