66 replies to this topic

[crustydog]

I think if you bring the engine fusion explosion back into the game, that might reduce the deathball effect a bit - along with the face hugging. At the very least, players would be inspired to spread out a lot more.

If you are introducing more damage into the battlefield from other sources, you can then also increase mech armour and structure without having to look at increasing the match time, etc.

[Livewyr]

Mawai, on 14 April 2016 - 08:35 AM, said:

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.

I could see it being done one (or both) of two ways.

1:
You could do the CoF as you've already mentioned, that goes from pin perfect convergence like we have now (sitting still or moving slowly) to a fairly wide cone when you are moving fast with engine at full throttle. The cone would be outlined in some way so you know.
You would have 2 cones:
Torso, generally larger cone for movement.
Arms, generally smaller cone for movement. (Actuators, buffers, etc...)
Having high heat would reduce the rate at which the CoF decreases in size after you slow down.

I'm not putting numbers out there because people would just nitpick them.
I would be okay with that way.

2:
Reticle sway. The reticle(s) would sway in a general figure 8 (or infinity) pattern that grows in size and intensity/speed as you move faster and faster (pushing your engine harder and harder).
Similar to the CoF, the figure 8s/inifintes would have different sizes and intensities for arms vs torso weapons.
Also similar to the CoF, having high heat would reduce the rate of stabilization of the reticle sway upon moving slower.

The weapons would always go where the reticle is, but the reticle would move. (Allowing you to always know where the shot is going, and allowing a person with good reflexes to overcome the challenge of reticle sway.)

This would be the preferred method for me.

[Ultimax]

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?

They only think about themselves dying easily, and find every excuse imaginable to blame - except for the primary cause, which is themselves.

I've played with guys who complain about TTK, convergence, etc., and these are always the first to get popped in matches because they make bad decisions.

Honesty is hard.

[Tordin]

oldradagast, on 14 April 2016 - 03:09 AM, said:

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.

Send that list to PGI and Russ. Seriously they need to see the mess that they keep building up overtime because of the pin-point root problem and their so called solutions when its right in front of them. They dont need to remove pin point totally if its part or lore, if it makes sense in some cases (like gauss?) tt or whatever but not to such extremes.

Edited by Tordin, 14 April 2016 - 09:33 AM.

[Mystere]

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

Would you like to explain in detail?

Edited by Mystere, 14 April 2016 - 09:33 AM.

[Davers]

Is CoF common in games with such a huge disparity in target sizes? A CoF that would change the hit location on an Awesome would almost guarantee a complete miss on a Commando. Do we want light mechs unhittable at range?

[Aiden Skye]

Monkey Lover, on 13 April 2016 - 08:41 PM, said:

We had higher ttk not long ago. Then they gave all the IS quirks and unnerfed the clans haha

Don't forget mobility nerfs.

[Ultimax]

Davers, on 14 April 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

Is CoF common in games with such a huge disparity in target sizes? A CoF that would change the hit location on an Awesome would almost guarantee a complete miss on a Commando. Do we want light mechs unhittable at range?

It's also the fact that hitting a specific component on demand is a skill.

Protecting a specific component when it's open is a skill.


Generally we see demands to introduce "randomness" from players who are on the end of the spectrum where success with the above two skills is of lower frequency (especially protection)

Edited by Ultimax, 14 April 2016 - 01:10 PM.

[cazidin]

Ultimax, on 14 April 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

It's also the fact that hitting a specific component on demand is a skill.

Protecting a specific component when it's open is a skill.


Generally we see demands to introduce "randomness" from players who are on the end of the spectrum where success with the above two skills is of lower frequency (especially protection)

Personally, I'm against the Short Sightedness of Convergence. If you read my thread from a few months back then thank you.

We saw what happened when PGI attempted to implement a "lock on" mechanic for the worst offender of high damage alpha strikes, lasers. It was quickly called Ghost Range, widely dismissed by the players and completely scrapped by PGI. We saw it for the terrible idea that it was.

Power Draw may work to reduce high pinpoint alpha strikes to atleast 30 or 35 points of damage and it has already been called Ghost Heat II or Ghost Power.

I don't know of a mechanic that PGI can introduce that will be universally accepted by the playerbase and won't arbitrarily focus on punishing a particular weapon system.

[Barantor]

Ultimax, on 14 April 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

Generally we see demands to introduce "randomness" from players who are on the end of the spectrum where success with the above two skills is of lower frequency (especially protection)

There is already randomness in this game, it's why we have broken LRMs and LBX.

It is a skill to do the things you talk about, but it becomes less battletech based as a result. There is also the balance of this game being based on a battletech universe, which it drifts away and comes back to very randomly.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Livewyr, on 14 April 2016 - 08:59 AM, said:

I could see it being done one (or both) of two ways.

