You miss my point that we are NOT aiming in this game. We are point'n'clicking. I do not believe there is any possible way to be an ELITE pointer or clicker. Just in the same way I do not believe there can be an ELITE tooth brusher.
I'm not really in the Cone-of-Fire camp, unless added as part of a heat penalty, but unless we were to all add bounce to our desktops and chairs while playing, I see it as an acceptable approximation.
Then there are so many people so bad at pointing and clicking I question their ability to even click on the "MechWarrior Online" icon on their desktop to start the game to play without help from a 3rd party.
But I think you're being WAY to literal, unreasonably so.
You miss my point that we are NOT aiming in this game. We are point'n'clicking. I do not believe there is any possible way to be an ELITE pointer or clicker. Just in the same way I do not believe there can be an ELITE tooth brusher.
I'm sure you say to yourself all the time "it's not really aiming so it doesn't matter if I suck at it." Medieval knights, if any were still around, would also probably say that using rifles and shooting someone from a distance isn't really fighting.
The fact is it takes a good amount of time and effort to get good at games. Not MWO, but games with lively competitive scenes and lots of money up for grabs. But it only takes a few minutes and a massive jerk to belittle other people's efforts like you have.
P.S. Manual/slow convergence and CoF will never happen. If they were to happen they'd have happened by now. Aim has been nerfed enough as it is. There's another thread that has a good discussion regarding other ways to increase TTK and make mechs more survivable. Go there and try to add to that discussion.
There are ways to distribute damage more evenly without introducing random elements to the game. I feel non-random methods such as splash/burst damage should be tried first. CoF is a last resort IMO.
Agreed, but then the same people complaining about CoF will be the same people running to complain on the forums when their IS ACs get the Clan treatment.
On a more serious note, "splash" has it's own issues. The first is: What percentage of the damage should be converted to splash? Next is: What decides which adjacent component receives X amount of damage? ----> Oh, snap! It's that dreadful Devil's Creation called "RNG" again. Dang it!
Dimento Graven, on 10 April 2015 - 01:32 PM, said:
Then there are so many people so bad at pointing and clicking I question their ability to even click on the "MechWarrior Online" icon on their desktop to start the game to play without help from a 3rd party.
But I think you're being WAY to literal, unreasonably so.
I do not think my position is unreasonable at all.
I want this game to approximate a sim. What we have is mostly arcade.
This game needs to be more difficult to master, not easier.
xImmortalx, on 10 April 2015 - 01:42 PM, said:
I'm sure you say to yourself all the time "it's not really aiming so it doesn't matter if I suck at it." Medieval knights, if any were still around, would also probably say that using rifles and shooting someone from a distance isn't really fighting.
The fact is it takes a good amount of time and effort to get good at games. Not MWO, but games with lively competitive scenes and lots of money up for grabs. But it only takes a few minutes and a massive jerk to belittle other people's efforts like you have.
P.S. Manual/slow convergence and CoF will never happen. If they were to happen they'd have happened by now. Aim has been nerfed enough as it is. There's another thread that has a good discussion regarding other ways to increase TTK and make mechs more survivable. Go there and try to add to that discussion.
Who have I belittled?
You?
If so, you have bigger issues than being called a good point'n'clicker.
FYI, according to my stats page, I'm a pretty good point'n'clicker, too.
Go re-read my questions and your responses. You did not answer in a way other than "because I yelled so."
Oh, so because my answers weren't in agreement, they weren't answers.
If that's how you're going to judge the merit of everyone's responses [Redacted].
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So, fantasies now = evidence? I must admit, you have the advantage on me there.
Ok here's just ONE YouTube vid of someone else doing it with bow and arrow:
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I have given you real life examples of how the CoF model actually benefits the skilled players and provides a greater differentiation between players of various skill levels. You seem to think that an RNG system will somehow specially target you and make all your shots miss while it makes all my shots hit you when they shouldn't have. You think that there's some magical distribution genie that will somehow unfairly gimp you while helping everyone else? Seriously, dude, go to Vegas. If you can have that sort of affect on statistical distributions, you should be raking in the dough at the roulette wheel.
