73 replies to this topic

[razenWing]

This is another aspect that Mechwarrior is unique amongst any other games ever in existence...

This is the only game that high ground absolutely sucks. Yes, the advantage still exists if you are on a hill and shoot 200-300 meters out, but on maps like Caustic Valley. If you take the Caldera, forget the heat, just the fact that you can't shoot down around you put you at a HUGE disadvantage. In every other games, that top of the hill should be a huge advantage going down the hill...

You get velocity, momentum behind you, other guys have to look up to shoot you...

It should be a roll by any stretch of the imagination.

But only in MWO, where you can't shoot down. So stuck on the hill? You not only NOT get additional speed from going down a hill (as opposed to mw4, which gives you like 10% or 20% depends on steepness?), but you have to race PAST the opponent so that you have the low ground to be able to shoot up at them.

Which is ridiculous.

There's really an easy fix to this. IK. Because if we can "normalize" the plain so that looking down would be like looking straight, that problem is solved immediately. Imagine you being 90 degree on the side of the hill looking down, yes your friends need to hold your back or you fall down the hill, but IK is supposed to fix the balance issue.

Also, more speed boost/reduction going up and down a hill would help...

[Bombast]

I don't know what you're talking about. Taking the heights is, except for a few cases, almost always the best move you can make.

[Seranov]

Yeah, this is factually incorrect. High ground is 99% of the time advantageous.

[Gamuray]

What would help is putting weapons in your arms.... Then you can shoot down. Also, high ground is useful in other games because humans aren't used to having to look up. You know, standing upright and all makes most animals and plants below your gaze. In this case, there's a big console in the way of us looking down in most mechs, so looking up is just more useful... and since mechs up are skylined, they're easy to see.

That said, high ground is still an advantage in most maps as you are the one who can peek more effectively and can more easily maneuver into better positions or escape. I.E. Crimson Strait, where starting out on top enables you to escape below when necessary. Ridgelines allow you to decide whether to be seen or not be seen, whereas low ground does not give you that option.

Except Rubelite Oasis... Because the ridge lines are actually the LOW ground in that map, the bottom is on par with the top.




p.s. Darn this forum and it's poorly coded copy paste ability. Always adding html-ish code around my pasted stuff!

Edited by Gamuray, 24 March 2018 - 05:20 PM.

[razenWing]

again, i am not talking about a cliff, cliff is for map control. but high ground like on top of a rolling hill

(again, caustic caldera area)

arms weapon is not an option for some mechs.

[DFM]

Don't yolo off the high ground, and shoot them in the face when they crest because you managed more patience than they did?

[VitriolicViolet]

the list of mechs that cant take any arm weapons is tiny, nearly every mech in the game can take arm weapons. The amount of mechs that can mount significant firepower in the arms isnt short either, most Zeus have the old missile fist, King Crabs of course, half the Supernovas can do it. im haveing trouble thinking of a mech that has no arm weapons at all, maybe one of the Battlemasters? Cicadas mostly dont, Hunchies are limited.
So out of 115 mechs i still have one of the battlemasters has only one arm weapon, 2 of my Cicadas have no arm weapons and one of my Hunchie IICs (HBK-IIC) also has none. 4 out of 115.

TL:DR out of the 115 mechs i have 3 have no arm weapons.

[razenWing]

why don't you guys actually take a second before the reply button and actually think about what i am saying.

even on a cliff, the fact that you can't look down makes it an ok map control, but bad otherwise. (since enemy can fight around you without your participation)

but the point i want to emphasize, is to think of a hill where you run down. like playing tag, is it more advantage to be at the top of the hill running down or down running up? except that logic doesn't apply in this game because you can't align torso with the curved plain. as such, doesn't matter if you have arm weapon, your SIGHT is not there to see down.

but yea, without resorting to your quickplay experience ("i stayed up on a hill and shoot down with my double gauss rifle ok), but think about an actual strat where you are not just sitting back and watch your teammate tank for you. in an actual push, pushing down the hill is downright awful.

so please, stop replying because you actually put 2 cents into a topic. it's not your obligation to reply before you even think about it. if so, and you still agree that charging down a hill is a great idea in this game? then we can debate on that.

