39 replies to this topic

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Kristov Kerensky, on 05 July 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

Just wait until we get collisions back...

From watching ShinVector's video above and hearing other's anecdotal evidence of getting heavily damaged when their lights run into friendlies, I'd say we're there...

[Richard Hardslab]

No offense Kristov, but this whole rubbing salt in the wound thing you insist on doing? Grow up.

Lights are not something people just 'pick up' and if you want the game to insist on realism then check this ****: The amount of force the legs on a light mech need to be able to withstand in order to run at the 150+ speeds that they do are EXTREME. If you want more Realism than that, I'm sure CoD welcomes you.

While it's possible you may in fact play lights, I highly doubt it. If you do play lights, I seriously doubt you play them effectively. If yo do play them effectively, you sure as hell aren't in the middle of things using complicated maneuvers, you're a long distance striker. I'd love to see you attempt to convince anyone here otherwise.

There are a dozen good reasons in this forum that people are reporting the current state as an issue.
Not all light mechs have jump jets. Man I feel bad for them right now...
You can say all you want that they just need to slow down, and that's wonderful, but making a light an easy target means they might as well be playing a medium.
Lights are playable(and fun to play) because they can do tricky maneuvers that other mechs won't get away with due to speed restraints, bobbing and weaving through/around enemy forces requires practice and skill to do well and if you don't focus on targets you die. You don't have time to focus on whether the shorter hills are going to further damage your legs or not.
You can even argue that there are fewer Poptarts now. That's true and actually awesome. No one has been or will be afraid of a Light Poptart. Ever. The change may be to fix Poptarting but lights should not be taking such a hit for something they're not built for or terribly good at.(And if you're afraid of a Poptart with a single PPC... well I'm certainly not seeing it)

Next, we can look at the effect that this change is going to have on the community. I really wanna see someone argue against this, I do, cause there's no way it won't be interesting if taken seriously.
Anyone going from slow Mediums, Heavies that aren't the Dragon, or any Assaults, will not drop down to lights. I've never met a Heavy/Assault pilot who thought running Lights was anything but extremely difficult: stock builds got you dead because they're too slow, and when you speed them up they're difficult to control. All of a sudden it's easier to break those legs, and you're going to see it a lot. We've now just brought the learning curve from hard to EVE Online.
End result we'll see less and less Light pilots being picked up. This is NOT good for the game in any sense, especially since PGI is attempting to introduce 3/3/3/3.
Hell, why would anyone even want to switch to Lights after they watch them break their legs during regular maneuvers every couple matches?

You can argue all you like about 35 tons falling 8m, and hey, jump jetting to deal with the fall isn't incredibly effective in select situations, and hey, maybe all those lights that don't have Jump Jets should be scrapped permanently.

Or maybe we can admit that current state Lights are unnecessarily difficult to play. Lights are already difficult to play well, and when you don't play well you get yourself dead real fast. There's no real good reason to have had to make it harder by adding a damage component to your most important and vulnerable parts occur semi-regularly.

I'm not saying the system needs to be removed by any means. It's good to have something to steer pop tarting away from where it currently it(PGI's been working at it for some time now). We do not need to risk destroying 1/4 of the community by having the other 3/4's sigh in dismay when they see they've got lights on their team and ***** about team mates that die too easily.

In the end, I'm curious to see where this goes overall. But reality is Lights risk losing a lot of their appeal to a lot of people. It should be addressed, not brushed under the carpet and ignored.

[Richard Hardslab]

An interesting and confusing thing I noticed during my own testing after watching that video with the DFA'ing. I don't know if the commentator mentions it, but testing it in the testing grounds, when you fall off a mech you jumped onto your fall speed accelerates rapidly. I went from a controlled fall onto the top of an Atlas, and when I slipped off I went from 18 on it's head to 45 when I touched ground.
I realize Atlai are tall, but it's bizarre and way too fast for the fall distance we're talking.

