647 replies to this topic

[stjobe]

ViKingOmega, on 15 March 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

im glad they are doing something about this but April 2nd?!! really? why so long,

See my post above. Programming and testing takes time.

ViKingOmega, on 15 March 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

Like push some content planned for next week's patch back until april 2nd and fix this damn problem. Jesus!

Next week's patch is more than likely done already, just waiting for Tuesday to go live. Altering that patch now means pushing it back, not having a patch at all on Tuesday. That would be a waste of both the devs and our time.

[Star Colonel Mustard Kerensky]

Shumabot, on 15 March 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

Given the obvious lack of forsight and the sheer fact that this has been occuring for many months and no one at PGI noticed until the userbase told them it was happening (despite anecdotal evidence that SRMs were wildly overpowered) I think that burger flipping analogy might still stand.

This plainly shows that they do no metric tracking what so ever for balance. That fact is horrifying. It means that they fundamentally don't care about this games balance enough even track if their own mechanics are functioning.

Actually it looks to me like the game doesn't report the extra "bugged damage" as the stats screen isn't showing erroneous numbers for my SRM damage.

[Monky]

Astroniomix, on 15 March 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

Actually it looks to me like the game doesn't report the extra "bugged damage" as the stats screen isn't showing erroneous numbers for my SRM damage.

This is pretty much the only viable explanation - we have direct evidence that it is doing more damage than intended per missile, but it is showing roughly what it should in stats if the situation was normal.

[Maurdakar]

Brilliant post OP.

[Ransack]

PapajIGC, on 15 March 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Sounds like PGI needs people who are better at their job. I'll admit I would not be one of them, but if I get paid to flip burgers and deep fry potatoes, and then all of a sudden I found my burgers and fries to be not coming out as specified and I couldn't figure out a way to make them in-spec, I'd be fired rather quickly.

I agree with this. Or at least get people who pay more attention to detail

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The big deal is that it ruins enjoyment of a game that doesn't even have a solidified playerbase yet and will only hurt the game down the road when it does launch (if ever, lol@ForeverBeta).

This game will never have a big playerbase. If you think that it will, you are fooling yourself. It's a niche game, and there are others out there now.

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Why when asked "Hey man, should I play MWO?" would I lie to people and tell them anything but "Nah man, those devs have no competency when it comes to game balance, programming, hotfixing clearly gamebreaking issues like weapons doing 5x their normal damage, or being unable to optimize their engine for accurate hit detection/tracking."

This is going to be the case whether they take two weeks to remove splash damage or not. Especially sine with ECM in play, you can barely target things anyway. ECM turned what was a fun game to a blah game that I can't get anyone to play for more than a day. Hell, maybe if they all ran Splatcats doing "5X" damage, they would have had fun.

Quote

Also, it went undetected for months because you could never hit light mechs to begin with the god awful netcode. Now that the netcode is somewhat fixed, all these unknown issues suddenly enter the spotlight and we realize just how bad of a state this game is in.

Really? I could have sworn that was the reason that there were so many people using streaks. Commandos have been paperweights since they were introduced, now we know why. It's still not a really big deal since it seemingly affects two, maybe three chassis, the Commando and Raven and the Spider. To that I say Yippee Ki Yay! I won't shed a tear.

I get where you are coming from, but really lets not get overly dramatic. There are a few things in this game that suck the enjoyment out of it. Being able to kill a light mech sure ain't one of them. Run a bigger mech and you will not see the splash damage bug.

[Gen Kumon]

Ransack, on 15 March 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

Really? I could have sworn that was the reason that there were so many people using streaks. Commandos have been paperweights since they were introduced, now we know why. It's still not a really big deal since it seemingly affects two, maybe three chassis, the Commando and Raven and the Spider. To that I say Yippee Ki Yay! I won't shed a tear.

Actually, according to the latest test results from Amaris, it's a huge deal. Lights are taking the higest amount of damage, the worst taking *17* damage per SRM...that being the Jenner. Commando's taking around 12. Raven takes from about 5 to 6. Here's the real kicker, though. It's not just lights. Trebs and Catapults are also taking around 5 damage each, double what they're supposed to. Even the Cataphract is taking just over 4 damage per missile. The Atlas, on the other hand, seems to take only 1,6 damage per missile, at least if shot in certain locations. Raven and Catapult can also take less damage if shot in certain spots.

