647 replies to this topic

[Vassago Rain]

This explains a lot of things.

[Allen Ward]

Basically splash damage would not be a problem, explosives are area of effect weapons, and it just depends on the radius they affect if any other parts are hit sort of indirectly. But considering the size of mechs and their hit boxes or body parts, it is pretty awkward to give missiles such a huge aoe effect. especially in BT where weapons are mediocre at best when it comes to technical evolution (the missile systems they use are a lot inferior to missile systems available today).

So I think we don't need splash damage from missiles at all. maybe the upcoming airstrikes should have it, if they are something like cruise missiles or heavy bombs/shells with a large aoe. then, several mechs close together could be hit by one strike or it'sw splash damage...

A missile in MWO should do the damage stated, not more, not less. And this damage should be applied to the body part hit only. We do have enough "splash" through the spread of unguided or semi-guided missiles already.

I wonder how long this effect has been in place... it should have been found out when Streak-Cats were dominating...

It seems that splash damage is counted in your weapon stats, too. Otherwise I can't explain why LRMs did different damage between fired from LRM10, LRM15 and LRM20 launchers...

[Solis Obscuri]

arghmace, on 15 March 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

Marvellous research by OP.

Raven hit locations are very compact so this explains why I seem to explode right away in my 2X or 4X when encountering ECM-Streak lights.

Which probably explains why most direct-fire weapons I use against Ravens spread damage and take forever to kill them...

[HRR Insanity]

Paul Inouye, on 15 March 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

Just an update. We will be removing splash damage until further tuning can be done that takes into account the new Mechs and their respective hit boxes. The splash damage will be removed in the April 2nd patch.

Don't 'tune it'. Keep it out. It's only going to cause more problems in the future.

[PapajIGC]

I keep seeing people in this thread screaming at PGI to "think about game balance" or "you're going to need to buff missiles for them to remain viable as they are now". I have one question for you individuals - ARE YOU EFFING DUMB? The state of the game as it is now is because missiles are doing way more damage than they should..or in some cases less..anywhere from 80% to 500% normal damage. If the Gauss rifle did say....30 damage or the AC/20 did say....40 damage, would you same people crying "think about balance before removing splash" still utter those words if a single AC/20 shot could cockpit you? Mind you, those figures would only be double damage much less 3-5 times normal damage like missiles seem to be consistently doing. If you answered anything but no to the above question, there is no helping you and I wonder how you manage to get dressed and walk across the street in the morning without getting hit by a bus.

If a weapon says it deals 2.5 damage, it should do 2.5 damage, not 2.0 or 4.1 or heaven forbid 12.9 damage like it sometimes is. If you think anything other than that is acceptable, I encourage you to think about what your response would be if I could take my Muromets and pop 2 Gauss that did 30-75 damage a piece into your mech. Would you still be thinking 'balance' then?

Edited by PapajIGC, 17 March 2013 - 01:46 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Yup. I, for one, welcome the notion of missiles only doing their listed damage, not some random amount. Even if they were changed to do their listed damage divided between hit locations via splash so they still did their listed damage in total, I'd argue we are better off simply without splash.

SRM's and LRM's fire in groups, and even with Artemis will already hit multiple locations in a volley. That's good enough.

[Mawai]

Wow ... awesome work and kudos to the original author.

Many people have been complaining that SSRM/LRMs and SRMs were not balanced. These numbers clearly identify the issues involved ... which have been hidden by the effects of ECM.

It is really nice to see this type of detailed testing work being done by the community but it really does beg the question why PGI does not have the resources to do this basic type of testing internally ... i.e. Do weapons do the expected amount of damage?

