43 replies to this topic

[DANKnuggz]

"Knock Down from Massive Damage" This is generally about the larger ballistic weapons in groups, not one at a time. More along the lines of AC/LB 10/20 or gauss/hvygauss. Possibly large flights of missiles hitting at once or nearly so or ballistics striking a mech in rapid succession destabilizing the gyros.

One thing that has always bugged me about ballistic/missile weapons in MWO is how poorly kinetics is handled. From the skill tree treating range/velocity as two different things rather than parts of the same equation, to light mechs eating tons of kinetic dmg and walking right through as if it were mere wind (getting struck in different spots)... Even the way ballistic heat is handled flies in the face of logic... I hold a rifle and fire it repeatedly, do I overheat or does the rifle barrel?...

The lack of knock down makes light mechs over balanced vs larger mechs with heavy weapons in close. This is for the most part how it should be but the large mechs are missing one key advantage they used to hold, punching power. Large mechs carrying kinetic based weaponry are supposed to pack quite a wollup even if they can't focus it all on one spot. TT had a skill for avoiding knock down from massive dmg which meant as a light you couldn't be so brazen even if you were fast. All mechs should have a knock down threshold based on class, the bigger the mech the higher the threshold. Possibly we could have skills on the skill tree that are actually skills and not mere mechanical upgrades, to offset the chances of being knocked over through pilot skill.

Ballistics should jam from overuse rather than overheating the mech. To balance the retention of mobility rather than a full shutdown as a normal overheat would incur you could simply make ballistic overheat cause systemic dmg to the overheated weapons themselves as a MASC does to your legs if you overuse it. You may not shut down and become easy prey but you can cook your barrels to the point of uselessness if you're not careful which is about as bad as death while shut down or boil over. Essentially what is being done for the RAC's but no engine heat just barrel dmg from overheating the guns. Damaged/hot barrels are not smooth and do not function as well reducing range and accuracy and increased heat from increased friction. The heat jam rate would need to be worked with to balance the spam vs reward aspect.

Energy and kinetic weaponry should not only look differently but their effects on targets should feel and be different as well. It's rather unimmersive to watch a large AC 20 shell slam into a light/med mech with no more than a flash of color on the target window. It's even worse to watch one torso roll through a hail of ballistics/missiles, damaged and most likely missing a piece or two, but nary a flinch otherwise from the little mech during the barrage.

[JediPanther]

Knockdowns were far better along with ik during the dragon bowling era. Pgi removed them because they were too hard. As for big guns doing knockdowns I'm glad that isn't in the game given how pee poor pgi is at implementation of things with 'their version' of the thing such as a nuke that goes for the largest group of mechs indiscriminately.

"watch a large AC 20 shell slam into a light/med mech with no more than a flash of color on the target window."
Given how little armor lights have along with is xl required for many of them to even be use-able if you can't kill one with your ac 20 you either missed or the light got lucky and was in a zig zag resulting in only partial damage. An ac 20 will outright kill an is light using xl. Clan lights have their it's-a-clan-advantage. An lct has only 10 st armor if the armor is distributed 10 ft and 10rt before the slight armor buff from survival if the light is using the survival tree.

[dario03]

Some big guns are already very good for killing lights, dual heavy gauss and quad lb10x work great. Plus ballistics are already very good and lights are the lowest performing class. If you put weapon based knockdown into the game (or a hypothetical mwo2) you would have to nerf ballistics in other ways and buff lights for balance.

[Apache1990]

DANKnuggz, on 28 September 2019 - 09:33 AM, said:

Even the way ballistic heat is handled flies in the face of logic... I hold a rifle and fire it repeatedly, do I overheat or does the rifle barrel?...

If you set up a heat sinking system linking you to the gun barrel like a mech, in order to spread heat to dissipate it more quickly overall without damaging individual components, you and the gun barrel overheat at roughly the same time, though with varying effects for different material heat tolerances.

[Prototelis]

Knockdown would be cancer.

Light mechs are the worst performing, lowest scoring, least played class in the game. They aren't "over performing" against any other class in the game at any range.

[Vxheous]

Having knockdown on large ballistics isn't going to help you kill lights. If you can already hit lights with large ballistics, they die really easily.....and if you can't hit lights with large ballistics, the knockdown doesn't apply.

Edited by Vxheous, 28 September 2019 - 09:50 PM.

[Appogee]

Vxheous, on 28 September 2019 - 09:02 PM, said:

Having knockdown on large ballistics isn't going to help you kill lights. If you can already hit lights with large ballistics, they die really easily.....and if you can't hit lights with large ballistics, the knockdown doesn't apply.

^ This.

But I'd have loved to have seen overall better kinetic consequences in the game.

