66 replies to this topic

[Spr1ggan]

TTK is actually higher now than it has been in a long time.

What do you guys want? For it to take your entire ammo payload to down one mech? For it to take 10 mins to kill someone? What?

[Felbombling]

There is a fine line between insta-kills and the circle of boredom, where two Mechs endlessly circle each other, unable to do enough damage to land a killing blow. You have two camps at work in the game... the pin-point 'skill' players and the 'lore' players longing for longer, drawn out play to better simulate a Mech battle. Honestly, players last longer in The Division than they do in MechWarrior: Online.

Given the coding challenges PGI seem to have, I'd make two changes...

• Lengthen the cooldown / reload times on the heaviest weapons [PPCs, Large Pulse Laser, Gauss Rifles, etc.] to roughly ten seconds or thereabouts.
  
• Keep the current cooldown / reload times on the smaller weapons, but halve their damage [Medium Lasers, SRMs, AC/2, etc.]

That way the twitch players who want 'excitement' can always feel as though they're doing something, so long as they have smaller class weapons, the 'realist' players have their tactical weapons and the middle of the road players have extended engagements. ANYTHING to extend the matches to about ten minutes average playtime instead of six minutes average playtime.

[Moldur]

No. It would just increase deathball, thus furthering the disparity between organized and disorganized players. Regardless of the fact that a person does not need to dedicate a lot of time to play organized with a group of people, many still choose not to "waste all their time in a clan on an online game," thus, the ability of the individual needs to be at least somewhat formidable.

Deathballs happen because their firepower is so much greater than single mechs, they can absorb much more damage, and all the mechs have the same firing line.

Lowering damage would make deathballs even harder to kill, but would barely hurt their firepower, which is still several times greater than an individual mech. The overwhelming firepower of 4, 5, 6+ mechs would still reasonably vaporize a focused target. In other words, it only buffs deathballs.

[Jetdrag]

Ttk is fine.

[oldradagast]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 13 April 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

I'd love some CoF based around recoil, movement, etc but it breaks HSR and between the two I think HSR is the more important

Cone of fire does not break HSR. Delayed convergence, however, does. We already have Cone of Fire in the game: extremely large cones with jump-jet use and MASC, and a small cone for machine guns, so the game engine can handle it just fine. A small cone on all currently pinpoint weapons would end the idiocy of dropping a pair of gauss rounds or a pile of large laser blasts on a single pixel at long ranges every time. It would also open up design space: heat penalties could enlarge the cone a bit, locking onto a target could narrow the cone a bit, etc.

But we can't have nice things that are inspired by Lore and the actual table top game because "esports" and "mindlessly easy damage application is skill."

[oldradagast]

Eth3real, on 14 April 2016 - 12:58 AM, said:

TTK is actually higher now than it has been in a long time.

What do you guys want? For it to take your entire ammo payload to down one mech? For it to take 10 mins to kill someone? What?

Nobody asked for such a thing - hyperbola does not help your argument. Anyone who thinks the current pinpoint laser vomit meta or putting a pair of gauss rounds into a single pixel at long ranges every time is Battletech is sadly mistaken.

Pinpoint damage has been at the heart of nearly every balance problem in the game:
- Why is mech geometry so overly important? Because it's too easy to apply huge amounts of damage to a single component at long ranges.
- Why is ghost heat a thing? To reduce the stupidly high amount of pinpoint damage that can be applied at long range
- Why do we have Hover Jets? Because PGI decided not to implement jump jet shake the whole time the mech is in the air so something else had to be done about jump-sniping - applying huge amounts of pinpoint damage at long ranges
- Why is the game dominated by lasers and a bit of Gauss / autocannons? Because they apply huge amounts of pinpoint damage at long range.
- Why was the PPC nerfed to useless and Gauss given a charge system? Because they applied a lot of pinpoint damage at long range
- Why do mechs have double armor and structural buffs? Partly because of the high rate of fire in the game, but also because so many weapons can apply pinpoint damage at long range
- Why are we going to get the who-knows-what-it-is power draw system? To reduce the amount of pinpoint damage that can be applied at long ranges in an alpha strike.