[Krivvan]

razenWing, on 24 March 2018 - 04:58 PM, said:

There's really an easy fix to this. IK. Because if we can "normalize" the plain so that looking down would be like looking straight, that problem is solved immediately. Imagine you being 90 degree on the side of the hill looking down, yes your friends need to hold your back or you fall down the hill, but IK is supposed to fix the balance issue.

IK doesn't do that.

Nor does that make sense in reality. When you walk up a 45 degree slope, your body doesn't stick out at a 45 degree angle.

Walking up a hill makes you look like this:


What IK does is make your legs and feet bend such that they match the slope, but your body is still horizontal. It does absolutely nothing for what your firing arc would be. IK is entirely cosmetic outside of the exact position of your leg.

What IK doesn't do is make you walk up hills like this:


In any case, high ground is an advantage because of the extra sightlines it gives you. This overwatch leads to map control. It only becomes a disadvantage if you are specifically in a mech with bad torso pitch and the enemy is directly underneath you, but generally the idea is that the enemy is dead long before they actually get underneath you.

Good Light players can attest that the best thing their team can do for them is to give them protection via overwatch. Having a friendly mech up on a hill able to punish any enemy that pokes out is a god-send for a Light player defensively.

If you ever are in a situation where the enemy is underneath you and you can't aim down then, well, the solution is to just back up a bit and now the enemy will be forced to be above you or on level ground with you.

Edited by Krivvan, 24 March 2018 - 07:12 PM.

[razenWing]

i agree that being patient is a way around it, but it just goes against expectation that if you are charging from above, you should win the engagement. think that one scene in LOTR the two towers when gandalf brought like 500 riders.

ik doesn't necessary make you sonic, but the gyro correction combine with the visual brought by IK could. obviously, there is a limit to how much balance correction can be done on a mech, but it shouldn't be the case where something like caustic (and i keep bring it up because its fresh, there should be more examples than that), be an issue.

(in fact, if you think about, isn't that the whole point of the reverse chicken leg design vs upright humanoid design? so that one design has more balance correction ability for rough terrains. hum... i am onto something here...)

Edited by razenWing, 24 March 2018 - 06:27 PM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

For the same reason that putting a tank or stationary gun on top of a steep hill is disadvantageous. If you can't depress your weapons to fire at enemies at the base of the high ground you're obviously going to be in trouble. This is one of the trade-offs of using torso-mounted weapons: they traverse slower and have a more limited range of movement.

If you're in a Blackjack, Rifleman, Jagermech, &c., you love hills, because you have high-mounted gun arms with a lot of vertical traverse and can effectively fight hull-down from many different angles, with the limit usually being based on the visual obstructions at the bottom of the cockpit.

[PocketYoda]

The issue isn't high or low ground..

Its that mech agility is garbage and a lot cannot look up or down very well arms cannot go up or down which means many mechs are screwed on high or low ground as they cannot hit anything..

Its a core issue with MWO and maybe Battletech everyone screams that high ground is better because they are using amazing mobility mechs.. For many looking up is better than looking down so low ground works better, some garbage mechs can't do either...

Try looking up or down in a crab or king crab, or try looking down in a mauler for example

Edited by Samial, 24 March 2018 - 06:41 PM.

[Krivvan]

Samial, on 24 March 2018 - 06:34 PM, said:

Its a core issue with MWO and maybe Battletech everyone screams that high ground is better because they are using amazing mobility mechs.. For many looking up is better than looking down so low ground works better, some garbage mechs can't do either...

Generally mechs that have trouble looking down have high mounted weapons and therefore gain an advantage in hill poking. There are tradeoffs. That's a good thing. You don't want mechs that can handle every situation well.

razenWing, on 24 March 2018 - 06:25 PM, said:

ik doesn't necessary make you sonic, but the gyro correction combine with the visual brought by IK could. obviously, there is a limit to how much balance correction can be done on a mech, but it shouldn't be the case where something like caustic (and i keep bring it up because its fresh, there should be more examples than that), be an issue.

