117 replies to this topic

[Curccu]

KuroNyra, on 28 October 2015 - 02:09 AM, said:

Counter Sttrike use a cone of fire.
Hawken use a cone of fire,

Mechwarrior use one in tabletops and books.
The only problem is because there is different kind of weapon with different placement. But that can be worked out.

1st shot while standing still or walking (well rifles at least) is 100% accurate in CS and all weapons are hitscan. quite many of them can kill other player with 1 shot. So not that simple to implement into this game (smartly).

Edited by Curccu, 28 October 2015 - 03:49 AM.

[Alek Ituin]

KuroNyra, on 28 October 2015 - 01:44 AM, said:

And it's closer from what is what in the books and in the tabletops. But ho well... People don't want cone of fire and stuff like that because... Reasons?

Because RNG COF is stupid.

If you absolutely MUST make a change... Change all weapon mounts to fire in a fixed forward arc, and only the arms can converge on a target (but their weapons are still forward fixed). If dynamic convergence is indeed impossible, and not just due to incompetency, this is the next best option.

RNG mechanics are like cancerous tumors in games, which take the outcome of events out of your hands entirely. Implement them only as an absolute last resort, implement them sparingly even then, and avoid entirely if at all possible.

[TheCharlatan]

Kjudoon, on 28 October 2015 - 02:23 AM, said:

I don't see any of that when I've played other games with RNG. I suspect that'd be a very contrived complaint... similar to dying by arty headshot which was an error in splash damage.

It was just an example. What i mean is that it won't necessarily work as you and others imagine it.

[timaeus]

Isn't the firing while jumping basically CoF? Not saying that the reticle should be annoyingly shaky as that though.

[Khobai]

Alek Ituin, on 28 October 2015 - 02:30 AM, said:

Because RNG COF is stupid.

If you absolutely MUST make a change... Change all weapon mounts to fire in a fixed forward arc, and only the arms can converge on a target (but their weapons are still forward fixed). If dynamic convergence is indeed impossible, and not just due to incompetency, this is the next best option.

RNG mechanics are like cancerous tumors in games, which take the outcome of events out of your hands entirely. Implement them only as an absolute last resort, implement them sparingly even then, and avoid entirely if at all possible.

What about a mechanic that redistributes a portion of the damage done to a location outward to an undestroyed adjacent location n a completely non-random way?

So like if your mech's side torso gets hit, 25% of the damage might get transferred to the arm or leg (whichever is closer to the point of impact). But the transfer would only occur if the arm or leg was undestroyed.

Its like a completely non-random version of cone of fire. And it directly addresses convergence by spreading damage out more across the hit locations of the mech.

Quote

Isn't the firing while jumping basically CoF? Not saying that the reticle should be annoyingly shaky as that though.

kindve but not really. reticle shake is full loss of weapon control.

cone of fire still gives you partial control over the weapon. the accuracy usually only gets bad if you fire for prolonged periods. and usually it gets worse if youre moving and better if youre stationary or crouching.

but cone of fire wouldnt really work for mwo because you fire multiple weapons at once. cone of fire is really only good for games where you fire one weapon at a time. It would end up being way too random of a mechanic and RNG has no real place in MWO.

I believe an armor-side mechanic that redistributes damage to adjacent locations is a much better solution.

Edited by Khobai, 28 October 2015 - 02:55 AM.

[sycocys]

Hopefully they get brave enough to add heat scale penalties on top of this.

[Kjudoon]

Khobai, on 28 October 2015 - 02:22 AM, said:

cone of fire works in those games because you only have ONE weapon.

cone of fire is stupid in a game where you fire multiple weapons at once. plus it introduces RNG to a game that shouldnt have RNG.

A better solution is just to have a portion of damage transfer to adjacent locations. You get all the benefits of cone of fire except its completely non-random.

Meh. RNG works awesome in World of Warships IMHO. Sure you get salvos that straddle ships and shots you probably SHOULD have hit, but so what? Adds a lot of realism to that game. Waves, winds, movement, defects in the shell... whatever. It is great for multiple weapons. No reason something similar could be done here.

[Khobai]

Quote

Meh. RNG works awesome in World of Warships IMHO. Sure you get salvos that straddle ships and shots you probably SHOULD have hit, but so what? Adds a lot of realism to that game. Waves, winds, movement, defects in the shell... whatever. It is great for multiple weapons. No reason something similar could be done here.

But this isnt world of warships. People play this game because they dont want to play world of warships. If they wanted to play world of warships they would play world of warships.

