38 replies to this topic

[Anjian]

Clanner Scum, on 24 March 2017 - 07:40 PM, said:

The game engine is a huge hinderance. That's where most of this games problems come from.

I think if they invest in moving MWO over to the new MW5 engine (unreal) this game would benefit greatly from it and we could see a huge increase in playerbase simply by switching engines.

We just have to cross our fingers and pray that PGI has plans of moving MWO over to the new engine. It would extend the life of MWO by many many years if they did it.

I hope the same. They probably know about this and is facing a daunting and expensive task for this.

I have this game installed in my system and it runs on the Unreal engine. The graphics are simply amazing, and I get more FPS from it than MWO. The potential for this game engine is incredible.

Edited by Anjian, 24 March 2017 - 07:50 PM.

[Variant1]

Dino Might, on 24 March 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

MWO is NOT a SIM.

An arm blowing off and no longer being there or anything that was in there, thats simulating a damage model. The heat coming from weapons? that simulating heat generation. Losing components to crits? that simulating component destruction.

"Arena shooter - a shooting game in an arena setting. That is the description that most appropriately fits MWO."
Where are the weapon drops, health armor pick ups, quad damage? where are the jump platforms then? look at quake arena or unreal tournament, those are actual arena shooters.

"Simulation is modeling an environment and assets, including their attributes and interactions at a level of complexity sufficient to effect a study of the desired subject(s). Usually, this involves integrated systems models and some sort of physics-based behavior. MWO lacks a level of complexity and internal consistency required of a simulation."
Um-no. Simulation in games usually involves the aspects of what its simulating. If were simulating planes we would take controls, plane structure and weapons into consideration. Simulating what it would be like to fly a plane, thats simulations.

"Racing and flight simulators have some of the best examples of the simulation genre. Go compare Digital Combat Simulator to MWO and tell me MWO is a sim."
Racing and flight seems are easy because there are real life examples, documentations, and well they can try them in real life. Cant really do that with a tall impractical walker now can we?

"When a single aircraft takes a team 3+ years to complete because it provides for every control input and result in all regimes of flight, that is a simulator. Mechs in MWO all move the same way, have arbitrary values assigned for their attributes for the sake of "balance," which are not consistently related to their design characteristics, and all mechs have the same, oversimplified controls inconsistent with the fictional universe from which the game is derived. That is an arcade game, not a sim."
The same could be said about planes, they all fly the same thats what makes them planes. Every mech is differentiated by its profile and loadout just like a plane would be. Except mechs wouldnt be flying, and well planes wouldnt be carying 35 tones worth of equipment/guns.

"Should we crap all over MWO because it's not a sim? No. It's a decent enough game for what it is. Plenty of non-sim games are great fun, and there's nothing wrong with being an arena shooter. Just don't sell this game as something that it is most definitely not."
If you're saying MWO isint a sim, then your saying all the other previous mw titles aren't sims. If i recall corectly MWO uses the sim aspects of those games, and those games are also called sims.

Anjian, on 24 March 2017 - 07:24 PM, said:

Modular damage does not make a sim, and in fact, there are arcade games that also have this.

So the turret damage, track damage, and ammo explosion don't simulate anything in Wot and Warthunder then?

"Your critical components are not laid out realistically, as in ammo in the foot, guns in the hand, lasers in one hand, heat sinks in the other. Realism would have dictated that both these components need to be next to each other."
With a scifi setting its much easier to be more liberal with simulating. In mechwarrior lore dictates what can and cant be done.

"War Thunder and World of Tanks use actual penetration formulas that can be used to apply for tanks in war game simulators. In Mechwarrior, a hit is a hit, and takes set damage. In a tank simulator, the way you are angled towards the gun can determine if the shell will totally penetrate or ricochet on you, which also factors the shell's velocity and range. Being able to determine penetration or taking no damage is actually quite complex and involves a considerable amount of mathematics being computed in real time. In World of Warships, they even apply an *aerodynamic coefficient* on the shells. Then there are also the differences between AP, APHE, APHEBC, HEAT, HE, APFSDS, APCR, composite armor, spaced armor, and having multiple layers of armor."
its not complex at all. Shoot from far take less damage, angle armor high chance of ricochet. Simple math, just rng. For warships, the simple term for that would be bullet drop.

