218 replies to this topic

[adamts01]

Cathy, on 04 November 2017 - 05:06 PM, said:

WoT has convergence, and WoT's combat mechanic means that if you use auto aim roughly 75% of your shots will do no damage.

in M.W.O system it will just mean TTK will drop by a large amount making the game worse.

Say this mechanic was introduced. There would be crying left and right that it's not competitive against manual aiming, just like we get crying that lore builds should be usable. If auto-aim was made competitive at this stage, it would absolutely be the death of this game.

The Basilisk, on 05 November 2017 - 05:49 AM, said:

There realy is no such thing as "shooting skills" in this game.

I think half this community is military, most of us shoot in real life and know it's nothing like a video game. But as lame as precise mouse movement and clicking a button is, it's still a skill. I think that's why much of the community wants more emphasis towards movement, positioning, and intel, because at the end of the day aiming with a mouse is just silly and simple.

[JigglyMoobs]

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:

Say this mechanic was introduced. There would be crying left and right that it's not competitive against manual aiming, just like we get crying that lore builds should be usable. If auto-aim was made competitive at this stage, it would absolutely be the death of this game.

I think half this community is military, most of us shoot in real life and know it's nothing like a video game. But as lame as precise mouse movement and clicking a button is, it's still a skill. I think that's why much of the community wants more emphasis towards movement, positioning, and intel, because at the end of the day aiming with a mouse is just silly and simple.

Actually steady hands and hand eye coordination developed playing video games has been very useful to me. My day job is scientific research. Both now and back in grad school I've needed to manipulate micromechanical objects with great precision.

Precision mouse tracking skills with hit scan weapons made that a cinch. It even helps me draw illustrations for my publications.

My experience isn't isolated. There's mounting evidence that video games significantly improve surgical skill by building reflexes for precise instrument manipulation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm...pubmed/17309970

Beyond manual skills the extremely quick decision making needed to recognize and apply component focus actually helps me make rapid decisions in discussion and negotiations

So yea, these aren't simple skills that are only good in a video game. They've actually paid off for me and others in the real world doing some very challenging and important jobs.

Outside of my job I do quite a bit of practical pistol shooting, and yes, it does help me there too.

[Curccu]

The Basilisk, on 05 November 2017 - 05:49 AM, said:

There realy is no such thing as "shooting skills" in this game.
And I am an expert Archer, smal bore sporting gun and rifle adept, large bore shot and even shoot some skeets from time to time.
This game has nothing to do with "shooting skills" its just hand eye klicky coordination that is mostly dependent of your personal nature, age and Quality of your PC.
You can't influence your nature or age and you can buy a better PC and periperals.
Rest is some practice...no skill involved.

And exactly that realy is ticking me of the most about this game.
PPL that copy some meta build from somewhere and instert their personal mouse klicky "skills" and macros and brag about their "skills" and how "skill" would be gone from the game when you take away the twitchy b...sh...

Like adamts01 commented earlier loads of players in this game have done military service and/or done shooting with real guns myself included. So I know that it is not same as with mouse BUT it's still shooting skill just not same as your bow or firearm. It can be trained and sure that skill will degrade while aging but isn't that same with pretty much everything?

Oldschool Longbow man could argue that shooting with scoped rifle isn't skill because it's so easy compared to longbow?

[adamts01]

JigglyMoobs, on 05 November 2017 - 06:15 AM, said:

So yea, these aren't simple skills that are only good in a video game. They've actually paid off for me and others in the real world doing some very challenging and important jobs.

Outside of my job I do quite a bit of practical pistol shooting, and yes, it does help me there too.

I fully agree that video games can be beneficial in a number of ways. My argument is that the more heavily a game relies on pixel perfect snap shots, the less it emphasises strategy and other more combat relevant skills. Let me go to an extreme for an example. Let 1 headshot kill compared to 99 body shots. A tight squad could run in a room with perfect coordination, catch the target off guard and start shooting center mass at his back. The l33t gamer could turn around and single tap those 4 guys in the head and win the encounter. You've essentially pushed to the back of the line stealth, recon, teamwork, team diversity, planning..... all of that pretty much goes out the window because aiming with a mouse was considered the most important. All that said, I disagree with OP's auto-aim proposal because as a fps aiming is important, but I do think this game neglected many other skills which I consider equally important to appease the e-sports crowd.

Since you brought up practical pistol shooting you should also realize that those fine motor skills that you've developed by using a mouse go completely out the window if you're ever in the position of having to possibly kill a person, which is why I don't buy the argument that clicking a button without moving your hand a pixel translates well to trigger control when it counts.

