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Pinpoint And Fast Fire...


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#21 Bloodweaver

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Posted 18 April 2015 - 07:57 PM

View PostTerciel1976, on 18 April 2015 - 09:24 AM, said:

Have to fix the rubber banding when two mechs get close before we can even remotely consider knockdown

I'm pretty sure the rubber banding is more a consequence of removing knockdown, than an effect. Knockdown was removed because it was getting exploited and because it was causing lag. But, removing it hasn't fixed the lag issue at all - as seen by rubber-banding.

View PostTripleEhBeef, on 18 April 2015 - 10:07 AM, said:

Would be nice if Pinpoint got switched for, say, a 5% bonus to target info gathering time or sensor range. I know we have equipment and modules that do that job better, but at least it would be a beneficial bonus.

Would be even nicer if Pinpoint was re-implemented as per its original mechanic - meaning weapons didn't all instantly converge on a pixel regardless of its distance from you. But, yeah. barring that, something else in its place would be better than absolutely nothing. I guess :(

#22 Tim East

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Posted 18 April 2015 - 08:00 PM

View PostBloodweaver, on 18 April 2015 - 07:57 PM, said:

Would be even nicer if Pinpoint was re-implemented as per its original mechanic - meaning weapons didn't all instantly converge on a pixel regardless of its distance from you. But, yeah. barring that, something else in its place would be better than absolutely nothing. I guess :(

Old PP skill is apparently not feasible in this engine according to the devs. There was a brief mention of this in a rather large and flame-tastic thread in the general discussion section recently. :unsure:

#23 Bloodweaver

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Posted 18 April 2015 - 08:01 PM

View PostJC Daxion, on 17 April 2015 - 12:15 PM, said:

pin point does nothing to speed up the arm/torso cross hair? the arms are always on the same spot, but put a large laser in an arm, and then one in the torso you will see them lag behind on convergence, does PP do nothing to help that? I could swear it does, but perhaps not.

No, PP does nothing to help with that. There's an in-match "trick" you can use to get your arms and torso to instantly converge. Press the key to toggle arm-lock on/off. The default is the Shift key. When you want your arms to move freely again, or simply to turn your torso faster(arm-lock on won't let you move your field of vision faster than the torso can spin, which is frustrating IMO), press Shift again.

With arm-lock off, the only thing affecting how quickly your arm reticle lines back up with your torso reticle after movement, is your arm movement speed. Nothing else.

Edited by Bloodweaver, 18 April 2015 - 08:02 PM.


#24 Bloodweaver

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Posted 18 April 2015 - 08:04 PM

View PostVlad Striker, on 18 April 2015 - 09:16 AM, said:

Convergence works like your camera autofocuse. When you shoot moving target then aiming point jumping from target to clouds behind target, from 200m to infinity. So weapon barrels turns not instantly but have some delay to change focus.

So you DON'T have pinpoint damage on moving target 'cause aim for each barrel have divergence from aiming point. This skill speed up convergence for each barrel to one point.


In theory, you wouldn't have pinpoint damage on a moving target. In practice, in MWO, you absolutely do. All weapons are constantly aligned with wherever the crosshair is pointing, at all times. If your crosshair is on a target, and its running sideways relative to you, and you let off a volley of lasers and PPCs, your lasers will connect at the reticle's indicated pixel, but your PPCs will lag behind the target and either hit another section or miss completely. However, this is not due to a lack of convergence - it is simply an effect of PPC projectile speed, whereas lasers are instantaneous.

#25 Bloodweaver

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Posted 18 April 2015 - 08:10 PM

View PostTim East, on 18 April 2015 - 08:00 PM, said:

Old PP skill is apparently not feasible in this engine according to the devs. There was a brief mention of this in a rather large and flame-tastic thread in the general discussion section recently. :unsure:

More or less. Basically, there was too much of a disparity between what you'd see server-side and what you'd see client-side. I wouldn't be surprised if it was also contributing to there being too much info being relayed both ways(which was the problem with SRM hit detection). The game's engine, of course, is not really the issue. As with most of MWO's missing features, it's PGI's amateurism that keeps this good mechanic down. "Difficult" and "impossible" are not the same thing. Especially in this case, as it's a feature that already existed (much like inverse kinematics, interesting damage models, knockdowns, critical hits to structural components, etc...)

#26 YCSLiesmith

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 10:01 AM

View PostIaldabaoth, on 14 April 2015 - 10:35 PM, said:

Solution: bring back knockdown, replace Pinpoint with 'Stability' which reduces knockdown chance by 50%.

have you seen the collision detection in this game? I'd prefer not to fall down every time my legs turn yellow from stepping on a rock

#27 Banditman

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 10:15 AM

Knockdown never had anything to do with the environment. Knockdowns only happened mech on mech.

#28 YCSLiesmith

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 11:04 AM

View PostBanditman, on 20 April 2015 - 10:15 AM, said:

Knockdown never had anything to do with the environment. Knockdowns only happened mech on mech.

yeah but what i'm saying is that the collision detection in this game is terrible. it's one of the main reasons knockdown didn't work out.

#29 Void Angel

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 11:37 AM

View Postgrendeldog, on 14 April 2015 - 09:42 PM, said:

Hey there. So I have seen numerous threads suggesting that the pinpoint elite skill does nothing, and a few that say that the fast fire skill does nothing. The thing is that all these threads are from 2012 or 2013, so I don't know if they're relevent to the state of the game today. I did in fact 'use the effing search engine' as they say, but found nothing recent.

