105 replies to this topic

[Burktross]

Wintersdark, on 04 July 2015 - 04:03 PM, said:

Yup. Right from the Shadowhawk's release, morons complained that is was too tall, and that that was somehow a problem.

Height is not a problem. Nobody ever misses mechs because they accidentally shoot over top of them; not even locusts. The natural reticle height with a level torso as people move around is pretty center mass on most mechs, and is low even to still hit short lights. People miss mechs because they miss to the sides.

While height does mean some terrain is less effective cover, it also means other terrain that would be too tall to fire over isn't anymore. When you've got shoulder mounts like the Shadowhawk does, height is a great thing: you can safely fire over friendly mechs, as well as terrain.

Why the shadowhawk was so good was those shoulder hardpoints, coupled with a very slight, narrow torso. With a narrow torso, your torso hitbox segments are narrow too allowing you to run an XL safely if you like, and to spread damage between the hitboxes easily.

The only reason it's not a great mech now, is as Bishop said: Quirks. Rather, the lack thereof.

Height is a problem with targeting profile. I'd bet a pretty penny, bigger-- if only taller-- mechs get focused more often than smaller, inconspicuous mechs

Edited by Burktross, 05 July 2015 - 06:22 AM.

[Pjwned]

Tennex, on 05 July 2015 - 06:04 AM, said:

Well the line is a measure of the average of the pixels from the side and the front. So its not a linear line for height. Its a linear line for the closest approximation of volume we can get

So with that chart, it takes into account, that mechs are stocky or skinny or w.e (its the reason why the grasshopper is so below the line)

Fair enough, but if mech scaling was not a balancing tool for any mech then that would eliminate options for mechs that underperform due to engine caps or hardpoints or lack of jumpjets or whatever else (vice versa for mechs that are too good as well) and quirks should be avoided as balancing tools if something else can be done instead e.g shrinking/increasing the mech's total size.

After thinking about it I would also like to point out that graph you posted earlier seems to be flawed, because if scaling were to only depend on a mech's tonnage then it wouldn't be appropriate to set the red line lower or higher than other mechs of the same tonnage. Considering that, the line for the Nova shouldn't be lower than the Enforcer, but that wouldn't necessarily exclude the Nova or Enforcer from being above or below the line on an individual basis if it was necessary to shrink/increase their size for balance purposes.

[Chemie]

all the mediums are out of size in relation to everything else so they can redo them all as far as I am concerned
https://www.reddit.c...ia_pixel_count/

[1453 R]

How in all the unholy hells is the SHADOW HAWK one of the top medium contenders for a rescale?

I could name a dozen 'Mechs that need rescaling more than the Shadow Hawk, which has never once had a problem because of its size.

I read this thread and it made me want to slam my head against a meat tenderizer. Tennex, dude...'Mechs which are horrible directly because of mis-scaling issues, like the NOVA, or the Trebuchet, or the NOVA, or 'Mechs which are not awful but are still actively hindered by being too big, like the Cicada, are in vastly greater need of attention than the fragbothering Shadow Hawk because their size is actively detracting from their performance.

Much ado has been made of that poorly organized graph and how it shows the Shadow Hawk as being too big - allow me to make a point, if you will:



Now. Point to be made: this graph states that the Stormcrow, a 55-ton 'mech, should be on the line at right just 30k pixels, and should also be noticeably smaller than the Shadow Hawk, a 55-ton 'Mech four 'mechs down whose median line is...34k? About 34k pixels.

So why does the Shadow Hawk get an extra 13% size increase over the Stormcrow? How does that make sense? Oh, wait - it's measuring individual 'Mechs, instead of setting an average volume point for all 55-ton 'Mechs. HMMM, I WONDER IF THERE'S ANY DATA ERROR THERE.

Your graph is bogus, and your conclusion. Good day, sir.

Edited by 1453 R, 05 July 2015 - 07:42 AM.

[Tennex]

Pjwned, on 05 July 2015 - 06:27 AM, said:

After thinking about it I would also like to point out that graph you posted earlier seems to be flawed, because if scaling were to only depend on a mech's tonnage then it wouldn't be appropriate to set the red line lower or higher than other mechs of the same tonnage. Considering that, the line for the Nova shouldn't be lower than the Enforcer, but that wouldn't necessarily exclude the Nova or Enforcer from being above or below the line on an individual basis if it was necessary to shrink/increase their size for balance purposes.

