40 replies to this topic

[Grimm Peaper]

Brief Summary: My prediction is that Increased falling damage could possibly be the magic bullet to balance jump snipers and the devs have already stated they are looking into increasing falling damage for larger mechs according to the Devlog #4.

Reasoning: Remember how in previous MW (i.e. MW2) titles, if you jumped up and didn't save anything for the landing, you would absolutely wreck your legs when you came down? If you came down hard enough, you could literally smash your own legs off in a single fall. In MWO, this doesn't happen. You would be hard pressed to smash a leg or 2 even if you tried. Giant 90 ton assault mechs can jump to full height, leave nothing for the landing and come down repeatedly and laugh the damage off.

If the devs scaled the falling damage according to weight class, this could curb JJ snipers while leaving light mechs almost untouched. For the heavier mechs, they would need to leave more of their thrust for padding their fall or risk severely damaging their legs. If they want more thrust, they'll need more JJ which means less weight for weapons. It might also mean they might be limited in how many times they can jump snipe. The devs could even add exponential damage to repeated jumps, and reason it out as microfractures to the frame.

Whether or not the Devs intend this, I don't know, but it would seem to make logical sense. It would not be particularly hard to implement and yet be a final effective solution to jump sniping.

Edited by Grimm Peaper, 01 June 2014 - 10:19 AM.

[FupDup]

Grimm Peaper, on 01 June 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

Reasoning: Remember how in previous MW titles, if you jumped up and didn't save anything for the landing, you would absolutely wreck your legs when you came down? If you came down hard enough, you could literally smash your own legs off in a single fall.

I don't recall that ever happening in MW3 or MW4. Which titles featured that?


Also, a poptart doesn't necessarily have to go very high to get his shot off. The really good ones only pop just high enough to shoot, and then fall out of sight before anyone knows what hit them. Having the falling damage code reworked is still something that really should happen (right now, Lolcusts and Commandos are the main/only mechs penalized by it), but unless they crank it up to the sky I don't expect a total revolution to result from it.

Edited by FupDup, 01 June 2014 - 09:52 AM.

[Jin Ma]

Only thing fall damage penalizes right now is light mechs. hope they fix this.

[Funkadelic Mayhem]

I cant wait tell my light can fall off a 2 foot rock and not take leg damage!

[Ursh]

Falling damage penalizes mediums as well.

It's ridiculous that victors and highlanders can jump to max height, fall, and take no damage to their legs.

[Jin Ma]

Ursh, on 01 June 2014 - 10:19 AM, said:

Falling damage penalizes mediums as well.

It's ridiculous that victors and highlanders can jump to max height, fall, and take no damage to their legs.

Right now fall damage is a flat daamge, so for mechs with alot of leg armor (like heavies/assaults) it does only a small fraction of their leg. however for mechs without a lot of leg armor (lighs, mediums) it reduces a good fraction of the leg damage.

Fall damage to the legs should be done as a percentage of total leg armor. As a result light mechs will take less fall damage than they currently do, and heavies mechs will take more damage like it should.

Edited by Jin Ma, 01 June 2014 - 10:36 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I have to say, this change is one that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Making Lights no longer kill themselves by running over rough terrain and making Assaults actually care about walking off cliffs or jumping to apex heights without fuel for the return trip will be a dream come true.

That said, Highlanders should get a quirk that treats them like a mech 30 tons lighter for fall damage (their legs were specially designed to absorb fall damage due to the prevalence of the Highlander Burial maneuver).

[Khobai]

Quote

It's ridiculous that victors and highlanders can jump to max height, fall, and take no damage to their legs.

not really. highlanders have reinforced legs. theyre designed to jump on the heads of other mechs.

[Harmless01]

Russ has said that they plan to do something along those lines.

https://twitter.com/...802369441677312

"Two things we are working on as to JJ. First I think paul mentioned in the VLOG - we are adding scalar damage from falling based on tonnage"

Edited by Harmless01, 01 June 2014 - 11:48 AM.

[Khobai]

Im concerned this will be like hill climbing all over and punish mechs without jumpjets the most.

Personally I think implementing features like fall damage and jumpjet heat to try and nerf jump snipers is silly. If you reduce pinpoint damage, jump snipers are no longer overpowered, so PGI should be focusing on reducing pinpoint damage.

[Jacobei]

Jump sniping bad / LRMS good?

[Eddrick]

I doubt it. Fall damage is easily avoided and even multiplied fall damage wouldn't hurt as bad as being hit by enemy fire. So, Poptarting would still be well worth the tradeoff.

The idea should be to make Poptarting more risky or harder to do. Not to stop Poptarting's use all together.

[Khobai]

Quote

The idea should be to make Poptarting more risky or harder to do. Not to stop Poptarting's use all together.

That still doesnt fix the problem though. Making something harder to do doesnt change the fact its overpowered.

