39 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:28 PM, said:

and that needed its own thread, instead of posting this idea on any of the above... because?

Because it's a more broad topic than those specific threads linked above.

[DaZur]

Posts like this just baffle me...

How can we have parallel but polar discussions? On one hand, there's the forwarded premise that damage is too harsh and battles are resolved too quickly yet we have premise that no nerfs should be a reversal to previous buffs?

I don't care which direction PGI goes, be it a buff or a nerf... They take a face and neck beating from one group or another... Even if the end result hold promise.

TIffany cufflinks...

Edited by DaZur, 08 January 2014 - 02:31 PM.

[Varent]

FupDup, on 08 January 2014 - 02:28 PM, said:

Because it's a more broad topic than those specific threads linked above.

And this thought couldnt be posted on any of those threads... because?

You do know that this jsut further spreads things out.... this same discussion can be started on any of the other threads.

[FupDup]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:33 PM, said:

And this thought couldnt be posted on any of those threads... because?

You do know that this jsut further spreads things out.... this same discussion can be started on any of the other threads.

Because it's a different thought?

It might mention the recent patch example, but that's not all this thread is about. Just mentioning something doesn't make the post automatically into the same context as the discussions going on in those other threads. Would we merge every single post that ever has the words "AC," "Autocannon," or "Ballistic" all into one giant thread, regardless of the context of the posts they were used in?

Edited by FupDup, 08 January 2014 - 02:36 PM.

[Varent]

FupDup, on 08 January 2014 - 02:35 PM, said:

Because it's a different thought?

It might mention the recent patch example, but that's not all this thread is about. Just mentioning something doesn't make the post automatically into the same context as the discussions going on in those other threads. Would we merge every single post that ever has the words "AC," "Autocannon," or "Ballistic" all into one giant thread, no matter the context of the posts they were used in?

depends what you feel the posts are used for.

If they are used for the devs to compile data and thoughts then YES they should be compiled to make it easier for them to retrieve data.

If they are there for you to rant... go wild.

Think about it.

[arkani]

if you remove the "crappy footbal hero mech" and the weapons nerfs whats left in the patch?
........
yep, nothing.

They are doing nothing, just moneygrabbing. So go buy a clan mech or a golden mech and sit down hoping that they will deliver.
Hope is fueling MWO, long live the hope.

[FupDup]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:37 PM, said:

depends what you feel the posts are used for.

If they are used for the devs to compile data and thoughts then YES they should be compiled to make it easier for them to retrieve data.

If they are there for you to rant... go wild.

Think about it.

Ironically enough, one ginormous ultrathread containing every single post that ever referenced ballistics, ever, would be a huge incoherent mess and insanely difficult to sift through all of the information because the posts would be divided between so many different topics.

Some of the posts within it would be the typical "ACs are OP" posts. Other posts would be totally irrelevant to the topic on hand, such as somebody in the Mechs & Loadouts section saying things like "The AC/10 on Bob's Wolverine works well" or "I use 2 AC/2 + 1 AC/5 on Jane's Battlemaster. " Others might just mention the word "Autocannon" while describing lore, i.e. "the Atlas is iconic for its torso autocannon, and I feel that people leaving it off of their build ruins the identity of the mech." Having every single post that ever makes the slightest mention of ACs would be a total pain in the rear center torso to compile.

Edited by FupDup, 08 January 2014 - 02:47 PM.

[Deathlike]

When it comes to balance, ideally a method of trying to move forward with balance is to make a change that is kind of "backwards" in order to move two steps forward. I wish I had a handy PGI example, but maybe someone will be generous enough to offer that example.

In the actual case of PGI, many changes tend to either be a lateral move (LPL heat increase which is more significant over the slight damage increase) or one that tends to be a step forward, and a step back (no progress, like PPC heat is the most notable example).

So while I'd like to think we could actually move forward with balance, it's not happening.... unless something drastically changes.

[Elyam]

<<<Proud to be an Anti-Progressive


Anyway, for MWO, I think the back-and-forth weapons tuning should typically be resolved in testing, though a few items will need to undergo it in the live environment. I think it's hard to get away from some of it with the complexities inherent to sticking close to BT norms while allowing non-random to-hit results.

[Varent]

FupDup, on 08 January 2014 - 02:44 PM, said:

Ironically enough, one ginormous ultrathread containing every single post that ever referenced ballistics, ever, would be a huge incoherent mess and insanely difficult to sift through all of the information because the posts would be divided between so many different topics.

