Moromillas, on 18 February 2014 - 09:03 PM, said:
Would prefer other balance mechanics over random rolls.
Not a solution, but certainly an opinion. Okay, more reasoning behind that opinion would be appreciated as I don't get the dislike as it's a common mechanic in shooters both first and 3rd person throughout the gaming industry.
Moromillas, on 18 February 2014 - 09:37 PM, said:
Perhaps a tiny variance (excluding sniper weapons) would be acceptable, maybe even a recoil mechanic, something that wouldn't be noticeable at short and medium range. I donno, maybe it's something that needs testing, to find out how it goes.
I do know that, any game where you are wrestling with RNG, it just makes gameplay not fun.
Alright, accepting a tiny variance would be fine. That's all I've argued for and even then a tiny variance only while moving. So precision remains intact while standing still.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:
A lot of those suggestions are for curbing heavy alpha strike builds, yet they already implemented a mechanic to balance that, ghost heat. Is ghost heat not doing its job? Maybe an increase on the amount of ghost heat.
I still think they should have buffed internals when they buffed armor.
I have another idea to spread damage.
Lasers, they're designed to be damage over time. To dish out the entirety of a lasers damage, requires you to hold it on a specific point, so IF you want pinpoint damage to a location, it's very difficult to do.
Ok, why not a similar mechanic for ballistics? At the moment, you fire an AC10, and it shoots out 1 round that deals 10 damage. If instead, it fired 10 shots in increments that did 1 damage each, you'd see some damage spread. For example, you fire an AC10, and it finishes firing 10 rounds after 0.5 seconds (maybe 1 second?), and with each hit, it deals 1 damage. It might look better too.
Alright an offered up solution. Granted I'd forgotten this. Though I could see this being more frustrating to deal with than just having a cone of fire of some sort implemented for mechs that are moving.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:
That, sounds like ghost heat isn't doing its job.
You agree ghost heat isn't doing its job correctly as high alpha strike combos can be made without the heat element. The prior post brought up PPC+ACs rather than all PPCs for a high alpha strike combination.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 06:05 PM, said:
Because putting cone of fire on a sniper weapon would render it defunct, as their intended purpose is for long range.
Sniper weapons aren't defunct in other titles that use a cone of fire, infact they remain strong and excessively used in many cases. Battlefield, and Call of Duty (I understand your dislike here - I agree, the franchise has gone to crap) or excellent examples of where this is still true to form. Though they're precision headshot weapons and the users often do not hip fire them, when they do they can still be brutally effective.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 06:33 PM, said:
Those seem to be two separate issues. The alpha, and the lack of spread. Hopefully there's a lot more solutions to it than to add randoms.
Did you see my idea to improve AC spread? It's back on page 1.
With ghost heat, I don't think they should scrap it just yet. If it's possible to fix, I think it should be. It actually takes quite a lot to implement new systems.
Pointing backwards at your solution. Good call. Again I overlooked this.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 07:05 PM, said:
Sniper weapons already have mechanics in place to curb damage at long range. Add a random variance, even half a degree, and it will be much to difficult to land a shot at long range.
I don't think the sniper mechanics really fully curb the damage they possess, but I'll agree I often don't get hit with them unless I leave myself exposed by going into a large open space. And the variance for "sniper" weapons can be adjusted, this is part of a tuning process when implementing a new system. No one says it'll work over night.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:
Not really. The problem seems to be WHEN a penalty is applied, and not the penalty itself.
If 4 PPC's gives you a CoF, but 2 PPC's and some AC's give you no CoF, but the same alpha damage. Then changing the penalty from one to another doesn't accomplish anything.
Replace ghost heat with CoF, and Instead of players saying that ghost heat isn't working, they'll be saying that CoF isn't working.
Simply adding a minor and differential CoF variance to all the weapons across the board isn't a very ideal solution either. Too much, and it becomes random rolls land, less and it accomplishes nothing.
I disagree, I think all weapons should be viable and competitive.