[Rogue Jedi]

Xetelian, on 27 October 2015 - 08:36 PM, said:

We'd end up with Ballistic-warrior and I think the lighter mechs would be the most effected.

the only Light Mechs that would affect are those mounting 4 or more lasers, so e.g. a Firestarter would have to fire the arm lasers then the torso lasers 2 seconds later, provided dissipation and cap are adjusted proportionately it just means you maybe do not fire everything in one alpha but rather 2 smaller weapon groups.
I do not see a problem, as someone who spends a lot of time in lights, in fact I view the increased dissipation as better than a high cap

[Kjudoon]

Khobai, on 28 October 2015 - 02:56 AM, said:

But this isnt world of warships. People play this game because they dont want to play world of warships. If they wanted to play world of warships they would play world of warships.

Great theory that takes a gauss to the knee vis a vis the truth though. People have been unfortunately, successfully transmogrifying this game into Mech of Combined Doodyfield for 2 years+ now. A major mistake by PGI on doing that. It's why we're in the mess we're in with 'knife kill' lights and 'sniper kill' assaults. I would love to see far more simulation and far less FPS for a while. Besides, the PC audience is not the same as the console audience. PGI, if they wanted to go FPS released this on the wrong platform. Shoulda gone console. The market research is out there.

Edited by Kjudoon, 28 October 2015 - 03:04 AM.

[oldradagast]

Gas Guzzler, on 27 October 2015 - 08:45 PM, said:

ER PPC Gauss again. Fine with me. The PPFLD crybabies might have an issue though.

The "cry-babies" are correct in that PPFLD is the game's biggest balance problem and has driven all the lurching weapon nerfs so far, including ghost heat, useless PPC's, Gauss charge, and other ideas (like ghost damage on lasers.) They aren't "cry-babies" since they are correct.

Now, the solution isn't more random weapon nerfs because every time a weapon is nerfed so it is tolerable when boated it becomes useless if not boated, and the meta just moves on to the next boatable weapon. No, the solution is something like a small cone of fire to end the ability of pinpoint weapons to easily drill holes straight through single components every time at long ranges.

Unfortunately, PGI doesn't seem to understand that, and frightening percentage of the community is fine with the current farce so long as they get to keep their dual Gauss "skill Wolf" or whatever other pinpoint meta idiocy they are playing and use it to kill "useless noobs."

[oldradagast]

Khobai, on 28 October 2015 - 02:56 AM, said:

But this isnt world of warships. People play this game because they dont want to play world of warships. If they wanted to play world of warships they would play world of warships.

For the billionth time, NOBODY is proposing a cone of fire as large as the one in World of Warships. Nor is anyone proposing a cone of fire as large as the one used when jump-jets are active. I'm very tired of the shallowness and lack of imagination around here; the moment somebody proposes a cone of fire, everyone immediately thinks of the most random cone they can and assumes that's the only available option, as if numbers can't be tweaked. No, the proposed cone only needs to be large enough to end the idiotic 100% pixel-perfect accuracy of a pile of weapons at long ranges.

And, for the record, the accuracy in WoWS is actually higher than real WWI and WWII naval artillery, so it is not as if they added that cone of fire in there just to annoy people. It makes for better game play AND is more realistic, a point to keep in mind given that Battletech's origins REQUIRE semi-random hit locations for the armor and damage values to work... and we are currently seeing how the game rules fail without that affect.

Edited by oldradagast, 28 October 2015 - 03:20 AM.

[Tom Sawyer]

How about allowing a mech to alpha then initiate a cool down timer like weapons currently. So you can alpha once, then fire your guns or lasers single or in groups just no all out alpha.

And if you do alpha then have it so the regular cool down time doubles for your guns.

Call it having your mech computers and systems having to reset having done that.

[Tom Sawyer]

An expansion to my prior post.

The greater the alpha aka weapons involved the longer the cool down time? Greater weapon range reduction or accuracy?

Or how about a internal counter that keeps track of how many times you alpha in a match or CW run? So lights that run in and constantly alpha so to suffer negative effects from wear or tear. Or any mech for that matter.

[Kjudoon]

Tom Sawyer, on 28 October 2015 - 03:51 AM, said:

How about allowing a mech to alpha then initiate a cool down timer like weapons currently. So you can alpha once, then fire your guns or lasers single or in groups just no all out alpha.

And if you do alpha then have it so the regular cool down time doubles for your guns.

