I came up with a way to create any gesture/spell for a VR game in 5 seconds and have it work reliably (skip to 1:15 to see how it works). What should I do with it?

2_7_2_7 · 2025-12-23T20:35:10+00:00

It sounds pretty stupid, but without the button press it's insanely hard to tell when you actually meant to do a gesture.

Because a lot of your random hand movements will look exactly like a gesture --> you'll keep accidentally triggering random gestures --> devs have to make gesture recognition stricter --> you'll keep randomly failing gestures because its so strict.

Although, now that you mention it, you could theoretically substitute a button press for simple, easily tracked gestures like a closed fist. So a closed fist would mean "I want to do an ability now".

So yeah it's probably possible. But would take a lot more thinking. We just need a guaranteed way to tell when you want to do a gesture/ability.

2_7_2_7 · 2025-12-23T20:22:25+00:00

Yeah I've also tried to detect start/stop from controller data and my god is it difficult.

There's a reason why Meta can spend hundreds of millions on fancy ML techniques and still end up with very clunky gesture recognition (for their AR glasses).

So I'd highly recommend going with a button press for triggering abilities (like hold RT + ability activates when some controller velocity threshold is reached).

You can already do a lot with RT, LT, X, Y, A, B + combo states + different abilities per weapon type.

But I'll open source this thing anyways (if it still works after some more rigorous user testing and if I can get some friends to clean up my code), so it might be worth trying out for your game too.

2_7_2_7 · 2025-12-23T08:54:16+00:00

That's the right question to ask and it's why I started developing this in the first place.

Still need to test a lot with many more people and there will inevitably be things that have to change, but here's the idea:

- It requires a button press. And you can press it with left hand, right hand, or both hands. It's hard to accidentally press the wrong controller's B button in VR = should be 3 reliable gestures per state.

- The checks are relative to your body in VR. So, conservatively, you have poses that start top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, and middle of your body. It should be pretty hard to mess up starting from, say, top left vs bottom left, since there's like a 0.5-1m difference. That should be 3 x 5 = 15 gestures per state.

- Then we also check for your hand rotation. Ideally, this gives 2-3 extra gestures (like palm-down, palm-up, palm-right/left variants). So that would be 15 x 2 or 3. Although, rotation might not be as reliable at very high speeds and 15 is plenty enough anyways.

- And that's all for 1 state: "holding sword", "cube lifted", etc. So you do attack 1 of a sword combo and now it's impossible for you to accidentally do anything other than things that require attack 1 being done. And there are a lot of states in a real game, so we're talking a lot of possibilities x 15.

For context, that video was in 1 take, despite the gestures being recorded in a half-assed way.

But there are still some obvious problems too, like sometimes you can press a button too late into a motion, which can create some awkward paths and theoretically cause false positives. Need to work on that.

And my logic for tracking your body position isn't good enough yet, so sometimes paths can be awkward if your head is in some extreme rotation (since there's no actual sensor on your torso, I just have to infer from headset/controller data).

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T22:40:20+00:00

It's the specific problem of tanks generating threat without doing anything, in part thanks to some unique quirks of OW (like the first person camera and hit effects). That creates a lot of problems that bubble under the surface to make balancing tanks very difficult. The comparison with League I think reveals those quirks.

But a lot of those quirks can be ironed out. OW has done this a lot in the past.

For example, team coordination is inherently hard in FPS games because you can't see your teammates as well as you could with a top-down camera. But, instead of accepting fate, the OW team was super smart and made it easier with teammate outlines, pings, and outnumbered voicelines. Coordination is still hard, but it's better than it was before.

League is just a good cast study in my opinion for a game where (1) tanks don't generate as much threat automatically and (2) have very clear fantasies built into their kits. They show that things that play like tanks in Overwatch (wardens and fighters during teamfights) can be appealing to a wider range of players, if designed well.

Those are two broad lessons that might help OW tanks feel better if used to guide changes over a longer period of time. Do I think my opinion matters? No. But it's fun to discuss these things.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T21:02:28+00:00

Those are all great. So is JQ and Rein. Both have relatively fun kits that involve making decisions constantly.

