195 replies to this topic

[BlackWidow]

3rdworld, on 14 August 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

Missile splash isn't the same as what they are planning for PPCs. right now the a SRM does 2 damage to the location it hit, and up to .4 damage to adjacent locations based on proximity. The splash is a bonus to the regular damage.

With PPCs, they are wanting to do something like 7/3. Where 7 damage would hit pinpoint, and 3 would be spread over a area, (which some of which would still be to the same location).

I don't know that it is the worst idea I have ever heard. I would probably support it more than any form of artificial "missing" added into the game. Hit registration is frustrating enough for me thank you.

What I don't understand is how little damage I do with PPCs sometimes.

I was running a Spider 5-D with 1 or w PPCs in the right arm. I hit mechs all the time and barely see any damage being done. I mean like 6 shots with BOTH ppcs to an arm or a leg (so there is no confusion as to what hitbox is being tagged) and yet the section is barely into the orange if even that!

I mean, sometime it seems like they are glancing shots, but until a splash damage modifier is added to PPCs, not matter what, if I hti something it should be full 10 points of damage, yes?

So, 120 points of damage and the arm is still there? No mech in game can sustain that kind of damage. So, is it possible a matter of the animation shows a hit but the code is actually a miss?

Please someone explain this to me. I guess I really need to start running FRAPS or spend some time in the training grounds.

[Dimento Graven]

3rdworld, on 14 August 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

Missile splash isn't the same as what they are planning for PPCs. right now the a SRM does 2 damage to the location it hit, and up to .4 damage to adjacent locations based on proximity. The splash is a bonus to the regular damage.

Yeah but an SRM2 is fired, 1 missile hits CT, other hits LT, splash damage equals 4.8 total damage. SRM4, same thing only 9.6 total damage, SRM6, SAME THING, only 14.4 total damage, and then increase that to maximum non-penalized boating scenario...

It just seems so unnecessary. If you want an SRM2 to have a maximum damage of 4.8, or an SRM4 to have a maximum damage of 9.6, or an SRM6 to have a maximum damage of 14.4, then set the per missile values to that, and get rid of the phantom damage, and save your serves the processing cycles required to support that silly thing...

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With PPCs, they are wanting to do something like 7/3. Where 7 damage would hit pinpoint, and 3 would be spread over a area, (which some of which would still be to the same location).

Why? What makes that necessary? The PPC was a pin point weapon, an extremely small but highly charged packet of charged particles, it may "look" big, but that's because of how bright the package is, that's the air around it being heated, but the actual 'package' itself is only inches at most, not feet like a 'splash' would imply...

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I don't know that it is the worst idea I have ever heard. I would probably support it more than any form of artificial "missing" added into the game. Hit registration is frustrating enough for me thank you.

I won't support either. A dumb idea is still a dumb idea, even when it's next to an even 'dumber' idea...

BlackWidow, on 14 August 2013 - 08:27 AM, said:

What I don't understand is how little damage I do with PPCs sometimes.

I was running a Spider 5-D with 1 or w PPCs in the right arm. I hit mechs all the time and barely see any damage being done. I mean like 6 shots with BOTH ppcs to an arm or a leg (so there is no confusion as to what hitbox is being tagged) and yet the section is barely into the orange if even that!

I mean, sometime it seems like they are glancing shots, but until a splash damage modifier is added to PPCs, not matter what, if I hti something it should be full 10 points of damage, yes?

So, 120 points of damage and the arm is still there? No mech in game can sustain that kind of damage. So, is it possible a matter of the animation shows a hit but the code is actually a miss?

Please someone explain this to me. I guess I really need to start running FRAPS or spend some time in the training grounds.

Lately I've noticed a hit registration problem with ERPPCs, but it's mostly at closer ranges. I figured PGI may have stealthed in a minimum range nerf for ERPPCs...

[GingerBang]

Dimento Graven, on 13 August 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:

What everyone forgets is that it's not "one on one" it's 12v12, where more often than not you're 1vX when you're getting fired at.

Having some sort of 'de-convergence' factor won't do squat for your survival when you stumble out into open field, or turn the corner into X number of 'mechs and trigger the gauss/PPC bukake.

De-converged or not, you're not going to survive that.

