378 replies to this topic

[Royalewithcheese]

TOGSolid, on 14 April 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Generally twitch games have no degradation due to their high speed nature while slower, more tactical games that emphasize positioning tend to include degradation in order to force players to think harder about their action.

I don't personally think of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Mass Effect, or Halo: Reach as "slower, more tactical games." I don't think variable spread is necessarily bad for a game (it doesn't fit in a Mechwarrior game, but that's a different story) - but we can clearly see by looking at actual twitch shooters that spread doesn't make a game not a twitch shooter.

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 14 April 2013 - 01:03 PM.

[cyberFluke]

FrostCollar, on 14 April 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

I'm afraid of a fundamental change of MWO that will distort everything else in a way that I see as ultimately deleterious to the game. When I explain what MWO's about to other people mobile combat and a fluid battlefield and fundamental parts of that explanation. No matter how it is implemented, any inaccuracy added to weapons when mechs are moving will harm that. You're making aiming at specific parts of enemies, the core gameplay mechanic in the game, harder.

It's a well outlined idea and you're being very reasonable about this, but I'm against the idea in general. Taking away accurate shooting on the move takes away something unique about Mechwarrior games and I don't think that's worth it.

You're right, I do indeed want to make the core tenet of stripping away one section of a Mech away much more difficult. This was supposed to be a hallmark of the most *elite* pilots, not a common feat performed 80% of the time by a halfway competent player.

I'm not trying to take away shooting on the move, just to make it a weighed decision, with advantages and disadvantages, and alternatives.

[TruePoindexter]

Targetloc, on 14 April 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

Maybe it should be harder. Seems kind of trivial right now.

Might also add that the core of the original game was positioning. Aiming at specific parts was only available with targeting computers.

It's trivial at close range right now seeing as a giant mech is well, giant. Precision fire at range is another matter. See my prior post: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2237383

[cyberFluke]

TruePoindexter, on 14 April 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

It's trivial at close range right now seeing as a giant mech is well, giant. Precision fire at range is another matter. See my prior post: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2237383

And you generally take precision shots at range while running at full tilt at full heat load do you?

[TruePoindexter]

cyberFluke, on 14 April 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

And you generally take precision shots at range while running at full tilt at full heat load do you?

Yes and no - I take shots when it makes sense to take a shot. I aim generally at weaker points on an enemy but sometimes it's not practical. Other times I can leisurely blast out a cockpit. You can't make general comments about the game without considering it in its entirety.

Edited by TruePoindexter, 14 April 2013 - 01:08 PM.

[cyberFluke]

TruePoindexter, on 14 April 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Yes and no - I take shots when it makes sense to take a shot. I aim generally at weaker points on an enemy but sometimes it's not practical. Other times I can leisurely blast out a cockpit. You can't make general comments about the game without considering it in its entirety.

You work in PR or politics right?

[TruePoindexter]

cyberFluke, on 14 April 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

You work in PR or politics right?

No. Unless those also involve software engineering. If that is the case consider this my candidacy for Governor of MWO.

[cyberFluke]

TruePoindexter, on 14 April 2013 - 01:11 PM, said:

No. Unless those also involve software engineering. If that is the case consider this my candidacy for Governor of MWO.

I actually laughed out loud, well played fella

But seriously, what I'm after, what I want from this, is a more mechwarrior feeling game. At the minute the aiming is far to simplistic. I was just playing a match on tourmaline with the CBS guys, and saying exactly this just now. As if to prove the point, I just jumped into the air on a whim (twin ERPPC CAT-C1) and walloped a random raven that was running around about 1.2km away, simple shot, like it was nothing. I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, I'm trying to say it was instinct, devoid of thought, effort or challenge, and this is true for most people I talk to on TS.

Edited by cyberFluke, 14 April 2013 - 01:18 PM.

[Targetloc]

TruePoindexter, on 14 April 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

First off - why is having good aim not considered skillful? It's easy to land shots on slow or still targets in this game. Hitting a reasonably fast moving target (64.8kph+) at 800m with PPCs/Gauss takes practice in understanding the weapon's projectile velocity, the direction of travel of the target, the velocity of the target, anticipating any maneuvers the target will make, compensating for your own movement, and finally compensating for the parallax error due to your weapons not firing from your camera. To me that is the very definition of skill with regards to shooting. Why is this considered a bad thing?

Moving on there are other techniques that skilled players employ and novice players do not past just shooting.

• A skilled player understands the layout of the map. They know where the typical enemy movements will be and how to counter them. They know where the choke points are and where the good vantage points are. This lets them stay in the optimal positions and avoid vulnerable ones.
  
• Skilled players understand the games damage model and exploit it by distributing damage across their mechs. They survive under tremendous levels of firepower where novices fold under the fire of just a single mech.
  
• Skilled players coordinate with their team understanding how focused fire and attacks from multiple vectors are tremendously powerful in combat. They use this to overwhelm even the strongest opponents quickly with little to no reprisal.
  