Overall, it's a massive, gamebreaking bug that seems to effect 95% of all mechs to some degree.

[Vapor Trail]

Ransack, on 15 March 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

I agree with this. Or at least get people who pay more attention to detail




This game will never have a big playerbase. If you think that it will, you are fooling yourself. It's a niche game, and there are others out there now.


This is going to be the case whether they take two weeks to remove splash damage or not. Especially sine with ECM in play, you can barely target things anyway. ECM turned what was a fun game to a blah game that I can't get anyone to play for more than a day. Hell, maybe if they all ran Splatcats doing "5X" damage, they would have had fun.



Really? I could have sworn that was the reason that there were so many people using streaks. Commandos have been paperweights since they were introduced, now we know why. It's still not a really big deal since it seemingly affects two, maybe three chassis, the Commando and Raven and the Spider. To that I say Yippee Ki Yay! I won't shed a tear.

I get where you are coming from, but really lets not get overly dramatic. There are a few things in this game that suck the enjoyment out of it. Being able to kill a light mech sure ain't one of them. Run a bigger mech and you will not see the splash damage bug.

Reduced effect from the bug can not be classified as "not see the splash damage bug."

Just because it affects the small mechs the most, doesn't mean it doesn't affect the larger mechs. For instance if your CT is almost cored, and you present your right side, and all the missiles hit your right arm, but you take splash damage (in addition to the damage that hit your arm) that kills you, you're a victim of the bugged state of things.

If splash damage is fixed so that the missile does damage at the hit location, and damage to a radius (I kinda hope they don't do it this way, personally), then the previous scenario would be just how the game is supposed to operate. But for right now, it's not.

[WardenWolf]

Gen Kumon, on 15 March 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

The Atlas, on the other hand, seems to take only 1,6 damage per missile, at least if shot in certain locations.

Overall, it's a massive, gamebreaking bug that seems to effect 95% of all mechs to some degree.

I can offer some anecdotal agreement with this, given that I almost always pilot Atlases. I have noticed that sometimes a Splat-Cat (6 x SRM6, for those not familiar with the 'affectionate' name) absolutely tear me to shreds, and other times that I am able to take a remarkable number of volleys from them. I figured it was due to missile spread being odd, and I am sure that is a factor, but splash damage affecting me more or less based on where the missiles hit also goes a long way toward explaining this phenomenon. I am eagerly awaiting the first April patch...

[Jman5]

Hey Paul,

First off, I really appreciate the quick response and transparency. It's one of your companies biggest strengths in my mind. However, is it really too much to ask that we get splash damaged removed by Tuesday? This is a game breaking problem for many of the mechs out there and I believe it's severely distorting the meta-game.

Is it not a matter of simply going into the database and setting splash damage and radius to 0?

[stjobe]

Jman5, on 15 March 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

Is it not a matter of simply going into the database and setting splash damage and radius to 0?

If it was, don't you think they'd just do it?

See my post a page or two back for a bit more realistic explanation of why they might need two and a half weeks to do it.

Or at least look at the top of this page for a reason they can't make it happen by Tuesday.

Edited by stjobe, 15 March 2013 - 02:14 PM.

[Thuraash]

Fantastically written report, OP. Everyone, take notes! This here is a master class in how to effectively gripe.

Paul, thanks for the update. I don't know about some of these impatient knuckleheads, but I'm happy you lot are acting on this issue this quickly.

I hope that when you re-implement splash damage, you make it such that the damage doesn't multiply across several areas, but rather just divides itself based on what percentage of its explosion hit a particular part, ignoring open space. By that I mean that if the missile does 2.5 damage and of the volume of explosion that hit the enemy, 60% hit CT and 40% hit LT, then the CT would suffer 1.5 points of damage, and the LT would suffer 1 point of damage. I don't know how feasible that would be in this engine, but that's how I think this should work, ideally.

