425 replies to this topic

[Metus regem]

Vanguard319, on 14 June 2016 - 01:59 PM, said:

There is no skill involved in this game, none at all. As for weapons technology, I would point out that JDAMs have a circular error probable of 13 m, meaning that the weapon will hit it's target within a 13 m radius. This is a Precision munition guided by GPS satellites, there is no such thing as pinpoint accuracy, and here you are claiming that CoF is unrealistic. If you ask me, being able to head shot an opponent from 1000 m away despite having a degree of inaccuracy shows far more skill than the current point and shoot we have now.

Ooh the things I could tell you, from the things I saw during my deployments... There was this time while out conduction an insurgency patrol in my Apache, my gunner spotted some guys setting up for a roadside ambush, when we got permission to open fire, my gunner used the M230, one guy we had to dump 15 rounds at him, before we finally hit him. Those ******* were so trying to hide behind and under their trucks... trucks don't stand up well to 30mm....

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Vanguard319, on 14 June 2016 - 01:59 PM, said:

being able to head shot an opponent from 1000 m away despite having a degree of inaccuracy shows far more luck than the current point and shoot we have now.

FTFY, unless we are talking about a discernible pattern with recoil/CoF, then being able to head shot someone with a CoF implemented does not take more skill. I think the most suggested is a CoF with a normal distribution, which while much better, still does not increase skill.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 14 June 2016 - 02:45 PM.

[Johnny Z]

I don't find aiming any easier In MechWarrior Online than in other games. There is no RNG or recoil but to counter that MechWarrior Online requires way more piloting/movement skill than other games requiring aiming. A nice balance and one of the reasons this game has such staying power.

TTK? It isn't bad, but could be extended in the spirit of the franchise easily, and would serve to improve game play as well.

The reduction in mastery bonuses was a great step.

Many of the BT board gamers were disappointed that this wasn't the "Thinking mans shooter" that it was advertised because of the low TTK. Just one group arguing TTK is to low. Many like myself want to see a great BT sim and Alphawarrior Online isn't it.

Again a small improvement to the sim extending TTK is most likely welcome by all. There are many one shot kill games already out there. MechWarrior/Battletech wasn't meant to be one of them.

Edited by Johnny Z, 14 June 2016 - 02:49 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 14 June 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

PGI keeps saying that cone of fire breaks HSR because reasons. Of course MGs have CoF... SRMs and LBX have damage spread...

Frankly I think PGI is just lazy and wants to cry to the AIMING IS SKILL L33T crowd.

Answer is Russ and his vision of PGI being a "serious biznez Esport". Despite mos tEsport shooters haveing some form of CoF mechanic, Russ is on record from the early days of MWO has categorically hating it (of course he said that about 3pV, too........) and as such, is the real reason it never happened.

Moldur, on 14 June 2016 - 01:22 PM, said:

I think something as simple as a big crosshair with no center dot, and forced arm unlock (like beta) would be enough to increase ttk.

Imagine having 2 big circles that are only slightly smaller than the red target lock box.

Yup, another approach. But even at that people are going to cry (I don't wanna point one way and see mah lazor hit anywhere but the exact pixel I pointed at!" (despite every other game doing exactly that, and well, your suggestion removing the "exact pixel" from the equation in the first place.)

[Gryphorim]

Some technical points to be raised with this proposal:
Russ mentioned in a recent tweet that they had wanted to do some dynamic heating effects, like having laser duration drag out from hot mechs, but it plays havoc with HSR and other netcode stuff.
CoF has been mentioned as having netcode related issues also, wherein the random off-center shot seen by the firer and by the target would be different, as would the point of impact as the server sees it.

That having been said, Aiming stutter is working just fine when JJ and MASC are used, so why not a similar thing at reduced values for firing while moving, or anywhere else an aiming penalty makes sense.
For example, a continuous reticule wobble when no target locked, and even when a target locked, but player aiming in another direction (getting worse, the further away the player aims, up to same as no-lock value)
Example 2, Heat above 50% causes aiming stutter even when locked, heat above 70% causes exaggerated effect. As this affects aiming, not the weapon stats themselves, this should not cause issues with HSR.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 02:45 PM, said:

Despite mos tEsport shooters haveing some form of CoF mechanic

For the record, most DPS oriented weapons have it, there are plenty of weapons that have often have very little if any spread, AWP from CS:GO; Widowmaker's Sniper Rifle, Zenyatta's Orbs, and more in Overwatch; Sniper's Rifle in TF2.