I don't know how to make it more clear. Pinpoint damage is the driving factor in this game, and the main balance problem that needs to be fixed since the band-aids are not really working.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 April 2016 - 03:13 AM.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

No no no...

We need to go faster so we're harder to hit.....
then we'll buff weapons b/c people won't die fast enough....
then we'll add structure buffs b/c we die to fast.....
then we'll go faster so we're harder to hit.....
then we'll add more and better placed hardpoints to make old mechs pointless.....
then we'll add ghost heat b/c mechs have too many weapons....
derp da derp de derp

Edited by The Atlas Overlord, 14 April 2016 - 03:20 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Says something about a game, when so many spend so much time on forums arguing rather than playing.

My post count on Guildwars was less than 10 GW2 less than that, was so bad I quit playing after a week, prefer the old one.
until MWO the highest post count I ever had was under 200 that was for everquest that I played for years..

[Mead]

Davegt27, on 13 April 2016 - 10:24 PM, said:

You need a low TTK when there are not that many players

That way you can get people in and on to the next game so the players waiting for a match don’t have to wait that long

Signs of a slow death

Just because a few people have the attention span of a fruit fly doesnt mean a 15 minute match is too much of a burden.

[mrpetzold]

8v8 would have fixed the TTK. 12 mechs shooting at one (aka focus fire) is what ***** up TTK.
It would probably have fixed matchmaking aswell.

[Livewyr]

The problem with threads like this, is that "how long TTK should be" is an opinion dependent on the individual's taste.

For some, it's CoD with mechs. (Why bother having component hitboxes?)
For others it's death by 1000 tiny cuts. (Why bother shooting at anyone.)

Me personally, I'd like the game to slow down a bit. I want it to involve a bit more skill and thinking than just positioning and just having the faster accurate mouse-hand.

However, the weapons themselves are ok in general, what needs to happen is a combat change.
Departing the unmolested hovertank pin perfect convergence would be good. (Leaving weapon perfect performance out would also muddy the meta a little bit, creating fuzzy lines between the weapon performance.)

How to leave this rigid performance combat system is another matter.

[Jetdrag]

It's based on individual/group skill too. Ttk is going to be low if you make poor decisions and/or don't move defensively or spread damage well. I've had a fair share of hard fought lengthy games.

[Rear Admiral Tier 6]

Eth3real, on 14 April 2016 - 12:58 AM, said:

TTK is actually higher now than it has been in a long time.

What do you guys want? For it to take your entire ammo payload to down one mech? For it to take 10 mins to kill someone? What?

Well teamwork is op,and more so focus fire,higher alphas,so it needs less than 3 players to completely gank/oneshot a fully armored enemy within seconds.

If people want that stupid COF-thing implemented,i want tabletop armor values too,half the armor for all mechs.

[Dino Might]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 13 April 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

I'd love some CoF based around recoil, movement, etc but it breaks HSR and between the two I think HSR is the more important

Why would that break HSR? If server CoF inputs differ from your own, it'd only be slight (I'm not usually seeing much warping to conclude that server determination of my position and speed is that much different than my computer's determination. Is everyone else seeing a lot more of this?) and probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

[Livewyr]

A movement and heat penalty to accuracy would greatly improve the gameplay.

TTK could be really short if you are willing to risk sitting still/crawling for perfect accuracy. Max Risk -> Max Reward.
TTK could be really long if you and your opponents want to go full throttle the whole time. Min Risk -> Min Reward.

All up to you.



(Except its not up to you because PGI is allergic to anything but binary game mechanics.)

[Almond Brown]

Black Ivan, on 13 April 2016 - 10:25 PM, said:

If PGI would implement such a CoF system the outcry on the forums would be greater than anything before. There are many people for Pin Point damage system.

On the other hand I doubt PGI's ability to do such a thing, when I see what poor game design they did with the last Quirkening, map design and game mode.

Psst. Give this number a call. 1-800-Arm-ChairDev. The Armchair Developers Union can always use another really good Armchair Developer, with TUDE. You would fit right in, guaranteed.

[cazidin]

Yes. Let's nerf LRMs, Flamers, Machine Guns and Lasers.

[Mawai]

FupDup, on 13 April 2016 - 06:12 PM, said:

Nope.

