86 replies to this topic

[MaddMaxx]

FatBabyThompkins, on 31 July 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:

Please tell me how it encourages camping. The brawlers want to get into close range (yes, there are brawlers out there). With less of a chance to hit on quick shots, the brawlers can get into range with less damage. Unless the sniper exposes himself to some fire to put shots on those incoming brawlers. Also leaving him open to counter sniper fire, but not before he can make a good shot on the incoming force. The brawlers engage, likely with other brawlers, leaving the snipers to support the melee. Either against each other, or to take out targets in the melee. Your skirmishers (yes, there are skirmishers out there), the light mechs, are either going after vulnerable brawlers or snipers. LRM boats (suprise, yet another non sniper build) are back with the snipers to put damage on brawlers, but more likely as counter sniper as the missiles may hurt friendly brawlers in the melee.

And holy crap we have class based warfare. I'm not saying it is perfect and will exactly go to this model with one change. Many changes need to be made.

Your proposing change in a vacuum dude. When "everyone" figures out that Brawling is difficult, due to exactly what you said, the "approach" then it goes away in favor of the Camping. The PPC wars showed that. Why would you ever want that to return?

Besides, the only snap shot that is actually effective is against a static target. To get a good bead from range, you have to expose yourself already. If that was not the case, then we would nit have to read the incessant complaints from players who are getting killed from "all the way" across the fracking Map. right?

FatBabyThompkins, on 31 July 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

The least you can do is get your fallacies correct. You're calling out the onus probandi AKA burden of proof.

A "correct fallacy" eh? OK then.

[FatBabyThompkins]

MaddMaxx, on 31 July 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

I think I read it here somewhere. It seemed to make sense really.

"If your getting one-shotted, repeatedly, then your doing it WRONG!"

Your entitled to your opinion, as we all are. What I am not asking for is to make the game some BS form of another game. This is MWO, not whatever you want it to be.

Again! Why do so many people think that players should NOT have to L2P "any game" they wish to play? Learning how to play is the FUN bit ffs.

Many of the proposed changes made to "add" skill simply add random BS that does not serve the greater good. IMO of course.

You're making a L2P argument without knowledge that I do or do not know "how to play" by what ever definition you are attributing. You say MWO is not whatever I want it to be, yet you are saying that the only way to play is how you want to play. It is a very hypocritical stance to take to say MWO is not my game, but yours is the only way to play.

Also, in MWO, I have only one real, substantial problem, and that is getting one shot. Other games have one weapon trying to hit two hit boxes. They have recoil and cone of fire when firing from the hip. MWO has many weapons hitting the same exact location meant to be distributed over the entirety of the mech. The game, in its current state, is very similar to the no-scope sniper rifle meta several years back. You have the power of a sniper rifle, which can one shot players, but are taking it into a situation that it was never intended to be in. It completely upset the balance of the game. Does any of that sound familiar?

MaddMaxx, on 31 July 2013 - 07:16 AM, said:

Except, not all weapons are created equal and your proposal would drive those who don't PPC/Gauss "every" Mech they drive to do just that. The issue at hand is not resolved sadly.

Your claim. Burden of proof is upon you. I have shown, through an illustration, that that is not the case. Show me how it would force each brawler to PPC/Gauss. How every LRM boat would PPC/Gauss. How every light mech skirmisher would PPC/Gauss. If you want to see what you are proposing, look no further than the current game. We have Jenners and Cicadas with PPCs. What I am proposing, through no direct action (I am not for random cone of fire 100%), is to reduce the effectiveness of sniper builds by making their shots take work. Anytime there is work, there is a skill involved. It lets truly gifted snipers shine while leaving the WeaponOfTheWeek crowd to epeen. It encourages movement into other areas of play, brawling, skirmishing and LRM. Don't shoot very well? Get into the brawl. You'll hit something. Don't want to die? Skirmish and engage at your discretion. Really don't want to die? Bring some LRMs and rain death from afar. You can line up some pixels on a target when they converge? Snipe.

Spoiler

And because you want proof that skill is added when work is added, here is the Wikipedia page for skill. Note the first line, "A skill is the learned ability to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both." Time and energy, the very definition of work (in the strictest sense). Any time you have to move your mouse, work is involved and thus skill will become a factor. I could generalize further by saying anytime you have to think and decide upon an action is work and thereby skill becomes a factor as well, but let us keep it to the simplicity of having to move the mouse.

Get out of cover, find a target. Move your mouse to on target. Wait for convergence. Pray for no counter fire. Fire. Simple.

Get out of cover, find a target. Move your mouse to on target. Realize you need to make a quick shot. Estimate where the shots will land. Move your mouse to correct for estimates. Fire. Complex. More skill involved.

Get out of cover, find a target. Realize you just stepped into a gun line. Retreat. Little skill.