Knockdown might be beyond the scope of the animators and could be cancerous to gameplay and Paul's fragile ego. However, the cockpit should at least shake in proportion to the caliber of AC that's hitting you, and your Mech's tonnage. The amount of shake should be further modified by the angle you're being shot from and your movement relative to the shot. A volley of clustered IS missiles should deal more cockpit shake than a stream of Clan missiles. UACs should deal less shake than standard ACs. And Heavy lasers should ⁽¹⁾...

In this way, lighter weight classes would have to deal with more 'buffeting' from incoming fire, whereas heavier classes would experience it less. This would add to the distinctiveness of the classes and piloting skills.

The maths is simple, and there'd be no noticeable game engine performance impact because the calculation would be performed client side.

(Come to think of it, damage dealt should also be moderated by relative momentum and angle of hit. Simple example: running directly into an AC20 shell at 80kph should do more damage than being hit from behind by an AC20 shell that you're running away from.)




¹ ... deal the same shake as as every other laser, because photons don't have mass

Edited by Appogee, 28 September 2019 - 10:37 PM.

[Koniving]

DANKnuggz, on 28 September 2019 - 09:33 AM, said:

*Joins the choir that's been going on since 2012/2013 when knockdowns were turned off*.

Grab a cane there, sonny, we're gonna be just bones by the time this problem gets fixed.

Apparently, it'll also be an issue for MW5 Mercs. Last I heard from the AMAs, there will be knockdowns "if they have time", but 2 delays later there's a mandatory release-in-this-amount-of-time-or-contract-is-void-and-you-gotta-pay-our-down-payment-back with Epic. So don't count on having it unless PGI decides to update the functionality in or someone mods it in.

When all the tech in the world can't get a video game that encompasses all the abilities and elements of a board game from 1986.

[Y E O N N E]

Koniving, on 29 September 2019 - 09:08 PM, said:

When all the tech in the world can't get a video game that encompasses all the abilities and elements of a board game from 1986.

A bit of an unfair comparison there since all of the things that make implementation difficult in a video game reside entirely in your imagination in the board game.

[Koniving]

Y E O N N E, on 29 September 2019 - 09:20 PM, said:

A bit of an unfair comparison there since all of the things that make implementation difficult in a video game reside entirely in your imagination in the board game.

True, but in comparison, MW3 and 4 got in those elements. Even MW1 managed to get in a lot more of the universe's elements than MWO managed to keep or implement.
MW5 really doesn't have a a good reason not to have it either. I'm aware all the mechs would need animations, but they had those animations for a number of the older mechs and if they were serious about putting back in knockdowns as they frequently claimed they were, they would have done more of those animations leaving a lot less work for later...

All the reasons for why they said they decided not to put it back in for MWO basically boil down to "Inverse Kinematics would make it so that you might not be able to hit a leg where you see it." Which therefore means knockdowns are out as they require inverse kinematics. Neither of these are good reasons for MW5 as it isn't intended to be PVP.

...But something tells me they never did that work in preparation of restoring the functionality. They've spent nearly as much time on it as Star Citizen has had (short a couple years), haven't had nearly as many hurdles of insanity or unnecessary details to put in (27 animations for ordering and eating a taco/burrito). I'm well aware of how small they are but a team of an even smaller sized managed to push out HBS Battletech...with melee and knockdowns, and I'm not expecting them to have reinvented how knockdowns work, just have the core framework there for me to work with so I could at least fix it.

What saddens me is before they took out knockdowns, they had already devised a solution for how to fix it. Impacts based on your speed and weight, damage dealt and received. There was even talk of preventing abuse. Then the Goons played with Paul. Personally I loved rolling down huge mountains.

[Khobai]

Prototelis, on 28 September 2019 - 07:27 PM, said:

Knockdown would be cancer.

Light mechs are the worst performing, lowest scoring, least played class in the game. They aren't "over performing" against any other class in the game at any range.

Knockdown isnt whats cancer.

The fact they tried to make light mechs and assault mechs equal so now we cant have knockdown because of all the light mech crybabies is whats cancer.

We should absolutely have knockdowns. And a light mech should not be treated as being worth the same as an assault mech. That has always been absurd.

In every other mechwarrior/battletech game lights are worse than assaults. Its a progression based system. MWLL did it the right way by having players start off in light mechs at the beginning of the game and gradually earn heavier mechs towards the end. All weight classes would actually get used then at varying stages of the game.

Y E O N N E, on 29 September 2019 - 09:20 PM, said:

A bit of an unfair comparison there since all of the things that make implementation difficult in a video game reside entirely in your imagination in the board game.

