34 replies to this topic

[Lefty Lucy]

Right now weapon convergence time is so nearly instantaneous as to be a complete non-factor at range. A jump sniper can find and hit a target in a precise spot with multiple weapons all in the short time that he or she is in the air. Similarly stalkers can hit you with 6 PPCs in the exact same point on a "snap shot."

Increasing convergence time would mean that while the same mechs could likely hit you with all of their weapons only moments after targeting you, those weapons would also be much more likely to hit all over your mech, rather than in one precise spot.

This would be a very "skill based" approach to solving the pin-point damage issue, because while it decreases precision of fire, it is in a non-random way. A player who is skilled at holding aim points would see that skill pay off.

[HighlandCoo]

Ive often wondered about this - even COD and battle field make you less accurate depnding on how fast you are moving.. also there is an elite skill for weapon convergence. But it does not appear to do anything at all.

[Jonathan Paine]

Much as I'd rather have alpha strike spread damage regardless of time spent aiming, delayed convergence would greatly improve the game from the Lucky Strike gameplay we have now.

[NinetyProof]

Again, the problem is there is no heat penalty for firing multiple weapons at the same time. Once that is fixed / deployed, then the whole "PPC Alpha Strike" thing starts to become less of a factor as you would not be able to Alpha them nearly as much.

Once you have to start chain firing, even in groups of two, convergenence isn't nearly as big of an issue.

Besides, convergence would affect *all* weapon systems, including lasers ... and lasers are a "DoT" so they don't need this limit.

Basically, fix the engine, instead of some extraneous stuff that would just be more confusing. (PPC's don't converge, but Lasers do?).

Edited by NinetyProof, 09 May 2013 - 11:15 AM.

[Monky]

An increase in convergence time could be effective however it will be unpopular. People generally want shots to go where they're aiming as it is not fun for shots to be wasted due to 'what the game says should happen.'

If there was an intuitive way of presenting this without making it look like 'cone of fire' it would be very workable, but I imagine it merely ******* off a lot of people.

[Weztside]

What's so lucky about hitting a mech's CT with an alpha from 500m away or scoring a killing blow on a jenner that was dumb enough to get within 200m of your lance? How can you complain about high alpha builds ruling the day when you can make and play with the exact same builds yourself for free? All of your solutions won't work. At the moment, PPC's are the best all-around weapons in the game as far as weight, slots, firepower, range, and ease of use are concerned . Until missiles are turned back into something you should fear they will continue to be the best weapon out there and will still be abused just like every other weapon. Why would they change key gameplay elements instead of simply balancing the other weapons?

[Accursed Richards]

Weztside, on 09 May 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

What's so lucky about hitting a mech's CT with an alpha from 500m away or scoring a killing blow on a jenner that was dumb enough to get within 200m of your lance? How can you complain about high alpha builds ruling the day when you can make and play with the exact same builds yourself for free?

In the next patch, I hear they're releasing a special weapon that weighs 1t / 1crit, doesn't use a slot, and will destroy any mech it hits with one hit. Since everyone can take that, balance won't be a problem.

[HighlandCoo]

Monky, on 09 May 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

An increase in convergence time could be effective however it will be unpopular. People generally want shots to go where they're aiming as it is not fun for shots to be wasted due to 'what the game says should happen.'

If there was an intuitive way of presenting this without making it look like 'cone of fire' it would be very workable, but I imagine it merely ******* off a lot of people.

I really dont understand this. In every other game, when you fire more than one shot, your aim suffers. Either due to recoil or movement. I really dont get how everyone is "okay" with what we have now. Right now PPC's (or any weapon in MWO) are like a mini-gun, except the minigun magically angles all it's barrels instantaneously so that every single shot hits the same point at the same time. Regardless of how fast you move.

I dont get it. Why is this okay? (from a game persepective) Please Please Please dont start a threadwar over "in real life we have computers that.." or "in 3050" they will have science dohickys that.."

Just purely from a gaming point of view. What other game lets you fire every weapon you are holding, all at the same time, and reasonably expect them ALL to hit the point your are aiming at?

Anyone?

Edited by HighlandCoo, 09 May 2013 - 01:42 PM.

[Ph30nix]

HighlandCoo, on 09 May 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

Ive often wondered about this - even COD and battle field make you less accurate depnding on how fast you are moving.. also there is an elite skill for weapon convergence. But it does not appear to do anything at all.

im sorry but the fact that you even mentioned COD and Battlefield completely invalidates any opinion you might have.