Some of the posts within it would be the typical "ACs are OP" posts. Other posts would be totally irrelevant to the topic on hand, such as somebody in the Mechs & Loadouts section saying things like "The AC/10 on Bob's Wolverine works well" or "I use 2 AC/2 + 1 AC/5 on Jane's Battlemaster. " Others might just mention the word "Autocannon" while describing lore, i.e. "the Atlas is iconic for its torso autocannon, and I feel that people leaving it off of their build ruins the identity of the mech." Having every single post that ever makes the slightest mention of ACs would be a total pain in the rear center torso to compile.

In a perfect world, people can only post on the exact concept expressed in a thread. That said. This isn't a perfect world and every thread changes topics at least ten times. As a former moderator of two forums... no.. actually its alot easier to sift through ONE thread and write down things on a notepad as you go as upposed to flipping between 8 of them all talking about the same things.

[Noesis]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

In a perfect world, people can only post on the exact concept expressed in a thread. That said. This isn't a perfect world and every thread changes topics at least ten times. As a former moderator of two forums... no.. actually its alot easier to sift through ONE thread and write down things on a notepad as you go as upposed to flipping between 8 of them all talking about the same things.

Posting behaviour is of the concern of moderation not players.

[FupDup]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

In a perfect world, people can only post on the exact concept expressed in a thread. That said. This isn't a perfect world and every thread changes topics at least ten times. As a former moderator of two forums... no.. actually its alot easier to sift through ONE thread and write down things on a notepad as you go as upposed to flipping between 8 of them all talking about the same things.

The thing is, this thread really isn't exclusively talking about the same things as the ones you linked earlier. It mentions the infamous yesterday patch example, but it makes the broad point that some of the more recent steps "forward" seem to be more like steps backwards towards earlier states of the game. And this thread also seems to contain a bit more cynicism than the other ones linked (this thread is about steps backwards/mistakes done by PGI, the other threads are more specifically about ACs only). It's basically a different (albeit related) topic.

Edited by FupDup, 08 January 2014 - 02:55 PM.

[Varent]

Noesis, on 08 January 2014 - 02:52 PM, said:

Posting behaviour is of the concern of moderation not players.

Just pointing out trends good sir.

FupDup, on 08 January 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

The thing is, this thread really isn't exclusively talking about the same things as the ones you linked earlier. It mentions the infamous yesterday patch example, but it makes the broad point that some of the more recent steps "forward" seem to be more like steps backwards towards earlier states of the game. And this thread also seems to contain a bit more cynicism than the other ones linked (this thread is about steps backwards done by PGI, the other threads are more specifically about ACs only). It's basically a different (albeit related) topic.

I could go into each of the threads linked and point out how we talked about those exact same things and flew tons of unrelated ideas back and forth.... But im just pointing out that your making it much harder on moderators (if your trying to get there attention) and this forums is basically starting to become a place just for ranting it appears... which I hope alot of us dont actually want...

[OneEyed Jack]

Bilbo, on 08 January 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

How would a higher velocity increase hit registration? I hit with them just fine. They just don't register.

Some people have become convinced that slower-moving projectiles have worse hit-reg. Have not yet managed to figure how giving the server more time to calculate would result in a worse chance of it being correct... but then it is PGI. I mean, they did program it, and they do seem to muddle stuff more the longer they take to think about it......

[Victor Morson]

Bilbo, on 08 January 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

How would a higher velocity increase hit registration? I hit with them just fine. They just don't register.

You have to picture what's going on, not what we see. To the way net code is calculated, this might as well be open space with a million miles between you and your target, since "scale" doesn't actually mean anything to the computer except X numbers further away, basically.

What I'm getting at is when you lob something that's moving somewhat slowly at a fast moving target, the margin of error of what you see and what's really going on become a huge issue. You have to remember, when moving, everyone is seeing SLIGHTLY different versions of events across all clients as ping factors in. So the slower the projectile, the more likely there will be a discrepancy when you see the impact:

• The server saw the shot miss by 5m
  
• The victim saw the shot miss by 10m
  
• You saw the shot hit

Again, higher velocity = less chance for this to happen. This is why that if you appear visually to land a shot with the Gauss, there's a very high chance it will land, where with the SRM, there's a very high chance it won't land, despite both making impact: Ultimately the above issue is still there, but since the Gauss round is moving so much faster, the above scenario is to look like:

• The server saw the shot hit the right arm
  
• The victim saw the shot hit the right torso
  
• You saw the shot hit the center torso

Still not perfect, but a huge step up, purely from velocity increase.

Edited by Victor Morson, 08 January 2014 - 03:06 PM.

