330 replies to this topic

[Funkadelic Mayhem]

Any way you can take a look at the Raven leg hotboxes again? If the spider is working as intended, why does the ravens have to have their leg hit box bigger then they should be? Please and thank you.

[Blurry]

Ok my suggestion - all my mechs take 0 damage.
anything I fire 100 yards close to a mech - takes critical damage.

Ok shouldnt be that hard right?
I wont complain since I have only been playing a few weeks - with the exception of the spider- 6 mechs focus fire took over 3 mins to kill it.

While in there any way to look at the matchmaker and lopsided matches? most are stomping one way or the other and really not even fun to play.
Thanks you

[MrEdweird]

Good, I like.

I was looking at the mechbay model of the Awesome chassis and noticed that selecting the arms also highlights the moving shoulder pads that cover the higher parts of the side torsos. Maybe actually make those part of the arms?

I've always wanted to pilot some Awesomes and went in just now fully prepared to be killed every match by CT even when torso twisting like mad and crossing damage all over the platform. And I was not surprised!

Clearly some adjustments are needed and I think there's a fanbase of the Awesome out there crying for some action on the subject since, well, since the Awesome was introduced. Maybe also do the equipment visual changes while you're at it?

[Voivode]

Glad to hear it. I already love the Awesome but if you want to make it even better....I won't stop you!

[merz]

Sharp Spikes, on 31 October 2013 - 05:01 AM, said:

but it would be 3 times as good if you not only let us know "what's coming down the pipe" before it hits us, but also take our feedback on it into consideration.

therein the problem. i would be much happier if paul simply released the changes into the wild without specifying the changes at any point in time and then asked the players how they felt about the changes. that would be actual feedback, something he could look at between opinions provided and statistics observed. what you suggest is that he provides an ammunition bin for the crowd that has a personal vendetta with him, so that they can respond with a resounding 'yeah, NOPE! GONNA GIT YOU FIRED!!' or engage in protracted theorycrafting about things not yet in the game.

[Sharp Spikes]

merz, on 31 October 2013 - 11:44 AM, said:

therein the problem. i would be much happier if paul simply released the changes into the wild without specifying the changes at any point in time and then asked the players how they felt about the changes.

Hawken devs use this approach, and it is one of the reasons I don't want to play Hawken anymore.

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that would be actual feedback, something he could look at between opinions provided and statistics observed.

So, feedback from users that know in-game mechanics is not feedback anymore? I am not sure I understand you here.

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what you suggest is that he provides an ammunition bin for the crowd that has a personal vendetta with him, so that they can respond with a resounding 'yeah, NOPE! GONNA GIT YOU FIRED!!'

Are you implying that people who are not satisfied with the game balance have something PERSONAL against Paul (He spat in their salad, drank their beer etc.)? Maybe they want him to be fired because his gameplay balance decisions were... questionable (to say the least) and they don't think he can do better? I must admit I promised $400 to PGI when/if someone else will take his position, but in case he'll be able to achieve acceptable weapon/mech/weight class balance I'll give that $400 to PGI too. It doesn't matter who did the job if the job is well done.

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or engage in protracted theorycrafting about things not yet in the game.

Ok, I like to theorycraft. Because it saves me from spending hours on playtesting to reverse-engineer gameplay mechanics. Hawken devs, for example, want players to feel balance changes "by gut" and don't provide any numbers because of that. I consider it an insult: I am not a monkey to learn exlusively by trial-and-error method.

[Aluminumfoiled]

Spyder228, on 31 October 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Yeah, let's baloon the Spider hitboxes because the hitreg sucks! Pull the ole Raven fix out of the toolbox. Treat the problem, not the symptom.

First off, I hate to even say anything about reducing light survivabilty. The Spider is a very strange exception. To me it revolves around the inconsistancy of the problem.

AC 20 a stationary Spider and either no damage or severe damage. Ping does not always seem to be the factor. Who hasn't watched endmatch, the last 3-5 mechs chase a spider for for entirely too long being lit up with hits the whole time. Or destroyed 2 min in for being just a bit too cheeky in front of an assault and the hits went true.

Shot lead varies too. Normal hit reg issues might not apply. If it did, the Locust let alone Jenners/Ravens et al would be in here too.

