Khobai, on 09 January 2014 - 03:40 AM, said:
Its a well known fact that mechs die significantly faster in MWO compared to Battletech as a direct result of precise aiming. I really cant see how making MWO resemble Battletech more is a bad thing. The best way to get there is a combination of a damage spread mechanism and internal structure buff.
Another option might be to add area cover bonuses to the game. For example, Battletech gave you cover bonuses for standing in light or heavy woods. It would certainly help increase time to kill if MWO emulated that by giving you damage reduction bonuses while standing in cover. It would also make movement much more tactical, especially if combined with movement penalties for moving through certain terrain (forests would slow you down but also protect you, and water would slow you down considerably). There should be a lot more tactical throught involved in movement; it should be important to consider what type of terrain youre moving through and whether the defensive bonus is worth the speed hit or not.
It would also be nice if PGI added "hardened armor" as well to give players the option to play a more tanky mech at the expense of additional tonnage, speed, and stability. Right now if you want to play something that can tank, your best bet is a light mech, which is pathetic... assaults shouldnt have to cower behind rocks in fear of being shredded by ballistics. Thats NOT battletech.
Hardened armor could also help balance IS and Clans since Clans cant use hardened armor. Allowing IS access to Hardened armor is a way better balancing mechanic than forcing clan mechs to use their base armor and engine values, which makes many clan mechs dead on arrival.
I think hardened armor would be fairly balanced at +20% damage reduction, -20% armor points per ton, -10% max speed/turning speed, and a stability penalty (once knockdowns are readded). Additionally, certain weapons/ammo types could be classed as armor piercing and would partially ignore the damage reduction. Those should be sufficient enough downsides to balance hardened armor.
Yeah, lethality is several times higher. The rate of fire is anywhere between 2.5x and 20x faster. To take a popular dangerous build, you have 2xPPC and 2xAC/5. In TT the DPS would be 3. In MWO, the DPS is 11.66. Armor is doubled, so you can divide by 2, but that still makes it 5.88 DPS vs 3 DPS, or nearly twice the lethality.
Now, combine that with precision aiming and Alpha Strikes all striking the same location. Normally the weapons would strike different armor panels, maybe 2 would hit the same spot. But here, all 4 will hit the same spot. That *quadruples* the lethality.
Combine that with nearly 2x higher DPS vs TT, and you have 2*4=8. 8 times the lethality compared to TT.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing per se. But we must keep that in mind when comparing TT vs MWO. Do we assume that TT is a good baseline for balance? If so, then the lethality in MWO is too high.
Think of it this way: in TT, a bounding maneuver from one covered position to the next might be safe, as in, you'll take a single round of fire from an enemy mech in that turn, before making it safely into cover. In MWO, you'll not only take twice as much damage relative to TT, but it can all be focused into your torsos. So that makes moving from cover to cover much riskier. Not only that, but in TT you might catch the enemy in enfilade, so that their own mechs block line-of-sight and only the mech at the edge of that line can shoot you. But in MWO, with jump jets, they can *all* take turns jumping over their teammate's shoulders to hit you. So not only is it that a single mech can put several times more effective damage into you compared to TT, but now *several* enemy mechs can shoot at you, not just 1.
Host-State-Rewind also favors the jump sniper when it comes to defensive torso twisting, because by the time you see him on your screen, he has already fired sometime in the past, depending on his latency and your latency. You see a PPC bolt appear, but in reality it was fired 200 milliseconds ago, and even if you react *now* to try to twist to tank the damage on your arm or shoulder, it won't matter because the server is going to rewind the game state and determine that you were hit in the CT. This is why sometimes players say "WTF? I was giving him my shoulder, how did he hit my CT?" HSR, that's why. Same reason sometimes people dive behind cover, and moments later the server tells them they are missing an arm or a shoulder, even though on their screen, the enemy fire clearly missed.
Anyways, all this means it's very very risky trying to close in, even if you aren't being a DERP and directly charging at the enemy in a straight line. You can get pretty hurt running from one piece of cover to the next, even moving diagonally. Not only is it that you take many times more damage than TT, but HSR means you can't even reactively torso twist defensively. Sure, you can permanently give them your shoulder while closing in, but then you aren't returning fire.
It's a tough deal.
9
for you in game without providing any reasoning besides "I dont like it" is not feedback. That is called "complaining".
