321 replies to this topic

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Triordinant, on 08 May 2016 - 04:12 AM, said:

PGI says TTK is too fast. End of story.

[Khobai]

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MWLL seemed to be ok

because MWLL had respawns. If your assault mech got destroyed you just respawned in a light mech or whatever until you got enough money to buy another assault mech.

If a gamemode has respawns then low TTK is pretty much irrelevant because dying doesnt mean youre permanently out of the game.

And thats exactly what MWO should have... a ticket based respawn gamemode. When you die your team should lose a number of tickets equal to the tonnage of the mech you died in. And then you should be able to pick a new mech to respawn in. Capturing the objectives should also cause the opponents tickets to bleed away. First team to run out of tickets loses.

That solves the whole problem of deathballing/nascaring/low TTK. Its also way better than CW which completely fails to be a proper ticket based repawn gamemode and still just revolves around killing the other team.

Edited by Khobai, 08 May 2016 - 11:54 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

Khobai, on 08 May 2016 - 11:49 PM, said:

because MWLL had respawns. If your assault mech got destroyed you just respawned in a light mech or whatever until you got enough money to buy another assault mech.

But you don't have to get killed - in most cases you could engage a target - and when you had the same weight class you could pulled back after some shooting - and move back to repair station.

Getting focused or stand and stare in front of an Assault killed you fast....although in those handful of games i can remember death balling was seldom an issue.

But in general you are right - MWLL ticket based system with respawn and repair station was perfect.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 May 2016 - 12:00 AM.

[kapusta11]

I don't have problems with TTK. Unless your or your enemy team is pushing or you get flanked by a lance of Oxides, nothing of which happens in pub queue, you're not supposed to fight more than one enemy mech at a time, otherwise you'll never win trades. You just need to know how to position yourself well and stay out of enemy team's line of sight most of the time.

[smokefield]

ok..lets try it in another way. power of example. A new unit member - decent player, under unit standards, but showed potential and was a great guy to be around (i was in the same situation at some point most likely...at least in some aspects rofl). He was dying in first 2 minutes of battle 85% of the time. But he played with us, he listened, he tried, he failed, he tried again, he improved. Now after some months he dies in those first 2 minutes in only 20% of the games, he does the damage, he survives. what happened ? the game its the same, nothing major changed. he pilots more or less the same mechs. he just improved his set of skills - positioning, moving, situation awarness, knowing when to do what to do, piloting...these things dont come easy and for sure no one its born with them. even the most talented player, without training and experience it will still be weaker compared with an average talented player who put the work in there.

[-Vompo-]

Teru Kojima, on 08 May 2016 - 07:16 AM, said:

1v1? I say 60 points of lazerpinpoint x 12 man firing line.. torso twist that and we can keep talking.

An you feel like you should be able to tank that without problems?

Playing like a moron who runs in front of the whole enemy team needs to result in an instant death. Don't mean just any particular player... We've all done it at some point. Only some of us feel that the reason they died was their poor play and I guess some feel that the game is bad and should be fixed so they could pull stuff like that off.


Also to those who compare the current game to Cod with robots... Come on... Getting killed in this game takes time unless you derp by overheating, turning your back at the enemy or stand still. I am yet to find the enemy who kills me Cod fast or even Cod fast x10. Go look up 1v1 tournament games and then compare the kill times to Cod.

Yeah it's a matter of opinion and both sides should be heard.

[smokefield]

unfortunatelly people have hard times to admit they play bad and have much to learn. easier to blame the game and some mechanic. no one in my unit not even once complained that ttk its small. i would go the lenght and say its because all of them are good players and the are very aware of how the game should be played.

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Yeah it's a matter of opinion and both sides should be heard.

heard yes. and just about that. you cannot increase TTK based on the group fights ttk and then hope it will scale down correct, cause it wont.

[The Mech behind you]

Oh god, please, no respawns! At least not in the solo queue. You have the CW for that.

[smokefield]

yeah...hopefully we will never see respawns in solo que.