As for splash damage itself ... I think a missile should do a fixed amount of damage and if desired that damage could be distributed over an area ... but there is no way that a missile should do up to 500% more damage when hitting multiple sections or 50% less damage when just hitting an extremity. The model chosen for missile damage by including a semi-random amount of additional splash damage both doesn't make much sense and is very difficult to balance. Most of the missile damage should be distributed near the impact point ... if that impact point is on the torso then some damage could be distributed to adjacent sections as a result of an area of effect ... but the total damage inflicted should remain constant whether the missile hits an Atlas or a Commando.

Edited by Mawai, 17 March 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[Spirit of the Wolf]

...Wow.

Uh...
damn.


This explains a lot. And thank God PGI is taking out splash until it's fixed.

[Haitchpeasauce]

Anybody notice in Paul's post that his 3L Raven shoots the Commando, but not the other way around?

I'm really interested to see some dev testing results on Raven hitboxes.

[PapajIGC]

Haitchpeasauce, on 17 March 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

I'm really interested to see some dev testing results on Raven hitboxes.

They're an urban legend. Some say if the Raven sits really still then you can see them gloriously. But what Raven sits still, they all go zoom zoom at 130kph+

[Nightcrept]

PapajIGC, on 17 March 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

I keep seeing people in this thread screaming at PGI to "think about game balance" or "you're going to need to buff missiles for them to remain viable as they are now". I have one question for you individuals - ARE YOU EFFING DUMB? The state of the game as it is now is because missiles are doing way more damage than they should..or in some cases less..anywhere from 80% to 500% normal damage. If the Gauss rifle did say....30 damage or the AC/20 did say....40 damage, would you same people crying "think about balance before removing splash" still utter those words if a single AC/20 shot could cockpit you? Mind you, those figures would only be double damage much less 3-5 times normal damage like missiles seem to be consistently doing. If you answered anything but no to the above question, there is no helping you and I wonder how you manage to get dressed and walk across the street in the morning without getting hit by a bus.

If a weapon says it deals 2.5 damage, it should do 2.5 damage, not 2.0 or 4.1 or heaven forbid 12.9 damage like it sometimes is. If you think anything other than that is acceptable, I encourage you to think about what your response would be if I could take my Muromets and pop 2 Gauss that did 30-75 damage a piece into your mech. Would you still be thinking 'balance' then?

I'll bite.

I think most of the weapons (effects) in game are balanced. I don't find missiles other then ssrms op.

So removing according to the math up to 3/4th's their damage in some cases is a serious problem. No one will use them.
Now that is always fine with some who crave their specific play styles. But I crave all around balance.

The mechanic should be fixed but missiles do not need a 3/4th's nerf to their effectiveness in game. My personal opinion is that you must be nuts if you think they are that op. No weapon has ever been that op.

So if I am sooooo wrong then you explain to me how you think that missiles are soo op that they require to lose a third of their damage.

[Haitchpeasauce]

Legend? Read this http://mwomercs.com/...e-test-results/

Also look at articles discussing the Raven hitbox design.

Like this one http://mwomercs.com/...x-localisation/

Then make the thing run at 150kph with its bobbing motion.

[PapajIGC]

Because they're supposed to do 2.5 damage per missile, not 1.9 to 12.9. I don't even know why I'm bothering to respond to a known troll such as yourself. Fixing the mechanic inherently nerfs their effectiveness...an effectiveness which is undeserving because they do more damage than they are supposed to in the current form. Again I ask you, if my Gauss Rifle is supposed to do 15 damage, and for whatever idiotic screw up in the programming/coding it sometimes deals 45 or 75 damage, are you going to defend that the excess damage shouldn't be removed because they are no longer as effective? Of course you would, because you're a stupid troll.

Edited by PapajIGC, 17 March 2013 - 06:42 PM.

[Nightcrept]

PapajIGC, on 17 March 2013 - 06:40 PM, said:

Because they're supposed to do 2.5 damage per missile, not 1.9 to 12.9. I don't even know why I'm bothering to respond to a known troll such as yourself. Fixing the mechanic inherently nerfs their effectiveness...an effectiveness which is undeserving because they do more damage than they are supposed to in the current form. Again I ask you, if my Gauss Rifle is supposed to do 15 damage, and for whatever idiotic screw up in the programming/coding it sometimes deals 45 or 75 damage, are you going to defend that the excess damage shouldn't be removed because they are no longer as effective? Of course you would, because you're a stupid troll.

Personal insults?

Generally, people say it's the last resort of a weak mind.

They are not supposed to do 2.5 per missile. Devs have said that splash damage was intended to cause more damage then that.
Fixing the mechanic should not inherently nerf the missiles. It should bring them back to dealing a balanced damage arch across all mechs.
Currently what we are doing though is removing the mechanic when it's in game effect has been balanced against for six months.
It will create a needless amount further harm to the community. Far better to leave it in place like it has been and then replace it with the fixed mechanic.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Nightcrept, on 17 March 2013 - 06:26 PM, said:

... So if I am sooooo wrong then you explain to me how you think that missiles are soo op that they require to lose a third of their damage. ...

If they were just OP, it would be a different discussion (search for them ... there's plenty).

The way they apply missile damage is inconsistent ... missiles are affecting different mechs in different ways ... if the listed damage is 1.8 or 2.5 per missile, they should do 1.8 or 2.5 per missile.

You can try it out yourself in the Testing Grounds and duplicate the results found here ... in general ... newer, smaller mechs take greater amounts of damage per missile than they should.

Edit: added this bit ...

Nightcrept, on 17 March 2013 - 07:00 PM, said:

... They are not supposed to do 2.5 per missile. Devs have said that splash damage was intended to cause more damage then that. ...

Source?

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 17 March 2013 - 07:10 PM.

[Nightcrept]

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 17 March 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

If they were just OP, it would be a different discussion (search for them ... there's plenty).

The way they apply missile damage is inconsistent ... missiles are affecting different mechs in different ways ... if the listed damage is 1.8 or 2.5 per missile, they should do 1.8 or 2.5 per missile.

You can try it out yourself in the Testing Grounds and duplicate the results found here ... in general ... newer, smaller mechs take greater amounts of damage per missile than they should.

No I agree that the mechanic needs fixed. The splash damage should cause the same damage to all mechs and it should be a known amount.
But removing it before fixing it is going to cause a rush of crying on the forums from players who don't read the forums usually.
Most players do not read the forums. We all know this.
In game these missiles are not op in effect to most players. So to most players the missiles are just all of a sudden going to be nerfed to hell.
Considering how upset many players have been getting with pgi over other issues do you really think causing this big of a cry fest is a good idea?
All of us on the forums understand the issue and can wait patiently for the fix without having to throw the game into a spin can't we?

[PapajIGC]

Nightcrept, on 17 March 2013 - 07:00 PM, said:

Devs have said that splash damage was intended to cause more damage then that.

And a Dev also said they are still doing way more damage than intended, even after factoring in the extra damage past 2.5 they are supposed to 'splash'. Let me just refresh your memory - I'll even bold, underline, and blow up the sentence that he mentions it so you can find it quicker.

Paul Inouye, on 14 March 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

Interesting and very thorough testing by the OP and many kudos for the in-depth write-up.
This problem has 2 levels.

First is that Testing Grounds has quite a few issues when reporting damage and the numbers you're seeing are inflated quite a bit (almost double). We will be addressing this bug and others as Testing Grounds matures over time.

Second, this does NOT eliminate the findings that S-SRMs AND SRMs are doing more damage than intended. This is not due to some top secret, behind your back weapon balancing. It has to do with splash damage, how it was first implemented and the new smaller Mechs coming out.



Here is one of the scenarios described and I've turned on the debug tools to let us see exactly what is going on in terms of hits and damage being done.

The Raven 3L has just fired 1 volley of 2 x S-SRM2 at the Commando 1B. As you can see, the amount of damage done to the Commando does not make sense. There is a total of 51.5 armor being stripped off the Commando. We've been able to reproduce this repeatedly and we're getting an average damage of 12.9 per missile. Quite a bit higher than the intended 2.5 damage per missile plus splash damage.

So what has happened to cause this? Smaller Mechs and more complex geometry than what was available when the splash damage system first went into the game. When SRM splash damage went into the game, there were a total of 4 Mechs available to the playerbase. The Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult and the Atlas. These 4 Mechs have very unique targeting silhouettes and were used to calculate the radius of splash damage per missile. Now what has happened is that the splash damage across smaller Mechs or Mechs with more complex/tighter component positioning are getting hit with more splash damage than intended.

In the image below, you can see how much overlap the damage done to the Commando has and how that it is taking significantly more splash damage than it should.



We are looking at the tuning for these hit locations/splash damage and will update as soon as possible.

Guess what happens when you can't fix/balance a mechanic properly in a reasonable amount of time, you remove it so you can acheive some semblance of balance and go from there. There is nothing balanced about a weapon that is supposed to do 2.5 damage that is doing 12.9 under any circumstance regardless of borked mechanics surrounding it are.

Edited by PapajIGC, 17 March 2013 - 07:26 PM.

[Lonestar1771]

I thought you were supposed to ADD features to betas, not remove them? PGI doing what they do best.

[Nightcrept]

PapajIGC, on 17 March 2013 - 07:18 PM, said:

And a Dev also said they are still doing way more damage than intended, even after factoring in the extra damage past 2.5 they are supposed to 'splash'. Let me just refresh your memory - I'll even bold, underline, and blow up the sentence that he mentions it so you can find it quicker.



Guess what happens when you can't fix/balance a mechanic properly in a reasonable amount of time, you remove it so you can acheive some semblance of balance and go from there.

I agree.

But in this case we are dealing with a damaged mechanic that isn't doing as much harm in the actual game as the outright removal without a replacement will do. AT least in my opinion.
I'm guessing srms were intended to do say 2.5 plus .5-1 splash damage.

However, they have apparently been doing far more for a very long time. We have balanced all new mechs and the other weapons systems against this broken mechanic. This reduces the actual in game effect of the broken mechanic but leads to the system as a whole being improperly balanced.

The devs say they are going to rework splash damage and then add it back. Correct?

If so then why create the added head ache of removing what we have gotten used to playing with for 6 months. Instead wait until you have fixed it and then patch it in. That will lessen the impact on the servers to the player population and save customers.

If they are not going to replace splash damage with a reworked version then by all means lets pull the band aid and get on with the re balancing. In that case my point was that the whole game was balanced against the broken weapons and we would need to re-examine everything.

Edited by Nightcrept, 17 March 2013 - 07:30 PM.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Nightcrept, on 17 March 2013 - 07:12 PM, said:

... The splash damage should cause the same damage to all mechs and it should be a known amount. ...

That, we clearly agree on.

Quote

... But removing it before fixing it is going to cause a rush of crying on the forums from players who don't read the forums usually.
Most players do not read the forums. We all know this. ...

If not this, then something else ...

These two statements seem contradictory to me:

Quote

... In game these missiles are not op in effect to most players. So to most players the missiles are just all of a sudden going to be nerfed to hell. ...

If they are not OP to most players (assuming light pilots are not "most players"), then how are they "nerfed to hell" to "most players" (assuming that "most players" don't use missiles mostly against light mechs).

So a small slice of the community getting crushed by missiles is OK, but a wide swath of the community having one weapon system tweaked for balance in certain situations is not?

This is one of those rare occasions when I think "it is Beta" is a somewhat appropriate response ... they are still making major changes to the game, whether that's adding new content or making major balance tweaks.

Maybe you're right that splash damage was supposed to be in addition to impact damage ... if so, then while they fix splash damage, maybe buff impact damage slightly ...