330 replies to this topic

[Voivode]

Awesome first on deck. Awww yeah!

[Finestaut]

I actually really like the pelvic hit box. It was a fixed vulnerability on all 'mechs, and a great equalizer. It wasn't so big that it invalidated torso twisting, but it did provide an alternative way to damage the big twisters.

Hopefully, the thong solution will still keep some of that vulnerability open.

[The Boz]

Voivode, on 05 November 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

No.

The only thing that gives balance to other mechs against assaults is that with enough well aimed fire you can disarm an assault. This game is already full of enough fat teams. This clearly would benefit assaults more than any other class. Just...no.

If you would just follow your train of thoughts to its logical conclusion, you will see that I am right. ~60 armor on the biggest hit box with the most important components attached, on the slowest, largest and most sluggish to maneuver platform.

[Xeno Phalcon]

While the awesome certainly needs the most +love out of any mech, I hope my orions get some lurvin too. I discovered that two weeks of playing locust has made me exceptionally good at piloting my orion -.^ I just pretend my CT is a locust that moves at 71kph.

[DeathlyEyes]

Are terrain boxes being evaluated as well? It seems almost all maps, especially Tourmaline have problems with invisible walls. Building hit boxes are also pretty bad.

Edited by h4t3r4d3, 05 November 2013 - 08:47 PM.

[Nryrony]

I suggest 2nd on deck should look like this:

Catapult
Centurion
Jenner
Hunchback

[The Boz]

h4t3r4d3, on 05 November 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

Are terrain boxes being evaluated as well? It seems almost all maps, especially Tourmaline have problems with invisible walls. Building hit boxes are also pretty bad.

This.
ESPECIALLY if you zoom in, and half the level doesn't even load.

[Paul Inouye]

First off... I said thong... not banana hammock.

Second: One point of clarification... these 4 Mechs are the first of a continuing investigation into ALL Mechs in the game. i.e. the buck doesn't stop here no matter how many bucks you put in that thong

[The Boz]

That sounded wrong.

[Bront]

Paul Inouye, on 06 November 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

[color=cyan]First off... I said thong... not banana hammock. [/color]

Second: One point of clarification... these 4 Mechs are the first of a continuing investigation into ALL Mechs in the game. i.e. the buck doesn't stop here no matter how many bucks you put in that thong

We want Mechs in Thongs!

[Kjudoon]

Paul Inouye, on 06 November 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

[color=cyan]First off... I said thong... not banana hammock. [/color]

Second: One point of clarification... these 4 Mechs are the first of a continuing investigation into ALL Mechs in the game. i.e. the buck doesn't stop here no matter how many bucks you put in that thong

My mechs look different. I don't know why.

[Lightfoot]

I feel alot of the complaints about being cored, pinpoint damage, PPCs, Gauss Rifles, now AC's, are all actually hitbox complaints or could be best resolved by hitbox adjustments.

I have played all the MechWarrior games in PvP (MW2-MW4) and MWO is the only game where players complained about losing their CT or ST's to accurate shooting. It wasn't ever an issue before HSR was added so I think hitboxes done right are key to a well paced game.

Edited by Lightfoot, 06 November 2013 - 09:16 PM.

[Cimarb]

Lightfoot, on 06 November 2013 - 09:15 PM, said:

I feel alot of the complaints about being cored, pinpoint damage, PPCs, Gauss Rifles, now AC's, are all actually hitbox complaints or could be best resolved by hitbox adjustments.

I have played all the MechWarrior games in PvP (MW2-MW4) and MWO is the only game where players complained about losing their CT or ST's to accurate shooting. It wasn't ever an issue before HSR was added so I think hitboxes done right are key to a well paced game.

Not to be mean, but you are totally wrong. Pinpoint damage (and all of the issues related to it) has nothing to do with hitboxes. PPCs and slug rounds in ACs are the reasons for pinpoint accuracy complaints. No hitbox change is going to fix that, ever. The only thing that will fix it is to make PPCs work like LBXs (but maybe with a smaller spread cone) and ACs work like the large-bore MGs they are - a stream of bullets, not a slug round. The other issue preventing a well paced game is the heat system, which needs to have a lower cap (less alpha) and higher dissipation (less time between smaller damage bursts), which will cause heat management to be much more linear instead of the ALPHA-ALPHA-ALPHA-shutdown-ALPHA-shutdown-ALPHA-shutdown behavior currently popular.