'Thinking man's shooter' doesn't only mean, "How am I going to get that next shot..." and that's it, it's more "How am I going to get that next shot, and not get shot at..."

So somehow 60 damage spread across three torso parts at 20 each when each of those parts have 40 armor will kill you just like the 60 damage all hitting the single 40 armor CT? Tell me more about this fantasy world you live in. It sounds awful.

[Dimento Graven]

GingerBang, on 14 August 2013 - 08:32 AM, said:

So somehow 60 damage spread across three torso parts at 20 each when each of those parts have 40 armor will kill you just like the 60 damage all hitting the single 40 armor CT? Tell me more about this fantasy world you live in. It sounds awful.

Ok wait... Now it sounds like you're talking about light 'mechs... I don't know of any 'mech besides the Spider that only has 40 CT armor, so unless you're running around with zero back armor, you've got less than 40 in the front CT, and depending on how many times you've already been hit by the time you run into that single 'mech with a ready alpha, yah, you could be one shot without de-convergence, hell even WITH de-convergence...

Also, where are we getting single 60 point alphas any more? I haven't seen any PPC boats, or any 'mech capable of running 2 gauss and 2 PPC's..., or 3 AC's... If you're talking about future clan 'mechs, as soon as I see the weapons and 'mech designs we can start talking otherwise. Or were you talking about MULTIPLE people firing their alphas? 2 30+ point alphas? 3 20+ point alphas? In which case, how low do you want to go for an alpha? What's the limit that you think you can live with?

Trust me, whiners and moaners will continue to ***** it down to 1 point alphas because they die when they don't want to (mostly due to their own poor play) and they STILL won't be happy...

A "default" forced de-convergence makes no sense. De-convergence through play actions, running hot, firing weapons at different rates, movement, terrain, visual impediments, being hit while firing, et al, make more sense and leave room for the skilled player to be skilled, and the not so skilled to become skilled.

[Odin]

Dramaqueens overtook MWO.
And I, Odin missed it.

2erPPC/Gauss are OK.

We don't want to blunt a brilliant/effective build. We want more effective weapons to counter.

Dry LPL.

For a change.

Edited by Odin, 14 August 2013 - 09:02 AM.

[Lightfoot]

Really, firing Gauss and PPCs gets a de-sync penalty soon? The nerf-babies win again. Battletech fails to be supported by PGI again. When does MWO lose all connection to MechWarrior?

To me MechWarrior defines itself as unique among other giant-robot games by allowing players to build a mech config and then use group-fire to unite those weapons into a high-damage salvo. The game where you get one gun and one missile and maybe one laser is Heavy Gear, or Front Mission, or Hawken.

MechWarrior uses arrays of weapons united by group-fire of the player's choosing. Different. Unique. Fantastic. Futuristic Sci-Fi gaming. Oh, but the nerf-herders don't like it so let's abandon a 40 year tradition.

I see the value of Heat-Scale, more trigger pulls, more clicky-clicky, more damage spread.... unless you are a veteran pilot in which case you'll just core stuff anyway. But it's not MechWarrior.

Also, Heat Scale de-syncing won't work on Clan tech because it does 50-100% more damage. 2xClan ERPPCs do 30 damage for instance. Like the dreaded 3x Inner Sphere PPC config.

The problem is the 2xRecharge forces mechs into face-to-face battles where they just race to core each other as fast as possible. It destroys the ability to turn away between shots to take hits on an arm, etc. Which is how mechs spread damage in previous MechWarrior games.

So Heat Scale / de-syncing does not prevent the problem, it reinforces the thing that is causing the problem.

The actual fix for 2xRecharge is to make the Mechs CTs and legs tougher to support the 2xRecharge dynamics in MWO.

If you want to go further with added de-convergence, you could increase the time it takes to allign the two reticles. No one wants that though.

Edited by Lightfoot, 14 August 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

I posted this in another similar thread, thought I'd post it here:

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Here's a thought, maybe someone mentioned this earlier, I've seen alluded to anyway:

REMOVE THE "BEYOND" MAX RANGE DAMAGE CAPABILITY.

Seriously. Why are ERPPC/Gauss such an effective damage combo? Because the stupid, the slow, the unaware, the hard headed can be killed at 1620 meters due to the "max range" mechanic that MWO has implemented.

