387 replies to this topic

[Unbound Inferno]

DeadlyNerd, on 01 July 2013 - 11:48 AM, said:

A question to everyone who agreed to this.

How will you react when you miss a perfectly lined up shot just cause the system forced non convergence? Back here and whine?

As I fire LRMs at long range and only use my Medium Lasers closer where its unlikely the spread would cause me to miss the broad side of a barn... I'd say its not likely for me.

[Angel of Annihilation]

The only issues I see is that lasers sort of don't miss. They are straight line, speed of light weapons so where you place the reticle is where they need to be hitting.

I guess you could justify it by saying that it isn't the lasers that miss, rather it is the targeting system that take time to calibrate the correct angles, hence the delay in convergence.

Also this isn't going to fix boating because lets face it a sniper is often standing still just waiting for a target to pop over a ridge. That being the case, he is still going to have prefect convergence due to lack of movement triggering the recticle bloom.

In fact now that I think about it, it would have the greatest impact on brawlers and fast medium or light mechs effectively nerfing them to oblivion while leaving snipers virtually intact.

[PEEFsmash]

Has anyone pointed out that this does nothing to stop the sniping meta, because snipers are the ones standing still with crosshairs on target for the longest period of time before shooting? This is just another nerf to meds and lights who cannot afford to stare at targets for the requisite time to have the game decide its time to make your shots accurate.

There is a bad thought process here that leads to unintended nerfs to meds and lights. "How can I nerf high alpha strike? Make it hit all-over. How can I make it hit all over? Well mechs move around and make them less accurate the more they are moving." The last sentence is when you go wrong. Snipers just sit and wait and look.

[Homeless Bill]

PEEFsmash, on 01 July 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Has anyone pointed out that this does nothing to stop the sniping meta, because snipers are the ones standing still with crosshairs on target for the longest period of time before shooting? This is just another nerf to meds and lights who cannot afford to stare at targets for the requisite time to have the game decide its time to make your shots accurate.

There is a bad thought process here that leads to unintended nerfs to meds and lights. "How can I nerf high alpha strike? Make it hit all-over. How can I make it hit all over? Well mechs move around and make them less accurate the more they are moving." The last sentence is when you go wrong. Snipers just sit and wait and look.

In the factors affecting convergence section, the only movement penalty I see applied is the target's movement speed (which would be a buff to mediums and lights).

Doc, clarification - does your own 'mech's movement affect the speed of convergence?

[Roland]

Peef's point is valid, and one that has been brought up before. Lighter, faster mechs will tend to suffer the most from penalties that stem from movement, and heat based penalties will affect most builds (especially light builds which tend to be energy heavy).

However, it's worth noting that snipers don't actually stand still, most of the time. Minimally, they are usually moving out of cover, firing, and then retreating to cover.

The other side of the issue though, is that convergence changes to heavy alpha boats will, while affecting lights and mediums, will also benefit them by making more shots against them miss. For instance, a stalker wouldn't be able to dump 4 PPC's onto a single panel of your jenner with one trigger pull. But at close range, the jenner would almost certainly still be able to put all of his medium lasers onto a single panel of the stalker, even if they didn't converge at all.

[Tezcatli]

Yes. This. A million times over yes.

[Unbound Inferno]

PEEFsmash, on 01 July 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Has anyone pointed out that this does nothing to stop the sniping meta, because snipers are the ones standing still with crosshairs on target for the longest period of time before shooting? This is just another nerf to meds and lights who cannot afford to stare at targets for the requisite time to have the game decide its time to make your shots accurate.

There is a bad thought process here that leads to unintended nerfs to meds and lights. "How can I nerf high alpha strike? Make it hit all-over. How can I make it hit all over? Well mechs move around and make them less accurate the more they are moving." The last sentence is when you go wrong. Snipers just sit and wait and look.

Viktor Drake, on 01 July 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

The only issues I see is that lasers sort of don't miss. They are straight line, speed of light weapons so where you place the reticle is where they need to be hitting.