[Jay Leon Hart]

As much as I like Armored Core (I should really play #5), it works there because of the massive amount of maneuverability you have. You *need* that type of targeting system to even have a hope of hitting something moving.

MWO is really slow paced, so although this would make Lights & fast Mediums more effective, I have to say no thanks.

[JC Daxion]

I like the idea of targeting computer assisted aiming.. (the larger the comp the more accurate and faster the assist would come into play)


So if you are trying to lead a mech for example, your icon could turn color and say you are in the prime spot to hit. Perhaps that could take time to acquire the lock/aim place for example.

Sorta like in the lore, how targeting assists in when you fire, or you just blind fire when you don't and hope your skill lets you.

This could also come into play with heat.. as you heat up your sensors fritz out and the locks are not reliable for example. You still would need to find the place hold the reticule over the mech and shoot using your skill, but it would be an added assist.

[Deathlike]

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:

I think half this community is military, most of us shoot in real life and know it's nothing like a video game. But as lame as precise mouse movement and clicking a button is, it's still a skill. I think that's why much of the community wants more emphasis towards movement, positioning, and intel, because at the end of the day aiming with a mouse is just silly and simple.

The error with that statement is that a large chunk of players are bad at the things you are listing... even before we talk about the ability to aim.

Seriously, there's too many people that don't even do the bare minimum.

Edited by Deathlike, 05 November 2017 - 09:46 AM.

[dwwolf]

Not that auto aim would be my preferred choice,

Target locks lowering CoF would be, and a better sensor system. And a real need for platforms ( read lights / mediums ) to scout to provide target info. And preferably REAL scouting like actually finding the targets. F all chance of that with micromaps however.

Not to mention CoF hooking into the damage system and the heat scale. All thoroughly BT concepts.

Edited by dwwolf, 05 November 2017 - 12:33 PM.

[AncientRaig]

I'm gonna have to say no on this one. Not because of any knee-jerk reaction, but simply because I don't like the idea of mechs not being able to fire at targets they don't have locked. Especially with how sensors work in MWO (some weird combination of active and passive sensors that doesn't really provide the advantages of either). A lot of weapons have more range than a mech's sensors. If they can't fire at those targets, what's the point of building snipers?

[JigglyMoobs]

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 07:00 AM, said:

I fully agree that video games can be beneficial in a number of ways. My argument is that the more heavily a game relies on pixel perfect snap shots, the less it emphasises strategy and other more combat relevant skills. Let me go to an extreme for an example. Let 1 headshot kill compared to 99 body shots. A tight squad could run in a room with perfect coordination, catch the target off guard and start shooting center mass at his back. The l33t gamer could turn around and single tap those 4 guys in the head and win the encounter. You've essentially pushed to the back of the line stealth, recon, teamwork, team diversity, planning..... all of that pretty much goes out the window because aiming with a mouse was considered the most important. All that said, I disagree with OP's auto-aim proposal because as a fps aiming is important, but I do think this game neglected many other skills which I consider equally important to appease the e-sports crowd.

Since you brought up practical pistol shooting you should also realize that those fine motor skills that you've developed by using a mouse go completely out the window if you're ever in the position of having to possibly kill a person, which is why I don't buy the argument that clicking a button without moving your hand a pixel translates well to trigger control when it counts.

So I play this game to develop skills with a pistol and a rifle? I don't think so. Not even close.

When was the last time 5 of your team got headshoted in 5 seconds? Even with the most skilled aiming in this game, it's rare to get more than one headshot in a round. In fact it's rare for anyone single mech to die in less than 5 seconds.

In fact, look at the very best examples of teaming in this game, the MWOWC tourney matches. What are those guys doing while doing all this coordination? Oh yeah, aiming really really well.

What I've also found consistently playing this game is that shooting skills in this game consistently correlate with strategy, positioning and awareness.

It's often the people with no shooting skills that also have no idea how to position and adapt. What they often do instead is chalk their lack of success up to shooting and refer to mythical strategies that would not work even if they could shoot perfectly. The strategies that they think are good tend to be static and rigid and they execute them with no intensity like in a turn based game. Many don't seem to understand that "strategy" in this game is dynamic and adaptable and depends on both time and space and is therefore highly sensitive to speed and intensity.

These people lack this understanding because they didn't develop their shooting with direct fire weapons. something else some people don't seem to get. 25% of shooting effectively in the game is positioning correctly to give good shot geometry. Positioning requires awareness of both red and blue team and awareness of 3d terrain. This means taking those rudimentary positioning"skills" lrm players harp about and developing them to the nth degree. This belief that "I do lrm so I know positioning more than those pixel clicking guys" is just a myth and s psychological crutch.