[stjobe]

Kristov Kerensky, on 05 July 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

These are huge massive walking tanks we're in, they are NOT meant to be abused the way everyone has been abusing them for so long now, running off cliffs that are over 10m high, dropping from jumps over 30m high and so on.

Actually, they are.

Go read pages 30-42 of the Tech Manual and you'll see that these aren't dumb "tanks on legs", they are very, very smart robots fully capable - and indeed designed to - walk, run, and jump around on just around every kind of terrain with minimal input from the MechWarrior. A 'Mech running through a forest will avoid crashing into trees on its own, it will not crash its arms through a building while running unless its MechWarrior orders it to.

As for taking damage while running, according to TT rules a 'Mech has no chance at all to take damage going full speed over a 2-elevation change (that's 12 metres). After that, there's a pilot roll to avoid taking falling damage with +1 per elevation level, which means an average MechWarrior (pilot skill 4) has a 8.3% chance to avoid damage from a 48-metre fall (8 elevation levels + 4 piloting skill = 12+ to avoid damage), and a 50% chance to avoid damage from an 18-metre fall.

"Falling" in the BT universe is losing control of your 'Mech, not just vertical speed. You do NOT take fall damage unless you fail a piloting roll. "Falling" means "falling 3+ elevation levels and failing a piloting roll" or "failing a piloting roll and thus falling over" - not just going down a 10m drop.

'Mech legs are 6-9 meter tall structures, jointed in (at least) three places, with an internal skeleton, myomer musculature, and shock absorbing pads under their feet. They're built to walk, run, and jump at high speeds in difficult terrain, there's no way they should take damage the way they're currently doing.

To add insult to injury, this new mechanic penalizes non-JJ equipped Light 'Mechs the most (Locust, Commando, Raven) while doing exactly nothing to stop pop-tarting.

Here's a picture of me in my TDK on HPG taking fall damage from going 171 kph down a slope. That just shouldn't happen:

[Deucebackpack]

I personaly don't mind the new fall damage at all. I run a Commando and a Locust and I do get leg damage from running full speed down a slope and going airborne but that just seems realistic to me. I like the added challenge of trying to pilot my lights with more care when running at top speed. It actualy makes the game less boring since instead of just carelesly running over rocks and slopes I now have to think abit about it.

As for the JJ capable light mechs I think it is also good that they can no longer just bounce around wildly like playing a Quake type FPS shooter.

Call me crazy but I would also like if the mechs would take good deal of damage if they ran into a building or another mech.

[F R A N C I S]

They really need to fix fall damage mechanics. A mech shouldn't take any damage from dropping 8m.
Falling, like face planting ok, but there's no mechanism for failed piloting in MWO.

Having said that, I don't mind if they want to introduce fall damage to help game playability- no such thing as balance.
I'm a Jenner pilot, and I'd be the first to admit in pugs if you got to choose a difficulty level, lights are Easy mode. But taking damage from slopes, over boulders, even getting bumped into is just silly. It does nothing to make the game fun.

I pilot every class, but in addition to all the aforementioned issues, mediums I've noticed are even harder to play now, and easier to kill when I'm in heavies and assaults because they all seem to have orange/red legs by the time I meet them. Being slower than lights, they are easy pickings.

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

Yep, they overshot on the nerf gun again. What do y'all think. About 6 months to a year for a fix. And very few good lights left by then?

[Dyex]

