117 replies to this topic

[Monky]

I think there may be an even simpler solution - reticle selection

Since we know there are two reticles, arm and torso, simply a toggle between which is the 'leading' reticle would work.

Torso leading - Since the arms are faster, they should consistently track right with the torso, maybe a slight delay (shorter or equal to the torso weapon convergence time) to prevent instant alpha strikes upon acquiring a target. Better for narrow engagement areas (close up chokepoint/long distance point suppression)

Arms leading - Allows your arms to fire on targets much more quickly when they appear on your peripheral. Your torso moves to the location the arms point, and allows you to engage fully after they converge. Better for wide engagement areas. (anywhere that you can be flanked, or already have been flanked)

That seems like the cleanest overall implimentation.

[Belisarius1]

Strum Wealh, on 13 May 2012 - 06:55 AM, said:

The Devs seem to very much mean for both (axial) convergence and differential tracking ("transverse convergence") between the arm-mounted weapons and torso-mounted weapons to be a substantial part of the game, and that one of the major roles of that system is to reduce (to a reasonable degree) the ability to instantly concentrate damage on a single location.

As such, being able to simply "turn off" the differential tracking while retaining the convergence seems antithetical to the Devs' apparent goals.

This is really the heart of it. The whole point of desync seems to be to mess up accuracy even further. They're not looking for the cleanest or easiest implementation, so there's really not a lot of point in suggesting ways to improve it.

Edited by Belisarius†, 13 May 2012 - 04:44 PM.

[Mad Pig]

Lots of good feedback but it still sounds like the ra ra ra crowd is asking for an 'easy button'.

[Monky]

Mad Pig, on 13 May 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

Lots of good feedback but it still sounds like the ra ra ra crowd is asking for an 'easy button'.

May I ask why you feel that is? I mean, it is available to everyone, has advantages and disadvantages, and doesn't negate any known features that the devs have implemented. I mean, really, I'm stretching to find why this 'I win button' thought exists and I can't rationalize it.

If it makes a difference, this is coming from a guy who likes up close and personal combat with lots of flanking, but I'm not going to sit here and say 'no snipers in MWO because MW4 borked the game'.

[GaussDragon]

Mad Pig, on 13 May 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

Lots of good feedback but it still sounds like the ra ra ra crowd is asking for an 'easy button'.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe your side is just as ra ra ra, if not, more so -> http://mwomercs.com/...mw4-generation/

Edited by GaussDragon, 13 May 2012 - 06:49 PM.

[Belisarius1]

I wouldn't have even replied to him, personally.

I'm actually coming around to the rubberised reticule. It will be harder to handle, but it's not cone of fire. I think we'll learn to drag the arms past a target (to move the torso faster) and then bring them back to intersect as we fire. That would take a lot of timing and familiarity, but I'm all for things that raise the skill ceiling.

Edited by Belisarius†, 13 May 2012 - 06:58 PM.

[Monky]

Belisarius†, on 13 May 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

I wouldn't have even replied to him, personally.

I'm actually coming around to the rubberised reticule. It will be harder to handle, but it's not cone of fire. I think we'll learn to drag the arms past a target (to move the torso faster) and then bring them back to intersect as we fire. That would take a lot of timing and familiarity, but I'm all for things that raise the skill ceiling.

Well, if he can articulate an argument, then he should. I'm all for hearing all sides of an issue. If he can't then he wont, and then can be ignored. If he puts up a fallacy or poorly reasoned response, then, well, he will also be ignored.

[Mad Pig]

The argument was made for me months ago by the game developers when weapon convergence was first introduced.

As for the rest of your enlightening comments - we can postulate and quote and requote and write essays on the subject, but at the end of the day you're simply asking to 'turn it off' because you perceive it to be detrimental to the way you want to play when you haven't even played the game yet.

Seems to me that you're basing your discussions on a perception before evaluating the actual product. Just an observation - it's your choice if you want to get your tightey whities in a bundle over it.

