84 replies to this topic

[Scromboid]

Overall I have to agree with the OP.

I cannot imagine in any sense of reality or fiction that a 100 ton 18 meter bipod BattleMech powered by a fusion engine ffs would not be able to climb the little lip of the stream in Canyon Network.

Listen... the idea was sound. I do not disagree that some sort of movement changes had to be made, but this is poorly implemented and a little too drastic. My Atlas is already the slowest critter in the crawl and this movement change makes it almost impossible to do any sort on maneuvering on any sort of slope. I spent half the match last night in River City Night just trying to figure out how to get on the bridge. It was ridiculous!

The other thing... there is no reason we should be limited to 0 when going up a hill. There is no point in time where the mech cannot even supposedly reach down with its arms and pull itself up the hill. Arden Sortek dug himself out of a 20+ meter bog in a Victor... straight up. We should be able to hoof it up a little hill. At the very least build into the HUD a way for the 'mech to tell us whether it is going to be able to traverse a hill or not. Running 52.7kph into a hill, going up 3 feet then stopping dead is completely ridiculous and not even how physics and inertia work! I would imagine that the weight and inertia alone would push the mech over the hill. Even if it would stop it, hitting a 45 degree and immediately stopping is not close at all to realistic and we are already suspending dis-belief by driving building sized robot tanks!

Lastly, if speed is affected uphill, it needs to be affected downhill as well. I cannot honestly imagine the reason for such a drastic change in the way our battlemechs move after 2 years of gameplay, but at least make it equal on both sides. If my car has a tough time going up a hill on one side of the mountain, it goes down on the other side very quickly. Right now, having that speed limiter just makes no sense at all.

Something needs to be done and very quickly. I have rarely gotten so frustrated at this game before that I have dropped group mid night to just go read. I was not the only one, either.

The new map movement is frustrating and poorly implemented. If there is any time for an immediate roll back, this is it.

Edited by Scromboid, 03 July 2013 - 05:11 AM.

[Dracol]

My first hope for this system is that us beta testers are filling their inbox with every shin high rock that stops a commando or an atlas dead in their tracks.

My second hope is that PGI knew we'd be finding these areas and has a team member assigned to go through the inbox and fix these small annoyances. That covers point 2 of your bullet list.

As for point 1, IMHO a better visual indication of what can and cannot be climbed would allow people to plan their paths better to avoid the necessity to game the system so to speak.

Other then that, I'm happy with how the system is working when I pilot cicadas and jump trebs.

[Scromboid]

Dracol, on 03 July 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

My first hope for this system is that us beta testers are filling their inbox with every shin high rock that stops a commando or an atlas dead in their tracks.

My second hope is that PGI knew we'd be finding these areas and has a team member assigned to go through the inbox and fix these small annoyances. That covers point 2 of your bullet list.

As for point 1, IMHO a better visual indication of what can and cannot be climbed would allow people to plan their paths better to avoid the necessity to game the system so to speak.

Other then that, I'm happy with how the system is working when I pilot cicadas and jump trebs.

I beg PGI to give us a useful bug submission tool.

[Victor Morson]

Scromboid, on 03 July 2013 - 05:03 AM, said:

Something needs to be done and very quickly. I have rarely gotten so frustrated at this game before that I have dropped group mid night to just go read. I was not the only one, either.

The new map movement is frustrating and poorly implemented. If there is any time for an immediate roll back, this is it.

A long time player of MW:O and friend of mine got so frustrated with the way the speed drops would happen at the slightest thing that instead of going to jump jet meta, he pretty much just opted out of the game entirely. I believe he canceled his Project Phoenix order as well.

He believes rather firmly that PGI is trying to make this into more of a corridor shooter and that they want to cater to an audience that doesn't exist - not the hardcore crowd and not the twitch crowd (which have a far superior "twitch" game in Hawken), but for really nobody. And they keep trying to push things like 3PV nobody wants, again, to move towards this goal of making a game that's too technical for casuals and too casual for technical.

Thus he doesn't think the game will get better. He thinks it will get worse. And unless PGI says something soon, I have a feeling he's right.

Again, if this movement change was meant to buff mediums/lights by giving them more flexability, I applaud that effort - as I do the idea of continuing on that trend. But trying to make it impossible to get onto terrain that feels like it's so close you could just lunge onto it - or not even being able to crest a gentle snow drift the size of your 'mech - is stupid. Being able to utilize the full terrain of a map was a strength of MW:O, not a weakness; and speed reductions won't change that.

But despite the knee-jerk reaction, this is nothing even remotely close to a "sim" thing that was added. It's an artificial restriction that feels forced and unnatural, and as I said in the OP, goes back to what we had in 2000 when the tech was too limited to do what we had going before this patch.