This is a fairness issue. If you are putting a LLas into my back as I engage that Atlas, I should be able to turn and hit you with a well placed shot.

[Kaldor]

Hit boxes will never really be fixed until the sizes of the mechs are adjusted so that the size of the mech is directly proportional to the amount of armor it carries.

But, anyway, at least it might get addressed at some point....

[The Justicar]

Looking forward to silencing all the Spider haters, and being able to play my Orion without chain smoking to keep my cool.

Justicar approves.

P.S. make up for ghost heat and implement basically everything CarrionCrows said about hitboxes.

Edited by The Justicar, 31 October 2013 - 03:19 PM.

[merz]

Sharp Spikes, on 31 October 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

Ok, I like to theorycraft. Because it saves me from spending hours on playtesting to reverse-engineer gameplay mechanics. Hawken devs, for example, want players to feel balance changes "by gut" and don't provide any numbers because of that. I consider it an insult: I am not a monkey to learn exlusively by trial-and-error method.

Heavy Gear Assault.Our only hope now.

короче, сочи..к сути дела..

The ultimate objective is reaching a point where there exists a wide range of gameplay styles, as well as mechs and weapon systems to accommodate them, that are all situationally-viable and relevant in both pug drops, competitive gameplay and, going forward, community warfare added on to that. although our precise imagining of what this scenario could look like may substantially differ, i think we can agree upon this being desired by everyone* involved in the ongoing discussion.

an idea explained, however thoroughly, will not demonstrate itself viable in bringing the game closer to that point until it is implemented and observed. the author may not be fully aware of the way the implementation could perform outside of the parameters of their intentions. the explanations come as deference to the playerbase, but they could and they do present a setback to the developer attempting to get things done, here defined as making the greatest number of choices meaningful and viable.

there is an undeniable pall of personal resentment now, if not in the broader community than at least the forums. it may very well have originated in valid concerns, but has since gone above and beyond, enough for people to phone death threats, seek to do personal harm or embarrassment to individual developers and the company as a whole, and openly express desire for the product to do poorly. things are toxic around here, and any significant changes to the game that rock the boat for the playstyles held to be effective at the present are sure to be unpopular with those who stand to be diminished as a result. between those people and a significant but present minority that continues to make arguments in bad faith, no real purpose is served in communicating the sort of thing, other than to whip the forums into a froth of 'HANDS OFF MY (placeholder)' or 'MY IDEA ON FIXING (placeholder) IS BETTER' and any number of politically-motivated brosefs seeking to cash in on the rage's currency to their own ends only tenuously-related to the overall health of the game.

you might recall that the whole thing started off with vassago rain making a design suggestion that was rejected by paul, to which he responded that his was better. Paul came back, to the effect of 'i look forward to seeing it implemented in your game'. there are many views on what the designer's role is exactly in a game of the sort and how much creative authority they are entitled to in implementing changes to an evolving system like what we've got here. my own personal take on this is that if the designer is actively trying to steer gameplay towards all choices given to the player being made meaningful, they should be given deference. There are also people who believe that the playerbase and the community drawn from it are the wellspring from which development flows, and the designer should merely facilitate their ideas.

I'd much rather see feedback as something conveyed in the game, through game play as opposed to forum froth. And i believe that someone who responds to this with "I don't have the time to actually play the game before offering my opinions on how it is and should be" has forfeited their opinion, as it carries no substance. why would a designer want to consider that sort of 'feedback' at all useful? seems like it only increases the relative noise level.

* - some of those participating have gotten carried away with a strange and personal power struggle, and are not interested in the game's overall health. which is to say that they may care about the game or the IP, but their feelings of resentment towards individual developers or PGI as a whole are so overwhelmingly negative that they would not mind much a scenario in which everything burns to the ground or would go so far as to bring such a scenario about. there are whole groups of people here who pretty much openly state this to be their objective. the original post i'm replying to comes from some guy whose 'only hope' per his signature is a game equivalent of a stillbirth. clearly his comments are sincere, filled with a heartfelt concern and strive for objectivity.

Edited by merz, 31 October 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[Training Instructor]

cdrolly, on 30 October 2013 - 11:59 PM, said:

[Redacted] They are slugs and plasma their sole purpose is pinpoint damage... They will never be changed because that's how they were designed. Hey why not have LRMS just fire randomly in a 360 arc while your at it... seriously.