Enjoy your slop. Mine is golden, and covered with pork rind sprinkles! Oink!

Edited by Mad Pig, 14 May 2012 - 06:52 PM.

[Belisarius1]

Told you so.

[Monky]

2 points to Belisarius, your troll spotting skills are mighty.

[Belisarius1]

Fish in a barrel in a pro-MW4 thread, honestly.

[Thomas Hogarth]

Prosperity, I love you brother, but I got to say: Anything that reduces accuracy of long range shots or increases difficulty of long range shots is a good thing. In this case, omission of a feature is the most seamless way to produce long-range shots that are as difficult as they are supposed to be.

[GaussDragon]

Belisarius†, on 13 May 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

I wouldn't have even replied to him, personally.

I'm actually coming around to the rubberised reticule. It will be harder to handle, but it's not cone of fire. I think we'll learn to drag the arms past a target (to move the torso faster) and then bring them back to intersect as we fire. That would take a lot of timing and familiarity, but I'm all for things that raise the skill ceiling.

Personally I find it to be clumsy, but that really is preferential. However I like the locking system based on the merits of having a trade-off between accuracy and the need to return fire quickly. Like Macabre Derek pointed out in another thread in a well-articulated point about game design: it adds nuance.

[GaussDragon]

Thomas Hogarth, on 14 May 2012 - 10:23 PM, said:

Prosperity, I love you brother, but I got to say: Anything that reduces accuracy of long range shots or increases difficulty of long range shots is a good thing. In this case, omission of a feature is the most seamless way to produce long-range shots that are as difficult as they are supposed to be.

Yes, but consider the example I used on the previous page. Unlike MW4, snipers won't have absolute accuracy as their target gets closer and closer. This puts the advantage back with smaller mechs. Also, Garth mentioned in another thread that map design is an important feature, so I don't think I'm far off in assuming it will be easier for smaller and/or brawler mechs to close in on a sniper compared to MW4.

Contrasting the two approaches (and obvious my bias bleeds in but follow me here):
1. Simply making it harder to aim at long distance is crude.
2. Designing the maps in such a way (in tandem with locking mechanics mentioned in this thread) make it so that there are a lot more variables between the sniper and his encroaching opponent.

The second approach takes more design and thought, but that is precisely what makes it a hell a lot more creative, sophisticated, interesting and again, nuanced. Something I've been arguing in favour of since day one.

[Belisarius1]

GaussDragon, on 14 May 2012 - 10:23 PM, said:

Personally I find it to be clumsy, but that really is preferential. However I like the locking system based on the merits of having a trade-off between accuracy and the need to return fire quickly. Like Macabre Derek pointed out in another thread in a well-articulated point about game design: it adds nuance.

I don't really think it does, though. The thing is that there are different kinds of nuance. Some things actually give the players real cost/benefit choices, but others give illusory options by making something that is already possible easier to do. Here, a locked reticule provides illusory benefit; if a player can learn to lead with the arms and track back to overlay before firing, he gets the same level of accuracy. A lock simply makes it easier for newbies to do that.

In contrast, if the torso moved faster in the lock mode that would be a real benefit; you've sacrificed the twitch speed of the arms for better torso performance. In this instance, though, I'd rather the torso just move at max speed the whole time because then you wouldn't even need a toggle.

Feature creep is a major problem in a game as complex as MW; everyone wants a toggle for everything, and eventually it gets silly. Keeping a lid on unnecessary controls should be a priority.


The real tell that I haven't seen anyone bring up is whether arm-loaded 'mechs will turn out to be overpowered. I think this is a serious issue if desync is supposed to be a major accuracy-limiting factor, because configs like the cat K2 are immune to it; all their power is on the fast reticule.

Edited by Belisarius†, 14 May 2012 - 10:52 PM.