Another 25% is pattern reading and prediction. To get a ballistics to hit from long range or to trade laser shots favorably you have to develop the ability to read your opponent's intentions on a second by second basis. This then develops into the ability to predict team intentions and therefore the ability to formulate and execute plans that proactively impose your will on the other team instead of reacting to them. People playing with lrms never get to practice the "read" with the same intensity as the shooters and so never understand that what they consider to be prediction"skill" can be sped up and intensified to the nth degree.

The final 25% other than mouse clicking is objective focus and multitasking. Fighting psychologically through distractions. Eg, the ability to study the paper doll, aim, fire, check the map, time, fire again, all the while you are under pressure from incoming fire. People who are not up front doing direct fire weapons never experience this to the same degree and never develop those skills. The consequence? In a tough fight your comm and map awareness go flying out the window, where as I can not only maintain clear head and effective comms, we can even coach other people on the fly and make minute suggestions regarding positioning and targeting while in the midst of the fight.

The last 25%, mouse clicking. When can you actually aim well in this game while protecting yourself effectively in this game using just the mouse? Never. If you think aiming is just mouse click, you haven't even scratched the surface of that last 25%.

I've been playing fps for almost 20 years. I'm still learning new things about that last 25%.

I have this bit of advice to people who think MWO is ruined by having to aim: stop complaining, stop taking comfort in ignorance, START LEARNING.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 05 November 2017 - 01:55 PM.

[The Basilisk]

Curccu, on 05 November 2017 - 06:39 AM, said:

Like adamts01 commented earlier loads of players in this game have done military service and/or done shooting with real guns myself included. So I know that it is not same as with mouse BUT it's still shooting skill just not same as your bow or firearm. It can be trained and sure that skill will degrade while aging but isn't that same with pretty much everything?

Oldschool Longbow man could argue that shooting with scoped rifle isn't skill because it's so easy compared to longbow?

Well such a claim would be largely wrong.
See the skill in piloting a mech is not to be searched within the point and klicky thing but rather in movement anticipation of enemy moves and positioning to bring the maximum effect out of your weapons without getting blown up.

It's just the same with the comparision between Archery and Gun skills.
The skill is not in aiming and pulling the trigger or releasing the arrow...that is just a matter of exercise and physical predisposition.
I trained dozens of young Archers to be able to handle a bow and shoot an arrow straight.
If there is no physical hindrance anybody can learn that.... there is no skill in that, no real learning.
It is just a form of repetitive behavior.

The real skill in shooting comes by understanding your equipment and exactly knowing what happens when you do something.
As archer what arrows and their configuration on what occassion, what bowstring and what does this do with my performance what arrow suspension, what nocs, what sight on which situation.....and now the transition to real skill....the ability to creatively addapt to new, unknown situations and instinctively doing the right thing because you know your stuff.

See... no klicky thingy involved.
Real knowledge and the ability to addapt or even better to create.
That is real skill

And Ironicaly that is also the thing you can observe when you watcht the better players.
They know what they do.
That what you call "shooting skills" comes from repetition, from physical training and repeating the same thing over and over.
Since those guys realy dived into the game and tried lots of stuff to get their strats and techniques straight they also trained aiming and klicky....but that is not what actually makes them good.

Edited by The Basilisk, 05 November 2017 - 02:54 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Little Pencils, on 04 November 2017 - 03:05 PM, said:

You give aim far too much credit. You live or die in this game based on positioning and teamwork. Having the best aim in the world doesn't mean a thing if you're caught out by a murderball.

If you think a murderball kills quickly, watch what happens when a lance of even lights picks a single section in advance.

You can blow a leg off an assault in one round of fire, and it's dead the next in MWO. It's one of those "teamwork is OP" bits.

Also, we exist in an era where it is quite doable to delete a medium in a single salvo of fire. From one robot. Been there, done that, have the kills on my Hellbringer. And I am running on a 30fps derpa-puter, which is why I normally don't run laservomit.

Draven Darkshadow, on 04 November 2017 - 04:45 PM, said:

there is automated targeting systems in this game... its call SSRMs, ATMs & LRMs.
The obvious thing is that if you do these weapon system only.. YOU WILL NOT IMPROVE..

you may on occasion get high damage when your friendly teammates get locks for you, so it may justify your use of homing or lock weapons but will you really have fun?

anyways a big fat NO on automated targeting system.. and we should in fact increase the spread on lrms/atm & ssrms more

Much rather get my own locks, even if Artemis nerf means it's increasingly less worth the extra tonnage to do so- depending on friendly locks is the biggest spread and least efficient damage in the game. Cause, y'know...reduced spread and all that.

