32 replies to this topic

[Gevurah]

So yeah there's lots of raven tears out there - but are they necessarily invalid? I'm going to say this outright - I'm a spider pilot - and a damn good one. But I know for a fact fighting a raven is a losing proposition. I've even had to come up with deliberate methods on how to kill a raven and even that works only about 30% of the time with my custom raven killing build. No, I'm not going into details. Mind you, that's on generic raven pilots. This doesn't even count people who are actually GOOD with the thing.

So I'm not saying "nerf" the raven. I'm saying "FIX" the raven.

Broken hitboxes - hits don't register or register in bizarre places.
Broken streaks/SRMS (especially against smaller light mechs such as the commando and spider) - see this thread: http://mwomercs.com/...-inside/unread/
AMS is virtually worthless against streaks - Buffing AMS would effectively neutralize the overwhelming advantage ECM provides with streak-bearing mechs

The raven has a good loadout, is a good mech overall, and should be an excellent scout mech. One of my oldest friends has piloted a Raven exclusively in mw4 for nearly a decade and uses it as such. He also was about the only person I ever saw piloting one. Primarily because they weren't broke as **** cheese machines. Competent and capable mechs, sure, but not with power disproportionate to the class.

Fix the bugs on the raven. Fix the hitbox. Fix the streaks. Buff AMS. This will resolve 99% of the Q_Qing about Ravens while bringing it and other mechs of the class in line with what they should be.

Ever wonder why that death's knell you paid money for is a worthless piece of trash except when fighting atlases/etc? People paid money for a mech which is easily outclassed by a *BROKEN* free mech. Fix the stupid POS.

Thanks.

Edited by Gevurah, 14 March 2013 - 08:21 AM.

[Jaxass]

Gevurah, on 14 March 2013 - 06:32 AM, said:

Ever wonder why that death's knell you paid money for is a worthless piece of trash except when fighting atlases/etc? People paid money for a mech which is easily outclassed by a *BROKEN* free mech. Fix the stupid POS.

Thanks.

Now you know how Ilya owners feel after this last patch ruined UACs... pretty **** poor business model.... make people pay money for mechs that get stomped by OP builds that shouldn't be OP

[Mechteric]

I actually have a video of me firing 2 ER Large lasers at a raven at close ranges and them not doing the damage they should be... I'll have to get it cropped and posted soon. I winded up having to move outside of LRM minimum range to try to finish him off with that.

Jaxass, on 14 March 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

Now you know how Ilya owners feel after this last patch ruined UACs... pretty **** poor business model.... make people pay money for mechs that get stomped by OP builds that shouldn't be OP

bugs happen and have nothing to do with their business model.

[Gevurah]

I don't mind when a mech is even keel with a cbill mech, pay for variety and all that. My YLW is a prime example.

But when things just flat out DON'T WORK because they're broken - then that needs to be addressed for the sake of the players.

At least 50% of my unit bought a death's knell and shelved it relatively soon after. What should have been a reasonably competitive light mech hunter ended up being a worthless pile of scrap due to the ridiculous damage from streaks.

As it is, the only way for a spider pilot to handle a raven is:
A - hit them when they aren't looking, pray they don't see you
B - get into the inevitable dogfight, doing less damage than the raven, generally getting killed.
C - hope they are stupid enough to run from you so you can damage their vulnerable rear torso
D - throw it in reverse so that all the streak damage hopefully only hits the front armor, maximizing endurance for as long as possible, hoping your pinpoint damage will outdo their streaks ridiculous damage.
oh, and E (which usually works best) - RUN. Use your jump jets and mobility to hit the gas and ****, generally using terrain obstacles to create distance.

@capper - please post that vid here when you get it.

Edited by Gevurah, 14 March 2013 - 08:09 AM.

[Calamus]

I agree with everything the OP said.

[Gevurah]

At least regarding the missile damage...

Looks like the devs are looking at it and will respond later today.

Matthew Craig: Just a note to say we've been looking into this and should have a full response later today.

Thomas D: Thomas Dziegielewski, on 14 March 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:
Np, the ball is already rolling. We'll update Known Issues once we've confirmed the issue.

Thomas is one of their lead programmers.
Let's hope for a hotfix.

Edited by Gevurah, 14 March 2013 - 09:11 AM.