[Mechwarrior413183]

Khobai, on 01 June 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

Im concerned this will be like hill climbing all over and punish mechs without jumpjets the most.

Personally I think implementing features like fall damage and jumpjet heat to try and nerf jump snipers is silly. If you reduce pinpoint damage, jump snipers are no longer overpowered, so PGI should be focusing on reducing pinpoint damage.

Personally I think they should embrace pinpoint damage and rebuild the weapons systems around it as shooting games are mostly about delivering pinpoint damage, guns don't fire fast enough for recoil to be a big deal unfortunately and if you did add it you'd just be nerfing the less pinpointy weapons and adding shake to movement would just buff jump snipers. I don't know how they could do it but I'm not a game designer and not really all that interested in theory crafting.

[Lykaon]

Grimm Peaper, on 01 June 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

Brief Summary: My prediction is that Increased falling damage could possibly be the magic bullet to balance jump snipers and the devs have already stated they are looking into increasing falling damage for larger mechs according to the Devlog #4.

Reasoning: Remember how in previous MW (i.e. MW2) titles, if you jumped up and didn't save anything for the landing, you would absolutely wreck your legs when you came down? If you came down hard enough, you could literally smash your own legs off in a single fall. In MWO, this doesn't happen. You would be hard pressed to smash a leg or 2 even if you tried. Giant 90 ton assault mechs can jump to full height, leave nothing for the landing and come down repeatedly and laugh the damage off.

If the devs scaled the falling damage according to weight class, this could curb JJ snipers while leaving light mechs almost untouched. For the heavier mechs, they would need to leave more of their thrust for padding their fall or risk severely damaging their legs. If they want more thrust, they'll need more JJ which means less weight for weapons. It might also mean they might be limited in how many times they can jump snipe. The devs could even add exponential damage to repeated jumps, and reason it out as microfractures to the frame.

Whether or not the Devs intend this, I don't know, but it would seem to make logical sense. It would not be particularly hard to implement and yet be a final effective solution to jump sniping.

To effectivley address "poptarting" we need to look at why it's done and why it's so prevelent.

So why is it done?

Poptarting allows for optimization of cover use while also retaining an offensive posture.Or simply put you can shoot and return to cover the fastest with this method.

So we know why and it makes sense.

So why is it so powerful?

The answer to this is the weapon mechanics used in conjuction make the poptart so potent,Nobody ever complains about the large laser poptart or the SRM poptart or any other weapon + poptart combo but the poptart + front loaded damage weapon combo is the issue.

So,is it jumpjets or FLD weapons that are the issue? would you even give a damn if poptarts used large lasers and missiles?

Fix the FLD issue and poptarting becomes a quirky tactic with marginal success ratios.

[Grey Ghost]

Khobai, on 01 June 2014 - 11:34 AM, said:

not really. highlanders have reinforced legs. theyre designed to jump on the heads of other mechs.

Will they remember to make it a Mech Quirk when they redo falling damage I wonder.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

If messing with fall damage impacts Lights and Mediums, I'm against it. One suggestion could be to make an effective module which negates the damage but then tarting would be back.

2 or 3 tarts per game is not an issue. Matches and teams with nothing but tarts are the issue. JJs and fall damage should remain as is and PGI should address weapon criticals doing full damage from 1 point getting through armor to prevent two shotting mechs. This gives more casual teams time to form a strategy or flank rather than the pissing contest competitive matches have boiled down to. You never hear of 1 tart ever dominating a match, not even a lance of tarts can carry their team. It's all about excess, player attitudes who exploit them, and what needs to be done to give those that don't a fighting chance without resorting to the same dishonorable tactics.

Edited by lockwoodx, 01 June 2014 - 01:02 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Personally I think they should embrace pinpoint damage and rebuild the weapons systems around it as shooting games are mostly about delivering pinpoint damage,

That would be one approach, albeit it would take us farther away from battetech, and I think most people would like the game to be closer to battletech: which means less pinpoint.

[Chemie]

given clan mechs have few with JJ and low slung weapons, making them good brawlers, PGI does not want to have IS mechs with a counter (which would be poptarting). Better to have everything a brawl for clan release. It would not make sens eto have different game styles between clan and IS because then there would be more ways to balance the two.

[Kassatsu]

FupDup, on 01 June 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

I don't recall that ever happening in MW3 or MW4. Which titles featured that?

MW2 did it, I rammed face first into a cliffside at 230kph in the air one time... Lost my entire right torso, had some massive CT and head damage and nearly lost a leg. MW3 potentially knocked you down (which was a death sentence mid-combat - assuming people weren't following the 'no-legging no-knockdown-shooting' rules, I believe you could take damage to your legs from such a landing as well)... MW4 was just a mess all around.

Edited by Kassatsu, 01 June 2014 - 03:19 PM.