Generally it is meant to keep people from abusing the higher damage potential of automatic weapons more than anything.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 14 June 2016 - 02:50 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

MischiefSC, on 14 June 2016 - 01:52 PM, said:

Hence why I've always said trying to port direct vales from tt to a fps was bad. We need to let go of that fetishist. In TT you were lucky to hit with 1 out of 3 MLS at 120m. You certainly were not hitting the same location.

Honestly? Cut armor back in half, make all weapons a 1 second (give or take) dot except missiles and give them a total DPS of their tt value over 10 seconds. Do the same with heat. So call MLAS 1 pt over 1 second with a 1 second cooldown between shots.

This would best simulate the expected relative spread of damage over targets while letting people fire more frequently and accurately. Then add in a small cof effect based on target locks and your own movement. Small, just enough to shake accuracy a little bit.

Not bad ideas, though I don't really like all weapons behave the same, overall. It's one of the few things I feel PGI did right, in theory was giving weapons distinct feels, by using differing mechanics. I rather would like to keep the distinctions for part of the reason I like the idea (though not the exact model used) behind WoT's aiming circle...immersion.

But even that tiny CoF? Church of Skill folk will rail against to the ends of the earth, because the only skill apparently is twitch targeting a pixel that is totally unaffected by any external force. And anythign that DOES affect things externally has to be exactly repeatable and predictable so it can be gamed.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 02:38 PM, said:

Fair, poptarts were known for it, but 600m is pretty different from 1000m, I mean I can understand maybe a minor increase in spread for jumping instead of the cockpit shake, but other than that I'm really ok with that, the main problem with poptarting during those days was the silly 3x gravity that allowed them to fall faster than most reactions allowed, they need to hover at the apex longer (the apex hang in MW4 was honestly about right for that).

Yeah the 3x gravity was huge for risk/reward. But you could easily make the shot at 1000 meters, not just 600, at least before PPCs got massively nerfed. It's just the damage fall off was enough to not get instagibbed at that range (unless you had the misfortune of being multitargeted).

Still gonna stick to my guns with Poptarting:
-JJ heat was good.
-Fall Dmg was good (not just for jumping but the way Lights used to just run off the top of Candy Mountain when they got cornered by an Angry Assault)
- Cockpit Shake/ Weapon Spread while under thrust was fine.

Everything else was garbage. Even with 3x Gravity (which PGI apparently id for "reasons",shake half to a full second after thrust was cut, it would have eliminated 1JJ poptarts, forcing a decent load of JJs to get enough altitude to get a shot after shake ended, and have enough juice left to cushion the fall after your shot. It also would have forced them higher and to be exposed to return fire longer, which is probably why some folk at the time were so against it.

Because some folks loved their ezmode.

[Johnny Z]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

Answer is Russ and his vision of PGI being a "serious biznez Esport". Despite mos tEsport shooters haveing some form of CoF mechanic, Russ is on record from the early days of MWO has categorically hating it (of course he said that about 3pV, too........) and as such, is the real reason it never happened.


Yup, another approach. But even at that people are going to cry (I don't wanna point one way and see mah lazor hit anywhere but the exact pixel I pointed at!" (despite every other game doing exactly that, and well, your suggestion removing the "exact pixel" from the equation in the first place.)

Yep long before I was even in closed beta this was a thing. At the time I wasn't online and didn't think to much about the fact this game had no COF or RNG. Now after having been online quite a bit I am so glad that's the way MechWarrior went. many scoff at hacks saying they are rare or don't exist, but there is nothing worse than RNG effecting a legit player and hackers completely ignoring it... At least with everyone hitting what they are aiming at the field is somewhat level. With the piloting demands of this game its even better.

If there is any legit players asking for RNG, trust me legit players don't want it.

On top of this, that pixel perfect aiming shows bots instantly......... Yes I know about aim bot deviation in aim but it doesn't work to hide them very well from what I seen.

Twice I seen video on this forum from players using bots and bragging about their skill who I am sure are perma banned at this very moment.

