422 replies to this topic

[Brain Cancer]

That's straight up Paul's fault because breaking jumpjets is how he "fixed" poptarting.

[Uzi Foo]

I hope this lrm meta stays, I love hearing them crash into hills and buildings.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

Brain Cancer, on 08 June 2017 - 02:10 PM, said:

That's straight up Paul's fault because breaking jumpjets is how he "fixed" poptarting.

My entire point is that PGI is incompetent & the "comp" scene are munchkins... Jumpjets should have never NEEDED to be fixed. Firing is restricted to ONE weapon while jumping... BT has had decades to figure out what functions and it was reduced all the way down to just one weapon. You used to be able fire ALL the weapons from ONE Component but then people were just boating cLPL/cMPL/cML in one component... so when the player base found a way to abuse the RAW by going against RAI, then RAW were changed to stop that behavior.

[Brain Cancer]

Mmm-hmm. But things like perfect convergence happened because PGI (again) cannot into coding the game to handling things.

There were alternatives. They were not taken, and instead we got ghost lasers, "InfoTech", hoverjets, etc.etc.

The game is run by people who are anything but Battletech fans, other than their money.

Also, where in Total Warfare/TacOps are you getting these weird rules about which weapons you can fire while jumping? Page source, please.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

Brain Cancer, on 08 June 2017 - 03:12 PM, said:

Mmm-hmm. But things like perfect convergence happened because PGI (again) cannot into coding the game to handling things.

There were alternatives. They were not taken, and instead we got ghost lasers, "InfoTech", hoverjets, etc.etc.

The game is run by people who are anything but Battletech fans, other than their money.

Also, where in Total Warfare/TacOps are you getting these weird rules about which weapons you can fire while jumping? Page source, please.

Tactical Operations pg 86
Opportunity Fire: Firing on the Move
Only 1 weapon can be fired and it is a +3 modifier to the Roll, Jumping while doing it adds +6 to the Roll. Firing a Guass Rifle at 600m is a +8 to a 2D6 roll if fired at a Target that has not moved at all yet... you can do that all game for all I care, it is going to be a very short game as I wipe your pieces off the board. You can Link Your Weapons (pg 85) and that is where it restricts you to using just 1 Components worth of weapons that make a single roll and use the worst value out of all of them. But even Linking Weapon to use while Jumping would eliminate the vast majority of the worst Poptart offenders... they would still be wiped off the board by an 11 year old playing the game for the first time.

Edited by I_AM_ZUUL, 08 June 2017 - 04:05 PM.

[Tesunie]

Mystere, on 08 June 2017 - 09:24 AM, said:

It can be reasonably argued that those dice rolls are mere abstractions to simplify a game suitable for play on a table top. As such, when converting a TT game into an FPS, it is important to identify the original principles being abstracted.

A literal translation, on the other hand, is one of the most moronic -- or the laziest, or even both -- thing that can be done by any developer.

It's good to have something to base after. To make an exact copy would lead to so many problems... There is just too many translation issues.

I will say that I wished the game could play a little closer to what was often described in the books... Which were loosely based on the TT rules as well last I recalled...

I_AM_ZUUL, on 08 June 2017 - 10:44 AM, said:

Go play an actual FPS like BF4 or CoD then play MWO, you will realize what an asinine statement that is. Next go play a Tactical Shooter like CS:GO then play MWO, you will realize that you are getting closer but MWO fails to even truly be a Tactical Shooter because the TTK is way too high. "Comp" players in a broken exploited system get it a lot closer to being just a Tactical Shooter but my whole point is there are way better Tactical Shooter games to choose from which use superior game mechanic design not broken game mechanics being exploited by munchkins until the game holds very little to do with the game it is designed to be. This is supposed to be a Simulator with the fun part of a Tactical Shooter added in, that is what an accurate translation of the game mechanics would create.

