47 replies to this topic

[East Indy]

Fantastic interview. I don't like the personal attacks constantly thrown at Bullock and PGI, and I find it unfortunate that Bullock really isn't great with the written word (Twitter, wall-of-text apology). To see the depth of the guy's love for BattleTech and the thought process behind the tradeoffs/gambles part of making this possible does Bullock and PGI justice. Thanks for the transcript.

[Peiper]

Interceptor12, on 27 September 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

I can't wait to see peiper's notes for the launch event speech. lord knows we want the jucy bits.

I didn't see the whole speech/powerpoint, and I couldn't pause or rewind the twitch feed. I THINK I saw most of it, and I did take notes from what I saw, but it was pretty fast. Much of CW was explained in the Eckman interviews already. I can put up what I have, but it would be rather spotty/inferior, and I fear it would lead to many more questions than answers in it's current state. (Not that there wouldn't be questions already, but some would be unnecessary if I could find access to a recorded copy to take notes off of.)

EDIT: a friend found the interview for me!

I will probably get to this overnight and have it set up for tomorrow.

Edited by Peiper, 27 September 2013 - 01:45 PM.

[Sudden Reversal]

Zyllos, on 25 September 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

And this is why Russ and PGI will never understand and MWO will never be balanced. Having pin point accuracy with an Armor System that assumes damage was randomized in some way breaks the system.

If you took his example that players can "twist/spin/roll" to protect an armor section, that is basically saying if your opponent fires their weapons and knocks a hole in your armor, you basically can no longer fire weapons because you have to twist/spin/roll away, no longer looking at your target to fire. At this point, your basically a damage sponge unless you can get out of the line of fire.

This breeds ideas in the community that you MUST alpha strike to allow for twisting/spinning/rolling away or players will just aim at where ever the vulnerable location is on your mech. This also reduces the time of survivability of all mechs in the game because the Armor System assumes you will hit many other locations before actually completely destroying a single section.

It also enforces the idea that mixing weaponry is bad because it is much harder to direct your damage onto a single location. If one location on the mech is considered the weakest, hitting another location is wasted time/ammo/heat.

I do agree that the player base thinks that it is better to have a battle of attrition. The CBT was 100% a battle of attrition due to having to hit mechs so many times. But the current aiming system with the Armor System is completely against the idea of attrition only for the sake to allowing players to aim.

There are MANY ways to allow players to aim their weapons but still enforcing attrition by limiting the amount of weapons to be fired 100% accurately. Honestly, your Ghost Heat system, which is to help keep players from doing too much damage onto a single location, doesn't fix the overall problem.

Ghost Heat still allows players to 100% aim their weapons at a single location, at all times. Ghost Heat only keeps players from firing too many times in a small window of time, which is what the Heat System is suppose to do (and doesn't do it well because the heat scale is MUCH too high but that is for another discussion) but does nothing on limiting how much damage players do against a target. Especially when the meta just shifted over to ballistic builds that still allow for a high pin point damage.

What the system should be doing is allowing players to fire extremely slow, over time, if they want to do pin point damage. But, the player has the option to fire much more rapidly but at the cost of not having 100% control of where weapons fire will land (but they still have majority control because they can hedge where the shots will most likely land, which still requires a lot of skill, especially when in the middle of a fight).

This enforces the idea that mixed weaponry is actually useful if you want to have pin point aiming because even if you have multiples of the same type of weaponry, you can only fire for a little bit and you lose the accuracy. Or, the player can choose to ignore pin point accuracy to put out a lot of firepower against a target in a short amount of time.

It also places more emphasis on the idea that alpha strikes are last resorts, widly firing all your weapons to an attempt to destroy the target by sheer firepower instead of focused, aimed, shots over time.

This also alleviates the Heat System from doing double duty of not only controlling overall DPS of a mech setup but also keeping players from doing too much pin point damage, which it should never be doing in the first place with the Ghost Heat system.

I just hope the community sees where the other side is coming from, understand that the flaws and imbalances of MWO is because it's following past mistakes of previous MW titles, get unified about it and make PGI understand that this game will always be flawed as long as we continue to have full accuracy at all times with an Armor System that needs randomization when taking damage.

For truth.

[MustrumRidcully]

Riptor, on 26 September 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

*snip*

I agree, we need a different armour distribution system if we want to keep mouse aiming and convergence and have no cone of fire.


One could try to explain the situation differently:
You have the following two options:
- Add 150 points of extra arm armor. Completely for free, no strings attached.
- Add 50 points of extra CT armor. It's not free, you need 1 ton.
What would you pick?

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 29 September 2013 - 02:19 AM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

MustrumRidcully, on 29 September 2013 - 02:11 AM, said:

I agree, we need a different armour distribution system if we want to keep mouse aiming and convergence and have no cone of fire.


One could try to explain the situation differently:
You have the following two options:
- Add 150 points of extra arm armor. Completely for free, no strings attached.
- Add 50 points of extra CT armor. It's not free, you need 1 ton.
What would you pick?

here's a wild card. not the armour points par-se that needs changing but incoporating more of the physical CT as LT and RT and shrink the CT hitbox. hense more shots are more likely to take out side torso's and will improve the survivability. i'm awear of the reprocussions to this being xl engines becoming more dangerous so what would you think if... shoulders became arm hit boxes. and crotches {engine boxes between the legs} were not CT's at all but are split in halves, left legt and right leg hitboxes. the theory being perfect aim doesn't garrentee headshots so if CT's hitboxes were a lot smaller like heads then skill for "coring" and survivability would grow and we get more explosions for our fights instead of love taps/ alphas knocking mechs out alltogether.

any takers?

[MustrumRidcully]

GalaxyBluestar, on 29 September 2013 - 02:41 AM, said:

here's a wild card. not the armour points par-se that needs changing but incoporating more of the physical CT as LT and RT and shrink the CT hitbox. hense more shots are more likely to take out side torso's and will improve the survivability. i'm awear of the reprocussions to this being xl engines becoming more dangerous so what would you think if... shoulders became arm hit boxes. and crotches {engine boxes between the legs} were not CT's at all but are split in halves, left legt and right leg hitboxes. the theory being perfect aim doesn't garrentee headshots so if CT's hitboxes were a lot smaller like heads then skill for "coring" and survivability would grow and we get more explosions for our fights instead of love taps/ alphas knocking mechs out alltogether.

any takers?

Well, small hit boxes work for the head slot. No one is particularly worried about that, it seems.

But getting hit boxes right is not exactly PGI's strong suite so far. Might be simpler to dial up some abstract numerical values instead of trying to fiddle with hit box dimensions or the models.

[GalaxyBluestar]

we'll continue this discussion in your armour thread

[MustrumRidcully]

GalaxyBluestar, on 29 September 2013 - 05:16 PM, said:

we'll continue this discussion in your armour thread

I think I saw that post, but it might have gone under. Let's see how it evolves, but if it's not picked up again, you should seriously considering posting about the idea in a seperate thread.

EDIT: Oops, there would be no need for a seperate thread, since it already exists, and you link to it in your post. I feel dumb now.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 September 2013 - 03:31 AM.