228 replies to this topic

[Dudeman3k]

Victor Morson, on 23 October 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

All of your data OP is from random pug games and is thus flawed.

All it takes is a few newbies to not know to turn around and you get hilariously inflated damage. Also again, damage isn't everything.

A guy who does 300 damage to a target and fails to kill it is probably a horrendous shot that failed to land hits on the key components. The guy who's been shooting at whatever with his AC/2s and plinking it all over worthless arms has nice damage that accomplished nothing. Etc, etc. It's definitely more of an issue than you realize, but given this is a 9 page thread now, you've probably already heard this.

A guy who uses a High-Alpha build and fails to kill the target in 300 damage is probably horrendous, yes. But Not for a balanced build. With Example B, you cannot alpha. It would be terribly difficult to land an alpha with that build (different weapon systems, min range, missles, and different weapon groupings), so your opponent is torso twisting and spreading damage (which is how the game should be played)... however, with Example A, the damage counter is low, but you will kill the target, because he cannot torso twist an instant pin-point to my directed component.

[MustrumRidcully]

FearTheAmish, on 23 October 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

One of my friends had a good idea...

Currently heat is set at high threshold low dissipation. Basically you can fire alot of weapons but it takes a bit to dissipate that heat. To move to a less alpha heavy state flip it. Low threshold High dissipation. This would allow laser builds to become stronger because you could cycle through them faster as well as lowering the amount of damage an alpha could be.

A topic that's been around since Closed Beta... Are we delusional if we keep pushing for it if the devs resist or ignore the idea for so long?

[Joseph Mallan]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 October 2013 - 01:17 AM, said:

A topic that's been around since Closed Beta... Are we delusional if we keep pushing for it if the devs resist or ignore the idea for so long?

But back in CB the idea of a High Alpha was 60+ damage (2 TT Gauss). Now we are whining about the equivalent damage to a single Gauss round on TT!!!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 October 2013 - 04:27 AM.

[Lightfoot]

Dudeman3k, on 23 October 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

"Battletech should be the source for balancing MWO since that is where the mechs come from and were balanced to work"

I agree, completely. And in the books (as Pht has mentioned) you can only call to target specific points of a mech (in a FPS 100% pin-point convergence) with ONE weapon. As for the rest, as you know, are randomly chosen with the dice. So how do you simulate both? The answer is simple. Multiple cross-hairs. You can chose where and when you want to target (like iin any FPS) but with muliple weapon systems, each one needs its on marker per location on the chassis.

as It stands, you are making every called shot with EVERY weapon... and in the books, that would ruin you, in any game, with how mech loadouts work. Imagine playing TT where you can alpha and call out where you wanted to hit instead of rolling for it.... it would make the hardest hitters your most valuable, this is what we are experiencing now.

Mech movement does simulate pilot skill, but it doesnt fix the "to-hit" issue. That can only be solved with "readjusting aim" per location of weapon mounted.

This isn't a cry for "NERF!" it's a cry to a fundamental error that has existed in EVERY FPS MW title to date. If I recall correctly, PGI wanted to stray away from that.... but instead, are following in its same foot steps by overlooking how the weapons hit. The "To-Hit" factor.

What I am saying is the random hit roll in Battletech is to use dice to simulate damage spread on a moving Mech. In a Mech simulation like MWO it's up to the players to move the Mech to spread the damage, not have it done for them.

And you know, we already have two aim-point reticles and the three weapon types all do damage in different patterns. Energy goes straight, Ballistics drop, Missiles do area damage. So there is no pinpoint with mixed weapon types although the Ballistic drop is minimal. Perhaps you could get them to remove arm-lock.

I think literal de-convergence of each weapon as a mechanic would make MWO very arcade-like instead of simulating a real mech. If you look at armored vehicles of today they all have at least limited ability to move all their weapons to aim at specific points in a cone of fire so aimed weapons will always be vital to any game calling itself a Simulation. Now you could add more weapons that spew damage in a cone pattern, but you would just be duplicating LBX's and SRMs.

Bottom line, this is MechWarrior and your opponent will aim for your mech's vital and weak areas so don't let them. It's a bit complicated by 2x Recharge, but I don't think that's going away. Still it makes every weapon and weapon grouping play like Rotary Autocannons which did more damage, but exposed you to much more since you didn't turn away for the duration of the firing, thus exposing the CT to all incoming fire.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Stop worrying about dice rolls and such.