[Trauglodyte]

James The Fox Dixon, on 30 July 2013 - 05:58 AM, said:

The main problem with the current Meta is the pin point high alpha builds aka the PPCx2/Gauss. In order to fix this problem we must look at the mech hard points themselves. In all of the art and what is currently in game are the weapon hard points in the torsos being fixed in place. By being fixed to fire in one direction they cannot possibly have any convergence to hit the same spot. The only weapons that could possibly converge together are weapons mounted in the arms.

Torso mounted weapons are fixed to fire in one direction as the weapons lack any type of movable weapon mount. This means that a right torso mounted weapon should always hit a different location than a center torso weapon. Say a Hunchback fires its AC/20 that is mounted in the right torso at a mech that is 100 meters away and facing him in the Center Torso, Right Torso, Right Leg, or Right Arm. All other weapons mounted in the other torsos hits would be moved over by one hit location as the AC/20 hit the CT. This means that the CT mounted lasers would hit the Right Torso and the Left Torso mounted weapons would hit the Left Torso, Left Arm, or Left Leg. Head mounted weapons should be very hard to hit with and will most likely miss all of the time.

I'm going to sound like a bit of a jerk so I'm going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time because it isn't intentional.

1) Your concept is especially flawed as it does nothing to tie in the aiming angles (you said yourself that torso mounted weapons shouldn't move) between the massive Atlas and something as small as a Commando. How would you expect your torso mounted AC20 to target in on the corresponding equal side torso of the 'Mando? Doesn't quite work even though it seems like it should. But, to the real meat and potatos.

2) The devs have already said that the problem isn't that all weapons converge but that arm mounted weapons converge instantly with the torso mounted weapons. This means that your concept of "left toros only hits its corresponding torso" is wrong and impossible. Furthermore, novels have mentioned that all torso weapons are mounted on gimbles with moving armor plates mounted around them which allows them to, in a sense, move. On top of that, when it comes to a laser weapon, all you need to adjust the angle of fire is to move the targeting mirror/lense. With enough engineering, you could fire a laser at a 90 degree angle to your torso assuming that you didn't have anything obstructing the line of fire. SO, in short, your idea won't work.

3) Expanding on point 1, the arm mounted convergence is the problem with pin point accuracy. In Alpha/Closed Beta, convergence speed existed and, when combined with arm movement speed, it meant that it took time for your arm mounted weapons to get to a firing solution that matched your torso mounted weapons. But, sometime in closed/open Beta, they removed convergence speed while adding in two efficiencies which increased arm speed and convergence. This now means that you can aim up at the sky and then immediately swing to something 5m in front of you and nail it dead on center.

4) With no limitation on weapon loadouts, a game cycle based around 4.25s, and the doubling of armor, the best way to burn through a heavy target is with equally heavy and instantaneous damage. Convergence being what I described above, your changes do nothing because many mechs allow for the heaviest of weapons to be mounted on the arms.

5) Finally, as big a problem as convergence is, environmental factors are the only true means of stemming this tide of bad game coding. But PGI refuses to move in that direction. They're still trying to create a Sim/FPS hybrid and it isn't working. They want everyone to be as creative as possible while allowing us to have the greatest freedom in aiming possible. The truth is, TT reduced such things from happening by way of outside factors like the impact of heat, terrain, and movement. While they could have added heat penalties, they thought that they'd lose customers due to "I can't aim right and its wrong" complaints so they added in an "alpha penalty" with the hope that it would slow things down. But, all that did was shift the meta slightly.

So, in the end, what you're suggesting does nothing.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Trauglodyte, on 31 July 2013 - 08:42 AM, said:

I'm going to sound like a bit of a jerk so I'm going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time because it isn't intentional.

1) Your concept is especially flawed as it does nothing to tie in the aiming angles (you said yourself that torso mounted weapons shouldn't move) between the massive Atlas and something as small as a Commando. How would you expect your torso mounted AC20 to target in on the corresponding equal side torso of the 'Mando? Doesn't quite work even though it seems like it should. But, to the real meat and potatos.

2) The devs have already said that the problem isn't that all weapons converge but that arm mounted weapons converge instantly with the torso mounted weapons. This means that your concept of "left toros only hits its corresponding torso" is wrong and impossible. Furthermore, novels have mentioned that all torso weapons are mounted on gimbles with moving armor plates mounted around them which allows them to, in a sense, move. On top of that, when it comes to a laser weapon, all you need to adjust the angle of fire is to move the targeting mirror/lense. With enough engineering, you could fire a laser at a 90 degree angle to your torso assuming that you didn't have anything obstructing the line of fire. SO, in short, your idea won't work.