[Arcaist]

Jaxass, on 14 March 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

Now you know how Ilya owners feel after this last patch ruined UACs... pretty **** poor business model.... make people pay money for mechs that get stomped by OP builds that shouldn't be OP

And if it was the other way around, people would cry P2W!

[Kmieciu]

Only thing that`s wrong with the Raven is the ECM. Before ECM Raven was the underdog. It was Jenner's food. have you forgotten? There was only one Raven for every nine Jenners on the battlefield. I mastered Commandos and then moved to Jenner and my K/D skyrocketed. It was that good.

The hitboxes did not change. They are simply different. In a dogfight you often hit the Jenner in the center torso. You hardly ever die in a Jenner due to XL engine. The Raven has big side torsos, rather easy to hit. But since it can turn around and circle strafe the other way, it has more amor to spare than a Jenner.

If the JR7-D got the ECM, it would rule the battlefield once more.

Edited by Kmieciu, 14 March 2013 - 10:00 AM.

[Gevurah]

Kmieciu, on 14 March 2013 - 09:58 AM, said:

Only thing that`s wrong with the Raven is the ECM. Before ECM Raven was the underdog. It was Jenner's food. have you forgotten? There was only one Raven for every nine Jenners on the battlefield. I mastered Commandos and then moved to Jenner and my K/D skyrocketed. It was that good.

The hitboxes did not change. They are simply different. In a dogfight you often hit the Jenner in the center torso. You hardly ever die in a Jenner due to XL engine. The Raven has big side torsos, rather easy to hit. But since it can turn around and circle strafe the other way, it has more amor to spare than a Jenner.

If the JR7-D got the ECM, it would rule the battlefield once more.

Sorry, but you're completely wrong.
If ECM was game breaking, other light ECM mechs would be on equal footing. But they are not. Why? Their damage given and damage received is disproportionately skewed.

ECM is a benefit, for sure. But it's not the cause. The cause here is taking a good chassis, giving it a good benefit, it having a broken hitbox and then having buggy as hell missiles that have no effective counter for other light mechs.

It takes less damage and gives more damage than it should.

Everyone cries about ECM but the fact is it's a tool, nothing more. It's not a bug. I'm simply saying they should fix the bugs.
If ECM is still game breaking after that THEN go after ECM. As it is, i find it to generally be a non issue. It's the missiles that give me trouble and the fact that about 30% of the hits on a raven either don't register or are a fraction of what they should be.

[FrostCollar]

Gevurah, on 14 March 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

At least regarding the missile damage...

Looks like the devs are looking at it and will respond later today.

Matthew Craig: Just a note to say we've been looking into this and should have a full response later today.

Thomas D: Thomas Dziegielewski, on 14 March 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:
Np, the ball is already rolling. We'll update Known Issues once we've confirmed the issue.

Thomas is one of their lead programmers.
Let's hope for a hotfix.

I'm a bit behind - where did they say this? The fact that the devs are looking at the issue is heartening, at least.

[Ralgas]

FrostCollar, on 14 March 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

I'm a bit behind - where did they say this? The fact that the devs are looking at the issue is heartening, at least.

nearly 25 pages into the streak broken thread linked above, by "full response" i assume a known issue/command chair post

[Mechteric]

So here's the video I mentioned earlier where it appeared the Raven wasn't taking proper damage from a pair of ER Large Lasers. I was pretty sure at the time I was pretty on target for most of the duration but I'll leave that up the viewer to decide. I eventually just got fed up of not seeing the damage on the Raven that I backed off and finished him off with LRMs

@15 seconds is where the Raven starts to come in
@1 minute is where I said F'it and got some distance to fire the LRMs

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 15 March 2013 - 05:36 AM.

[Sheraf]

Before the Raven issue is fixed, giving the streak cat temporary ECM will get rid of Raven problem for the time being .

[focuspark]

Yup... RVN hitbox doesn't seem to match up with it's physics mesh. Seems like a massive bug to me.

[Gevurah]

Holy crap, focus and I see eye to eye on something!

[IrrelevantFish]

It's not just bugged hit-boxes, it's the hit-boxes themselves. Just look at them and you'll see the following problems:

• Half of the side-torso regions that are visible from the rear are actually counted as front-side torso.
  
• When faced head-on, the long, narrow body is a very small target.
  
• When faced head-on, the torso regions are extraordinarily thin.
  
• When viewed from the side, significant portions of the side torsos are shielded by the arms.

