51 replies to this topic

[SweetJackal]

Wait, what am I smoking? Removing Convergence from the game?

No, not quite.

Right now we have universal convergence. Every single weapon no matter where it is mounted rather mystically aims itself for the center of the crosshair. This causes a lot of pin point damage which devalues armor and makes the distribution of hitboxes and armor a rather hot topic. This has given problems with a single location on a mech reliably being focus fired.

This shouldn't be happening with most places to mount a weapon. Weapon Convergence shouldn't be universal. This is because weapons that are not mounted in the arms are not turrets. They are anchored in a fixed mounting. What this means is these weapons should be firing straight out of the torso. If there is a 1 meter distance between two medium lasers on where they are mounted on the mech itself then there should be a 1 meter distance between where they hit. The profile of the mech and where it's weapons are should matter in terms of where it's weapons hit instead of bending light and bullets to hit the center of the crosshair.

And the same should be true for arms missing the lower actuator and lacking lateral movement. Weapon Convergence is the product of lateral movement of the weapons fired, the weapons themselves being moved to focus on a single point in space. This is something done with the advancements of a basic targeting computer.

This isn't talk about making weapons fire have a cone of fire or other random factors. The profile of the mech would determine where weapons without lateral movement would hit in relation to the crosshair and this wouldn't change. A Quickdraw with 2 ML in the RT and 2 ML in the LT would have two lasers to the right of his Torso Crosshair and two lasers to the left of his Torso Crosshair. Any MLs mounted in the arms would still focus on that tiny point in space that is the Arm Crosshair as the Quickdraw has Lateral Arm Movement.

What this means is that there will suddenly be more spread on weapon damage that will depend on the mech the weapons are mounted on, where those weapons are mounted, the profile of the mech they are targeting and the skill of the pilot itself. For trying to hit smaller targets in an Alpha you'll have to account for weapons mounted on the other side of your mech hitting a different location or missing the target entirely.

Mechs like the Stalker and Jagermech that do not have Lateral Arm Movement will face a more distinctive feel during play. The infamous AC/40 Jager won't just be able to aim for the CT and get damage. The lack of Lateral Movement will mean that the pilot would have to aim to the left of the CT when firing the right AC/20 then shift aim to aim to the right of the CT to hit with left AC/20, just to hit the CT with both of the AC/20s.

This change would add another layer to mech building, which mechs you field and how you load them out, add more survivability to most mechs, increase general damage spread across the mech in a non-random way that is affected by skill and making the game more Sim and less Arcade. Adding Weapon Convergence to be a feature of the Lower Arm Actuator means that the otherwise vulnerable arms suddenly have more weight in deciding which hardpoints to use.

The Swayback being able to mount 6 energy weapons in one single torso location will have an advantage over a Stalker that has 6 energy weapons spread out over the mech without any lateral arm movement.

Anyways, thoughts and opinions welcome.

[Imperius]

Didn't read. Convergence isn't the issue. Paper armor is! Do not take the ability to aim away from people. It will kill the game! Stronger/more armor I'm ok with. Take away my ability to aim , and I go with it. Aiming = Skill!

[Earl White]

I think without convergence there would be a mess of balance between the chassis we have, and certain mechs being picked much more often than others (because their chassis has better convergence). At least with universal convergence all the chassis aim more or less at the same point, but that's not a bad thing, it means more mechs are viable to play.

I think it would also be a buff to Light Mechs and possibly even heavy Assault mechs, because it will be a lot harder to hit lights with your weapon load (they are already quite hard to hit anyway) and things like the Atlas will be able to more easily spread damage across their torso.

The current armour values between chassis are more than enough to make sure convergence isn't too much of a problem, although admittedly Mediums seem to be in need of some kind of buff. Time to kill is quite reasonable too, so I don't think nerfing convergence is necessary (especially with torso twisting, you can survive a lot of punishment).

Focus fire and teamwork will always nuke down lone wolves who stray too far, but this is not a problem with convergence, it is just one team playing better than another. It's quite difficult in general to sneak up on an enemy in significant numbers without being spotted at all, especially with seismic sensor (aka spider sense).