"In Mechwarrior, your "armor" is nothing more than a hit box with an HP bar that lowers with each hit, and is the same with every distance. Shells travel into a straight line, you don't shoot upward then watch them fall on gravity, with a flight arc. If you have real mechs in battle, mechs should be angling their torsos to maximize the deflection of enemy rounds, rather than twisting their torso to "distribute" damage. A mech should have the most protected part of its body at the torso, then sacrifice protection at the flanks, which is contrary to this game where the most vulnerable part of the mech is the forward center which is the direction you want to attack with."
In mechwarrior lore thats how armor worked for those walkers, its simulating how it would work in the game. Actually damage drops off for each gun if its past its optimal range. Your using tank logic on giant impractical walking death machines, it works for normal tanks but in mechwarrior lore its different.

"The best way to call MWO is Sci-Fi arena shooter. Sci-Fi means you don't simulate real world physics, but apply the lore rules of that particular universe. Like if you make a wargame with Star Trek, expect phasers, photon torpedoes, deflectors and so on, and you try to recreate the same effects as they are shown in the canon narrative. However, that does not make for realistic space combat nor it is a simulator."
thats exactly what it is its simulating that worlds lore. Just because its in a sci-fi setting doesnt mean it cant be simulated. Mechwarrior online is simulated the mechwarrior universe not the real world. Its still a sim nonetheless

Edited by Variant1, 24 March 2017 - 08:01 PM.

[Vanguard319]

Variant1, on 24 March 2017 - 06:28 PM, said:

Warthunder and WoT focus on tanks. Something very easy to simulate since there are documented, real models and happened in real life. Kind of hard to do the same with impractical walking death machines such as mechs. Also one thing they couldn't get right is the tanks breaking down constantly since that happened alot during ww2.

In MWO we got heat for weapons, damage components(center, side etc.) You are placed inside a cockpit of the mech and all the buttons. There ammo, theres a crit system that simluates possibility of losing something (ammo,weapon, equipment). It doesnt have to get realism down to the tea just the important aspects of it



Well my friend i guess neither did the old games then =/
They simulate heat from weapons. Component damage for each section (arm, side center etc). The cockpit is more detailed then those old mechwarrior titles

Do you know what an arcade game is? if its not a SIM then its not a shooter like quake or doom because its not face paced like those games

Actually, the devs for War Thunder were planning to include a variable for mechanical failure, but decided it would be detrimental to player enjoyment. In the end, they had to ignore some realism to make the game enjoyable, but it wasn't impossible to do.

As for mechs being fictional, that isn't much of an excuse to throw out simulation aspects, as you can still figure out average armor thickness based on amount of armor per section, and then have ballistics factor in angles of deflection. If MWO had features like that, the high dakka builds would lose most of their effectiveness because placement and angle of the shots would matter more than DPS.

[jjm1]

My FPS is a ~90% consistent under 30 on med-low settings. Coupled with LOD popping at close range that destroys all illusion of being in a real place, and screws with the integrity of the game itself. Its really quite bad.

If I were to hazard a guess as to why this might be the case. The number of draw calls from 24 mechs with multiple materials each and now decals too is just too much once you factor in the large maps and effects. This game absolutely chugs like a slideshow if its creating the shader cache while you try to play a map, something I was reminded of just then on the test server.

Cryengine is good, even 4k holds up nicely. But it relies on good level optimisation to get that quality across without murdering the framerate. I don't think PGIs artists considered optimisation at all while they were piling in rocks and buildings and smoke emitters and auto-tooling some truly criminal mesh LODs.

[jjm1]

Vanguard319, on 24 March 2017 - 08:12 PM, said:

As for mechs being fictional, that isn't much of an excuse to throw out simulation aspects, as you can still figure out average armor thickness based on amount of armor per section, and then have ballistics factor in angles of deflection. If MWO had features like that, the high dakka builds would lose most of their effectiveness because placement and angle of the shots would matter more than DPS.

Mechs are certainly built with no consideration for deflecting ballistics. Instead they use reinforced handwavium alloy. Yeah, its probably best to not even go there.

