181 replies to this topic

[Asmudius Heng]

I agree to a degree.

The trick is to allow short time windows to do significant damage of a sort enough to be beneficial to the overall picture and worth the risk of splitting your force.

What people want is to make sure the same sort of strike tactics cannot be the main tactic when used in greater numbers. Like the Gauss being such an awesome weapons before it had the charge up could do everything and AC20 could for the most part and more.

What most people want i think is to have that feeling of a mech slowly dying around you rather than being smashed through the CT too quickly and not having a chance to respond .... however most people are terrible at hiding their damaged locations too.

I made a post about this before, the more attrition and time to kill, the less risk vs reward there is on a tactical level.

Without other options such as capture objectives to split the force, or AI tanks etc to bolster etc generally people focus on killing a single target quickly an efficiently which doesnt really change on TTK just in execution.

What can be changed though is how mechs take damage and crumble.

Making it more rewarding in a tactical sense (not a cbill sense) to cripple not kill ... some suggest more internal armour to give more time to do crits, but we still get into that attrition space ... however, if you can pull off a flanking move and know you disabled systems if not killed then you might count that as a short term victory etc.

It is a tough nut to crack thats for sure ... i think mechs last plenty long right now, but i do feel i hardly ever lose a component without losing an entire section too.

[Asmudius Heng]

I should also add the less measurable effect of flanking though is turning the enemies attention despite damage. Split focus then push kind of tactic.

If mechs were even more sluggish just the act of making them turn would be beneficial to stop enemies bringing weapons to bear and exposing rear armour etc.

So the mobility and speed of the mechs are another variable in the mix ...

[Kiiyor]

Asmudius Heng, on 13 November 2014 - 05:52 PM, said:

What most people want i think is to have that feeling of a mech slowly dying around you rather than being smashed through the CT too quickly and not having a chance to respond .... however most people are terrible at hiding their damaged locations too.

This is an excellent point - though I would like to point out that hiding damaged locations against someone wielding their Vorpal Sword of PPFLD+5 is often an exercise in futility, as any decent enemy worth their salt will just wait for you to re-expose the damaged component. It's not like you can do any appreciable damage while you're playing the 'can't hurt me if they can't see me' game anyways. Against someone with lasers or SRM's, it's a far more viable tactic.

I think that more emphasis needs to be placed on internal damage.

On the battlefield, as we speak, pilots are fighting knowing that stripped armour from a location usually means that the next hit is the one that seals the deal. Now, If I lose the armour from any location (especially in a 'Sphere mech) I start to play ludicrously cautiously. If i'm in a medium or light, i'll even petulantly charge to my death, especially if the big hit is at the start of the match. Team player.

I'd like to see far more emphasis on critical hits and slowly degrading internal structure. Damaged arm actuators locking an arm in place, damaged foot actuators giving a mech an appreciable limp making it hard to fire while moving, damaged weapons producing extra heat or with reduced ranges, damaged gauss having triple the charge up time, damaged engines reducing speed, damaged gyros increasing the effect of impulse dramatically, damaged electronic slots making the HUD flicker or lengthening lock on time...

To this end, I think that rather than increasing armour, we should double or triple internal structure, and look at making internal hits a larger part of the game, rather than counting down seconds until death. We could even quirk mechs that are purportedly tanky, like the Atlas, to increase the damage resitstance of their internal components, so they are more likely to be in the fight until the bitter end.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Kiiyor, on 13 November 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

To this end, I think that rather than increasing armour, we should double or triple internal structure, and look at making internal hits a larger part of the game, rather than counting down seconds until death. We could even quirk mechs that are purportedly tanky, like the Atlas, to increase the damage resitstance of their internal components, so they are more likely to be in the fight until the bitter end.

The funny side effect of this, would be making this game more like TT, where a majority of mechs are done in by critical hits rather than outright component destruction.

[Asmudius Heng]

I would be totally in favour of having more crittable areas such as actuators and gyros etc if it came with an internal structure buff.

Though as we are discussing too hard to kill also can be a problem, however if even accidentally your spread damage ended up causing a little discomfort for the pilot by having actuators jam and limiting weapon movements or something it would give you the FEEL of dying slowly for sure.

And on the end of the damage dealer would make each mini-engagement a little more meaningful if you are more likely to clip and disadvantage your enemy for the next engagement beyond just the lowering of your armour section health bar.

[Kiiyor]

Asmudius Heng, on 13 November 2014 - 06:50 PM, said:

I would be totally in favour of having more crittable areas such as actuators and gyros etc if it came with an internal structure buff.

