11 replies to this topic

[Satan n stuff]

Knockdown had been in this game since the start of closed beta, before getting patched out at the start of open beta. Back then, the reason given whas that it wasn't working with the crappy netcode and it really wasn't, but now we no longer have any major lag issues so I think it's about time we got knockdown back, but with some improvements.

In the old system you'd be knocked down if another mech hit you mostly based on how fast the other mech was moving and how much it weighed. Once you were hit you'd either go down or continue moving like normal.
My idea is to make collisions knock mechs off balance, after which the player can attempt to correct this by turning, accelerating or decelerating away from the collision. While a mech is off balance, an indicator is displayed onscreen showing where the mech's center of mass is compared to where it should be, like you'd see during some tricks in extreme sports games. If left on it's own the imbalance will either be corrected at low speeds or get worse at high speeds. The worse the imbalance gets the faster it increases,until the mech reaches the tipping point and falls down. Colliding with a mech would also cause significant damage.

The indicator would look more or less like a circle with a smaller circle inside it, and a dot representing how far off balance the mech is. The smaller circle represents how much the mech can correct on it's own, if the dot is outside it it will if left on it's own move away from the center until it reaches the larger circle at which point the mech falls over. Lighter and faster mechs can correct an imbalance faster but are much more vulnerable, with high speed collisions being an instant knockdown on them.
The actual effect of a collision would be dependent on the same physics system used in the old knockdown system, with heavier slower mechs being more resistant to knockdown and faster heavier mechs being better at causing it and mechs being more likely to fall down if they get hit higher up. Colliding with a mech while airborne would make it impossible for you to actively or passively correct until you get back on the ground, making it a nearly guaranteed knockdown.
A mech that collides with another mech would have it's speed and direction of movement altered, with the throttle being automatically set to match. The player would then have to turn and adjust the throttle to avoid falling down. If a mech for example runs into another mech and bounces off to the side it would need to turn away from the mech and reduce throttle to recover.
A mech running at full speed would not be able to correct if hit in the back, and a mech running full reverse would not be able to correct if hit in the front. Turning left leaves you vulnerable to a collision from the right, and turning right leaves you vulnerable to collisions from the left.
A mech which is knocked off balance will be visibly unbalanced, with the mech leaning over more as it's closer to falling over.
Mechs with more than one arm actuator on either arm would be silghtly better at causing, resisting and recovering from knockdown, based on the total number of actuators excluding the upper arm actuator.
To prevent griefing and accidental knockdowns mechs would be highly resistant to friendly collisions. This can be explained as mechwarriors intentionally minimizing the impact while doing the opposite against enemies.
This system opens up a wonderful opportunity to add modules, which I hope would be a good alternative to current modules. For example you could have:
Increased collision damage, deal no collision damage to friendlies.
Increased knockdown effect on enemies, no knockdown effects against friendlies.
Increased resistance to knockdown, immune to friendly knockdown.
Increased resistance to collision damage, immune to friendly collision damage.
Increased passive balance recovery, recover from knockdown faster.
Etc.
While combining these modules would make a mech much more effective in collisions this would of course require one to give up other useful modules for it.

All in all, this looks like a very complicated system, but I think it will add quite a bit to the game as it makes knockdown more skill based without letting players avoid knockdown completely and it adds some more useful modules to give certain current modules some competition.
While the system is quite complicated to describe it wouldn't be nearly as complicated to use.

TL;DR The idea is to re-implement knockdown and make knockdown partly skill based and partly dependent on modules and chassis.

Edited by Satan n stuff, 26 May 2013 - 09:43 AM.

[xXxBANExXx]

This is a great Idea.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I dislike immunities to friendly collisions/knockdown. It seems way too strong.

Other than that, I'm not sure a balancing mini-game is a good idea, which is what this would become if they added some kind of indicator showing how you need to correct to stay on your feet. If they have no indicator then this becomes a huge barrier to entry barring some kind of intensive piloting tutorial that everyone is required to pass before being allowed to play public games (which would itself be a barrier to entry).

Also, off-balance movement animations would be hugely expensive to produce. Implementing those alone would likely push back other new content by a huge amount of time.

[bucurmish]

This is a great idea and i think it would add a new layer of strategy to the game. Unfortunately i dont think the devs will implement something this complicated because it might require new out of balance animations for each mech.