How is it a benefit by randomly making hits "misses" and "misses" hits?
Seriously dude that's just plain stupid.
The person who carefully aims is hurt more because the CoF model with RNG behind it doesn't allow them to have any expectation of where the shot will actually land other than "somewhere over there, maybe, kinda", where the person who battles by just pointing in the general direction already, will actually probably come out ahead because they'll be aiming at larger areas of the enemy.
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Over the course of 30 shots (30 weapons, maybe all fired at once, maybe fired 1 at a time, doesn't matter), a pure CoF system will ensure that the one with better aim wins. If you are advocating for a one shot one kill type of game, then yes, the CoF system could give you an appreciable disadvantage on an extremely small percentage (<1%) of the time.
HOW?!?! HOW DOES IT HELP? "Well it distributes the shots..." BASED ON WHAT? "Well it'll have to be based on a formula that simulates real world..." WILL I BE ABLE TO PREDICT WHERE THE SHOT IS GOING TO LAND? "Well... no, it's gonna be distributed..." CAN I AT LEAST HAVE SOME IDEA OF WHERE IT WILL BE DISTRIBUTED? "Well... no, it's going to be random..."
If you can't see the reality of that, I don't know how else to explain it to you.
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If that number bothers you, you have other issues. But we're not advocating a uniform blanket standard deviation for the CoF (RNG distribution). The standard deviation is impacted by your piloting and mech status, so that when you line up that shot carefully and pull the trigger, your gauss round aimed at dead center of the cockpit is going to hit within a foot of that point of aim, which is still pretty much dead center of the cockpit. It's only when you start trying the 360 no scope snapshots at 80% heat that your potential point of impact deviation causes you to hit the side torso or arm, or *gasp* miss instead. I think we can both agree that those types of shots are not routinely done by skilled players, even ones such as yourself. The ones hitting with those shots are getting lucky that they hit the mouse button at the right time - it wasn't really skill based because it's entirely unrepeatable.
Seems totally repeatable so far:
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I have given you ranging formulas and discussed with you how angular deviation results in appreciable differences in point of impact for anything, be it coherent light or ballistic projectile. You still aren't understanding how that works, despite me having given you the sources to go investigate and learn.
And nothing in your tables or anything else you linked doesn't equate to a programmer having to put an RNG into the game to decided whether or not the pixel I currently have under my target reticule is the pixel I'm going to hit, and provides no means for the careful skilled player to predict a result.
And it becomes a bad idea.
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Also, a beam of light actually has a definitive cone of fire. First let's start with the concept that light is made up of photons. These photons exhibit wave-particle duality. There's a whole slew of things that changes about your assumptions, but its on such a small scale in the macro world as to be inconsequential. A laser is a collimated beam of these photos. Collimation uses a mirrored tube and geometry to achieve the focused beam. The beam can never be perfectly focused so that all photons are traveling in perfectly parallel directions. There will literally be a cone of light emitting from the lens. Now, again, we can show that this cone will be quite small, and almost negligible for our purposes.
Yes, the laser itself IS "the cone" of fire, but it does not have a "cone" potential for landing its effect. The laser travels in a straight line, period, it doesn't deviate left, right, up or down unless acted upon by some other force.
Period.
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But, the gimbals, actuators, and mechanical systems used to align the lens/barrel/collimator will have errors in precision no matter what you do. Despite the fact that you keep arm waving about 3050 tech being magical, we are supposed to be playing with things that are made of real matter behaving in ways we understand. There can be no argument that there will be some precision error every time the weapon is realigned. That error may be so small as to be negligible, but it depends on the engineering of the system, the environmental conditions in which the weapon is used, inertial effects, etc. (read PHYSICS). Because of how this works, there will be some error in each shot, however small it may be. The errors are modeled very well with a CoF system, which allows us to get the same end result of where the shots should land without having to calculate every particle interaction in the local space (which again, would take a processor that exceeds any conceivable design, even with your 3050 magic tech).
Yes, I don't believe in playing a game where **** just fails to work as predicted because an RNG says, "one out of every 14 billion times fired, the proton used to start the chain reaction actually is virtual particle and therefore no reaction started".