[Anjian]

Turret, engine and track damage alone won't constitute a sim for War Thunder. The core of it lies in the complex relationship between armor, gun and shell, involving angles, shell type, muzzle velocity, etc,.

The shells are not complex at all? RNG? Even RNG is dictated by factors and percentage values. The difference between all these rounds are reflected in myriads of ways.

The amount of HE inside a shell --- the greater the amount, the higher the one shot chance knock out.

If the shells are all solid --- they are less likely to take out a tank in one shot, which makes the shot placement more important so they can reach the ammo.

Ballistic capped shells like APHEBC, have higher normalization values than non capped shells like APHE, APCR. This makes for better penetration against slopped armor than non capped shells, even if the non capped shells have a higher muzzle velocity.

HEAT has the highest normalization values, useful against the most slopped of tanks, but they are also solid shells.

APCR and Sabot have the highest penetration values, but the lowest normalization values. They are most likely to ricochet. Both are also solid shells, which makes the least internal damage.

HE will not penetrate most frontal armor, but can cause fires, knock out crew, damage components.

Sometimes you are facing soft skinned vehicles and the shot will overpenetrate, causing the least amount of damage. Switch to HE and knock that SPG out.

War Thunder tanks makes ammo selection important, and one also has to understand the different types to make the right decision in the battlefield.

** Do you know that reducing the amount of shells in a tank reduces the chances of ammo racking? ** You can use the Xray viewer to see where the shells are located, and by reducing the shells, which of the vulnerable places are left empty. For a game to feature that, even on its arcade mode, that just blows my mind when I discovered that.

=====


As for Mechwarrior it doesn't simulate the BT universe properly in a fundamental way, since a vital core component of the table top experience is RNG and you don't have that in Mechwarrior. You don't have tanks, infantry and VTOLs either. The BT universe is a combined arms experience which you don't have on MWO. Then there are other things, quirks, changes in values, that are quite non canon, though deemed at first necessary for game "balance". Then there is manipulation of the lore, such as Clan tech superiority over the IS, which has been chipped out, for "balance". In a proper sim, one has to accept a certain degree of imbalances, if this is lore set imbalances.

It also fails to simulate the experience of a giant robot --- everyone feels like a six foot person in a costume. It doesn't feel stompy, mechs have a funny chicken like hurried gait when they walk, mechs can't tank now, they can't take damage, they can't stomp, they can't assault or use tactics we expect from Battletech or any giant robot premise. Mechs peek and boo, as if they are playing an FPS with mechs. You don't have this slow, clunky but massively overpowering firepower of what you expect a giant robot should be.

If you take away the legal, technical things to qualify a simulation, then you also need the simulation of the spirit. Does it simulate the feel of the franchise? Does it simulate the heart of the franchise? Does it simulate the soul and the spirit of the franchise?

And quite frankly, even on the emotional and spiritual aspects of it, no. This doesn't mean they tried. But even then, and up to now, they have not succeeded and I don't know to what extent or even tried to make that 'feel' (they seem to be more and more influenced by other games, as if they are trying to put this game between CoD and WoT).

Edited by Anjian, 24 March 2017 - 08:46 PM.

[meteorol]

My biggest issue is... It seems to constantly get worse. Somehow, pgi manages to lower the performance with every few patches.

Two years ago or or something like that, i ran everything on max with 100+ fps. Now, im sitting on 40-50 fps with mostly low settings, some on max (for visibility). My rig is well maintained, and no single other game has seen a comparable dropoff.

Games with WAY better graphics are running at twice the fps. This is, indeed not acceptable.

What is even worse though is the uppopping terrain. Especially on Polar Shitlands. Hills do change their shape at 200m distance there. Within goddamn srm range. THAT is really unacceptable. When your game has terrain popups within the range of "short" range missiles, you know there are massive issus.

[Dino Might]

Variant1, on 24 March 2017 - 07:59 PM, said:

An arm blowing off and no longer being there or anything that was in there, thats simulating a damage model. The heat coming from weapons? that simulating heat generation. Losing components to crits? that simulating component destruction.

Let's list all the systems the mech has:
1. Armor
2. Weapons and ammo
3. Heat
4. ....