The red line is just a trend line drawn from the locust to the atlas. Ideally each tonnage would only get 1 slot for the line, but some slots are occupied by multiple mechs for example the 55 tonnage slot has a lot of mechs. So it will skewer where the red line should be in a given tonnage slot (maybe by 100 pixels max). It is the closest approximation we got, unless anyone wants to actually calculate it.

In reality its not going to make a big difference. And the fact that mechs fall so well under this trend line speaks to how good it is, at least as an approximate measure. (and also how good a job PGI has done so far with the mechs they were able to scale well)

Pjwned, on 05 July 2015 - 06:27 AM, said:

Fair enough, but if mech scaling was not a balancing tool for any mech then that would eliminate options for mechs that underperform due to engine caps or hardpoints or lack of jumpjets or whatever else (vice versa for mechs that are too good as well) and quirks should be avoided as balancing tools if something else can be done instead e.g shrinking/increasing the mech's total size.

I wholeheartidly disagree with that. The whole point of quirks is to serve to add another tuning variable in balancing. Given that many things are constant; engine speed per tonnage, and ideally mech scale.

If there are too many variables and too many levers to press, balance is going to be a cluster **** and the developers have no way to know whether the balance problem is due to variable A, Variable B - X or because of improper scaling.

Edit: Here it is adjusted for tonnage douplicates

Edited by Tennex, 05 July 2015 - 08:31 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Bishop Steiner, on 04 July 2015 - 02:04 PM, said:

Because it's fall from grace has exactly ZERO to do with size. It was the same size when it WAS the Medium Meta.

It has to do with 2 factors, neither of which rescaling will help:
1) StormCrow
2) Quirks

Stormcrow took it's lunch money as the unchallenged Medium MetaKing. Period. End of story. But because of the SHDs previous position in the food chain, when Quirks were handed out, it got jack crap, whilst almost everything around it got at least something over quirked to allow them to at least be super effective specialists.

Scaling? Not even an issue, and in fact, it's height is in fact very useful when combined with those shoulder hardpoints. That Height allows it to shoot over things and teammates that a shorter Shawk could not.

The mech is a fantastic generalist, with one of the tankiest hitboxes in the game....handicapped by this game being dominated by specialists.

If your concern is returning the SHD back to tier 1 glory, could we focus on the actual problems?

Which come down to quirks, not scale. As Quirks currently stand, the SHD simply needs to be better quirked. Or, a better thing for the game in general, is in this upcoming "global balance change" that PGI is claiming, that Nerfs in general get turned back. WAY back.

Anyhow, vote as you choose, but just understand what you are actually trying to accomplish and voting for. Resizing the Shadowhawk really won't do a dang thing to help it.

Cheers.

I happen to agree with you the Shad got a lot of kills because it is so tall, but then people cry over the Grasshoppers height to, and I've got kills with that, I couldn't have if it was smaller, yet people cry cry because they think its size makes it a bad mech, it doesn't and its not, but it I don't think its fall from grace can be placed at the storm crows door, its suffered from JJ nerf as much as the voctor and Highlander has.

Edited by Cathy, 05 July 2015 - 07:45 AM.

[1453 R]

It continues to boggle my mind that people think height is some tremendous derp factor. "The Grasshopper is as tall as an Atlas!", they wail. Yeah, it is - it is not, however, even half as bulky. It's eighty percent leg, it's a spindly wiry thing without a lot of excess flub, and when I was running it the thing's height never gave me any negative issues. Being able to burn my top-mounted iERLL over other folks for sniper shots, though? That was a big help.

The 'Hopper, canonically, is supposed to be tall and spindly. It is tall and spindly. What the hell's the problem?

Nobody misses high, folks. Everybody misses wide. Height is a thing which is helpful as often as not and which doesn't significantly decrease durability by itself. Bulk is what gets you killed, and neither the Shadow Hawk nor the Grasshopper possess any bulk to speak of.

[Bishop Steiner]

Pjwned, on 05 July 2015 - 04:18 AM, said:

I do agree somewhat here, but to me the problem is not really the lack of quirks on the Shadowhawk (which are not actually all that bad) but rather the completely excessive amount of quirks on every other mech. Quirks for most mechs should strive to be around the same level as Shadowhawks, with a few exceptions for particularly bad mechs but even Locusts have excessive quirks with all the free leg armor and everything, and a huge number of mechs cross this line by miles.



