38 replies to this topic

[PEEFsmash]

Mr 144, on 12 October 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

I agree with you only so far. Assaults vs. Lights is an easy kill for any 'good' assault pilot. I don't agree with a need for range of motion being arbitrarily limited on new mechs while old mechs still have full movement. This creates a skill-less newb enviornment for heavier chassis.

There is no reason why assault mechs cannot be walking turrets with large ranges of motion...both arms and torso. The speed at which they react is the sole mitigating factor in the ability to fend off lights, not the range of articulation. As long as the speed is slow enough to give lights the upper hand in close quarter enviornments, your 'goal' is achieved. Limiting range of motion only reduces the heavier classes into skinned standardized FPS shooters and looses the 'mech' alure imo.

Giving back the original range of motion heavies and assaults had, while decreasing speed serves two purposes. It gives llights and fast mediums a large advantage against them, as targeting them proves extremely difficult with both pilots being skilled. The increased range of movement gives the heavier chassis better abilities to continue trudging along while being picked apart (as opposed to the standard back against a wall mentality)....the heavier still looses to the lighter in isolation, but the heavier also has an ability to attempt regrouping or retreat.

I know you don't run heavies or assaults often, but arms are a complete joke on them. It's not about a 'buff'...it's about tweaking them back into their role...slow, high firepower, high armored, walking turrets. How is range of movement OP against lights if the tracking speed does not allow reliable targeting?

Stop with the nerf everything heavy, and throw the 'good' assault pilots a bone....something they can actually enjoy piloting...even if they can be picked apart by lighter chassis.

If they were serious about the nerfs that I'm proposing (and I think they should be done to all heavy and assault chassis), then I could get on board with an armor buff for assaults and heavies. They would be stronger at tanking, but they would need serious disadvantages they dont have for that to work.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Sable Dove, on 12 October 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Mech efficiencies are partly to blame. The majority of them increase the mech's mobility, which helps to bolster the weaknesses of the heavier classes, while doing little to help the lighter classes (twist speed, for instance, is useless on any light, or the Cicada, since they already turn faster than the camera, assuming you're using a reasonable sensitivity).

Take an Atlas, for instance. You would think it would be heavily armed and armoured, with limited mobility, but with Elite efficiencies, it can aim its torso 96 degrees, and its arms 136 degrees to either side, while turning 20% faster than normal.

I agree, we need to start here with addressing the Mech Tree boosts. And maybe also separating (or limiting) how the installed Engine also boosts torso and arm speed.

Maybe just get rid of the the Mech Tree boosts for now, until the devs can work on Roles and Trade Offs (maybe a fair C-Bill compensation for the effort in unlocking them, if necessary, when the boosts are removed; if the XP cannot be refunded, and I doubt the devs would want to convert those points over to GXP).



And for any interested you can go to Smurfy's Site and look at how the Twist X boosts Torso Twist range specifically when the values in Torso/Arm as selected.

Here is the full chart too.

[Mr 144]

PEEFsmash, on 12 October 2013 - 05:26 PM, said:

If they were serious about the nerfs that I'm proposing (and I think they should be done to all heavy and assault chassis), then I could get on board with an armor buff for assaults and heavies. They would be stronger at tanking, but they would need serious disadvantages they dont have for that to work.

Meh...I'm happy with armor values....range of motion back to 'standard' would be all the damage mitigation I need. I would NEED lights or mediums to shadow me for defense, but I still could cover enough ground to regroup for defense. Self defense due to limited twist/arm speed would be poor at best....but I'd like at least some ability to disengage

[Rhent]

As it stands now, lights just don't have total dominance. With the movement nerf to assaults and heavies, putting in ghost heat to prevent large weapons from being fired as a group and to the nerfing of SSRM's, lights just aren't king yet. If only we could limit assault and heavy torso turns so that lights can run up and have absolutely nothing to worry about, then we could all bow down to our Jenner masters.

[Ghogiel]

I will only consider this as a reasonable suggestion when knockdowns are back in. Until then it's kinda bad.