Edited by Johnny Z, 14 June 2016 - 03:07 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Johnny Z, on 14 June 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

Yep long before I was even in closed beta this was a thing. At the time I wasn't online and didn't think to much about the fact this game had no COF or RNG. Now after having been online quite a bit I am so glad that's the way MechWarrior went. many scoff at hacks saying they are rare or don't exist, but there is nothing worse than RNG effecting a legit player and hackers completely ignoring it... At least with everyone hitting what they are aiming at the field is somewhat level. With the piloting demands of this game its even better.

If there is any legit players asking for RNG, trust me legit players don't want it.

On top of this, that pixel perfect aiming shows bots instantly......... Yes I know about aim bot deviation in aim but it doesn't work to hide them very well from what I seen.

Twice I seen video on this forum from players using bots and bragging about their skill who I am sure are perma banned at this very moment.

Server side obviates any of those concerns dude.

[Johnny Z]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

Server side obviates any of those concerns dude.

Bots can correct the aim better than we can. They can entirely ignore recoil.

I mean this in all seriousness and truth, in another game a mod or dev actually showed me some of whats possible in a small impromptu event with 3 other players/mods. Same game I have seen teleport hacks, spawn hacks, desynchs, and everything else including allied aim bot users showing me they do indeed work in game, which I never played with again... I always considered that game great training for this game.

This is a video of a player using a single shot with recoil in a next gen game with two major anti cheat services that bans players none stop. The cheats don't care and reroll and keep trolling.

I like this video because it is informative and that's what this video is for.



I should add that this game was big budget and was forced into bankruptcy or changing hands, not sure the details, in large part due to cheats and has been the target of major long term DOS attacks for sure and everything else as a guess.

Edited by Johnny Z, 14 June 2016 - 03:49 PM.

[1453 R]

Rampage, on 14 June 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

If I am not mistaken, they are describing artillery shell accuracy there. I know with autocannons and gauss there may be some variation but I believe we would be talking centimeters not meters. In MWO we would be injecting a RNG factor into weapon accuracy. That is what I meant by artificial. I would be more in favor of reticle bounce which may be overcome with skill rather than depending upon luck.

Unfortunately, Cone of Failure proponents don't really want players to be able to overcome reticle movement/inaccuracy with skill or practice. Weapons remaining accurate to the reticle, but having the reticle itself move in relation to your 'Mech's movement a'la the 3rd person view, is an excellent solution that always, always, always gets shot down by Cone of Failure people because it doesn't do what they actually want a Cone of Failure feature in the game to do - ensure that nobody can kill anybody else.

Most (not all, but most) Cone of Failure enthusiasts are old TT hands (and again, not all old TT hands are Cone of Failure enthusiasts) who are incurably offended at the fact that weapon hits are not determined by random dice rolls only mildly influenced by things like Player Position, Player Aim, and other factors that are usually considered to be sortakinna important in a first-person combat game. They want to get back to their TT roots and ensure that only the gods can decide who wins any given engagement, which Cone of Failure does very nicely given the fact that MWO's weapons are built specifically for single, carefully-placed shots and are not at all the sort of things which rule the roots in any game with a CoF system.

I've pointed this out time and again - imagine a game of Call of Duty where everyone has a bolt-action sniper rifle, thirty times the normal CoD health count, and also no ability to aim down the sights. That's what Cone of Failure folks are trying to turn MWO into, because that is, to them, the truest and most accurate representation of the TT ruleset in which nobody had any g'damned clue what they were going to hit any time they pulled the trigger.

A system such as motion-based reticle sway - NOT Cone of Failure, but predictable 'Mech-based motion of the reticle which a player can learn to compensate for - would allow players to actually have an impact on who wins any given fight, and so COne of Failure people don't want it. Even though the code is already there and it's both lore-friendly, physics-friendly, and an elegant, low-impact solution to the problem they claim they want to fix - overly-accurate fire able to drill down onto a single target point on their enemies.

Can't be having anything like actual gunnery skill in our A BattleTech Game™, after all. That's just not how TT works.