But seriously... all I am saying is that PGI has failed at a fundamental level of game design to just COPY the existing game design. Which is what makes the "comp" players munchkins exploited a broken game system... you can try to argue around that all you want but when an overall ruleset that has been around for decades going through multiple itertations while finally being condensed into one streamlined system, is being ignored then the "comp" scene is the result. They are playing an entirely different game than the other 95% of the player base because of their dedication to being the biggest munchkins they possibly be & PGI is a horrifically terrible GM who can not enforce the game mechanics properly.

MW:O IS A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER. (With third person tendencies, because it's an option.)

It is different from the typical FPS styled game, but it is still actually classified as such. It's slower paced, more in depth, and has more options than your standard FPS would technically have. What you are saying would be like calling Elite Dangerous not a space fighter game, because it isn't playing like something else. It still is a space fighter game.

Now, something I keep hearing you say, over and over and over and over again. That comp players exploit the system. This indicates that they have found a flaw/bug/something that isn't suppose to work that way in an obvious manner in the game, and that they take advantage of this (which is the definition of an exploit). An exploit is knowing a broken section of wall you can hide in and shoot anyone in the map, or say what happened in Guild Wars 2. In that game there was a bug where you could by something really cheap for Karma currency, and then resell it for far more gold than it was intended to be worth (which was suppose to be unable to be sold). Those who bought the item once to be used, was not exploiting it, but they had some people who bought THOUSANDS of copies and made MILLIONS of gold off it. Those people actually got bans for exploiting the game...

So, which exact exploit (and be careful what you say here) are comp players supposedly using? Have they found a way to hide in a spot on the map, be invincible but be able to kill anyone they want? Or maybe they found an infinite C-bill glitch to be richer than everyone else? Can they suddenly shoot through buildings? Kill a mech with a single MG bullet by exploiting a hot box bug that causes instant death (the King Crab(L) actually had such a spot in it's back if it was looking down)?

So, tell me. What exact exploit are the using?

I_AM_ZUUL, on 08 June 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

My entire point is that PGI is incompetent & the "comp" scene are munchkins... Jumpjets should have never NEEDED to be fixed. Firing is restricted to ONE weapon while jumping... BT has had decades to figure out what functions and it was reduced all the way down to just one weapon. You used to be able fire ALL the weapons from ONE Component but then people were just boating cLPL/cMPL/cML in one component... so when the player base found a way to abuse the RAW by going against RAI, then RAW were changed to stop that behavior.

I honestly have played TT, not much of it though. I have never heard of this rule... Wouldn't disbelieve it though, but if this was such a thing than why was Megamek (a direct translation of the TT rules placed into a computer program) never enforcing it? I jumped all the time with the Spiders, and unloaded most if not all of it's weapons onto my target (sometimes I couldn't due to heat). Sure, I was unlikely to hit, but so was my opponents as well...

[Mystere]

Luminis, on 08 June 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

Not quite. Competitive as in "human players competing for the win". Which is the nature of pretty much any player vs. player game or game mode, really. I mean, what do you want to do? Ban them from playing what's best so things stay lore friendly?

Who said anything about banning anything or anyone? If something is actually being actively banned in MWO, it's lore.

2 Clan Stars vs. an IS Company is still a "competition".
A rear-guard lance running to an extraction point while being chased by a company of enemy pursuers is also still a "competition".
A striker lance on a suicide mission to kill the enemy commander protected by a Clan Trinary is still a "competition" as well,

A "competition" does not have to be an equal X vs. X fight.

That is my point.

Edited by Mystere, 08 June 2017 - 05:31 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

I_AM_ZUUL, on 08 June 2017 - 03:59 PM, said:

Tactical Operations pg 86
Opportunity Fire: Firing on the Move
Only 1 weapon can be fired and it is a +3 modifier to the Roll, Jumping while doing it adds +6 to the Roll. Firing a Guass Rifle at 600m is a +8 to a 2D6 roll if fired at a Target that has not moved at all yet... you can do that all game for all I care, it is going to be a very short game as I wipe your pieces off the board. You can Link Your Weapons (pg 85) and that is where it restricts you to using just 1 Components worth of weapons that make a single roll and use the worst value out of all of them. But even Linking Weapon to use while Jumping would eliminate the vast majority of the worst Poptart offenders... they would still be wiped off the board by an 11 year old playing the game for the first time.