• Skilled players understand the advantages and disadvantages of their own mech and work to play towards their strengths while taking every possible measure to avoid their own weaknesses.

Monkeying with the shooting aspects of the game does nothing to address these other parts still leaving a skilled player with a tremendous advantage over the novice. All you would do is making long range precision fire more difficult which if you just had an understanding of those other aspects of play would not be an issue.

Reducing weapon precision would put more emphasis on those awareness and positioning skills, and less emphasis on 2-shot sniping CTs, which I wouldn't consider a bad thing.

I love dropping mechs from halfway across the map, or winning 2v1's (and the occasional 3v1) with smart application of high-alpha hit and run, but maybe it's not the best focus for a team mech game.

[cyberFluke]

Targetloc, on 14 April 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

Reducing weapon precision would put more emphasis on those awareness and positioning skills, and less emphasis on 2-shot sniping CTs, which I wouldn't consider a bad thing.

I love dropping mechs from halfway across the map, or winning 2v1's (and the occasional 3v1) with smart application of high-alpha hit and run, but maybe it's not the best focus for a team mech game.

This.

<3

[Elkarlo]

Another Suggestion for Volley Fire:

First Weapon would hit were it is intended,
Second Weapon has a spread based on the first Weapon,
Third Weapon has a Spread based on the second Weapon,
etc.

Spread reset after 1 Second Cooldown.
So you would need to group your Weapons into smaller pair or Double Chainfire Groups.

This would eliminate Poptard Mechs, and Pinpoint PPC Mechs.
I won't reduce their Effectivness in able Hands. ( 4 PPC Stalker could fire in pairs and hit again)

So one Weapon would hit, second would only be slightly off, and third would be more off etc.

Clan Mechs would have reduced spread, thanks to the (hopefully installed) Targeting Computer.

Edited by Elkarlo, 14 April 2013 - 01:23 PM.

[Erasus Magnus]

Taemien, on 14 April 2013 - 04:32 AM, said:

The way to deal with boats isn't to nerf them, or add randomness to the game, but to counter them. All boats have glaring weaknesses that can be exploited. This is the reason I do not use them. I don't need to launch into a random game and then get hard countered because my arms got shot off or someone got within a minimum range or stayed at maximum range.

I wouldn't mind seeing more punishment to those who ride the heat levels such as MW3 did with the HUD scrambling and such. But not adding any randomness.

qft.

make the heat "dial" the game breaker for those laser/ppc stalker.

they should èsplode when going into 150% heat nirvana, or the pilot should cook off.
or the fusion core melt.

[TOGSolid]

Royalewithcheese, on 14 April 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

I don't personally think of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Mass Effect, or Halo: Reach as "slower, more tactical games." I don't think variable spread is necessarily bad for a game (it doesn't fit in a Mechwarrior game, but that's a different story) - but we can clearly see by looking at actual twitch shooters that spread doesn't make a game not a twitch shooter.

**** those games. I was thinking Counter-strike, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Arma and other games like that. CoD is just a giant spray and pray ****** fest and should never be brought up in any serious game discussion.

Edited by TOGSolid, 14 April 2013 - 01:38 PM.

[Taemien]

Targetloc, on 14 April 2013 - 12:28 PM, said:

Reintroducing some of the TT accuracy penalties (for movement and heat) would still allow precision targeting, but would really separate the men from the boys. You would actually need to be dead-center of what you were aiming for, and it would increase mech survivability quite a bit. (and give some new options for balancing weapons)

For targets under 90kph, this would do nothing. For targets over 90kph, it would make them unhittable by most of the community. Anyone who knows how to play a Light Mech properly currently knows people can't aim as it is with the system in place. Adding randomness would make it impossible.

We already have nerf light mech threads. And even veiled nerf Jenner threads popping up already. This leads me to believe the current system works already. There's no reason to change it. If you're getting 2 shotted sniped by 6 PPCs from their maximum range you're doing something wrong. No amount of randomness is going to save you at that point.

With me, there is already randomness because of the way I maneuver my mech. The sniper doesn't know where or how to lead me. They literally have to get lucky with their shots. They don't need more randomness that is going to widen the gap between the Veteran and the Newbie. ELO doesn't help them when I'm dropping in with a newbie friend or using a medium mech (which I haven't done since ELO was conceived).

[Ranek Blackstone]

Elkarlo, on 14 April 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

Another Suggestion for Volley Fire:

First Weapon would hit were it is intended,
Second Weapon has a spread based on the first Weapon,
Third Weapon has a Spread based on the second Weapon,
etc.

PPCs and lasers are energy weapons and generate no recoil. How would the aim be shifted off target?

Ballistics weapons use hydraulic systems to absorb the recoil to the point the mech's own mass would be able to take the recoil force with out flinching. This is why tank cannons lurch back into the turret rather violently, but the tank barely shifts when doing so. Besides, if my guns are on different parts of the mech, how does the recoil from my left arm disrupt the aim of my right?

