203 replies to this topic

[jay35]

Just a quick reminder that if you have issues with players always being able to hit what they properly aim at, which is normal in a first-person simulator/shooter like MWO, you might be better served by MechWarrior:Tactics, where the gameplay is much closer to tabletop, including pRNG (pseudo random number generation, i.e., representation of dice rolls) for whether your weapons fire hits its intended target. That removes player skill from the equation and leaves it up to "chance", which might be more to your liking.

However, to come here and demand this game be changed to inhibit player skill as the primary factor in whether someone hits their target, is to undermine the very nature of this game. The devs have themselves stated in the past that they want player skill to be the primary factor, and requesting the introduction of things like "weapons don't always hit where you aim" would be the beginning of wrecking this game, and turn off not only the core playerbase but also most of the potential audience that would come from other FPS games. Right now the biggest fanbase is here for one of two reasons: fans of previous MW games, which did not have any sort of randomized nonsense in whether you hit your target, or competitive players, which also demands player skill be the primary determinant of success and that begins with the game designating a hit on what you correctly targeted.

It's quite annoying that the hit detection is currently broken on ballistics until the other half of ballistic HSR is brought online, so nearly half of on-target AC and PPC shots are failing to register. But that's also a good example for everyone of how obnoxious it would be if some sort of RNG was introduced to determine whether your shots hit what you aimed at. Please keep that in mind the next time you are tempted to start a thread that is in effect a request to remove player skill from the game.

Edited by jay35, 26 May 2013 - 08:23 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

If you don't want RNG, and less alpha striking, we need a reason to not fire multiple weapons at once.
Lower the heat cap so that too many weapons fired at once breka the heat cap, chain-firing them doesn't.
Remove convergence for torso mounted weapons (and limit convergence of arm mounted weapons to arm mounted weapons firing parallel to each other but the arm "converging" on the targeted spot)
Enforce a global cooldown so that weapons always chain-fire and turn alpha strike into a special ability that can be used ever 10 seconds or something like that.

[IceSerpent]

jay35, on 26 May 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Just a quick reminder that if you have issues with players always being able to hit what they properly aim at, which is normal in a first-person simulator/shooter like MWO, you might be better served by MechWarrior:Tactics, where the gameplay is much closer to tabletop, including pRNG (pseudo random number generation, i.e., representation of dice rolls) for whether your weapons fire hits its intended target. That removes player skill from the equation and leaves it up to "chance", which might be more to your liking.

Jay, if you are not trolling and seriously think that 1) pointing and clicking in a combat as slow as MWO one requires some sort of exceptional skill, and 2) TT game (any tabletop game, not just BT) doesn't require any player skills, you might want to re-evaluate your position, because it's about as far from reality as you can get.

[MustrumRidcully]

IceSerpent, on 26 May 2013 - 08:48 AM, said:

Jay, if you are not trolling and seriously think that 1) pointing and clicking in a combat as slow as MWO one requires some sort of exceptional skill,

It requires enough skill that no one has an accuracy of 100 %.

Unless you do.

[Dude42]

-1/10

Non-instant weapon convergence and stiffer heat penalties/caps would make the game require more skill, not less. Self contradictory troll is self contradictory.

Edited by Dude42, 26 May 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[Kitane]

Why do SRMs have a random spread in a skill-based game?

[Felbombling]

Great post, Jay. The only problem I find with it is that you are content with a good game, when this game has the potential to be amazing with some well-thought out changes. The game has really devolved from Closed Beta when it was fairly fun and challenging into this simple, dumbed down one click Easy Button that the Staples franchise would be proud of.

[cyberFluke]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 May 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

It requires enough skill that no one has an accuracy of 100 %.

Unless you do.

Not 100%, but far too high IMO. Especially considering the extremely low number of times I've used some of these weapons, giving me no time to "get used to them". I've omitted Guided weapons (SSRMs, LRMs) for obvious reasons and SRMs because I never use them other than for trolling, so hardly a fair or accurate stat. Hopefully I can use HTML tables on here...? If not, I'll have to edit the post I guess.. here goes.


nope... hmmm... lemme try and rejig the table into something acceptable...
here we go...



Bear in mind I use my PPCs as pointers when giving team intel out on TS, otherwise they'd be a damn sight higher too.

Edited by cyberFluke, 26 May 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[IceSerpent]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 May 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

It requires enough skill that no one has an accuracy of 100 %.

Unless you do.

Anybody can have a 100% accuracy - I can achieve it by simply only pulling the trigger when I am absolutely sure that I will hit the target. That has nothing to do with skills though, because a player who kills the target faster, but misses a lot of shots is much more effective than a player who has 100% accuracy, but fails to take down their targets in a timely manner.

[cyberFluke]

jay35, on 26 May 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Just a quick reminder that if you have issues with players always being able to hit what they properly aim at, which is normal in a first-person simulator/shooter like MWO, you might be better served by MechWarrior:Tactics, where the gameplay is much closer to tabletop, including pRNG (pseudo random number generation, i.e., representation of dice rolls) for whether your weapons fire hits its intended target. That removes player skill from the equation and leaves it up to "chance", which might be more to your liking.