The balance was never good between lights that can't equip JJ and the ones that can and now it's even worse. Why would anyone want to choose to drop in a non jump-jet light now? Hell why would they even what to drop in any lights right now, oh wait - they aren't. This game has some of the most extreme battle fields when it comes to goat trails and ridiculous slopes at least give lights the tools to navigate it and do there job.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Richard, I do pilot Lights, have since the closed alpha and beta when we had collisions and I could plant the arse of my Jenner into the face of an Atlas at 130kph and knock it down, MWO tbagging back in the day. I also realized that developing bad habits, like running my Light into bigger Mechs or using my JJ to get max height and leave nothing for the landing, was a really bonehead move so I've avoided developing them. I don't ram into another Mech of any size unless I'm out of weapons and am trying for that ever elusive BUT possible ramming kill(2 to date since the game went Live, 4 total since the alpha). I don't hit max height and drain my JJ unless I'm actually testing changes to falling damage, like with the last update. Yeah, falling from heights hurts now, it should have ALWAYS hurt like it does now. Stjobe mentions the movement rules in PnP, he fails to mention that those elevation changes take place over a turn and require you to trade forward movement for vertical movement. You don't just jump down and go as he makes it seem, that would actually cause you to take damage to your Mech, up to and including making said Mech unusable without serious repairs. He also fails to mention, and you and others complaining about the fall damage when JJing, that using JJ in PnP does NOT mean you hit your jets, hit max height and then just FALL to the ground. You use those JJ to take off and control your flight AND cushion your landing so that you do NOT do damage to your Mech every time you use those JJ.

Players are failing to follow some basics when using JJ, they use them all up and leave nothing to cushion the landing, and that's the biggest issue. Running over bad terrain, well, it is indeed a pain in the arse, but you HAVE to slow down and take the terrain at a speed that doesn't tear your legs apart. Hey, guess what, these are the SAME movement rules in PnP!

I have yet to hurt my own legs in my Mechs, all classes, without or without JJ, unless I did something I KNOW was a bad move and would cause damage to them. I slow my Lights down on bad terrain or feather my JJs to handle the bumps. I try not to walk off high places without JJ and I try not to use my JJ to the point where there's nothing left to cushion the landing.

I've jumped off the I9 peak on Alpine, not a point of damage. Jumped off the highest crystals on Tourmaline without any damage. That's on my Kit Fox with 2 JJ btw, actually have to seriously work those JJ with that, but it's doable. My Jenner(S) and Spider...forget it, I don't take damage from falls, just being shot.

[AC]

Anyone else been able to reproduce the issue with the air strikes?


Additionally, it seems that LRM now excessively leg mechs. Watched a heavies legs melt from indirect LRM fire.

[Galenit]

Svidro, on 04 July 2014 - 08:02 AM, said:

There are also some hills where you definitely "skip" off of rather than actually going airborn for a second where you take damage. In fact on some hills you can be in constant contact with the hill and keep taking damage as you go down it. Had that in a direwolf on alpine.

When you go down a slope and do a little jump to a bumb, you are floating over the ground downhill.
You are not more then a few meters above ground, but it counts as you where flying straight and go down straight after it.

They missed to use vectors for the calculation:

\ Thats what happens when you go downhill
.\\
..\\
...\\

___ Thats what the mechanic uses for calculation in that case
.... I
.... I
.... I

This may be one cause of the problems with the new fall damage.

Edited by Galenit, 09 July 2014 - 01:14 AM.

[Ironwithin]

Just learned something new and exciting:

Your leg-stored ammuniton can explode from fall-damage.
Didn't know that... just got to experience it.
"Ironwithin killed Ironwithin" "Cause of Death: Ammo Explosion"
After dropping down from upper HGP to one of the acces-tunnels to lower HPG with slightly yellow internals in one leg.

How awesome is that ?

[Duke Nedo]

So far I think it feels ok for heavies and assaults, but too tough on the lights... so why not just tweak the scaling factor for lights? Next patch?

[Lily from animove]

Richard Hardslab, on 05 July 2014 - 10:46 PM, said:

No offense Kristov, but this whole rubbing salt in the wound thing you insist on doing? Grow up.

Lights are not something people just 'pick up' and if you want the game to insist on realism then check this ****: The amount of force the legs on a light mech need to be able to withstand in order to run at the 150+ speeds that they do are EXTREME. If you want more Realism than that, I'm sure CoD welcomes you.

While it's possible you may in fact play lights, I highly doubt it. If you do play lights, I seriously doubt you play them effectively. If yo do play them effectively, you sure as hell aren't in the middle of things using complicated maneuvers, you're a long distance striker. I'd love to see you attempt to convince anyone here otherwise.

