67 replies to this topic

[Featherwood]

verybad, on 09 May 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

EXspecially if no other mechs could do that.

Fixed

[Trauglodyte]

XX Sulla XX, on 09 May 2014 - 02:04 AM, said:

What they need to do is not nerf jump jets again but just make weopons have less convergence at range. Jump jet brawlers are fine. Snipers of all kinds can change the game into something were the fight is a long range stand off.

The more I listen to this the more I hope they are not listening to NGNG. While they do have some good ideas they have a ton of terrible ideas also.

PGI wont' stop listening to them. The sad part is that NGNG hurts more than it helps for no other reason, and this isn't necessarily their fault, than it splinters the information chain.

As for JJs, if PGI treats them like Flamers, we'll be fine. JJs should do 3 points of heat base on use like now and each JJs should also do 0.1 heat for each 10th of a second growing additionally for every 10th of a second there after (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, etc). It wouldn't force you to overheat unless you were already at 99%, at which case you shouldn't be using anything at all. Anyway, how long do people honestly use their JJs? 2-3s? I think that the JJ tank is like 3s now so, given a value of 0.1 per tenth of a second and growing additionally, that's 3 heat per JJ over 3s or 1hps per JJ. Most mechs run 2-3 JJs (how many people actually run a full load?) so that is 6-9 additional heat, maybe a slight bit more, for a full tank of juice. That is far from unreasonable.

Fix the falling damage code (Light mechs get hosed, Assaults don't take anything) and adjust it some for greater impact and we've got a good base. From there, we just need some heat and movement based convergence point impact and we're good to go.

Edited by Trauglodyte, 09 May 2014 - 09:45 AM.

[verybad]

Peiper, on 09 May 2014 - 09:30 AM, said:

Don't confuse what THEY said with what I said. I wasn't there. All my stuff is in [brackets]. I am disappointed that they DIDN'T mention hardpoints as the issue. I expect they didn't because whether they agree with me or not, I really don't think Paul and/or PGI will ever agree to looking into it. MAYBE after they run out of stuff to do on their roadmap (after CW). But Bryan/Russ have always bragged about 'mechlab' being super-duper important, which means they are more likely to revisit ECM than limit our frankenmeching powers.

Oh shucks, darn'it, and poop. Well, thanks for clearing that up.

[Keeshu]

I'll listen it when I get a chance today. For now I'll just go off of Peiper's notes.

Jumpjets. I haven't had a chance to use the Jumpjets since the last time they changed it, didn't they nerf the heck out of what a singe Jumpjet does already?
Adding heat to Jumpjets is a nerf, but I hope they are taking ballistics and missles into consideration. Not everyone uses high heat energy weapons as a primary focus for their builds.
Due to Jumpjets screwing with your enemy's aim a bunch, and being able to chase/escape easily is nice. You do give up some armor/firepower/space to do it though.
Whatever the case i'll be using Jumpjets whenever possible because I just love being in the air in any game I play for some reason. I'm okay with them doing some kind of nerf to Jumpjets. Unless the nerf gets so hard that I'm almost never able to fire anything, and/or they make fall damage really severe even if you try to use JJs to slow your fall you still take massive damage. I don't think they'd go that overboard with the nerf though.
Right now I'm a little worried, because it makes me feel like I might miss out on all the Jumpjets fun, just in case a nerf anvil is dropped onto the Jumpjets to make them as useless as flamers (I still equip flamers every now and then, fun to shoot out fire randomly, but I never use it to attack, too hot)

As for the specific mech skill trees, that sounds like a wonderful idea to me. That example of taking only 3 out of 6 sounds very nice, because it makes it sound like there's a possibility of having multiple meta builds for a mech variant, instead of the 1 or 2 they normally have.

As for people talking about sized hardpoints it's a double edged sword. On one hand, it's more likely to spawn more unique builds, however it severely limits what you can do with a mech, which may make it so people will only run 1 or 2 builds.usually.

[Mark Brandhauber]

For the Poptart meta IMHO they should just track the pilots who use certain jumping mechs in a certian fashion, their mech stats reveal what their doing (hours played with AC5 or Guass and PPC) and just make them play against others doing the same thing, if that style of play is so good/fun they should have plenty of opponents to play against.

