118 replies to this topic

[YueFei]

Joseph Mallan, on 29 November 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

I'm concerned with the realism of combat. A basically ground vehicle being launched in to the air is not going to be as accurate as one that is moving on the ground. There are things than should be bent and other things that should not. Running around at 150KpH then jumping into the air and hitting a pie plate is something only the very best players should be able to do. So unless you are the 1%... You are not that good.

I personally don't have a problem with Pop Tarts, just the mechanic of it offends my experience and combat training.

Don't exaggerate. I can jump and shoot in my jenner, and mostly get my lasers onto the target, but I ain't gonna hit a pie plate and keep my lasers trained on it for the whole duration, even if it isn't moving. I would bet 99% of the players in this game can't do it either. If you think it's so easy, try it yourself. Take a lateral leap at 150 kph in a Jenner and keep your lasers trained on the eye socket of an Atlas at 250 meters.

I'm sure only a very small handful of players can pull it off. And that's on a stationary target. Put a pilot in that Atlas, with his bobbing stride, moving and twisting, and it's impossible.

Stability of the shot on the way up already has shake. The shot on the free fall should be steady. The player must already compensate for the changing angles during the fall.

BTW, Mongolian horse archers would time their shot to coincide with that split second moment when all of the horse's legs were in the air, since that was when it was most stable. Shooting during one of the horse's strides would jar the archer and throw off his aim.

[GODzillaGSPB]

Yep, PPC with the charge, Gauss with the min-range. Would've spared us the dual-ppc-ac/20-jump-meta, too. I guess it will happen though. When hell freezes over.

[Zoose]

I havent read the previous posts and I acknowledge this up front and apologise. I was not going to post and allow the game to develop in what ever way it did but I feel the need to mention my thoughts if only to say there is my opinion.

The pop tart tactic which is very effective is not the direction I want to see the title go. I also refuse to use it as I would feel cheap but thats a personal prefernce and it is in the game so I understand people have the right to use it and I say good luck to them. I dont want matches to develop into two teams sitting behind hills jumping and firing like some jump in the box competition. Now while I agree that the tactic may not be as effective in organised clan matches (as the mech layouts used for this tactic tend to run hot due to PPC dependency and rushing them with certain configurations may combat this tactic) I still think its a tactic that is very frustrating for players in pubs where the team work is limited. I wonder if we did have private servers and the ability to limit this tactic how many groups would eventually turn this tactic off (rhetorical question).

My suggestion (and this is just a quick thought) is to limit the ability to one of the following:
- fire ppcs in the air
- fire ppcs in the air for mechs over 60t
-fire weapons in the air for mechs over 60t
- fire more then one weapon in the air
and the list goes on...

GL HF jump less

[xCico]

Joseph Mallan, on 29 November 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

I trained long and hard as a Grunt to kill the enemy at 500M in real life. Spare me your idea of what is and isn't brave. I don't Pop tart, but I don't complain about using tactics that involve limiting damage.

RL and this game arent very close, but ok(need balls for that too)
I have poptart in my garage and im rushing with him, believe me, Im doing much better from close. Yea, seeing enemy peeking at 500-600m isnt p***y? Okay boss. Its a great tactic I believe you.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

Joseph Mallan, on 29 November 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

I'm concerned with the realism of combat. A basically ground vehicle being launched in to the air is not going to be as accurate as one that is moving on the ground. There are things than should be bent and other things that should not. Running around at 150KpH then jumping into the air and hitting a pie plate is something only the very best players should be able to do. So unless you are the 1%... You are not that good. I personally don't have a problem with Pop Tarts, just the mechanic of it offends my experience and combat training.

see i keep seeing this "the best players will make do", fine except JJ cockpit shake, reticule shake, and weapon deviation while jetting..... are all.... random.... so i don't know how good you (or anyone else for that matter) are at compensating for "random". but somehow i don't think skill is involved in this process past simply "cresting" while shooting.

but i mean we like hill humping and poptarts right?

right?

forget that lights use JJ totally differently then any other mech.

even mediums are "pop tarting"

at least the erppc spiders have the smarts to sneak up on you vs just looking for a target to smash in one massive volley. lol

Edited by Mellifluer, 30 November 2013 - 04:35 AM.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

Bobdolemite, on 30 November 2013 - 12:28 AM, said:

Has weapons, can jump? Can fire while jumping (IMO)

You can try to rationalize away jumping and shooting by using examples from TT, but as you see in a realistic real time environment, where people can make snap decisions, jumping and shooting becomes a common thing.