What's astonishing is that the guided weapons that can't be snapshotted into a target are repeatedly nerfed in terms of killing potential, while the pinpoint guns that do the quick-and-dirty aren't touched in the ways that render them so good at melting off locations in no time flat.

Also, Streaks don't have spread. They're assigned a "bone" on the target at random (unless the location is destroyed) and track to it. All the spread increases do is make a third-rate weapon system even further behind in performance, which as a gameplay design decision is patently stupid. Aimed direct fire weapons already reward skill with massive increases in damage efficiency (that is, less damage required = faster kills), but at this point any benefit guided launchers get is dwarfed by even mediocre levels of skill at putting a crosshair on target.

Mind you, making all weapons automated targeting is a ridiculous idea, but I find it equally ridiculous that I can poke out, pump 50+ damage into a single pixel on an enemy target without an iota of self-induced spread with my lasers, and do it with iron sights because I don't even need to tap the R key to focus my sensors on something and get targeting data.

[ocular tb]

I'd rather not. Do you really want to run the risk of the targeting system getting broken if PGI goes and tries to implement this?

Edited by ocular tb, 05 November 2017 - 03:14 PM.

[adamts01]

Deathlike, on 05 November 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

Seriously, there's too many people that don't even do the bare minimum.

Create a simple game and you get simple players.

Think about the community that left when CW flopped. You wouldn't see the same basic mistakes in tier 1 matches if those guys were still playing.

JigglyMoobs, on 05 November 2017 - 01:21 PM, said:

When was the last time 5 of your team got headshoted in 5 seconds?

Never, which is why I made up an example on the far extreme side. I don't think I could explain things any simpler. Please re-read it and try to understand my point that the more aiming-heavy a game is, the less strategy matters. It's just to explain a concept.

[JigglyMoobs]

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 05:31 PM, said:

Create a simple game and you get simple players.

Think about the community that left when CW flopped. You wouldn't see the same basic mistakes in tier 1 matches if those guys were still playing.


Never, which is why I made up an example on the far extreme side. I don't think I could explain things any simpler. Please re-read it and try to understand my point that the more aiming-heavy a game is, the less strategy matters. It's just to explain a concept.

And my point was MWO is already so far from those games that your point about aiming games in general just straight out doesn't apply.

And btw, there's pretty significant amounts of strategy in games like CS: GO.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 05 November 2017 - 07:13 PM.

[adamts01]

JigglyMoobs, on 05 November 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

And my point was MWO is already so far from those games that your point about aiming games in general just straight out doesn't apply.

Yeah, but that's all personal preference. I'm a huge Mechwarrior fan, but gave up on this game years ago because it's just too simple. Move with the team, get a good position, then poptart or peek and alpha. I want more spread damage on mechs and considerably smaller pinpoint alphas. I think it would promote teamwork, more aggressive movement, and open up different strategies, as right now it's either get to a good position and peek or deathball. It's so lame. I don't need teamwork because every time I peek with my Hellbringer I cripple an enemy and he's forced to hide the rest of the match with open or red CT armor. If I can do that 6 times before my potatoes do something stupid then it's game over for the enemy team, as half their team is ready to go down with a 2nd or 3rd shot. Too many people think focus fire is the problem and 8v8 is a solution, it's not, it's huge pinpoint alphas. That's why 8v8 was so much better back in the day, not because of less shooters, but because of less pinpoint firepower. I've always been an advocate of a cone of fire like most other shooters. If you're in the air your shots will spread like crazy, there, now we can finally have good jump jets. If you're moving full speed then your shots spread a little, more so as you're accelerating, no more quick peeks that rule out mechs with low mounts. If you fire every gun at once then the shots spread, no more monster alphas. It all makes positioning and teamwork that much more important. But yeah, less e-sporty, so here we are. And go figure, the kids are all playing CS and Overwatch instead of MWO, big surprise.

JigglyMoobs, on 05 November 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

And btw, there's pretty significant amounts of strategy in games like CS: GO.

Sure, there's strategy in everything, but much less in connect 4 than chess.

[qS Sachiel]

Curccu, on 05 November 2017 - 06:39 AM, said:

Oldschool Longbow man could argue that shooting with scoped rifle isn't skill because it's so easy compared to longbow?

Actually, given that bows were already well established during the age of knights, and knighthood was all about honor, skill, valiance: the event of fire sticks and flintlocks were seen as an affront to the honor and skill of knight-based combat.

The real reason was because it put useful weapons in the hands of soldiers that didn't need to train a lifetime to hone their art, you just put a musket in their hands, pointed out the target and they did the rest day 1.