[Karl Streiger]

smokefield, on 09 May 2016 - 03:43 AM, said:

yeah...hopefully we will never see respawns in solo que.

Well i think Kobai had the Team Controll mind when he talked about respawns.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 May 2016 - 03:50 AM.

[SteelMantis]

I'm happy with the TTK in MWO as it is now (somewhat high, which is good both because it is a mech game and also because it doesn't punish lag too much). So I would rather PGI leave it alone. At best I will continue to be happy and at worst I will become less happy.

On a side note: there are plenty of games with low TTK that are more serious than COD. ARMA for example. And there are lots of high TTK games with bad PvP like World of Warcraft. Low TTK doesn't automatically mean bad anymore than high TTK makes a game good.

[Pinscher]

Looks like PGI is searching for another bandaid. All because they refused to use the full heat system from tabletop.
All the problems they have been trying to fix could be solved by using TT heat scale and heat penalties.

your game play and alpha strikes would change completely if your heat slowed your engine down. Go ahead fire 9 lasers. but you wont be moving very fast, and any good player knows how critical movement is( in MW or TT).

PGI is trying to recreate the wheel with each piece of duct tape they add. Ghost heat is the perfect example. They used to fire too many lasers, so they came up with ghost heat. Using TT heat scale you would fire 9 lasers once. and then you would run at 20 kph and be dead. Not to mention MWO has a base heat scale of 60 versus TT scale of 30.

Any weapon imbalance issues, alpha strike issues, or mech balance issues are all caused by the heat management of the core game. they need to start by putting in movement penalty to heat. This will turn the meta to mechs with multiple weapon types. This new meta will have the limits tested of course, thats when ammo explosion checks need put in or severely increased. And at some point the heat penalty to targeting needs put in.If your heat het high you should lose the quasi c3 targeting we have followed bu losing radar all together.

You have to remember a mech is a machine, the more energy it uses for weapon, the machine has to compensate by dropping it elsewhere. Since the fusion engines are regulated by heat instead of Gigawatt output, things need to start turning off the higher the heat gets. This is why in TT the higher the heat the slower the mech, The engine has to cope with the energy output that is being requested.

[Nightmare1]

Mavairo, on 08 May 2016 - 08:21 PM, said:

Look I get it, you want a mindless twitch shooter. That's fine...
I don't.
What I want is a game where TTK is somewhere between where it is right now, and world of warships.
What the devs also want from their own stated intentions is a longer TTK.

Not at all. I do want a good Mech game. However, I want a different standard to be used, one that incorporates common sense. You want the game to be something where if a Light Mech or a Medium Mech walks out into a firing line of 12 Mechs then there is a chance it will walk away again. That doesn't make sense to me. I can't think of a single instance where a Mech of 50 tons, should be able to withstand the concentrated firepower from anywhere from 4 to 12 Mechs in a straight-up battle.

As far as escaping is concerned, that's dependent on three things: Your speed, your use of terrain, and your enemies' accuracy. You can't control the latter point, but the first two are withing your control. Granted, if you're in an Assault Mech, you probably won't be able to escape very well.

Look at it mathematically. Assume that the average Alpha Strike from an enemy Mech is 50 points of damage. Some are lower and some are much higher, but we'll use 50 for our purposes. Four Mechs means 200 points of damage. Six Mechs is equal to 300 points of damage. Ten Mechs is 500 points of damage, and twelve is equal to 600 points of damage. The average Medium Mech has something like 96 points of health in its CT with fully front-loaded armor, plus quirks. The tankiest Assault Mech only has 186 points of health with fully front-loaded armor, plus quirks. Ignoring quirks and critting, the firepower from just four Mechs is enough for kill any Mech in the game (200 points of damage).

How on earth do you justify the notion that Mechs should get a "chance to escape?"