Sorry, keep tossing tables and all the other things in there. My, and any other reasonable player's expectation is, unless I've made some sort of fundamental mistake, when I've got you lined up for a shot, you're going to be hit.
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So, again, explain to me how 3050 negates all of this?
There's no other reason needed.
You want the game with "realistic" errors built in so you can live longer and not be shot up as quickly by other players. Yet you're not decrying portable fusion reactors, the existence of monopoles, the lack of any application of inverse square laws, and all the rest of the realities that currently say "none of this can actually ever work". The inherent hit detection, hsr, and hit box bugs of this game haven't been sufficient to allow you to live long enough, you NOW want a CoF too...
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This is the best non-answer ever. Will the sun come up tomorrow? Call me tomorrow and let me know if it did. Until then, I won't believe you when you say yes.
You think you're being clever here, but the truth is, no one really knows IF the sun will actually come up until it does. For all we know in the next 15 minutes a some dense mass could pass by our solar system pulling the earth out of orbit, an unseen large meteoroid could smack into our planet, all the pressure from fracking could build up enough to launch the entire north American continent into orbit, destabilizing the planet, etc., etc..
When we talk about the future, we're at best, talking probabilities.
I do not think my position is unreasonable at all.
I want this game to approximate a sim. What we have is mostly arcade.
This game needs to be more difficult to master, not easier.
Who have I belittled?
You?
If so, you have bigger issues than being called a good point'n'clicker.
FYI, according to my stats page, I'm a pretty good point'n'clicker, too.
You have no idea how much I just want to step back into my MW4 persona right now because I've seen literally hundreds of guys just like you spouting the same old tired crap. But I will try to take the constructive route on this one.
I haven't put enough time or effort into this game to have an ego about it. So no, you haven't belittled me at all. But I'm sure there are lots of others who have put in the time and effort.
Trivializing other people's efforts is what massive jerks do and no real high level player would ever do that. You might be "a pretty good point'n'clicker" on the stats page but I'm pretty sure this game still has a few dozen players who'd roll you 1v1 without breaking a sweat and I don't see any of them coming in here doing what you're doing.
For the record, I'd like instant convergence to be removed and replaced by one of many different kinds of solutions:
a. convergence that takes time ... so that efficiency we keep unlocking actually does something.
b. no convergence. You have separate reticles which are slightly apart representing the different weapon mount points
c. convergence only of weapons mounted in the same component.
I would not like to see cone of fire or any deliberate randomisation introduced.
You have no idea how much I just want to step back into my MW4 persona right now because I've seen literally hundreds of guys just like you spouting the same old tired crap. But I will try to take the constructive route on this one.
I haven't put enough time or effort into this game to have an ego about it. So no, you haven't belittled me at all. But I'm sure there are lots of others who have put in the time and effort.
Trivializing other people's efforts is what massive jerks do and no real high level player would ever do that. You might be "a pretty good point'n'clicker" on the stats page but I'm pretty sure this game still has a few dozen players who'd roll you 1v1 without breaking a sweat and I don't see any of them coming in here doing what you're doing.
Honestly, what efforts?
This is a freaking GAME. This is not an e-sport, it is a GAME, which quite frankly does NOT take a massive amount of skill or effort. Yes the learning curve can be a challenge for those unfamiliar with Battletech, but I believe most players could walk away from MW:O tomorrow without agonizing over their wasted effort. (wasted money and or time, yes, but effort?)
I have never claimed that I was the best at this game. I have never called out a single person on the forums for being bad at the game. (and how would I know without being over his shoulder for quite a few matches?)
If you personally do not feel belittled or trivialized (and I believe you), then what was the point of your response? White Knighting for other grown people on the forums?
I am going to assume you had some sort of forum frustration in addition to mine, and mine was the one that inspired you to vent some steam. I wasn't calling you or anyone else out in any way, just putting this elitist attitude some people have into perspective.
Convergance is fine and well though out the way it is.
There needs to be no changes.
Cry wolf too often and maybe you'll get your way at the expense of the game.
Keep convergence the way it is.