You may be right players made say that cone of fire isn't working after it's implemented, but we don't know how it'll actually work within the current system until implemented. Even then once implemented it'll take a bit of tuning to get it right through testing to ensure proper balance.
Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 10:37 PM, said:
Your heat does go up a bit while walking and running.
Yup
Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 12:29 PM, said:
The intent was to have a mechanic to balance high alpha damage.
Ghost heat's intent is known, it's just a poor system for it. And the hidden effects are not well demonstrated to the end user. My crutch there is the lack of information provided to the user for showing whats going on and why it's occurring.
It's my belief that a system like Cone of Fire which is more visible to the user in several capacities tends to be more informative allowing the user to adjust their behavior better to choose their own risk/reward situations and improve on their skills overall.
Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 01:20 PM, said:
Boating is still very much in the game, there's no limit to it, but there are penalties for firing many of the same weapon in order to achieve egregious alpha damage to a pinpoint location. You can still do this, but you have to bear the penalty. The alpha damage potential, the boating viability, penalties where placed on both -- They're the same thing.
Yes, it's not BattleTech, it's MechWarrior.
Mechwarrior is Battletech. The purpose of the first mechwarrior games were to emulate the behavior seen in tabletop but give the user the sense of being in the battle. You go back and look at Mechwarrior through Mechwarrior 3 the titles were very much striving to be simulators. Sadly the popularity of a simulation title fell as more and more people became interested in PC gaming, or gaming in general. From there you see the gameplay behavior become more arcade like while retaining some qualities of the tabletop and previous titles. This youtube video is a demonstration of that evolution.
Even so separating the two for gameplay purposes makes sense to some degree, but systems can be created to continue to attempt parody to the original source material. Quite honestly I've been impressed with MWO for the viability of the TRO designs to function fairly well within the combat designs in the game. This is a good sign to me that they're trying to make sure the source material is fairly well honored in their interpretation of it's mechanics.
Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 07:14 PM, said:
This is incorrect. Changing the damage is essentially what ghost heat did/does, and it directly relates to pinpoint damage. Anytime you increase the heat, you're lowering the damage.
Boating was the preferred method to get large pinpoint damage because you would have weapons that all functioned the same way, same velocity, same cooldown, same range. So with that, you could land more shots on a specific location and get large amounts of damage there.
This does show the strength of boating, and honestly boating is a part of the mechanics from the canon material. There are mechs that are designed to be just focal weapon platforms. Others are more generalists. Even then you have dueling mechs that were created for Solaris VII
Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 07:31 PM, said:
I've not seen any numbers on anything Clan, yet you do need penalties in place for balance. Ghost heat is marginally better than adding CoF, which is a random mechanic.
Cone of fire can be a controlled mechanic to encourage specific behavior. Your accuracy isn't decreased if you're standing still. So the idea is to slow the player down, or get them to stop and fire. Admittedly the stopping and firing for 100% accurate shot is mildly annoying but thats also how it worked in Mech4. So funny thing there.
Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 11:34 PM, said:
You're not sure why random rolls would be frustrating?
Yeah narrowly missing a target can be a bit frustrating. It's more a question as to why people take such a hard line against trying the mechanic.
Moromillas, on 25 February 2014 - 12:39 AM, said:
That's because every game like CoD has been dumbed right down to cater to all the college dude bros. I complain about that watered down piss every chance I get.
Adding a small cone of fire doesn't dumb it down. If anything the current iterations of Call of Duty as a franchise are more akin to Unreal Tournament than they are to the original Call of Duty or even Call of Duty 2. The last "good" Call of Duty title in my opinion was Modern Warfare.
But there are other current competitive games that use the cone of fire mechanic that have depth and tactics to them. I suggest you research those a bit. I'd suggest World of Tanks as a good place to start. The suggestions I've made before as a cone of fire system are closely based on World of Tanks as a whole, though I'd not make the cones as large and drastic as theirs.