Though as we are discussing too hard to kill also can be a problem, however if even accidentally your spread damage ended up causing a little discomfort for the pilot by having actuators jam and limiting weapon movements or something it would give you the FEEL of dying slowly for sure.

And on the end of the damage dealer would make each mini-engagement a little more meaningful if you are more likely to clip and disadvantage your enemy for the next engagement beyond just the lowering of your armour section health bar.

Yep. And these would be good things - I, for one, hate moving from once piece of cover to another, only to take a walloping from dual gauss or a single laser vomit alpha, and lose an entire freaking limb. Imagine landing a hit on a leg, then seeing the mech develop a limp. "There's something I can target next... though do I go for the damaged torso instead?"

Also, AMMO EXPLOSIONS. Right now, I think CASE is almost completely useless, as the destruction of a torso usually means you're nano-seconds from death anyway, and the fact that so many lighter 'Sphere mechs have to carry XL engines to have enough weaponry to be viable invalidates it completely.

I think the time the ammo explosion effect takes to complete should be increased dramatically. I've seen tanks cook off internally, and sometimes the light show can continue for quite some time. I watched one of our tanks go up in a training accident many moons ago, and everyone had time to make it out safely. We also had time to watch the light show open-mouthed for what felt like an eternity.

Check this video (one of the few videos I could find where you know someone wasn't dying horribly - it's a dummy tank)



I'd like ammo explosions to damage the affected area far more slowly, and have a larger and more spectacular light show. Right now, I love seeing the fizz of one igniting, but the effect is quite small and easy to miss. Imagine instead, an Atlas slowly cooking off, but having the time to line up a couple more shots before they lose a torso. Imagine also a light show like the video above, with flames jetting out all over the place, lighting up the battlefield, and the Atlas striding towards you, belching fire from it's joints, STILL INTENT ON BLOWING YOU TO SMITHEREENS.

This would make CASE far more important. It would also make you think far more carefully about where you put your ammo, as ammo going off in the legs or CT would be a death sentence. Said ammo explosions would also be far more likely to be something you consider when building if there was enough internal structure health to almost guarantee ammo being hit at some point.

Maybe this could help balance boating of AC weapons?

I guess, overall, what i'd like to see is a lowered importance on carrying as much gun as you can. I don't carry AMS or CASE on any of my mechs, as the extra tonnage for heatsinks or firepower, to me, is far more important than the scant protection offered by CASE.

Edit: Modern CASE!

Edited by Kiiyor, 13 November 2014 - 07:45 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

Mostly agree man, i think ammo needs to be treated carefully.

I think the classic case of it just destroying you can feel a bit irritating to many. While it should be a risk vs reward thing if the game is balanced to the current level of ammo destruction then the power of ammo weapons might need to be increased etc and this if a formula for problems.

That being said, i think combining ammo explosions with critical damage might be more fun.

Without case you can get heavily damaged but let not let a single lucky shot ruin an entire mech - but what if it had incredible critting ability rendering a section damaged and many non functional systems across multiple locations.

Case would be needed to stop that critting ability and contain it.

So rather than a death knell of ammo explosions they become more likely but more about deteriorating your mech than just exploding it and saying good night game over?

[Kiiyor]

Asmudius Heng, on 13 November 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

Mostly agree man, i think ammo needs to be treated carefully.

I think the classic case of it just destroying you can feel a bit irritating to many. While it should be a risk vs reward thing if the game is balanced to the current level of ammo destruction then the power of ammo weapons might need to be increased etc and this if a formula for problems.

That being said, i think combining ammo explosions with critical damage might be more fun.

Without case you can get heavily damaged but let not let a single lucky shot ruin an entire mech - but what if it had incredible critting ability rendering a section damaged and many non functional systems across multiple locations.

Case would be needed to stop that critting ability and contain it.

So rather than a death knell of ammo explosions they become more likely but more about deteriorating your mech than just exploding it and saying good night game over?

Yep, but depending on how much ammo is left over. If it's only a little, it likely won't be DOOM, but in all likelyhood, it will be - just over a longer period of time. 10-15 seconds, rather than the 1-3 or so we have now.

[Thunder Child]

The TTK doesn't need to be increased, or lowered. What DOES need to happen, is that maps need to be about 5x bigger, with objectives that actually matter spread ALL over the damned place.

Imagine if there were a pair of indestructible Gauss turrets on the top of Sniper Hill in Alpine. But the Turret Control was in that little base in M7. So now everyone murderballs on M7, right?