[Peiper]

Keeshu, on 09 May 2014 - 10:01 AM, said:

I'll listen it when I get a chance today. For now I'll just go off of Peiper's notes.

Jumpjets. I haven't had a chance to use the Jumpjets since the last time they changed it, didn't they nerf the heck out of what a singe Jumpjet does already?
Adding heat to Jumpjets is a nerf, but I hope they are taking ballistics and missles into consideration. Not everyone uses high heat energy weapons as a primary focus for their builds.
Due to Jumpjets screwing with your enemy's aim a bunch, and being able to chase/escape easily is nice. You do give up some armor/firepower/space to do it though.
Whatever the case i'll be using Jumpjets whenever possible because I just love being in the air in any game I play for some reason. I'm okay with them doing some kind of nerf to Jumpjets. Unless the nerf gets so hard that I'm almost never able to fire anything, and/or they make fall damage really severe even if you try to use JJs to slow your fall you still take massive damage. I don't think they'd go that overboard with the nerf though.
Right now I'm a little worried, because it makes me feel like I might miss out on all the Jumpjets fun, just in case a nerf anvil is dropped onto the Jumpjets to make them as useless as flamers (I still equip flamers every now and then, fun to shoot out fire randomly, but I never use it to attack, too hot)

As for the specific mech skill trees, that sounds like a wonderful idea to me. That example of taking only 3 out of 6 sounds very nice, because it makes it sound like there's a possibility of having multiple meta builds for a mech variant, instead of the 1 or 2 they normally have.

As for people talking about sized hardpoints it's a double edged sword. On one hand, it's more likely to spawn more unique builds, however it severely limits what you can do with a mech, which may make it so people will only run 1 or 2 builds.usually.

RE: Jump Jets, it's mostly Sean talking about them. They haven't done anything with them since they nerfed them a couple months ago (especially for assaults). As of this interview, there's no indication they'll nerf them again.

Sean does talk about he combination of BAP, target lock decay and jump jets when being a jump-missile mech, and mentions that maybe the target decay module is now too effective since missiles are so much faster.

Regarding sized hardpoints: it would affect missile boats too. In combination with jump-sniping, there would only be so much damage you could put out.

Also, we've been doing some great experimentation with a semi-stock build league at the House Steiner HUB, where we've altered all the stock mechs, save the most advanced lostech ones, to include double heat sinks and double ammo, leaving all the weapons, engines, armor and equipment the same. It sort of brings many mechs to a similar level, but despite that, we're seeing many different chassis and variants used in our experiment. Part of that is due to the newness of it, and part of it is due to players re-stocking their otherwise unused mechs for the semi-stock league. However, I think the semi-stock league is breathing new life into many otherwise maligned mechs. The 4SP and Victors are proving to be very popular, though! (One rule we will eventually add as it gets more popular is limiting each team to having no more than one of any given chassis on a team.) Time will tell. But I'll say this: having different game modes means you'll see and play more mechs than you will with what we have now. My Centurions are finally getting a dust-off and believe it or not the Trebuchet 3D is freakin awesome fun in stock mode.

[Goose]

Peiper, on 08 May 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

Footnote 4: Maybe if falling were factor in the game would I agree, along with death from above. But jump jet capable mechs are DESIGNED to jump and land without falling apart. I would like to see large mechs take damage more proportionally from falling/sliding down mountains as compared to smaller mechs. It doesn't make sense that the lighter the mech, the more damage it takes from landing/falling/sliding down. But JUMPING mechs should not take damage from LANDING if they are landing from a height no greater than the greatest arch of flight they were designed for. Now if a mech jumps high off a cliff, then they should take damage as they're falling much further down then the are designed to jump up!

This is a fallacy: Jump 'Mechs would land without damage by performing a breaking maneuver with their jets, not by being equipped with some magical Thunder Thigh™ Myomer bundles.

It's clear damage for landings is a "flat fee," so heavier 'Mechs have more endurance for this shtick.

Landing without feathering the jets should make a unit fall down, with damage most everywhere; Landing with inadequate feathering should do weight- and height-damage to the legs, but the unit stays upright.