[Kangarad]

if you realy want to go away from pinpoint accuracy on the move, yet I realy do not like rng, why not add weapon sway? Your gyrostabs are not perfect (and theres a module for upgrading that) therefore your reticle and point of aim would sway with every step you take, light mechs are easier on the gyros so they may handle more speed untill the sway becomes impossible to control while heavyer mechs sway slower from the start but can not handle larger speeds well due to the mass the gyrostabs need to account for? wed still have the shake while in the air with that.

This would make it so that with skill you can still hit exactly what you want however it will be harder to do so while moving at top speeds and sniping would essentialy require standing still, yet the pilot can allways see where his shots go and with the right timing counter the mechanic giving the game a higher skill floor and ceiling.

[Mister Blastman]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 11:17 AM, said:

You want to "fix" TTK? "Skill" folk need to get over their revulsion to limited situational CoF mechanics, and we need a revamped heatscale and affects ( and BTW, we HAD heat that affected targeting in early CB, as well as ammo cookoffs. I don't recall if we had movement affected or not though, been 4 years)

I like your post up until there. No, we don't need to get over Cone of Fire. See here:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__5009851

See: Choice 2, scalable hitboxes... (because convergence is never getting removed)

It is a superior solution to adding Cone of Fire in every way.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 14 June 2016 - 03:22 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Johnny Z, on 14 June 2016 - 03:12 PM, said:

Bots can correct the aim better than we can. They can entirely ignore recoil.

Except we don't have recoil, and adjusting for lead time is hard considering how much it would have to compute to give you that perfect shot not to mention when lag comes into play. The most problematic hack in this game is the radar hack, not aimbots.......

[Mystere]

Rampage, on 14 June 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

If I am not mistaken, they are describing artillery shell accuracy there. I know with autocannons and gauss there may be some variation but I believe we would be talking centimeters not meters. In MWO we would be injecting a RNG factor into weapon accuracy. That is what I meant by artificial. I would be more in favor of reticle bounce which may be overcome with skill rather than depending upon luck.

Given the nature of Tech in BT, variation should also be in meters. Also note that that's just the shell. We should probably also include mechanical slop on the cannon mounts.

As for reticle bounce, it should not be as insane as what we get when using MASC or JJs. I expect them to have some inertial dampers to reduce the wild shaking.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 02:44 PM, said:

FTFY, unless we are talking about a discernible pattern with recoil/CoF, then being able to head shot someone with a CoF implemented does not take more skill. I think the most suggested is a CoF with a normal distribution, which while much better, still does not increase skill.

My dream layout would be visible convergence in the Hud and a small cof. Like only relevant at 400m barely, only significant at 800m plus. There is always some variance beyond what skill accounts for, we're at a desk with a 0 order controller on a 2d representation. We're not using a firing computer to plot a shot and execute a solution either.

So small circular cross hairs for each weapon that move toward convergence so if you want to snapshot just, say, your PPCS now and put your lasers on target 0.5 seconds later when they're all converged you can do so.

There's a lot of good ways to do it. I'm strongly of the opinion that it would need done as part of a larger balance overhaul and IW system but it would make for an overall better environment and a larger skill gap, which we need.

Currently we have a steep skill curve. You learn some good behaviors and BOOM. You're way up from average.... the suddenly you're at the ceiling of the mechanics. You want a longer, more gradual curve. While this does technically make top performers way better than average than they are now it gives a better transition and progression.

Currently if you can twist and gauge hits passable well you're way up the curve. How to tell a good build from a bad one. Then you lean some basic position and then it's just teamwork and consistency.

Adding mechanics isn't going to make it too hard for competitive players. They will learn and master the mechanics and move forward. The point is to create some more depth for the remaining 98% to work and develop through.

[Bishop Steiner]

1453 R, on 14 June 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

Unfortunately, Cone of Failure proponents don't really want players to be able to overcome reticle movement/inaccuracy with skill or practice. Weapons remaining accurate to the reticle, but having the reticle itself move in relation to your 'Mech's movement a'la the 3rd person view, is an excellent solution that always, always, always gets shot down by Cone of Failure people because it doesn't do what they actually want a Cone of Failure feature in the game to do - ensure that nobody can kill anybody else.

