41 replies to this topic

[Corbon Zackery]

We horribly abused the knock down in closed beta to the point that it needed to be removed.

That's the short sweet answer wrapped in a cabbage roll with some cheese on it.

[stjobe]

Two things necessitated the removal of knockdowns:

• The implementation was very poor. If you got knocked down, you got treated to a 3rd person view of your 'mech falling down, lying about a bit, and then slowly getting back up. This would take 2-4 seconds, and at the end of that you got your 1st person view back - but there was about a second or so before you got control back over your 'mech. During these 2-5 seconds, all enemy 'mechs of course were free to line up their alphas on you, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. Especially for lights, that was a death sentence as I'm sure you understand.
  
• Players griefed the hell out of it. The Dragon had bugged knockdown performance (it knocked down as a 100-ton 'mech if memory serves), and people would just put the largest engine they could into it and run around knocking enemies over - even 'mechs larger than the Dragon. It wasn't just the Dragon though, and it got so bad that teams had designated "hitters" - 'mechs whose only job was to knock enemies down so the rest of the team could finish them off while they could not shoot back. Not very BattleTech or MechWarrior, as I'm sure you agree.

The Goons trolling Paul, while funny, probably had very little to do with the mechanic getting removed - there were endless threads on the forums about people wishing it gone for months and months, and the devs weren't happy with the way it made 'mechs rubberband about either.

Also, as someone else pointed out, sometimes the hitboxes decoupled from the 'mech model during a knockdown, and that of course wasn't something you could just leave in the game. Imagine an Atlas with all its hitboxes 2 meters off to the left...

[LordBraxton]

so because during closed beta a feature had bugs

PGI removed it entirely

-does not update about any progress on the feature

-and has spent the last several months making the graphics and game balance progressively worse

that is all I am hearing

[buttmonkey]

they removed knockowns because... er... ummmm.... ???
it was a good feature and it made people think before they just went running head first into an atlas. it meant you needed to actually focus on where you were running and where your team mates are.
think about it. if knockdowns were reintroduced now, all matches would begind with what could only be described as a ruck like you get in rugby matches
like this
https://www.google.n...52F%3B611%3B404

[jakucha]

LordBraxton, on 16 June 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:

so because during closed beta a feature had bugs

PGI removed it entirely

-does not update about any progress on the feature

-and has spent the last several months making the graphics and game balance progressively worse

that is all I am hearing

You're just ignoring anything positive because you want to hate the game no matter what. They've improved hit detection across the board; ballistics HSR isn't perfect but it's much better than previously. Also had to find and correct a bug that they shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place seeing as how it was within the engine they licensed. How have they made graphics worse?

As for balance, they haven't made heavy passes at it because it's pointless to focus heavily on weapon balance before when all the weapon groups didn't have HSR.

The netcode being buggy extended into multiple areas, not just one. That combined with the devs having to fix an engine deep bug has made things slower than it may have been otherwise. Once netcode is working as intended, chances are development speed picks up, like with the beta test server.

Edited by jakucha, 16 June 2013 - 12:32 PM.

[LordBraxton]

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:29 PM, said:

they removed knockowns because... er... ummmm.... ???
it was a good feature and it made people think before they just went running head first into an atlas. it meant you needed to actually focus on where you were running and where your team mates are.
think about it. if knockdowns were reintroduced now, all matches would begind with what could only be described as a ruck like you get in rugby matches
like this
https://www.google.n...52F%3B611%3B404

YES

the team effect is one of the main reasons I want it back

try to zerg through a tight area with your whole team?

you are all gonna fall on your *****!

[PropagandaWar]

Ozric, on 16 June 2013 - 05:08 AM, said:

Dragon bowling.

um no that was fixed.

[LordBraxton]

jakucha, on 16 June 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

You're just ignoring anything positive because you want to hate the game no matter what. They've improved hit detection across the board; ballistics HSR isn't perfect but it's much better than previously. Also had to find and correct a bug that they shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place seeing as how it was within the engine they licensed. As for balance, they haven't made heavy passes at it because it's pointless to focus heavily on weapon balance before when all the weapon groups didn't have HSR.

The netcode being buggy extended into multiple areas, not just one. That combined with the devs having to fix an engine deep bug has made things slower than it may have been otherwise. Once netcode is working as inteded, chances are development speed picks up, like with the beta test server.

no I want to love the game Like I did months ago

if this wasn't mechwarrior I would have given up

netcode has gone back and forth, only recently has hit detection been a problem once again

my 2 main points stand

since closed beta

graphics have gotten much worse

balance has gotten much worse

[Vassago Rain]

Stunlocks are bad for you.



Stunlocks are very, very, very, very annoying, and outright broken, in PVP games.

[jakucha]

LordBraxton, on 16 June 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

no I want to love the game Like I did months ago

if this wasn't mechwarrior I would have given up

netcode has gone back and forth, only recently has hit detection been a problem once again

my 2 main points stand

since closed beta

graphics have gotten much worse

balance has gotten much worse

Explain how graphics have gotten worse? They haven't done much to balance for the reason I stated in my previous posted.