[Zyllos]

NinetyProof, on 09 May 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

Again, the problem is there is no heat penalty for firing multiple weapons at the same time. Once that is fixed / deployed, then the whole "PPC Alpha Strike" thing starts to become less of a factor as you would not be able to Alpha them nearly as much.

Once you have to start chain firing, even in groups of two, convergenence isn't nearly as big of an issue.

Besides, convergence would affect *all* weapon systems, including lasers ... and lasers are a "DoT" so they don't need this limit.

Basically, fix the engine, instead of some extraneous stuff that would just be more confusing. (PPC's don't converge, but Lasers do?).

Heat is not 100% the problem, it's only one piece of the puzzle.

Dual AC/20, triple AC/5, quad AC/2, dual Gauss Rifle.

All of these builds do the exact same thing as the multiple PPC builds. It's just the PPC builds out weigh the AC builds due not being limited by ammo, range to speed ratios, and possible build loadouts.

If you made PPCs really hard to alpha strike, then what do you do about builds that focus on multiple ACs or Gauss Rifles, doing the same thing, all damage hitting a single point?

That is why heat is only part of the problem.

HighlandCoo, on 09 May 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

I really dont understand this. In every other game, when you fire more than one shot, your aim suffers. Either due to recoil or movement. I really dont get how everyone is "okay" with what we have now. Right now PPC's (or any weapon in MWO) are like a mini-gun, except the minigun magically angles all it's barrels instantaneously so that every single shot hits the same point at the same time. Regardless of how fast you move.

I dont get it. Why is this okay? (from a game persepective) Please Please Please dont start a threadwar over "in real life we have computers that.." or "in 3050" they will have science dohickys that.."

Just purely from a gaming point of view. What other game lets you fire every weapon you are holding, all at the same time, and reasonably expect them ALL to hit the point your are aiming at?

Anyone?

Yes, you are right.

But how many other games lets you fire multiple weapons of completely different styles at the same time? How do you add recoil after the first shot when all the weapons fire at the same time? If you say multiple weapons are fired at the same time, then only one of them hits where you aim, how do you get around macro'ers who will circumvent this by adding delay?

Weztside, on 09 May 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

What's so lucky about hitting a mech's CT with an alpha from 500m away or scoring a killing blow on a jenner that was dumb enough to get within 200m of your lance? How can you complain about high alpha builds ruling the day when you can make and play with the exact same builds yourself for free? All of your solutions won't work. At the moment, PPC's are the best all-around weapons in the game as far as weight, slots, firepower, range, and ease of use are concerned . Until missiles are turned back into something you should fear they will continue to be the best weapon out there and will still be abused just like every other weapon. Why would they change key gameplay elements instead of simply balancing the other weapons?

Poor argument. Just because everyone can do it doesn't make it not broken.

[Tombstoner]

HighlandCoo, on 09 May 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

Ive often wondered about this - even COD and battle field make you less accurate depnding on how fast you are moving.. also there is an elite skill for weapon convergence. But it does not appear to do anything at all.

Ph30nix, on 09 May 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

im sorry but the fact that you even mentioned COD and Battlefield completely invalidates any opinion you might have.

No it dosen't. Garth has made direct comparisons between MWO and counter strike. I'll paraphrase... weapon balance is good since mwo has 12 out of 24 weapons used competitively and CS has 4. Face-->Palm

The modification to accuracy you find in modern shooters is considered anathema to many players in this forum and oppose any aspect of what is considered a random number generator. in fact the game was specifically designed to remove any random aspect to targeting. thus we have the current incarnation of the meta game.. poptards and boated ppc's

Edited by Tombstoner, 09 May 2013 - 03:09 PM.

[Ph30nix]

Tombstoner, on 09 May 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

No it dosen't. Garth has made direct comparisons between MWO and counter strike. I'll paraphrase... weapon balance is good since mwo has 12 out of 24 weapons used competitively and CS has 4. Face-->Palm

The modification to accuracy you find in modern shooters is considered anathema to many players in this forum and oppose any aspect of what is considered a random number generator. in fact the game was specifically designed to remove any random aspect to targeting. thus we have the current incarnation of the meta game.. poptards and boated ppc's

which can both be overcome with teamwork, which since the average pugger is too ******** to do they go with the option that requires the less direct teamwork which is currently poptarting.

get LRM's back to where they need to be and poptarts will start jumping face first into a rain of missles and the flavor of the month crowed will get pissy and switch to something else

[Renthrak]

Monky, on 09 May 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

An increase in convergence time could be effective however it will be unpopular. People generally want shots to go where they're aiming as it is not fun for shots to be wasted due to 'what the game says should happen.'