There are a dozen good reasons in this forum that people are reporting the current state as an issue.
Not all light mechs have jump jets. Man I feel bad for them right now...
You can say all you want that they just need to slow down, and that's wonderful, but making a light an easy target means they might as well be playing a medium.
Lights are playable(and fun to play) because they can do tricky maneuvers that other mechs won't get away with due to speed restraints, bobbing and weaving through/around enemy forces requires practice and skill to do well and if you don't focus on targets you die. You don't have time to focus on whether the shorter hills are going to further damage your legs or not.
You can even argue that there are fewer Poptarts now. That's true and actually awesome. No one has been or will be afraid of a Light Poptart. Ever. The change may be to fix Poptarting but lights should not be taking such a hit for something they're not built for or terribly good at.(And if you're afraid of a Poptart with a single PPC... well I'm certainly not seeing it)

Next, we can look at the effect that this change is going to have on the community. I really wanna see someone argue against this, I do, cause there's no way it won't be interesting if taken seriously.
Anyone going from slow Mediums, Heavies that aren't the Dragon, or any Assaults, will not drop down to lights. I've never met a Heavy/Assault pilot who thought running Lights was anything but extremely difficult: stock builds got you dead because they're too slow, and when you speed them up they're difficult to control. All of a sudden it's easier to break those legs, and you're going to see it a lot. We've now just brought the learning curve from hard to EVE Online.
End result we'll see less and less Light pilots being picked up. This is NOT good for the game in any sense, especially since PGI is attempting to introduce 3/3/3/3.
Hell, why would anyone even want to switch to Lights after they watch them break their legs during regular maneuvers every couple matches?

You can argue all you like about 35 tons falling 8m, and hey, jump jetting to deal with the fall isn't incredibly effective in select situations, and hey, maybe all those lights that don't have Jump Jets should be scrapped permanently.

Or maybe we can admit that current state Lights are unnecessarily difficult to play. Lights are already difficult to play well, and when you don't play well you get yourself dead real fast. There's no real good reason to have had to make it harder by adding a damage component to your most important and vulnerable parts occur semi-regularly.

I'm not saying the system needs to be removed by any means. It's good to have something to steer pop tarting away from where it currently it(PGI's been working at it for some time now). We do not need to risk destroying 1/4 of the community by having the other 3/4's sigh in dismay when they see they've got lights on their team and ***** about team mates that die too easily.

In the end, I'm curious to see where this goes overall. But reality is Lights risk losing a lot of their appeal to a lot of people. It should be addressed, not brushed under the carpet and ignored.

And what if lights now have to play different? what if they cna not be like carrions surroung their oppoennts anymore. they have speed, and they cna still use it to scout, not to be a piranha in barrel of carps. They now may not be able to 1on 1 an atlas anymore as they never would dare to do in a TT match. They may now be the scouts or support role. Of course, if you are used to that previous playstyle, this may be a hard change to get used to.

[ShinVector]

Lily from animove, on 10 July 2014 - 01:14 AM, said:

And what if lights now have to play different? what if they cna not be like carrions surroung their oppoennts anymore. they have speed, and they cna still use it to scout, not to be a piranha in barrel of carps. They now may not be able to 1on 1 an atlas anymore as they never would dare to do in a TT match. They may now be the scouts or support role. Of course, if you are used to that previous playstyle, this may be a hard change to get used to.

Don't really need to change if you had played this game for a while...
Brawling doesn't work.. Poptarting.. If that doesn't work sniping... that doesn't work.. + ECM... The scenarios will change according to ELO and your team... A good light pilot will have learnt many play styles.

You can 1v1 any BAD assault mech pilot.. For the good ones.. You got to come back to them when they are half dead.

Edited by ShinVector, 10 July 2014 - 02:56 AM.

