118 replies to this topic

[Av4tar]

Will lead to more use of #LRMs.

[Black Ivan]

Problem is that weapons ballance is entirely broken

[Khobai]

I personally would like to try something simple like burst fire ACs and arcing damage PPCs. If that doesnt work we can try something more extreme like homeless bill's suggestion.

[Koniving]

To remind people of this from the second page...

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 10:21 PM, said:

A relatively simple solution that's already part-way in the game.
Look at third person. I'm sure we've all noticed its crosshair is a little wonky.
The instant jumps are from instant convergence. This is something that already happens in first person (we just can't see it).

Focus on something close by. Observe the reticule as you do things.
Do various things. Walk at different speeds.
Now imagine that in first person.

A new video demonstrating it here.

It's kinda long, but it uses several mechs to show how it is unique to different mechs. It also demonstrates that while it's still 100% pinpoint, the fact that the mech's movements affect the crosshair can throw off aim for poorly timed shots. Demonstrates that movement affects the crosshair and thus your aim.

In the last one with the Banshee, I first use first person to demonstrate how with the current first person even with the hud off you can get perfect pinpoint shots to the point of ludicrous ease. That is followed by using the proposed crosshair and showcasing the ability to still manage things like precision shooting and even pulling off a headshot even with the hobbling mech's reticle.

The point being that this simple idea is a system that reduces pinpoint accuracy without taking it away, and does so by increasing the player skill involved rather than 'removing it' as players fear many anti-pinpoint systems will do. Best of all, it's already in the game. PGI needs only to implement it on first person.

Edited by Koniving, 01 June 2014 - 02:25 AM.

[stjobe]

Turist0AT, on 01 June 2014 - 12:26 AM, said:

Hmm, i kinda want my weapons to hit ware i aim them, want this game to be based on skill and not random chance.

Skill != perfect accuracy. Just ask any champion marksman if they always hit what they aim at.

Also, non-perfect accuracy does not automatically imply random chance. Non-random reticule sway from the motion of your 'mech is just one example.

Turist0AT, on 01 June 2014 - 12:26 AM, said:

And no heat penalties.

Heat penalties are an integral part of any BattleTech Universe game, and them being missing completely from MWO for over two years is just more fuel on the "MWO is not a BattleTech game" fire.

Turist0AT, on 01 June 2014 - 12:26 AM, said:

I want this game to be a simulator. In simulators you can only take one maybe a couple of hits before your dead meat. We can allready take a huge barage. how much more do you want machs to be able to take. Weapons need to be effective murdering tools. Not nerf guns.

Simulating combat between 1000-years-in-the-future giant fighting robots with ablative armour and poor fire control isn't the same as simulating 20th century combat between humans. BattleTech is a game where giant robots take a long time to die, and MWO needs to reflect this if that "a BattleTech game" slogan they added to the logo should have even a slight chance of not being a blatant lie.

[Siepher Hawkins]

what if
we had a slider that we controlled where our weapons converge at? basically a number in meters next to the one telling us our distance to target on our hud that we controlled with the mouse wheel, that dictates where our weapons will converge. keeps player skill as a factor, and increases time to convergance, no random number generators, no loss of accuracy.

[Reno Blade]

Changing PPCs to splash damage would reduce its pinpoint potency, but not the skill to hit where you want.

Adding a delay to the PPC would also keep the ability to hit your target at a section that is damaged, but it would need a bit more skill to do so (like the gauss) and also give the target a short time to react when seeing you the first time (like comming around a corner)

Same goes for lasers already!
If you see someone coming around a corner with lasers, you can twist away. you will get 100% of the damge, if the shooter is skilled, but you have the ability (if YOU are skilled) to turn and twist to spread the incoming damage.

And same would be true if we had only burstfire ACs. You could turn and twist very quick, but depending on the duration of the burst, you might still take 3-4 bullets (of a 5 bullet burst) into the open section and only avoid 1-2 bullets, but that is enough to give you a CHANCE to USE your SKILL to spread the damage.

Curently the only skill you can use as the target is to keep twisted away before the impact and hope the attacker uses the Pinpoint weapons on cooldown and shoots your shield arm (if you play a shield-arm mech).