There are ways to distribute damage more evenly without introducing random elements to the game. I feel non-random methods such as splash/burst damage should be tried first. CoF is a last resort IMO.
Sorry Khobai, I disagree, its again a nerf to individual weapon systems to address a problem with specific builds/combinations. There is no reason to nerf a mech that carries only one PPC or one Auto-cannon. Same as back when they nerfed the Gauss rifle because of the Gauss-Cat, Gauss on HBK and ATL were not an issue, but if anything, they took the nerf heavier than the Gauss-Cat did. I personally don't want to see any randomness involved, but hitting the weapons has been tried and tried and tried and tried again.
Edited by Boris The Spider, 10 April 2015 - 03:26 PM.
Honestly, what efforts?
This is a freaking GAME. This is not an e-sport, it is a GAME, which quite frankly does NOT take a massive amount of skill or effort. Yes the learning curve can be a challenge for those unfamiliar with Battletech, but I believe most players could walk away from MW:O tomorrow without agonizing over their wasted effort. (wasted money and or time, yes, but effort?)
I have never claimed that I was the best at this game. I have never called out a single person on the forums for being bad at the game. (and how would I know without being over his shoulder for quite a few matches?)
If you personally do not feel belittled or trivialized (and I believe you), then what was the point of your response? White Knighting for other grown people on the forums?
I am going to assume you had some sort of forum frustration in addition to mine, and mine was the one that inspired you to vent some steam. I wasn't calling you or anyone else out in any way, just putting this elitist attitude some people have into perspective.
You know something? I played MW4 for the better part of a decade at a reasonably high level and I used to hear very similar things to what you said all the time from bad players trying to make excuses for why my teams were shellacking them. I know I said that I wouldn't step back into my MW4 persona but I had a bit of a flashback right there. My bad.
Upon further reflection, I partially agree with you. Putting shots on target in MWO is beyond trivial. The hardest thing about it is dealing with twist speed limitations until you get double basics. Every FPS I've played in the past 6 years, including several CoD titles, has more challenging gunnery than MWO.
That's not necessarily a bad thing though. In an FPS, a skilled player has a much higher influence on the outcome of a game than in MWO. So making certain aspects of the individual game more challenging makes sense. One of the most frustrating things about MWO is how utterly dependent an individual pilot is on his teammates to accomplish anything and how minor team mistakes can negate flawless execution on the part of the pilot. With that in mind, do you think it's a good idea to raise the bar for gunnery skill?
Missiles already have a CoF. No need to reconsider them.
Actually, no they do not. They do spread out from the launcher, but only until they've reached a certain spread, then they proceed in a straight line until max range & then detonate.
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The idea of infinite convergence is simply terrible. There is no reason for this at all. Even today battleships can bring multiple weapons (100s of feet apart) to bear on the same target. If I were a mech pilot in a Jaeger the first thing I would do would be to find a mountain to bang my guns on until there was some sort of convergence. Just because the Jaeger doesn't have "elbows" or "wrists" doesnt mean that it's "shoulders" cannot move in the horizontal.
Jagermechs with dual gauss in this game are not remotely comparable to battleships firing in ballistic arcs over the span of nautical miles.
It has no actuators that allows horizontal movement, so it doesn't make sense to allow it to put the arms on a single pin point location, especially at close up ranges.
What this would mean is you can't do dual-gauss PPFLD - you'd have to fire and aim one gauss rifle at a time, and slightly twist in order to get them to hit the same target, otherwise it would hit two different parts of the mech (you know, like would almost always happen on tabletop).
I don't see that increase of difficulty as unreasonable.
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The idea of somehow time-constraining convergence is interesting, I think most good pilots could adapt to a system like that. To just simply randomly apply a modifier to the aim (as in a CoF) kind of makes sense but, I think (in the case of a Mech), would really not amount to much difference in damage dealt over time per area. At least not with going so far that many would say the guns are broken. I like the idea of alphas being high risk.
My opinion is we should investigate slowing down convergence and somehow complicate alphas to require much more consideration by the pilot.