Chalk it up to a lack of imagination from the original write up, or as a deliberate attempt at making mechs more ground borne by TT creators.

In a dynamic environment with real people moving around a real map, the idea of jumping and shooting is a given. Arbitrary rules would have to be placed to change this and these would have little logic if implemented.

Jumping and shooting is not a reserve of the elite, but a tool in a box available to all (who pilot a jj capable mech) and to argue otherwise is to ignore very obvious/basic concepts.

thank you

underlined for emphasis

[Nimura Nekogami]

Sice when is "jumping + shoot" called tactic? So pressing space-bar and 1 mouse klick is making me to some sort of tactical player? (read it multiple times in this forum)

All those years in shooters i thougt it was just a gamplay style.

Those "bunny-hopping" guys in CoD4 were tactical masters. I was young and couldnt see the beauty.
All those years wasted with the image, that flanking, positioning, troop-splitting, harrassing is tactic instead of the only true Tactic: Jump and fire.
The shame is great.....i called those guys "tards" and "fragged" so many of them....im sorry for my blindness.

[Damia Savon]

omegagun, on 29 November 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

Its all you can do in this game atm and NERFING the gauss has not stopped it.
The PPC should have had the charge...Return Gauss mechanic.

PPC

• Fires in multiples!
  
• No reload!
  
• No ammo!

Gauss

• Heaviest Weapon!
  
• Explodes!
  
• Needs Ammo!

NO!

PPCs generate a huge amount of heat. Gauss generates almost no heat. PPC/ERPPC require a lot of heat sinks to keep running which eats up a lot of space. PPCs/ERPPCs can easily overheat a mech.

PPC weapons are energy weapons. They should hit almost immediately. Insteads they move amazingly slow, barely more than move projectile weapons. They are way slower than a freaking Gauss round. That is bloody insane.

PPCs have been nerfed more than Gauss already. Learn to deal with the weapon rather than whine whine whine.

PGI needs to fix so many other things before nerfing weapons again.

[Damia Savon]

GHoppa, on 29 November 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

TLDR version:

Get rid of all mechs ability to pop tart with 30+ point alphas. Most meechs will still be able to poptart, but the bigger the mech, the signifcantly less damage will be done by attacking that way.

And the game will be forever better for it.

Or just realize how easy it is to hit pop tarts. You watch them jump up...wait.. they jump again.. you blast them..

Wash, rinse and repeat. They stop doing it after a few good hits.

[Burke IV]

Nimura Nekogami, on 30 November 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

Those "bunny-hopping" guys in CoD4 were tactical masters. I was young and couldnt see the beauty.

BH was an air friction exploit, i dont think it was possible in cod4 because it was part of the hl engine. True bunnyhopping and being able to aim in any way at all was highly skilled because the action of exploiting the air movement meant you had to strafe and move your mouse in sometihng like a curve at the same time. "real" bunnyhopping didnt use any kind of forward movement by the player other than to gain speed for the first hop.

[Captain Stiffy]

The Gauss Rifle will never ever again be a good brawling weapon. It was never meant to be that anyway.

[Nimura Nekogami]

Burke IV, on 30 November 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

BH was an air friction exploit, i dont think it was possible in cod4 because it was part of the hl engine. True bunnyhopping and being able to aim in any way at all was highly skilled because the action of exploiting the air movement meant you had to strafe and move your mouse in sometihng like a curve at the same time. "real" bunnyhopping didnt use any kind of forward movement by the player other than to gain speed for the first hop.

This.
Someone explained it to me once with: Im harder to hit. (he wasnt )
The only thing my squad used jumpfiring was at corners. You know the anemy is behind the corner.
Jump + aim + shoot. (50/50 chance in hardcore-mode)
They guys jumping without moving....well.....if they didnt hit you with the first jump it was an free frag.