So to answer this once and for all: does pinpoint do anything? Does fast fire do anything?

And if pinpoint does in fact do something, my understanding is that it allows your weapons to converge at whatever you're targetting, so that if you have, say, 3 MPL in the torso and four in the arms, and your target is only 50 or 100 meters away, they all hit one component instead of being spread out over several. Is this indeed how pinpoint works, if it works at all?

Thanks a lot guys!

As has been hashed out extensively above, fast fire DOES work - and pinpoint does not. At all. period. The reason for this lies in the netcode and developer resources. Back in the Bad Old Days before the netcode was fixed (and trust me, it is fixed; hitreg is a different issue, still much improved - but I digress) they had non-instant convergence for a while. Personally, I like the idea, for much the same reason I liked Counterstrike's accuracy system; however, because of the netcode they inherited with CryEngine, people were taking different amounts of time to converge based on their ping. This was bad; it's a world without Host State Rewind where even your accuracy suffered a penalty if the other guy had a lower ping to the server - since they hadn't fixed HSR yet, there was no immediate remedy, and many players were severely affected. Thus, they made the decision to simply remove instant convergence, particularly since the current piloting skill trees were intended to be overhauled (if I recall correctly) at some point anyway.

Now HSR is fixed, at long last, and there was much rejoicing (except from those who affect total "disappointment" and "loss of faith" in the game and its developers, and yet who still will not go away - but again, I digress.) It follows that delayed convergence MAY now be feasible to implement again; whether or not it actually can be implemented depends on how the two sets of code interact and how many resources are available to throw at it - software engineering is still engineering, and engineering is the science of compromises. Those who blithely assume that pinpoint convergence (or some other favored feature) can be "brought back" with no significant difficulty should not be taken seriously on that point, and their credibility should be questioned.

So to summarize, Pinpoint doesn't work now, but it might be able to - and now might be a good time to ask the devs rather than assuming that it can or cannot be done. Personally, I'd pitch it as a possible avenue to balance the Clans and Inner Sphere, while revitalizing certain pieces of equipment (what if the Command Console increased convergence speed for the entire team as long as it was active?) - but that truly is another thread. =)

View PostTim East, on 18 April 2015 - 08:00 PM, said:

Old PP skill is apparently not feasible in this engine according to the devs. There was a brief mention of this in a rather large and flame-tastic thread in the general discussion section recently. :unsure:

Could you link it? I think I missed that one - I just know there were nontrivial technical issues with pinpoint (or knockdown for that matter.)

#30 grendeldog

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 12:45 PM

So I think it's been clearly established what fast fire does do, and what pinpoint theoretically would do but doesn't. However, I got to thinking: perhaps more useful than a simple 5% cooldown reduction - or instead perhaps a cool replacement for pinpoint - would be a percentage reduction in the ghost heat interval.

That will never happen for several reasons - PGI does not fiddle with ghost heat any more than one simply walks into Mordor (without overheating at least in a 6 LPL Banshee) - but it would be genuinely useful and is something no existing module or skill can do.

Just a thought.

#31 H00L1GAN

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 01:28 PM

play with all your arm actuators and tell me it doesn't do anything. it's way noticeable in my HBRA

#32 Tim East

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 05:53 PM

View PostVoid Angel, on 20 April 2015 - 11:37 AM, said:

Could you link it? I think I missed that one - I just know there were nontrivial technical issues with pinpoint (or knockdown for that matter.)

I really don't want to go digging through 50+ pages of that garbage to find a link that may never have even been posted. I just said it was mentioned by someone in that particular flame war.

However, if you want to do a research paper's worth of reading to find that or at least someone who can point you in the right direction, here's the thread. http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

Ick.

#33 Void Angel

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Posted 20 April 2015 - 08:05 PM

Heheh - I don't blame you; this is why what I want most from our new Community Manager is some kind of unified resource for PGI communications. I should not have to go to Twitter, or Reddit, or NGNG when PGI has their very own website.

#34 Tim East

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Posted 21 April 2015 - 10:31 AM

View PostVoid Angel, on 20 April 2015 - 08:05 PM, said:

Heheh - I don't blame you; this is why what I want most from our new Community Manager is some kind of unified resource for PGI communications. I should not have to go to Twitter, or Reddit, or NGNG when PGI has their very own website.

Even if all they did was copy/paste the posts on other media to a thread on the forum, at least it would be something you could hit with the search function.

#35 Void Angel

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Posted 21 April 2015 - 12:26 PM

Not that that's much of an improvement - I've searched for exact wording, and still couldn't find the post I wanted.

#36 Banditman

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Posted 21 April 2015 - 12:27 PM

View PostYCSLiesmith, on 20 April 2015 - 11:04 AM, said:

yeah but what i'm saying is that the collision detection in this game is terrible. it's one of the main reasons knockdown didn't work out.

No it's not. Knockdowns actually worked very well. You collided with another mech, and based on some mass, velocity and class computations, you either fell down or you didn't.

What didn't work was the results of the knockdown on fast mechs. When a mech was knocked down the engine couldn't figure out where it was supposed to be, so it rubber banded back and forth between the position it last was confirmed to be, and the position the server thought it should be. It was a Bad Deal ™. The only time you could reliably hit a knocked down mech was right at the moment it stood up.

You can watch between 8:10 and 8:50 of this old video to see a couple knockdowns on Hunchbacks, which moved slow enough that rubber banding wasn't a big issue for them. Pretty cool stuff.





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