71 replies to this topic

[Vassago Rain]

CapperDeluxe, on 05 August 2014 - 02:50 PM, said:

funny because 6 jump jets on my griffon are terrible


ok lets separate the fine from the not fine:

- fine: using jump jets to feather falling off a cliff
- fine: using jump jets to help climb up a steep hill

- not fine: jump jets take several seconds just to lift you max height
- not fine: max height is abysmal, you can barely jump over the height of one Atlas with 6 jets (they're supposed to jet you around 1 level of height per jet, not 1 level per 6 jets)

Use this tool to check just how awful jets are.

http://norrisdev.com...lab/jumplab.htm

You're welcome.

[Rhent]

Why can't we go back to the days where you only needed 1 JJ to jump 20M in the air and get perfect aimed snipe shots? Why the heck can't we have that again? My need for easy mode is greater than the need for game balance. I'm seriously considering of cancelling my subscription and writing a nasty letter to my senator if I can't get my "I Win JJ" button back. I'm really, really pissed off right now. And there are a ton of people who agree with me in this thread. Screw balance, we all want our "FUN".
/SARCASM

[SkyCake]

So how I envision jump jets in bt are as follows. ..
Best possible mode of transportation
Far surpasses walk/run in terms of maneuverability
In exchange for the above perks. ..
Worst targeting imaginable during jump...
Jump jets require extra tonnage/crits and cause heat
How to implement this in mwo? ?? Simple
Only allow chain fire while in flight
Jets are all or none so you must carry all the jets on your mech or none at all
Jet critical locations are fixed. ..
Now jets can be highly maneuverable and still be fair. ..

[FireDog]

I was happy with Mech Warrior IV JJs.  You could get airborne and have a lot of fun doing it. Abuse it too much, get really airborne, and you might as well ask to receive a free alpha from the entire opposing team. For starters unlike PGI’s Hover Jets, MW4 allowed for some real physics like allowing pilots to use ramps to get a little more altitude, also carrying forward the momentum speed unlike PGI’s massive air braking of MWO (invisible drag chutes?).  I will admit Pop-snipping on MW4 was abused a lot by people using the 3rd person magic over the top views, but was much less a problem on the force 1st person view servers.
PGI's much improved take on 3rd person would probably be Ok as well.

If Jump Snipping (lateral movement shooting at speed) was a problem PGI could have introduced shake throughout the entire jump.  And if Pop-Sniping (stationary pogo snipping) was an issue, PGI could have introduced a forward movement vector to the jump so Pop-tarts would land forward onto the cover they were previously hiding behind exposing themselves to the return full fire of their adversaries.

I really do hope PGI would see the light and at least return JJs close to their previously performance.  Probably not allowing one JJ 90% performance but allowing two to get at least halfway there.  If PGI added the forward movement vector and crosshair shake and the Jump/Pop-tarts abusers would go away.  It’s a win-win, less abusive play and allowing us mech pilots that actually like to pilot to have our fun back.  MWO’s nerfs on fun are really starting to add up fast.

Edited by FireDog, 05 August 2014 - 03:45 PM.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

pgi in a word doesnt fundamentally understand that JJ are meant for getting over and up obstacles.

1 JJ should get you 1 level of height. understand that this is no less then 15-20M high, and should transport you at least 30M distance period.

a mech with 12 JJ should practically be a LAM.

a highlander with 5 JJ should jump at least 150M far and 75M high.

what this means is that any mech with at least 4 JJ should surmount 90% of all the cliffs, hills and buildings in this game period. and a mech with 2-3 JJ should easily be able to scale canyon networks walls (they are only 2-3 levels high maybe level 4 for the tallest rocks)

the platform (citadel?) in river city is only 2 levels high and the tops of its buildings are only around level 4.

the tallest cliffs and crystals in tourmaline (what seems to be the highest elevations of any map) are only around level 6-8

this means the spider with 12JJ should be able to clean jump from the water in river city over the dam. should easily be able to jump clear out and over the walls to the map in tourmaline or in a single bound get on top of any of the cliffs. in fact the 12JJ spider should be able to clear anything hill, cliff or building in this game. and in TT it would be a monster scout (as it is in certain maps).

and before you rant back "this isnt TT! fool!" yes it isnt, and shouldnt operate as a direct copy but it should maintain the spirit of the game on which its based even if we "redesign" things to adapt better to an FPS environment.

why you ask? should JJ allow you to "surmount and overcome obsticales"? (besides the fact that thats exactly what they were designed to do?)

because...