What you're describing isn't inverse kinematics though and can be implemented entirely without it. It'd be a bad idea in my opinion though. Those few mechs that have problems with torso pitch and are entirely torso mounted are also the mechs with good high torso mounts, which are considered excellent in other situations such as hill poking. It's a tradeoff, and tradeoffs are good.

razenWing, on 24 March 2018 - 06:25 PM, said:

i agree that being patient is a way around it, but it just goes against expectation that if you are charging from above, you should win the engagement. think that one scene in LOTR the two towers when gandalf brought like 500 riders.

The strength of high ground isn't charging though. And without melee weapons in MWO, the benefit of that is entirely irrelevant. Can you imagine modern US Marines taking the high ground solely to be able to charge down at the enemy with assault rifles blazing? No, the high ground provides you with both cover and sightlines depending on how you want to use it.

Edited by Krivvan, 24 March 2018 - 06:51 PM.

[MechaBattler]

So everything should just have more pitch? I think it's just one of those things you have to deal with on certain mechs. The only problem I've found with the high ground is being the only one up there. Especially if it's highly visible high ground. Then you have everyone popping you from every direction.

[kuma8877]

Any bipedal form of motion naturally requires the center of gravity be maintained at all times or the biped will tumble (front to back). The mech would HAVE to lean back and lower the center of gravity (begin to crouch) to pitch further forward or tumble. To do otherwise would be so unnatural looking as to be absurd.

The other possibility would be for the legs to use IK to better represent standing sideways against the slope using the rear (upper hill) leg as a counterweight to lean further over to shoot further down the slope. But this doesn't solve your problem with a push as your forward motion would be perpendicular to the slope.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Much more pitch and your 'mech should realistically fall on its face when you lean as far forward as you can. Chicken walkers have a bit more leeway (or quads) since their waist arrangement could be structured differently enough to have an appreciably lower center of gravity (though it's generally just 'turret on legs'), but humanoids?

Given that PGI refuses to remove perfect instant convergence we're forced to assume that at least within the reality bubble of MWO torso mounts are gimballed to some degree, but they're still mostly stationary and internal. You want to aim them somewhere, the whole torso has to be pointing more or less in that direction.

[Kubernetes]

High ground is a bit complicated in MWO because enemies can absorb damage and get in close. And once the enemies get in close you actually don't want the high ground-- you want to park yourself on the reverse slope, at the lip of the top. This allows you to shoot exposed enemies on top while you hill-peak. You can see this in action on both heights on Grim Plexus. The team that camps on one of the tabletops becomes toast once the enemy gets on the slope.

[PocketYoda]

Krivvan, on 24 March 2018 - 06:38 PM, said:

Generally mechs that have trouble looking down have high mounted weapons and therefore gain an advantage in hill poking. There are tradeoffs. That's a good thing. You don't want mechs that can handle every situation well.

I do, imbalance in this game is beyond a joke.. literally makes a lot of mechs unusable or not worth it because others are better.. I have 170+ mechs and about 70 or more are not even worth buying or using..

Edited by Samial, 24 March 2018 - 07:57 PM.

[Jonathan8883]

Krivvan, on 24 March 2018 - 06:38 PM, said:

Generally mechs that have trouble looking down have high mounted weapons and therefore gain an advantage in hill poking.

Disagree. My Victor has low mounted weapons. If it's on high ground, it has to expose a lot of itself to fire at enemies below, and there's still a chance of slamming 50 points of damage into the edge of the ledge. If it's on low ground, it can simply aim up and shoot at enemy head/shoulders/arms without hitting the terrain or being any more exposed than a Blackjack or Rifleman would be.

[Snowbluff]

I mean, I was killed in my Madcat MkII B the other day on Rubelite Oasis. Another mech of the same chassis and configurations shot up at me. The cockpit obscured my view when aiming now, so i couldn't return fire.