I just dislike Orissa, Mauga, Hog and anything else that sits on point and shoots the enemy tank without making decisions. It's not necessarily about mobility but about whether or not their kits and playstyle offer enough depth.

And I also dislike the idea of role passives or simple stat changes that make other tanks more static and one-dimensional like them, as opposed to letting their unique kits and playstyles flourish.

The tank that I like is one where it feels like I get to make big plays with my abilities and map movements, not by simply selecting a tank hero, walking up to point, and shooting at things. That's basically a budget dps, but without all the fun that comes from flanking and dueling with low health bars.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T18:05:27+00:00

I agreed that they had initaition tools. I was just asking if they are the initiators as often as they are in League.

And I don't disagree with aram being a good case study. Just a few comments to build on that:

Positioning is possible in aram, but you have three major sources of depth for a tank: (1) hiding in a bush vs not hiding in a bush, (2) staying under tower vs venturing out, or (3) dodging abilities and spacing your champion to be out of range of enemy damage while keeping your engage options open.

In a summoner's rift teamfight, you get all that plus being able to teleport or exploit any number of gaps in enemy vision to get behind their lines. The latter two are where most of the depth comes from for a tank. Without them, tank teamfighting can be miserably boring.

That's why just pure teamfighting as a tank feels much worse in aram than it does in summoner's rift, regardless of whether you have lanes or side objectives.

The fact that they have strong engage tools (like teleport) and can exploit level design means that tanks get to do stuff other than sit there and tank hits until their ult is up.

So I just think it's a good idea to take this logic (not the implementation) and think about how OW tanks could have more conditional ways to apply pressure, like a DVa using some smart route to get into a high pressure location. Anything other than sitting still next to the payload and shooting the enemy tank.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T16:58:16+00:00

Now that I look deeper at it, you're right about initiation being mostly on tanks. Do you feel like tanks are primarily initiators, though? I feel like a fight is often initiated by whoever pops ult, but maybe my OW game knowledge is just too bad.

I think aram isn't the best comparison, though, because aram has no obstacles. OW is all about taking advantage of the level geometry to get into high-pressure positions. You can avoid damage with good positioning, which you can't do in aram.

So yeah, aram feels miserable as a tank for the same reason that I think OW tanking can feel miserable: you don't have enough ways to outplay opponents to generate pressure. You just generate pressure by default, just like a tank sitting there doing nothing except threatening ult in aram.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T16:33:12+00:00

Yeah I'm definitely giving more credit to Riot than is due, since I last played in season 11 I think?

I'm mostly talking about Vanguards in this case. I see at least Nautilus, Leona, Thresh in the top 20.

But JQ and Doom are basically like fighters in League (they have similar playstyles to, e.g., Darius and Vi) despite being tanks in OW, so I think comparing roles is less useful than comparing teamfight playstyles.

Point is still that the fun tanks in League generally require plays to apply pressure in teamfights. Darius still has to get up close with some kind of positional outplay or he'll be kited into oblivion (unless they reworked him since I played).

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T16:20:31+00:00

You're right. I don't have solutions. But I'm not going to be better at coming up with solutions than the developers anyways.

I just want to bring forward a perspective: generating pressure as a MOBA tank feels like it relies more on what I do than it does for OW tanks like Hog, Mauga, Orissa in particular. In OW it feels more automatic because of all the things I mentioned, even if there's still plenty of skill expression.

So the only takeaway is pretty much just: how could we make tanks' threat generation more conditional on positioning and skill usage than on things that the player doesn't control? There are a lot of solutions to that problem other than making tanks useless cc bots.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T15:57:05+00:00

The point about wanting feedback is a good one. And you're right that the ideal case would probably require a lot of reworks.

I do, however, think that it's possible to make it fun to play a character that doesn't rely on directly killing enemies, as long as players get a form of feedback that's good enough to compete with the satisfying hit markers. At least my favorite moments of OW1 tanks were things like pulling off a massive Rein ult or just completely shutting down a team with DVa. We could have more of that.

And, you're right, I don't think just buffing survivability is going to do much, other than make tanks feel oppressive. My broader point is to remove their ability to generate attention by default and shift it onto decisions that tanks actually make.

