30 replies to this topic

[CDLord HHGD]

So, over the last week I was out of town and my nephew convinced me to play a new game with him. So I spent the better part of a week playing World of Warships (WoWS).

Wow, what a breath of fresh air! I am not leaving MWO for WoWS (you guys aren't THAT lucky), but there are several mechanics that I'd like to point out that could be beneficial for MWO. Not carbon copy brought into MWO, but worth looking at.

Convergence. Wow! Convergence is HUGE in WoWS and it takes time. It doesn't detract from gameplay at all, only added to the immersion of the gameplay.

Multiple reticles. For anyone saying more than two reticles in MWO would be too hard, I say it isn't. In WoWS I had up to 8 reticles and they were all identical and overlapping and it didn;t bother me one bit.

Survivability. Battleships FEEL like battleships. Take a beating and keep beating back. Even the destroyers (aka Lights) felt tanky but were also fragile. Many times I maneuvered close to something hurting me a lot just to get a guaranteed hit with my torpedoes. And those torpedoes HURT!

Balance. Now, I may not have had a long enough time playing to get a comprehensive feel for balance in WoWS, but it felt right. My I didn't feel helpless using any class of ship going up against any other class of ship. I didn't feel God-like either. Torpedoes will make short work of any ship. I didn't spend any money on their premium ammunitions (P2W IMHO) but I never felt like I needed them. Otherwise, all weapons where the same, loadouts the same, etc.

Features. One feature I really like was the F# key chat responses. Most of the F# keys had something like "Affirmative" or "Negative" or "Help!". One even had "@(*$^&#$(" that also had voice like a comm channel. Really neat. I will say that their UI wasn't as user-friendly as I would have hoped. Wasted some money on some mistakes so the grass isn't greener on the other side.

This is NOT an advertisement for WoWS or meant to sway players to that game. I played something different and it inspired me to want to help MWO be better. I thought WoWS was a good comparison because of the relative likeness between the ships and our mechs.

[SpiralFace]

I've been playing a bit of Armored warfare myself, and have come away with many impressions as well:

• WOW if people where complaining about TTK in MW, they should see what else is out there. Round a corner with anything but an MBT and you can get blasted back to the stone age if they have a line set up.
  
• Man, it takes a long time to get stuck into combat and its great. It takes nearly a minute for you to even be getting in a position where you can see opponents, and this actually HELPS the game. No "BLIND RUSH THIS WAY TO START SHOOTING THEM IN 10 SECONDS." Tanks are deployed across a large area, and even though there are limited number of maps, fights are varried because you are not punished for executing on the singular game plan and are given time for your slow movers to position themselves where they want to be. Even if your a slow artillery piece trudging along at 15-30kph.
  
• Mobility is huge and it is PUNISHING even the speediest tanks are less mobile then many assault mechs in MWO.
  
• While I don't think "invisible mechs" work for MWO, I do like everything else about how painted targets work. Spotted tanks are only shown through their name labels, but don't have a giant "shoot me here" dorrito with bounding boxes essentially highlighting where you need to shoot. The text is big, and you still need to zoom in and highlight tanks, the name tag indicates general area, but spotting tanks still heavily relys on you visually spotting them and placing your reticle on them.
  
• Man, obstructed sight lines everywhere. While there are some open maps, most maps are filled with clutter making pinning targets through a few tree lines incredibly hard to achieve.
  
• HUGE maps. I know the tanks have much longer effective weaponry, but the reletive map size compared to gamplay is pretty huge when it comes to the game. And allows for everything to playout quite well.
  
• I LOVE how death balling is more of a detriment then a benefit. In AW, you need to secure different sight lines and lock down territory to punish people moving in certain directions.
  
• Mobile play is still encouraged, but static play isn't PUNISHED. You can lock down areas through fireing lines and punish players entering areas, where as MWO, death balling through a fireing line to initiate a brawl wins you more games then you loose.

MWO is a different game a 1 to 1 adaptation is never going to be good for this game, but I think there are some valuable lessons to be learned from the other games, as I know that many of the talking heads and forum warriors spout doom and gloom unless things are handled certain ways, but in other games its not a detraction at all and infact adds to the depth of play you see in the games. No game is perfect, and its not without their own problems in these games, but there is definatly things to be learned from the other games.

[Kushko]

I was actually just thinking something similar but after playing Elite Dangerous. I was thinking that the little dots that represent the gimballed turrets that auto track on to the target once you have it in your sights would work perfectly in mwo. So for example 2 dots would represent each arm on your mech and where it fires and when you put your main (torso) reticle over a target those two dots would converge on it with a certain speed. So basically you wouldnt have instant pinpoint targeting as soon as you put your reticle over a mech which would make the game (in my opinion) more fun and even have the extra advantage of upping time to kill which i believe is far too low as it currently stands.