[Monky]

Jman5, on 15 March 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

Hey Paul,

First off, I really appreciate the quick response and transparency. It's one of your companies biggest strengths in my mind. However, is it really too much to ask that we get splash damaged removed by Tuesday? This is a game breaking problem for many of the mechs out there and I believe it's severely distorting the meta-game.

Is it not a matter of simply going into the database and setting splash damage and radius to 0?

Even doing that, they have to test it and vet it before pushing it to live - no professional software developer anywhere pushes 100% untested code/functions. On top of this, it pretty much mandates re-balancing before it can go live or else the general forums will end up in a **** storm as per usual 'Y U BRAKE MY LRM BOTE' style posts. Something of the scope of affecting an -entire- branch of weaponry and how they deal damage isn't as simple as just turn x part off.

[codynyc]

bah ...

Edited by codynyc, 15 March 2013 - 03:05 PM.

[Scop]

Thontor, on 15 March 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Torso internals are half maximum armor as well. Easiest way to see what maximum armor is to go to Smurfy's online mechlab and select the maximum armor tool. Remember torso max armor is front and rear combined.

There's also a simple formula to determine total internal structure hit points, thanks to Amaris in the original post.

[Internal Structure] = (([Max Armor] - 18) / 2) + 15

Smurfy's is awesome, for sure, and the formula seems to work for determining total internals. But combining front and rear, then halving ([torso front max + torso rear max] / 2) in the COM's case doesn't seem to add up. Reference the debug from Paul's screenshot, below.



According to this, a COM's CT health is 16, and each side-torso has 12.

According to Smurfy the CT front max armor is 24 front and 16 rear, and each side can have 18 front, 12 rear.

(24 + 16) / 2 = 20 =/= 16
(18 + 12) /2 = 15 =/= 12

Hence my trouble. Yet arithmetic-ing up the health values from the screenshot gives a sum of 95, which also equals our internal health formula, ([178] - 18) / 2 + 15, where 178 is the maximum armor for the chassis.

[Scop]

Thontor, on 15 March 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

COM-1B max armor

Center = (22+10)/2 = 16
Side = (16+8)/2 = 12

Found my mistake. When the stock armor is loaded, COM-1B stock, it displays a different ratio, 16/24 and 8/16 for the center. That makes it look like maximum damage overall for the front and back is 40. So there we go, I'll be sure to pay attention to that in future.

[Fiachdubh]

Wow, that is impressive work. Well done.

You are still a ******* for destroying the Terran Hegemony.

[Mister Blastman]

Astroniomix, on 15 March 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Nothing is ever that simple. Especially something that involves altering how missiles do their damage.

You've never looked at the files, have you?...

[Haitchpeasauce]

Sure I'd like the splash damage removed for this Tuesday, and as a programmer I'm pretty sure it's actually as simple as a setting of splash radius or splash damage value, but two things:

The Tuesday release would have been readied and queued this whole time. We have a new mech and new map coming. It might be a big setback to change something so close to release.

Also, removing splash is going to expose another problem: intermittant SRM non-register issues. I've noticed this as have many others. Removing splash will break SRM even more in the current state, causing yet another outrage on the forums. Let's just hope they fix the non-registering issue before removing splash.

[Haitchpeasauce]

The oddest thing about MWO and BT is that something the size of an Atlas that weighs 100 tons will probably float on water.

I suppose that's why they're called boats!

[Monky]

Haitchpeasauce, on 15 March 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

Sure I'd like the splash damage removed for this Tuesday, and as a programmer I'm pretty sure it's actually as simple as a setting of splash radius or splash damage value, but two things:

The Tuesday release would have been readied and queued this whole time. We have a new mech and new map coming. It might be a big setback to change something so close to release.

Also, removing splash is going to expose another problem: intermittant SRM non-register issues. I've noticed this as have many others. Removing splash will break SRM even more in the current state, causing yet another outrage on the forums. Let's just hope they fix the non-registering issue before removing splash.

From what i've seen in live, non registering affects pretty much all weapons. lasers seem to be far deadlier chainfired compared to group fired (at least, more than 2 lasers need to be chained to get the actual damage). It's like the server isn't capable of parsing that many functions in that short an amount of time and making it add up right. The same might be occuring on any given weapon hit and it might just be lost somewhere due to a completely different bug.