I disagree. WoT operates on this theory, and I hate it. Even without the RNG being involved, I'd rather not go back to this, and as Mystery has pointed out multiple times PGI has canned the idea because of other problems it introduces.
Dimento Graven, on 10 April 2015 - 02:29 PM, said:
GOOD NEWS!!!! It isn't instant, it's just very fast!
No, it's instant. Pgi have said it's instant, because it apparently breaks the game when it isn't. Any differential you think you're seeing is either meshing to rending issues or the underlying code not keeping up with your reticule and using a longer/shorter range than you think it is.
I think I have an idea on why people have a problem with CoF.
When they see CoF, they immediately think "random" and visualize this, an equal distribution:
when in fact the probability distribution model being proposed by people for CoF (and which mimic real life concepts like CEP and R95) look more like this:
Damn those 3050 engineers! Why can't they produce mechanical devices with absolute 100% precision.
I think I have an idea on why people have a problem with CoF.
When they see CoF, they immediately think "random" and visualize this, an equal distribution:
when in fact the probability distribution model being proposed by people for CoF (and which mimic real life concepts like CEP and R95) look more like this:
Damn those 3050 engineers! Why can't they produce mechanical devices with absolute 100% precision.
We don't need 100% precision to have "no CoF" for all practical purposes.
We are firing at targets the size of buildings, at what are typically infantry engagement ranges. Under these conditions we can achieve sufficient accuracy to target individual components ( even a side torso is many times larger than a human) with bows, crossbows, catapults, and trebuchets. I would hope that in the distant future, a laser is at least as accurate as a medieval siege engine!
Any CoF large enough to matter would draw some serious questions regarding the competence of the mech's engineers.
And since you're suggesting the CoF as a TTK adjustment measure, it's obvious that to do so it would have to force missing components or even entire mechs within typical engagement ranges. Which is ridiculous, there are several orders of magnitude difference between missing an ant or even a human, and missing a four story building with legs.
As far as quantum fluctuations causing the round to spontaneously jump six meters to the left, if the odds of something happening have to be stated in scientific notation to be readable, then it is not significant enough to bear simulating in a video game. Our mechs are equipped with fusion engines, not finite improbability drives.
Dimento Graven, on 10 April 2015 - 09:23 AM, said:
Explain to me the thought process on that...
It's a basic concept called trade offs. You want massive burst damage, you sacrifice precision. You want perfect accuracy, you sacrifice massive burst damage. It's the key to making anything in any game interesting. If Option A has zero trade offs, then there is no reason to ever use option B. This is pretty much where MWO is regarding Alpha Strikes. If you aren't Alpha Striking 90% or so of the time in MWO, you just aren't using your weapons correctly. This creates a fundamentally more boring, simpler combat and causes serious systemic problems.
It's a basic concept called trade offs. You want massive burst damage, you sacrifice precision. You want perfect accuracy, you sacrifice massive burst damage. It's the key to making anything in any game interesting. If Option A has zero trade offs, then there is no reason to ever use option B. This is pretty much where MWO is regarding Alpha Strikes. If you aren't Alpha Striking 90% or so of the time in MWO, you just aren't using your weapons correctly. This creates a fundamentally more boring, simpler combat and causes serious systemic problems.
Yes, but give us some specifics. How do you envision it working?
What's the cut off? More than 2 weapons fired at once? 3? 4?
Is it graduated? The more weapons you fire at once, the more RNG hits you?
And since you're suggesting the CoF as a TTK adjustment measure ...
I'm really not. I'm here for the convergence discussion.
But, I am also joining in on the CoF discussion anyway, mainly by providing science-based reasons on how such a thing can be justified. And with regard to CoF itself, my interest actually lies in engagements at 1000m and beyond, as it is more or less a non-issue at "typical" engagement ranges of 500m or less. I'm just a sucker for "non-typical" cases.
Unfortunately, the discussion is also being derailed by people whose only rationale for disagreeing is a near-religious belief that "RNG is the Devil and is therefore Evil", and at the same time attributing malice where there is none, and/or declaring that the people suggesting such things are bad players.
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Hotthedd, on 10 April 2015 - 01:11 PM, said:
