123 replies to this topic

[TKSax]

I think convergence should be how long you keep your reticle on target/steady the longer you are steady with your aim the more weapons will hit that spot, shot of a quick one they may hit, but they will be all over the mech.

[Tombstoner]

TKSax, on 28 May 2014 - 07:18 PM, said:

I think convergence should be how long you keep your reticle on target/steady the longer you are steady with your aim the more weapons will hit that spot, shot of a quick one they may hit, but they will be all over the mech.

Essentially yes, but there are some who would even objects to this. I think they only want to fight with sniper riles and MWO gives them that with jump jets

The only way to "fix" magic levels of accuracy without destroying PGI's"VISION" is with armor co factors based on the mechs volume. that way you can have an absolutely huge bard door center torso with the durability of 4 atlases. then you can tweek things for how they feal while playing.

If your 5x the size of a commando then your armor must be 5x stronger to compensate for how mech art has screwed you over.

[Jam the Bam]

OP Can you explain how you would actually implement non-perfect convergence?
Please do not mention any form of randomness, but I would like to know what you envisage instead of just 'pinpoint is bad'. I know lots of threads have been brought up about it but very few people actually specify what they would replace it with, and I mean specifics and not just 'spread'.

Also please explain how people are ever going to hit a light mech ever again if their weapons do now converge?

Note: I agree something should change but I still haven't heard an idea I actually agree with.

[Runenstahl]

Actually I would LOVE for PGI to implement game mechanics from World of Tanks (indirect fire for LRM and convergence according to your movement and aiming time). Yes, it would introduce a "random" factor. But it won't diminish the skill involved (maybe shift it a bit from "twitch" to "tactical"). If you ever played WoT and managed to hit a fast moving tank with your artillery you'll know that it DOES take skill. And I agree that it would solve a lot of problems AND it would also represent the "lost-tech" of the canon very well.

The problem is: PGI has already gone quite a way in the current direction, I doubt they would be willing to redo that big a part of the game.

Second problem: there ARE quite a lot people that would whine about such a change.

[Agent of Change]

Runenstahl, on 29 May 2014 - 04:27 AM, said:

The problem is: PGI has already gone quite a way in the current direction, I doubt they would be willing to redo that big a part of the game.

Second problem: there ARE quite a lot people that would whine about such a change.

Well to be fair PGI has completely reversed it's position on several things, why couldn't they for once flip positions on something actually good for the game? AS for the whiners, well people on these forums would whine that the sky is blue and that water is wet if you gave them the chance.

Let any change stand on it's own I say. The convergence issue could be dealt with badly and in ways that leave us worse off than before, but if done half way decently could have deep resonating effects through the whole of MWO gameplay.

Edited by Agent of Change, 29 May 2014 - 04:41 AM.

[Runenstahl]

Agent of Change, on 29 May 2014 - 04:41 AM, said:

AS for the whiners, well people on these forums would whine that the sky is blue and that water is wet if you gave them the chance.

You sure they didn't do that yet ?

[Raigner]

As a high latency gamer due to satellite connection, MWO was nearly unplayable for me in the closed beta days, its was boat lrms or don't play, and all enemy mechs were invisible to me once to inclosed to a distance closer then 300 meters, with the net code adjustments and HSR, MWO has become infinitely more enjoyable for me to play and in fact i can play the game and enjoy it as much as any other player despite having a 1000ms ping. lasers ballistics and brawling are all viable, and i damn near cried the moment i did 3 damage with a weapon that was not a LRM. i recognize that pinpoint accuracy and instant convergence contributed greatly to allowing me to play as anyone else, that being said agent of change is quite right in that the current state of the game is a direct result of the instant convergence and near perfect accuracy of all weapons. combined with ghost heat it heavily promotes ballistics over any other weapon type to stay "competitive", i do fill the game would be more enjoyable with instant accuracy taken out of MWO.

That said if we went back to timed convergence over distance and movement factoring into accuracy you will probably see the "meta" shift back to how it was in closed and early open beta, Guass rifles, PPCs, LRMS, streaks, and laser boating (as lasers would have to be 100% accurate as that's there whole thing). noting will really change, people will continue to boat because that how people want to play the game. to find to most efficient weapons to kill the other guys and quickly and easily as possible with as few draw backs to themselves.

As ghost heat becomes more of a factor people will just redefine how many PPCs it takes to mount before you are considered boating PPCs, and the appropriate whining will continue as it always has, literally PGI is faced with the impossible task of pleasing the unpleasable. Some people love LRMs as they are in the game now, some hate them and consider them as the bane of MWO, the same can be said for any other weapons or any other fix, what works for you will not necessarily make a better game for everybody, and no matter what pgi dose to change the weapons to bring them into balance with each other, the players will always find a way to break that balance and then exploit the hell out of it, or any other weapon that's slightly easier to use/ more effective then the others until it gets nerfed. everybody will ***** the whole way threw, first by the people that get killed by the new meta and don't themselves want to use the gameplay style that that new meta promotes, then by the previous users of the slightly out of balance weapons after they get nerfed or adjusted, complaining that there weapon of choice dose not work as effectively as they would like anymore (see recent AC balance pass threads).