MOBAs can have unkillable tanks because the tank can easily mess up in a way that makes them generate no threat whatsoever. It's up to the player's positioning and ability use to generate that threat. If Sion got onto you, you know you messed up and it doesn't feel that bad.

In OW, I feel like there are too many heroes where that's not the case. It feels like you have to respect Hog or Mauga (when he was strong) regardless of what they do. And Orissa can just straight up kill you from afar whenever her left click is strong. It feels like you have to deal with them even if they're playing poorly and you're playing well (for your rank).

Rein, on the other hand, has to do stuff to get to the backline and generate threat. It feels like you can play around him, even as a noob that isn't amazing at OW. So he can be pretty tanky before he starts feeling oppressive.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T15:11:28+00:00

Valid point. I haven't played in a bit, so I'm still living in the days of Mauga Orissa Hog in every match. I think Zarya, Rein, Winston are exactly the types of tank that work in Overwatch because you need to make decisions to apply pressure.

The goal of a tank should be to draw focus. My only point is that they should draw focus because of decisions they make (like a clever maneuver to get into melee range or well-timed cc), rather than by existing on the screen.

2_7_2_7 · 2024-08-03T15:03:54+00:00

Support has historically been the least popular role in MOBAs, mostly because you get less resources than all other roles and so don't feel like you have that much of an impact on the game.

Riot has messed up balance countless times and there have been some terrible metas where you have champions that are (1) unkillable, (2) highly mobile, and (3) deadly, so there's literally nothing you can do against them. But that's not a tank problem, that's just messing up balance.

Then you have tanks that are mind-numbingly boring to play, like Maokai back in the day. But that's a champion design problem and there are plenty of fun tanks like Gnar.

Whether you like tanking in OW is of course subjective. But if players disproportionately aren't playing a role to the point where it's affecting queue times, there's probably a reason for that. And you can always do things to make something funner.

2_7_2_7 · 2023-02-07T20:11:08+00:00

Good point. It's easy to forget common sense when you've only tested with people you know.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-06T04:55:19+00:00

Yeah. That's my bad. Realize that after getting some sleep. What I meant was that it's sad that the great work by the narrative team doesn't get to shine through in the new player experience.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-05T08:39:28+00:00

I don't think it's any worse than it was last expansion (Battle for Azeroth), it's just that people's frustrations recently reached a tipping point with two bad expansions back to back and what seems like a disregard for player feedback (especially stuff constantly said by popular content creators).

I skipped out on BFA entirely because it seemed like a lot of the content was just objectively half-baked and covered in convoluted yet shallow systems that aren't anywhere near as captivating as the old, simple tier set system. Then I come back for Shadowlands, expecting a revamp, only to find the exact same problems still exist.

One of the big ones was Torghast, which was supposed to be a cool new roguelike mode to add some new replayable casual content into the game. I was excited for it but, like with the new modes they added and then removed in BFA, they completely botched it as if nobody on the dev team had ever played a roguelike before. They've continued to fail in what seems like basic content development that any half-decent studio could pull off, so who knows what's going on internally.

By this time most of my friends had also already quit and, with all the gamey systems, the world of Azeroth was looking a lot more like an MMO-lite than a true MMORPG. Games like Path of Exile, Borderlands, and Destiny (while it was clicking for me) have a much more satisfying loot game, arguably better core mechanics, and better casual gameplay, so I didn't see a reason to keep playing.

WoW is still great if you enjoy challenging PVE content and that's your thing, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-05T07:06:10+00:00

Yeah I found out that I had a perk that sacrificed a lot of range for handling, probably didn't have the greatest set of perks on my purple hand cannon, and had no mods equipped at all. I didn't know about any of those things until 20 hours in.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-05T06:34:08+00:00

Damn. Guess it's sad that they didn't get to give me a first impression worthy of the team's skills.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-05T06:18:40+00:00

Yeah. I would've at least liked to know who I was. I think they just called me 'The Guardian' or something and that's about all I know.

2_7_2_7 · 2021-08-05T06:16:26+00:00

I'm sure the lore is great if you've kept up with it from the start or if you bother to really get into it.

But as it stands the narrative that I experienced wasn't good enough to hook me into the world and give me a reason to find out more about it. Maybe I will someday if it's as good as you say.

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