[FupDup]

Varent, on 08 January 2014 - 02:56 PM, said:

I could go into each of the threads linked and point out how we talked about those exact same things and flew tons of unrelated ideas back and forth.... But im just pointing out that your making it much harder on moderators (if your trying to get there attention) and this forums is basically starting to become a place just for ranting it appears... which I hope alot of us dont actually want...

That's more the fault of some individual posters, rather than the fault of the guy who created this thread we're in right now.

As for moderator attention, they seem to be MIA most of the time and most of the threads in general (both the big centralized threads, and the spam of duplicate threads alike) tend to go ignored (not saying that's good or bad, just saying that's the way it is).


Not to derail this too far, but another problem for why this happens is because PGI's past actions have created the idea that ideas need to be spammed to get across. Remember Coolant Flushgate? Or the brief MG Rebellion? Or the ECM Revolution? Or the LRMinatening? PGI has responded to player threads only when they are spammed in massive quantities. To make matters worse, the gem threads that are unique and well-thought out (i.e. Homeless Bill's convergence solution) have been totally ignored in favor of those spammed threads. PGI is literally reaping what they have sown. Their actions have indirectly told the playerbase how to get their attention, and it caused them to split up the forums in an effort to make it harder for players to combine their efforts into one place (used to be Gen Disc.).

If PGI wants us to get the message that they dislike spam threads, they need to actually respond to the unique threads and ignore the spam. Then, players will get the idea of what they should do to make stuff happen (and what they should avoid doing). It's up to them to set the bar for how they want us to behave in regards to our feedback given to them.

Edited by FupDup, 08 January 2014 - 03:11 PM.

[Texas Merc]

Victor Morson, on 08 January 2014 - 03:03 PM, said:

You have to picture what's going on, not what we see. To the way net code is calculated, this might as well be open space with a million miles between you and your target, since "scale" doesn't actually mean anything to the computer except X numbers further away, basically.

What I'm getting at is when you lob something that's moving somewhat slowly at a fast moving target, the margin of error of what you see and what's really going on become a huge issue. You have to remember, when moving, everyone is seeing SLIGHTLY different versions of events across all clients as ping factors in. So the slower the projectile, the more likely there will be a discrepancy when you see the impact:

• The server saw the shot miss by 5m
  
• The victim saw the shot miss by 10m
  
• You saw the shot hit

Again, higher velocity = less chance for this to happen. This is why that if you appear visually to land a shot with the Gauss, there's a very high chance it will land, where with the SRM, there's a very high chance it won't land, despite both making impact: Ultimately the above issue is still there, but since the Gauss round is moving so much faster, the above scenario is to look like:

• The server saw the shot hit the right arm
  
• The victim saw the shot hit the right torso
  
• You saw the shot hit the center torso

Still not perfect, but a huge step up, purely from velocity increase.

An example in game is the gauss speed buff, rarely do hits not register when using the GR.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 08 January 2014 - 03:03 PM, said:

Not to derail this too far, but another problem for why this happens is because PGI's past actions have created the idea that ideas need to be spammed to get across. Remember Coolant Flushgate? Or the brief MG Rebellion? Or the ECM Revolution? Or the LRMinatening? PGI has responded to player threads only when they are spammed in massive quantities. To make matters worse, the gem threads that are unique and well-thought out (i.e. Homeless Bill's convergence solution) have been totally ignored in favor of those spammed threads. PGI is literally reaping what they have sown.

So, if you poop on the ground and forget you left "gold" in that disaster...

Well, that would get messy.

[Screech]

Gotta love it when folks who have 80+ posts every day start to complain about other people being redundant.

[Bront]

arkani, on 08 January 2014 - 02:39 PM, said:

if you remove the "crappy footbal hero mech" and the weapons nerfs whats left in the patch?
........
yep, nothing.

They are doing nothing, just moneygrabbing. So go buy a clan mech or a golden mech and sit down hoping that they will deliver.
Hope is fueling MWO, long live the hope.

DUh, of course, "If we remove the content of the patch, then there was nothing in the patch".

Of course. (BTW, you forgot the champion mech). The first patch of the month is not usually the big content patch, and they flat out said that the patches leading up to the first February patch (UI2.0) will be lean.

Next patch, we can expect some hitbox fixes (a balancing issue of sorts, already announced), possibly more balistic adjustments of the AC2/5 (just assuming here), the Battlemaster (sure, existing content, but it's public release, so now it's for everyone), and probably a few other things (minor bug fixes, or other minor new content).

Today we got the first weapon balance adjustment since around "release" time. You can't complain about them never fixing anything and then complain when they do. Was it enough? No. But PGI moves slowly in this regard usually (Ghost heat, PPC and Gauss being a notable exception), so expecting a massive and complete rebalance in a single patch is expectng way too much.