But what if there is a capture point at H8 (in clear LoS to both turrets), and if it's captured, it's GG. And it's not a capture point like in Conquest, where you can just cap it as ya go, run off for a bit, and then come back. No, as soon as you step off, the Cap is reset. And it's slow to Cap. So, most of the Team Rushes the Cap, with a force going to the Turret Control to try and gain an edge.

BUT WAIT, THERES MORE! Those two juicy Atlas Carcasses in E9 would be worth a pretty penny at Galatea, or Solaris. SO, if your team controls that (capped in the traditional fashion) at match end, your team gets a juicy 25% C-Bills bonus.

But, it's not over yet folks! The Comms Towers in L3 and H13 (or thereabouts) would give great intel on what the enemy is up to, so IF your team controls BOTH of them at the end of the match, that's an extra 25% Experience bonus.

This is the sort of stuff that would encourage Murderballs to break up more. What we need is less Stick, and more Carrot. Oh, and an easier way to communicate with the rest of our PuGs, short of using hand (actuator) movements, and smoke signals. A command Wheel, for example.

Just my 2 C-bills worth. Oh, and personally, TTK could go up just a little imho. Especially if we had ROOM to move, instead of being crammed into little Arena Maps.

Edit: And having just read the posts on page 4 (I admit, I read the first two pages, then skipped to the end), I agree that if any Increase to the TTK was done, Buffs to internal structure rather than armor, would be the way to go, with Crits becoming far more important. And I would love to see that exploding Atlas, even if it was coming towards me (ammo explosions are too brief now. Far cooler in Closed Beta).

Edited by Thunder Child, 13 November 2014 - 10:17 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Slow TTKs are fun, fast TTKs are not fun.

If you want fast TTKs you need respawns, no ifs, ands, or buts.

[Davers]

I agree that we could distance ourselves from canon when it comes to CASE and ammo explosions. It would even help out stock designs that use CASE, but have XL engines.

Ive always thought they should have tripled IS rather than doubled armor. That and expanding the critical hit system to include actuators and all that fluff.

[QuantumButler]

Davers, on 13 November 2014 - 11:00 PM, said:

I agree that we could distance ourselves from canon when it comes to CASE and ammo explosions. It would even help out stock designs that use CASE, but have XL engines.

Ive always thought they should have tripled IS rather than doubled armor. That and expanding the critical hit system to include actuators and all that fluff.

Or or or.

They could have made weapon damage based on firing them multiple times over 10 seconds, so maybe a ppc deals 2.5 damage per shot but fires 4 times in 10 seconds, you know, balance it all around a tabletop round, then they could have kept stock tabletop HP values for everything.

Damage, heat generation, base it all off the ten second turn, so a ppc would have both DPS and HPS of 1, 10 single heatsinks would dissipate the heat of one ppc assuming you're not moving.

If they'd done this from the start many of our current balance problems would be gone.

Sure, we'd have a host of all new, unique balance issues instead, but that's how it goes.

[Duke Nedo]

TTK is fine imo, I would not like more armor... mainly for the reason that I am afraid that the only way to kill anything at all would be focus fire only. That would put less organized/voip teams at an even bigger disadvantage and would make it even less likely to turn a game around once you have lost some dps. I.e. larger snowball effect, more stomps.

I kind of like that a few well placed shots can actually turn the tide of a battle. If it all boils down to slowly grinding mechs down by focused fire I will quickly get bored. Less fun for me at least.

[MischiefSC]

More tactical gameplay isn't related to TTK so much as game modes. Complex game modes with complex objectives is the solution to that.

Slower TTK though is a good thing and is a big part of what makes the game like BT and not a token shooter. A better solution to changing TTK is, as someone prior mentioned, slower refire and more restrictive heat scale with movement and accuracy penalties.

Then we could cut armor back to normal and make ammo explosive and crits actually dangerous. Then it's less about drilling out the CT with a 12-16DPS or a 60-70 pt alpha or 35+ pts of PPFLD.

It's a bit too late for that sort of rebalance though.

[oldradagast]

Mechs fall too fast in this game. It's sad when a mech spends more time walking around and waiting for something to happen vs. actually fighting... an argument could be made that such a thing does tend to match actual war, but you know what I mean.

Massive pinpoint damage is still a problem. The game universe was designed around random location hit results, not 30+ damage casually dealt to whatever component you want.

[The Boz]

Russ said that, since the quirk patch, average match time has dropped by 15 seconds, and implied that it's not that big of a deal... I disagree, because if you take a look at how much time you spend in the game actually shooting or taking shots, 15 seconds is a HUGE drop.