3) Expanding on point 1, the arm mounted convergence is the problem with pin point accuracy. In Alpha/Closed Beta, convergence speed existed and, when combined with arm movement speed, it meant that it took time for your arm mounted weapons to get to a firing solution that matched your torso mounted weapons. But, sometime in closed/open Beta, they removed convergence speed while adding in two efficiencies which increased arm speed and convergence. This now means that you can aim up at the sky and then immediately swing to something 5m in front of you and nail it dead on center.

4) With no limitation on weapon loadouts, a game cycle based around 4.25s, and the doubling of armor, the best way to burn through a heavy target is with equally heavy and instantaneous damage. Convergence being what I described above, your changes do nothing because many mechs allow for the heaviest of weapons to be mounted on the arms.

5) Finally, as big a problem as convergence is, environmental factors are the only true means of stemming this tide of bad game coding. But PGI refuses to move in that direction. They're still trying to create a Sim/FPS hybrid and it isn't working. They want everyone to be as creative as possible while allowing us to have the greatest freedom in aiming possible. The truth is, TT reduced such things from happening by way of outside factors like the impact of heat, terrain, and movement. While they could have added heat penalties, they thought that they'd lose customers due to "I can't aim right and its wrong" complaints so they added in an "alpha penalty" with the hope that it would slow things down. But, all that did was shift the meta slightly.

So, in the end, what you're suggesting does nothing.

No hard feelings bud.

1. If you look at what I said you will see that the weapons fire in a straight line with no convergence possible. I noted that the weapon would hit different locations based upon where you were aiming. With the AC20 in your example it would hit a single location, but the rest of the weapons would hit a different location due to no convergence.

2. We can't use lore since the developers said they wouldn't use it. However, also in the lore it describes mechs in this time frame not having gimbles and are fixed in a straight line.

3. Arm mounted weapons will converge at a certain distance, but will cross after a certain point. Arms definitely need convergence speed. The game needs to utilize arm actuators. A mech without lower arm actuators cannot move the weapon(s) side to side. A mech without upper arm actuators cannot move their weapon(s) up and down. If a mech lacks both then it cannot move the weapon(s) at all and are fixed in a straight direction.

4. The changes I propose prevents pin point convergence while keeping in mind the customization of mechs.

5. That's your opinion and I have mine.

You haven't shown that this will do nothing.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 31 July 2013 - 09:42 AM.

[Pht]

James The Fox Dixon, on 31 July 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

2. We can't use lore since the developers said they wouldn't use it.

... Got link?

Or just a bald claim?

Been on these forums since the first month it came online and have been watching MWO since it's inception, and I've seen nothing of the kind, and a lot of evidence that says otherwise.

Quote

However, also in the lore it describes mechs in this time frame not having gimbles and are fixed in a straight line.

No. It doesn't.

[3rdworld]

FatBabyThompkins, on 31 July 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:

Please tell me how it encourages camping. The brawlers want to get into close range (yes, there are brawlers out there). With less of a chance to hit on quick shots, the brawlers can get into range with less damage. Unless the sniper exposes himself to some fire to put shots on those incoming brawlers. Also leaving him open to counter sniper fire, but not before he can make a good shot on the incoming force. The brawlers engage, likely with other brawlers, leaving the snipers to support the melee. Either against each other, or to take out targets in the melee. Your skirmishers (yes, there are skirmishers out there), the light mechs, are either going after vulnerable brawlers or snipers. LRM boats (suprise, yet another non sniper build) are back with the snipers to put damage on brawlers, but more likely as counter sniper as the missiles may hurt friendly brawlers in the melee.

And holy crap we have class based warfare. I'm not saying it is perfect and will exactly go to this model with one change. Many changes need to be made.

It is the entire reason why PPCs are superior in the first place. Pinpoint > spread. It makes no difference what brawlers want to do. If by standing still I am still accurate, why on earth would I move? You are just lowering the damage that a closing brawler can do to a target.

So really you are nerfing brawling more than sniping. Exposing myself as a sniper is irrelevant against a brawler, as he will be moving so any retaliatory fire by the brawler will be either spread all over my mech and not an issue or miss all together, while my sniper continues to pick the brawler apart.

Moreover you greatly reinforce the assaults >anything else, as assaults are the only mechs that can afford to eat a shot from a smaller mech in order to deliver one in return.

TLDR:
you reinforce the current meta, not change it.

[FatBabyThompkins]

3rdworld, on 31 July 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

If by standing still I am still accurate, why on earth would I move?

You'll be shot. That's the point. If you don't move, you'll be shot by someone else. Standing still = death in most cases (armor/time relative). That brawler might have a decent long range weapon if he's running a balanced build. He can put some damage into you. The other snipers can come up, wait for a few and put damage into you. The walking brawler gets LOS on you and his LRM boats start raining missiles on you. If you're exposed, you've made yourself a target. If you remain exposed, the enemy has a chance to exploit it and put several shots on you. Exposure being the counterbalance to getting your convergence.