Just find a way that you want to play MWO and drop the meta crap. let the game fix itself over time (it will, maybe not the way you personally want it to but it will) embrace change and adapt instead of kicking and screaming every time a value is changed, and let PGI so there job. they resurrected the license from death, let them handle there game and bring balance to something that was inherently unbalanced both in lore and on tabletop. if you guys keep wishing for MWO to fail then that might just be what happens, do you think another publisher is going to pick the title up and keep the servers on? fix the game? or that a new company will make a better, more lore friendly battletech game? please don't be naive. if MWO fails it just proves to the publishers that it was the dead IP they thought it was. the name will become radioactive, and nobody will touch it, nobody will ever consider making another battletech game until your old and gray, even then probably not. now stop cheering for there downfall and start becoming an agent for good, or at the very list stop criticizing every breath PGI takes, they put there company and there lively hood on the line for a dream of revitalizing battletech, and all i ever see on these forums are people walking a rather long way to contribute so very little to the discussion and then go to great effort to tear down what others have built up. they brought battletech back from the dead and gave it to you for free, now all this forum ever dose is just wish for it to go back into the grave. bunch of ungrateful ingrates if i have ever seen any.

[moneyBURNER]

I offered a simple/lazy solution to discourage alphastrikes without having to implement any new convergence system: repurpose the ghost heat mechanic from heat to stress damage.

Firing multiple large weapons simultaneously would weaken a mech's internal structure and cause scaling damage with an increasing chance of various kinds of failures, due to excessive recoil, energy overload, etc. Each and every alphastrike would carry a risk. The bigger the alpha, the more damage would be incurred to various components. Cockpit messages could provide warnings of impending failures.

There are lots of possibilities for how such a system could be fleshed out.

Or PGI could finally grasp the validity of a low capacity/high dissipation heat scale.

[Agent of Change]

raigner, on 29 May 2014 - 05:43 AM, said:

snip for space.

I get what you are saying but just because it won't fix all the problems doesn't mean it shouldn't be fix to correct many problems. As for slinging mud at PGI well, we are going to have to agree to disagree. They have more than earned their fair share of bad mouthing with the way they have (mis) handled things related to this game and community over the last few years. I don't want this to turn into that discussion if it can be avoided, I will say that some people take it a bit far.

moneyBURNER, on 29 May 2014 - 06:03 AM, said:

I offered a simple/lazy solution to discourage alphastrikes without having to implement any new convergence system: repurpose the ghost heat mechanic from heat to stress damage.

Firing multiple large weapons simultaneously would weaken a mech's internal structure and cause scaling damage with an increasing chance of various kinds of failures, due to excessive recoil, energy overload, etc. Each and every alphastrike would carry a risk. The bigger the alpha, the more damage would be incurred to various components. Cockpit messages could provide warnings of impending failures.

There are lots of possibilities for how such a system could be fleshed out.

Or PGI could finally grasp the validity of a low capacity/high dissipation heat scale.

It's an interesting idea with the stress damage but i'm not sure that I like it personally. It' a novel approach I'll give you that. We definitely need a change to how heat/cooling work to exactly what you mention. It's just so clear to me that the convergence is the root of the worst excesses of what people hate about the game right now.

Edited by Agent of Change, 29 May 2014 - 08:07 AM.

[Demuder]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 28 May 2014 - 11:58 AM, said:

Hence why the following fixes are needed more than anything:

1 - Dynamic Precision Reduction (based on throttle %, heat %, and stability state)

2 - PPC damage arcing

3 - Variant-specific armor tweaking

4 - Cassette-style ACs (4-round bursts)

5 - Cooldown rework (slow down everything but standard SRMs and Pulse Lasers)

6 - ECM rework from a hard counter system to a soft counter system

Do the above and the game will be hugely improved, with much healthier gameplay.

All these solutions and many others, just as good, keep being proposed over and over again for that past year I have been playing and probably the year before that. PGI won't even acknowledge the problem and frankly, it's because any attempt to fix it would cost time and money, instead of making money - selling mechs that is.

Just look at the mess ECM is and still they won't acknowledge it (since they would actually need to program a "new" ECM, instead of just tweaking values).

Livewyr, on 28 May 2014 - 12:18 PM, said:

Try to imagine fighting a circling light mech without convergence.. he runs around and tears up the big target, while the poor larger mech is trying to just clip the little mech with his weapons..

That's what is happening right now anyway. Lights troll-run around heavier mechs because a) there's no collisions with other mechs or terrain and b) because they generally die to heavier mechs because of hitscan damage over time. It's only rare that a light pilot gets stuck long enough for the heavier mech to unload on them, and that is usually a sign of a bad light pilot who would have died anyway. At least this way they would have to hold still for a second or two to converge their weapons before doing 6xML pinpoint damage in the back of the poor of Atlas.

Edited by Demuder, 29 May 2014 - 09:01 AM.

[CygnusX7]

Just a couple thoughts.. Would I be oversimplifying this if I suggested having pinpoint convergence only at an infinite distance or perhaps more than 5000 meters? Any distance less than that would have a spread due to the weapons not being at the same location on the mech.