Adding the ability to use your SKILLs to spread incomming damage (as described) is improving the deapth of the gameplay.

[Lightfoot]

GreyGriffin, on 31 May 2014 - 11:04 PM, said:

False.

Take a 'mech with 2 PPCs and an AC-5 (or a pair if you have the tons). Put all those weapons in a group, then chain fire them from a distance. Try and assess how badly you hurt the enemy 'mech, and how long it takes to kill them.

Then, put all those weapons on group fire. Keep shooting from a distance, and watch as their torsos slough off under your concentrated pinpoint fire.

This is the point of contention. The ability to concentrate a 'mech's entire firepower onto a single enemy component cripples or destroys that enemy far faster than if the damage was not concentrated on a single point. Pinpoint damage affects everything.

• Why do people hate LRMs? Because you can't get in range, because their snipermech buddies will pop your torso the moment you get out of cover.
  
• Why are 3 large lasers Ghost Heat Mania? Because with pinpoint damage, huge stacks of high impulse weapons melt components too fast.
  
• Why is jump sniping the dominant form of combat above mid-ELO? Because it minimizes exposure to withering enemy pinpoint fire while having very little opportunity cost to return a snap shot of massive damage.
  
• Why is Alpine a frozen white sea of misery?
  
• Why do we always end up fighting over the same three sniper-friendly ridges on every map?
  
• Why do gauss rifles have a super annoying charge-up mechanic?
  
• Why don't noobs ever just go when they take a hit, letting us through the pass instead of bunching us up like third graders waiting for the 80 year old chaperone to get off the bus?
  
• Why don't we see more Awesomes?

The list goes on and on, and all these problems and pressures would be relieved if there was a mechanic that kept our 'mechs from being surgically dissected past 300m.

What you are talking about is changing gameplay to suit your favored playstyle. That's very bad. The weapons are balanced so that the long duration ones like hit-scan lasers and AC2's/AC5's do the most damage per ton/heat used and the ones with long recharge and single shots do much less damage per ton/heat used. Like I said Accuracy is a constant, it doesn't change based on the weapon, it just seems like the big-hit weapons are the problem since they are likely to finish you off, but in practice the AC2's kill mechs the fastest. If you have used both large and small ACs you know this is so.

AC5's seem a bit overpowered when stacked together, but PGI wants this superfast recharge and wanted to replace the weak Gauss Rifle with the stronger grouped ACs and UAC's so what can I say?

The Jump-Jet exploit is allowed and has always caused the problems associated with it, but that is a Jump-Jet thing, not a weapon problem. Petition PGI to block firing weapons while Jump-Jetting, but it's a Battletech sacred cow so GL with that.

Now I don't like that my Mech gets destroyed in three second sometimes, that's B S, but it gets destroyed by AC2's and Lasers in 3 seconds as often as AC20's and PPC's. So I oppose nerfing weapon abilities based on player opinions that are actually based on subjective experiences. You always experience what is popular so it seems to be the big problem. You need to look deeper.

MWO's core problem is the Mechs are too weak for the 2xRecharge on the weapons. Energy weapon damage is curbed heavily right now by Heat as opposed to Ballistics which just fire at the 2xRecharge rate continuously. High heat and minimum range keeps PPC use much lower. I estimate the mechanical recharge for PPCs averages 7 seconds now. You get a few quick shots till the mech heats up, but then it's about a 7 second recharge usually.

Ballistics have no weakness in MWO's Mechlab or in battle, so you could lower the internal structure damage they do to create a weakness and lower overall damage. However the best way to fix MWO is make the mechs tougher, they seem like their armor is paper thin compared to previous MechWarrior titles.

The pin-point damage thing really doesn't exist. You move laterally and "poof", no more pin-point damage due to different travel times of the various weapons. This doesn't change the fact that the mech often gets destroyed in 3 seconds, but expect Mechs to get destroyed even faster as players gain experience. AC2's do it and AC20's and PPCs do it and most teams work hard to create a focus-fire target which is the most common cause for Mech destruction.

[mdmzero0]

While I don't have a problem with the pin-point damage, I do think some of these suggestions would be pretty darn neat for making a more realistic mechwarrior game.