Its not just in his imagination though. Earlier versions of mechwarrior had knockdowns. Ballistic weapons also had a knockback effect which forced your mech to torso twist in the opposite direction. And they had terrain deformation and destroyable buildings. In a lot of ways MWO was a step backwards from mechwarrior 3 which came out in 1999 lol.

Edited by Khobai, 29 September 2019 - 11:07 PM.

[dario03]

Khobai, on 29 September 2019 - 10:52 PM, said:

Knockdown isnt whats cancer.

The fact they tried to make light mechs and assault mechs equal so now we cant have knockdown because of all the light mech crybabies is whats cancer.

We should absolutely have knockdowns. And a light mech should not be treated as being worth the same as an assault mech. That has always been absurd.

In every other mechwarrior/battletech game lights are worse than assaults. Its a progression based system. MWLL did it the right way by having players start off in light mechs at the beginning of the game and gradually earn heavier mechs towards the end. All weight classes would actually get used then at varying stages of the game.



Its not just in his imagination though. Earlier versions of mechwarrior had knockdowns. They also had terrain deformation and destroyable buildings. In a lot of ways MWO was a step backwards from mechwarrior 3 which came out in 1999 lol.

Well that would make the issue be with the one or four mechs a match system not the light mech supporters.

[Prototelis]

Khobai, on 29 September 2019 - 10:52 PM, said:

Knockdown isnt whats cancer.

Yes, it is. Stunlock in action games is cancer.

Quote

The fact they tried to make light mechs and assault mechs equal so now we cant have knockdown because of all the light mech crybabies is whats cancer.

They have not; not even close. You might know if you actually played the game.

Quote

And a light mech should not be treated as being worth the same as an assault mech. That has always been absurd.

Last I checked a 20 tonner is worth 20 tons and a 100 tonner is worth 100 tons.

Quote

In every other mechwarrior/battletech game lights are worse than assaults.

Lights are worse than assaults in this game. Nobody seriously played lights in any of the other games unless they were made to because of league/server rules. Viable isn't the same as equal.

Edited by Prototelis, 29 September 2019 - 11:10 PM.

[Sjorpha]

JediPanther, on 28 September 2019 - 12:35 PM, said:

Knockdowns were far better along with ik during the dragon bowling era. Pgi removed them because they were too hard. As for big guns doing knockdowns I'm glad that isn't in the game given how pee poor pgi is at implementation of things with 'their version' of the thing such as a nuke that goes for the largest group of mechs indiscriminately.

Knockdowns were removed because they were a glitchy, buggy underdeveloped mess that didn't work.

Maybe they could have worked some way, but the implementation we had just wasn't functional. That has nothing to do with being too hard or anything, it simply wasn't working well technically.

IK wasn't reintroduced because it didn't work well with the HSR system, so feet and legs on uneven terrain would have bad hitreg, and PGI didn't manage to solve that issue (or maybe they didn't bother).

Khobai, on 29 September 2019 - 10:52 PM, said:

The fact they tried to make light mechs and assault mechs equal so now we cant have knockdown because of all the light mech crybabies is whats cancer.

We should absolutely have knockdowns. And a light mech should not be treated as being worth the same as an assault mech. That has always been absurd.

In every other mechwarrior/battletech game lights are worse than assaults. Its a progression based system. MWLL did it the right way by having players start off in light mechs at the beginning of the game and gradually earn heavier mechs towards the end. All weight classes would actually get used then at varying stages of the game.

Light mechs ARE worse than assaults in MWO, quite a bit worse actually. Tonnage advantage is a very real advantage in this game, something everyone who has played enough group q or Faction Play knows.

The average results for heavier mechs are higher than for the lighter mechs, and they are higher for most players both good and bad. Basically the idea that lights in MWO have somehow been balanced to equal assaults is complete nonsense, it has never been the case, not even back before the rescale when lights were much stronger than they are now.

Some builds counter each other, so some assault builds can't beat some light builds (and some medium and heavy builds counters lights), but that doesn't change the fact that more tonnage is generally better in MWO. The more teamwork the more you can leverage tonnage advantage and a superior health pool, which is why this silly myth about lights being as strong as assaults is born out of anecdotal experiences in solo q.

[Karl Streiger]

Sjorpha, on 30 September 2019 - 01:56 AM, said:

IK wasn't reintroduced because it didn't work well with the HSR system, so feet and legs on uneven terrain would have bad hitreg, and PGI didn't manage to solve that issue (or maybe they didn't bother).

And you know what have had solved that?
What have made in transparent bandaids like "Ghost Heat" not necessary?
Regional servers when there were still enough people to play the game.
(We had regional servers later, when the game was already declining)
I had no real issues with the Hit-Reg prior to HSR (the only exception were lights with ECM (for reasons) - but for lights you had knockdown once) even with a ping of ~120.