Call it having your mech computers and systems having to reset having done that.

I can put all my guns on one channel or on several channel and get an alpha without pressing the button. I can spam the chainfire button as well and get the same thing. The problem still remains they all hit the same spot.

[Tom Sawyer]

Kjudoon, on 28 October 2015 - 04:01 AM, said:

I can put all my guns on one channel or on several channel and get an alpha without pressing the button. I can spam the chainfire button as well and get the same thing. The problem still remains they all hit the same spot.

How about an internal counter that tracks weapons fired? Each shot introduces a small yet progressive increase to the cone of fire. So the more you shoot the great the variance in where that shot or group of shots land? If you alpha then make it a larger variance.

Said counter could also decrease if you refrain from firing at a slow rate as the computers adjust the weapons back to optimal.

I now this has been discussed many times in many different variations in many many threads.

[Kjudoon]

We already have3 that. it's called cooldown. Again, you still are not addressing the core problem: all DF weapons hit the same point.

[Jetfire]

Heat Cap and dissipation are not the core issue.

The lack of scaling heat penalties is the biggest contributor to high alpha play and low TTK. As you produce more heat you should suffer increasing encumbrance up unto the point that you begin to take damage to internals.

Penalty examples:
25% Heat - 15% CD increase to all weapons
50% Heat - 15% top speed decrease, 15% slower accel and deccel
75% Heat - 30% top speed decrease, 30% slower accel and deccel and 30% weapon CD increase
95% Heat - HUD flickers out, loss of radar function and targeting

Those are just example values but could be tuned to give the desired result so that High Alpha play is a risky proposition rather than the norm. Leaving you unable to run away effectively or continue returning fire. This would encourage sustained controlled fire.

Add in fixed max range weapons convergence for torso weapons (and arms lacking lower actuators) and TTK would probably be right about where you would expect for giant tanky mechs.

[Kjudoon]

Jetfire, on 28 October 2015 - 04:15 AM, said:

Heat Cap and dissipation are not the core issue.

The lack of scaling heat penalties is the biggest contributor to high alpha play and low TTK. As you produce more heat you should suffer increasing encumbrance up unto the point that you begin to take damage to internals.

Penalty examples:
25% Heat - 15% CD increase to all weapons
50% Heat - 15% top speed decrease, 15% slower accel and deccel
75% Heat - 30% top speed decrease, 30% slower accel and deccel and 30% weapon CD increase
95% Heat - HUD flickers out, loss of radar function and targeting

Those are just example values but could be tuned to give the desired result so that High Alpha play is a risky proposition rather than the norm. Leaving you unable to run away effectively or continue returning fire. This would encourage sustained controlled fire.


.... except for those who dont' want change and want Mech of Doody. They'll hate it.
Add in fixed max range weapons convergence for torso weapons (and arms lacking lower actuators) and TTK would probably be right about where you would expect for giant tanky mechs.

This is an excellent point as well. Although it will not stop alphas from being instagimps, introducing the TT heatscale problems WOULD address boating weapons and create fewer alphas. Of course, in the reality of the munchin gamerverse, how will you minmax your way out of this? Go to lower heat weapons and continue on in the same fashion. Personally doing this AND ending instant convergence should be done. It will bring this game FAR closer to lore and TT in ways that will make this game much more interesting.

Edited by Kjudoon, 28 October 2015 - 04:19 AM.

[Lugh]

Khobai, on 28 October 2015 - 02:22 AM, said:

This. We all know what the problem is: Convergence. just fix it. Its that simple.

Bandaids dont fix anything. Double armor fixed nothing. Ghost heat fixed nothing. No bandaid in the history of this game has ever fixed the problem. So why would a heatscale bandaid work?

In fact its already been explained why lowering the heat cap wont fix anything. Because it just makes dual gauss supreme as the only weapon that can still do high pinpoint damage for low heat. The game literally becomes gausswarrior online at that point.



cone of fire works in those games because you only have ONE weapon.

cone of fire is stupid in a game where you fire multiple weapons at once. plus it introduces RNG to a game that shouldnt have RNG.

A better solution is just to have a portion of damage transfer to adjacent locations. You get all the benefits of cone of fire except its completely non-random.

We HAD convergence mechanics in the game in closed beta. The whining and crying from the Call of Duty tryhards about having to wait to fire weapons and not being able to instantly hit what they were pointing at were so loud that we woke up one day and boom convergence gone. Pinpoint skill made useless in a single patch.