However, to come here and demand this game be changed to inhibit player skill as the primary factor in whether someone hits their target, is to undermine the very nature of this game. The devs have themselves stated in the past that they want player skill to be the primary factor, and requesting the introduction of things like "weapons don't always hit where you aim" would be the beginning of wrecking this game, and turn off not only the core playerbase but also most of the potential audience that would come from other FPS games. Right now the biggest fanbase is here for one of two reasons: fans of previous MW games, which did not have any sort of randomized nonsense in whether you hit your target, or competitive players, which also demands player skill be the primary determinant of success and that begins with the game designating a hit on what you correctly targeted.

It's quite annoying that the hit detection is currently broken on ballistics until the other half of ballistic HSR is brought online, so nearly half of on-target AC and PPC shots are failing to register. But that's also a good example for everyone of how obnoxious it would be if some sort of RNG was introduced to determine whether your shots hit what you aimed at. Please keep that in mind the next time you are tempted to start a thread that is in effect a request to remove player skill from the game.

And you, The clue, it went ====> that way.

If you stopped regurgitating the crap you read elsewhere in the forums that you thought made you sound like you knew what you were talking about and thought about the faeces you were spouting, you might realise you're about as wrong as it gets. The very definition of wrong in fact.

Adding an RNG CoF is the simple, quick and easy way of solving the problem. Even as a quick and dirty fix however, it could be used to change the skills required for aiming from purely twitch reflex and vector prediction to also include battlefield awareness, self positioning, mech piloting skill, heat management (yeah, heat should factor into your accuracy, it's f*cking supposed to!) and timing to name but a few off the top of my head.

Frankly, think before you post such obvious misinformation and wilful ignorance to the internet. All you're doing is proving yourself a clueless ****.

[MustrumRidcully]

cyberFluke, on 26 May 2013 - 09:13 AM, said:

Not 100%, but far too high IMO. Especially considering the extremely low number of times I've used some of these weapons, giving me no time to "get used to them". I've omitted Guided weapons (SSRMs, LRMs) for obvious reasons and SRMs because I never use them other than for trolling, so hardly a fair or accurate stat. Hopefully I can use HTML tables on here...? If not, I'll have to edit the post I guess.. here goes.


nope... hmmm... lemme try and rejig the table into something acceptable...
here we go...



Bear in mind I use my PPCs as pointers when giving team intel out on TS, otherwise they'd be a damn sight higher too.

I don't see 100 % anywhere

Shooting stuff in a shooter is theoretically very easy. Just carefully poisition your mouse, and if you're over your target, you hit. MAybe lead a bit.

Except you have to do it while being fired at, while the enemy is moving in and out of cover, torso twisting and what not. You are under pressure. That'S why you screw up even a simple task. That's why we try to make "real" weapons simple to use, so you have less things you can screw up.

If we were just shooting at immobile targets to measure how close we can get to the bull's eye, then maybe aiming would be utterly skill-less. But if you add time constraints, it gets harder.

Sure, it could require even more skill - if our crosshair was constantly shifting and moving due to our mech's movement, if there was wind speeds to consider or what not. But adding time pressure is sufficient already to make sure you hit poorly.

That's why forcing people to chain-fire - even if we give them a cross-hair for every single weapon installed, heck even if we gave people a lead indicator, would make things harder, without requiring us to make something actually complicated or unpredictable.

[Chavette]

cyberFluke, on 26 May 2013 - 09:13 AM, said:

Bear in mind I use my PPCs as pointers when giving team intel out on TS, otherwise they'd be a damn sight higher too.

Too bad they're the only ones that matter.

[cyberFluke]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 May 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

I don't see 100 % anywhere

Shooting stuff in a shooter is theoretically very easy. Just carefully poisition your mouse, and if you're over your target, you hit. MAybe lead a bit.

Except you have to do it while being fired at, while the enemy is moving in and out of cover, torso twisting and what not. You are under pressure. That'S why you screw up even a simple task. That's why we try to make "real" weapons simple to use, so you have less things you can screw up.

If we were just shooting at immobile targets to measure how close we can get to the bull's eye, then maybe aiming would be utterly skill-less. But if you add time constraints, it gets harder.

Sure, it could require even more skill - if our crosshair was constantly shifting and moving due to our mech's movement, if there was wind speeds to consider or what not. But adding time pressure is sufficient already to make sure you hit poorly.

That's why forcing people to chain-fire - even if we give them a cross-hair for every single weapon installed, heck even if we gave people a lead indicator, would make things harder, without requiring us to make something actually complicated or unpredictable.

I did say there was no 100%, but you have agree they're rather high...

Simply adding convergence back in would make a big difference, but adding reticule sway when the mech walks/runs, shake when flying//falling, large directional twitches when you collide with something and reticule wandering and twitching when hot would really bring more mech piloting skill to the game. Not only would the game feel more like MechWarrior, but it would go a good way to alleviating the problems caused by excessive boating, poptarting and alpha heavy combat.