If you applied that in MWO, then no unit could fire more than a single weapon at a time while mobile. The rule doesn't just apply when expending jumping MP, but any movement whatsoever.

[PhoenixFire55]

Brain Cancer, on 08 June 2017 - 05:55 PM, said:

If you applied that in MWO, then no unit could fire more than a single weapon at a time while mobile. The rule doesn't just apply when expending jumping MP, but any movement whatsoever.

TacOps ruleset is just plain ret@rded. They had a few things done right, but mostly it is cuckoo ... Nobody used it, like ever ...

[Vellron2005]

Guys, I just wanna say that you can't really compare a table top turn-based system's mechanics to a real-time action videogame..

Some concessions have to be made to make it work.. Just like you can't translate D&D into LARP very well, which is why LARP has it's own rules..

Also, let me ask again..

Still no official work from PGI?

[Luminis]

Mystere, on 08 June 2017 - 05:29 PM, said:

Who said anything about banning anything or anyone? If something is actually being actively banned in MWO, it's lore.

2 Clan Stars vs. an IS Company is still a "competition".
A rear-guard lance running to an extraction point while being chased by a company of enemy pursuers is also still a "competition".
A striker lance on a suicide mission to kill the enemy commander protected by a Clan Trinary is still a "competition" as well,

A "competition" does not have to be an equal X vs. X fight.

That is my point.

That's all technically true. Asymmetric Clan vs. IS balance, for example, I'm actually lobbying for in HBS's BattleTech (assuming they ever introduce Clans). Asymmetric balancing works in games where a player controls an entire force - fielding 12 'Mechs vs. 5 'Mechs is perfectly fine there as the players involved have about equal power at their disposal.

Put actual players into the 'Mechs, though, and things don't work as nicely. Suddenly, a player on the Clan side has roughly twice as much power at their disposal as an IS player on the opposing team. Frankly, playing on the IS side, your chances of surviving and killing things are much, much smaller, despite the fact that both teams have a balanced shot at winning. Being the sacrificial lamp four your team's success isn't a very suitable role for a human player.

Hell, the light queue is practically dead and that places you at much less of a disadvantage regarding your ability to survive and kill, what do you think would happen with the IS queue if PGI were to introduce asymmetrical Clan vs. IS balance? Well, I know for sure I wouldn't be touching IS 'Mechs with a ten yard pole, that's for sure Or, to step away from BT for a second, would you rather be a Zergling or a Protoss Archon?

So, yeah, I get your point. It's just not very applicable to a game where human players control every 'Mech - again, that's the disparity between playing a strategy game as "the Commander" and playing a first person shooter as "the MechWarrior".

[PhoenixFire55]

Vellron2005, on 09 June 2017 - 12:26 AM, said:

Some concessions have to be made to make it work.. Just like you can't translate D&D into LARP very well, which is why LARP has it's own rules..

Its a kind of an empty argument tho, since D&D has been perfectly translated into "real-time" games. Look no further than D&D Online tbh.

I would go as far as saying that we could have had a perfectly balanced and perfectly fun FPS game with all TT BT rules still intact, given various balancing instruments, such as for example mech rescales, since mech sizes aren't a part of TT rules. However, we all know that PGI butchered the TT rules and values and then butchered the rescale even worse.

It simply takes understanding and ability.

[Vellron2005]

PhoenixFire55, on 09 June 2017 - 03:39 AM, said:

Its a kind of an empty argument tho, since D&D has been perfectly translated into "real-time" games. Look no further than D&D Online tbh..

