Ed Steele, on 08 April 2015 - 07:22 AM, said:
No "cone of fire", skillful aiming should be rewarded, I do not want to play a COD style spray and pray shooter.
The irony of this statement is CoD style is exactly what we have right now. Call of Duty has extremely limited and extremely forgiving weapon recoil models, and pretty much all the guns in that game are hitscan - meaning aiming is extremely easy (and not even remotely random). You aim at a single point with any weapon you have and you are almost guaranteed that every shot is going to hit that spot in CoD. You aim your entire mechs loadout at a single point and you are almost guaranteed every shot will hit that spot in MWO. Pretty much the only exceptions to this are SRM's and LBX, but both of those still have pretty close to perfect convergence at their optimal range (that is the optimal range experienced players use them at, not their listed "optimal" range).
A change to convergence would increase the skill required to aim, not decrease it. We aren't talking about making every shot go in a random direction, all shots should proceed to a predictable terminus - meaning you can aim just fine, but you can't just fire everything you have at once and expect it all to end up in the same place. With this model you have to make a decision as to whether you want huge burst from your alpha, or the precision targeting from one or two weapon groups. This choice doesn't currently exist in MWO, Alpha is the only answer to the question 95% of the time and as such it greatly reduces the amount of skill and thought involved in aiming.
For an in game example. Say you take a Pulse boat (any, doesn't matter which), you engage say an AC/20 Hunchback. In the current set up, you fire everything you have at the Hunch, your heat spikes but it all likelyhood at least 80% of your alpha lands on that Hunch and very likely removes it's armor (or comes very close) in one burst.
With the convergence change I would like to see, this scenario would play out differently. If you decided to Alpha, some of your pulse shots would hit the CT, the opposite ST and the Hunch (some may even miss depending on the exact point you aim for and angle of fire), in the end you may have delivered around 60% of your Alpha damage (just spitballing numbers) onto the Hunch compartment.
However, maybe you could decide you want to land everything on that Hunch: So instead of Alpha striking - you fire weapon group A, then aim for and fire Weapon Group B, Then aim for and fire Weapon Group C and so on. It takes longer to get all of your damage on target, you will have to twist between shots or weave into cover to avoid the AC/20, but if your aim is good enough you will land 100% of your damage on the Hunch, no randomness involved.
This has the resulting effect of greatly minimizing burst damage (making it situational, as it should be), increasing general TTK and making Pilot skill matter more. It also means the fight will reward the smarter player, who chooses both his target and his weapon usage correctly. You could still run into situations where Alpha is the right answer, either a hit and run scenario or maybe the Hunch is already armor stripped and you think you can pop it with an Alpha Strike. These are the situations Alpha's were intended to be used in, but with perfect universal pinpoint accuracy it simply removes almost any thought from attack choice, you Alpha until your heat threshold says you cant.
18
). Would kind of replicate the RNG roll on which component got hit and instantly remove pinpoint as well. <-not an actual suggestion btw, I have no clue how this would work out 