I'm not a fan of adding arbitrary additional systems to add extra heat for boating (or forcing chain fire) as MW already has systems in place to deal with this. Adjustments to the heat system with heat affecting your aim would mean that alpha boating would be untenable as a primary tactic, without adding any extra complications.

Edited by cyberFluke, 26 May 2013 - 09:49 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

cyberFluke, on 26 May 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

I did say there was no 100%, but you have agree they're rather high...

I don't know if they are high. Mine seem to be similar.

Quote

Simply adding convergence back in would make a big difference, but adding reticule sway when the mech walks/runs, shake when flying//falling, large directional twitches when you collide with something and reticule wandering and twitching when hot would really bring more mech piloting skill to the game. Not only would the game feel more like MechWarrior, but it would go a good way to alleviating the problems caused by excessive boating, poptarting and alpha heavy combat.

I'm not a fan of adding arbitrary additional systems to add extra heat for boating (or forcing chain fire) as MW already has systems in place to deal with this. Adjustments to the heat system with heat affecting your aim would mean that alpha boating would be untenable as a primary tactic, without adding any extra complications.

Heat penalties . other than out-right shutting down a mech in plain sight of the enemy - I have doubts they'll help. A pop-tarter will shoot, and then get hot, not the other way around.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 26 May 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[Renthrak]

Dude42, on 26 May 2013 - 08:56 AM, said:

Non-instant weapon convergence and stiffer heat penalties/caps would make the game require more skill, not less.

cyberFluke, on 26 May 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

I'm not a fan of adding arbitrary additional systems to add extra heat for boating (or forcing chain fire) ...

That's pretty much where I started from when planning my suggested balance changes.

The answer to a system where the degree of skill required to succeed is low, is to increase the effect of player skill on the game. RNG can do this in a roundabout way, forcing people to wait until their cone of fire is small enough to hit where they want to and choosing weapons to fire based on the size of the cone for example, but I think it makes more sense to just directly raise the requisite skill to master combat. As long as this can be done without making the game impossible for lower skilled players, the results should be positive.

With that intention, I have a couple of suggestion/discussion threads on the topics of skill-based aiming:
http://mwomercs.com/...out-randomness/

and heat management and balance:
http://mwomercs.com/...ce-first-draft/

Some of you have already contributed to these threads, but for the rest, they might make for an interesting read.

[Hoaggie]

There are a lot of replies to this thread that are really off topic, and people accusing Jay35 of trolling them and it's really easy to tell that they did not even read Jay35's post. Is it bad to want your aimed weapons to go where you aim? Is there something wrong with him being disappointed because hit detection does not work correctly for all weapons? A Random Number Generator in a game that plays like MWO would destroy the game play.
IMO, if you are complaining about his post, you need to find a different game.

[cyberFluke]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 May 2013 - 09:53 AM, said:

I don't know if they are high. Mine seem to be similar.

*acc stats pic*

Heat penalties . other than out-right shutting down a mech in plain sight of the enemy - I have doubts they'll help. A pop-tarter will shoot, and then get hot, not the other way around.

The poptarter should have to deal with the inaccuracy of the the reticule shake plus the heat from JJs adding more inaccuracy the longer they're in the air.

[IceSerpent]

Hoaggie, on 26 May 2013 - 10:14 AM, said:

There are a lot of replies to this thread that are really off topic, and people accusing Jay35 of trolling them and it's really easy to tell that they did not even read Jay35's post.

Gotta disagree with you here - the only person who didn't read Jay's post (and replies for that matter) is yourself.

Quote

A Random Number Generator in a game that plays like MWO would destroy the game play.

So, you are saying that unless we make all missiles invariably hit the location under the reticle, the game play would be destroyed? Seriously?

[Hoaggie]

IceSerpent, on 26 May 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

Gotta disagree with you here - the only person who didn't read Jay's post (and replies for that matter) is yourself.

I... You've brought up something that really cuts man. I cant read. That's really a low blow man. Low blow.

IceSerpent, on 26 May 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

So, you are saying that unless we make all missiles invariably hit the location under the reticle, the game play would be destroyed? Seriously?

That's cool, edit out the part where I was talking about aimed weapons, and made no mention of lockon weapons.

[One Medic Army]

There is more to skill in an FPS than pointing your reticule at the enemy and clicking, or at least that was one of the goals of MWO: to make the game about positioning, heat management, situational awareness, and target/weapon selection.

Personally I am in favor of RNG as part of the game mechanics (no I have never played CoD, I don't own a console either). Randomness means that any person can win vs any other person, differences in skill or situation change the percentages involved. I'd much rather play in a game where a newb has a 0.01% chance to beat a pro than a game where a newb has no chance, it means that there is always a chance of a reversal, and every combat is different. It adds variety and danger.

The traditional TT skill is to maximize your ability to damage your enemy while minimizing their ability to damage you, it's about manipulating probabilities.

Edited by One Medic Army, 26 May 2013 - 11:01 AM.