84 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

One of the best advances in MW:O over previous MechWarrior titles was the ability to climb any terrain on the map effectively, really bringing the spirit of "'mechs are mobility" to life. In fact, it made several maps that looked really bad and "path laden" into far more interesting, dynamic maps. Previous games couldn't deliver this because physics and animation had not yet caught up to it. In fact, MW4 didn't even use bones!

But those of us who played MechWarrior 4 for years know that you could get up just about any terrain: Move side to side to get velocity, turn sharply and gun it - eventually you'll make your way up things. It never felt very good, and felt like obvious gaming the system more than any kind of simulation element. Living Legends had the exact same issue.

... so here comes MW:O, with it's awesome dynamic animation system that allows for this movement. It's really good and one of the big things MW:O does did better than any MW game before it. And now, it's dead.

Let me first state I am in favor of the overall movement system. I think that by making Assaults go much slower up terrain, and lights go much faster up steep/rough terrain, you're effectively giving lights, mediums and even smaller heavies a huge advantage that they've needed for some time now!

For example, I think it would be awesome if a Centurion pilot would suffer only a 20% speed hit or some such on steep terrain, while a Atlas might take an 80% hit - now figuring in their typical speeds, that means the Centurion could outmaneuver an Atlas massively on a hill. That's awesome and the concept behind the speed system allows for that to happen.

That's not what's going on. The speed nerfs don't mean anything the way they are, other than "stuck spots." Effectively one of two things happen when you go up a hill and fail:

1: The hill ends up being just a tiny bit too steep, and your speed suddenly rushes to zero.
2: You hit a rock, pebble, slight mount of dirt that increases the angle by a degree too far, speed rushes to zero.

This feels less "I feel like I can't climb up this hill, it's too steep!" and far more "Gah, this stuck spot/invisible war is annoying and now I have to shake loose from it!" It's a working as intended feature that has the same level of frustration as one of the most annoying classes of bugs in gaming.

.... now back to the full circle part from the topic. A few defenders of this system that insist more terrain should act as walls for many non-JJ 'mechs (and thus "corridorify them"), because you can still climb hills "with skill." Namely, the same skill we used to get around MW4's technical limitations. Rocking side to side, turning, gunning your engine, repeating.

You've literally brought an awesome nextgen feature down to the problems of the 90s, and the more I think about it, the more frustrating it is. This should not be acceptable and we should not expect people to start adapting to "rock and turn" climbing tactics just "because."

...

Long story short, terrain accessibility by other classes of 'mechs have never been a problem. Mediums and other smaller 'mechs do need an advantage and I think the ability to climb surfaces far faster than assaults - while assaults are heavily penalized - is an awesome idea and has tons of potential.

I mean, picture if they add a map with more rolling hills, for example? Mediums and lights would absolutely shine as they go up and down the hills with a minimum speed hit, while the assaults struggle to keep up. We don't need to hard lock anybody to 0 on surfaces that should otherwise be climbable, however! Just reduce their speed!

PS: Before anyone (I expect people who didn't read the OP to post this anyway) starts complaining that I'm upset I can't drive my assault up hills, I've been doing the vast majority of my testing in a 100kp/h Trebuchet 7M. So no.

...

TL/DR:
GOOD - Massive speed nerfs the bigger you are going up steep terrain. Give mediums and lights a real edge on hills!

BAD - Steep (but climbable) terrain that will knock you to 0 abruptly for getting a degree off track, while being unable to get over terrain as high as your knee that's right in front of you.

UGLY - Honestly thinking this is acceptable because you can map monkey your way out of it. Really?

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 July 2013 - 08:20 PM.

[Valore]

Victor Morson, on 02 July 2013 - 08:10 PM, said:

BAD - Steep (but climbable) terrain that will knock you to 0 abruptly for getting a degree off track, while being unable to get over terrain as high as your knee that's right in front of you.

First thing I noticed. I don't disagree with terrain stopping you dead if you JJ into it. I imagined trying to drag a brick across a sandpaper floor as an image for people who think it should be doable.

But the knee high dead stop is hilarious. My Highlander JJed up, made it to the top, then couldn't move, because apparently its foot was caught on a ledge.

Immersion killer much.

[Victor Morson]

Valore, on 02 July 2013 - 08:18 PM, said:

First thing I noticed. I don't disagree with terrain stopping you dead if you JJ into it. I imagined trying to drag a brick across a sandpaper floor as an image for people who think it should be doable.

But the knee high dead stop is hilarious. My Highlander JJed up, made it to the top, then couldn't move, because apparently its foot was caught on a ledge.

Immersion killer much.

The sad part is even my 50 tonners are experiencing that same kind of sticking. This basically undoes any "advantage" that lighter 'mechs get, because as it is now anyone trying to go up a hill is at risk for an abrupt dead stop and subsequent death.

Also, preparing you now that at least a few people are going to totally ignore your post, except just one word:

HIGHLANDER!