Holy hell.. do you even play proper tabletop D&D? Pathfinder?

Cose' if you did, you would NEVER even think about writing that.. D&D online sucks by any TT player's standards.. And it was made to mimic the worst possible iteration of D&D - the 4th edition, which tanked so much that it almost made Wizards of the coast bankrupt.. I haven't played it much, maybe they changed something, but it was horrible, bad story, bad performance, massive paywalls, and like most D&D games, concessions WERE made.. it's not full real-time cose' you can still pause the game to place spells tactically, also no proper mounts, flying, most spells from TT are missing, and like most D&D games, you lose most of the TT experience..

The best D&D games were Baldur's gate series and Neverwinter nights, and even those missed so much of the freedom that TT brings, because it's impossible to translate turn based TT into real-time video games..

Modern RPG's like Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition make this gap somewhat smaller, but they still make many many concessions to make it work..

If MWO was not a Battletech game, and wasn't based on a tabletop, nobody would be crying and whining about this.. If they made a completely new universe and their own game mechanics, nobody would care, but nooo, it's based on a previous ruleset incompatible with actual real-time gameplay, so it's gotta be a certain way..

Give the dev's a break.. The game they make is loved by many.. it has it's fallacies, but overall, isn't half bad..

P.S.

Holy hell 2.0: Your statement still makes me laugh.. that's kinda like saying the D&D movies should have won Oscar for best picture.. hahahahaah, you cray cray bro..

Edited by Vellron2005, 09 June 2017 - 05:06 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Vellron2005, on 09 June 2017 - 05:03 AM, said:

D&D online sucks by any TT player's standards ...

That might or might not be true, but it is entirely besides the point. The point was that TT rules got translated into the real-time game perfectly fine.

[Mystere]

Luminis, on 09 June 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

That's all technically true. Asymmetric Clan vs. IS balance, for example, I'm actually lobbying for in HBS's BattleTech (assuming they ever introduce Clans). Asymmetric balancing works in games where a player controls an entire force - fielding 12 'Mechs vs. 5 'Mechs is perfectly fine there as the players involved have about equal power at their disposal.

I really do not know who started that myth, because that is what it is.

Have you by any chance watched an Eve: Online battle? I am asking because X vs. X is definitely not a rule in there.

[Vxheous]

When Zuul started raging about "munchkins" this is how I pictured it (is that the blue fist of Steiner?):

I'm going back to playing MWO, and build another mech, by whatever rules are currently in game

Edited by Vxheous Kerensky, 09 June 2017 - 06:55 AM.

[Dago Red]

Vellron2005, on 09 June 2017 - 05:03 AM, said:

Holy hell.. do you even play proper tabletop D&D? Pathfinder?

Cose' if you did, you would NEVER even think about writing that.. D&D online sucks by any TT player's standards.. And it was made to mimic the worst possible iteration of D&D - the 4th edition, which tanked so much that it almost made Wizards of the coast bankrupt.. I haven't played it much, maybe they changed something, but it was horrible, bad story, bad performance, massive paywalls, and like most D&D games, concessions WERE made.. it's not full real-time cose' you can still pause the game to place spells tactically, also no proper mounts, flying, most spells from TT are missing, and like most D&D games, you lose most of the TT experience..

The best D&D games were Baldur's gate series and Neverwinter nights, and even those missed so much of the freedom that TT brings, because it's impossible to translate turn based TT into real-time video games..

Modern RPG's like Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition make this gap somewhat smaller, but they still make many many concessions to make it work..

If MWO was not a Battletech game, and wasn't based on a tabletop, nobody would be crying and whining about this.. If they made a completely new universe and their own game mechanics, nobody would care, but nooo, it's based on a previous ruleset incompatible with actual real-time gameplay, so it's gotta be a certain way..

Give the dev's a break.. The game they make is loved by many.. it has it's fallacies, but overall, isn't half bad..