Dracol, on 03 July 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

My first hope for this system is that us beta testers are filling their inbox with every shin high rock that stops a commando or an atlas dead in their tracks.

People keep suggesting this, but it's not the maps fault. Sure maps could be made now to exploit the speed reduction more, but seriously.. the maps don't need fixing. The problems are everywhere. "Fixing" them would require making them flatter and less interesting.

I'd rather fix what we broke than fix what we added broke.

[William Mountbank]

So this is my experience from a light mech with JJs - I should have no trouble with the new movement, right?



Here I've just jumped up on a buried building. It is shorter than my Spider, and I used JJs and my forward momentum to get up the few metres necessary - see the cap laser marker to know how high I am.

Unfortunately as I land, I hit a tiny slope of snow, maybe 15cm big and with a slope over 45°. So my mech goes instantly to 0kph as it lands, and I have no forward momentum so JJs only take me directly up, then back down to exactly the same spot, still with 0kph.

The only thing I can do to get off this tiny snow drift is to turn the mech over 90° to the left or right - or press S, and wait while my speed selector slowly creeps from full forwards to zero (catching up with reality), then slowly to reverse and I take one step back to freedom.

So basically, by jumping onto this minor obstacle, my superfast mech is utterly frozen for 3 seconds.

Plus, was making the new PPC sound incredibly load and annoying a way to nerf boating??

[Dracol]

Scromboid, on 03 July 2013 - 05:12 AM, said:

I beg PGI to give us a useful bug submission tool.

It would be nice if it was easier. At least they gave us screen cap ability. It was so damn frustrating when that was disabled.

[Matta]

Rengakun, on 03 July 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

Fifth, JJ Vectoring is awesome and requires skill to use.

I know it's not on-topic but humor me please.

Why do you think JJ Vectoring would be awesome in MW:O ?

I asume you're talking about Mech running straight and when you press "JumpJets_to_the_left" button it would immediately start lifting you up and to the side ?

[Victor Morson]

Vectoring would make navigating terrain easier, but really, that shouldn't be the fix to ANYTHING. 'mechs without JJs should not be trash.

[Rengakun]

Matta, on 03 July 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

Why do you think JJ Vectoring would be awesome in MW:O ?

I asume you're talking about Mech running straight and when you press "JumpJets_to_the_left" button it would immediately start lifting you up and to the side ?

Well, awesome screen shake, reasonable heat generation and the speed of JJs can make it awesome.

Just play MW:LL and see for yourself. (Or dig up Youtube videos of it)

[William Mountbank]

Victor Morson, on 03 July 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

Vectoring would make navigating terrain easier, but really, that shouldn't be the fix to ANYTHING.

But W is OP!

[Lostdragon]

I was skeptically excited about this when they announced it. I had things to do yesterday so I only got to play about 5-6 games all in a HGN and it felt very clunky to me. I am going to play some in my Jenners and Cataphrafts tonight so I will reserve judgement until I have tried more mechs but initially I feel the movement penalties are very stiff.

[MoPo]

Would something like this work better?

Note: figures in the grid are a deceleration applied as a percentage of current speed per second.

For example, a Cicada and a Highlander, both travelling at 40 move onto an incline of 15 degrees. The highlander would decelerate (roughly) twice as quickly as the cicada.

The weighting factor helps it increase the relative deceleration as the slope gets steeper. The class factor makes the difference between weight classes a bit more prominent (i.e. there's more of a difference between a 55t medium and 60t heavy than between 60t and 65t).

Larger, heavier mechs would slow quicker for a given incline than lighter ones (an Atlas at 30 degrees would stop very quickly but also a lot smoother than the "running into a wall" principle).
Class Light Medium Heavy Assault Class Factor 31 30 29 28 Incline Weighting factor 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 5 1 3.23 4.03 4.84 5.65 6.67 7.50 8.33 9.17 10.34 11.21 12.07 12.93 14.29 15.18 16.07 16.96 17.86 10 1 6.45 8.06 9.68 11.29 13.33 15.00 16.67 18.33 20.69 22.41 24.14 25.86 28.57 30.36 32.14 33.93 35.71 15 1 9.68 12.10 14.52 16.94 20.00 22.50 25.00 27.50 31.03 33.62 36.21 38.79 42.86 45.54 48.21 50.89 53.57 20 1 12.90 16.13 19.35 22.58 26.67 30.00 33.33 36.67 41.38 44.83 48.28 51.72 57.14 60.71 64.29 67.86 71.43 25 1 16.13 20.16 24.19 28.23 33.33 37.50 41.67 45.83 51.72 56.03 60.34 64.66 71.43 75.89 80.36 84.82 89.29 30 2 38.71 48.39 58.06 67.74 80.00 90.00 100.00 110.00 124.14 134.48 144.83 155.17 171.43 182.14 192.86 203.57 214.29 35 2 45.16 56.45 67.74 79.03 93.33 105.00 116.67 128.33 144.83 156.90 168.97 181.03 200.00 212.50 225.00 237.50 250.00 40 3 77.42 96.77 116.13 135.48 160.00 180.00 200.00 220.00 248.28 268.97 289.66 310.34 342.86 364.29 385.71 407.14 428.57 45 3 87.10 108.87 130.65 152.42 180.00 202.50 225.00 247.50 279.31 302.59 325.86 349.14 385.71 409.82 433.93 458.04 482.14 50 4 129.03 161.29 193.55 225.81 266.67 300.00 333.33 366.67 413.79 448.28 482.76 517.24 571.43 607.14 642.86 678.57 714.29 55 8 283.87 354.84 425.81 496.77 586.67 660.00 733.33 806.67 910.34 986.21 1062.07 1137.93 1257.14 1335.71 1414.29 1492.86 1571.43


