704 replies to this topic

[Troutmonkey]

Pht, on 08 August 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

How can this be a meaningful statement, if you can't clearly explain what you mean by "inspiration" ... and how can anyone know what you mean?

This is the point I'm trying to make.

Inspiration, flavor, spirit... these are functioning only as conversation stopper words when they're not defined.

http://dictionary.re.../browse/context

[Pht]

Troutmonkey, on 10 August 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

http://dictionary.re.../browse/context

The best that can be gotten from the context in your posts is that you meant that the BG shouldn't be followed in whole ... no standard for what parts should or shouldn't, nor why. That's why I asked what you meant.

Edited by Pht, 11 August 2013 - 08:00 AM.

[Haji1096]

PGI should at least give a reason as to why this solution can't or won't be implemented, whether its technical, budgetary, or temporal.

Bottom line is that the current nerfing of boating through exponential heat generation is not an intuitive solution. Adding a charge up time to the Gauss Rifle is not a good idea. Balancing via patchwork is intellectually lazy.

I hate the PPC Gauss meta, but players should have the freedom to customize their mech the way they want and play the way they want. If you're skilled enough to put consecutive PPC Gauss shots on target, then you should be allowed to. If you want to Alpha two AC/20s you should be allowed to.

Even with all the heat nerf, people still run PPC boats, PPC Gauss, or double Gauss.

Edited by Haji1096, 27 August 2013 - 07:54 AM.

[RighteousHand]

Nice solution, but too complex.
My suggestion: give each weapon a built-in inaccuracy (cone of fire) - lasers would be more accurate, ballistics less (recoil) etc.
Then for every weapon that is fired at the same time simply decrease the accuracy of all weapons fired by a fixed percentage,
for example: 2 weapons fired -5% accuracy, 3 weapons: -10%, 4: -20% etc.
The modifier is applied to the base accuracy of each weapon fired.
Minimal dev required and numbers would be pretty easy to adjust for balance purposes.

Just putting it out there.

[Pht]

Haji1096, on 14 August 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

PGI should at least give a reason as to why this solution can't or won't be implemented, whether its technical, budgetary, or temporal.

Russ bullock (president of PGI) has stated very clearly that he doesn't think it's fun to have an MW video game in which the damage is spread out from under the player's reticule.

The necessary implication of his comments is that his idea of fun is that all weapons of the same velocity fired at the same time should always concentrate perfectly under the reticule (crosshairs).

I contend that actually making the 'mechs handle their weapons like they do in the novels and the rest of the lore would not only be just as fun, but more fun ... and easier to balance.

Quote

Bottom line is that the current nerfing of boating through exponential heat generation is not an intuitive solution. Adding a charge up time to the Gauss Rifle is not a good idea. Balancing via patchwork is intellectually lazy.

I do believe in the same NGNG podcast (google it, I think it's one of the number 88-89 podcasts) Russ "owned" the concept of "balance by whack-a-mole" - aka, "patch the problems as they arise."

RighteousHand, on 28 September 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Nice solution, but too complex.

There's a way to do it without even having to do a cone of fire, that only requires simple addition of small numbers and a simple choice of numbers that can literally be run on a ti-86 calculator, and using virtually only data that is already collected by the game engine right now...

...which still produces outcomes directly driven by player peripheral control skills and player choices:

http://mwomercs.com/...different-idea/

Edited by Pht, 07 October 2013 - 04:35 PM.

[Tombstoner]

Has PGI ever commented on this concept.

[Homeless Bill]

Tombstoner, on 09 December 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

Has PGI ever commented on this concept.

Nope. Ghost Heat was designed and coded before / during the course of this thread, and by the time the idea became wide-spread, they didn't want to have that debate in addition to having to explain how their system was going to work. I'd have made the same choice given their position.

I'll trim things down and try again after UI 2.0, but there's no point trying to push it now. That said, it really has worked out exactly as I predicted: the cheese is the same; all that's changed are the weapons. It's still the exact same problem as when the Highlander came out and HSR for projectiles went in: large bursts of direct-fire, pinpoint damage.

I'm guessing they even avoided the Victor 9A and 9A1 variants specifically because they'd be able to mount dual AC/20s.

[Deathlike]

Bill, I get the strong feeling Paul said no, and that's that.

[Tombstoner]

Homeless Bill, on 10 December 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

Nope. Ghost Heat was designed and coded before / during the course of this thread, and by the time the idea became wide-spread, they didn't want to have that debate in addition to having to explain how their system was going to work. I'd have made the same choice given their position.

I'll trim things down and try again after UI 2.0, but there's no point trying to push it now. That said, it really has worked out exactly as I predicted: the cheese is the same; all that's changed are the weapons. It's still the exact same problem as when the Highlander came out and HSR for projectiles went in: large bursts of direct-fire, pinpoint damage.

I'm guessing they even avoided the Victor 9A and 9A1 variants specifically because they'd be able to mount dual AC/20s.

PGI has to my understanding never really stated what they want from Us the frequent forum user or beta testers/ players in general. without a clear set of goals and a statement for how PGI will handle feed back for things like like bugs, map issues, hardware feedback. The relation ship is some what nebulous. add in controversial changes like ghost heat and 3pv from left field and you got a problem.

