74 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Well in theory if PGI doesn't release another mech during the months that the Phoenix Project are going to be regularly released (starting in October), the balancing "could" be done within that 4 months span.

However, given PGI's track record, this may never get done.

[Lord de Seis]

Onmyoudo, on 12 August 2013 - 05:29 AM, said:

The long and short of it is, they say they cannot re-scale some mechs because it would a) take a lot of work and they're all compared to each other for each new mech that is made. As it is evident that mechs are often WAY oversized then something about the way they're compared to all the other mechs to determine that initial size is broken. I haven't actually played for a while so this may be a little off, someone can correct me as necessary.

Raven - hitboxes borked.
Jenner - seems fine. Hitboxes/size appropriate.
Commando - fine.
Spider - hitboxes mega borked.

Cicada - massive (for its tonnage), walking centre torso.
Hunchback - size appropriate, MASSIVE right torso where all the weaponry is stored that can be hit from literally any angle.
Trebuchet - huge.
Centurion - very tall, hitboxes borked. Sometimes nigh unkillable, which is the only thing that doesn't make it a walking deathtrap.
Blackjack - ??? Not played against any. Seems alright.
Kintaro - bigger centre torso than some light mechs, really tall. Also fat. All-around terrible. Called this from the first screenshot.

Catapult - pretty tall. Ears stick out from miles away, comparatively not so bad.
Cataphract - fine.
Jagermech - fine.
Dragon - huge centre torso.
Quickdraw - huge everything. The poster-boy for poorly scaled mechs before the Kintaro showed up.

Highlander - fine.
Atlas - fine.
Victor - ??? Not played since they were introduced.
Stalker - much smaller than the other assaults, tiny front profile.
Awesome - fat and slow, but without the tonnage benefits of the other assaults. A bullet magnet.

From that list I count (potentially) 8 mechs that seem appropriate. Out of 20. That's a 40% hit rate, guys. Time to go back to the drawing board.

Well put, I agree with what you say.

[Sybreed]

it won't happen.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Dimento Graven, on 12 August 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

Scanned image possibly from a BT source book:

Note the sizes of the 4 IS 'mechs.

I'm willing to have 'mech sizes re-examined.

Oh, but I'd like the poll to have a 'Possibly' option, because that's what I'd select...

See this is what I think we should be looking at for relative sizing across the board. Notice how the 50 ton medium mech comes up to the chest of the 95 ton Assault or how the70 ton Heavy is only shoulder height to the Assault.

I mean it is pretty obvious that a 60 ton Quickdraw should fall in between the 50 ton Enforcer and the 70 ton Grasshopper which would put its head about level with an Atlases neck, not eye to eye.

Also notice how thin all those mechs are? And finally, I think that Commando is a bit larger than the one we have in game.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 12 August 2013 - 08:06 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Viktor Drake, on 12 August 2013 - 08:06 PM, said:

See this is what I think we should be looking at for relative sizing across the board. Notice how the 50 ton medium mech comes up to the chest of the 95 ton Assault or how the70 ton Heavy is only shoulder height to the Assault.

I mean it is pretty obvious that a 60 ton Quickdraw should fall in between the 50 ton Enforcer and the 70 ton Grasshopper which would put its head about level with an Atlases neck, not eye to eye.

Also notice how thin all those mechs are? And finally, I think that Commando is a bit larger than the one we have in game.

Yes, but don't forget that note, "Although size varies individually among units, this scale shows the relative size difference in each weight class."

It's not a hard and fast, never to be broken rule.

In some cases we could have very tall mediums, even lights, and shorter heavies and assaults. Are the Quickdraw and Kintaro? I don't know, there's not enough specific data on those 'mechs, but I wouldn't get upset if they were resized.

[Brilig]

It is something that would be nice. The mechs all look really cool, but it does seem a little strange that many of them end up so huge.