I guess you could justify it by saying that it isn't the lasers that miss, rather it is the targeting system that take time to calibrate the correct angles, hence the delay in convergence.

Also this isn't going to fix boating because lets face it a sniper is often standing still just waiting for a target to pop over a ridge. That being the case, he is still going to have prefect convergence due to lack of movement triggering the recticle bloom.

In fact now that I think about it, it would have the greatest impact on brawlers and fast medium or light mechs effectively nerfing them to oblivion while leaving snipers virtually intact.

Not true.

It doesn't harm the initial shots of the snipers, sure. However as heat rises, the reticle expands, causing the firing lines to diverge. The threat of a hot-running PPC sniper that is pummeling perfect shots repeatedly can't happen as he'll be forced to let the mech cool down or deal with inaccurate shots as the accuracy suffers under the hotter heat.

The best balance would be the Heaat being the main factor, and other effects like JJ and speed less so. Balance it right, it will work out.

Edited by Unbound Inferno, 01 July 2013 - 12:09 PM.

[DocBach]

Roland, on 01 July 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

The other side of the issue though, is that convergence changes to heavy alpha boats will, while affecting lights and mediums, will also benefit them by making more shots against them miss. For instance, a stalker wouldn't be able to dump 4 PPC's onto a single panel of your jenner with one trigger pull. But at close range, the jenner would almost certainly still be able to put all of his medium lasers onto a single panel of the stalker, even if they didn't converge at all.

This is exactly how I envision it; every class's weapons will converge less, but getting convergence against a fast moving target would be more difficult while gaining convergence against a slow moving or stationary target would be much quicker, the system would actually make lights and mediums harder to kill while making the larger 'Mechs they are fighting easier for them to get hits on.

[DocBach]

Homeless Bill, on 01 July 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

In the factors affecting convergence section, the only movement penalty I see applied is the target's movement speed (which would be a buff to mediums and lights).

Doc, clarification - does your own 'mech's movement affect the speed of convergence?

The firing 'Mechs throttle rate affects the maximum the weapons will converge; a 100 ton 'Mech moving 48kph at 100% throttle would have less convergence than a 25 ton 'Mech moving 120kph at 75% throttle; the speed of convergence on a target would make slower 'Mechs are easier to converge on, and since the reticle would have to remain on target to gain convergence, it is actually a buff to smaller 'Mechs moving at high speeds as large grouped weapons won't instantly converge on a single location and be able to one shot them.

[Homeless Bill]

DocBach, on 01 July 2013 - 03:31 PM, said:

The firing 'Mechs throttle rate affects the maximum the weapons will converge

Okay, so I totally disagree with this aspect of the system, but I'm fine with everything else. Whether or not it's Canon and whether or not other shooters do it, realtime MechWarrior is totally different. Unlike shooters where movement is quick and agile, moving is plodding and governed by acceleration in MWO.

The increase in difficulty for shooting a moving target is much greater for a standard shooter than MWO, again because it's essentially tank-driving mechanics. I dislike people that stand still, I hate camping, and I adamantly oppose any effort to reward it.

I'm a fan of penalties based on the target's movement, but I hate anything that encourages people to stand still.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I just want PGI to pick one of these and do it. I don't even care who's idea at this point.

[Homeless Bill]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 01 July 2013 - 03:56 PM, said:

I just want PGI to pick one of these and do it. I don't even care who's idea at this point.

They can hire us both, and we'll fight to the death to see which one gets implemented.

[Kibble]

I like the OPs idea. Throw it on the test server and give it a shot PGI.

[DocBach]

Homeless Bill, on 01 July 2013 - 03:52 PM, said:

Okay, so I totally disagree with this aspect of the system, but I'm fine with everything else. Whether or not it's Canon and whether or not other shooters do it, realtime MechWarrior is totally different. Unlike shooters where movement is quick and agile, moving is plodding and governed by acceleration in MWO.