In almost every single Battletech book, autocannons were portrayed as big guns that fired a burst of shells, not one giant slug. The LBX series of autocannons were the only ones who fired a single round, and that was a shotgun shell. The Gauss is the gauss, it's always been portrayed as a single slug.

[CrashieJ]

sure you can have a plan of action...

but can you be a"man of action"?

also: chassis stats, you kinda left them hanging after the Misery, when ya gonna pick it back up or roll back that fiasco?

[stjobe]

cdrolly, on 30 October 2013 - 11:59 PM, said:

[Redacted] They are slugs and plasma their sole purpose is pinpoint damage... They will never be changed because that's how they were designed. Hey why not have LRMS just fire randomly in a 360 arc while your at it... seriously.

Well, no.

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An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts. It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" that fires predominantly cased explosive shells though models firing saboted high velocity kinetic energy penetrators or caseless ordnance do exist. Among the earliest tank/BattleMech scale weaponry produced, autocannons produce far less heat than energy weapons, but are considerably bulkier and are dependent upon limited stores of ammunition.

Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor.[1] The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors.

[...]

Caliber is fluff for the size of the barrel that the shell or shells are fired from and no standard caliber has been set for any of the classes of Autocannon. Autocannon in a class vary by manufacturer and model. With the fluffed number of shells and caliber being specified, no Autocannon has been specified to be one shell fired for each "round" or burst of fire. Probable exceptions are the 185 mm ChemJet Gun Autocannon/20 mounted on the Demolisher combat vehicle and Monitor Surface vessel or the 203 mm Ultra Autocannon/20 on the Cauldron Born A BattleMech.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon (emphasis mine)

[Blue Footed Booby]

stjobe, on 01 November 2013 - 04:25 AM, said:

Well, no.


http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon (emphasis mine)

That's all flavortext to justify the way they decided to balance autocannons. It's entirely post-facto handwaving driven by the game design. Sarna chose this specific flavor approach because in a tabletop game you don't actually see anything shoot, and because the game is turnbased, meaning you can treat a burst of small bullets and a single instantaneous shot as taking interchangeable units of time.

Mind, I'm not agreeing with the guy you responded to. I'm not advocating for any specific approach to balancing at all. My point is that pointing at this flavor text and saying "hey, this is how the weapons are supposed to work" and letting that drive game design is a textbook example of the tail wagging the dog. In an action game/pseudo-simulation like MWO it just isn't possible to abstract away how many shots are actually being fired, how big the shots are, or how long it takes to fire them.

Put more succinctly: in a real time game there are meaningful differences between a second of aiming followed by three seconds of spraying bullets, vs a second of aiming, an instantaneous shot, and three seconds of recovering from the recoil. In a turn based game the only thing that matters is that both actions take four seconds.

Edited by Blue Footed Booby, 01 November 2013 - 05:27 AM.

[RamsoPanzer]

[Cimarb]

Blue Footed Booby, on 01 November 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

That's all flavortext to justify the way they decided to balance autocannons. It's entirely post-facto handwaving driven by the game design. Sarna chose this specific flavor approach because in a tabletop game you don't actually see anything shoot, and because the game is turnbased, meaning you can treat a burst of small bullets and a single instantaneous shot as taking interchangeable units of time.

Mind, I'm not agreeing with the guy you responded to. I'm not advocating for any specific approach to balancing at all. My point is that pointing at this flavor text and saying "hey, this is how the weapons are supposed to work" and letting that drive game design is a textbook example of the tail wagging the dog. In an action game/pseudo-simulation like MWO it just isn't possible to abstract away how many shots are actually being fired, how big the shots are, or how long it takes to fire them.

Put more succinctly: in a real time game there are meaningful differences between a second of aiming followed by three seconds of spraying bullets, vs a second of aiming, an instantaneous shot, and three seconds of recovering from the recoil. In a turn based game the only thing that matters is that both actions take four seconds.