[Sephlock]

Better idea: Just make it so devs cannot be knocked down, then implement the old system. Also, bring back the dragon dozer.

[Chou Senwan]

I could go for that, as long as you had a few seconds to adjust yourself.

Alternately, just have the mech start to totter, and if you press the appropriate button (let's say 5 on the numeric keypad) you avoid falling. Less of a mini-game, more of a "crap, time to take my hand off my mouse and press this button on the whole other side of my keyboard" thing.

Folks who like tackling could re-map the key, of course.

[Liberator]

I like this idea, but the modules that makes friendlies immune to negative effects sounds to black and white, i guess the bonuses are more than enough, no need to have magical airbags on your mech to protect friendlies from your piloting error or their failure.

Edit:
While i am ranting on this i might just add some ideas that have been bubbling in my head.

I was considering the possibility of adding more features to the efficiency tech tree, rather than just have torso twist and such, it should have different paths that you could go, and there should be choices so that you are unable to MAX EVERYTHING.

There would be a piloting tree and a gunnery tree at the very minimum, and piloting would increase your mechs ability to remain stable and move in a efficient manner.

Gunnery would include convergence, stability, spread and fast fire.

So if you go for sniper upgrades you would be able to snipe, but you would be easy to knock over, and a little slow to turn in a brawl.

Edited by Liberator, 27 May 2013 - 05:54 AM.

[Satan n stuff]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 26 May 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

I dislike immunities to friendly collisions/knockdown. It seems way too strong.

Other than that, I'm not sure a balancing mini-game is a good idea, which is what this would become if they added some kind of indicator showing how you need to correct to stay on your feet. If they have no indicator then this becomes a huge barrier to entry barring some kind of intensive piloting tutorial that everyone is required to pass before being allowed to play public games (which would itself be a barrier to entry).

Also, off-balance movement animations would be hugely expensive to produce. Implementing those alone would likely push back other new content by a huge amount of time.

Mechs would already have a significant resistance to friendly knockdown and collision damage, mainly to avoid griefing and newbs accidentally crippling their own team. The increased resistance would add to this to make players immune to friendly collisions, and it would take two modules to be completely immune to collisions with friendlies. It's a small bonus, but not exactly OP because there won't be a lot of players deliberately running into friendlies.
Now as for the animations, it should be possible to have the game automatically tweak the animations slightly to make a mech lean to one side convincingly without having to redo all the animations. This will require some math and programming but it's not exactly impossible.
As far as the actual "minigame" value, it would be along the lines of hold this / these two button(s) to avoid falling over, with the time available depending on how fast you mech is, how and how hard it hit the other mech and what kind of bonuses the mech has. Once the dot is inside the small circle as described above you'd be effectively balanced, though you'd need to wait until it's completely centered or center it yourself to regain full control and continue as usual. This should typically take no more than a few seconds though in some cases it might take a bit longer. In the case of a 150+150kph frontal collision you'd simply fall down instantly.
In order not to drag out the balancing the indicator would disappear once you hit the point of no return, that is when you're not yet going to fall but are no longer capable of correcting your balance. You'd still be able to control your mech after this point to for example fall down in a more convenient spot, and you'd probably get some kind of warning to go with it.

There is an issue I haven't addressed yet, and that's the input method. Since a lot of players would be holding one or more of the wasd keys the balancing mechanism wouldn't accept a key press if it was held down during the collision unless it's released first. It would of course still be possible to throw your mech off balance by pressing a key at the wrong time but seeing the imminent collision and responding appropriately is a skill that can and should be learned.

Liberator, on 27 May 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

I like this idea, but the modules that makes friendlies immune to negative effects sounds to black and white, i guess the bonuses are more than enough, no need to have magical airbags on your mech to protect friendlies from your piloting error or their failure.

I don't think you have any idea how much poor piloting affected teams during closed beta. It was quite common to lose a battle because someone accidentally knocked down a critical asset, and often him/herself as well.

Chou Senwan, on 26 May 2013 - 11:05 PM, said:

I could go for that, as long as you had a few seconds to adjust yourself.

Alternately, just have the mech start to totter, and if you press the appropriate button (let's say 5 on the numeric keypad) you avoid falling. Less of a mini-game, more of a "crap, time to take my hand off my mouse and press this button on the whole other side of my keyboard" thing.

Folks who like tackling could re-map the key, of course.