Good landing technique should be part of the Church of Skill …

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Goose, on 09 May 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

This is a fallacy: Jump 'Mechs would land without damage by performing a breaking maneuver with their jets, not by being equipped with some magical Thunder Thigh™ Myomer bundles.

It's clear damage for landings is a "flat fee," so heavier 'Mechs have more endurance for this shtick.

Landing without feathering the jets should make a unit fall down, with damage most everywhere; Landing with inadequate feathering should do weight- and height-damage to the legs, but the unit stays upright.

Good landing technique should be part of the Church of Skill …

Exactly. CityTech had some pretty harsh rules for falling and skidding damage (running full speed and doing sharp turns on pavement.) Worst case scenario is you'd land on your head and it was game over.

LAMs also had some harsh rules on landing under CityTech.

BattleTech was the boardgame with training wheels. CityTech was BattleTech for the big boys.

Edited by ShadowWolf Kell, 09 May 2014 - 11:46 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Roland, on 09 May 2014 - 05:26 AM, said:

This supports what people were saying, that PGI was misinterpretting their data, and when Paul said only 18% of drops were premades, he literally meant drops, and not actual players... such that each group dropping was only counting as 1 "drop" in his numbers.

Because frankly, if only 18% of players actually grouped, then they wouldn't have any trouble limiting the number of groups per team to 1... the fact that they can't make full teams effectively with that limitation in place suggests a significant percentage of their playerbase is actually playing in groups... which would make more sense given the previously released statistics regarding grouping (where it used to be the majority of all players dropped in groups).



This post presents a way to use a dynamically generated BV to handicap teams, creating a sliding scale of benefits for smaller groups.

No, the metrics for percentage of players dropping in groups is probably exactly right. That sort of telemetry isn't hard to pull out of content and I find it highly unlikely that all the people at PGI who are involved in matchmaking and telemetry made the same mistake - I sincerely doubt that Paul went and created, then ran the report himself.

Here's the issue.

Suppose you have 1,000 players who all want to drop. You'll create 41 matches and have 16 people waiting for more to fill a team.

So you've got 984 people to put into 41 matches. You'd need 82 teams in that mix; average team size is a bit over 2 people so we need to round it to 3. So that's 246 people. That's 25% of the population.

So if you've only got 18%, here's what that looks like. First 29 matches fills.... and....

You wait.

However long it took to fill that 1,000 people, of which 984 will fit a match you literally need to wait almost that whole timeframe again to populate enough teams to drop a premade on each team.

The math just doesn't work. Out of 1,000 people you'd have 180 people on premade teams. You've got to have 1 premade on each team, so 1 set of 2 on each team. So that's.....

max possible 42 matches you can put a premade to each side on out of 1,000 people. Since statistically 1/2 of all premade teams are 3 or 4 people you're closer to filling 29 matches out of every 41 you need to fill.

So you wait for more premades.

Even worse is that you can't expect premade teams to populate evenly across all 3 Elo buckets, so you might end up with need 10 Tier 1 matches, 20 Tier 2 matches and 11 Tier 3 matches but only have 4 Tier 1 premade team sets, 12 Tier 2 sets and 13 Tier 3 sets.

I was always dubious that part would work. 3/3/3/3 works because it's just filling buckets. Like putting coins in a coin-counter, you just feed the right size in the right slot and there is a constant feed of coins (players) coming in. At 18% of the population though premade teams would skew the crap out of that process. You'd have to drop them FIRST to build teams around since you've got to have 1 premade per team you can't build a team and then not be able to fit a premade because of 3/3/3/3.

So you'll stack up pugs waiting for a premade in the right tier to populate.

Does that make sense? I hate to puke up a bunch of math without taking the time to put it into formula but the concept is simple -

18% is 180 out of 1,000.

1,000 people is 41(well, 41.6) matches.

180 people on premade teams is about 60 premades.

2 premades per match (1 per team) means about 30 matches worth of premades.

That leaves 11 matches without premades. So out of every 1,000 people ready for a match you've got 280 who will be waiting.

That's without accounting for premade availability across the 3 Elo tiers.