[TamCoan]

I kind of passed up WoWS because of my experience with WoT(World of Tanks). They are both based on the same model and once you get up into higher tiers, it really becomes a losing grind that you can only overcome with money or tons of time. Plus the fact that when you fight higher tiers you are at a disadvantage, to the point where you know you can't do anything.

On the up-side, I'm glad that the time-to-kil in WoWS is better than WoT. One shot in a tank and you are dead.

[CDLord HHGD]

TamCoan, on 30 November 2015 - 08:04 AM, said:

I kind of passed up WoWS because of my experience with WoT(World of Tanks). They are both based on the same model and once you get up into higher tiers, it really becomes a losing grind that you can only overcome with money or tons of time. Plus the fact that when you fight higher tiers you are at a disadvantage, to the point where you know you can't do anything.

On the up-side, I'm glad that the time-to-kil in WoWS is better than WoT. One shot in a tank and you are dead.

I played WoT and didn't much care for it. I really like WoWS though and it'll become my alternative when MWO isn't available.

[WarHippy]

cdlord, on 30 November 2015 - 07:16 AM, said:

So, over the last week I was out of town and my nephew convinced me to play a new game with him. So I spent the better part of a week playing World of Warships (WoWS).

Wow, what a breath of fresh air! I am not leaving MWO for WoWS (you guys aren't THAT lucky), but there are several mechanics that I'd like to point out that could be beneficial for MWO. Not carbon copy brought into MWO, but worth looking at.

Convergence. Wow! Convergence is HUGE in WoWS and it takes time. It doesn't detract from gameplay at all, only added to the immersion of the gameplay.

Multiple reticles. For anyone saying more than two reticles in MWO would be too hard, I say it isn't. In WoWS I had up to 8 reticles and they were all identical and overlapping and it didn;t bother me one bit.

Survivability. Battleships FEEL like battleships. Take a beating and keep beating back. Even the destroyers (aka Lights) felt tanky but were also fragile. Many times I maneuvered close to something hurting me a lot just to get a guaranteed hit with my torpedoes. And those torpedoes HURT!

Balance. Now, I may not have had a long enough time playing to get a comprehensive feel for balance in WoWS, but it felt right. My I didn't feel helpless using any class of ship going up against any other class of ship. I didn't feel God-like either. Torpedoes will make short work of any ship. I didn't spend any money on their premium ammunitions (P2W IMHO) but I never felt like I needed them. Otherwise, all weapons where the same, loadouts the same, etc.

Features. One feature I really like was the F# key chat responses. Most of the F# keys had something like "Affirmative" or "Negative" or "Help!". One even had "@(*$^&#$(" that also had voice like a comm channel. Really neat. I will say that their UI wasn't as user-friendly as I would have hoped. Wasted some money on some mistakes so the grass isn't greener on the other side.

This is NOT an advertisement for WoWS or meant to sway players to that game. I played something different and it inspired me to want to help MWO be better. I thought WoWS was a good comparison because of the relative likeness between the ships and our mechs.

I agree with you. I also have been playing WoWS off and on since it was in open beta, and a lot of how they do things there would be a welcome change compared to some of the absurd things PGI comes up with.

To add to your list the ship detection range system in that game would be a much better system for role warfare in MWO than what PGI created on the PTS with bizarre sensor ranges where some mechs couldn't target something inside of normal optimal range of weapons. Basically what it should be is everyone has the same sensor range of for example 1000m, but for example light mechs can only be detected at 400m, mediums at 475m, heavies at 600m, and assaults at 800m. You could then have the skill trees and quirks tweaking those numbers as needed depending on role.

Edited by WarHippy, 30 November 2015 - 08:39 AM.

[Tarogato]

cdlord, on 30 November 2015 - 07:16 AM, said:

Features. One feature I really like was the F# key chat responses. Most of the F# keys had something like "Affirmative" or "Negative" or "Help!".

haha I'm sorry, but once I got to here I lost all focus on your post. F# keys. hehe

[CDLord HHGD]

Tarogato, on 30 November 2015 - 09:32 AM, said:

haha I'm sorry, but once I got to here I lost all focus on your post. F# keys. hehe

I am musically illiterate.

Edited by cdlord, 30 November 2015 - 09:46 AM.

[Nathan Foxbane]

cdlord, on 30 November 2015 - 09:46 AM, said:

I am musically illiterate.

If I recall my musical note annotation right F# = F sharp.

[TamCoan]

cdlord, on 30 November 2015 - 08:32 AM, said:

I played WoT and didn't much care for it. I really like WoWS though and it'll become my alternative when MWO isn't available.

I'd be interested to get your opinion if you get to a higher tier. I know once I broke T7 in tanks, it just became such a grind-fest that I lost desire to play pretty quick. I wonder if the same holds true for the WS design.