1:
You could do the CoF as you've already mentioned, that goes from pin perfect convergence like we have now (sitting still or moving slowly) to a fairly wide cone when you are moving fast with engine at full throttle. The cone would be outlined in some way so you know.
You would have 2 cones:
Torso, generally larger cone for movement.
Arms, generally smaller cone for movement. (Actuators, buffers, etc...)
Having high heat would reduce the rate at which the CoF decreases in size after you slow down.

I'm not putting numbers out there because people would just nitpick them.
I would be okay with that way.

2:
Reticle sway. The reticle(s) would sway in a general figure 8 (or infinity) pattern that grows in size and intensity/speed as you move faster and faster (pushing your engine harder and harder).
Similar to the CoF, the figure 8s/inifintes would have different sizes and intensities for arms vs torso weapons.
Also similar to the CoF, having high heat would reduce the rate of stabilization of the reticle sway upon moving slower.

The weapons would always go where the reticle is, but the reticle would move. (Allowing you to always know where the shot is going, and allowing a person with good reflexes to overcome the challenge of reticle sway.)

This would be the preferred method for me.

I honestly think the CoF style like AW has it would be best for this game. It would be not unlike when we fire Autocannons in Aw, the bloom increases as we rapidly fire, decreases when we stop. If we fire alot of guns at once in a big group fire, it would bloom more then it we fired just 1. MOving, we would incur more bloom then when were stationary. Only change id make is to make the stationary, non moving fire damn near pinpoint accurate, while moving would be less so. Chain firing while moving would be fairly accurate while alpha striking while moving would be like firing an SRM6 at 270m in this game..Ofc, the bloom would increase based on number of guns fired, over size of gun fired.

[FupDup]

Ultimax, on 14 April 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

It's also the fact that hitting a specific component on demand is a skill.

Protecting a specific component when it's open is a skill.

Generally we see demands to introduce "randomness" from players who are on the end of the spectrum where success with the above two skills is of lower frequency (especially protection)

Related to this, a key part of those other generic FPS games is that they simply have fewer hitboxes. As far as I know, the majority of games have a head hitbox and a body hitbox, and that's it. Some games might not even have the head...

Let's make a hypothetical situation in Call of Duty. Let's pretend that our shooter is aiming square in the center of his target's chest. CoD has corns of fire, so this means the bullet has a good chance to deviate from that square center. Maybe, for example, the bullet ends up landing to the left of the aiming point, right where the left lung would be. In CoD, this does identical damage to the target as just shooting the exact center.

Thus, in CoD, the deviation caused by the corn doesn't have much impact, if any, on the outcome of the fight.

But in Mechwarrior, our multi-hitbox system changes this. In CoD, there is only a single health pool. In Mechwarrior, there are like at least 8 different possible places you can hit an enemy. Each of these 8 places has their own independent health bar. Corns of fire in Mechwarrior mean that your damage gets applied to a completely different health bar compared to CoD, where they all apply to a single combined health pool.

For example, if you aim at an exposed side torso but the corn makes the shot hit the arm instead, this massively changed the outcome of the shot in Mechwarrior. In Call of Duty, hitting the arm is 100% identical to hitting the chest, or the foot, or the butt, or the groin, or the left pinky finger. In Mechwarrior, hitting the wrong hitbox can and does literally mean the difference between life and death.


TL;DR: People like to try to take mechanics from mainstream FPS games and put them into MWO without remembering the key mechanical differences between these games, and thus these mechanics work vastly differently in MWO than they do in those other games.

[Davers]

cazidin, on 14 April 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

Personally, I'm against the Short Sightedness of Convergence. If you read my thread from a few months back then thank you.

We saw what happened when PGI attempted to implement a "lock on" mechanic for the worst offender of high damage alpha strikes, lasers. It was quickly called Ghost Range, widely dismissed by the players and completely scrapped by PGI. We saw it for the terrible idea that it was.

Power Draw may work to reduce high pinpoint alpha strikes to atleast 30 or 35 points of damage and it has already been called Ghost Heat II or Ghost Power.

I don't know of a mechanic that PGI can introduce that will be universally accepted by the playerbase and won't arbitrarily focus on punishing a particular weapon system.

The only one that would be acceptable is a system that allowed a 'skilled' player to focus damage more than a less skilled player. Flat RNG or 'unlockable' accuracy, such as through modules or Pilot Quirks, is really unacceptable.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Davers, on 14 April 2016 - 01:32 PM, said:

The only one that would be acceptable is a system that allowed a 'skilled' player to focus damage more than a less skilled player. Flat RNG or 'unlockable' accuracy, such as through modules or Pilot Quirks, is really unacceptable.