1 JJ weight scales up with mech size a 90 ton mech uses 2 ton JJ and a 25 ton mech uses 0.5 ton JJ.

2 mechs with 2-3 JJ are currently practicaly useless for getting over anything but small rocks when they should be at least semi usefull.

3 Many many many mechs like the victor, highlander, spider, catapult, grasshopper est were designed with JJ specifically in mind. have you not noticed that some mechs have nothing but JJ varients even in canon? they were designed with stronger legs and mech chassis to accomidate JJ's. and there are even some mechs that have "ghetto strapped JJ's" that have their own design quirks where their JJ could "overheat" "fail" or the chasis was never properly reinforced and so they must suffer piloting rolls when landing or jetting, and even sustain extra damage when they fail to land properly. or things like LAM's which straight up malfunctioned (failed to revert to mech form from airmech form) sometimes and would crash and burn instantly.

4 mechs make a trade off in space and weight for JJ, we can debate the relative sacrifices to benefits and balance but as it stands some mechs trade 10% or more of their total weight for JJ which is not unsubstantial.

5 JJ were meant to give you total mobility from the get-go. they allowed a mech to move through hexes without turning IE 4 JJ meant 4 hexes of movement, no need to turn your mech to JJ backwards, to the side or anything. and you could use 4 JJ to surmount 2 levels of height (better then walking as you could expend 4 movement points to walk up 2 levels one at a time) and then move 2 more hexes (if you didnt have to again jet higher or lower) so JJ allowed a mech to move easily twice as far as its movement points would have normally allowed. this is key to understanding how the victor, highlander, grasshopper and other heavy/assault mechs used JJ to "jump into the heat of battle" and brawl. compared to now where JJ universally cause you to move slower..

6 JJ allowed you to ignore movement penalties for things like water and forests or "rough" terrain in that you could simply jet over them rather then walk through them and possibly fall over (depending on scenario and water vs terrain)

7 JJ in TT requires a skill roll to make sure you dont fall down, this explicitly is implying that you had enough JJ "fuel" to feather your falls after you already JJ 4 hexes/elevations or w/e (yes we dont have knockdown but im sure PGI could come up with a system of "fall down" for landing in a bad way like on the edge of a building or on uneven terrain or even falling to fast without feathering)

8 JJ were exactly that Jets that allowed your mech to jump over and past obstacles. the only reason this is "unfair" or "OP" is because PGI has physically limited the speed and range of many mechs to aim up/down/twist drastically. making it impossible for many mechs to actually return fire against more then the legs (previously not so much now with hoover scooters) of jumping mechs while JJ brawling. this has allowed JJ mechs to "spread" damage to their legs and give them longer survivability when in TT a mech was simply harder to hit while jetting, it possessed no intrinsic "immunity" from getting hit in the upper regions. nor was "pop-tarting" possible in TT. you could fire while jetting "technically" but you could not "fire from the air then return to cover" all in one turn it simply does not work this way.

9 PGI's own decisions are why JJ have never been balanced, not because JJ are inheriently "OP" or "unbalanced". with things like long jetting and hang times it gives you lots of time to "aim and shoot" while in the air, realisticly JJ would be extremely overpowered and give you "one big boost all at once" to save on space/weight for fuel. it makes no sense to use underpowered rockets to make something fly it actually increases the amount of fuel needed exponentially to move something slowly with rockets vs giving it one big short boost.

10 If JJ worked properly and moved you fast, high and with a vengance and you then had to concentrate on landing instead of falling flat on your face we wouldnt even worry about poptarts becaues you wouldnt have the time or concentration for aiming while inflight.

11 fire paul or at least shoot his ideas down with regularity.

[Eglar]

while I agree that JJs could have been altered differently, I don't find the JJ change bad. In fact, the way JJs used to be, they were very overpowered for the tonnage and 1 critical slot invested. There would be absolutely no overpowering reason to pick a non-JJ variant if there is a JJ one, with the Cataphracts being a good example.

As things are, you can still navigate through rough area, reach places non-JJ mechs can't, it just takes longer. Jump-Sniping still works with mini-jumps but is not as effective as it used to be.