[Sandpit]

Quote

Multiple reticles.[color=#959595] For anyone saying more than two reticles in MWO would be too hard, I say it isn't. In WoWS I had up to 8 reticles and they were all identical and overlapping and it didn;t bother me one bit.[/color]

I wanted to touch on this one quickly (liked the post btw CD)

This right here? I agree with and have been a huge proponent of for years now. I personally feel this solution right here completely solves the whole instantaneous PPD issue in one fell swoop.

[Bobzilla]

Sandpit, on 30 November 2015 - 12:31 PM, said:

I wanted to touch on this one quickly (liked the post btw CD)

This right here? I agree with and have been a huge proponent of for years now. I personally feel this solution right here completely solves the whole instantaneous PPD issue in one fell swoop.

Do they have a spread out resting position that they revert back to when you are not moving/selecting them so you can't line them all up and leave them kinda like how arm lock works?

[Sandpit]

Bobzilla, on 30 November 2015 - 12:43 PM, said:

Do they have a spread out resting position that they revert back to when you are not moving/selecting them so you can't line them all up and leave them kinda like how arm lock works?

I've written some pretty detailed explanations on this one but don't have time to repeat it all at the moment so I'll give you a .002 recap lol

Essentially it's similar to how missile, arm, and direct fire reticles work now, just modified slightly with movement speed of the reticle altered by the weapon system.
Big bore and heavy weapons move slower (we're not talking seconds here) and lighter weapons move more quickly.

Example
AC20 = .25 second slower movement to line up shot
AC10 = .15
AC5 = .05
AC2 - 0
So those reticles move at different speeds it completely solves the problem of instantaneous PPD every single shot. You might hit a side toros with that AC20 while the ML you fired off hits the CT if you don't allow the .25 delay for the AC20 to completely align for the shot. Very small delays like this would work to force pilots to either wait that very small delay, or have shots go off course just slightly.

Short ranges obviously aren't going to be as much of a factor but the longer the range, the more important it becomes. 300 meters you might hit the side torso instead of CT for instance. 600 meters and you might hit an arm instead.

None of these would be extreme enough to destroy accuracy but it would definitely help mitigate instantaneous PPD

[Davers]

Someone must have told PGI that sims are no fun and F2P games must be simplistic. MWO is an arcade shooter and any game mechanic that is sim-like will not be implemented (No multiple reticles).

Also, the playerbase has already spoken- They want cold, open, featureless maps and they do not want to actually have to walk very far to get to combat. All that positioning cuts into their Cbill per hour ratios.

This is a game where "Target enemy mechs to do full damage at long ranges" was considered counter-intuitive, but having 3 types of heat sinks, all with completely different stats but none of them actually Double anything is not. To say nothing of the byzantine relationship between BAP, ECM, Sensor modules, lock on time, and the new target Profiles and sensor ranges. But, of course missiles are noob weapons so the l33t don't have to worry about that.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

cdlord, on 30 November 2015 - 07:16 AM, said:

I didn't spend any money on their premium ammunitions (P2W IMHO) but I never felt like I needed them. Otherwise, all weapons where the same, loadouts the same, etc.

There is no gold premium ammo in WOWS.
They got it in their tank game, thought.

[CDLord HHGD]

TamCoan, on 30 November 2015 - 12:31 PM, said:

I'd be interested to get your opinion if you get to a higher tier. I know once I broke T7 in tanks, it just became such a grind-fest that I lost desire to play pretty quick. I wonder if the same holds true for the WS design.

I'll keep you posted. I'm just now getting into the game so am very much a noob (but don't FEEL like one which is a credit to their MM).

Bobzilla, on 30 November 2015 - 12:43 PM, said:

Do they have a spread out resting position that they revert back to when you are not moving/selecting them so you can't line them all up and leave them kinda like how arm lock works?

No, they follow, or try to follow, my LoS center always. Some guns don't have the ability to get there at all so they get as close as they can. Only guns that reach the center LoS (go green) fire though. Once the others get there and go green, they can be fired (regardless of the state of the reload state of the previously fired guns).

Here's a video, starting at 2:57, you can see the reticles working.

Jaeger Gonzo, on 30 November 2015 - 01:18 PM, said:

There is no gold premium ammo in WOWS.
They got it in their tank game, thought.

There is a tab for premium ammunition in the UI and the option to auto-reload it... I'll confirm next time I am on.

Edited by cdlord, 30 November 2015 - 02:33 PM.

[Novakaine]

Gold ammo hmmmmm.
It's only a matter of time.

[Madcap72]

would you accept the WoWs grind to get those things.

But, seriously, WoWz is just as much of a FPS button masher as anything else.

I don't know why anyone would want mechs to have as slow of convergence as a multi thousand ton battleship turret.

[MechaBattler]

There's a problem with the multiple convergence mechanic. The playerbase. It's divided. Some loud people don't want mechanics that get in the way of their twitch based "skill" FPS.

[Lyoto Machida]

Going to my default answer...unlikely that PGI can/will code any of what you suggested.