Now, I haven't played World of Warships, but I have played other naval simulators. My guess, is that you are referring to the enemy's accuracy. In most of the other simulators, it takes a moment for the vessels to acquire each others range before they can start to accurately land hits. In that time, you can take evasive maneuvers and attempt to flee. That being said, I've never been able to escape unscathed, much less without serious damage, when being fired upon by an entire fleet of ships. The sheer amount of firepower and spread of shells guarantees some will hit. So it is with MWO too, except that the ranges are shorter so there is a greater amount of accuracy involved.

Frankly, I believe that TTK should be based on 1v1 battles. That is the purest form of combat and the easiest method to use for balancing because it has the least amount of variables. You can't really balance TTK for groups because, like others have said, teamwork is OP. It's not really something you can nerf either. Attempting to do so, would just ruin the small combat scenario. Now that Scouting is in-game, and with Solaris in the pipeline, PGI can no longer make blanket nerfs in an attempt to balance team play, without risking the unbalancing of small or single combat play.

I'm a realist. You're not. Longer TTK can't be achieved through simple nerfing. It has to be achieved by something that would scale with the size of the combat. Power Draw is a good idea for this as is reworking the heat scale. Given PGI's past failings, I'm a little worried about what we may get, but those remain our best options. Convergence was tried, and we know that it definitely breaks the game.

Edit: It is possible to extract yourself from a bad situation:




The enemy team started pushing, so I didn't wait around. I knew what was coming and began pulling out before the full team hit that corner. As a result of my foresight, as well as my use of cover and speed, I was able to escape a nasty corner push and firing line. I lengthened my own TTK, you could say, by playing smart.

Now, I know that not everyone can do that. Some people are just unlucky when they walk around the corner and others just get focused. Here is a good example of all that:





That first Mech ate it in the cockpit, I think. That's unlucky and nothing can really be done about that. Indeed, nothing should be done about it; a cockpit hit with a lot of firepower should be a kill hit.

The Mauler was taking direct fire from three Mechs plus LRM fire from a fourth. The direct fire Mechs concentrated on its right torso and the pilot didn't even attempt to spread damage. By not spreading damage, he made it stupidly easy to pop his side torso, which is when we discovered that he was running an XL. That's his fault; not PGI's or my team's. The third Mech was Medium, which rightly should not be able to withstand the firepower of an Assault Mech. Once again, I was careful to concentrate my firepower into a single component, killing the Mech just before I died myself.

Frankly, I think the TTK of all Mechs in that video were fine. My Atlas lasted a little more than 30 seconds under a withering hail of fire from the entire enemy team. The Light Mech died instantly, granted, but that was its own fault for being that far forward when he knew we were massing for a push on the other side of the hill (not shown, but Light Mechs had been probing us prior to the push). I also put over 60 points of damage into it, and I'm pretty sure that I accidentally cockpitted it. That was a deserved insta-kill. The Mauler was getting shot up by my allies before I turned my attention to it. It appears to be an insta-kill, but it actually isn't. It lasted a while until I started firing into it. Even then, it took me two full Alphas to finish it. Had the pilot been smart, then he would have been twisting to spread damage while using the buildings to providing himself with cover instead of standing out in the open. That would have greatly extended his TTK. Lastly, the Griffin was really pretty stupid. He attempted to face-tank me, without twisting to spread damage, while blocking his ally's line of fire. He was already damage when I turned the corner and ate a fully alpha to his side torso. At that point, I was too hot to fire anything other than my AC/20, but I was good enough to put it into his damage side torso. That turned out to be enough to kill him.

So, TTK for a cockpitted Light Mech is about right. TTK for a damaged, XL Griffin facing an Assault Mech is about right. TTK for focused Assault Mechs is also about right. What's the problem here?

Edited by Nightmare1, 09 May 2016 - 04:46 AM.

[smokefield]

ask the other pilots in the light or the griffin or he mauler...hehe. they should have "escaped" from that situation right ?

[Nightmare1]

smokefield, on 09 May 2016 - 04:54 AM, said:

ask the other pilots in the light or the griffin or he mauler...hehe. they should have "escaped" from that situation right ?