[xDeityx]

I agree that the concept itself is fine. The implementation of the concept felt clunky at best. The immersion was broken several times and I was reminded of MWLL (oh god those chain link fences) when I would walk over some insanely tiny ground feature that would impact my movement way more than it should considering I'm piloting a 20-100 ton bipedal war machine.

Its hard to explain but the way this was implemented almost felt more like I was driving something with wheels and low torque than legs.

What boggles my mind is how this stuff gets through internal playtesting. Are the testers too afraid to speak up? Do they know how to do their jobs? Do they exist?

[Victor Morson]

xDeityx, on 02 July 2013 - 08:23 PM, said:

What boggles my mind is how this stuff gets through internal playtesting. Are the testers too afraid to speak up? Do they know how to do their jobs? Do they exist?

I am starting to wonder if their lead balance designer effectively will hear no criticism of his ideas, not from us or his testers.

I know we bash the testers all the time, but having done dev & requirement testing years ago, I can tell you a lot of the time it's a stubborn producer or dev that simply refuses to fix really stupidly broken balance stuff no matter how much it's reported.

In other words there's two scenarios:

A: Their test team is terrible and doing a terrible job

B: They are reading these forums, blood running down their lips from how hard they are biting them for fear of violating their NDA. I knew a few guys who worked requirements testing on a very, legendarily buggy game that just gave up after half a dozen magazines specifically bashed the test team. They'd bugged it all, they'd bugged it early, and nobody listened.

I have personally seen testers get a dev to come over to look at a seriously broken mechanic only for the dev that made it to go "Oh that's what I wanted, working as intended!" and walk away, only to later be forced into changing it (and the MP game dying anyway). So yeah. I do feel bad bashing the test team, even though some of this could be their fault. We just don't know.

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 July 2013 - 08:29 PM.

[Caviel]

xDeityx, on 02 July 2013 - 08:23 PM, said:

What boggles my mind is how this stuff gets through internal playtesting. Are the testers too afraid to speak up? Do they know how to do their jobs? Do they exist?

Not being fixed doesn't mean it wasn't reported.

[Victor Morson]

Caviel, on 02 July 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

Not being fixed doesn't mean it wasn't reported.

A nice one sentence summary of my last two paragraphs, lol. Well said.

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 July 2013 - 08:30 PM.

[xDeityx]

Victor Morson, on 02 July 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

I am starting to wonder if their lead balance designer effectively will hear no criticism of his ideas, not from us or his testers.

I know we bash the testers all the time, but having done dev & requirement testing years ago, I can tell you a lot of the time it's a stubborn producer or dev that simply refuses to fix really stupidly broken balance stuff no matter how much it's reported.

In other words there's two scenarios:

A: Their test team is terrible and doing a terrible job

B: They are reading these forums, blood running down their lips from how hard they are biting them for fear of violating their NDA. I knew a few guys who worked requirements testing on a very, legendarily buggy game that just gave up after half a dozen magazines specifically bashed the test team. They'd bugged it all, they'd bugged it early, and nobody listened.

I have personally seen testers get a dev to come over to look at a seriously broken mechanic only for the dev that made it to go "Oh that's what I wanted, working as intended!" and walk away, only to later be forced into changing it (and the MP game dying anyway). So yeah. I do feel bad bashing the test team, even though some of this could be their fault. We just don't know.

I remember a thread where someone did an analysis of PGI's linked in page and found no QA people at all so chances are they are outsourcing their testing.

Politics might also come into play too...Paul being built up as this balance whiz from his pro CS days yada yada and nobody wants to burst the bubble.

Public test server might yet fix some of the disconnect between development and QA.

Caviel, on 02 July 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

Not being fixed doesn't mean it wasn't reported.

Fair enough. To the end user the result is the same though.

Judging by the quality of their patches I'm inclined to believe that they have a testing team that consists of a few random employees pulled from other duties for a few hours the morning of the patch to make sure nothing is catastrophically broken.

[Victor Morson]

xDeityx, on 02 July 2013 - 08:36 PM, said:

I remember a thread where someone did an analysis of PGI's linked in page and found no QA people at all so chances are they are outsourcing their testing.

One of the Aces actually visited PGI a while ago and talked about meeting the test team, so they are almost positively there. However, they are almost also positively temps brought on from a tester agency, and thus won't get PGI employee pages. I bet you could find them in the credits, though. (Going on the fact that most testers are temps.)

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 July 2013 - 08:44 PM.

[Ningyo]

Maybe they could change the slowdown/stop to be based on the average mix-max height change of the next 5-10m of travel on your present course. So a 2m tall wall would over 5m be a like a 40 degree slope even if it was vertical. if you based the distance of travel on the height of the mech taller mechs would be able to step over larger obstacles, but with the steeper slope smaller mechs would be able to climb steeper average slopes. (can't guarantee this would work depends on how it is coded. Don't want you stopping because 10m in front of you is a wall but you are on flat ground or such.)

Also they really need to make minimum speed it drops to be 5kph or so, until you hit a slope steep enough you slide. This would solve nearly all those being stuck problems, while leaving the mobility differences in mechs.