So yes.

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 05:31 PM, said:

my point that the more aiming-heavy a game is, the less strategy matters.

Complete lies. Skill doesn't exist within a vacuum. There's a host of other factors of the game to take into consideration.
Rainbow 6, SQUAD, EFT, games with brutal damage models which are FPS require successful players to consider their actions and approach to every encounter, consider possible encounters, know the maps etc...

just no

Edited by qS Sachiel, 05 November 2017 - 08:17 PM.

[JigglyMoobs]

adamts01, on 05 November 2017 - 07:36 PM, said:

Yeah, but that's all personal preference. I'm a huge Mechwarrior fan, but gave up on this game years ago because it's just too simple. Move with the team, get a good position, then poptart or peek and alpha. I want more spread damage on mechs and considerably smaller pinpoint alphas. I think it would promote teamwork, more aggressive movement, and open up different strategies, as right now it's either get to a good position and peek or deathball. It's so lame. I don't need teamwork because every time I peek with my Hellbringer I cripple an enemy and he's forced to hide the rest of the match with open or red CT armor. If I can do that 6 times before my potatoes do something stupid then it's game over for the enemy team, as half their team is ready to go down with a 2nd or 3rd shot. Too many people think focus fire is the problem and 8v8 is a solution, it's not, it's huge pinpoint alphas. That's why 8v8 was so much better back in the day, not because of less shooters, but because of less pinpoint firepower. I've always been an advocate of a cone of fire like most other shooters. If you're in the air your shots will spread like crazy, there, now we can finally have good jump jets. If you're moving full speed then your shots spread a little, more so as you're accelerating, no more quick peeks that rule out mechs with low mounts. If you fire every gun at once then the shots spread, no more monster alphas. It all makes positioning and teamwork that much more important. But yeah, less e-sporty, so here we are. And go figure, the kids are all playing CS and Overwatch instead of MWO, big surprise.

Sure, there's strategy in everything, but much less in connect 4 than chess.

First of all, unless you are playing against people with some truly bad builds, the days when you can cripple somebody with one alpha in a Hellbringer are long gone.

Secondly, your w/l record from the Jarl's List shows that you have a ways to go before having claim to have "figured out" everything about strategy in this game. In fact, I doubt any of us can claim this.

Thirdly, you're suggesting that taking away the risk for players to suffer sudden damage engenders teamwork. What it really engenders is mediocrity. You can try to turn this game into a team building exercise with nerf bats, but that doesn't mean that teamwork needed to play the game will then rise to major league baseball levels.

Lastly, as MWOWC shows, 8v8 is better than ever, if you actually have skill and strategy.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 05 November 2017 - 11:07 PM.

[adamts01]

qS Sachiel, on 05 November 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

Complete lies. Skill doesn't exist within a vacuum. There's a host of other factors of the game to take into consideration.
Rainbow 6, SQUAD, EFT, games with brutal damage models which are FPS require successful players to consider their actions and approach to every encounter, consider possible encounters, know the maps etc...

just no

Squad is one of my favorite games, and the 1 or 2 hit kill damage mode is a perfect fit for it, so it's not like I'm against low TTKs. I love Squad because of the greater tactics involved, not just deathball forward or pick a power position and sit there all match. That game has so much more going for it than MWO, and is pretty similar to what I'd love CW to be like. Unlike MWO you have to break up in to squads to fight all over the map at once, take advantage of recon, communicate well within the squad and also at the platoon level. It's just great. What's really funny is that Squad has an INSANE cone of fire, but no one there claims it nerfs skill. It promotes fire control, stamina management, forces you to either prioritize movement or shooting, more heavily rely on teammates with different loadouts, and overall makes players consider so much more than you have to think about in MWO. I really don't understand your "skill in a vacuum" comment, as What I'm proposing would make players take more things in to consideration.

JigglyMoobs, on 05 November 2017 - 11:02 PM, said:

First of all, unless you are playing against people with some truly bad builds, the days when you can cripple somebody with one alpha in a Hellbringer are long gone.

I don't think we play the same game.... The heavy large laser build dishes out 64 damage. Against another Hellbringer with maxed armor and zero in the rear you'll shred all ST armor with a single shot and get the CT down to 20 armor. Maybe we have different definitions of crippled, but starting a match with no ST armor puts you in a pretty bad position, especially with all the MGs out there.

[Brain Cancer]

Optionally, just shoot the leg. Much tougher to twist out of the way, and one good alpha will strip anything under an assault, and even some of those if they skipped leg day on armoring up. Your MG lights will love you.