I don't think it's a major occurrence exactly, but when sniping with a long range weapon you can actually miss by shooting over the top of the mech, and if targeting smaller mechs then that can happen more often.



I do agree here though, I never really saw the Shadowhawk's height as a big problem because it uses that height well (with the ballistic left torso especially, which is fantastic) and the main reason I stopped using it was because it was overshadowed by other mechs with huge quirks.



I do think it should be in a better place as far as quirks, but this should be accomplished by toning down huge quirks on other mechs rather than power creeping the Shadowhawk just as much.

Agreed, which I think I touched on, that either in this upcoming balance pass quirks need a major tone down (they do), but since I don't see that happening, unfortunately, quirks have become too easy a bandaid, then unless the Quirks in general are reduced, then the SHD needs to be brought up to the new "average" as it were.

[Bishop Steiner]

Burktross, on 05 July 2015 - 06:21 AM, said:

Height is a problem with targeting profile. I'd bet a pretty penny, bigger-- if only taller-- mechs get focused more often than smaller, inconspicuous mechs

yet oddly the SHD has always been famed for it's tankiness to the point of people crying that it had hitreg issues. Getting focused tends to come down to the biggest threat/easiest target that presents itself closest, and in my experience, has little to do with size, especially height. It's far easier to hit a squat fat mech than a tall thin one.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tennex, on 05 July 2015 - 07:38 AM, said:

The red line is just a trend line drawn from the locust to the atlas. Ideally each tonnage would only get 1 slot for the line, but some slots are occupied by multiple mechs for example the 55 tonnage slot has a lot of mechs. So it will skewer where the red line should be in a given tonnage slot (maybe by 100 pixels max). It is the closest approximation we got, unless anyone wants to actually calculate it.

In reality its not going to make a big difference. And the fact that mechs fall so well under this trend line speaks to how good it is, at least as an approximate measure. (and also how good a job PGI has done so far with the mechs they were able to scale well)





I wholeheartidly disagree with that. The whole point of quirks is to serve to add another tuning variable in balancing. Given that many things are constant; engine speed per tonnage, and ideally mech scale.

If there are too many variables and too many levers to press, balance is going to be a cluster **** and the developers have no way to know whether the balance problem is due to variable A, Variable B - X or because of improper scaling.

A question for your chart...it appears that the pixel count is frontal only? Without a side view pixel count, to get the actual depth/thickness of a mech, how can one properly tell the volume? If I am wrong, please let me know.

[Bishop Steiner]

Cathy, on 05 July 2015 - 07:43 AM, said:

I happen to agree with you the Shad got a lot of kills because it is so tall, but then people cry over the Grasshoppers height to, and I've got kills with that, I couldn't have if it was smaller, yet people cry cry because they think its size makes it a bad mech, it doesn't and its not, but it I don't think its fall from grace can be placed at the storm crows door, its suffered from JJ nerf as much as the voctor and Highlander has.

it suffered, as a poptarter, but at the time of the nerf, I was running my usual anti-poptart build, and the SHD still carried on as the top medium, by a considerable amount. FoV was a tad limited as was it's twist compared to other 55s, but still was the tankiest, mobile enough, and had great hardpoints.

So that really just weeded out the EZMode crowd, to a degree. But when it absolutely hit a brick wall was about July last year, after people figured out how deadly the Crow was.

[Ted Wayz]

I want it ant man small but still pack the same punch. Sort of a mini elemental. Is that too much to ask?

[Tennex]

Bishop Steiner, on 05 July 2015 - 08:23 AM, said:

A question for your chart...it appears that the pixel count is frontal only? Without a side view pixel count, to get the actual depth/thickness of a mech, how can one properly tell the volume? If I am wrong, please let me know.

Just updated it. He actually used both frontal and side and averaged the two. But only showed frontal in the samples.

It doesnt exactly measure volume. But its the closest approximation we have/I have ever seen.

I think the fact that the trend line follows the PGI made mechs so well speaks to how good it is as an estimator of volume.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tennex, on 05 July 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

Just updated it. He actually used both frontal and side and averaged the two. But only showed frontal in the samples.