That's it. Nothing else is modeled. You have health bars, weapons and ammo, and a firing penalty system. In a game where movement is supposed to be a significant part of the experience, you can't say that any type of movement system is sufficiently modeled to simulate these space magic robots. The movement profiles are so simplified, not taking into account anything but tonnage and arbitrary modifiers (quirks), that there is nothing meaningful ascribed to the design characteristics of a particular mech. A 35 ton reverse joint leg mech moves exactly the same as a 35 ton humanoid leg mech. Also, the reverse joint legs won't even work the way they are designed if they're really supposed to be using artificial muscle.

Arms/torsos getting blown off is not simulation, because for each mech, the arm hitboxes and health associated with them is arbitrary and not specific to any design differences among the mechs. The damage model is so basic, that to call it a simulation is to use that word in its most generic and meaningless sense. Simulation, in terms of computer models, implies some level of consistent programming so that a meaningful study can be derived from the model. Losing an arm does nothing to the mech's balance, has no impact on movement, and only removes the listed components that were in the lost arm. Losing the arm has no bearing on any other system in the mech. None of those other systems are even modeled to consider whether the arm is present or not.

Heat coming from weapons is an arbitrary balancing mechanic, where the numbers are adjusted to balance the game. These numbers are not consistent across weapons, nor are they dependent on their actual mechanics of firing, loading, charging, etc. This is not a simulation of weapons fire effects, but rather an applied cost to arbitrarily adjust performance. That we don't have any defined model relating heat to type of weapon, duration of fire, mechanic of firing, location of weapon, size of weapon and associated projectile or energy pulse characteristics, and myriad other factors just reinforces that this is not a simulation but rather, at their most complex, a set of cause/effect scripts.

Crits make MWO a sim? The crits are probably the closely thing to simulation that MWO has, and that's not saying much. They are again based on arbitrary values applied to the sample distribution (the RNG, ironically, is the most sim-aspect of the whole system), which are altered not based on mech characteristics, but rather based again on "balance."

A simulator does not change behaviors, characteristics, and mechanics based on the whims of balance, for popularity's sake. A simulator adjusts behaviors, chacteristics, and mechanics to more accurately reflect the environment it is attempting to model or create. You can have a simulator for a completely fictional environment, but it must be based on consistent principles.

MWO is NOT a simulator. There is no objective rhyme or reason for the mechanics or behaviors in the game that remain consistent across all types of entities.

Edited by Dino Might, 24 March 2017 - 09:53 PM.

[DivineTomatoes]

CMGrendel, on 24 March 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

A whole load of nothing.

Before we get started, prove it.

You sound like a bag of hot air.

[Dino Might]

Here you go. This is a product that is from a simulation:

http://server.3rd-wi...Manual%20EN.pdf

Yes, it's the manual for a single aircraft from the simulation.

Again, it's okay that MWO is not a sim. It doesn't mean it's a bad game.

The analogy to this situation is me calling myself a professional mathematician. Not true at all. I am a math teacher, but not at all in the same category as a mathematician. Not being a mathematician in and of itself does not mean I am stupid or uneducated or some other negative implication (however, other evidence is available and appropriate to support those claims).

Edited by Dino Might, 24 March 2017 - 09:59 PM.

[Click]

Variant1, on 24 March 2017 - 05:23 PM, said:

I dont mean to be rude OP but do you even know what an arena shooter is?






because calling MWO an arena shooter is like saying call of duty is role playing game.
An Arena shooter is literally set in an arena, there are health pick ups and weapons, countless respawns until a frag limit is reached and it focuses on map control sometimes. Its mostly fought in ffa but there are team modes. Some examples of arena shooters would be Quake, Unreal tournament and Nexus.

Mechwarrior is a SIM. It simulates component damage, critikal chance, heat management and equipment managing(mechlab). Its a game where you have to take things slow(for the most part)

how to derail a thread over semantics in one post

Edited by Click, 26 March 2017 - 03:49 PM.

[Tarogato]

Variant1, on 24 March 2017 - 05:23 PM, said:

I dont mean to be rude OP but do you even know what an arena shooter is?






because calling MWO an arena shooter is like saying call of duty is role playing game.
An Arena shooter is literally set in an arena, there are health pick ups and weapons, countless respawns until a frag limit is reached and it focuses on map control sometimes. Its mostly fought in ffa but there are team modes. Some examples of arena shooters would be Quake, Unreal tournament and Nexus.

