152 replies to this topic

[o0Marduk0o]

Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

That, sounds like ghost heat isn't doing its job.

It was never its job.

[Moromillas]

o0Marduk0o, on 24 February 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

It was never its job.

The intent was to have a mechanic to balance high alpha damage.

[o0Marduk0o]

Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 12:29 PM, said:

The intent was to have a mechanic to balance high alpha damage.

Not the damage. It is a method to limit boating and to change the way players build their mechs. Having 4-6 PPC/LL in a mech and shooting them the same time is no Battletech.
That the alpha dmg got reduced is a positive side effect.

Edited by o0Marduk0o, 24 February 2014 - 12:45 PM.

[Moromillas]

o0Marduk0o, on 24 February 2014 - 12:44 PM, said:

Not the damage. It is a method to limit boating and to change the way players build their mechs. Having 4-6 PPC/LL in a mech and shooting them the same time is no Battletech.
That the alpha dmg got reduced is a positive side effect.

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.

[o0Marduk0o]

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.

Many mechs are boats by default but they are reasonable. With a mechlab with little restriction like we have, players will build boats which are too effective or just don't feel like Battletech (Mechwarrior is a part of it) anymore.
What PGI did is to add a "soft barrier". They give the player options to build what they want with all consequences. They are free to boat everything but it might be less effective to a certain degree.
The other option would be a hard cap, how many weapons of a certain type you can build in.

Ghostheat has nothing to do with pinpoint dmg, because it does not change how weapons work. Just reducing pinpoint damage is no solution here.

[Colby Boucher]

Gideon Grey, on 19 February 2014 - 05:34 AM, said:

Interesting: fixed targeting for non arm weapons. Torso weapons fire at a discrete but repeatable point and don't auto converge with arm weapons. They would have their own reticles. This allows grouping of arm weapons which unfortunately would make certain chassis better by default, but spreads arm and torso weapon damage apart. Still not random though because you could still aim the torso weapons as well as today, just not simultaneously.

I have thought about this before. Especially on weapons like the hunchie's hunch, convergence on torso weapons doesn't make much sense. It would give having articulating arms much more value, and it would be pretty unique to have to aim torso weapons based off of their actual placement. It would change things immensely, and I imagine not to difficult to implement, depending on how they coded everything.

[Mirkk Defwode]

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.

The ghost heat method still isn't the best solution to this overall as a problem. Once the clans come out you're only looking to punish people who use the Nova Primo variant as stock, and considering it is just 12 medium lasers thats a lot of damage potential from an explicit laser boat.

Though I bet we'll see people making that all ER Large soon enough after its kicked out the door.

[Peiper]

Convergence. Each weapon should have an angle of convergence set to weapon group. For example, three large lasers, one in each torso set to converge at 450. All weapons with an optimal range of 450 would be set to converge there. Small lasers would converge at 60 or 90 meters and so on. There is no reason fixed weapon mounts should converge at every distance.

Also, especially in ballistics - and you see this in real tank warfare - the ballistics typically never hit exactly where you target them, even if you shoot from a fixed mount. They will always stray a little to the right/left/up/down. This is what is meant by 'cone of fire.'

Arm mounted weapons should converge where you aim them, but they wouldn't automatically converge with chest mounted weapons if you're not moving your arms, I think. Similar to how a hull mounted machine gun and a swivel mounted machine gun in a tank turret cupola would not automatically line up with the hull machine gun just because the weapon is at a default-rest position.

But, I like the idea of MWO as a Battletech simulator. The devs seem to be twitch gamers.

[Moromillas]

o0Marduk0o, on 24 February 2014 - 02:29 PM, said:

Ghostheat has nothing to do with pinpoint dmg, because it does not change how weapons work. Just reducing pinpoint damage is no solution here.

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.

[Moromillas]

Mirkk Defwode, on 24 February 2014 - 02:34 PM, said:

The ghost heat method still isn't the best solution to this overall as a problem. Once the clans come out you're only looking to punish people who use the Nova Primo variant as stock, and considering it is just 12 medium lasers thats a lot of damage potential from an explicit laser boat.

Though I bet we'll see people making that all ER Large soon enough after its kicked out the door.

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.

[Sybreed]

Who here played Day of Defeat?

It's a WW2 arcade/sim game where you play as either german or americans and they had a pretty unique mechanic for their CoF system, as in recoil is the first thing that messes up your aim but it's something you CAN control.

When you knew your gun pretty well, like say a Thompson, you could fire pretty accurately at targets even at mid range (almost useless at long range though). So, while the recoil was "somewhat" random, you could still control where your shots where going. Semi auto guns like the Garand had a bigger kick, but if you could control the recoil, you could place 2 shots in a row in someone's chest and kill them (although I think the Garand was a 1-hit 1-kill gun when you hit the upper body)

Of course, for this to work in MWO, you need ACs to be fast firing cannons and PPCs would still kind of be broken because their higher RoF would mean recoil would less affect you, but it,s something that could be worthwhile to check.