It doesnt exactly measure volume. But its the closest approximation we have/I have ever seen.

I think the fact that the trend line follows the PGI made mechs so well speaks to how good it is as an estimator of volume.

Trying to remember who it was that did the volume measures was back in Open Beta...he got banned/left out of frustration, but I think actually used Blender or such to "weigh" each model by polygon, etc. That I think was the best I ever saw,. but probably a lot of work.

Thanks for the update though.

[Tennex]

Bishop Steiner, on 05 July 2015 - 08:38 AM, said:

Thanks for the update though.

Yeah of course,

Its super hard to get the volumes in game because the shapes overlap and there are gaps and all sorts of funny junk. I guess this is just the best we have to go by

[Ted Wayz]

Tennex, on 05 July 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

Just updated it. He actually used both frontal and side and averaged the two. But only showed frontal in the samples.

It doesnt exactly measure volume. But its the closest approximation we have/I have ever seen.

I think the fact that the trend line follows the PGI made mechs so well speaks to how good it is as an estimator of volume.

First of all facts are not allowed on the forum so just stop unless you are bashing people over the head with opinions.

Second, I agree with your premise. But as you said their are many variables to consider, so consider this. Sometimes a bunch of perceived negatives do add up to a positive and out of chaos comes beauty. In the case of the shadowhawk the scaling actually benefits the mech. That is why scaling needs to be based upon performance, not just raw pixel data as empirical as it may be.

[Burktross]

Bishop Steiner, on 05 July 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

yet oddly the SHD has always been famed for it's tankiness to the point of people crying that it had hitreg issues. Getting focused tends to come down to the biggest threat/easiest target that presents itself closest, and in my experience, has little to do with size, especially height. It's far easier to hit a squat fat mech than a tall thin one.

I wasn't talking about the Shad so much as about a general rule. There's plenty of exceptions to the targetting, but the height makes a difference in the first volleys; the twitch shooting on the "biggest" before one really thinks out, "This target is a priority"

[Wintersdark]

1453 R, on 05 July 2015 - 07:54 AM, said:

It continues to boggle my mind that people think height is some tremendous derp factor. "The Grasshopper is as tall as an Atlas!", they wail. Yeah, it is - it is not, however, even half as bulky. It's eighty percent leg, it's a spindly wiry thing without a lot of excess flub, and when I was running it the thing's height never gave me any negative issues. Being able to burn my top-mounted iERLL over other folks for sniper shots, though? That was a big help.

The 'Hopper, canonically, is supposed to be tall and spindly. It is tall and spindly. What the hell's the problem?

Nobody misses high, folks. Everybody misses wide. Height is a thing which is helpful as often as not and which doesn't significantly decrease durability by itself. Bulk is what gets you killed, and neither the Shadow Hawk nor the Grasshopper possess any bulk to speak of.

Exactly. The shadow hawk is tall, but it is purely an aesthetic issue, making it shorter won't make it better. Nobody misses high; even while sniping. I can't recall a time I've ever missed high.

Even if people love the Shadowhawk and want it to be better, this isn't the way to do it. So Im left wondering:


Are these people voting Shadowhawk seriously so concerned about aesthetics that they'd leave mechs that are actually harmed by their size not fixed (say, the Nova, or Trebuchet) to fix a minor aesthetic issue,

*or*

Are they really that ignorant?

Because we DON'T know that every mech will get looked at, and odds are they won't.

[Tennex]

Wintersdark, on 05 July 2015 - 08:49 AM, said:

Exactly. The shadow hawk is tall, but it is purely an aesthetic issue, making it shorter won't make it better. Nobody misses high; even while sniping. I can't recall a time I've ever missed high.

Even if people love the Shadowhawk and want it to be better, this isn't the way to do it. So Im left wondering:


Are these people voting Shadowhawk seriously so concerned about aesthetics that they'd leave mechs that are actually harmed by their size not fixed (say, the Nova, or Trebuchet) to fix a minor aesthetic issue,

*or*

Are they really that ignorant?

Because we DON'T know that every mech will get looked at, and odds are they won't.

I think people just own more shadowhawks in their mechbays. And the general trend is to forget about the mechs ppl dont use or dont own as much. Or even mechs they haven't heard about in a while.

Resulting in the poll results

[therealswilly]

The rescaling is needed, but as an Orion pilot, hitboxes need a change as well.