Hi, I was wondering how hard you think SMART ought to be in order to do flawlessly and effectively.

Easy - It's really easy to get the hang of; mash the button and off you go. Within an hour you pretty much know all about what you can do with it.
Medium - Only the noobs won't really catch on, but the majority of the playerbase will be pretty skilled within a week.
Hard - The majority of the playerbase learn the basics, but find themselves more reliant upon their aim than SMART, while the real n33ks excel.

It doesn't seem like there's much to "master," for SMART. If anything, the thing people will need to "master" is the layout of the maps, so they can discover clever ways to utilize them.

Mastering SMART really means nothing, if you don't know when/where/how to take full advantage of it.

Well, yeah, how you utilize your surroundings is always important in FPS games, but if you look at the container city footage and compare it to some of the amateur clips, they are miles apart in terms of how quickly things get done. And as you know, there will be an automatic smart and a manual one.

This exactly. The SMART is a button you hold down to allow easy movement, not too hard :wink_smile: . Doing stuff manually will be harder and more rewarding.

Map layouts and short cuts and good hiding spots are important to know.

I read an article somewhere were they said that certain moves they couldn't even do. So it seems like some things and areas will be difficult to get to. So I think to master will be hard.

The only article I read where they mentioned moves they couldn't pull off, was involving wall jumps and using the map, not SMART itself being difficult. Here is something Rahdo said back in April:

"a week doesn't go by that i'm not surprised by some new shortcut that our internal testers have found by using wall jumps. i'm really starting to think that you guys will have a lot of fun leveraging it to the max. for instance, we've got a demo coming up, and paul said "I want to do some freedom

of movement climbing in this room" as part of the show he's doing. so we were talking about maybe putting a couple extra crates here or there to let him do it, since we'd never planned for it in that room to begin with. but then bezzy came over and found a way to do it (climb a railing while going up the stairs, at the top of the stairs long jump off towards a statue, bounce off the statue with a hard right, and grab the upper railing to pull up) that we never anticipated, and it was awesome. of course, it's a VERY hard maneuver to pull off, so we went ahead and put a crate temporarily in for paul (it's not good for him to miss his jumps in a demo), but we'll take the crate back out after the demo and leave the "hard timing jump" for you guys to find... "

That was the one. And isn't that apart of smart? Smooth movement across random terrain? So, that type of maneuver seems like it would be rather difficult.

The automatic one ware you just hold down the smart should be medium,but the manual withe the jump crouch and smart should be hard

i said easy. but id rather do it manually to avoid accidently climbing up something. im playing as heavy anyway so it doesnt matter

I think he means mastering as in mixin the SMART system with manually doing things(which in its own right sounds hard to do and incredibly epic...sorta like doin a kickflip at a slow speed down some stairs the first time in skate when ur far to used to the tony hawk games)

I got this idea too, not that it was some system you needed to conquer to play.

I think the real intricacy of the SMART system should be difficult to get just right, but i dont want to have point zero reflexes just to gain benefit. It should be something, that for those who practice it regularly, will quickly notice its benefits, and eventually and intuitively mastering it with out really realizing it. However, those who just stick to the smart button and rely on it more then not, would likely have difficulty when performing maneuvers that require the player to mix and match smart and manual combo's.

And i'm talking about just using it on an intuitive level. Not highly practiced "i go here all the time" routs, but whenever a well practiced player would need to get some where smart couldnt do on its own, they could gracefully find their way up with out much thinking.

This would also make the movement system more realistic to parkour. As one becomes more talented in the trait, the more they do it, the more they practice it and the more techniques they acquire, they will suddenly find themselves not only seeing and finding more paths in their environment they had not noticed before, but they will try these paths intuitively.

I agree with most of what's said here. The SMART is just a button nothing more nothing less. Most people will simply hold it down and let it guide them along. The players who take the time to learn it manually will be more efficient and go places that you normally can't by just holding the SMART.

It will be a moderate challenge to master doing those moves manually, but the beauty of the smart button is that you can perform all these moves to traverse the map at the press of a button, it allows skilled competitors and humble noobs to have fun without it being too easy/hard.

But the way they have it setup, you can't really do things 'completely' manually, since sprint and smart are the same button.

The way they originally made it sound, was that there was a SMART button and separate sprint, crouch and jump buttons for those who want to do things manually.

What button is Smart mapped to then defaultly? That sounds a bit too simnple for my liking, but probably makes the most sense.

sprint/smart is mapped to LB on xbox, LT on ps3.

Hmm. I its best because it means that players can seamlessly freerun acros the map and leaves extra fingers so they can shoot and stuff. As long as it isnt all automated im happy, otherwise their wont be much of a learning curve for smart and will detach me from the game a bit.

Actually I think you can. Even if you are using the sprint/smart you can jump before the SMART would jump so you would climb/ vault.

Medium. Not too easy, but not too hard.

if it was to easy there would be no point of manual use although harder to master i think it should be much more rewarding then automatic use

"Mastering" SMART isn't going to give some huge, significant advantage over those who just hold down the button. The real advantage is going to come from situational awareness - knowing when and where to use SMART, thinking up clever uses for the maneuvers, and using your surroundings to your advantage. Learning how to wallrun or slide will be easy. Actually putting them to good use is where the "skill" comes in.

Agreed also like you stated in an earlier post it will come down to learning the maps figuring out how you can impliment SMART to use the fastest routes ect.

Mastery of smart will give the advantage of marginally more efficient, smoother, quicker movement in ones environment. Nothing more. From what its sounding like, to master it will just be committing it to reflex and intuition. A master of the SMART system will be little more then some one who uses it naturally to its fullest. The average kid is gana run around, thinking "okay, i gata go here, and to make it here i gata jump manually, then jump off this wall, and grab onto this ledge" where as a "master" will just do it all in a natural fluid process w/o taking his concentration away from the actual fight.

A big advantage? enough to make a difference, but it wont make any one a hardcoe killer. "maybe" they can take a rout or path quickly, that a lesser skilled enemy would have to pause and think for a quick second, enough for the prey to escape.

The SMART button should be limited in what it can do. So you can't just ninja all over the place just by holding the button. That would make manual control a bit more useful.

Let's face it, whose going to turn down a "ninja mode" button so they can feel more satisfied when they land a jump? The SMART system should have some chance of failure at least, while manual is more reliable but harder to use.

it has been overused, but it seems it's still needed...

light is not a ninja, SMART is not a ninja button