The increase in difficulty for shooting a moving target is much greater for a standard shooter than MWO, again because it's essentially tank-driving mechanics. I dislike people that stand still, I hate camping, and I adamantly oppose any effort to reward it.

I'm a fan of penalties based on the target's movement, but I hate anything that encourages people to stand still.

To address concerns about static long range positions being dominant, maximum convergence is also affected by the range of the weapons; pretty much being outside of the effective range would be barely any convergence, long range shots (the last 1/3rd of the weapons max damage range) would converge actually less than a 'Mech running at full speed. To get pinpoint precision like we have now, the sniper 'Mech would have to get in much closer than present, and then make himself an easy target by standing still.

[Unbound Inferno]

Homeless Bill, on 01 July 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

They can hire us both, and we'll fight to the death to see which one gets implemented.

My money's on DocBach if it comes to that.

[General Taskeen]

Kibble, on 01 July 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

I like the OPs idea. Throw it on the test server and give it a shot PGI.

Added Doc's Alpha convergence/reactive reticle suggestion to my test server thread

[StandingInFire]

This is the best method I have seen for fixing convergence without introducing rng, got my full support.

[MustrumRidcully]

Narcisoldier, on 01 July 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

Mechwarrior has always been an FPS "skinned with lore." The sooner the devs unshackle themselves from tabletop, the sooner balance will improve.

It doesn't really matter if they "unshackle" themselves from the table top or not. What matters is that they get a real grip and really understand the intracities of their game.


A lot of balance discussions use the table top as an example to compare to, but you can also completely ignore the comparison part and focus on the meat.



Here is one simple balancing approach:

The effective weight of a weapon system should be determined by:
- The Weight of the weapon itself
- The Weight of the ammo needed in a typical match
- The amount of heat sinks to counter the heat of the weapon.

Weapons of equal worth should have equal weapon system weight. Worth is determined by damage potential, range and precision/aiming factors like projectile speed or beam duration. How this is determined is what the developers have to figure out, which they can use gameplay metrics and mathematical models for. (Get data, formulate a model, apply it for tweaks, ge tnew data, adjust model...)

I can compare to the table top and show how it worked (and where it failed), but I can also show how PGI fails.

4 PPCs:
If you wanted to counter the complete heat of each PPC, you would need 20 standard sinks or 10 (True) DHS per PPC. That would put the weapon system weight at 27 for each PPC.
But i practice we know yo udon't need tha tmuch. Why is that?
Because you have a huge heat capacity. You can afford to accumulate heat without being to completely dissipate it.

And now it gets really complicated - the heat capacity is high. A single PPC can basically be fired without any extra heat sinks for a long time. But the more PPCs you add, the more heat sinks you need to add per PPC (not just more heat sinks absolutely - more heat sinks per PPC).

This makes it very hard to actualyl balance weapons well - the heat capacity gives you a large window to operate in, and can act funky when you add more and more weapons to your mech.

But a crucial landmark might be: How much damage can you press into your heat capacity and the bit of dissipation you have before you overheat? If that damage is too low, then your build will overheat before the enemy is dead, and if there are more heat efficient builds, they will fare better against you. If the damage is high enough, you might be able to kill the enemy before you overheat. Unless there is a build with even more DPS potential before your shutdown, you now have a winner build. Even if it lacks heat efficiency.

Overall, this creates a very difficult setting to balance weapon system weight.

The system would be easier (but not perfectly so) to balance if the heat capacity was much lower. Then a heat inefficient build will usually not break the "barrier" of dealing enough damage to kill an enemy before shut down, and you must build a mech closer to the heat neutral ideal. but there stil lneeds to be let some room, so there is reason to not build heat neutral and risk overheating, becaus ethis can up your DPS and you might be able to kill some enemies earlier thanks to your hotness. But not enough, because then you end up with overheating monster boats like we have them now.