- Love the idea of making the reticle move along with the movement of the mech. It would change based not only on how fast your going/the terrain, but also just the movement style of the mech you're piloting. That'd be awesome!

- I also like the idea of having the convergence take a half a second or some small but noticeable delay to adjust to a new target. (i.e., the computer isn't quite fast enough to instantly adjust the convergence to a new target, so you have to hold your shot for a moment)

[Barantor]

Eddrick, on 31 May 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

Homelessbill's Targeting Computer solution

Eddrick, on 31 May 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

Homelessbill's Targeting Computer solution

Eddrick, on 31 May 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

Homelessbill's Targeting Computer solution

Those are my top three choices.

Although if it was combined with Konivings crosshair shake idea and Rhaythes arcing ppcs it would probably be even better.

Edited by Barantor, 01 June 2014 - 06:12 AM.

[East Indy]

I'm curious to see what the upcoming autocannon nerf does to shell trajectory contra PPCs, but not unrealistic in my expectations.

Either PGI expands heat scale to catch the workarounds, or alters gameplay via recoil, delay or the like by preventing simultaneous shots from the same class of gun hitting the same location.

[Pale Jackal]

Khobai, on 01 June 2014 - 01:04 AM, said:

I personally would like to try something simple like burst fire ACs and arcing damage PPCs. If that doesnt work we can try something more extreme like homeless bill's suggestion.

I agree with this. Lasers are already inaccurate enough: as a light, if I've flanked an assault 'mech and am coring into its back, I don't think my lasers need to be non-convergent.

Making Inner Sphere ACs into two-shells per burst, and having PPCs do 66% and 33% of their damage to two components, seems like it would help the problem without requiring any other mechanics to worry about.

[Reitrix]

Im hoping that the burst fire UACs i've heard will be used for Clans is just a testbed to see if a similar ballistic solution could be used for IS as well.

[Perilthecat]

There are some interesting ideas here, especially when it comes to the lore. I'm not sure that lore should be more than a guiding principle. It's supposed to be the year 3000. You're running around in a giant robot, on a planet far from home. Mechwarrior is a videogame, and thus is not a canon source in BT. That gives it freedom to walk a different path in some regard.

Why is it unreasonable to think that your incredible giant robot shouldn't be able to hit what you point its' guns at?

I never understood that part of the lore, although I guess it was just the fiction creating an explanation for a T.T. game mechanic. A game from the '80s, which (just maybe) might not be the most be the most sophisticated thing by today's standard.

You have some people saying that the game isn't enough of a simulation because survivability is too high. Others state that pinpoint damage renders survivability too low. Many of the proposed solutions, while simple to throw out there, would take huge amounts of development effort. I want to see CW before I get old and die.

And besides, right now I feel like we have a workable solution to pinpoint damage:

Lateral movement.

[Charli3 Tang0]

I believe a good start to addressing this would be including recoil. Basic concepts (apologize if someone has already beaten this horse):

• Every weapon deemed to have recoil will be assigned an impact value, which details how drastic the recoil will be.
  
• Energy weapons have no recoil EXCEPT THE PPC.
  
• All Projectile based weapons have recoil to some degree based on size of projectile and number fired at a time.
  
• All Missile based weapons have recoil to some degree based on number of missiles fired at a time.

Make location of weapons impact recoil:

• Recoil impact is based on size of mech and location of weapon on mech
  
• Size of Mech: smaller mechs experience greater recoil impacts.
  
• Location of Weapon: as weapons are placed further away from the gyro (Center Torso) recoil impact increases. (Example: recoil impact from an AC/20 placed on the Right Torso would be less than if placed on the Right Arm).

Let’s have some fun with this:

• If a mech is airborne while firing a weapon which creates recoil, the mech will not only experience the recoil impact, but will also begin spinning slightly per the impact of recoil
  
• Placement of weapons starts to matter even more, especially if you like weapons that produce recoil
  
• Targeting computers could have a new use: once recoil impact of a weapon is experienced, the targeting radical would automatically return to its original position without pilot input. Otherwise, the pilot would have to manually adjust before taking another aimed shot.
  