Mechwarrior is a SIM. It simulates component damage, critikal chance, heat management and equipment managing(mechlab). Its a game where you have to take things slow(for the most part)

1) if youve made some games care to give a few examples?

2) Okay. why not apply to PGI and help fix the performance issues? im sure everyone would be gratful if you can optimize the game for everyone. If you have trouble running the game why not edit files and remove stuff so the game runs better?

I will agree with you though, that MWO definently needs optimization. However they have optimized the game much better then it was back then. As for rigs my computer i bought for 500$ with a GTX760 260$, runs this game okay(60 fps) at low settings.

MWO is a shooter that takes place in an arena. Arena shooter is an apt way to describe it.


Yes, I know what Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament are. Heck, I've been playing UT4 for the past month. Yes I understand that those are the three major players that define "arena shooter" as a unique genre, and I understand that MWO obviously does not apply to that. But independently you can still aptly describe MWO as an "arena" "shooter", just like you can describe WoT, TF2, CoD, CSGO, Overwatch, H1Z1, TC:RSS.

But yes, I do still understand that this is not a very good term. "Arena shooter" is a very established term for its genre, so maybe we need to come up with something else to describe this new genre. I think of Overwatch as almost a MOBA, but those are typically top down games where the emphasis isn't on shooter, but spellcasting and abilities. "Action real-time strategy" (ARTS) kinda works, but it's not catching on. Maybe multi-player online shooting arena? MOSA? That's the best I got, lol.

Though if you want to lump MWO in with WoT, WT, AW, WoWs all into one unique genre... maybe combat vehicle shooter?

Edited by Tarogato, 26 March 2017 - 05:06 PM.

[rollermint]

Wish people would talk more about what the OP brought up instead of arguing whether the game is a sim or not, interesting as it may be.

I would but I'm not even half as knowledgeable on the topic although i'm looking to hear more "expert" opinions on the issue.

[DreadDevil]

i dont have a problem with its performance i am running it at 70-90 fps on my 970 nvidia card but then again i have a intel hex core not a cheap amd and am running twin pcie ssds and 32gb ram 3300 oced, so really i dont even have problems with games like star citizen that others have, so sorry cant help, now if you computer is fairly old and can not keep up with the game that is a diffrent problem, and if it you running a amd muliti core chip then again it another problem. best i can tell you is it may be your computer or drivers if the game is not running fast enough. you seem to have a good backgroud in computers and software but you dont tell us what you are running or feel you need to run to make it a good game so quality convo to me at least is limited, sorry jst my opinion

Edited by DreadDevil, 26 March 2017 - 05:49 PM.

[Coolant]

quad core AMD 4ghz not overclocked, nvidia gtx 660 (non ti) not overclocked, 8gb RAM...a mediocre system. Why do I need super tech programming and network knowledge to comment when I personally have a mediocre system and it runs fine?

Edited by Coolant, 26 March 2017 - 06:33 PM.

[Khobai]

honestly I dont think you can zing MWO on graphics because its not like its a new game. Its already 4 years old.

[Chiasson Brinker]

i7, 8GB DDR3 RAM and a GeForce GTX950M. I don't think that counts as a "monster system" though I could be wrong (I have been many times before) and I can run this game on max settings with 40fps consistently. The game isn't optimized properly, and it is beginning to show its age, but I enjoy it and continue to put money into it.

Let me ask the original poster this though; What is the purpose of your post? Was it just to share an opinion or is there an end goal in mind?

[PhoenixFire55]

Performance optimization is a lost art among game developers these days, its not just PGI. The fact that MWO truly like you said demands more than any other game out there is just a result of 5 years of crap piling up without anyone on their team with enough brains to even begin to understand their own code. The fact that they seem to shuffle their stuff with utter disregard for anything and everything isn't helping either. Improvements had been made, a couple times, long ago, but overall game performance that was extremely poor to begin with only degraded over the years. That is very much apparent when you have the same rig that you had back in 2013 ...

Edited by PhoenixFire55, 27 March 2017 - 02:53 AM.