That situation was basically a bad setup for them. They had the time to prepare a firing line but didn't. When we pushed, their line collapsed. That situation isn't about escape, so much as it is about holding the line and slugging it out. Like I said, the Light was a cockpit shot, I think. Nobody should escape that, even if it was an unintended cockpit hit. The Griffin had ample time to escape, but hung out and waited for me. He was cocky and thought he could take me with his buddy's help and the assistance of Catalina Steiner's LRM boat. He wasn't actually wrong - he was just careless. Had he shielded with his arm, used cover, stood in a different spot to avoid blocking his ally's line of fire (the Mech behind him), or even just dropped through the floor, he would have survived. Instead, he just stood there, facetanking, cocky in his flamer's ability to make me overheat, and his allies' incoming firepower to help put me down. Lack of respect for his enemy is what killed him. Had I been in the Griffin, I would have killed the Atlas and survived; it's that simple.

The Mauler held the line like he was supposed to do, and provided a fixed point on which his team could rally. Had he torso twisted, then that would have bought him, and his team, a few precious seconds to bring up more guns to face our charge. Instead, he facetanked against multiple Mechs and died. That was the moment the enemy team lost the match. If you notice, I was also focused like crazy, but I also made sure to shield effectively. I knew that it was less important for me to output damage than it was to tank and lead the charge. We were each our team's focal points, so I made sure to kill him and then live as long as I could to buy my allies time to get over the hill and hit the enemy. Compare our TTKs, mine versus the Mauler, to get a better sense of the impact shielding has on combat, even for when you are focused. Had the Mauler shielded, then he likely would have made it back behind the corner of the mountain, where he would have more than halved the number of enemy Mechs firing at him, and purchased himself even more time.

We won the match, but it was actually very close, with only about a lance of our own Mechs surviving in the end. Had the Mauler and Griffin pilots behaved a bit differently, the match could have gone the other way. Their TTK was short, not because of flaws with the game, but because of flaws with their pilots, and their team paid for it.

[Khobai]

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Not at all. I do want a good Mech game. However, I want a different standard to be used, one that incorporates common sense. You want the game to be something where if a Light Mech or a Medium Mech walks out into a firing line of 12 Mechs then there is a chance it will walk away again. That doesn't make sense to me. I can't think of a single instance where a Mech of 50 tons, should be able to withstand the concentrated firepower from anywhere from 4 to 12 Mechs in a straight-up battle.

In Battletech an Atlas can quite easily withstand the concentrated firepower of 4 other mechs for multiple rounds. It takes 200-300 damage on average to destroy an Atlas in battletech (which would be the equivalent of 400-600 damage in MWO since MWO has double armor/structure).

But in MWO you can kill an Atlas in less than 5 seconds with focus fire/pinpoint alphastrike nonsense. While in battletech that same atlas would live 3-4 rounds (30-40 seconds) before getting destroyed.

Reasons-
1) MWO has no defensive terrain bonuses/defensive bonuses for movement
2) MWO has no random hit roll or random hit locations
3) MWO has no range penalties for firing weapons at medium or long range (it only has penalties for firing weapons BEYOND long range which isnt even possible in tabletop)
4) MWO allows mechs to stand shoulder to shoulder making focus fire super easy while battletech limits the number of mechs that can be in a hex to one per hex making focus fire more difficult.


MWO simply does not feel like battletech because mechs have much lower TTK than they should. Weapons in MWO always hit, always hit exactly where you aim, never suffer any penalty at long range, and can fire farther than long range. And thats pretty much the whole problem.

Im not necessarily saying MWO should be exactly like battletech. Simply that the TTK in MWO is very low compared to battletech and that PGI should do something to fix that. People want the game to feel more like battletech, not call of duty with mechs.

Quote

your game play and alpha strikes would change completely if your heat slowed your engine down.

not at all. people would just use dual guass. youd still have high pinpoint damage with no heat penalty because gauss generates basically no heat.

all heat penalties would do is reign in gauss as the new meta weapon. that solves nothing and actually makes the game worse by limiting weapon options to gauss alone.

Edited by Khobai, 09 May 2016 - 05:50 AM.