[Odnir]

When they come back, and I do hope they come back, I want to see two things:

Dragon Chassis Perk: Stable
The dragon is known for having stable footings and a centre of mass that is low to the ground. It resists being knocked over as if it were 20 tons heavier. This does not cause it to knock down mechs as if it were 80 tons, it just resists knockdown as if it were.

Awesome Chassis Perk: Hulk
Massive size and a hulking frame allows the Awesome to knock over enemy mechs as if it weighed an additional 20 tons. It does not increase the resistance to being knocked down.

[buttmonkey]

jakucha, on 16 June 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

You're just ignoring anything positive because you want to hate the game no matter what. They've improved hit detection across the board; ballistics HSR isn't perfect but it's much better than previously. Also had to find and correct a bug that they shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place seeing as how it was within the engine they licensed. How have they made graphics worse?

As for balance, they haven't made heavy passes at it because it's pointless to focus heavily on weapon balance before when all the weapon groups didn't have HSR.

The netcode being buggy extended into multiple areas, not just one. That combined with the devs having to fix an engine deep bug has made things slower than it may have been otherwise. Once netcode is working as intended, chances are development speed picks up, like with the beta test server.

improved the game across the board you say! what game are you playing mate?
gameplay is worse
ping is worse
match maker is worse
user interface is worse
is there any other aspect of the game?

[jakucha]

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

improved the game across the board you say! what game are you playing mate?

jakucha, on 16 June 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

They've improved hit detection across the board; ballistics HSR isn't perfect but it's much better than previously.

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

gameplay is worse

That's subjective, though the forums seem pretty happy about less poptarts.

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

ping is worse

It was briefly higher for me until last patch. Now it's fine. This is probably why they want to add a few regional servers, as HSR doesn't work perfectly unless you have a stable ping.

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

user interface is worse

How so? It looks better to me than it did during closed beta. UI 2.0 preview screen shots look like nice concepts too.

Edited by jakucha, 16 June 2013 - 12:45 PM.

[Tickdoff Tank]

buttmonkey, on 16 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

improved the game across the board you say! what game are you playing mate?
gameplay is worse
ping is worse
match maker is worse
user interface is worse
is there any other aspect of the game?

I find the game much more enjoyable now than a few months ago, but YMMV.
My ping is fine, but I have never had ping issues with MWO.
Match Maker needs some work, but it seems to be better now, not worse.
User interface has not improved much, but neither has it become worse.

Apparently we are playing different games, or, more likely, have different expectations and tolerances.

[shabowie]

They removed knockdowns because they looked extremely unattractive and badly implemented. There was all kinds of teleporting involved and too easy to game the system. It exposed how bad the net code at the time was.

[Gaan Cathal]

I wish it was because the light game shouldn't revolve around ramming into your counterpart at the first opportunity so your lance have 5s or so of uninterrupted fire on it stationary. But sadly it's probably just because the animation was embarrassingly poor.

[Foxfire]

IIRC at the time that it was removed, it was considered a 'placeholder' ruleset for knockdown and that knockdowns would be coming back at some point in the future once they get a more robust rule set that eliminated the silliness that was occurring because of knockdowns.

[Squirtbox]

jakucha, on 16 June 2013 - 11:09 AM, said:

As for breakable street lights and trees, that's only player side as well as purely cosmetic so I imagine it's a very low priority.

I would just like to point out that breakable street lights is not just purely cosmetic considering they can and do repeatedly eat weapons fire at the worst times possible.

[Corbon Zackery]

LordBraxton, on 16 June 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:

so because during closed beta a feature had bugs

PGI removed it entirely

-does not update about any progress on the feature

-and has spent the last several months making the graphics and game balance progressively worse

that is all I am hearing

No we abused the hell out of it. Tactic included lights tripping light on propose in front of medium and heavy mechs just to get rid of them. Tripping so the back armor was hit by large quantizes of LRM. Tripping to stop a circle of death.

It may have been bugged but rampant abuse of the tripping mechanic was what got it removed from the game.

Edited by Corbon Zackery, 16 June 2013 - 07:12 PM.

[LordBraxton]

Corbon Zackery, on 16 June 2013 - 07:11 PM, said:

No we abused the hell out of it. Tactic included lights tripping light on propose in front of medium and heavy mechs just to get rid of them. Tripping so the back armor was hit by large quantizes of LRM. Tripping to stop a circle of death.

It may have been bugged but rampant abuse of the tripping mechanic was what got it removed from the game.

I don't see that as abuse


people can agree to disagree about knockdowns

but somebody claimed the graphics have not gotten worse....

lol everything from textures, to shading, antialiasing, and ESPECIALLY animations, has gotten much worse since CB

to help non gaming rigs run the game

they ruined the game for gaming rigs

Edited by LordBraxton, 16 June 2013 - 07:25 PM.