[Lily from animove]

The Boz, on 14 November 2014 - 04:20 AM, said:

Russ said that, since the quirk patch, average match time has dropped by 15 seconds, and implied that it's not that big of a deal... I disagree, because if you take a look at how much time you spend in the game actually shooting or taking shots, 15 seconds is a HUGE drop.

this is actually true, thats why statistics often just don't give you the asnwer they tell you.

Alpine is all about walkign aroung and taking position for the major part of the time. Then some shooting is happening. Now the quirks will ahrdly reduce the time walkign around, except I missed those speed tweaks on all the mechs (wihch didn't happen) So those 15 seconds come totally from the pure battletime. which menas quite a big impact on the pure ttk.

[Duke Nedo]

Agree that average match length says very little about ttk, it only takes one light running around to make any game go on forever. It doesn't say anything about how quickly or in what way the other 11 mechs died...

A few things to remember just:

- The quirks did not increase the size of alphas, they all increased DPS. The worst offender(s) did not get any quirks this pass.
- Quirks also buffed armor/structure for quite a few mechs
- Increasing TTK could risk to make 1v1 silly...

I don't know, personally I don't find it much harder to stay alive really... for some of my mechs that got armor/struct buffs it's the reverse, I live longer now. Imho the balance between survivability and damage-dishing is in a rather good place. When I screw up my positioning I usually don't die, I just get crippled and it serves me right...

Edited by Duke Nedo, 14 November 2014 - 04:45 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Afar from the armor and damage given and taken - the maps have their share on the problem too.
There is hardly enough room to maneuver a sufficient sub unit with overlapping fields of fire.

In most cases you can send a single mech through a gap -then another and another. The only tactic if you call it this way - is to choose the Mech that should die first - for example you send a Atlas or BattleMaster who's only task its not to die hope that the enemy will overdrive there heat sinks so you can pick them out - when you made it through the gap.

[LordMelvin]

Thunder Child, on 13 November 2014 - 10:07 PM, said:

The TTK doesn't need to be increased, or lowered. What DOES need to happen, is that maps need to be about 5x bigger, with objectives that actually matter spread ALL over the damned place.

Imagine if there were a pair of indestructible Gauss turrets on the top of Sniper Hill in Alpine. But the Turret Control was in that little base in M7. So now everyone murderballs on M7, right?

But what if there is a capture point at H8 (in clear LoS to both turrets), and if it's captured, it's GG. And it's not a capture point like in Conquest, where you can just cap it as ya go, run off for a bit, and then come back. No, as soon as you step off, the Cap is reset. And it's slow to Cap. So, most of the Team Rushes the Cap, with a force going to the Turret Control to try and gain an edge.

BUT WAIT, THERES MORE! Those two juicy Atlas Carcasses in E9 would be worth a pretty penny at Galatea, or Solaris. SO, if your team controls that (capped in the traditional fashion) at match end, your team gets a juicy 25% C-Bills bonus.

But, it's not over yet folks! The Comms Towers in L3 and H13 (or thereabouts) would give great intel on what the enemy is up to, so IF your team controls BOTH of them at the end of the match, that's an extra 25% Experience bonus.

This is the sort of stuff that would encourage Murderballs to break up more. What we need is less Stick, and more Carrot. Oh, and an easier way to communicate with the rest of our PuGs, short of using hand (actuator) movements, and smoke signals. A command Wheel, for example.

Just my 2 C-bills worth. Oh, and personally, TTK could go up just a little imho. Especially if we had ROOM to move, instead of being crammed into little Arena Maps.

Edit: And having just read the posts on page 4 (I admit, I read the first two pages, then skipped to the end), I agree that if any Increase to the TTK was done, Buffs to internal structure rather than armor, would be the way to go, with Crits becoming far more important. And I would love to see that exploding Atlas, even if it was coming towards me (ammo explosions are too brief now. Far cooler in Closed Beta).

This. Oh sweet merciful Emperor this.

One of the things I loved about the previous MW games were the map sizes and optional objectives. Moving to take one objective meant you couldn't get across the map in time to take another so you had to choose: Do I want to take out the comm tower to prevent the assault lance from combing in from patrols and reaming me or do I take out turret control so the base is easier to storm?

MWLL did a phenomenal job with this by making the maps enormous. Once you got your vehicle of choice it was a fair trek to the fight, but there was never just one fight because there were multiple targets of interest. It also meant that long range weapons like PPC and Gauss had proper drawbacks (namely very long cooldowns) or in the case of LRMs poor tracking, but they also had REALLY REALLY long ranges.