If there was an intuitive way of presenting this without making it look like 'cone of fire' it would be very workable, but I imagine it merely ******* off a lot of people.

I have been running a poll on this, and support has been good. I also go into more detail about how slowed convergence could affect the game, so it might be worth a read.

http://mwomercs.com/...out-randomness/

Ph30nix, on 09 May 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

get LRM's back to where they need to be and poptarts will start jumping face first into a rain of missles and the flavor of the month crowed will get pissy and switch to something else

I assert that countering the currently most hated weapon setup by reviving the previously most hated weapon setup isn't going to make the game more fun.

[Tombstoner]

Ph30nix, on 09 May 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

which can both be overcome with teamwork, which since the average pugger is too ******** to do they go with the option that requires the less direct teamwork which is currently poptarting.

get LRM's back to where they need to be and poptarts will start jumping face first into a rain of missles and the flavor of the month crowed will get pissy and switch to something else

hehe i must admit that LRMS can be effective against poptards. i do love seeing the missiles arc dropping behind the hill and my targeting ****** going red.

still the current game is broken not just some aspects. the whole thing. for example increasing convergence time i be-leaved was explored in alpha and the first wave of closed beta and they took it out. the entire game design depended on having an increased chance to miss for long range... much more than what it is now. this was supposed to be convergence, a player controlled game mechanic that rewarded player skill... it didn't work and convergence rates where set to extremely high rates and thus we have pin point accuracy and the issues with poptarding.

The game left alpha with a fundamental flaw in game design upon witch everything else is built. the problem is the player base that funds PGI. it has become used to the game as is. PGI is loathed to do anything to mess with what cash flow they currently have.

[Ph30nix]

what boggles my mind is people seem to think convergance will be some miracle cure all. it wont do **** against long range. unless they limit how close shots can land. which would be stupid. the farther away a shot goes, the EASIER it would be to converge since less alteration is needed

[Zyllos]

Ph30nix, on 09 May 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

what boggles my mind is people seem to think convergance will be some miracle cure all. it wont do **** against long range. unless they limit how close shots can land. which would be stupid. the farther away a shot goes, the EASIER it would be to converge since less alteration is needed

Yup.

Of course, you can modify the angular velocity as a function of distance (time to converge stays constant) but then the problem becomes what should the convergence time be?

1.0s for every 250m of distance? That is ~69.4kph, which means any mech going slower than this would have all it's weapons still converge onto a single point. Any mech going faster would impossible to converge onto.

Having a time to converge just won't do what people think it would do.

[Ph30nix]

yea and they also dont realize how badly its going to BUM **** the brawlers.

how much is it gonna suck if something 10 meters from you and your shots dont hit anything?

[Ph30nix]

Neverfar, on 09 May 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

it's fine if the Mech's weapons hit at long range.

The issue is all of them pinpoint hitting the same location.

so your saying its okay this wont bother snipers okay as long as it screws over brawlers?

[pencilboom]

HighlandCoo, on 09 May 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

I really dont understand this. In every other game, when you fire more than one shot, your aim suffers. Either due to recoil or movement. I really dont get how everyone is "okay" with what we have now. Right now PPC's (or any weapon in MWO) are like a mini-gun, except the minigun magically angles all it's barrels instantaneously so that every single shot hits the same point at the same time. Regardless of how fast you move.

I dont get it. Why is this okay? (from a game persepective) Please Please Please dont start a threadwar over "in real life we have computers that.." or "in 3050" they will have science dohickys that.."

Just purely from a gaming point of view. What other game lets you fire every weapon you are holding, all at the same time, and reasonably expect them ALL to hit the point your are aiming at?

Anyone?

Ever thought of the brawlers and lights?

[Ph30nix]

pencilboom, on 09 May 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

Ever thought of the brawlers and lights?

i find it funnier that not only that but their suggested fix in reality wouldnt work. as the farther away a target is the easier getting convergence would be.

typical knee jerk reaction without thinking of the actual end result.