[Victor Morson]

If they cut the rate in which your speed falls by like 90% (not the speed you fall to), they'd really fix a lot of this. It'd let you keep momentum and not feel like you're hitting a brick wall abruptly.

[Adridos]

...SO 100 ton machine standing upright while walking straight climbing a 89° slope is next-gen or real for you?

[Waking One]

The misuse of "next gen" is hurting me here.

Making the game more of a sim: now making it so last gen.

Oh my.

[Victor Morson]

Adridos, on 02 July 2013 - 11:20 PM, said:

...SO 100 ton machine standing upright while walking straight climbing a 89° slope is next-gen or real for you?

Exaggerate much? We're talking about 38-45 degree slopes.

Waking One, on 02 July 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

The misuse of "next gen" is hurting me here.

No, it's completely accurate. The reason MW4 didn't allow for taller hills - directly from the dev team, by the way - was that they could not animate effectively with the limitations of the hardware then.

Today we have really awesome animation/physics systems, such as in the latest Crytek engine MW:O is using. Which they used to their advantage.

Waking One, on 02 July 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

Making the game more of a sim: now making it so last gen.

Oh my.

This right here says you didn't read the post. You go "I want big 'mechs to slow down on hills so I won't read anymore!" pretty much, like a lot of others around here. I think perhaps we should begin a charity drive to combat ADD in MW:O forum posters.

Second, physics do not work this way.

Have you ever seen a vehicle like a tank go up a very steep hill? It might lose speed, certainly. The taller it is, the slower it goes, with gradual falloff. (Modern tanks can take angles of almost 60 degrees, by the way.)

Thus, at a certain point, the speed begins slowing until it simply can't push forward anymore.

Here, you suddenly can't go over even moderate hills unless you "turn left and right" over and over. IS THAT A SIMULATION? Does that work IRL?

If I find myself on a steep hill in my car, the way to go up it is to start spinning left and right wildly? From a dead stop halfway up a mountain, no less?

SIMULATION!

More importantly, if the road inclined from 40 degrees to 43 degrees for about 3 feet, should my vehicle suddenly go from the roughly 100km/h I was going to 0 in under 2 seconds?

SIMULATION!

I'm really, really getting frustrated with people who can't read, or comprehend, one or the other. They've got their opinions all lined up and they ignore the fact that I repeatedly state in the OP that I like the concept, and stress how it could be used to repair balance in mediums and heavies.

But making most of the map inaccessible without zig-zagging because of small terrain defects is flat out as dumb and gamey and absolutely as far from a sim as you can get.

You are literally saying what mounts to invisible walls = simulation. My God man. My God.

EDIT: Just because you like the idea of something doesn't mean it's not broken, stupid, frustrating and dumb as hell.

Again, I think this system can be salvaged. It needs to worry less about dead stopping people (or make momentum fall off drastically less rapidly) or blocking their access to parts of the map (same as above) and more on letting mediums and lights easily move up hills assaults move up at GREATLY reduced speed.

PS: Going 130 and turning across a slight mound of dirt will immediately drop your speed to 40 in about 3 seconds in a medium, with almost no serious disparity between assaults and mediums in drop off. Since speed drops hurt mediums far more than assaults, this whole system NERFS mediums in it's current form.

It's freaking horrendous. Seriously people stop defending the IDEA of something and start looking at what it IS!

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 July 2013 - 11:38 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Yea, these machines walk like humans, lift leg, bend knee, place leg on next firm footing.
a 45D angle...shouldn't stop them cold, however i suspect it was done this way as any higher an elevated angle, would mean reworking all the maps.

[SuperJoe]

what is play testing.

[GODzillaGSPB]

They have to tweak it. But I'm not missing Stalkers gliding up the talest mountains on Alpine, then rain down 4 erppcs an each and everyone in the distance.

[Victor Morson]

GODzillaGSPB, on 03 July 2013 - 02:23 AM, said:

They have to tweak it. But I'm not missing Stalkers gliding up the talest mountains on Alpine, then rain down 4 erppcs an each and everyone in the distance.

Good players already caught on and are using Highlanders exclusively. Stalkers are what caught on with the PUG community though. Give it a week and everyone will be "LOL impassable terrain" as they get used to using jets to reach places you CAN'T go without them.

Edited by Victor Morson, 03 July 2013 - 02:31 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Victor Morson, on 03 July 2013 - 02:30 AM, said:

Good players already caught on and are using Highlanders exclusively. Stalkers are what caught on with the PUG community though. Give it a week and everyone will be "LOL impassable terrain" as they get used to using jets to reach places you CAN'T go without them.

If only JJ gave you forward momentum to stop the clipping :/

[Victor Morson]

DV McKenna, on 03 July 2013 - 02:32 AM, said:

If only JJ gave you forward momentum to stop the clipping :/

The trick is mixing it with the "turn sharp to accelerate" thing; you can get up pretty much anywhere, because you only need a couple kph speed most of the time. It's really terrible feeling though, and comes as very, very "gamey."