Most (not all, but most) Cone of Failure enthusiasts are old TT hands (and again, not all old TT hands are Cone of Failure enthusiasts) who are incurably offended at the fact that weapon hits are not determined by random dice rolls only mildly influenced by things like Player Position, Player Aim, and other factors that are usually considered to be sortakinna important in a first-person combat game. They want to get back to their TT roots and ensure that only the gods can decide who wins any given engagement, which Cone of Failure does very nicely given the fact that MWO's weapons are built specifically for single, carefully-placed shots and are not at all the sort of things which rule the roots in any game with a CoF system.

I've pointed this out time and again - imagine a game of Call of Duty where everyone has a bolt-action sniper rifle, thirty times the normal CoD health count, and also no ability to aim down the sights. That's what Cone of Failure folks are trying to turn MWO into, because that is, to them, the truest and most accurate representation of the TT ruleset in which nobody had any g'damned clue what they were going to hit any time they pulled the trigger.

A system such as motion-based reticle sway - NOT Cone of Failure, but predictable 'Mech-based motion of the reticle which a player can learn to compensate for - would allow players to actually have an impact on who wins any given fight, and so COne of Failure people don't want it. Even though the code is already there and it's both lore-friendly, physics-friendly, and an elegant, low-impact solution to the problem they claim they want to fix - overly-accurate fire able to drill down onto a single target point on their enemies.

Can't be having anything like actual gunnery skill in our A BattleTech Game™, after all. That's just not how TT works.

ah the usual (and incorrect) rhetoric.

Lemme guess, we don't have the ability or desire to gitgudd ourselves so we want mechanically enforced gitbad for eveyone......

[Kangarad]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 03:26 PM, said:

ah the usual (and incorrect) rhetoric.

Lemme guess, we don't have the ability or desire to gitgudd ourselves so we want mechanically enforced gitbad for eveyone......

gitgud beign mechanics which can be countered by skill like weapon sway / recoil vs gitbad as in Pray n Spray with the Circle of suck??

[Aresye]

The problem with having movement penalties for aim is it lowers the skill gap. I know we hate using that term, "skill gap," but it's 100% true in regards to what you're suggesting. You're rewarding players who stand still, and punishing players that actually know how to pilot effectively.

On the other hand, if MWO could incorporate a skill based means of counteracting that movement based penalty, then you've widened the skill gap in an already complicated game for new players.

CS:GO does so many things right when it comes to tiny things like this it's not even funny. Take for example the extreme movement penalty for most weapons. New players stand still and crouch as a means of getting around it, but in higher level play that just makes it easier to get killed. Instead, better players learn how to strafe-shoot, in which you time your aim and shoot only during the transition between 2 different directions of movement, when your sideways movement reaches exactly 0, and the movement penalty is no longer there.

CS:GO also uses predictable recoil patterns, with each weapon having its own unique pattern. This helps raise TTK and prevents the game from being a typical arcade shooter like CoD, but allows for high level players to learn and counteract these recoil patterns in order to be more effective.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like predictable recoil patterns in MWO. For example, imagine if an ISLL, ISML, and CERML all had separate "lensing" deviations while firing. The ISLL gently goes down and to the left, the ISML just gently goes down, and the CERML gently goes up. All of these would be very tiny deviations that wouldn't make that big of an impact at mid-close range, but could potentially spread the laser damage over a larger area at long range.

Newer players won't have to worry about being killed as fast, but good players retain the ability to learn and counteract these changes. A good IS ERLL sniper player would therefore know that while sniping at long range in a Grasshopper, he has to pull his crosshair up and to the right slightly while shooting.

[Bishop Steiner]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Except we don't have recoil, and adjusting for lead time is hard considering how much it would have to compute to give you that perfect shot not to mention when lag comes into play. The most problematic hack in this game is the radar hack, not aimbots.......

that the same as the wallhacks, or different? I've seen very few aimbots in 4 yrs here (they are prety detectable when you see them on here, and rare) but I have seen more than my share of "No LoS, no UAV, no teammates with LoS but know exactly where you are when you are going to pop out from behind a rock into focus fire from 4 guys all to the same component the moment you clear cover (including gauss)".

Now can't claim it's a hack, as i got no proof, no recordings, haven't been able to eagle eye study the map after, etc. but that is really about the only thing I have found to smell "fishy" with anything remotely approximating "regularity" and it's thankfully pretty rare too.