The problem is that this game has a lot of key bindings already, in fact numpad 5 is already taken, it's 50% throttle. That's why I'd prefer context-sensitive keys.

Liberator, on 27 May 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

Edit:
While i am ranting on this i might just add some ideas that have been bubbling in my head.

I was considering the possibility of adding more features to the efficiency tech tree, rather than just have torso twist and such, it should have different paths that you could go, and there should be choices so that you are unable to MAX EVERYTHING.

There would be a piloting tree and a gunnery tree at the very minimum, and piloting would increase your mechs ability to remain stable and move in a efficient manner.

Gunnery would include convergence, stability, spread and fast fire.

So if you go for sniper upgrades you would be able to snipe, but you would be easy to knock over, and a little slow to turn in a brawl.

Sounds alright but don't go hijacking my thread now.

Edited by Satan n stuff, 27 May 2013 - 07:18 AM.

[Kyone Akashi]

First off, I know the official reason, but I do not believe it was entirely coincidental that knockdowns were removed shortly after Paul was knocked down for the course of an entire match because his opponents thought it is funny - considering that, at that point in time, they have been in the game for months, complete with the glitchy warping (which nobody really complained about too).
To me, it seems like some players gave the devs a live demonstration of everything that was wrong with this feature.

At the same time, I feel that collisions should have more effect and some form of knockdown should be in the game for the sake of realism alone. I like to think of MWO as at least partially being a simulation, and BattleMechs just bopping into each other like bumper cars looks just as wrong as the excessive "sumo-wrestling" that had plagued the Closed Beta and replaced actual brawling in the days before this function was removed from the game.

Though my own thoughts are somewhat similar to OP's in that I too believe that 'Mechs "stumbling around" could be part of the solution, I do not agree about the interactive part necessitating skill-based input from the user, on the basis that faster 'Mechs are running at such high velocities that a meaningful implementation of such tests (meaningful in that they would have to run for a certain amount of time during which the 'Mech is essentially "locked" into a direction) would be too punishing in that the pilot could only recover after his machine having run a hundred meters or more.

In an attempt to balance between not wanting to come across like only complaining without being able to offer counter-suggestions as well as respecting OP's opinion regarding other players' suggestions, I shall just spoiler my own thoughts on the subject:

Spoiler

A hypothetical collision mechanic 2.0 could take into account
- Weight
- Speed
- Angle

Depending on these factors, a 'Mech could either be "unbalanced" or knocked down right away. True knockdowns, however, would likely only happen with glaring gaps between these factors and the tolerance zone, such as the 'Mechs involved being at least two weight classes apart. Far more common would be one or both of the 'Mechs being thrown off-balance and tumbling into a direction either random (45° front arc) or dependent on the collision angle, the pilot being unable to steer for a duration of 1.5-2-0 seconds whilst the gyro attempts to stabilize the machine. Slowing down would speed up the process, and pilots with the necessary amount of GXP could also purchase modules such as "Improved Gyro" to reduce the time (by 0.5 or 1.0 seconds) as well as the chance for a total knockdown.
(sidenote: 1-2 seconds sounds short now, but you'd be surprised how much this means in the midst of a battle)

Also, collisions should cause damage to both machines based on the kinetic energy involved in the crash.

Edited by Kyone Akashi, 27 May 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[Satan n stuff]

Kyone Akashi, on 27 May 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

First off, I know the official reason, but I do not believe it was entirely coincidental that knockdowns were removed shortly after Paul was knocked down for the course of an entire match because his opponents thought it is funny - considering that, at that point in time, they have been in the game for months, complete with the glitchy warping (which nobody really complained about too).
To me, it seems like some players gave the devs a live demonstration of everything that was wrong with this feature.

At the same time, I feel that collisions should have more effect and some form of knockdown should be in the game for the sake of realism alone. I like to think of MWO as at least partially being a simulation, and BattleMechs just bopping into each other like bumper cars looks just as wrong as the excessive "sumo-wrestling" that had plagued the Closed Beta and replaced actual brawling in the days before this function was removed from the game.

A rear end collision in this system should not be enough to knock a mech down unless there is a significant speed and or weight difference, which would likely cause both mechs to fall down. Frontal collisions are fairly easy to avoid as long as you don't get too close but would likely knock down one or both mechs. That being said, you're right it shouldn't be easy to knock down a mech, because we've seen what can happen if it is.
Let's say a Jenner wants to knock down another Jenner, how does he go about it? He tries to set up a frontal collision. In the old system, any collision or even a near miss would knock down both Jenners, in this system if one Jenner tries to dodge while he still has some room to turn he would likely avoid being knocked down as both Jenners would be running more or less parallel to each other when they make contact. Even a hit at a significant angle ( up to 45 or so ) would not be a guaranteed knockdown as the player could correct manually.