Edited by Earl White, 14 September 2013 - 05:58 AM.

[HRR Insanity]

Many variations of convergence fixes have been discussed since Closed Beta. Yours falls into the 'B-type' fix classification.
A - Solves convergence for all 'Mechs and hardpoint configurations. (see also Homeless Bill's proposal)
B - Attempts to use 'Mech Geometry as an argument for minimal convergence. Does not deal well with 'Mechs with 3+ hardpoints in one 'Mech location
F - Everything else

[HRR Insanity]

Imperius, on 14 September 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

Didn't read. Convergence isn't the issue. Paper armor is! Do not take the ability to aim away from people. It will kill the game! Stronger/more armor I'm ok with. Take away my ability to aim , and I go with it. Aiming = Skill!

Please ignore Imperius. He fails to understand that the reason 'Mech armor seems weak is because of convergence. The Devs already tried to double armor (to the current values) because 'Mechs died 'too quickly' during Beta. The Devs can triple, quadruple, or make armor infinite without changing the fact that groups of weapons will be optimal. Increasing armor forces people to group weapons to punch through armor in a reasonable time and makes individual weapons useless.
Please see reference material.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Unfortunately you will only be preaching to the converted Insanity - I just wish that PGI could do what you suggest. From what they have posted in the past it would seem that it is not easy to do in Cry-engine. It seems that it also leads to "unacceptable" performance.
Maybe with an engine update it would be possible.

[Amsro]

Imperius, on 14 September 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

Didn't read. Convergence isn't the issue. Paper armor is! Do not take the ability to aim away from people. It will kill the game! Stronger/more armor I'm ok with. Take away my ability to aim , and I go with it. Aiming = Skill!

If you read - then post you would notice that this thread/idea has no bearing on aiming/removing skill.

Instead this change would increase skill needed to use the different hardpoint/locations on different mechs, overall less arcade more sim.

Edit; this would make arms a little more valuable making them targets.

That said I'm still for homelss bills idea.

Edited by Amsro, 14 September 2013 - 06:08 AM.

[Xanquil]

It has been time to "do something to" convergence for over a year now. It is the root of all the weapon balance issues, and the cause of the oddball "balance changes". (ie ghost heat) But fear of the don't nerf my skill, and it is too much work excuse have caused it to stay around as long as it has. If PGI had started working on it when it was first brought up(closed beta) it would have been "fixed" by now.(most likely)

[SweetJackal]

Oh trust me HRR, I know that this has been something discussed since the CB. Was in it back before the Founder's Program and was one of the vocal detractors of Repair And Rearm, outlining the pitfalls of that system and what needed to be avoided. Though I felt like I was making a roadmap for every mistake R&R would make.

But with convergence itself continuing to be an issue we need to continue the discussion. PGI stated before that the Pin-point accurate system was just a placeholder as true convergence wasn't in the game yet. Well it's been a year, building your game and deciding a placeholder system is the best one is pretty poor.

On your reference material, the Math is true but I don't agree with Cones of Fire and Random Spread, they don't contribute to skill based gameplay. Nor do I see mechs that have 3+ hardpoints in a single location being a problem as that only enables low crit weapons and even then when hardpoints are on the same location they aren't always coming out from the exact same spot. Cramming in 3 PPCs into the Swayback's Hunch still wouldn't have those 3 PPCs hit the same pinpoint of space, there would still be distance between them as there is distance between their mountings.

The problems would come from models that do have multiple weapons coming out of one location. But right now I am noticing more people moving away from the Gauss-PPC poptarting and more going into UAC/5 Armor Mulching.

[S3dition]

Partial convergence is needed, regardless of anything else. This can be done via set convergence ranges (think WW2 fighters, you can set weapons to converge at a specific range, like 400 meters). They need to aim in, but I think the biggest problem is pinpoint aiming. Understandable on a laser where the shot is distributed over the entire mech as intended, but not so much for ballistic weapons.

But therein lies where Battletech rules fall apart when they hit a simulation. Without real ballistic properties (windage, drop, etc) you basically have nothing more than a laser that does all it's damage to a single hit box. PGI would have to break away from battletech and make ballistic weapons lighter and use much less heat, but also make them far less accurate. The current balancing scheme doesn't make much sense, as it's trying to balance a dice roll mechanic without using a dice roll.

[HRR Insanity]

SuckyJack, on 14 September 2013 - 06:23 AM, said:

On your reference material, the Math is true but I don't agree with Cones of Fire and Random Spread, they don't contribute to skill based gameplay. Nor do I see mechs that have 3+ hardpoints in a single location being a problem as that only enables low crit weapons and even then when hardpoints are on the same location they aren't always coming out from the exact same spot. Cramming in 3 PPCs into the Swayback's Hunch still wouldn't have those 3 PPCs hit the same pinpoint of space, there would still be distance between them as there is distance between their mountings.

The problems would come from models that do have multiple weapons coming out of one location. But right now I am noticing more people moving away from the Gauss-PPC poptarting and more going into UAC/5 Armor Mulching.

Ya didn't read the reference material. Individual weapons are perfectly accurate, therefore there is no cone of fire or random spread unless you choose to groupfire. And yes, I dealt with macros in the reference material.

[SweetJackal]

HRR Insanity, on 14 September 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

Ya didn't read the reference material. Individual weapons are perfectly accurate, therefore there is no cone of fire or random spread unless you choose to groupfire. And yes, I dealt with macros in the reference material.

Like I said, I read the reference material. I don't agree with CoF or Random Spread. In my mind I see Weapon Groups being turned into Disco Balls which harkens back to my days playing Tribes Ascend with the RNG Disco Grenades that you could toss into a room and get nothing. Or the hitscan weapons that would miss because of CoF.

An extreme picture of it? No doubt. But that is my reaction to that design choice.

[Zyllos]

Regardless of what the actual solution ends up being, this is 100% the largest problem MWO is facing right now.

All previous MW titles have had the same plague. It needs to be cured here and now before we move much further into launch and players begin to expect this to stay around.

It's a very simple concept of why there is an issue with armor/weapons. The armor system used is based on the idea that weapon's damage is randomly selected based on a distribution. But MWO currently uses aiming, which while it does every now and then do semi-random damage, the majority is landing where the player wants, thus leading to only CT's taking any significant damage, or easily dismantling certain mechs with all their weapons placed into one basket.

[Zyllos]

SuckyJack, on 14 September 2013 - 07:32 AM, said:

Like I said, I read the reference material. I don't agree with CoF or Random Spread. In my mind I see Weapon Groups being turned into Disco Balls which harkens back to my days playing Tribes Ascend with the RNG Disco Grenades that you could toss into a room and get nothing. Or the hitscan weapons that would miss because of CoF.

An extreme picture of it? No doubt. But that is my reaction to that design choice.

True, but that is a CoF is that LARGE.

A CoF that deviates no more than 3.0m in any direction would only make you miss if you aimed at the edges of a mech. If you aimed in the middle, your guaranteed to hit. Also, when choosing where to aim, your mitigating the chances of landing a slot where you don't want to land it, thus aiming is just as important.

The armor system is balanced around the fact that players can not 100% control where all damage is going to land. That is why we see issues with MWO right now because why fire at that arm if the CT is much easier to hit and it kills the mech?

Also, Homeless Bill's suggestion adds a lot of ways to allow players to aim their shots that are 100% accurate without it allowing all weapons on a mech to do this at the same time.

It also allows customization to include actions, different firing patterns, ect to influence the accuracy of mechs if and when the system needs it.

Edited by Zyllos, 14 September 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Foxfire]

I still say they need to spread the pin point into a circle projected along the path of aim with convergence to the respective side of the circle for the weapons(eg head weapon on top, shoulders on the upper at 1/8 and 7/8, arms on the sides, torso weapons firing true) with single fired weapons maintaining perfect accuracy.

If it was done so that you had a decent chance of hitting multiple components at about the 100-200m range when group firing, you still allow skill to play a big part in aiming since there would be no RNG or Cone of Fire to influence the shot.. but you would reduce the power of high damage alphas.