[Nightmare1]

Khobai, on 09 May 2016 - 05:26 AM, said:

In Battletech an Atlas can quite easily withstand the concentrated firepower of 4 other mechs for multiple rounds. It takes 200-300 damage on average to destroy an Atlas in battletech (which would be the equivalent of 400-600 damage in MWO since MWO has double armor/structure).

But in MWO you can kill an Atlas in less than 5 seconds with focus fire because of pinpoint alphastrike nonsense. While in battletech that same atlas would live 3-4 rounds (30-40 seconds) before getting destroyed.

Reasons-
1) MWO has no defensive terrain bonuses/defensive bonuses for movement
2) MWO has no random hit roll or random hit locations
3) MWO has no range penalties for firing weapons at medium or long range (it only has penalties for firing weapons BEYOND long range which isnt even possible in tabletop)
4) MWO allows mechs to stand shoulder to shoulder making focus fire super easy while battletech limits the number of mechs that can be in a hex to one per hex making focus fire more difficult.


MWO simply does not feel like battletech because mechs have much lower TTK than they should. Weapons in MWO always hit, always hit exactly where you aim, never suffer any penalty at long range, and can fire farther than long range. And thats pretty much the whole problem.

Im not necessarily saying MWO should be exactly like battletech. Simply that the TTK in MWO is very low compared to battletech and that MWO should do something to fix that.

You're thinking in terms of TT, not MechWarrior. MechWarrior is not BattleTech. They have the same Universe and Lore, but they aren't the same thing. Frankly, TTK in MWO isn't all that different from what it was in the previous MW series.

1) As for terrain bonuses, I can't think of any fps or simulator game where terrain offered bonuses other than "cover." Some games have hard cover and soft cover. MWO only uses hard cover. What bonuses are you wanting? "Standing in trees, 50% for enemy weapons to magically miss?" Well, trees have hit-reg and are destructible now. I can't describe how aggravating it is for a previous AC/20 round to be eaten by a tree. It's literally been the difference between life and death. What more do you want?

I will admit that I would like Hill Climb to work downhill in addition to uphill. It would be nice to have a speed boost when moving down slope.

2) Why should MWO have random hit locations? In real life, when I am firing guns or the military is using its targeting computers to fire weaponry, we don't go, "Wait a minute, randomize your hits because nobody should be able to strike the target accurately." TT has random hit locations because it is TT. You can't manually aim the weapon, so player skill can't enter into where you strike your enemy. Everything depends on the dice roll. It makes sense for a board game, but not for an fps or simulator game.

3) The penalties for firing beyond optimum range are reasonable. In real life, I have a rifle sighted for 100 yards. It can hit beyond that, but lacks the power and accuracy it would have at 100 yards. MWO simulates this. Lasers are always accurate, but their power drops off. Ballistics have a loss of power and accuracy over distance. Missiles are capped at their optimum range because that's all the fuel that they have; they can't strike beyond their optimum distance. The system actually makes sense; what's your hang-up?

4) This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. That's TT kid, not the game. Even in the Lore, Mechs stood in firing lines shoulder-to-shoulder. You can't restrict people's movements with, "Oh boy, the two of you are waaaaay to close together. Time to use the magical Roller Coaster Tycoon Claw to pick one of you up and drop you off over here. Now remember, no getting within 100 meters of each other!" Seriously though, how would you even code for this??? This isn't a board game; it's and fps-simulator hybrid. Time to forget about hexes and dice rolls.

Returning to your initial comment about the amount of damage required to kill an Atlas, I tanked an awful lot of damage and am satisfied with my TTK in that match. My experience with dice-based games is that it only takes between 8 and 10 seconds to roll the dice and score the hit(s). I lasted about 32 seconds. That's four turns at 8 seconds, or three turns at 10 seconds, and I was taking fire from at least six Mechs. That's pretty good, I think. TTK is fine.

[Khobai]

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You're thinking in terms of TT, not MechWarrior. MechWarrior is not BattleTech.