[Rhent]

Ghogiel, on 12 October 2013 - 08:54 PM, said:

I will only consider this as a reasonable suggestion when knockdowns are back in. Until then it's kinda bad.

As it stands now, you can't one shot a light mechs leg now without taking serious heat issues. They even made it where PPC's now do no damage below 90M and Gauss Rifles have a 0.75 delay. There are more lights being played than Assaults in most of the games I play. And now people are talking about nerfing Heavies/Assaults more.

Its laughable at this point.

[Deathlike]

Rhent, on 12 October 2013 - 09:04 PM, said:

As it stands now, you can't one shot a light mechs leg now without taking serious heat issues. They even made it where PPC's now do no damage below 90M and Gauss Rifles have a 0.75 delay. There are more lights being played than Assaults in most of the games I play. And now people are talking about nerfing Heavies/Assaults more.

Its laughable at this point.

Well, I remember shooting a Spider in its back with 2 ERPPCs to immediate core it... of course this was the last mech at the end of the match... trying to snipe with an ERPPC...

I dunno. Lasers still work just fine.

[GalaxyBluestar]

General Taskeen, on 12 October 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

As a side note to Twisting.

I would prefer all (fully actuated) arms to be able to fire 90 degrees while facing forward. That is how it worked in Mech Warrior 3 and Mech Warrior 4, which is actually how its supposed to work.

In Mech Warrior 3, at least, don't remember if this happened in MW4, but if one of your arms was aimed 90 degrees, any of your weapons on the opposite arm and torso automatically could not fire, so you didn't have to worry about setting up even more weapon groups. That was an incredibly, amazing touch in my opinion and was a staple for making Mech Warrior have that more immersive "simulation" feel.

Either PGI hasn't figured it out, or they haven't got to it yet. Another hurdle is including a side camera, someway, somehow, which those older engines could handle very easily.

that's the only reason i'm still around, in the vain hope that this game will recognise a lot of the superior gear MW2-3 had.

wish list:

independant arm articulation that maens when your pilot looks left you can shoot at what you're looking at.

toggles for views such as wire frames for mechs and battlegrids, rearview mirrors, something for god's sake more accurate than the damn damage dolly, a graph chart of armour is so much more accurate and telling for how much armour you've really got left. 30pts of armour is red on an assault but 10 pts on a light-medium, you best not forget that thinking you can take more if you're inclined to jump from chassis to chassis.

hotkeys for commands considering intergrated Voip doesn't want to show up outside getting on c3 which most puggers aren't on so you won't be talking to too many people unlees you just do the 3rd party system anyways.

a complete tutorial movement of the pilot's head is missing, gunnery isn't here, radar/battlegrid isn't here. {proberbly don't want to commit to details cause they'll be buffed nerfed next week} a tute that's just something which isn't tab-o-licious like the school project we currently have. a voice over would go a long way.

soo many dreams, just to match up to titles of 15yrs of age.

[Krivvan]

GalaxyBluestar, on 13 October 2013 - 12:02 AM, said:

toggles for views such as wire frames for mechs

Wh...why?

[GalaxyBluestar]

Krivvan, on 13 October 2013 - 12:22 AM, said:

Wh...why?

sorry, proberbly didn't make myself clear, i'm talking about the targetting hud not the whole enviroment. would love to see walking mechs within the hud targgeter and colour coded damg like this game provided...




MWO however takes 9 so months to bypass an error in making a pip window focus so it's going to be a long wait before mechs can walk within the target hud and have hitboxes highlighted, toggles to rear view and other damage readings etc etc. at the momment mw2 has more sim information available to the pilot than this game :/

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 13 October 2013 - 01:43 AM.

[Kitane]

Mechs with arms and full set of actuators should be able to raise their arms and essentially gain the same over-the-hill capability as mechs like Jagermech.

The only thing I am worried about is that the game would change into march of zombies, humanoid mechs "look" much better with arms in their default position.

The best solution for that would be for the game to dynamically control the arm movement. The current position would be the default one, but whenever you aim at something and your arms detect that the terrain is blocking their view, the mech would automatically raise them to higher position. Adding these raycasts would also enable a visual indication of a blocked weapon in HUD.