[Barbaric Soul]

Why anyone would want an aiming system that takes away the ability to hit where you want to hit is beyond me.

[Sidekick]

Sigh... this topic again?

I mean... AGAIN?

I know that convergence is the issue. Everyone doing some research and some simple math knows that current balancing problems, ther are 3 reasons:
- Adding a convergence of all weapons where, by game design and balancing concept, there was none. The whole "weight/damage" distribution of the weapons stems from the idea that a single hig-number hit is more valuable than a couple of low-damage hits. Thus the AC-weight-distribution.
- Adding a concept of aimed attacks to this is a multiplicator to the convergence isse.
- Having uneven distributions of mech geometry/target surface to max armor ratios, the concept of aiming and convergence recieves ANOTHER multiplicator.

So yes. The system is borked from the very beginning. As it was told from the very beginning. As was never understood/properly commented by/tested by the designers.

You are beating a dead horse. You are telling a legless person to jump higher. Your work here is futile.

Edited by Sidekick, 14 September 2013 - 07:49 AM.

[SweetJackal]

Zyllos, on 14 September 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

True, but that is a CoF is that LARGE.

A CoF that deviates no more than 3.0m in any direction would only make you miss if you aimed at the edges of a mech. If you aimed in the middle, your guaranteed to hit. Also, when choosing where to aim, your mitigating the chances of landing a slot where you don't want to land it, thus aiming is just as important.

The armor system is balanced around the fact that players can not 100% control where all damage is going to land. That is why we see issues with MWO right now because why fire at that arm if the CT is much easier to hit and it kills the mech?

Also, Homeless Bill's suggestion adds a lot of ways to allow players to aim their shots that are 100% accurate without it allowing all weapons on a mech to do this at the same time.

It also allows customization to include actions, different firing patterns, ect to influence the accuracy of mechs if and when the system needs it.

The problem I see with only having Weapon Groups or Succession Fired weapons facing a CoF is that it devalues weapon groups in the first place. Weapon groups are a Weapon Management system and penalizing it with CoF is a system that sits in the same book as Ghost Heat for me.

It also pushes away from weapons that you do want to group to make them effective and I can see it hurting Brawling as a whole.

And, try legging a Light with weapons that have a CoF. Those leg hitboxes can be small and fast moving so firing as little as 2 ML would more likely miss than hit.

In the end CoF is a system that removes control from the player. Template firing doesn't.

Sidekick, on 14 September 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

Sigh... this topic again?

I mean... AGAIN?

I know that convergence is the issue. Everyone doing some research and some simple math knows that current balancing problems, ther are 3 reasons:
- Adding a convergence of all weapons where, by game design and balancing concept, there was none. The whole "weight/damage" distribution of the weapons stems from the idea that a single hig-number hit is more valuable than a couple of low-damage hits. Thus the AC-weight-distribution.
- Adding a concept of aimed attacks to this is a multiplicator to the convergence isse.
- Having uneven distributions of mech geometry/target surface to max armor ratios, the concept of aiming and convergence recieves ANOTHER multiplicator.

So yes. The system is borked from the very beginning. As it was told from the very beginning. As was never understood/properly commented by/tested by the designers.

You are beating a dead horse. You are telling a legless person to jump higher. Your work here is futile.

As to this being worthless to talk about, I point to R&R. Things can change and so long as a problem exists then the discussion shouldn't end.

[Wolfways]

Wouldn't just setting the convergence distance of every weapon be the weapons optimal range work?
It would place more importance on the weapons optimal range because as you get closer to, or further away from the target the weapon groups fire would naturally spread.

[HRR Insanity]

Barbaric Soul, on 14 September 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

Why anyone would want an aiming system that takes away the ability to hit where you want to hit is beyond me.

In both my proposal and Homeless' proposal, the ability to aim and hit with precision with single weapons (mine) or small groups of weapons (Homeless') is maintained. The balancing factor comes when you try to combine weapons into a 'super weapon' as is allowed currently by pinpoint convergence.

It balances the groupfire advantage (more damage at the same time) with a disadvantage (not all weapons hit exactly where you aim).

RTFM.