lartfor, on 28 July 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:
Ehh... if anything increased hp values make it MORE like cod, not less (you started the ****** cod comparison btw).
Go play a real man's simulation style shooter... Much lower hp pools, much longer ranges, and much easier to be the "hero" yet tactical elements within the game are incredibly important... You will find that the reality of play style with higher hp pools is actually the complete opposite as you claim.
Definitely. Its one reason why I am spending much more time in War Thunder. Zero HP here. You are completely relying on the robustness of your aircraft, your speed or maneuverability if you are a plane, or the thickness and angles of your armor, as well as constantly angling your armor to deflect shots from someone shooting at you. Hull down, side scraping. You can get one shot across the map if you are not too careful. A lot of tank duels happen zoomed at a tiny target who is shooting back at you, and one shot can decide everything.
The main problem of Mechwarrior is that you stand in a decidely tall mech that is way too easy to hit and doesn't have much in alternatives in hiding and avoiding those shots. So you are just twisting to distribute and soak up damage, or kill the other guy faster. Because the very nature of having damage sponges, this creates a massed mob mentality, where tactics essentially boil down to a big blog focus firing on one target for quick kills. In contrast to games like War Thunder or World of Tanks, where forces are spread out, and can afford to be, and the system rewards the thoughtfully aggressive and daring player, as long as you are not reckless and stupid.
If you are one mech, facing four or five, your goose is literally cooked, since its impossible to do the hero shot and kill opponents quickly. Instead you are going to be overwhelmed, and the fact that you are going to get staggered by the LRM and ballistic fire, your weapons are going to overheat while deperately firing. The high damage soak, mob based focus firing mechanic of MWO means staying together as a mob is the consistent way to win, even if PGI tries to break up the spawn. And one big result of tis is that MWO games tend to end up mostly one sided, one big roll over or another in favor of you or against you. Rollovers are less common in WT and WoT, despite the one shotting and all, partly one game has respawns, and for both, the one shotting can also be applied against the currently more numerous team.
MW4, which has a quick time to kill for each mech but featured large maps and respawns, feels more fun, even wth the poptarts and all. I remember when playing MW4, there was no need to mob to win games.
For MWO, you can't turn back what has been done. I do think it can still build from what it already has accomplished by making some changes, though this is not complete.
1. Get rid of the small tight maps or change them into larger bigger ones. Forest Valley, Frozen City, River City especially. The older maps of MWO is problematic, the newer ones, at least those introduced in 2013, were better.
2. We certainly need new maps, larger ones. Maps should offer a combination of sniper firing lanes, to areas with plenty of cover and offer brawling opportunities. Notice how maps in WoT has a combination of wide open fields for snipers and tight tights and villages for close range brawlers. Maps should offer multiple lanes of approach.
3. I think we need to keep players longer in the game, and we don't need to reduce damage or increase HP. That other way is to allow respawns. Its been proposed to have some mode where you can have a limited respawn --- the original mech you came with doesn't respawn, but you pick from one in three or four other choices in a pallete. I do think there is one problem, that the ELO matching system is based on personal performance in a weight class, not the sum overall performance per se as a total and regardless of weight class. The other dropped mechs have to be of the same weight class. I do propose an even tighter alternative --- you get three lives, these three lives are based on three variants of one mech. If your primary mech is destroyed, you are allowed to continue with the next variant of the same mech in your inventory. If you don't happen to have three variants of one mech, then you are pretty much out if one or two of such is destroyed. You also should be allowed to choose which variant to start the match.
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