That wouldn't be hard to code and it would dramatically improve the experience, but tt would probably require a significant overhaul of arm animations.

They could upgrade mechs one by one, just like they are doing dynamic hardpoints now.

[Satan n stuff]

GalaxyBluestar, on 13 October 2013 - 01:42 AM, said:

MWO however takes 9 so months to bypass an error in making a pip window focus so it's going to be a long wait before mechs can walk within the target hud and have hitboxes highlighted, toggles to rear view and other damage readings etc etc. at the momment mw2 has more sim information available to the pilot than this game :/

That's not an error, that's a limitation of Crytek which any decent graphics programmer could easily remove. ( Or rather, a feature that was never added to Crytek. ) As it is now it's still not working the way it should, but at least it is working better than before. With some creative programming you could have any number of views onscreen at a time in any shape you want, using whatever projection type you want with no significant slowdown. Only edge culling would take longer because there will obviously be more edges, but that's one of the least resource intensive parts of the process so it's not exactly going to be a bottleneck.

[Lyoto Machida]

Kitane, on 13 October 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

Mechs with arms and full set of actuators should be able to raise their arms and essentially gain the same over-the-hill capability as mechs like Jagermech.

The only thing I am worried about is that the game would change into march of zombies, humanoid mechs "look" much better with arms in their default position.

The best solution for that would be for the game to dynamically control the arm movement. The current position would be the default one, but whenever you aim at something and your arms detect that the terrain is blocking their view, the mech would automatically raise them to higher position. Adding these raycasts would also enable a visual indication of a blocked weapon in HUD.

That wouldn't be hard to code and it would dramatically improve the experience, but tt would probably require a significant overhaul of arm animations.

They could upgrade mechs one by one, just like they are doing dynamic hardpoints now.

I've always said there should be a zombie or mummy style option for the humanoid arm types but with the drawback of less protection for your torsos if you twist (since your arms aren't covering your "ribs" anymore). It's a tradeoff but the benefit to having the extra slots taken up by the actuators is the ability to switch modes.

[MustrumRidcully]

See also this thread on the current value between articulated arms and high but fixed positioned arms: http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

There is a split between people that think it's more or less balanced (role dependent) and those that say high positions are best. But very few say that the articulated arms are best.

[Tynan]

Yeah I don't know how this turned into another lights vs. assaults fight, the point is more that articulated arms need to mean something, or ought to, whereas they're only rarely any substantive use at the moment.

[Lyoto Machida]

Tynan, on 13 October 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

Yeah I don't know how this turned into another lights vs. assaults fight, the point is more that articulated arms need to mean something, or ought to, whereas they're only rarely any substantive use at the moment.

Soon™.

[Screech]

De-couple torso twist speed from engine size. Then set torso twist speeds and ranges on a chasis basis. During this pass slow down heavies and assaults twist speeds in general. Leave arm movement alone increasing the value of arm mounted weapons as they would be significantly more agile.

[Otto Cannon]

PEEFsmash, on 12 October 2013 - 02:42 PM, said:

It's called Role Warfare. No mech should be able to do it all. Highlanders can sit at base and do it all. Assaults shouldn't be the best at EVERYTHING that is mandatory in this game. (Scouting and capping and spotting are NOT mandatory activities, because you can choose to simply camp base with 12 highlanders).

I don't think you can really cite role warfare and then totally discount scouting and capping just because they can be made unnecessary by one specific type of camping gameplay in one specific gamemode (i.e. assault). In conquest mode a light mech will not even break sweat running rings around a Highlander and capping ftw. That's not even considering future game modes where mobility could trump firepower every time.

You're obviously entitled to your view, and it's not really surprising you want lights to be able to kill heavier mechs as well as outmaneuver them tactically, but I don't think it's as simple as you make out. When a Highlander can move from objective to objective as fast as a Jenner I'll fully support the Jenner being able to fight the Highlander on equal terms. Until then I have to disagree with you.

[TexAce]

its a damn robot, it should at least have one aspect of a robot, something humans can't do, which is 360° torso twist

seriously, why is there no mech yet that has unlimited torso twist. I want one. It would finally be something special.