Other problems with adding accuracy penalties to movement is computer controlled gyro stabilized weapons systems, like the kind found on modern tanks. These let the tank travel 40+ kph over broken ground and still retain a 90%+ first shot hit ratio at over 500m. And since the only motion in the mech is the up down movement from the stride, the system has to work with fewer variables then the system in a tank.

Heat doesn't make any sense to me at all. All it would do is have the pilot get sweat in his eyes, which would suck, but you can just climate control the inside of the helmet to keep your head cold.

[TruePoindexter]

cyberFluke, on 14 April 2013 - 01:13 PM, said:

I actually laughed out loud, well played fella

But seriously, what I'm after, what I want from this, is a more mechwarrior feeling game. At the minute the aiming is far to simplistic. I was just playing a match on tourmaline with the CBS guys, and saying exactly this just now. As if to prove the point, I just jumped into the air on a whim (twin ERPPC CAT-C1) and walloped a random raven that was running around about 1.2km away, simple shot, like it was nothing. I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, I'm trying to say it was instinct, devoid of thought, effort or challenge, and this is true for most people I talk to on TS.

If you landed that shot I would argue you that you had good aim and your opponent had poorer skills. Further at that range you would have dealt about 50% of the weapons capable damage or around a 10 damage strike. Even assuming you were a 6 ER PPC Stalker you would only have dealt approximately 30 damage. Neither of these numbers are devastating. It is almost impossible to outright kill in one or two shots an enemy at this range short of a head shot.

Also I wonder how meaningful the shot was since unless the Raven was running directly at you the odds are it was not a CT hit. Landing shots is all well and good but unless the hit contributed to a reduction in firepower or a kill it is still effectively a wasted shot. As an example about meaningless damage just the other night I dealt 1005 damage with a JM6-A. The number sounds impressive but once you account for the randomness of SRM's only about half of the damage really led to kills. The rest were wild SRM spreads that hit the enemy but not in a way that contributed to a kill effectively making the damage moot.

Targetloc, on 14 April 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

Reducing weapon precision would put more emphasis on those awareness and positioning skills, and less emphasis on 2-shot sniping CTs, which I wouldn't consider a bad thing.

I love dropping mechs from halfway across the map, or winning 2v1's (and the occasional 3v1) with smart application of high-alpha hit and run, but maybe it's not the best focus for a team mech game.

Isn't this a failing though on the enemy for not understanding their own positioning? You can't consider skill in game play without looking at it from both the player's and the enemy's perspective. In this scenario would reducing precision fire truly enhance your opponents play or would it just lead to them getting slaughtered later? I would argue that novices are in fact - novices. Remove the sniper weapons from a shooter like CS and you simply have players dying slightly later in medium/close combat because they in fact weren't good players to begin with.

Much of the problem I'm having with most of these suggestions is that the problems they hope to address don't line up with my own personal experiences. I consider myself relatively skillful (not the best but above average) and in an effort to improve myself I record almost every single game. I watch most of the videos later cursing at myself for missing a possible advantage or making a tactical error. If precision fire really was an overwhelming problem I would see it as a trend for losses. This simply isn't the case. Reviewing other peoples videos who post most or all of their game play corroborates with this assessment.

Edited by TruePoindexter, 14 April 2013 - 01:48 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

TOGSolid, on 14 April 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

**** those games. I was thinking Counter-strike, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Arma and other games like that. CoD is just a giant spray and pray ****** fest and should never be brought up in any serious game discussion.

It's a good example of what not to do, though, and it's a good example of how copying elements from tactical shooters (like variable spread) does not turn a game into a tactical shooter.

[Nightcrept]

I honestly don't know why you guys are even bothering to argue about this as it flies in the face of mech warfare..

If you have the tech to make a giant stompy mech you can definitely hit another giant stompy mech. You honestly should be able to do it from the moon.

[TruePoindexter]

Nightcrept, on 14 April 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

I honestly don't know why you guys are even bothering to argue about this as it flies in the face of mech warfare..

If you have the tech to make a giant stompy mech you can definitely hit another giant stompy mech. You honestly should be able to do it from the moon.

Accounting for the rotation of both the Earth and Moon in addition to the interaction of gravity between the two would make this a difficult shot.

(Note: obvious facetious comment )

Edited by TruePoindexter, 14 April 2013 - 01:59 PM.

[Bobzilla]

Seems like a good idea to me. As long as the cross hair spread is based of a mech's top speed (a ravin at 150 spreads as much as an atlas at 50). Lets face it, you could still aim. I've done well without a hud at all. Its not hard to see where the middle of the crosshairs are even if they are spread out a bit. It would be hard to go super long range with accuracy if your moving or over heating (which it should be) or target spacific parts (which it also should be). Call me traditional, but i think there should be negatives for moving and shooting or high heat. Heat managment, and aimming is a joke, lets add something to it

Edited by Bobzilla, 14 April 2013 - 02:06 PM.