If premades were 33% of the population that would mean there was at least 2 4man premades permatch in every single match across every tier of Elo, That at least 8 people in each game are in premades. That's just not happening.

No, 18% is about right. It just tends to skew more heavily towards higher Elo; so in higher Elo you've got probably closer to 20, maybe even 25% while in lower tiers it's likely closer to 12%.

The issue is that it's not enough to fill matches with 2 per side, especially not accounting for Elo tiers.

[Bishop Steiner]

Peiper, on 08 May 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

* Discussion Topic: Jump Jets
* Do they need a downside to their obvious advantages?
* Add more heat?
* More fall damage?

simple answer? Sure SOME small amount of heat makes sense. But the rest? Why continue to convolute a simple answer, and get everything else BUT Poptarting nerfed instead? Seriously, more heat does not affect poptarting one little bit. It would hurt those brawlers and flankers who have to ride their heat already to compete. And Mechs take leg damage too easy already. (Heck just running is a great way to leg your locust)

We already have cockpit shake on the way up. Simply institute cockpit shake remaining for a full half second to a second after cutting the JJs. It makes sense since it would take a moment for vibrations to stop, and the targeting comp to adjust.

And one could still poptart, but one could no longer do it with 1-2 JJs, as you need more height, to be able to still shoot before falling behind cover. Plus it means the poptart has more exposure both of the mech itself, but also time, meaning it is no longer such a blatantly high reward low risk tactic.

Seriously, problem solved.

[Barantor]

verybad, on 09 May 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

An Awesome with 3 PPCs and no ghost heast might be viable? Especially if no other mechs could do that.

I was actually writing down some ideas on a notepad while I waited for my kids to get out of school this afternoon and that was one of the things I was thinking of.

They don't have to be quirks for the mechs, make them skills that go beyond the generic mastery of the mech. Have a mech that was set up stock to be able to boat long range ppcs be able to do that more efficiently than one that wasn't. This doesn't mean that another mech couldn't as well, but there should be a benefit to using a mech the way it was supposed to be used in battletech. Not just for lore, but for diversity and some flavor in the game itself.

I'd be willing to grind out tons of xp to be able to have the awesome 8Q fire up to three ppcs at once without ghost heat. It can still be stupid hot, but the multiplier for that 3rd one is silly on a mech whose main weapon starts out as such.

[Peiper]

Goose, on 09 May 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

This is a fallacy: Jump 'Mechs would land without damage by performing a breaking maneuver with their jets, not by being equipped with some magical Thunder Thigh™ Myomer bundles.

It's clear damage for landings is a "flat fee," so heavier 'Mechs have more endurance for this shtick.

Landing without feathering the jets should make a unit fall down, with damage most everywhere; Landing with inadequate feathering should do weight- and height-damage to the legs, but the unit stays upright.

Good landing technique should be part of the Church of Skill …

ShadowWolf Kell, on 09 May 2014 - 11:45 AM, said:

Exactly. CityTech had some pretty harsh rules for falling and skidding damage (running full speed and doing sharp turns on pavement.) Worst case scenario is you'd land on your head and it was game over.

LAMs also had some harsh rules on landing under CityTech.

BattleTech was the boardgame with training wheels. CityTech was BattleTech for the big boys.

What I hear translates to piloting checks in MWO. Landing on a slope would take a piloting check. Feathering your jump jets to land safely is a piloting skill. I see what you guys are saying and I agree in principal. What I would like to see, however, is not a flat damage fee for every time you land. More like: if you feather your jump jets before you land, then you can prevent extra wear and tear on your "thunder thigh" and "cankle" skeleton structure. Citytech or not, landing on an ememy mech - Death From Above - would often result in your landing on it's butt rather than on the enemy's head. If skill mitigated damage - or maybe even add it to the skill tree for jumping mechs - that would be reasonable and acceptable.

[Trauglodyte]

Fixing JJs on the descending cycle and adding in leg damage is easy. You fall at a velocity equal to your weight, height of fall, and whatever map factors are added in. If you use JJs like you should and therefore slow your descent, you take no damage. If you blow all of your fuel for a super jump, you take leg damage when you land. The concept is simple so they need to add it in. Piloting checks aren't really necessary without collisions anyway.