3rdworld, on 31 July 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

So really you are nerfing brawling more than sniping.

Brawlers builds, with the exception of the AC/20, are already spread damage. SRMS and medium lasers, both of which have their own spread mechanism. Up close in a melee, their shots won't deviate much more than they are now. You're still going to hit, for the most part, what you're looking at up close. Especially against slow, brawler mechs. This would also give the shotgun LBX-10 a reason to be taken. Don't want to rely entirely upon that one round in the AC/10? Take the LBX-10 and pepper them in close range. I do not see how this would at all affect brawling and push everyone to sniping. Brawling is fast, dirty, messy, chaotic. Unless you're very skill, chances are you're not putting a lot of thought into where you're hitting the enemy mech, just that you're hitting it with everything you have, heat be damned. Hell, you're probably not very interested in which mech just that you're hitting a mech and putting in damage.

3rdworld, on 31 July 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

Moreover you greatly reinforce the assaults >anything else, as assaults are the only mechs that can afford to eat a shot from a smaller mech in order to deliver one in return.

How so? I have shown that there are essentially 4 types of mechs. Snipers, brawlers, skirmishers and LRM. LRM are good anti sniper, especially if you have to hang around to take a shot for a few extra seconds. Snipers are good at taking out other snipers and putting shots into or before brawling happens. Brawlers are good at taking a beating and putting damage into other brawlers in close range. Against a sniper in close range, they should eat their lunch with a smile. Skirmishers are there to spot and take opportunity shots and exploiting weaknesses. Fast, nimble, hard hitting, but not very sustainable nor resilient. Good against a pure sniper, not so much for a sniper that also carries some close range weaponry (like real snipers carry a sidearm). Great against LRM boats, unless they also carry a some close range weapon. Absolutely devastated against a brawler that can hit it.

Pinpoint > spread, it is true only if you can combine weapons into one alpha. 10 points to one armor location, even on a light, is acceptable. 20 becomes a little worrisome, but if it is uncommon, then consider there are some lucky shots that occur. 35+ will one shot lights and begin to cripple other mechs. You want to 35 point alpha strike someone? Fine. But be prepared to stand in the open for a few seconds and possibly receive some return fire. Better hope you land your shot, cause chances are someone is going to hit a non-moving target.

The final point I want to make here is that you're assuming everyone is a sniper and will flock to the hide and go seek. I play with about 6-8 close friends. We all gravitated to our play style and mech choice. What did we wind up with? 2 lights, 2 mediums, 2 heavies, and 2 assaults, without even thinking in terms of balanced tonnage. There are plenty of light mech pilots out there. There are quite a few brawlers in the Atlas, who's recommendation in the assault forums is to get in the thick and take some damage. That that is your job, to soak damage, distract and let the heavy hitters put shots into the other team. There are people constantly trying out LRM mechs. I see quite a few people try out mediums to get that firepower with a dose of speed. To get into brawling range with the assault and maneuver into a flank. When I see people try these concepts out, which is exactly as I am proposing in my illustration, they are wiped by the PPCWarriors. Usually to the tune of 8-0 or 8-1.

What would you change then? You say pinpoint > spread, and I agree a surgical strike is far superior to a sledge hammer. One PPC does 10 damage to one panel. When combined with other weapons, the damage quickly become catastrophic as it is localized. One is fine, more than one is not. Even the AC/20 is limited to 20 damage at close range to one panel. It hurts, but even the smallest of mechs can take that hit (except in the face). In a brawl, putting all your faith into these weapons is generally not a good idea... unless you have perfect convergence and are a good twitch gamer. Making movement affect convergence would push brawlers out of those big nasty weapons and into spread and laser weapons. Spread to get at least some damage on target and lasers so they can adjust their beam and, again, at least get some damage on target. That big AC/20 is designed to start crippling an assault, but you're sacrificing perfect convergence if you're moving in the middle of a brawl. So you get close to use it, which has it's own risks and rewards.

Point is (and this truly is my final point) every positive needs a corresponding negative. Everything must have some risk. The current meta has no to very little risk with rewards that can be obtained by even moderately skilled players. I want a system that puts high damage, long distance sniping at some risk. I propose making them stand in place for a few seconds to get their perfect convergence (and yes, I have no problem with perfect convergence if there is a risk involved). Brawling's risk is getting beat to **** while dishing out fast, but dirty damage. Skirmishers risk is low survivability if caught in the wrong place. LRM risk is needing a spotter or stand in the open and marginally against skirmisher attacks. Then imagine the beauty of mixed builds where some mechs are good at some of these roles, but not as good in each as a dedicated mech...

(Seriously sorry for the long reply, brevity is the soul of wit and my wit is low....)