Is part of the problem cryengine where most games are a person running around aiming and firing one weapon at a time?
I can see how it might be tough to write code to handle firing multiple weapons at the same time in a game engine that was never intended to.

[Procyon Alpha]

I think you are also missing that a 85 tonne mech dropping with out and jump jet thrust 40 to 60 feet, should cause a lot more than one point of damage to the legs. Put that damage back into the game and pop tarting will decline fairly quickly.

[Shae Starfyre]

Wouldn't just getting rid of Arm Lock simulate the convergence thingy concept?

Like, I purposely do not lock my arms on my Lyr and I notice even moving slowly or trying to track anything that I am always a little off with my torso mounted weapon.

Even the most skilled JJ'r will have to aim that extra half second to align them if they were not locked.

This would also repurpose the skill tree thing about aligning your weapons whatever it is called.

I just think that this is the simpliest solution.

Standing still = armlock, move, twist, JJ in anyway doesn't equal armlock. This would be the simpliest thing to do (for now) as we wait for all weapons (CLAN tech) to come into play and see how all weapons work; we are so far away from being able to really balance things because we are lacking all the tools.

Let's take a baby step?!?

[Tombstoner]

Tweek armor not the weapons..... make it scale based on mech size.

[Khobai]

Tweeking armor doesnt fix the problem and just makes pinpoint damage even more important for breaching armor. The only real fix is reducing pinpoint damage to manageable levels.

Although I personally believe the Atlas should also get some inherent damage reduction too. Because its so inferior to other Assault mechs and its not nearly as scary as it should be. Reducing pinpoint damage would be a good start, but ultimately I think each weight class/mech should have its own unique skill tree. And the Atlas' skill tree should give it damage reduction to make it better at tanking.

Edited by Khobai, 29 May 2014 - 11:19 AM.

[Barantor]

Khobai, on 29 May 2014 - 11:16 AM, said:

Tweeking armor doesnt fix the problem and just makes pinpoint damage even more important for breaching armor. The only real fix is reducing pinpoint damage to manageable levels.

Although I personally believe the Atlas should also get some inherent damage reduction too. Because its so inferior to other Assault mechs and its not nearly as scary as it should be. Reducing pinpoint damage would be a good start, but ultimately I think each weight class/mech should have its own unique skill tree. And the Atlas' skill tree should give it damage reduction to make it better at tanking.

The atlas isn't scary because it has too many negatives compared to it's positives in the current edition of MWO.

Atlas is slow, even with a big engine.

Even though it has lots of armor overall, each mechs armor only matters for one component. The center torso or the legs. If you can reliably hit the center torso (rear or front) you will kill the mech with the standard engine, if you knock out both legs you kill the mech too and once one is gone it is even easier.

With lots of missile points and LRMs not being great and SRMs not hitting reliably, the only atlas to take is the one with the ECM (which a lot of folks feel is broken too, including me).

It is also huge, easy to see, easy to kill.

It's one pinpoint weapon point is half way down it's torso, so being big plus that isn't helping it do any sniping whatsoever.



It is a pity too, since at one point it dominated the battlefield, now it along with lots of other earlier mechs are relegated to the second tier of use.

[Khobai]

well i understand the weapons are screwed on an atlas. thats why i suggested a damage reduction buff. you cant really fix the bad hardpoints but you can make it scarier by making it harder to kill.

[Barantor]

Khobai, on 29 May 2014 - 12:13 PM, said:

well i understand the weapons are screwed on an atlas. thats why i suggested a damage reduction buff. you cant really fix the bad hardpoints but you can make it scarier by making it harder to kill.

I think that making it just harder to kill is just a bandaid of several underlying problems which this game suffers.

One thing I will say and some disagree with is that the level of customization of mechs in this game kills a lot of mechs outright and means that hardpoints are more important than anything else.

[Agent of Change]

So Another Idea for this has crossed the table (from a conversation with a squad mate) this one relatively easy to implement.

Fixed Convergence set by the player... by component.

so here's how it would work, as part of your mech loadout you would set your convergence distances.

Weapons in the CT/head would always be straight ahead towards the reticle, easy enough so far.
The the RT and LT would both individually be set and it would affect all weapons in each location.
then your arms LA and RA would also be set individually to affect all the weapons mounted there.

The distance you set would be the point at which the weapons in that component would all converge perfectly on the cross hairs (or the arm recticle for arms). The important thing is that this is set in mech lab and cannot be changed once dropped.

it's not perfect but it does mean if you want to snipe and you set your convergence way out then you won't be able to land those pinpoint hits at a brawler in your face. It helps a bit with role warfare as well. The individual component convergence gives you a bit more granular control if you want it and allows for you to make in close weapons set differently from ranged weapons if you build your mechs like that.

Edited by Agent of Change, 29 May 2014 - 09:03 PM.

[Kassatsu]

Agent of Change, on 28 May 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

stuff

Where's my didn't read .gif when I need it...

Stopped reading at something about instant pin-point conversion and instantly agreed with everything you just said in the OP.