Peiper, on 24 February 2014 - 02:38 PM, said:

Convergence. Each weapon should have an angle of convergence set to weapon group. For example, three large lasers, one in each torso set to converge at 450. All weapons with an optimal range of 450 would be set to converge there. Small lasers would converge at 60 or 90 meters and so on. There is no reason fixed weapon mounts should converge at every distance.

Also, especially in ballistics - and you see this in real tank warfare - the ballistics typically never hit exactly where you target them, even if you shoot from a fixed mount. They will always stray a little to the right/left/up/down. This is what is meant by 'cone of fire.'

Arm mounted weapons should converge where you aim them, but they wouldn't automatically converge with chest mounted weapons if you're not moving your arms, I think. Similar to how a hull mounted machine gun and a swivel mounted machine gun in a tank turret cupola would not automatically line up with the hull machine gun just because the weapon is at a default-rest position.

But, I like the idea of MWO as a Battletech simulator. The devs seem to be twitch gamers.

Like WW2 planes? It's something that's been suggested before and something I could endorse, but you know, no words from PGI...

[GreyGriffin]

Ghost heat doesn't solve the pinpoint damage problem, it only introduced consequences for massive pinpoint damage that shifted the burden onto a different combination of weapon systems. You can still do it, you can still roll the 6 PPC stalker, and you can still 1 shot core someone, you'll just suffer consequences. However, by shuffling your weapon systems around (blend PPC's, AC 5's), you can get almost the same effect - a massive precision burst targeting a single body part, and even if you do face the consequences of overheating, the 'mechs that support the new layout are jump snipers, so overheating is virtually a null factor.

Then you also have a pair of AC 5's, which are one of the best brawling weapons to boot.

[Belorion]

GreyGriffin, on 18 February 2014 - 08:41 PM, said:

Please?

So many of the balance issues that arise come from pinpoint targeting single body parts, especially at extreme ranges. A modest cone of fire dependent on hardpoint position can only help spread the damage out.

I am prepared to endure the slings and arrows of the lern 2 play crowd, and the pseudo realism pedants. But I stand by the position that it is a good balance move for a game that relies on its 'mechs battlefield endurance to really capture the spirit of Battletech.

If they put in cone of fire, I will probably quit this game.

[ShadowbaneX]

Sybreed, on 24 February 2014 - 07:46 PM, said:

Who here played Day of Defeat?

It's a WW2 arcade/sim game where you play as either german or americans and they had a pretty unique mechanic for their CoF system, as in recoil is the first thing that messes up your aim but it's something you CAN control.

I did before RO. If they put DoD's CoF system then I quit MWO as an AC/5 doing damage from one mech would do a different amount of damage in another mech; see: Garand, Springfield, BAR & .30 cal MG; K98, G43 & MGs 34 & 42, etc, etc.

[GreyGriffin]

Belorion, on 24 February 2014 - 08:05 PM, said:

If they put in cone of fire, I will probably quit this game.

Why? I am interested in cracking open the psychology of this knee jerk response.

[Moromillas]

GreyGriffin, on 24 February 2014 - 09:10 PM, said:

Why? I am interested in cracking open the psychology of this knee jerk response.

You're not sure why random rolls would be frustrating?

[o0Marduk0o]

In every ego-shooter your crosshair is getting bigger while moving. Shooting then is random as well. Nobody complains about it.

[Moromillas]

o0Marduk0o, on 25 February 2014 - 12:05 AM, said:

In every ego-shooter your crosshair is getting bigger while moving. Shooting then is random as well. Nobody complains about it.

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.

[Sug]

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.

How is a crosshair that expands during movement or rapid fire dumbed down? Go play Quake Live if you're into twitch games.

[Mirkk Defwode]

Moromillas, on 24 February 2014 - 11:34 PM, said:

You're not sure why random rolls would be frustrating?

Who said anything about random rolls? This is an expanding field of fire when you're moving in a fashion that would make your weaponry inaccurate, the closest comparison is a humanoid firing a rifle today, So find me a rifleman, or sniper that can at a run consistently hit the same target in nearly the same spot.

This will just cause a little more variety in where shots land, Nothing random to it.

You want examples of how this works on single shot weapons? Go play World of Tanks, you want it with Automatic weapons, try counterstrike.

SLOWING DOWN will decrease the cone size, STOPPING will eliminate the cone entirely. Doing so leaves you exposed. So these elements turn into a risk/reward factor for gameplay. It's a more complicated combat system that will bring out player skill.

The cones don't need to also be huge in size, meaning they can make for very minute changes in behavior.

And this is probably the 4th or 5th time I've reiterated on this singular point.

Please read full statements, please review the ideas, and please look at others cited source material. There is plenty of Twitch and Youtube footage that you don't have to download this other title and try it for yourself.

Edited by Mirkk Defwode, 25 February 2014 - 01:08 AM.