Do you use a variety of weapons? Not unless you are purposely hurting yourself.

Do you chain fire or alpha more? You alpha unless you are in an overheating situation or doing the above purposeful hurting.

Do you aim to kill (CT-RT/LT w/ XL-Legs) or aim to disarm? Fastest time to kill while taking the least damage is always aim to kill, not disarm (unless someone already messed up and shot someone up without killing them properly).

Are you scared to step out in the open because mechs die so quickly? Especially now with 12vs12, one wrong move and you are done for.

Do you feel like this game is a "thinking man's shooter"? I think since we've gotten to where we are basically clicking the same two mouse buttons and firing alpha's at eachother repeatedly, I might as well be a human with a sniper rifle instead of a 100 ton mech.

There are a limited amount of "right" choices you make in this game. You can go against the grain and purposely limit yourself (that's your choice), but this game takes much less skill currently than normal FPS due to the fact that mechs are so dang slow and big.

On top of that PGI keeps releasing new mechs with huge center torso's (which they seemingly plan to revisit).

I think we need to inject real skill into this game.

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 24 October 2013 - 09:00 AM.

[Zyllos]

Lightfoot, on 23 October 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

I think players just like to complain about being destroyed and if you got this wonderful de-convergence you would hate it also because you could no longer destroy anything before being destroyed.

I have never asked for any nerf in MWO, but I am surprised that PGI always caves to the nerf-herders with some weird nerf like Ghost Heat. Gauss de-sync. Things that do not come from Battletech. Battletech should be the source for balancing MWO since that is where the mechs come from and were balanced to work. That way all the Mechs would be balanced instead of the AC-only Mech Balance MWO has ended up with.

In my view damage spread caused by moving the mech simulates the random hit rolls in Battletech which has no way to express movement damage spread other than a random hit dynamic.
.

Damage is spread out when weapons aim at different locations. Within Battletech, every weapon fired, regardless if fired at the same time or from the same location, aims at a new location, independent of all other weapons.

Within MWO, weapons all aim at two different locations, the arm and torso crosshair. These crosshairs allow players to choose where they aim. All weapons, regardless if fired at the same time, always aim at their respective crosshair.

Even if your wanting to hit the CT, if you happen to be aiming at the RT, all the weapons fired will hit the RT.

So, the problem is that weapons are "summed" together because they all aim at a single point, regardless if they were intending to actually hit a location or not.

When this happens, essentially, the spread of weapons is done on a "volley" basis instead of individual weapon basis. That means, the more weapons you fire together, the more focused/accurate damage becomes.

Edited by Zyllos, 24 October 2013 - 09:20 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Lasers melting off leg armor, Auto cannon depleted uranium shells stitching a trail of destruction across a torso. While Missiles rain damage across a broad area shattering armor into twinkling shards. Passages like that are everywhere in the stories. Where is the Convergence?

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

Lasers melting off leg armor, Auto cannon depleted uranium shells stitching a trail of destruction across a torso. While Missiles rain damage across a broad area shattering armor into twinkling shards. Passages like that are everywhere in the stories. Where is the Convergence?

Honestly a big issue is the auto cannon line. If auto cannon's had a stream of shells as opposed to a single shell, the damage would spread out more.

And the other thing is that when you read the books is the dang variety of weapons. Yes I know boats existed, but it's really rare in any of the descriptions to read about a pilot jamming the fire button and shooting all of his weapons at once into a pre-determined location.

And when that did happen, it was only the top of the top mechwarriors doing it like Kai Allard and it was to further the storyline. Not because it was normal.

[Joseph Mallan]

Agreed about the AC lines. It always made me go "Don't feel that way on TT!"

[Lightfoot]

@Zyllos,

Well the Devs have said the game can't support indvidual aim-points for each weapon. So two options, more armor in vital areas of the Mech, easiest to do and balance. Or, have the hitboxes all overlap slightly making damage spread more likely and making high accuracy shots more like an ace shot. This requires a major rebuild (I think) and balancing for each mech, but would simulate damage to mechs in the most realistic way.