If they are going to resize things it seems like the sooner the better. The more new mechs they design the longer it will take to go back and size them all.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Sizing is one thing when the mechs are for TT play (where all hit chances are equal) or "lore" reasons.
It is totally different when it is a gameplay factor in a computer game. This is definately one of those areas where deviation from the original is needed if necessary. It's not just the overall size but the hitbox layout as well on many of the mechs.
They changed the atlas head hitbox fairly quickly, why not the catapult - the launchers are easy enough to hit that it wouldn't become OP.
Yes it may be a lot of work, perhaps down to the way they elected to set up the mechs in the beginning? It is certainly something that is needed if mechs are not to be classed as "uncompetative" from the start based on the artwork before they are produced (to be confirmed when we do get them). I know that this would pull people off of other work but it needs to be applied now, particularly for those mechs due to come out soon.
i can just imagine the QQing (and refund requests?) if the Phoenix mechs are borked. If they started off with the "worst" first and had it as an ongoing project it would go a long way to help.

[Tennex]

on mediums mostly

[AC]

PGI fails to realize how important this is. Smaller mechs with less armor need to be harder to hit. Medium mechs with CT's the size of assaults don't last very long at all. Light mechs that are too small but with decent armor have the opposite effect (spiders).

[Donnie Silveray]

It is a bit of a fickle issue and does make me wonder if they're using proper size scales in their work. It has happened to me before while working on a project where a child was normal sized but the bed prop was too small. I had to go over to the asset modeler and investigate what could have been the problem since she indicated that in scene the bed was of the proper scale. However this is simply an internal issue that generally is spotted easily. It does make me wonder if PGI has some kind of intention behind this or that someone changed hands and didn't properly scale.

There could be virtually any reason why the scales seem strange, however the hesitation to address this is well founded as quite frankly, it'd take a long long time to revise all mechs. You should probably expect any kind of fix to take place after release. Assuming say... there are 2-3 modelers, 1-2 riggers and 1 animator... you can probably expect a complete size revision to take a month at best, several months at worst. If the revision 'breaks' the animations then it'd take even longer. Thus comes the scenario: If I was shown this situation, I'd put it off until we were ready to perform a significant overhaul of mech visual/animation.

As in I wouldn't expect a re-size in mechs until the dev team decides to revamp all of the older mech models to the current standard.

[3rdworld]

Another issue isn't just the size of the mechs, it is the layout of their hitboxes.

The Kintaro is huge no doubt, but its front being nearly all CT, is what makes it trash.

[Dimento Graven]

AC, on 13 August 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

PGI fails to realize how important this is. Smaller mechs with less armor need to be harder to hit. Medium mechs with CT's the size of assaults don't last very long at all. Light mechs that are too small but with decent armor have the opposite effect (spiders).

Right now the Spider is an extremely poor example. It's generally agreed that Spiders have some sort of hit detection issue, and you can see it in the fact that where before the last patch you were lucky to see one every other match, now you can have 4 or 5 EVERY match.

The Spider has become what the Raven 3L used to be. A little speed demon with defective hit detection that survives, not because of pilot skill but because of poor game mechanics. When PGI addressed the issues with Raven (or hit detection in general) they quickly went the way of the Dodo bird/passenger pigeon, they were basically extinct except for a few truly exceptional pilots, or hard heads, and that is EXACTLY what will happen to the Spider as well.

Commandos, Ravens, and Jenners, all small fast 'mechs that do get some mitigation from their speed and size, granted. The Spider, something else altogether is going on with it. I have personally seen my own ER PPC's repeatedly pass through a Spider with no hit. I am literally standing on the corpses of the Commandos, Jenners, and Ravens I have just killed, but unless I aim high, low, behind or WAY in front, whatever the random issue with the Spider is for this instance, I'm not going to be able to hit it.

Anyway, as far as your assertion that reducing the size of the 'mech will resolve the CT issue, I'm not sure about that. Think about it: Even if the 'mech is reduced in size 20% that CT will STILL be as proportionately large as it is now, and of course, it will have to have a the proportionate hit box to go with it. That means if the pilot overly exposes himself, he'll still be taking MOSTLY CT hits.