In the ERPPC/Gauss the maximum range that THAT particular combo would normally have is 660meters, the LONG RANGE of the gauss (ERPPCs having a Long Range of 810).

In TT Long Range was THE maximum range. Any 'mech beyond the LONG RANGE, was not even targetable.

So, eliminate the x2/x3 MAX range BS.

Problem solved, until the stupid, the slow, the unaware, and the hard headed still end up getting killed because of stupid, slow, unaware, hard headed mistakes that they will CONTINUE to make, and would CONTINUE to make even if you lowered the damage to 1 point every 10 seconds...

[Lightfoot]

De-Syncing Gauss and PPCs does nothing. Because Gauss and 2xPPCs is actually an inferior damage build. It was just the most obvious build so it was very popular. It was just an easy gateway into Mechlab and MWO for new players. Made new players a bit more competitive, which is what Mechlab should do.

Edited by Lightfoot, 14 August 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[FatBabyThompkins]

Lightfoot, on 14 August 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

The actual fix for 2xRecharge is to make the Mechs CTs and legs tougher to support the 2xRecharge dynamics in MWO.

No. Increasing armor/internals neuters low damage/spread weapons even more so that you can survive the game breaking convergence problem with high damage weapons at significant range. As I have said before: TT weapons were balanced around weighted randomized hit locations. They were never designed with all weapons repeatedly hitting the same section. In MWO, missiles spread and you very little control where they hit (none for LRM/SSRM, which are as close to TT as you get). Lasers are hit scan that on moving mechs or at range will not hit the same location over the duration of the beam. Front loaded weapons have nothing in the way of spreading the damage (and they should not by their very nature). However, they can stack on top of each other to hit the same location (not originally intended and their balance came from high confidence you would not hit the same section in this turn or rarely on subsequent turns). Heat alone will not fix this issue. It can mitigate some burst or sustained damage of the front loaded weapons but then affects the sustained low damage weapons as well (I'm talking about fundamental heat changes, not just phantom heat penalties). Already doubled armor, spread on low damage weapons (which are impacted more by double armor), and perfect convergence for pin-point weapons are the problem. Heat just says how often you can sustain certain levels of fire (double entendre not intended ).

Summary: Heat alone will not solve the problem. Armor/Internal changes alone will not solve the problem. I would even say convergence alone will not solve the problem. The fundamentals are broken. Even if we do achieve some semblance of balance, it'll be so unstable that even one addition/change will have a huge impact.

Edited by FatBabyThompkins, 14 August 2013 - 10:01 AM.

[AlmightyAeng]

Sadness...welcome to K-Town.

[Dimento Graven]

Yay! We're in the patch feedback forum, which is better than jettisonville...

[Lightfoot]

@FatBabyThompkins,

Well another possibility, maybe the best, is to overlap the hitboxes so it becomes possible that a weapon would hit two mech sections and harder to hit single sections. It's more interactive anyway.

I am just wanting to show that MWO's 2xRecharge set alot of different gameplay dynamics into motion. Players used to be able to turn their mechs to avoid damage to their CTs as their weapons recharged, but with only 3-4 seconds between shots you really can't do that. Your time to re-aim will be too long to avoid return fire or will be inaccurate so you are better off just facing off with your opponent. Anything that extends the time to group-fire increases the need to just face-off in a race to core the other mech.

So, 2xRecharge is why Mechs just get cored in MWO, but not previously.

[BlackWidow]

Patch feedback? Wth? What will tomorrow bring? Fan art? Clan recruitment?

Hell, I felt better in K-town.

[Dimento Graven]

After some thought, and some other's posts, this is what I came up with for a possible solution:

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Aspects to keep in mind when considering the problem:

1. TT is 3rd Person view, so there's no means of adding gunnery skill other than through a small die roll modifier, or to add a lot more funky mechanics that can take a 5 minute per round game and turn it into 25 minutes per round. The mechanic in TT was done for game play expediency and what can be done in a 3rd person only view. Some of this was accommodated by location modifiers depending on what portion of the 'mech you could see, too. After all it wasn't possible to not hit what you couldn't see, ie: legs, when a 'mech was standing behind a Level 1 obstruction.

2. MWO is a first person shooter built on the Crysis2 engine, which was designed from the first person carrying and firing a single weapon at a time perspective.