Yeah, by means of a person who is able to properly manage their RoF and CoF over a newb who just runs in gunz-a-blazin' but cant hit ****.

[Davers]

LordKnightFandragon, on 14 April 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

Yeah, by means of a person who is able to properly manage their RoF and CoF over a newb who just runs in gunz-a-blazin' but cant hit ****.

Personally I wouldn't target RoF- that is what heat does, plus what good are AC2s if you punished accuracy with rate of fire? I would rather force a tradeoff between movement and accuracy, where players would have to constantly be adjusting their speed rather than running full steam all match, as an example.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 14 April 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

TL;DR: People like to try to take mechanics from mainstream FPS games and put them into MWO without remembering the key mechanical differences between these games, and thus these mechanics work vastly differently in MWO than they do in those other games.

I've already acknowledged this... but it's not like you commonly see headshots in this game. What you see is people normally aiming CT (occasionally forgetting to leg Lights for some unknown reason) and melt the thing that comes around the corner or over the top of the hill... and complaining about the firing line that noone else bothered to scout in advance.

There is a disparity between in terms of armor (or "health") in how it is distributed on a mech to a point where you'd wonder if the actual TT ratios need more radical adjustments... I'm only talking about the max armor (including structure) and not stock armor (because you can't fix bad designs in stock - you deal with the optimal ones virtually all the time).

Edited by Deathlike, 14 April 2016 - 02:15 PM.

[Unreliable Mercenary]

With proper maneuvering and torso twisting I seem to survive quite awhile even in my mediums, but perhaps its just my tier.

mrpetzold, on 14 April 2016 - 03:45 AM, said:

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.

Honestly it seems like some of the maps were designed for 8v8.

Edited by Owen Miller, 14 April 2016 - 02:27 PM.

[Ultimax]

Barantor, on 14 April 2016 - 01:22 PM, said:

It is a skill to do the things you talk about, but it becomes less battletech based as a result. There is also the balance of this game being based on a battletech universe, which it drifts away and comes back to very randomly.

Why is it less battletech?

Do the mech pilots in novels randomly shoot all over the place?

Or is it just not the same as the table top game where mechs have less armor to begin with and therefore die more easily from a "lucky" roll of the dice?

Edited by Ultimax, 14 April 2016 - 02:33 PM.

[oldradagast]

Ultimax, on 14 April 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

It's also the fact that hitting a specific component on demand is a skill.

Protecting a specific component when it's open is a skill.

Generally we see demands to introduce "randomness" from players who are on the end of the spectrum where success with the above two skills is of lower frequency (especially protection)

Insulting others with "only low skill people want removal of perfect precision at all ranges" doesn't help your argument. For one thing, it's not true, and for another thing adding a small, weighted cone of fire does not in any way reduce the skill required in the game.

Skill is relative. If you are bad at aiming, you'll still be bad at aiming with a cone of fire in play. If you can't roll damage across your mech, you still won't be able to roll damage with a cone of fire in the game. In ALL cases, the guy with better skills will still be better at the game - nobody is proposing making "all weapons hits totally random" or "adding an accuracy modifier that gets bigger the lower your tier" or some other dumb thing.

I grow very tired of listening to people argue against the cone of fire by either assuming we want all weapons made into LBX's or by somehow thinking that a bit of randomness "removes all skill" and somehow makes a horrible player great at the game. Both are laughable arguments not remotely based in reality.

I've already explained in painful detail how pinpoint damage at long ranges is at the root of nearly all balance problems in this game AND is the driving factor for nearly all illogical mechanics we've seen added. It is time the problem is actually addressed.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 April 2016 - 02:35 PM.

[oldradagast]

FupDup, on 14 April 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

TL;DR: People like to try to take mechanics from mainstream FPS games and put them into MWO without remembering the key mechanical differences between these games, and thus these mechanics work vastly differently in MWO than they do in those other games.

Perhaps, but people also seem to be forgetting that the entire point of having multiple hitboxes in Mechwarrior / Battletech was because there was no way to simply pile up all your damage on a single component on a whim. People claim it's "skill" to do this - bull. It may be skill to hit the damaged component, but it is NOT skill to have all your weapon damage pile up there. It takes no skill for the last 2 large pulse lasers or the 2nd Gauss rifle to put its damage right where the first weapon hit - and that's the problem.

Armor values, structure values, hitboxes, weapon placement, and everything else in Battletech falls apart when people can casually sheer off components at long ranges with pinpoint damage. So, when it comes to fitting inappropriate mechanics into a game, I would argue that pinpoint damage IS the inappropriate mechanic here.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 April 2016 - 02:38 PM.