Obviously, the figures would be subject to more than 10 minutes thought.

Also, as the deceleration is a factor of speed, a mech would, in theory, never actually stop. It would just get r e a l l y s l o w.

EDIT: That table looked MUCH better before I posted it. I'll have to see how to do this a bit better.

Edited by MoPo, 03 July 2013 - 05:56 AM.

[Shumabot]

Quote

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!

Watching an atlas climb a sheer cliff made of ice while half of its body is absorbed into the ground isn't helping the "spirit" much for me. Also, MW4 had skeletal animations.

William Mountbank, on 03 July 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

So this is my experience from a light mech with JJs - I should have no trouble with the new movement, right?



Here I've just jumped up on a buried building. It is shorter than my Spider, and I used JJs and my forward momentum to get up the few metres necessary - see the cap laser marker to know how high I am.

Unfortunately as I land, I hit a tiny slope of snow, maybe 15cm big and with a slope over 45°. So my mech goes instantly to 0kph as it lands, and I have no forward momentum so JJs only take me directly up, then back down to exactly the same spot, still with 0kph.

The only thing I can do to get off this tiny snow drift is to turn the mech over 90° to the left or right - or press S, and wait while my speed selector slowly creeps from full forwards to zero (catching up with reality), then slowly to reverse and I take one step back to freedom.

So basically, by jumping onto this minor obstacle, my superfast mech is utterly frozen for 3 seconds.

Plus, was making the new PPC sound incredibly load and annoying a way to nerf boating??

I'd blame the maps which are somewhat incompetently made before the movement mechanics. This game needs collision planes, but I think the mechs actually walk on the maps geometry in most cases.

[Lostdragon]

Also, after reading the title I was disappointed this thread was not about things like DX11 and SLI support.

[Matta]

Victor Morson, on 03 July 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

Vectoring would make navigating terrain easier, but really, that shouldn't be the fix to ANYTHING. 'mechs without JJs should not be trash.

I said it was offtopic question, unrelated to terrain movement and JJs.

On-topic, I do agree with you on this one, even from light Mech perspective. This needs some tweaking pretty fast, either map-side or mech-side.

Rengakun, on 03 July 2013 - 05:37 AM, said:

Well, awesome screen shake, reasonable heat generation and the speed of JJs can make it awesome.

Just play MW:LL and see for yourself. (Or dig up Youtube videos of it)

Can't find any usefull video atm. But vectoring (except forward one) is not common in BT universe, is it ?

[Kraven Kor]

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

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?

Pretty much this.

I like the intent, and I think largely it works well but the instant stop and such on some terrain is crazy and it is MUCH easier to get stuck now.

But I do, overall, like it.

[Zyllos]

I have no idea how their deceleration works but I would suggest redoing it to 10% reduction in forward momentum per second as a base then add 5% per 20t if below the 45 degree incline.

This rate should double if over the 45 degree incline, to 20% + 10% per 20t.

What this will do is make mechs slowdown speed based on their tonnage while their maximum speed is based on their "height".

[Lostdragon]

Also, after reading the title I was disappointed this thread was not about things like DX11 and SLI support.

[Rengakun]

Matta, on 03 July 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

Can't find any usefull video atm. But vectoring (except forward one) is not common in BT universe, is it ?

Eh... I think MW2 and 3 had thrust vectoring. A MechWarrior fan game called Assault Tech: 1 (By MekTek, y'know those guys who did HG:A) also had thrust vectoring.

I'm too lazy to dig up a source on JJ vectoring in BT right now.

Here's a link for you if you want to get MW:LL.

[Mechteric]

The only problem with JJ thrust vectoring is that unless you add new actions that correspond to jump jetting in each direction (like MW2 had) then you end up being unable to use jump jet assisted turning (like in MWLL). Granted I like the jets in MWLL for this reason, but it would be nice to have both!

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 03 July 2013 - 06:36 AM.