And yes....."bunnyhopping" was a CS plague. Now you could see it in every shooter....well.....not in ARMA (1-3).

[Alistair Winter]

The good news is I can just recycle my old satire to mock the current metagame.

Spoiler

[Flyby215]

Khobai, on 29 November 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

All pinpoint damage is overpowered, doesnt matter where it comes from.

PPCs need to do splash damage to spread damage (non-randomized splash damage though, because RNG sucks). With splash damage, PPC heat could be lowered to reasonable levels.

Autocannons need to fire in bursts to spread damage. This doesn't remove aiming, but rather raises the skill cap on aiming since you'd have to hit the same location with successive shots instead of just one shot.

Gauss seems fine with chargeup, but the chargeup mechanic needs to be more intuitive (should be press once to charge and press again to fire). It should NOT feel like im firing a bow and arrow in a Wii game.

I really like this idea for some reason. Might also help the Pulse Laser family since it could become the predominant pin-point weaponry, and they have high costs with short range and high heat.

[Koniving]

Hellcat420, on 29 November 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

it makes more sense for the charge mechanic to be on the gauss rifle because the gauss rifle requires much more energy to fire.

Contrary to popular belief, a Gauss rifle is a rail gun and uses magnets to send a projectile out. It is very efficient at doing so. The heat produced by a PPC is actually generated by the high friction/resistance involved in creating the blast. To be specific, in creating a PPC 'bolt', an enormous amount of energy is required and much of that energy is actually 'wasted' as heat. Without the "Inhibitor" to dilute the PPC and focus the energy ahead of the barrel, the weapon would literally explode under its own energy build up.

The ER PPC found a way around this, but at the cost of even more heat. So much that in previous iterations of MW / Battletech (not including the playstation and expansion versions of MW2 [threshold 40] and the heavily criticized MW4 [threshold 60]), firing 2 ER PPCs at the same time would result in the instant shutdown of a mech as well as the loss of consciousness for the pilot. On tabletop, when you fire exclusively 2 ER PPCs you fire them 5 seconds apart. When you fire 3 you shorten that time, but never, ever, do they get fired at the same time (otherwise they'd only require a single roll instead of one per weapon).

Also, in what show, movie, game, etc., does an extremely powerful energy blast not require a build-up of energy? The PPC in MWO in its original form during closed beta took half a second from the mouse click to 'begin' firing (due to lag mainly) and then spent the next half a second 'building up' in front of the barrel before it launched. The effect was wicked looking. The problem was without lag compensation, by the time that full second was up the target wasn't there to be shot.

Yes, a Gauss Rifle requires energy and a fair bit of it. Energy we can produce today to launch much larger and heavier projectiles half way across the world and into bunkers miles deep, and it doesn't even dim the lights on a battleship. The reactors on the mechs are more efficient and more powerful.

The PPC in some fluff descriptions "superheats" things in the air and reaches temperatures of several thousand kelvin.

Now what takes more energy? Something we can do today without even dimming the lights (on a cannon larger than an Atlas with a projectile as heavy as a Locust)? Or something that isn't even theoretically possible today without miles and miles of super conductors and multiple nuclear reactors dedicated to the specific task?

Edited by Koniving, 30 November 2013 - 02:50 PM.

[Burke IV]

Nimura Nekogami, on 30 November 2013 - 02:00 PM, said:

And yes....."bunnyhopping" was a CS plague. Now you could see it in every shooter....well.....not in ARMA (1-3).

I was gonna say it was only HL1 only, but then i read wikipedia. I think HL engine bh was a little different from what it seems to mean today, but then again i only ever played HL games and a little bit of ut2k4 so who knows

Anyway here is some OT stuff about bh in old games.

