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[Peter2000]

TL:DR: The current slope slow-down mechanic is flawed, especially in its interaction with jump jets. Allow sufficiently short slopes to be ignored, and maintain “velocity” when hitting impassable terrain.

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Let me preface this by saying that I think these changes are interesting, and have the potential to be good. However, it seems they may not have been thought out (or tested!) as thoroughly as would be ideal. Maps do not seem to have been designed with this in mind, and there are also issues that severely hinder reasonable maneuvering. Fortunately, most of these should be relatively easy to fix.

One problem manifests itself when you are trying to scale (for example) a steep hill in a JJ-equipped ‘Mech. In the past, the system was relatively intuitive. March forwards until you hit the terrain you can’t climb, then fire your jump jets. This worked because although ‘Mech movement was stopped by the terrain, the “leg velocity” (represented by the speed number displayed on the HUD) was high, so the jump would move you forwards, as you rose. Currently, hitting impassable terrain cuts this to zero, so you jump in place, and need to reverse, then accelerate, and jump in advance. This wouldn’t be a huge problem, but it is, because it is not always clear when terrain will become impassable. The best way of dealing with this would be to allow “leg velocity” to be maintained while churning up a hopelessly steep slope (already the way it used to work, so this fix should be easy). This will also solve the issue of jumping onto impassable terrain, and becoming stuck until you climb down (all of which has resulted in unintentional nerfs to jump jets, when this system should have been a buff to them).

Another issue is that many very small slopes cause significant deceleration. These can range from annoying (the small rocks below the big cliff in Alpine), to hugely problematic (some areas on Canyon). The calculation for slope slowdown needs to take into account the length of that slope. An Atlas should be able to clear a 90 degree slope, if it’s 2 feet high! It may make sense to scale this value to ‘Mech size, or even ‘Mech leg size. In any case, tiny terrain obstacles (like the ones that used to destroy Jenner/Raven legs in days past) are now, absurdly, a problem again. Taking an average over a certain distance, or just ignoring very short segments, would fix this issue.

Another problem that already existed, but has become clearer, is the very specific angles that must be taken to ascend some ridges (Canyon having by far the most examples of this, though they also exist on Alpine and Caustic). The paths have always been very finicky, and approaching at even a few angles off slowed your progress until you righted it. Now, however, it cuts your actual throttle to zero, meaning that you must accelerate again from zero to begin moving, until you go off course again and need to repeat the process. It is simply annoying to deal with this. There are a number of possible fixes. First would be to make these paths wider (or at least more forgiving, angle-wise). Alternatively, they could be CLEARLY marked. Finally, taking the ‘Mechs intended movement vector and speed, the game could “push back” on the ‘Mech, sending it up, but slightly more slowly. This would be similar to what happens when you run into a flat wall at 45 degrees. You hit the wall, and continue walking into it, but do keep moving along it, albeit a bit more slowly. Any of these fixes would really improve the behavior of ascent paths.

Again, this change could be really nice (assuming that more buffs come to brawlers than you had in mind before, since they’re going to have fewer legal routes of approach now), and could help give jump jets a role without massively altering their behavior. However, there’s a few things that are very, very wrong with the current implementation that should have shown up during “testing.” Fortunately, there are easy solutions. Please keep them in mind.