[MischiefSC]

Paul Inouye, on 06 November 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

[color=cyan]First off... I said thong... not banana hammock. [/color]

Second: One point of clarification... these 4 Mechs are the first of a continuing investigation into ALL Mechs in the game. i.e. the buck doesn't stop here no matter how many bucks you put in that thong

Any balance change that involves the term 'banana hammock' can't go wrong. It doesn't even have to be used appropriately in a sentence, it's just going to derail any criticism before it starts. Seriously, someone writes you a two page flame post and you respond with 'banana hammock' what can they say? 'Well played sir, I concede.' That's about it.

Can we get picks of the concept? People are going to complain and/or praise regardless. A screen-cap of an example (no promises of course) would be nice, that way people can get their happy/excited and morally outraged/dismissively indignant responses out of the way or at least vented before the results hit. People like forewarning, good or bad. It's why we peek at Christmas presents.

[Fragger56]

To preface this, I am a Cataphract pilot, I specialize in long range loadouts.
Please do not assume I main a lightmech and that I am crying about a potential nerf, the below post was put together with logic and math and is meant to address what I believe is the underlying issue: inaccurate client side prediction of other entities.

I really hope these hitbox changes don't cause the spider to become completely useless, as from my own logical analysis of whats going on with fast moving mechs and hit registration and location, the only way to "fix" spiders is to make the hitboxes larger than the spider itself.

The reasoning for this is well explained by a post i've made in the past regarding the scale of the mechs in the game and their movement speed.

The TL:DR is, lightmechs are so small that at their maximum speed, they can move a significant distance in the time it takes for data to get from the server to you.
By significant distance, I mean several meters and several meters means missed shots when the whole mech is smaller than 10M in height and width.

Now to quote my old post, which explains with math my view on the issue:

Quote

I've just done some math and figured out how large the Spider is supposed to be and from this, it seems pretty obvious why spiders "take little damage"

A spider at full speed can move at up to 150+ KPH, at 150 KPH the mech is moving at a rate of 41.6 meters per second.

Now the rate of travel in M/S is important, as once you factor in ping, you should realise that the spider, on the server end can be a significant distance away from the client POV.

In my case, I typically have a ping of 50ms.
Within 50ms, a spider at 150KPH will have traveled 2.08 meters, now some of you might think that 2 meters isn't much, but a spider is only supposed to be around 10m tall.
2m on a spider is the difference between hitting the CT and the RT, or hitting the RT and missing to the side.


Any game with any amount of latency and server confirmed or hybrid client/server hitreg will have offset issues like this, its the nature of the internet and latency. In most games the targets and hitboxes are large enough that the offset caused by latency should be negligible, but in MWO we have the spider, which can cover a distance larger than one of its hitboxes in the time covered by a typical players ping.

As your ping goes up, this situation becomes worse, and spiders can become nearly impossible to hit, as at 150ms, there would be nearly a full spiders width worth of offset between where your client thinks it is and where the server says it is.

This issue can also be mitigated by using weapons with FAST projectile speeds (Gauss) and a small amount of lead.

I've gotten to the point that I can usually hit the exact component I want to on a fast spider as i aim for the next component over to compensate for the offset.

Example:
Spider is moving from right to left at max speed 300m in front of you, with gauss and a 50ms ping, if i aim at his RT (left from my POV) I'll get hitreg on his CT, if i aim CT, it will hit his LT (RT from my POV) and if I aim at his LT, the shots will likely miss his arm completely cause its so thin.

BTW, I think the Locust will be even worse than the spider when it comes to hitreg once it is released, due to the conclusions drawn from that math up above.
Locust will be smaller than the spider and move faster, leading to even more offset which will probably lead to more 'ZOMG LIGHTMECHS' threads...

[Lightfoot]

Cimarb, on 07 November 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

Not to be mean, but you are totally wrong. Pinpoint damage (and all of the issues related to it) has nothing to do with hitboxes. PPCs and slug rounds in ACs are the reasons for pinpoint accuracy complaints. No hitbox change is going to fix that, ever. The only thing that will fix it is to make PPCs work like LBXs (but maybe with a smaller spread cone) and ACs work like the large-bore MGs they are - a stream of bullets, not a slug round. The other issue preventing a well paced game is the heat system, which needs to have a lower cap (less alpha) and higher dissipation (less time between smaller damage bursts), which will cause heat management to be much more linear instead of the ALPHA-ALPHA-ALPHA-shutdown-ALPHA-shutdown-ALPHA-shutdown behavior currently popular.