Kyone Akashi, on 27 May 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

Though my own thoughts are somewhat similar to OP's in that I too believe that 'Mechs "stumbling around" could be part of the solution, I do not agree about the interactive part necessitating skill-based input from the user, on the basis that faster 'Mechs are running at such high velocities that a meaningful implementation of such tests (meaningful in that they would have to run for a certain amount of time during which the 'Mech is essentially "locked" into a direction) would be too punishing in that the pilot could only recover after his machine having run a hundred meters or more.

A prepared player would be able to respond fairly quickly to the balancing test, and as the passive and active rebalancing of a mech would be dependent on it's speed the actual test would be a lot shorter for faster mechs. The possibilities are that the player does nothing and the mech recovers or falls down after a few seconds, or the player attempts to correct manually and fails causing the mech to fall down even faster, or succeeds and regains control even faster. Either way doing something should resolve the situation faster than normal one way or another, unless the player somehow manages to throw his mech off balance multiple times in one incident.

Kyone Akashi, on 27 May 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

In an attempt to balance between not wanting to come across like only complaining without being able to offer counter-suggestions as well as respecting OP's opinion regarding other players' suggestions, I shall just spoiler my own thoughts on the subject:

Spoiler

A hypothetical collision mechanic 2.0 could take into account
- Weight
- Speed
- Angle

Depending on these factors, a 'Mech could either be "unbalanced" or knocked down right away. True knockdowns, however, would likely only happen with glaring gaps between these factors and the tolerance zone, such as the 'Mechs involved being at least two weight classes apart. Far more common would be one or both of the 'Mechs being thrown off-balance and tumbling into a direction either random (45° front arc) or dependent on the collision angle, the pilot being unable to steer for a duration of 1.5-2-0 seconds whilst the gyro attempts to stabilize the machine. Slowing down would speed up the process, and pilots with the necessary amount of GXP could also purchase modules such as "Improved Gyro" to reduce the time (by 0.5 or 1.0 seconds) as well as the chance for a total knockdown.
(sidenote: 1-2 seconds sounds short now, but you'd be surprised how much this means in the midst of a battle)

Also, collisions should cause damage to both machines based on the kinetic energy involved in the crash.

While I myself am in favor of the balancing test to make player skill an important factor, this seems like a good alternative, and it's otherwise fairly close to how I'd want to see collisions implemented.

Edited by Satan n stuff, 27 May 2013 - 11:12 AM.

[Gryphorim]

Love this Idea, started to post some suggestions, and wound up with a wall of text. So I created a new thread, presenting my similar, but not the same ideas. I'll post a link here, and I've linked back to this in the OP of the other thread.
http://mwomercs.com/...ce-and-stagger/
I really want to see a system like this in-game.

[Tweaks]

Even though I'm a Jenner pilot, and would probably be most affected by this, I think it "could" work, as long as they implement it using proper physics. That means, that colliding with the legs of an assault 'Mech at full speed with a light 'Mech, when the light 'Mech is barely higher than its lower upper legs, would not do much to the assault 'mech, but nearly destroy the light 'Mech and knock it off balance.

Momentum and inertia also has to be taken into account. That means that colliding with a 'Mech dead on in a linear path wouldn't knock you down, but rather just stop you dead as opposed to colliding at an angle which would throw you off balance a lot more. Just think of american football athletes when they charge and push. Unless the opponent counters with opposing force, he will be knocked down or pushed backwards.

The original knockdown mechanic was just ridiculous. A 'Mech would barely touch you and you'd be on the ground. I never want to see something like that again. As for having to move in a certain direction to counter the in balance, I don't know... it seems like a lot to think about and control in the heat of battle and I'm not sure it would work well. Also remember that 'MechWarriors were linked with their 'Mech's balance center through their Neurohelmet, so balancing was instinctive and not manually controlled. It would have to be the same in MWO. I agree we should be thrown off balance (according to the physics I mentioned above), but I think that the recovery should be automatic. If anything, there could be a pilot skill to improve recovery speed.