You are right, but that is exactly why he is using it as supporting data on why it should be changed as I detailed. In the novels, reference sources, and every other place mentioned, including auto cannons in real life (such as on the A10 Warthog), it is handle as a burst fire weapon, not a huge slug round. More importantly, though, it would drastically help the pinpoint damage issue that causes such quick deaths currently. That "meaningful difference" is exactly what we are aiming for, pun intended, as it will increase TTL across the board.

[GreyGhost]

Cimarb, on 31 October 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

The Catapult is built the same basic way as a Timberwolf, but the missile boxes are arms, and there aren't many people complaining about it on catapults. The Timberwolf could have the missile boxes also be part of the arms, but that may make disabling them a bit too easy, as those would be huge arm hitboxes. I'm not sure if you are talking about it this way: they could take some of the armor from the current arm and side torso and put it in a separate hit box for that side, but it should still come from the same total armor count, right? I definitely don't think it should be some ghost armor - they already have enough half-brained "ghost" systems as is...

True. And no, no one is complaining about the arms on the catapult. Imagine if those were side torso though. It would make the catapult so easy to kill no one would ever use it again.

As the timberwolf has large missle boxes as part of it's side torso, we are looking at an upcoming hitbox problem if the dev's don't get ready now.

As to the hunch, making the hunch itself a seperate part and NOT side torso would be helpful. It's a damned good little mech, but it has bad hitboxes on the hunch. First, you can shoot the actual hunch from any side, and it's side torso damage. The hunch should use CT armor values, but we also don't want our CT as vunerable as that huge hunch is. So making the hunch part of the CT would help, but it would hurt in another way. (Much more vunerable CT.)

Instead, making it an 'extra' component and not CT, ST or Arm would work very well on this mech. Maybe give it the same armor value as whatever you put on your CT, but we don't want to have to armor it seperately as that creates a weight issue. The hunch is an icon that could use a buff... and it'll set us up for future mechs like the timberwolf and a number of others like it. IE, the Timberwolf.

PART of the reason we are having problems like this, is the VERY realistic maps, which weren't present in previous mechwarriors or table top.

Now you can take cover much more effectively, (and the good players do,) and the result is that many mechs are being nerfed by the environment, as they mount their weapons too low and can't shoot from cover as they hit the ground. By the same virture, mechs that stick out over the top too much before you can see out yourself are going to be in serious trouble of getting scalped at long range. (And I don't care if it's a PPC poptart or a jager. If you stick out the top of the ridgeline, it's getting hsot off. Better to loose your missle pods then your mech.

[Cimarb]

GreyGhost, on 01 November 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

Instead, making it an 'extra' component and not CT, ST or Arm would work very well on this mech. Maybe give it the same armor value as whatever you put on your CT, but we don't want to have to armor it seperately as that creates a weight issue. The hunch is an icon that could use a buff... and it'll set us up for future mechs like the timberwolf and a number of others like it. IE, the Timberwolf.

I agree with you in theory, as it will definitely be a problem with Timberwolf-type mechs, whether they put the missile pods as part of the arms or torso actually, but you can't just add a whole other section of armor for specific mechs without negatively affecting every other mech. Does the Thunderbolt get the same buff? How about the Shadowhawk? The Battlemasters shoulders are huge, so maybe it should get one too? It would have to be a change across the board, for example making the right side torsos an "upper right side" and "lower right side" and same with left side, or it would have to just redistribute the armor for that side from two components to three as I described earlier. It can't just be "free armor" or some sort of ghost armor system without some really drastic downsides.

[Roughneck45]

Is it only a hitbox pass or would you actually change the size of some of the models?

You could fine tune the hitboxes on the Awesome as much as you want, if it is still as wide as it is now it will always be bad. Same with the Orion, that CT is visible at all times from all angles.

[Cimarb]

Roughneck45, on 01 November 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Is it only a hitbox pass or would you actually change the size of some of the models?

You could fine tune the hitboxes on the Awesome as much as you want, if it is still as wide as it is now it will always be bad. Same with the Orion, that CT is visible at all times from all angles.

It sounds like just a hitbox pass, but we are all praying for a bit more thorough of a pass than just that, for the reasons you just said. I wouldn't hold your breath, though, as that would be an extensive increase in work and time involved (as in huge magnitudes in several departments).

Edited by Cimarb, 01 November 2013 - 07:55 AM.