673 replies to this topic

[Vermaxx]

OneEyed Jack, on 21 March 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

Again, I haven't tried it, but doing more damage to smaller targets doesn't seem like a balanced mechanic... no matter how much I want to squash them.

I would assume the missiles are smart enough to 'splash' the same hit location if there is nothing else nearby. Although with a spread distance of 1.8 meters, I suspect there's very few mechs where missile hits do not hit another component.

Only time will tell if this causes "more damage" to lights over larger mechs. If it does, they'll work on a new solution. That is the bonus of the fact that they are working on the game still, rather than calling it done and letting it generate profits til it flops.

[Chrithu]

Barnaby Jones, on 21 March 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

So instead of reverting the change they made in the last patch and then taking their time to find the right balance, they have instead given us a rush job, bandaid that we can't calculate the fix, we just have to "Feel it" to know its fixed. How homeopathic... and we all know how homeopathic medicine is ultra effective.

sounds real professional to me.

Let's see your fix.

Talking's allways so easy.

The flight path change was done because missiles were flying in strange sinus curves leading to them grouping tightly together at certain reproducible distances. This is why most people tried to fire SRMs from a distance of about 140m because then they all were basically in the samme place and would all hit the target on more or less the same location thus maximizing the damage.

That the grouping of especially LRMs in the new path was too close was already visible right afterwards but taking a step back does not seem smart to me. They rather should do what they are planing: Take the flight paths and further adjust them that's what you do as a professional.

The only other thing they did was fixx damage to legs from Missiles. Reverting that would not have been a true fix either.

So yeah: Quickly bandaiding the current problem to have a system that feels like working so they have the time to properly fix everything without us stopping to play is the best thing they could do.

Edited by Jason Parker, 21 March 2013 - 04:16 PM.

[Ransack]

Ouch!

Catapults will stay in the box. LRM's were OP yes, but damn, two nerfs in a week in a week made them cough up huge hairballs.
(for the record, I did not participate in the exploitation of LRM's. I went out, pew pew'ed and died like the rest of you)

Edited by Ransack, 21 March 2013 - 04:17 PM.

[Barnaby Jones]

Thontor, on 21 March 2013 - 04:11 PM, said:

Missiles were just as broken before the patch. Additional Splash damage was ridiculous. And inconsistent across different mechs. The patch just fixed an issue with the legs not taking as much damage as they should have been... Making the core issue of the additional splash damage even more apparent.

SRMS were the main issue prior to the tuesday patch. LRMS werent doing enough dmg to legs prepatch, and the resulting "Fix" to that in the patch was to make CT and leg focused LRMS, that started having the same issue as SRMS splash BECAUSE they changed the clustering of lrms.

[glunkr]

Feels much better to me. I'm happy so far.

[Alex Novian]

<HUGS>

and bump, thank you kind Sir.

[Barnaby Jones]

Jason Parker, on 21 March 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

Let's see your fix.

Talking's allways so easy.

The flight path change was done because missiles were flying in strange sinus curves leading to them grouping tightly together at certain reproducible distances. This is why most people tried to fire SRMs from a distance of about 140m because then they all were basically in the samme place and would all hit the target on more or less the same location thus maximizing the damage.

That the grouping of especially LRMs in the new path was too close was already visible right afterwards but taking a step back does not seem smart to me. They rather should do what they are planing: Take the flight paths and further adjust them that's what you do as a professional.

The only other thing they did was fixx damage to legs from Missiles. Reverting that would not have been a true fix either.

So yeah: Quickly bandaiding the current problem to have a system that feels like working so they have the time to properly fix everything without us stopping to play is the best thing they could do.

The problem with bandaids is that they never seem to get fixed.... they just keep stacking up until an old bandaid fix becomes the new problem... this is already the case with a number of issues in this game.

edit: and your reproducable distances thing on srms was by design, its called artemis. it groups at 135 and 270. without arty they do not do that.

Edited by Barnaby Jones, 21 March 2013 - 04:22 PM.

[Bettysue]

Paul Inouye, on 21 March 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

It is at these levels that missile combat falls back to a level that we AND the community felt was right for a long period of time before the badness appeared. I'm going to ask you to help us test these values by FEEL. Not by playing SpreadsheetWarrior.

Okay insert “is this math you do as a xxx, to make yourself feel better” joke.

Edited by Bettysue, 21 March 2013 - 04:23 PM.

[Oy of MidWorld]

This sounds great. If it works, just keep it?

Edited by Oy of MidWorld, 21 March 2013 - 04:24 PM.

[Ph30nix]

as far as missle grouping why not have them each target a random part on enemy mech?

20 missles fire each one gets a random component to focus on.

[Barnaby Jones]

Jetfire, on 21 March 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

You don't "revert" a bug fix, you move forward.

Remind me what they did they day they implemented phase three MM (ELO) with respect to 8 man groups? I seem to recall a 4 hour turn around before they reverted to the previous code so they could take their time and fix the problem.

[shabowie]

Barnaby Jones, on 21 March 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

edit: and your reproducable distances thing on srms was by design, its called artemis. it groups at 135 and 270. without arty they do not do that.