Not to be mean, but you don't understand MechWarrior very well. Despite the problems of accuracy and group-fire that is just how 'mechs were designed to function and MWO is going to have to balance that somehow. I am not going to derail the topic, so we'll just agree to disagree.

Hopefully the hitbox adjustments will help with mech durability enough that energy weapons can be used again. Otherwise MWO will be a game where only Ballistic equipped mechs will be used. More or less.

[Cimarb]

Lightfoot, on 07 November 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

Not to be mean, but you don't understand MechWarrior very well. Despite the problems of accuracy and group-fire that is just how 'mechs were designed to function and MWO is going to have to balance that somehow. I am not going to derail the topic, so we'll just agree to disagree.

Hopefully the hitbox adjustments will help with mech durability enough that energy weapons can be used again. Otherwise MWO will be a game where only Ballistic equipped mechs will be used. More or less.

I agree that we disagree, but I do understand how MW works and also have played recently, which you must not have done. There are a ton of energy weapons out there currently, especially with all of the PP mechs that all tend to have heavy energy loadouts.

There is currently not much of a pinpoint issue with energy, though, because the only one that needs a fix is the PPC, which has had its heat inflated so much that you can only have one at a time without serious heat issues. Lasers are all over the place, but they work just fine because they are a damage over time weapon, just like I suggest autocannons should be. If autocannons worked like lasers, there would be no pinpoint issue with them. If PPCs worked like an LBX, they could safely put the heat back to normal TT levels without them being overpowered either.

[Blacksoul1987]

Cimarb, on 08 November 2013 - 09:13 AM, said:

I agree that we disagree, but I do understand how MW works and also have played recently, which you must not have done. There are a ton of energy weapons out there currently, especially with all of the PP mechs that all tend to have heavy energy loadouts.

There is currently not much of a pinpoint issue with energy, though, because the only one that needs a fix is the PPC, which has had its heat inflated so much that you can only have one at a time without serious heat issues. Lasers are all over the place, but they work just fine because they are a damage over time weapon, just like I suggest autocannons should be. If autocannons worked like lasers, there would be no pinpoint issue with them. If PPCs worked like an LBX, they could safely put the heat back to normal TT levels without them being overpowered either.

PPC's are at TT values currently standard is 10 damage 10 heat, ER is 10 damage 15 heat.

[ShinVector]

Fragger56, on 07 November 2013 - 07:14 PM, said:

To preface this, I am a Cataphract pilot, I specialize in long range loadouts.
Please do not assume I main a lightmech and that I am crying about a potential nerf, the below post was put together with logic and math and is meant to address what I believe is the underlying issue: inaccurate client side prediction of other entities.

I really hope these hitbox changes don't cause the spider to become completely useless, as from my own logical analysis of whats going on with fast moving mechs and hit registration and location, the only way to "fix" spiders is to make the hitboxes larger than the spider itself.

The reasoning for this is well explained by a post i've made in the past regarding the scale of the mechs in the game and their movement speed.

The TL:DR is, lightmechs are so small that at their maximum speed, they can move a significant distance in the time it takes for data to get from the server to you.
By significant distance, I mean several meters and several meters means missed shots when the whole mech is smaller than 10M in height and width.

Now to quote my old post, which explains with math my view on the issue:

I don't know if there is much point arguing about spiders and lights in generally.
HSR is not fix and it is hard to hit small and fast mech accurately.

Spider being the mech with the slimest chassis benefits most from this issue.
What will PGI do ? The easy way out to stop all the complaints rather than fixing HSR.
They make the Spider hitbox bigger that it really is, much like Raven's legs...

Spiders might become bad, by the time they are done with it.
Nothing new...

Lastly: Fix HSR PGI !

Edited by ShinVector, 08 November 2013 - 10:21 AM.

[Cimarb]

Blacksoul1987, on 08 November 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:

PPC's are at TT values currently standard is 10 damage 10 heat, ER is 10 damage 15 heat.

I stand corrected on that (shows how long it's been since I played TT...), though the rest of my argument is still valid. Pinpoint damage is the issue, not hitboxes. Hitboxes can be adjusted, and they definitely should be for some mechs, but no adjustment to hitboxes will fix the pinpoint damage issue like Lightfoot is talking about.