The player base has to some extent came together to form a petition asking for the removal of specific decision makers within PGI. That action simply damaged relations with little to no chance of success. I think those people and everyone else, love the game and or love BT/MW. but the reality is 2 very different set of conflicting objectives: PGI making money and players wanting conflicting things.

What i would like to do is create a player document that crowd sources our collective gaming and real life experience. Some thing high quality that is worthy of PGI's time. It will take into account PGI's design paradigm of skill based targeting and the player base revulsion for anything RNG. I be-leave both systems can be combined seamlessly that would provide an improved sense of progression and game depth.

If a group of players put forth a substantial positive effort into a high quality game design. its got to improve relations. even if they say nothing. It says we want you to succeed, let us help. as opposed to engaging in flame wars.

People hate the comparison between MWO and TT but the truth is they are still very similar, but skill based targeting breaks the game and leads to massive pinpoint alphas that a TT port just cant handle. We all must agree to disagree on this point.

Time frame for approaching PGI I'm thinking dec next year for a completed design document with pros and cons for all systems discussed. systems like heat, targeting, new weapons perhaps, mech crit space based on tonnage. why a spider has the same as an atlas i'd love to know. cause the rules need to be written. stuff like this.

[Lockon StratosII]

Bill, when you give this another try after UI2.0, if you are interested I could show you my idea for "penalty range" of TC, it's basically trimmed down version of yours and removes the "random" effect of cone of fire which people here are so afraid of and best of all it doesn't require any coding but granted it has some flaws in itself that can be solved only by art department team

[GoriKarafong]

thx guys for this brilliant thread and you willingness to keep it alive and maybe PGI reconsidering...

[Goldhawk]

Hold on, I read through Homeless Bills idea and I believe that it is solid. However, he stated that ER PPCs would give a TCS of 50. So, yet again, a solution has come about the the Awesome gets left out in the cold. Firing 3 ER PPCs would give a 150 and screw much of the targeting. I like the idea, but damn it, I need something that will allow me to fire my 3 ER PPCs and smash something. All I'm asking for is 30 pts of damage. Why must the Awesome suffer from other mechs' abusing the system?

[DeadlyFred]

Goldhawk, on 29 December 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

Hold on, I read through Homeless Bills idea and I believe that it is solid. However, he stated that ER PPCs would give a TCS of 50. So, yet again, a solution has come about the the Awesome gets left out in the cold. Firing 3 ER PPCs would give a 150 and screw much of the targeting. I like the idea, but damn it, I need something that will allow me to fire my 3 ER PPCs and smash something. All I'm asking for is 30 pts of damage. Why must the Awesome suffer from other mechs' abusing the system?

Because many people (community and PGI included) want to tread the symptoms of a broken system rather than fixing the system itself. If a Stalker with SIX BLOODY PPCS is a problem... then why the hell are you allowed to stick SIX BLOODY PPCS on a Stalker in the first place? You can't balance your game around that, its ridiculous. MWO has the perfect opportunity to learn from past MW games what does and doesn't work with custom loadouts and how to implement them effectively and in a BALANCED capacity... they just seem to have decided to ignore this in favor of "balancing" their systems based on ridiculous min/maxed builds which probably don't have any right to exist anyhow.

[spacekeeper]

Fantastically elegant idea. I love it. I especially love how it quite neatly represents a concept that currently only exists on the tabletop (the targeting computer). It also makes sense with the current (somewhat hand-wave) convergence system.

The boneheaded solution to the problem of 'mechs like the Awesome is for it to have its own targeting computer value. This would also allow the game designers to restrict the weapon handling capacity of individual chassis without changing how hard-points are implemented.

"Want to mount an AC/2 on your SDR-5K? Sure you can, but the targeting computer is only rated for machine guns, and you can't install a different one."

I have a few more thoughts, but I'm going to enclose them in spoiler tags because I'm not sure if this is well-trodden territory or not.

Spoiler

I can't think of any logical way that the convergence of torso weapons could be changed during battle. Dynamically converging torso-mounted weapons (or those mounted on arms with only one degree of freedom) are a no-go in my opinion.

I mean, for the torso AC/10 in your Cataphract to converge on a target at any range, it would either have to be mounted on a gimbal, or at an angle (fixed convergence). Otherwise, the targeting computer would have to slew the torso slightly to deflect the shot, requiring the pilot to swivel his head to compensate. In the absurd case, your poor pilot would find himself staring at a support strut instead of glass if he wanted to keep his eyes trained on the target.

None of this addresses how arms with more than one degree of freedom *and* the ability to mount insane weapon combinations would work, because there's nothing stopping them from providing full convergence at any range.

[Homeless Bill]

Spring forth from the dead, my child. The Clans are almost upon us.

[FupDup]

Homeless Bill, on 27 May 2014 - 09:22 PM, said:

Spring forth from the dead, my child. The Clans are almost upon us.

Although this time it's a necro for a good cause!

[Pht]

holy resurrecting dead threads batman!

[IcemanOmikron]

This is incredibly thought out and is the best solution I've seen suggested. It's always refreshing to see somebody put the time and effort into finding a solution and not just screaming incoherently at a problem.

Edited by IcemanOmikron, 28 May 2014 - 12:56 PM.

[ipox]

How is this not implemented yet?

[FupDup]

Bump of great truth and justice.