I was happy with things the way they were and have never asked for any nerf. I think battles are a bit too short and unforgiving, but adding armor till you get satisfactory battles is the way to fix this.

Probably the best way I have heard to fix the 2xRecharge damage is to halve the damage per shot and increase ammo and heatsink dissapation. That way you would restore Battletech damage per turn rates without altering gameplay.

[Vodrin Thales]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 04:26 AM, said:

But back in CB the idea of a High Alpha was 60+ damage (2 TT Gauss). Now we are whining about the equivalent damage to a single Gauss round on TT!!!

This is true. PGI has been successful in reducing the value of the standard alpha is usually 30 or lower (with the occasional short range 40 from dual AC20 or AC20/2PPC), but to really get the feel right it should be further reduced (or at least the pinpoint effect reduced). Right now as many have said high pinpoint alphas (30+) still result in very rapid mech destruction, even with assaults. More thought would go in if PGI could come up with a reasonable system that reduced ability to pinpoint damage while still rewarding good aim, and encouraged more varied weapon loads.

[Joseph Mallan]

Vodrin Thales, on 24 October 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

This is true. PGI has been successful in reducing the value of the standard alpha is usually 30 or lower (with the occasional short range 40 from dual AC20 or AC20/2PPC), but to really get the feel right it should be further reduced (or at least the pinpoint effect reduced). Right now as many have said high pinpoint alphas (30+) still result in very rapid mech destruction, even with assaults. More thought would go in if PGI could come up with a reasonable system that reduced ability to pinpoint damage while still rewarding good aim, and encouraged more varied weapon loads.

And yet a 15 point hit on TT is fine, In fact it is so fine we have builds that throw 3 times the equivalent damage! A Thunder Hawk can fire 3 15 point shots every turn, That is equal to us taking 3 30 point Alphas in 3 different locations! Every turn! I cannot grasp the idea that 30 damage here is to much to handle!

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

And yet a 15 point hit on TT is fine, In fact it is so fine we have builds that throw 3 times the equivalent damage! A Thunder Hawk can fire 3 15 point shots every turn, That is equal to us taking 3 30 point Alphas in 3 different locations! Every turn! I cannot grasp the idea that 30 damage here is to much to handle!

It is though, due to the recycle time and the fact that we can pick our shots. It's exacerbated by team work and the addtional 4 mechs on each team in 12vs12.

If you round a corner in a medium mech, and run into two mechs mounting a 30 damage pinpoint alpha, you are smoked in one recycle of their weapons.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 24 October 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

It is though, due to the recycle time and the fact that we can pick our shots. It's exacerbated by team work and the addtional 4 mechs on each team in 12vs12.

If you round a corner in a medium mech, and run into two mechs mounting a 30 damage pinpoint alpha, you are smoked in one recycle of their weapons.

Same for a Medium running into two Thunder Hawks (90 damage) in one turn! More (130 total) if they each fire their 4 medium lasers as well! the equivalent of 260 total damage here!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 October 2013 - 10:19 AM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:

Same for a Medium running into two Thunder Hawks (90 damage) in one turn! More (130 total) if they each fire their 4 medium lasers as well! the equivalent of 260 total damage here!

So if a Shadowhawk rounds a corner, and runs into a pair of Cataphracts, you feel that in two weapon recycles, the Shadowhawk should be dead?

Might as well not be battlemechs at that point.

Once again I don't care about TT. I care about the feel of this game, and I do not feel like I'm in a mech if I weigh less than 65 tons, and even when i'm in an assault if I run into a 4 man pre-made who concentrates fire, my mech melts away like it's using paper for armor.

And once again the worst part about this is the fact that i'll probably take almost no damage to the inconsequential parts of my mechs.

We might as well just have a hitpoint bar instead of components.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 24 October 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

So if a Shadowhawk rounds a corner, and runs into a pair of Cataphracts, you feel that in two weapon recycles, the Shadowhawk should be dead?

Might as well not be battlemechs at that point.

Once again I don't care about TT. I care about the feel of this game, and I do not feel like I'm in a mech if I weigh less than 65 tons, and even when i'm in an assault if I run into a 4 man pre-made who concentrates fire, my mech melts away like it's using paper for armor.

And once again the worst part about this is the fact that i'll probably take almost no damage to the inconsequential parts of my mechs.