3. As mentioned earlier, PGI has taken bits and pieces of the BT mechanic and implemented them in this game, missing the corresponding balance features inherit in TT play.

4. PGI has actually bastardized various values in TT, armor per ton, ammo per ton, heat per shot, and more specifically weapon ranges.

5. As mentioned in 4, when it comes to weapon ranges, PGI has actually increased them. Not only that, they compounded this by adding in an "Extended Range" component, giving weapons ridiculous ranges when compared to TT. Given that in TT a single hex was 30 meters, and that LONGEST range you could fire a gauss and actually hit was 22 hexes (30meters times 22 hexes), the LONGEST effective range of a gauss rifle was: 660 meters, regardless of your skill or any modifiers.

6. Lack of a comprehensive Heat Affects table allows repetitive use of Alpha Strike as fast as the weapons can possibly be fired. Something not typically seen in standard TT. In BT, LONG before you risked actual shut down there were other affects that would be activated based on your level of heat adding risks to using alpha strike, ie: It had a balancing factor. MWO, with no heat affects until your heat is beyond 99%, has nothing to balance alpha strike.

What this adds up to is to make MWO more like we expect our BT experience to be 3 things have to happen:

1. Add a comprehensive Heat Affects table for heat levels below 99% to add risk to over use of alpha strikes.

2. Reduce weapon ranges to TT standard, alleviating probably 30%-50% percent of the sniper opportunity.

3. Change the aiming mechanism to add 'pin point' ambiguity at LONG range, but leaving close in 'pin point' only slightly affected.

I'll see if I can't describe point 3 more completely. Essentially instead of having a pin point aiming reticule, you'd have a circle in the center of your screen of say a .5 cm diameter.

In that circle the 'pin point' that you previously used for aiming would exist, but it would be invisible, and in that circle it would randomly drift moment to moment. So that, at LONG range, when a 'mech is really 'small' in your FP perspective, the entire mech could fit inside that circle, but you wouldn't be able to see exactly where the 'pin point' of aim was. It could be dead center, it could be on the outer edge somewhere, and when you fired, it used that point to fire the weapons. You might hit but you only have a percentage chance of hitting exactly where you want, or you might miss entirely. You could possibly expand the number of invisible pin points to match the number of weapons the 'mech is carrying too, so that each weapon could end up with a different aiming point, eliminating 100% weapon convergence.

Now, taking that same .5 cm diameter circle and close in on the target 'mech, as you got close the target 'mech from your perspective grows in size, the targeting circle covers less and less of the 'mech until the point where the circle covers only a section of arm, or left/right torso that you're point at.

This method would simulate the LONG RANGE ambiguity, eliminate 100% convergence, but still allow for close in targeting.

Also for a heat affects, one of the things you could do to affect firing ability while under high heat is to cause the targeting circle to grow from .5 cm to 1 cm on up to as wide as the screen. A very cool affect that does a great approximation of simulating TT heat affects on gunnery skill.

It even adds the possibility of adding a "Firing Computer" control module that could be purchased just like current modules (the NON-MC ones) to reduce the pin points to ONE pin point, adding accuracy, but still maintaining LONG range ambiguity...

My thoughts anyway...

[MustrumRidcully]

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To me MechWarrior defines itself as unique among other giant-robot games by allowing players to build a mech config and then use group-fire to unite those weapons into a high-damage salvo.

What other giant robot games?
I will not dispute that this is somethnig you associate with Mechwarrior, but Mechwarrior is part of the Battletech franchise, and ducttaping guns together and having them all hit the spot is not something happening in Battletech.

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game where you get one gun and one missile and maybe one laser is Heavy Gear, or Front Mission, or Hawken.

But Mechwarrior has become the same game, the only difference is that you pretend your single missle or laser is made up out of multiple weapons. But the gameplay effect is the same - one single shot delivers your firepower.

[Karl Streiger]

Its interesting what new ideas were brough to COUNTER a homemade problem.
I really have to ask my self - when the knowlege behind those ideas would have been used to SOLVE problems - how would the game behave?

I mean ECM was weird - but instead of reducing the abillitys we got counters
Look at the PPC - discussing, rage, insults for half a year - and we got counters

Its not MechWarrior its CounterWarrior.