[Deucebackpack]

Ironwithin, on 09 July 2014 - 06:49 PM, said:

Just learned something new and exciting:

Your leg-stored ammuniton can explode from fall-damage.
Didn't know that... just got to experience it.
"Ironwithin killed Ironwithin" "Cause of Death: Ammo Explosion"
After dropping down from upper HGP to one of the acces-tunnels to lower HPG with slightly yellow internals in one leg.

How awesome is that ?

That kind of drop is pure suicide especially with a yellow leg. I think that is a perfectly fine result. And why could fall damage not cause an ammo explosion? If the ammunition gets compacted by the force of the impact theres a good chance it explodes IMO.


I was really suprised at the huge amount of negative feedback regarding the new fall damage. I have seen some videos of people using their jump jets to deliberately blow of their legs and alot of whine about running on rough terrain / slopes. All of these issues can be dealt with by adjusting your play style.

In game running my 169 kph Locust and 139 kph Commando I have seen no difference other than I can no longer fall from great heights with no penalty. I have not noticed the excessive damage reported from running on slopes or rough terrain. If I go airborne I reduce my speed and try to go down the slope in a slight angle and that causes me to stay on the ground.

In any case I have read that fall damage for light mechs will be reduced in the coming patches. It will be interesting to see how much. The current fall damage was already pretty conservative in my oppinion.

[Deucebackpack]

Richard Hardslab, on 05 July 2014 - 10:46 PM, said:

Next, we can look at the effect that this change is going to have on the community. I really wanna see someone argue against this, I do, cause there's no way it won't be interesting if taken seriously.

Anyone going from slow Mediums, Heavies that aren't the Dragon, or any Assaults, will not drop down to lights. I've never met a Heavy/Assault pilot who thought running Lights was anything but extremely difficult: stock builds got you dead because they're too slow, and when you speed them up they're difficult to control. All of a sudden it's easier to break those legs, and you're going to see it a lot. We've now just brought the learning curve from hard to EVE Online.

End result we'll see less and less Light pilots being picked up. This is NOT good for the game in any sense, especially since PGI is attempting to introduce 3/3/3/3.

Hell, why would anyone even want to switch to Lights after they watch them break their legs during regular maneuvers every couple matches?

Pilotin a light mech is much easier than a heavy one to anyone who has played a standard FPS game.
However when piloting a heavier mech you feel more like a mech. You have to take into consideration things like not beign able to stop or change direction immediately. Also with the slow speeds if you get into a bad situation you are dead meat. A light can just run away.

Light mechs only "drawback" is that you can not just stand and fight the enemy. You have to run behind them or seek already damaged opponents. Other than that they still seem like nimble and agile little men running and jumping around like crazy.

What the fall damage did to lights was to at least make the player think twice before using them like in a standard FPS game.

Edited by Deucebackpack, 10 July 2014 - 02:31 PM.

[Ironwithin]

Deucebackpack, on 10 July 2014 - 03:05 AM, said:

That kind of drop is pure suicide especially with a yellow leg. I think that is a perfectly fine result. And why could fall damage not cause an ammo explosion? If the ammunition gets compacted by the force of the impact theres a good chance it explodes IMO.

You misunderstand me, I LIKED that.
Was trying to make a desperate getaway from 2 timber wolfs getting too close for my LRMs and that was the only route that offered some cover from their ultras and ppcs. Damage to the other leg wasn't so bad, turned slightly orange from being yellow. I just didn't know that I could pretty much critically hit myself, have bad enough luck critically hitting others.

Apart from being way too harsh on lights, I like the new fall-mechanics.

[VXJaeger]

There definetly is some adjustment to do in this matter. Meds take damage to legs just by dropping into river in canyon network.

[Vermaxx]

Falling damage and jets tuning could be completely wiped off the board if they re-implement one feature:

TRIPPING

I would happily deal with the Dragon Linebackers (esp now with how forked from LRM you are out in the open) if it meant these smarmy lights would fall on their faces when they try hugging people and running through mechs.

Edited by Vermaxx, 10 July 2014 - 04:46 AM.