No non art SRMs converged at those distances as well.

Edited by shabowie, 21 March 2013 - 04:28 PM.

[Coolant]

Missiles "feel" right. Went against a Stalker with 2 LRM15's and took 4 salvos and my CT was stripped of armor and red, but I was still alive

[BlueSanta]

Paul Inouye, on 21 March 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

But Paul, you said you'd REMOVE splash damage!!!!
I know I did, but here's the kicker and yet another part of the mystery of missile damage. We tried removing splash damage and it did exactly what you think it was going to do. Pinpoint on target damage. Cool right? Yes... but...

Doing this exposed a problem with the grouping/clustering of missiles. We now have a high percentage of any incoming missile targeting the CT. This is BAD.

Now our primary concern as to what is happening on the live servers is to curtail the incredibly high damage levels of missiles/explosions. To make the missile explosions/damage feel like they should and to keep the damage spread across a Mech, we kept the above mentioned splash damage work along with the following damage changes to missiles:

LRMs drop from 1.8 damage per missile to 0.7 damage per missile.
SRMs drop from 2.5 damage per missile to 1.5 damage per missile.

Is this grouping with or without Artemis, because obviously Artemis is supposed to give missiles a tighter grouping; you should be able to concentrate SRM4s on the CT, for instance. However, we have noticed since the Artemis improvement patch at the beginning of this month that LRMs with Artemis were concentrating on the CT in addition to the tighter grouping.

I personally believe that you still need to decide between AP and HE warheads. A missile user shouldn't have the best of both worlds. However, maybe this balance in terms of base damage + splash will at least be a working compromise.

[DirePhoenix]

Paul Inouye, on 21 March 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

(Note: I'm going to use the term 'secondary component' below but you can read it as 'a component that did not get hit directly but is taking splash damage')

You guys need to stop calling these things "components" and start calling them what they are: Hit Locations. It's a lot less confusing to everyone that way. "Components" should refer to the items inside the Hit Locations.

Also, thanks for explaining why you're not doing EXACTLY what you've said previously. Hopefully it might cut down on the "OMG Y U LIEEEEE!!!" (although I won't hold my breath).

[Commander Kobold]

Ransack, on 21 March 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:

Ouch!

Catapults will stay in the box. LRM's were OP yes, but damn, two nerfs in a week in a week made them cough up huge hairballs.
(for the record, I did not participate in the exploitation of LRM's. I went out, pew pew'ed and died like the rest of you)

it wouldn't be soo bad if they nerfed ECM by removing missile immunity

[Solis Obscuri]

I think the point of the splash increase was meant to spread more damage away from the CT into the arms, legs, and side torsos. But something went wrong and instead of doing less damage to more places, it did more damage everywhere.

[Buffalo Six]

Paul,

1st off thanks for the hot fix, it was sorely needed.

2nd, Something Ive always wondered about. Is there any randomness to the way missiles hit?

What I mean is, in TT, say my longbow wants to slug off 20 LRMs at a target. I declare my attack, account for any range, speed, terrain, and pilot modifiers and make my roll. Dice say I connected.

Now here is where I am fuzzy with how MWO works. Again in TT, I roll for Number of hits, then Placement of hits. From what I read in your post it seems LRMs are basically targeted to center of mass (CT) and spend splash damage outward of that point? Shouldnt there be more randomness to the hits? Its been a few years but in my entire time on the TT, including a few games in the Grand Council at GenCon, I have never seen a full shot of LRMs hit, mostly about 70% or so connect.

Yes I know this is a live fire situation but.........was just wondering

[Divine Decoy]

Ph30nix, on 21 March 2013 - 04:24 PM, said:

as far as missle grouping why not have them each target a random part on enemy mech?

20 missles fire each one gets a random component to focus on.

PERFECT SUGGESTION!!! Something like this for LRMs would be great, they are what.... heat guided. The hotter a mech is the more dispersed their damage should be, random selection with old damage make them "soften uppers" that they should be. LRMs should be like artiliary, plenty of damage but not specific spot damage. I bet if you pull the stats, less ten half of LRMs hit anyway, their hit % must be close to that of the TAG laser (close to ZERO) even in the best load outs/mechs.....

SRMS should group close to where they were aimed. So you can aim at the legs and hit both. Aim at the CT and hit the 2 side torsos, aim at the arm (and may get lucky to hit something cuz that's hard)

[Ph30nix]

Divine Decoy, on 21 March 2013 - 04:34 PM, said:

PERFECT SUGGESTION!!! Something like this for LRMs would be great, they are what.... heat guided. The hotter a mech is the more dispersed their damage should be, random selection with old damage make them "soften uppers" that they should be. LRMs should be like artiliary, plenty of damage but not specific spot damage. I bet if you pull the stats, less ten half of LRMs hit anyway, their hit % must be close to that of the TAG laser (close to ZERO) even in the best load outs/mechs.....

SRMS should group close to where they were aimed. So you can aim at the legs and hit both. Aim at the CT and hit the 2 side torsos, aim at the arm (and may get lucky to hit something cuz that's hard)

yep and eventualy they can add in a module to allow more directed Missle targeting so say 1/2 of your missles target what you want