Only a few can even qualify for any degree of OP'ness, the rest are either fine or actually a tad too weak (cough cough MGs).

Honestly, this depends on what you consider a reasonable time to kill. If you half the damage of every weapon (or double all armor) then the time to kill will be doubled but the individual weapon balance will stay the same.

The FEEL of the game will change since each individual volley will count for less. You will whittle away your opponents rather than taking them out in a few shots. This aspect is important since I think most folks LIKE a game in which shots CAN matter rather than every shot feeling like a war of attrition trying to burn off armor and internal structure. On the other hand, the other extreme is the one shot kills of many first person shooters.

So .. it comes down NOT to the weapon balance but how you want the game to feel.

All that said, if your Atlas walks out in front of 4 to 6 opposing mechs with a clear field of fire ... you will die, fast ... and you SHOULD ... whatever damage scaling is used in the game should not reward bad decisions or bad luck.

On the other hand, if you look at 1:1 fights (which are admittedly fairly rare ... as they should be if you want to win) then it can take a while to burn through an opponents armor and internal structure ... but it is the time to do that which should be used as the time to kill yardstick and form the basis for deciding whether to make it longer or not.

For example, if the time to kill for a 1:1 encounter (assuming no maneuvering or headshots) is less than 10 seconds then that probably needs looking at.

e.g. A clan U-AC10 has a base dps of 4 ... assume 6 for double tap since I don't want to work it out exactly .. that gives a 4 C-UAC10 DWF a dps of 24. In 10 seconds that can dish out 240 damage which will core any mech in the game. An AS7-D has up to about 110 frontal armor, 62 structure and a 31 structure quirk ... total of 203 damage to kill through CT. This would take the DWF about 8.5 seconds to kill ... add in some defensive twisting and it will take a bit longer but the Atlas won't get much opportunity to return fire. This is an extreme example (though I have seen several DWF with 4xC-UAC10 builds) ... so some additional adjustments to either the Atlas or the C-UAC10 could be justified if you use a baseline TTK of 10s for attacks to the front of opposing mechs.

However, I think it is analyses like the one above and a desired TTK goal that should be used to scale the overall weapon/armor balance ... after that individual weapon balance can be addressed further.

[Mawai]

Livewyr, on 14 April 2016 - 05:11 AM, said:

A movement and heat penalty to accuracy would greatly improve the gameplay.

TTK could be really short if you are willing to risk sitting still/crawling for perfect accuracy. Max Risk -> Max Reward.
TTK could be really long if you and your opponents want to go full throttle the whole time. Min Risk -> Min Reward.

All up to you.



(Except its not up to you because PGI is allergic to anything but binary game mechanics.)

I think a lot of players don't like random numbers. Can you describe how a "penalty to accuracy" would be implemented?

The only reasonable way would seem to me to be a cone of fire effect. Every weapon starts with a narrow cone of fire or spread ... as heat or movement penalties build up the cone of fire or spread increases. However, this means that even with perfect aim, you might miss, or you will miss the component you are aiming at due to the random number effect of the cone of fire.

Many people at the moment seem to prefer that their shots go where they are aiming. When they introduced reticle shake while using jump jets the reaction was quite negative and many folks complained about motion sickness.

On the other hand, if the reticle could be adjusted to show coloured rings that defined the current spread of the available weapon then folks would have a visual representation of where their shots could end up ... which might mitigate some of the negative reaction ... but the game would play much differently.

[Barantor]

A lot of it boils down to the fact that you can't have a long range direct fire weapon be only long range.

If I take a gauss rifle and make it really good with a big hit, with the idea that I can stay back and do big damage from range then nobody will do that and will just run as many as possible and get closer for guaranteed hits. If I make a short range weapon really good, then brawling happens a lot more as folks rush to put as many on any chassis that can hold them.

All of the problems relate to the fact that we have too much freedom to customize our mechs. Balance in this game is a moving target because of it but if they took away customization the level of salt on this forum would fill an ocean.

PGI won't put in a random hit mechanic, and they can't change customization options. They've tried to curtail a little of it and boost unused mechs with their quirks system, but I think it is a bit carried away now and they've ended up boosting some way too much.