MWO says its a battletech game. Its right in the upper left corner.

Also you obviously have the reading comprehension of a chimpanzee and clearly didnt read my post because I wasnt advocating adding any of the element of battletech into MWO. I simply said MWO should have higher TTK so it feels more like battletech.

Edited by Khobai, 09 May 2016 - 06:02 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Khobai, on 09 May 2016 - 05:26 AM, said:

In Battletech an Atlas can quite easily withstand the concentrated firepower of 4 other mechs for multiple rounds. It takes 200-300 damage on average to destroy an Atlas in battletech (which would be the equivalent of 400-600 damage in MWO since MWO has double armor/structure).

this remains me - you have forgotten point 5. you need more shots = more damage with smaller weapons.
Say when you need one AC20 hit to kill the target it may still be tough enough to take hits by several AC5s.
In MWO- when you can kill it with 1 AC20 you can kill it with 4 AC5s in one shot, too.

[Nightmare1]

Khobai, on 09 May 2016 - 06:00 AM, said:

MWO says its a battletech game. Its right in the upper left corner.

Also you obviously have the reading comprehension of a chimpanzee and clearly didnt read my post because I wasnt advocating adding any of the element of battletech into MWO. I simply said MWO should have higher TTK so it feels more like battletech.

Actually, I quote it before you went back and edited your post to include that. Nice attitude though; it's always easier to resort to ad hominem attacks than to admit that you were wrong or that you retroactively edited your post.

As for being a BT game, it is, but only in the sense that it uses the BT universe. The MechWarrior game series were also BT games in that same sense, although they were not TT. MWO is simply the latest iteration of MW. The "A BattleTech Game" is more to pay homage to its origins than to indicate that it is a TT clone.

TTK is pretty decent right now if you fight smart. Walk into a line of enemy Mechs and you'll get killed. It's that simple. It should be like that in every game because stupidity should be painful. For those that are simply unlucky, get over it. I've been in that situation before where there's literally nothing you can do, like when I headshotted that Light Mech in the video. That's frustrating, but you just disconnect and drop again, recognizing that life isn't always fair and that you will lose some. Coming to the forums to whine that you need protection from bad luck or foolhardiness is ridiculous. I just don't have much tolerance for it after four years.

Like I said previously, TTK in 1v1 and 1v2 combat is good. Those two scenarios should be the underpinnings of how we regulate TTK. There's no need to change TTK in this respect. Getting blown away by a half-dozen or more Mechs is both reasonable and realistic; why do you think you deserve to withstand an amount of firepower that defies logic?

Edit: I posted it once before, but here you go again, for your convenience:

https://www.youtube....NFQvULs5YhL28Cw

That's a playlist with 16 videos showing that TTK is just fine. They were all recorded in April across three weekends. That's TBRN's annual Rum-Off, a special event with prizes we hold to celebrate the anniversary of our founding. The only rules are that you can't shoot until "Go!", you have to stay in a predetermined area of four-sectors, and you can't use arty/air strikes. Pilot skill levels range from first-time newb to hardcore veteran, with builds ranging from troll to comp. Despite the mishmash of skills and builds though, the TTKs for each match were pretty good. There were two that were a bit short, three that went a little long, and the rest were about right.

Obviously, I don't expect you to watch all the videos, but they are there for you to peruse through at your leisure if you so desire. Try picking one or two and skimming through them, picking out the battles and watching them. Pilots of even skill took about 40 seconds. An ace pilot took only 20 seconds to destroy a less skilled pilot. On average though, Assault 1v1 took over forty seconds to complete. That's a good TTK. For the Heavies, the matches were similar, with 50 seconds being a common TTK, but some getting at long as a 1:10 minutes. That's an excellent TTK. Our Light matches had roughly 40 second TTKs too. That's good!

TTK is just fine. The issue is focus firing, and there really isn't a fix for that unless you limit the queue to smaller groups. Personally, I'm fine with the game as it is with respect to this though.

Edited by Nightmare1, 09 May 2016 - 06:35 AM.