P.S.

Holy hell 2.0: Your statement still makes me laugh.. that's kinda like saying the D&D movies should have won Oscar for best picture.. hahahahaah, you cray cray bro..

It was Neverwinter that was based off 4E D&D Online was based off the 3.5/pathfinder system which I would personally argue is the worst version of the game that's existed. Still they did actually translate pretty spot on. Frankly to a degree that meant the regular MMO crowd were almost always going to screw up their first few characters if they hadn't played 3.5 before. The buy and adventure to play it thing was interesting but free players hit a wall HARD at about eight to tenth level.

4th had its issues but it was a solid game. It was a hell of a decent turn based tactical combat game that for some reason got called D&D. Just should have been marketed as a spin off as opposed to a replacement. I'm still sad that know one made an X-Com style game with it's rule set.

[Burke IV]

Planescape torment was pretty good, especialy if you like story. I beleive that runs on D&D rules.

[Tesunie]

Vellron2005, on 09 June 2017 - 12:26 AM, said:

Still no official work from PGI?

To be honest, don't expect anything official from PGI on this. They rarely release data "because a player asked for it". I think the only exception would be if that data was something created by that personal individual. In this case, as it is more of a community thing... I doubt they will release it.

Even then, PGI can't be everywhere on these forums...

PhoenixFire55, on 09 June 2017 - 03:39 AM, said:

Its a kind of an empty argument tho, since D&D has been perfectly translated into "real-time" games. Look no further than D&D Online tbh.

I would go as far as saying that we could have had a perfectly balanced and perfectly fun FPS game with all TT BT rules still intact, given various balancing instruments, such as for example mech rescales, since mech sizes aren't a part of TT rules. However, we all know that PGI butchered the TT rules and values and then butchered the rescale even worse.

It simply takes understanding and ability.

I would think Never Winter Nights would be a better example, and did you ever try to play magic or ranged in that game? Nearly impossible (at least in single player mode). I would not call that "successful" personally. It did have it's charms though, but it also could have used some work as well. Was a good game and a lot of fun, but I wouldn't have called it "electronic D&D".

Now, Temple of Elemental Evil... That was a good translation (in my opinion) of D&D into a game format. However, it was turn based just like D&D, much like what Hair Brained Schemes new game is in relation to TT. MW:O is a lot like NWNs, where it's not a bad interpretation, but there are some points that could use work (and PGI knows it and is working on it).


Now I want to play ToEE or NWN... or maybe even NWN:Online again... Thanks...

Dago Red, on 09 June 2017 - 07:36 AM, said:

It was Neverwinter that was based off 4E D&D Online was based off the 3.5/pathfinder system..

You talking about NWN:Online, or NWN 1 and 2? Because NWN 1 was produced before 4th edition came out and was based on 3.5 rule sets. At least as far as I know. NWN:O may be different. Only played that for a short period of time.

[PhoenixFire55]

Tesunie, on 09 June 2017 - 09:13 AM, said:

I would think Never Winter Nights would be a better example, and did you ever try to play magic or ranged in that game? Nearly impossible (at least in single player mode). I would not call that "successful" personally. It did have it's charms though, but it also could have used some work as well. Was a good game and a lot of fun, but I wouldn't have called it "electronic D&D".

And again, the only point I was trying to make wasn't about how good D&DO or NWN are or how good balance in those games is, but rather about the transition of TT rules into a real-time game.

And for the record, I got 16 chars in D&DO (which is very little by its standarts) not counting all the lvl.1 storage units. Three of them are high level mages, two are dedicated rangers (no cross class) and I even used to run a bard back before the new enchancements trees when bard was an equivalent of MWO Mystlynx. They are all more than playable in solo play, but needless to say smth like a bard or a dedicated heal cleric only excel on a team. Regardless, that is working as intended, and the game actually gives you a hint about how difficult it is to solo-play any of the classes during character creation.