We might as well just have a hitpoint bar instead of components.

Depends on the weapons involved. I can kill a Shadowhawk with two Wahrammers in two turns of fire, so yeah I do think so. you are looking at 140 tons of bad v 55!

And I am also thinking about the feel of the game. A game I have played since the late 80s! Both on TT and (late 90s) computer.

[Fut]

Joseph Mallan, on 23 October 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

Even though each those 5 shots on TT are equal to the single 30 point pin point Alpha that are taking flack now in MW:O? If I was doing Pin Point locations with that, it would be 75 points to one location or equal to 150 points of convergent damage! The players are complaining about taking the same damage as one TT Gauss... ONE!!! Who about taking a single Gauss round on TT...? Unless its a Head shot or a stock Light Mech pilot!

You can jostle the numbers around as much as you like, it doesn't matter much, and quite frankly a lot of it doesn't even make sense (reminds me of that scam where a dude goes into a store with a $50, buys something small and then starts asking for specific denominations in change, changing the numbers around quickly in an attempt to confuse the cashier - often leading to the scammer walking out of the store with more money than they went in with).

The fact remains that in TT you couldn't place all of your shots exactly where you wanted to (unless you were precision aiming at a shutdown Mech or something), so the biggest Alpha-Strike in the world would wind up spreading out and hitting all over your target. So your claimed Billion-Dmg Alpha's in TT would really just be a bunch of Million-Dmg hits on various parts of your enemy.

In MW:O though, you can hit the exact same pixel on your opponent every time you fire (hypothetically). This makes everything in this game more dangerous - regardless of how much they increase the armor levels. A 20-dmg Alpha sounds like a joke when compared to your uber-numbers from the TT days of old, but that 20-dmg Alpha can be placed exactly where the attacker wants it to go every time.

This is why people are complaining about High-Alpha: Pin-Point accuracy, and no consequences for riding 99% Heat for the entire match.

[Joseph Mallan]

Fut, on 24 October 2013 - 10:35 AM, said:

You can jostle the numbers around as much as you like, it doesn't matter much, and quite frankly a lot of it doesn't even make sense (reminds me of that scam where a dude goes into a store with a $50, buys something small and then starts asking for specific denominations in change, changing the numbers around quickly in an attempt to confuse the cashier - often leading to the scammer walking out of the store with more money than they went in with).

The fact remains that in TT you couldn't place all of your shots exactly where you wanted to (unless you were precision aiming at a shutdown Mech or something), so the biggest Alpha-Strike in the world would wind up spreading out and hitting all over your target. So your claimed Billion-Dmg Alpha's in TT would really just be a bunch of Million-Dmg hits on various parts of your enemy.

In MW:O though, you can hit the exact same pixel on your opponent every time you fire (hypothetically). This makes everything in this game more dangerous - regardless of how much they increase the armor levels. A 20-dmg Alpha sounds like a joke when compared to your uber-numbers from the TT days of old, but that 20-dmg Alpha can be placed exactly where the attacker wants it to go every time.

This is why people are complaining about High-Alpha: Pin-Point accuracy, and no consequences for riding 99% Heat for the entire match.

20 alpha here equals a single AC10 or PPC on TT. I shudder to think someone is afraid of 20-30 damage alphas. What do we do when someone starts to complain about a 20 point Alpha? We will have to nerf the damage f ONE AC20? Really? Sorry Fup but the players are getting to cowardly if 30 damage is to much! Like I said 30 here is equal to a single Gauss on TT!

[Fut]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

20 alpha here equals a single AC10 or PPC on TT. I shudder to think someone is afraid of 20-30 damage alphas. What do we do when someone starts to complain about a 20 point Alpha? We will have to nerf the damage f ONE AC20? Really? Sorry Fup but the players are getting to cowardly if 30 damage is to much! Like I said 30 here is equal to a single Gauss on TT!

You're focusing on the numbers too much, Buddy.

Joseph Mallan, on 24 October 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Like I said 30 here is equal to a single Gauss on TT!

In TT, could you place your Gauss shot exactly onto your enemies damaged RT because you knew they were rocking an XL Engine?

Edited by Fut, 24 October 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

No I am focusing on feel. 30 point hits are fine by me. So are forty point hits. It's what I am used to feeling for 30 years.