Movement Experiments - The Finals
Okay, so recently I've been doing a lot of experimenting with movement and other mechanics in the finals, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I've discovered and experimented with some really weird stuff, as well as some really useful stuff that can actually give a competitive advantage when used. Correctly, I've always loved experimenting with mechanics and games and trying to push them to their limits and see what's possible, so let's have a look at what I found during these experiments.
I'll start off with a fundamental movement technique that has existed in many games for many years, and that is hopping. Everyone knows what bee hopping is, but in case you don't, here's a quick rundown: Bee hopping is where you go boing along the ground and maintain most, if not all, of your momentum while doing so now due to the fact that sliding in the finals loses your momentum really quick now.
Be-hopping is a must-learn technique to maintain your momentum and can generally be combined with other movement techniques as well for a much better result. To hop successfully, you need to be jumping basically in the same frame that you hit the ground each time. The timing can be pretty precise, and that's why I would highly recommend binding jump to your scroll wheel and scrolling down right before you're about to hit the ground to hit those perfect bee hops.
It really helps a lot. Now in the finals, you cannot carry your momentum forever. I hope it will only carry it for so long, and then it seems to just kind of run out. I tried to figure out exactly why this is, and I think it might have something to do with jump fatigue. Jump fatigue is a mechanic that basically limits how many times you can jump within a period before you start to lose height on each jump.
And when hopping, it seems that as soon as the jump fatigue kicks in, your momentum is rapidly lost. It also seems that jump fatigue in the finals is on a timer and doesn't actually require you to plant your feet on the ground for a period of time to reset, meaning that if you are moving fast enough that your feet are only touching the ground every second or so, you'll be able to keep bee-hopping without jump fatigue impeding you.
I need to do further testing on this, however, but it does seem to be the case. Now we'll go back to bee-hopping. Before you begin bee-hopping, you're going to want to get some speed. There are a bunch of different ways to gain speed in the finals, but some of the best are the grappling hook, zip lines, and jump pads.
The grappling hook can be used and canceled almost immediately after for a nice little speed boost that you can then maintain for a bit by hopping longer grapples, which will give you more speed. The zip line actually gives quite a generous boost of speed. When jumping off of it and is something that every class in the game can use so you can be hop around like this on a heavy with a sledgehammer which is actually pretty funny, lastly is the jump pad now I did a lot of experimenting with the jump pad probably more experimenting than I did with anything else and I found some really unusual, stuff, the jump pad can be placed on almost any surface including walls and ceilings and will launch you in the direction that it is facing, in this clip here I mantle the wall that the jump pad is deployed on and the moment my mantle finishes I get launched in the direction the jump pad is facing this gives very good speed and lets you be hop out of it pretty.
Fast i also tried placing the pad on this window shutter, then breaking the shutters, and as the pad is falling. I mantle it, and as soon as the mantle finishes, it launches me through the window and into the building. This was probably one of the weirdest things I encountered through my experiments.
I tried for a very long time to figure out a way to carry around a deployed jump pad by potentially placing it on an object that could be moved around, but I wasn't able to find anything. Sadly, another thing I did a bit of experimenting with was trimming. And if you don't know what trimming is, it's another mechanic that exists in a lot of other games where you basically hit an angle with speed and hop as you hit that angle, and it launches you further and higher than a normal jump, kind of like hitting a ramp.
This is super fun to do. I couldn't get any crazy trims happening, but I definitely got some that really gave me much better vertical and horizontal velocity than I'd usually get. Another quick random thing that I found that isn't related to movement but has to do with the objects around the world that you can pick up and throw, such as barrels.
You can throw them and then immediately catch them, and you can do this over and over. These do 50 damage when they hit a player, and you can basically spam throw and catch them over and over for 50 damage each time. It's a pretty funny way to kill someone, so I thought I'd add it in here. These objects can also be picked up from a lot further than you would first expect.
I think it's something like 5 meters, but anyway, of all this random stuff that I've been talking about, is there anything actually useful? Well, be-hopping is obviously super useful in every class, and particularly in the light class, in combination with the grappling hook. Not only is it super fun and cool to do, but it can really give you a competitive advantage when used correctly.
It allows you to get much better use out of each grapple and cover more distance, which is excellent for chasing down players or even getting yourself out of a bad situation fast, such as in this clip here where I get pushed by a heavy with an auto shoty and then I turn around and quickly grapple away, cancel it into a be hop, and then quick scope him as I'm flying backwards.
Now for the heavy class, although you don't really have any movement tools of your own, using jump pads placed by other players and zip lines can allow you to gain some really good speed, and by using be-hopping to maintain that speed, you can surprise your enemies with something like a sledgehammer.
For example, I've literally never played the heavy class in a match, but maybe at some point I'll try to go for some flashy Sledgehammer movement players just for a bit of fun. And as for the medium class, obviously you have a jump pad and a zip line you can place, so they're basically the enablers of their team's movement.
I'd imagine there's some really cool combos you can do with three mediums in one team by just linking up jump pads and zip lines combined with be-hopping to zoom around the map super fast. Now I have a lot more stuff that I want to test out like this, and I'm sure I'll find some more interesting results.