Moromillas, on 25 February 2014 - 01:15 AM, said:
The entire thread is about CoF, which is random rolls... Well done.
Hang on my screens all foggy. Please excuse me while I hide behind this chest high wall briefly.
Yup.
Moromillas, on 25 February 2014 - 02:08 AM, said:
Then the problem here is simply your ignorance.
Personal insults really don't need to be here. I'm debating an alternative point of view.
Moromillas, on 25 February 2014 - 06:14 PM, said:
Ok, I'll reiterate: Adding a CoF to a sniper weapon, would be a heavy nerf, and you would not be able to use said weapon for sniping.
A variable CoF based on movement speed would dumb the game down to CoD levels. I do hope that people stop suggesting this and realise this game mechanic is ****.
Please stop tacking on real life situations to a video game...
The game implies some real life mechanics, And at the very least we can try to adhere to some rules associated in physics to ensure a users suspension of disbelief.
We know we're not going to see giant machines that are bipedal or quadrupedal running around at high speed firing weaponry designs for tanks, light armored vehicles, or aircraft. But part of the idea is that'd it'd just be cool if we did.
Adding some realism to the point that someone can disconnect from the look of the game and feel a part of it is the idea behind games in general. It's escapism. Allowing for things that their conscience mind can look at and go "that's possible" is the goal. Or sometimes it's just silly and something to laugh at. But this isn't a game along the lines of Saint's Row or Leisure Suit Larry. We're looking for something visceral as a player base and a means to suspend our disbelief and believe this universe exists.
If you disagree with that okay, but I can tell you now this is what narrative writers look to do when working on a game.
Moromillas, on 25 February 2014 - 06:55 PM, said:
The idea in question, is the equivalent of someone saying "Hey everyone, lets eat our own ****."
How about, we don't do that.
If you're saying I've not been offering alternative suggestions, this shows your ignorance. You can quite plainly see all the suggestions I've posted, unless you've not bothered to look in the first place.
Refusing for the sake of refusing. That you would make such a bald assertion, and pretend it's something factual, or worse, actually believe it to be fact. That actually shows how monstrous you are.
MWO is NOT a tabletop game. The tabletop is NOT a balanced video game, its a tabletop game that was created decades ago.
That wasn't balanced either! Arms race, mixtech, hey lets run around each other and shoot each others legs off.
That comparison really isn't called for. I'm curious though where does that scathing dislike for this mechanic come from? Because I've rarely run into titles where it interfered to a degree that I would refuse to play or not find a means to adapt if I felt strongly about the experience.
You're also correct in saying MWO isn't tabletop but this goes back to me stating that we can look for parody. Not exactly the same as what we'd see in the tabletop but a close enough that all the fans that have been around since the 80's can feel proud to be playing a new battletech game. As well as enjoy their experience with this title as well as with their old ones.
Okay if you want to toss us old fans out into the cold even then the idea of systems that are visible to the user is a far superior design for both player morale and balance purposes.
Calling out MW3 as mixtech and unbalanced is fair. But it is a franchise title with an example of cone of fire functioning. It was intended to be little else.
As for my bald accusation. You did have one suggestion as an alternative and a callback to it. So I apologize, though most of your other posts are just trying to refute others who have suggestions or disagree with you. Some reasoning as to why you think this system doesn't work or where it'd be problematic would be helpful to alleviate your concerns or at least look for a middle ground we all can agree is a superior solution.
I'm not sure I'd agree with it as mechanically it doesn't make sense. It also doesn't fit canon well for the universe. You also didn't have any depth as to whether this is a sustained fire weapon, meaning you decide when that stream of shells start and stop or a mechanical burst where you pull the trigger once and all the shells fire at once.
If it's the mechanical burst I'll attest that it's a pain to deal with that and would likely make most of the heavy autocannons unusable. But it'd be worth investigating. That also sorta blurs the line between the autocannon and rotary autocannons though for when they arrive as a new weapon tech at around 3056 I believe.
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