• While recoil from arm mounted weapons would be the most severe, they would be the fasted to reacquire the target due to speed of arms vs torso twist.

Just some thoughts... think it would be neat AND fix a few issues... but would probably create new ones. Also, this is ONE change that would have broad impacts, rather than a ton of small changes...

Edited by Charli3 Tang0, 01 June 2014 - 07:37 AM.

[Reitrix]

Charli3 Tang0, on 01 June 2014 - 07:35 AM, said:

I believe a good start to addressing this would be including recoil. Basic concepts (apologize if someone has already beaten this horse):

• Every weapon deemed to have recoil will be assigned an impact value, which details how drastic the recoil will be.
  
• Energy weapons have no recoil EXCEPT THE PPC.
  
• All Projectile based weapons have recoil to some degree based on size of projectile and number fired at a time.
  
• All Missile based weapons have recoil to some degree based on number of missiles fired at a time.

Make location of weapons impact recoil:

• Recoil impact is based on size of mech and location of weapon on mech
  
• Size of Mech: smaller mechs experience greater recoil impacts.
  
• Location of Weapon: as weapons are placed further away from the gyro (Center Torso) recoil impact increases. (Example: recoil impact from an AC/20 placed on the Right Torso would be less than if placed on the Right Arm).

Let’s have some fun with this:

• If a mech is airborne while firing a weapon which creates recoil, the mech will not only experience the recoil impact, but will also begin spinning slightly per the impact of recoil
  
• Placement of weapons starts to matter even more, especially if you like weapons that produce recoil
  
• Targeting computers could have a new use: once recoil impact of a weapon is experienced, the targeting radical would automatically return to its original position without pilot input. Otherwise, the pilot would have to manually adjust before taking another aimed shot.
  
• While recoil from arm mounted weapons would be the most severe, they would be the fasted to reacquire the target due to speed of arms vs torso twist.

Just some thoughts... think it would be neat AND fix a few issues... but would probably create new ones. Also, this is ONE change that would have broad impacts, rather than a ton of small changes...

While I like the idea of Recoil (It exists, however slight and is purely visual for the shooter) the problem is not the ability to place multiple individual shots in a single location. The issue is placing multiple shots at the same instant to the same pixel. Recoil wouldn't have any appreciable effect on the high FLD meta we have now.

[Procyon Alpha]

I am just going to put this out there. If we had Double Blind Rule set in place you would see load out completely change. You would have to think more about your load out than just putting a whole bunch of pinpoint weapons on it. I blame the paperdoll that you get by default. That is the job of BAP!

[Procyon Alpha]

BTW take away ghost heat and put a hard heat cap of 30 in. This 80 to 100 heat cap is a bigger issue, along with front loaded dmg of the ACs. Lasers are suppose to be the front loaded DMG thus the heat to make them balanced, where the only draw back to ACs is the ammo. Lasers are suppose to be pin point and AC are in BT not very accurate. I would love to see more Heat management in the game. Something in the effect of the VW pods, now there was a chalenge.

[stjobe]

Perilthecat, on 01 June 2014 - 07:14 AM, said:

There are some interesting ideas here, especially when it comes to the lore. I'm not sure that lore should be more than a guiding principle.

You're a founder, you should remember that they sold us on the game as being "as close to TT as possible". Do you think that holds true?

Perilthecat, on 01 June 2014 - 07:14 AM, said:

And besides, right now I feel like we have a workable solution to pinpoint damage:

Lateral movement.

Lateral movement, either by the whole 'mech or just the torso does in no way stop (single or massed) ACs or PPCs from putting all their damage into a single spot.

It does, however prevent every other weapon system from doing so.

Edited by stjobe, 01 June 2014 - 08:16 AM.

[Bobzilla]

I was thinking make the circle reticle for the arms, be two circles (left arm + right arm). Space them slightly apart, oo, they don't move independently. Then make the torso reticle into two (RT + LT) + + .

This way at far ranges, only one arm and one torso can land pinpoint (by lining up the o and +), but closer the range, the spacing between reticles can fit in one location on the enemy.

The spacing between o would be different than + so all reticles can't align.