[GaussDragon]

Belisarius†, on 14 May 2012 - 10:50 PM, said:

The real tell that I haven't seen anyone bring up is whether arm-loaded 'mechs will turn out to be overpowered. I think this is a serious issue if desync is supposed to be a major accuracy-limiting factor, because configs like the cat K2 are immune to it; all their power is on the fast reticule.

I pointed this out in another thread and specifically mentioned past favourites - the Nova Cat and the Ryoken. I'm not a TRO warrior so I had to go checking the canonical placement of their weapons but sure enough, it was the case. The Nova Cat is the most obvious with the two larger barrels on the right arm for the PPCs and the three smaller barrels on the left arm for the 3 large lasers (stock nova layout). The Ryoken is fairly straightforward with beams in the arms and missiles in the torso. One could conceivably dump out missiles and load up on lasers with arms if the hard points allowed it.

[Belisarius1]

Rifleman and nova cat (oh, and dire/daishi... man....) are probably the worst culprits out there, but none of those are likely to show up in MWO just yet. A lot of other stocks tend to have direct fire arms and missiles in the torsos (mad dog, timber wolf et al.), which has the same effect since missiles shouldn't care about desync.

With MWO's crazy-flexible 'mechlab I can certainly see myself sticking as much as possible in the arms, which is a shame because it really does dodge the mechanism.

Edited by Belisarius†, 14 May 2012 - 11:15 PM.

[GaussDragon]

Belisarius†, on 14 May 2012 - 11:07 PM, said:

With MWO's crazy-flexible 'mechlab I can certainly see myself sticking as much as possible in the arms, which is a shame because it really does dodge the mechanism.

Bingo.

[StaIker]

Belisarius†, on 14 May 2012 - 10:50 PM, said:

The real tell that I haven't seen anyone bring up is whether arm-loaded 'mechs will turn out to be overpowered. I think this is a serious issue if desync is supposed to be a major accuracy-limiting factor, because configs like the cat K2 are immune to it; all their power is on the fast reticule.

This was the very first thought I had when I read about the arm/torso split reticule. It would create a bias in favor of Mechs that can pack firepower into locations that converge on one or the other, rathar than be split. I think this fact alone is enough to doom the twin reticule system, it just needs some hard core play testers to demonstrate during the beta how abusive an advantage it will be.

[Thomas Hogarth]

GaussDragon, on 14 May 2012 - 10:30 PM, said:

Yes, but consider the example I used on the previous page. Unlike MW4, snipers won't have absolute accuracy as their target gets closer and closer. This puts the advantage back with smaller mechs. Also, Garth mentioned in another thread that map design is an important feature, so I don't think I'm far off in assuming it will be easier for smaller and/or brawler mechs to close in on a sniper compared to MW4.

Contrasting the two approaches (and obvious my bias bleeds in but follow me here):
1. Simply making it harder to aim at long distance is crude.
2. Designing the maps in such a way (in tandem with locking mechanics mentioned in this thread) make it so that there are a lot more variables between the sniper and his encroaching opponent.

The second approach takes more design and thought, but that is precisely what makes it a hell a lot more creative, sophisticated, interesting and again, nuanced. Something I've been arguing in favour of since day one.

Judging from the videos we've seen thusfar, accuracy isn't impacted in the slightest when objects get closer. The weapons seem to zero more than fast enough to handle the speeds a 'Mech can put down.

Also, there is no harm in implementing both carefully designed maps and leaving out a locking arm/torso reticule. I'm of the mind that anything that makes long-ranged targeting more difficult(without breaking lore immersion) is a good thing. Fire should get more accurate as the range decreases, and that curve should be quite steep.

RE: Customs+weapon placement. Another great reason to leave Mechlab out. It's too late for that now, but I hope there is some sort of mechanic to make sure stock, canon variants aren't extinct in MWO.

Edited by Thomas Hogarth, 14 May 2012 - 11:27 PM.