[AC]

I agree to some extent, but when medium mechs are the size of 100ton assaults, how easy is it to hit them from long distances. How easy is it to hit a jenner? It only gets worse up close. I agree that if a mech is all CT, it is going to have problems. We saw this in MW4 with the Madcat. However, if a mech is WAY larger than it should be, then it just compounds the issue.

Edited by AC, 13 August 2013 - 07:27 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

AC, on 13 August 2013 - 07:26 AM, said:

I agree to some extent, but when medium mechs are the size of 100ton assaults, how easy is it to hit them from long distances. How easy is it to hit a jenner? It only gets worse up close. I agree that if a mech is all CT, it is going to have problems. We saw this in MW4 with the Madcat. However, if a mech is WAY larger than it should be, then it just compounds the issue.

Good point, though most mediums don't have the same speed and maneuverability as a light 'mech and the Kintaro is one that we know from LORE wasn't designed to be a fast nimble 'mech.

However, in general, you're absolutely correct. Reduce the Kintaro scale by 20% and we'll probably see a 20% reduction in long distance deaths of that 'mech.

[ryoma]

Yeah certain mechs are really ridiculous.

[ryoma]

So the thread complaining about Kintaro's size got sent to a graveyard. Nice work PGI.

[General Taskeen]

Dimento Graven, on 13 August 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

Good point, though most mediums don't have the same speed and maneuverability as a light 'mech and the Kintaro is one that we know from LORE wasn't designed to be a fast nimble 'mech.

It was an average speed mech designed to get in close, as far as 'canon' goes. And yet the opposite logic is being applied to it whereby the only way to get "use" out of it is stick in a huge-fast XL engine and claim, "well cuz it should be a fast striker, trolololo!" If hitboxes made any freaking sense even a Jenner would have reasonably easier to hit side torso's along with the Cicada. The only reason they are "power houses" is because they run anything from 280XL's to 300XL's, since the torso area's are less risky and since it is so small, while the CT is usually hit, it can dodge fire at the same time, however the cicada suffers the opposite running a big engine, but since it is larger, dies far faster even though it has more armor possibility.

Conclusion: Sizing and Hitbox design is unfortunately relegating Mechs to the Hanger and actually reducing variety - Its just the facts.

Edited by General Taskeen, 13 August 2013 - 02:14 PM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I am going to assume that PGI got 2 mechs correct:
The Atlas and the Commando, which means almost every other mech is borken (some worse than others).

Hunchback, Trebuchet, Centurion, should be half the size of an Atlas, AND twice the size of a Commando. Then just break it down from there.

Or they could break it down based on Engine and hardpoints, however then a Cicada couldn't be so much smaller than a hunchback, because the Hunchback can only carry 260 rated engine maxium, which the Cicada 3M can carry a 340 Engine, so logically the CT of a Hunchback should be 25% smaller than a Cicada. And scince they can both mount an AC20 the side torso surface area should be the same as well. In fact the entire 20% tonage differnce between these mechs can be accounted for by the missing arms so these mechs should have roughly the same dimentions.

So maybe engine capaciy and hardpoints aren't the best method, maybe raw tonage. But it it fair to make the highlander 90% as big as the Atlas? I mean that atlas is friggin huge. And there is no way the Stalker fans will agree to being 85% has large as an Atlas, that is like a 30% increaes in their current Catapult size.

[keith]

i forgot which atd had it, but it said they had 2 teams working. 1 working on this content 1 on future stuff. they really should take the team on future stuff, well the hitbox/art team. retool them to fix current issues with mech sizes for community sake. then put them back to work on stuff they were working on. most of the mechs only need a 10-25% size reduction. or use a different merit instead of density.....

[Dimento Graven]

Khobai, on 13 August 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

IMO, theres only 2 mechs that have severe enough scaling issues to warrant changes.

1) Kintaro = too fat
2) Trebuchet = too tall

I can live with the Stalker/Awesome/Catapult being too skinny/fat/tall respectively.

Better be careful, the Kintaro is too "barrel chested", if you say "fat", you may end up with a 'mech with an even more 'pencil like' waist line...