Spoiler

If you want to see proper bunnyhopping search old time "team fortress classic bunnyhop" on youtube. TFC made bh part of the game, altho it was limited at some point to about (hazy memory here ) x1.7 speed. TFC! best game ever! not only bunnyhopping but strafe jumping, wall strafing (another friction exploit, running against a wall gave a slight boost. Also allowed you to land off the conc and slide along a wall, helped maintain momentum), conc jumping, rocket jumping, pipebomb jumping, grenade jumping, emp grenade jumping (engy grenades, i think they was called emp) ammo dispenser jumping! The tricks and exploits were endless and it was all fair, all of it became part of the game and when you were really good it was like neo in the matrix. Scouts and medics had concussion grenades that basicly let you fly. Back in the day we didnt even have a grenade timer, you can to count in your head and know when to jump. It was one of a very, very few games that you could call e sport and still keep a straight face. Anyway i cut this waffle short

Now counterstrike. I started back in beta of cs. Built on the same engine meant all the exploits of TFC were there are the start. It was right that it was mostly stopped in cs because it wasnt really appropriate for that game. Even after it was supposedly taken out i still saw people who could bunnyhop backwards but not at anywhere near the speed. 3 times i built new PCs just to play counterstike and then CS:S on.

Another game that demos some really nice bunnyhopping is natural selection 1. Surprisingly enough also a HL engine game NS was a human vs alien FPS. The aliens coordinate with in game abilitys and coms, but the humans where controled by a commander. The comander might aswell have been playing start craft (at least till the aliens got hold of his little control chair, then he tended to jump out and was in the FPS world with the rest) The whole thing relyed on the human team to follow orders, it was the epitome of team play. When i see people in this going "your not in charge of me" omg their so dumb. If only this game could have a little slice of that gameplay. Anyway marines werent supposed to be able to BH in that but they still did, however the aliens were allowed to BH (and sometimes run on the walls or teleport or fly) as much as they liked. If you would like to see some fast bunnyhopping look for a "skulk" BH video. NS1 that is.

click, cl-click, click, chomp! WTF?

So much win and all mods of half life, you payed for 1 game.


It took a fair bit of searching.

will give some idea of tfc. Trick maps arnt like really playing

And because balance is good

I have only seen the first minute or 2, i expect it will cause lols

Edited by Burke IV, 30 November 2013 - 05:15 PM.

[Mystere]

Damia Savon, on 30 November 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

Or just realize how easy it is to hit pop tarts. You watch them jump up...wait.. they jump again.. you blast them..

Wash, rinse and repeat. They stop doing it after a few good hits.

Actually, you don't even have to wait for them to jump again. Anyone with good enough situational awareness will be able to detect a poptart and shoot them if positioned and/or equipped to do so.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

Poptarting is making this game boring. Simple as that.
Go to any 12s. 8 jump sniping mechs is commpn sight. I would even sey the ONLY one. And thats mean boring.

[Nimura Nekogami]

Burke IV, on 30 November 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

I was gonna say it was only HL1 only, but then i read wikipedia. I think HL engine bh was a little different from what it seems to mean today, but then again i only ever played HL games and a little bit of ut2k4 so who knows

Anyway here is some OT stuff about bh in old games.

That brings you back in time.
Thanks for sharing it.

Back to topic:
The Jump and fire mechanic in MWO with the combination of PinPiont dmg seems to be an problem.
The problem stacks if you piloting non JJ Mechs and a 4 man premade group is playing like this. I dont want to get rid of it, but it shouldnt be a dominant gameplay style.

I`ve read some suggestions that could add some drawbacks to it. Like the increased fall dmg to heavy machines. If you dont smoothing your fall you would dmg your legs with every jump.
Most lights need to do this already.
(better than the screen shake thingi PGI tryd )

In Lore the jump needed to be balanced the hole time. Otherwise you would ramm your Mech in the ground.

But i think we have to deal with it. I cant think of an solution that would please every part of the MWO community.

[Estonniel]

What if the use of JJ's would generate heat in general + having a longer fuel reload time. ppl can still snipe jump. but limits the amount of times they can. and as well be careful about it.

ive checked a JJ mech at a buddy of mine who simply doesnt use em. and found that yes JJ and shooting midair is just fine. but the fuel reloading seems extreemly fast. after you flew up and dropped back. it should be like 45 seconds or so + / - before atempting a other jump. and also during the jump heat should buildup depending on how long / far / how many JJ's you use.

but even so, shooting midair should still be possible if you ask me.