[Sagara Sousuke 011011001]

Koniving, on 29 September 2019 - 09:55 PM, said:

True, but in comparison, MW3 and 4 got in those elements. Even MW1 managed to get in a lot more of the universe's elements than MWO managed to keep or implement.
MW5 really doesn't have a a good reason not to have it either. I'm aware all the mechs would need animations, but they had those animations for a number of the older mechs and if they were serious about putting back in knockdowns as they frequently claimed they were, they would have done more of those animations leaving a lot less work for later...

All the reasons for why they said they decided not to put it back in for MWO basically boil down to "Inverse Kinematics would make it so that you might not be able to hit a leg where you see it." Which therefore means knockdowns are out as they require inverse kinematics. Neither of these are good reasons for MW5 as it isn't intended to be PVP.

...But something tells me they never did that work in preparation of restoring the functionality. They've spent nearly as much time on it as Star Citizen has had (short a couple years), haven't had nearly as many hurdles of insanity or unnecessary details to put in (27 animations for ordering and eating a taco/burrito). I'm well aware of how small they are but a team of an even smaller sized managed to push out HBS Battletech...with melee and knockdowns, and I'm not expecting them to have reinvented how knockdowns work, just have the core framework there for me to work with so I could at least fix it.

What saddens me is before they took out knockdowns, they had already devised a solution for how to fix it. Impacts based on your speed and weight, damage dealt and received. There was even talk of preventing abuse. Then the Goons played with Paul. Personally I loved rolling down huge mountains.

Not sure how many here played MW3 online, but I do remember you fought primarily for the knockdown. If you could knock over a mech, it was an easy kill because you could take out a single leg for the kill.

[Prototelis]

Sagara Sousuke 011011001, on 30 September 2019 - 02:24 PM, said:

Not sure how many here played MW3 online, but I do remember you fought primarily for the knockdown. If you could knock over a mech, it was an easy kill because you could take out a single leg for the kill.

lol no.

You fought primarily to laser off one leg which got you an easy kill.

Karl Streiger, on 30 September 2019 - 02:49 AM, said:

And you know what have had solved that?

Well it sure isn't stunlock.

Quote

What have made in transparent bandaids like "Ghost Heat" not necessary?

Ghost heat was done to prevent the MP experience from being exactly the same unbalanced mess it was in the two previous entries; Assaults with a **** load of PPFLD one shotting almost everything.

Quote

I had no real issues with the Hit-Reg prior to HSR (the only exception were lights with ECM (for reasons) - but for lights you had knockdown once) even with a ping of ~120.

So if you don't have a problem hitting light mechs what good is knockdown going to do you?



Edit: FWIW, knockdown doesn't help or hurt lights. What makes stunlock especially bad for this game is how it plays out on other classes. Most lights die after a single hit with a bunch of dakka or are so damaged it doesn't matter.

Edited by Prototelis, 30 September 2019 - 03:22 PM.

[Sagara Sousuke 011011001]

Prototelis, on 30 September 2019 - 03:16 PM, said:

lol no.

You fought primarily to laser off one leg which got you an easy kill.

I remember that was the case in "stock" matches where you could not boat, but it was much harder to hit legs in MW3 because of the poor lag that the game suffered from. You had to aim and shoot at the space in front of mech in order to score hits.

In fact to be honest, skill was less about direct accuracy and more about finding your opponents real location.

If you were going the laser route, you go pulse to scout their location.....or you'd just slam 2 UAC 20s into them if 2/3 or more of the volley hit they would fall. Alot easier to finish off a non moving target when lag meant that most opponents were 10 - 20 meters in front of their visible position.

Edited by Sagara Sousuke 011011001, 30 September 2019 - 03:53 PM.

[Prototelis]

lol no. 6 er large shadowcat.

One or two shot most legs.

Even with stock builds leg meta was the way to go, and legs weren't difficult to hit.

[Sagara Sousuke 011011001]

Prototelis, on 30 September 2019 - 04:04 PM, said:

lol no. 6 er large shadowcat.

One or two shot most legs.

Even with stock builds leg meta was the way to go, and legs weren't difficult to hit.

Of course because 1 leg was death, most of the "fat legged" mechs weren't popular. I'd say the Avatar, Bushwacker, and I guess the shadow cat would be there too, were the most popular.

Most of the lights were unusable because they couldn't torso twist. You would see the Adder occasionally because it was so small and fast.

(Admittedly, after a few months I gravitated to UA matches only which I'm guessing you probably avoided?)

Edited by Sagara Sousuke 011011001, 30 September 2019 - 04:13 PM.