I didn't compare anything to the table top so far, but now I will:
Due to the heat penalty system in the tabl etop, it worked out reasonably well in this manner. Just gaining 5 heat per turn could turn your mech into a really hot beast that would suffer from the heat penalties. A 6 PPC build with just 15 Double Heat Sinks would never be practical.

[Prezimonto]

DocBach, on 01 July 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

To address concerns about static long range positions being dominant, maximum convergence is also affected by the range of the weapons; pretty much being outside of the effective range would be barely any convergence, long range shots (the last 1/3rd of the weapons max damage range) would converge actually less than a 'Mech running at full speed. To get pinpoint precision like we have now, the sniper 'Mech would have to get in much closer than present, and then make himself an easy target by standing still.

Or fire single weapons. A single Gauss rifle would still be amazing.

[Grand Ayatollah Kerensky]

MustrumRidcully, on 02 July 2013 - 07:06 AM, said:

It doesn't really matter if they "unshackle" themselves from the table top or not. What matters is that they get a real grip and really understand the intracities of their game.


A lot of balance discussions use the table top as an example to compare to, but you can also completely ignore the comparison part and focus on the meat.



Here is one simple balancing approach:

The effective weight of a weapon system should be determined by:
- The Weight of the weapon itself
- The Weight of the ammo needed in a typical match
- The amount of heat sinks to counter the heat of the weapon.

Weapons of equal worth should have equal weapon system weight. Worth is determined by damage potential, range and precision/aiming factors like projectile speed or beam duration. How this is determined is what the developers have to figure out, which they can use gameplay metrics and mathematical models for. (Get data, formulate a model, apply it for tweaks, ge tnew data, adjust model...)

I can compare to the table top and show how it worked (and where it failed), but I can also show how PGI fails.

4 PPCs:
If you wanted to counter the complete heat of each PPC, you would need 20 standard sinks or 10 (True) DHS per PPC. That would put the weapon system weight at 27 for each PPC.
But i practice we know yo udon't need tha tmuch. Why is that?
Because you have a huge heat capacity. You can afford to accumulate heat without being to completely dissipate it.

And now it gets really complicated - the heat capacity is high. A single PPC can basically be fired without any extra heat sinks for a long time. But the more PPCs you add, the more heat sinks you need to add per PPC (not just more heat sinks absolutely - more heat sinks per PPC).

This makes it very hard to actualyl balance weapons well - the heat capacity gives you a large window to operate in, and can act funky when you add more and more weapons to your mech.

But a crucial landmark might be: How much damage can you press into your heat capacity and the bit of dissipation you have before you overheat? If that damage is too low, then your build will overheat before the enemy is dead, and if there are more heat efficient builds, they will fare better against you. If the damage is high enough, you might be able to kill the enemy before you overheat. Unless there is a build with even more DPS potential before your shutdown, you now have a winner build. Even if it lacks heat efficiency.

Overall, this creates a very difficult setting to balance weapon system weight.

The system would be easier (but not perfectly so) to balance if the heat capacity was much lower. Then a heat inefficient build will usually not break the "barrier" of dealing enough damage to kill an enemy before shut down, and you must build a mech closer to the heat neutral ideal. but there stil lneeds to be let some room, so there is reason to not build heat neutral and risk overheating, becaus ethis can up your DPS and you might be able to kill some enemies earlier thanks to your hotness. But not enough, because then you end up with overheating monster boats like we have them now.


I didn't compare anything to the table top so far, but now I will:
Due to the heat penalty system in the tabl etop, it worked out reasonably well in this manner. Just gaining 5 heat per turn could turn your mech into a really hot beast that would suffer from the heat penalties. A 6 PPC build with just 15 Double Heat Sinks would never be practical.

Because it's hard is no excuse. PGI should be tweaking problem-weapons every single patch. At least this way, even if they f*ck up, you haven't been bored out of your mind by months and months of the same gameplay meta.