Now make it Streak-proof and capable of traveling at 150kph with a funky-chicken walk that bobs the torso all over the place and moves the legs in an extraordinarily eccentric fashion and try to kill it. What do you think will happen? Without god-like precision, most shots aimed at the legs will go right between them and those to the upper region will be spread out so much across the torsos, cockpit, and arms that they might as well be a single component with 140 points of frontal armor and 87 points of internal structure.


IMO, that explains far more of the Raven's outrageous durability than buggy code.

Edited by IrrelevantFish, 15 March 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Aim64C]

I'll be honest - I play with a good connection at roughly 60-80 milliseconds for my ping. I think a lot of other people are experiencing an artifact with lag, or... something, when trying to hit light mechs. I've never had a problem putting damage on most light mechs.

That said - I think Irrelevant Fish echoes my observations, here. The hitboxes of the Raven are a little funky and the thing is quite a chaotic flurry of metal to try and hit. It's difficult to put any kind of consistent damage on the thing, especially with lasers that need to be tracked, but are otherwise the go-to weapon for dealing damage to maneuvering lights.

Compared to the relatively larger torso sections of the other lights and their more stable walking kinematics, the Raven has a considerable advantage over other lights even when lag is not a factor.

That said... it -is- designed according to relatively modern innersphere mech design philosophies... namely, that mechs should be designed with reduced profiles: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Raven

And the 3L -is- supposed to be the embodiment of the Raven.

That said - the battletech rules don't really take into account mech 'hitboxes' and other such things. While the raven may not have been so great in the tabletop game where it did not stand much better or worse chance compared to a similarly armed Jenner... it -does- come into play in Mechwarrior, where one is expected to have to actually hit one of these machines designed to be efficient at avoiding fire.

I'm not exactly sure how to adjust for it.

We're going to run into stuff like this from time to time - where the physical reality of the mech's design contradicts the way it was supposed to behave in the lore/table top game. I can see the Madcat becoming something of a disappointment because its center torso is absolutely gargantuine (unless they really work to try and balance it out) while the Bushwacker will possibly have a lot in common with the Couldron Born (in terms of being a PITA to kill) - though that is consistent with its design philosophy.

Though I'd really like a Madcat MK IV... Rear-firing streak SRM-6s will be fun to play with when I'm 105 some-odd years old.

[IrrelevantFish]

Aim64C, on 16 March 2013 - 02:32 AM, said:

That said - the battletech rules don't really take into account mech 'hitboxes' and other such things. While the raven may not have been so great in the tabletop game where it did not stand much better or worse chance compared to a similarly armed Jenner... it -does- come into play in Mechwarrior, where one is expected to have to actually hit one of these machines designed to be efficient at avoiding fire.

I'm not exactly sure how to adjust for it.

I can think of four ways:

• reduce the maximum engine rating
  
• reposition the hit-boxes (not a lot of adjusting you can do with the current geometry)
  
• redo the geometry (would either be very expensive or very ugly)
  
• redo the walking animation (same as the above)

I think the first option is by far the best. So far as direct-fire weapons are concerned, the only difference between the 4X/2X and the 3L is their speed, but I've always found the slower Ravens to be too vulnerable to direct-fire weapons.

Ithink they should hold off on tampering with the 3L until after they can see the effects of turning off splash damage, but I suspect it will still need nerfing, and the 4X and 2X are in need of buffing no matter what. For all three, I think the engine is the best target.

[Hayashi]

The best information I have at the moment (partially from Amaris' threads, partially from gameplay experience both against and as a Raven) is indicating that the Raven is either nearly or completely invulnerable at the nose area from the front. Unfortunately Streaks also aim at the spot, and as it's quite big players also tend to aim at that spot. This is one of the reasons why they're so hard to kill.

When fighting Ravens that are directly facing you, shoot the joint between the head and the legs, its 'groin area' as it were, and it should register as a Centre Torso hit. If you shoot the sides of the beak, near the tip it'll flash if you hit it but register basically zero damage, and nearer the arms it will register as a Side Torso hit. It's practically not possible to hit the side torsos without first taking out the arms. If using Streaks against a Raven, fire them such that the Streaks will hit the Raven from the sides or back, and they'll do fine.

I'm waiting for the devs to locate the problem and fix it, but until then, aiming differently can help quite a bit.

[Gevurah]

Actually that sounds about right. I'd like to see a raven in the test grounds.