[5th Fedcom Rat]

Gonna have to be a contrarian to most in this thread. As much as I love jump jet brawling, and wished the Summoner on my alt account wasn't so terrible, I have to say the JJ nerf has made the game FEEL much more like Mechwarrior again. It made the game feel grounded again (heh).

Rather than what it was turning into pre JJ nerf which was a bunny hopping munchkin fest. All the "elite" players would tap their JJs in brawls to exploit the netcode bugs so you ended up with people jumping all over the place like rabbits. Was starting to feel more like Hawken than a game of 90 ton walking lumbering tanks as Mechwarrior/Battletech is supposed to be about.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

Novakaine, on 05 August 2014 - 06:50 AM, said:

I want jj's for my Stalker.

JJs for my Atlas and I'll start playing tomorrow. its canon.

[YueFei]

5th Fedcom Rat, on 06 August 2014 - 12:07 AM, said:

Gonna have to be a contrarian to most in this thread. As much as I love jump jet brawling, and wished the Summoner on my alt account wasn't so terrible, I have to say the JJ nerf has made the game FEEL much more like Mechwarrior again. It made the game feel grounded again (heh).

Rather than what it was turning into pre JJ nerf which was a bunny hopping munchkin fest. All the "elite" players would tap their JJs in brawls to exploit the netcode bugs so you ended up with people jumping all over the place like rabbits. Was starting to feel more like Hawken than a game of 90 ton walking lumbering tanks as Mechwarrior/Battletech is supposed to be about.

That's because JJs fail to adhere to physics. Instead of starting at low initial velocity (which would prevent bunny hopping), and gradually accelerating to higher ascent speeds, we have JJs that actually produce almost no vertical acceleration, but you gain almost 5 meters near instantly just from tapping spacebar.

If they were to act more like rockets, you could get big air out of them. And you couldn't bunny-hop with them.

[Asmudius Heng]

Yes, just add JJ shake after you cut the jets and make it slightly less and lets actually retain some semblance of mobility.

Jump sniping is fun, i do it also but as Roland said it makes more sense for them to be REAL mobility tools.

If they had reticle shake you could still jump and fir in close range and hit suff but have bad accuracy - just stops the extreme range stuff and utter pinpoint medium and close range.

It never should have been taken out - people claiming motion sickness were a bunch of BS.

... and i do not hate Jumps snipers or anything, i spent half my time in MW4 jump sniping - but if it is a balance issue they cannot solve then let JJs be about mobility and positioning please and not snap shotting in the air as fun and skillful as it is - if it is breaking the game then return the reticle chake and the mobility please.

[Mechteric]

FireDog, on 05 August 2014 - 03:24 PM, said:

I was happy with Mech Warrior IV JJs. You could get airborne and have a lot of fun doing it. Abuse it too much, get really airborne, and you might as well ask to receive a free alpha from the entire opposing team. For starters unlike PGI’s Hover Jets, MW4 allowed for some real physics like allowing pilots to use ramps to get a little more altitude, also carrying forward the momentum speed unlike PGI’s massive air braking of MWO (invisible drag chutes?). I will admit Pop-snipping on MW4 was abused a lot by people using the 3rd person magic over the top views, but was much less a problem on the force 1st person view servers.

The good jump snipers in MW4 only needed to just barely crest a hill to get a shot off since there was no jet shake. Just saying, MW4 isn't the best example. MWLL is to date the only Mechwarrior game that had a balance of fun, useful jets that didn't favor jump sniping in a way it has most other Mechwarriors.

[Yokaiko]

Rhent, on 05 August 2014 - 03:02 PM, said:

Why can't we go back to the days where you only needed 1 JJ to jump 20M in the air and get perfect aimed snipe shots? Why the heck can't we have that again? My need for easy mode is greater than the need for game balance. I'm seriously considering of cancelling my subscription and writing a nasty letter to my senator if I can't get my "I Win JJ" button back. I'm really, really pissed off right now. And there are a ton of people who agree with me in this thread. Screw balance, we all want our "FUN".
/SARCASM

No one said one JJ wasn't to much before, its the fact that you can have 5 tons on a heavy, or TEN tons on an assault, and can't jump half of your height with any fuel left for the landing.