[Name140704]

Peiper, on 08 May 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

Good recap

I'm so glad you do this. It is nice to get some information. I wonder if they will ever get a place where people can communicate about ideas on the internet. I think they are called "forums".

Also, shills.

[Bishop Steiner]

Trauglodyte, on 09 May 2014 - 12:42 PM, said:

Fixing JJs on the descending cycle and adding in leg damage is easy. You fall at a velocity equal to your weight, height of fall, and whatever map factors are added in. If you use JJs like you should and therefore slow your descent, you take no damage. If you blow all of your fuel for a super jump, you take leg damage when you land. The concept is simple so they need to add it in. Piloting checks aren't really necessary without collisions anyway.

I miss watching mechs fall down though......

[Name140704]

CyclonerM, on 09 May 2014 - 05:47 AM, said:

THIS! Please Paul read this..

And you should get quite some heavy leg damage when jumping off from a mountain in Alpine Peaks..

In a novel a Rifleman gets its back armor heavily damaged just sliding on its back down a ravine..

All the ideas are great. However...it's not like Paul cares. He played Candy Crush, or tetris, orwhatever during the launch party. Nobody gives a **** about our ideas.

[Goose]

Peiper, on 09 May 2014 - 12:34 PM, said:

What I hear translates to piloting checks in MWO.

The way shooting things calls for a "gunnery check?" I'm not following you …

[Roland]

Heffay, on 09 May 2014 - 06:51 AM, said:

What one person calls a mispronunciation of a word, another calls it "the way they speak". You have your own versions of this and don't even realize it. Yours aren't any more right than theirs. They are just different, not wrong.

At the end of the day, they are all *spelled* the same way. That's the difference between language and dialect. One is written, the other is the oral implementation of that.

No dude, there actually are correct pronunciations.
When you say "Expresso" instead of "Espresso", it's not because you are speaking a different dialect.
It's because you are stupid, and don't know what the word that you are trying to say actually is.

[Pygar]

Peiper, on 09 May 2014 - 09:30 AM, said:

Don't confuse what THEY said with what I said. I wasn't there. All my stuff is in [brackets]. I am disappointed that they DIDN'T mention hardpoints as the issue. I expect they didn't because whether they agree with me or not, I really don't think Paul and/or PGI will ever agree to looking into it. MAYBE after they run out of stuff to do on their roadmap (after CW). But Bryan/Russ have always bragged about 'mechlab' being super-duper important, which means they are more likely to revisit ECM than limit our frankenmeching powers.

I dunno... I think here not too far down the road, much of what we collectively know as "in game balance" is going to go out the window in a big way with the clans arriving- IS mechs are probably going to need as much help as they can get to keep up with clan tech... especially now is a really bad time to put slot limits like on them like in MW4.

Edited by Pygar, 09 May 2014 - 01:39 PM.

[Peiper]

Goose, on 09 May 2014 - 01:20 PM, said:

The way shooting things calls for a "gunnery check?" I'm not following you …

Gunnery checks are done with our fingers on the mouse, so rather than dice rolls, we use our own skills. Our skill checks are literal hand-eye coordinated skill checks.

Feathering your jump jets is a skill people learn. Before they learn, the bang up their legs pretty bad. So, what I'm saying is if they up the damage for landing or something like that, it should be either avoidable by learning to land lightly (feathering, not hitting the jets until after you jump the cliff and instead just use them to cushion the fall, etc...) and maybe, if they want to add an appropriate skill to the mech/pilot/skill tree, have one that helps reduce damage from falls/landing hard. The latter idea wouldn't be a skill check, rather just show you've put in some hours into the mech.

A person who sucks at jumping might want to use the skill from the skill tree (if we have to choose in the future between skills). A person who is skilled enough to jump well might choose something different.

So, my argument has to do with realism. Either the player themselves are skilled, or they wreck their legs. And if they just aren't skilled, they can put their skill points into jumping skills should we have such a tree in the future. But if they aren't skilled, and they don't put points into jumping/balance or whatever, then they may just wreck their legs. See what I'm sayin' yo?