28 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

As a compromise I could imagne collision damage with a "friendly colission" check. So exidentialy bumping into a team member because you had no chance of seeing him dosn't hurt but you can still "kick" a light enemy mechs behind when he is getting to close.

Just leave out the falling part. It sounds realy cool at first but it creates more problems then it solves.

[Nesutizale]

YueFei, on 04 June 2020 - 11:58 AM, said:

Someone approaching from your front arc? I darn well hope you see them coming, because if your situational awareness is so poor that someone approaching from your front gets the drop on you, you deserve to be bowled over.

Front firing arc or front leg arc? Because if you are talking about the firing arc, yes you could see him comming. Leg arc, well if your torso is twisted you can very well not see him comming because of a lot of reasons.

Depending on your FOV settings you only see about 70-110 degree of the entire stuff happening around you. Far less when you get your tunnel vision of focusing on a target or you try not to hit the teammate that is running in front of your guns.
It gets even worse for the rear arc as you hardly have a chance to see someone approaching there.

You can only hope that a teammate or a UAV is up to improve your "awareness" of the battlefield but frankly that is not depandable as you don't allways have someone watching the back of the line, UAVs get shot down and stealth mechs aren't even shown.

Add to that most people aren't capable to watch the minmap and fire their weapons at the same time. Just make a check yourself. Count the times that you have been hit in the back or side without excecting it. I bet its happening more often then you would like. That every time your awareness wasn't there.

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Dude, if we're expecting players of a decent proficiency to be able to torso twist within the ~500 millisecond window of enemy weapons fire in order to shield and take hits on the arms or "dead-side", surely we can expect players to react in time to twist/pitch against a physical charge. Even at near point-blank-range (say, 40 meters), you have nearly 1 second against even the fastest mechs to react in time.

Oh I don't aspect people to twist that fast at all. Look at how people play and most of them don't even twist, let alone fast enough.

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How are you gonna get knocked down again as you get up into a crouch? Do you not understand that in the system I'm proposing, you're immune to knockdowns as you get up in a crouch? Enemies can shoot you all they want as you get up into a crouched position, and continue to blast you or physically ram you once you're up in that crouched position, but you won't fall. I also said your mobility would be hampered, not totally removed. You can still turn, torso-twist, and shuffle around slowly, but you're not going to be running around at full tilt.

Maybe I didn't explained it well enough. I DON'T kick you down while you are in a crouched position. I wait till you get back up and you will get back up because, as you said, your movement and options to hit me are limited.
So either you wait crouched till its over and you are dead or you will get up and stand again at some point. That is the moment I kick you down again and we start it all over.

AGAIN I allready did that in the older games. Not fun at all.

[Bistrorider]

YueFei, on 04 June 2020 - 11:58 AM, said:

How are you gonna get knocked down again as you get up into a crouch? Do you not understand that in the system I'm proposing, you're immune to knockdowns as you get up in a crouch? Enemies can shoot you all they want as you get up into a crouched position, and continue to blast you or physically ram you once you're up in that crouched position, but you won't fall. I also said your mobility would be hampered, not totally removed. You can still turn, torso-twist, and shuffle around slowly, but you're not going to be running around at full tilt.

You mean shooting when you lay? That how it was in Battletech, I never liked melee atacks (kicks, punches) in BT, but fall over option is tempting, if you can still shoot when you lay. Some speed/tonage/distance traveled formula to determine when mech can ram other mech and to knock it over? This way we all would be right and wrong on that topic.

But then can I lay down my mech by myself? Interesting.

[Nesutizale]

No you can't. He is talking about a theoretical option to prevent yourself from beeing knocked down over and over again by going into a prone/crouch/whatever position.
As long as you are in that position you can't fall again but your movement, twisting speed, etc are hindered.

I don't like that idea because its only dragging out the process not preventing it.
Instead of falling, standing up, falling again it would be falling, prone, standing, falling.

[thievingmagpi]

JediPanther, on 27 May 2020 - 09:22 AM, said:

Back when the game was fun and exciting. Rip 35t.

Hello Cougar

Hello Wolfhound

Hello heavy gauss Firestarter

Hello brawl Panther

[JediPanther]

thievingmagpi, on 04 June 2020 - 08:56 PM, said:

Hello Cougar

Hello Wolfhound

Hello heavy gauss Firestarter

Hello brawl Panther

The secend and third most tanky-ist is lights, the cou's massive fire power potential and a lol fs build. Those aren't replaced by mechs 10-15 tons lighter as the Jenners while getting the majority of nerfs over the years and replaced by other mechs in the same weight class. I got those mechs too and they can be fun depending on build and match. I just don't have any reason to use a Jenner other than the it's-a-jenner reaction. A lot of mechs do what the Jenner did only a lot more better than the Jenner. Now i'd say there is no reason for any one new to mwo to use a Jenner when you have far more mechs superior to the Jenner in every way.

[thievingmagpi]

JediPanther, on 05 June 2020 - 01:57 PM, said:

The secend and third most tanky-ist is lights, the cou's massive fire power potential and a lol fs build. Those aren't replaced by mechs 10-15 tons lighter as the Jenners while getting the majority of nerfs over the years and replaced by other mechs in the same weight class. I got those mechs too and they can be fun depending on build and match. I just don't have any reason to use a Jenner other than the it's-a-jenner reaction. A lot of mechs do what the Jenner did only a lot more better than the Jenner. Now i'd say there is no reason for any one new to mwo to use a Jenner when you have far more mechs superior to the Jenner in every way.

Jenners got nerfed, but they aren't the only 35t that was ever good or fun.

[YueFei]

Nesutizale, on 04 June 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

Front firing arc or front leg arc? Because if you are talking about the firing arc, yes you could see him comming. Leg arc, well if your torso is twisted you can very well not see him comming because of a lot of reasons.

Depending on your FOV settings you only see about 70-110 degree of the entire stuff happening around you. Far less when you get your tunnel vision of focusing on a target or you try not to hit the teammate that is running in front of your guns.
It gets even worse for the rear arc as you hardly have a chance to see someone approaching there.

You can only hope that a teammate or a UAV is up to improve your "awareness" of the battlefield but frankly that is not depandable as you don't allways have someone watching the back of the line, UAVs get shot down and stealth mechs aren't even shown.

Add to that most people aren't capable to watch the minmap and fire their weapons at the same time. Just make a check yourself. Count the times that you have been hit in the back or side without excecting it. I bet its happening more often then you would like. That every time your awareness wasn't there.

It just all comes back to situational awareness. You have the same sorts of people crying about getting LRM'd, or shot in the back, or hit by airstrikes or artillery strikes. Should those be removed from the game because players cannot effectively use the counter-play tools they are given?

And even if you fail to maintain good situational awareness, and let a charging enemy get within 40 meters of you before you notice it, even then you still have nearly 1 second to react to it, even longer if it's a larger mech trying to charge you.

Nesutizale, on 04 June 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

Oh I don't aspect people to twist that fast at all. Look at how people play and most of them don't even twist, let alone fast enough.

By this logic, we should just cone-of-fire everything to make hits spread-out and randomized because people don't torso-twist.

No, game design should strive to provide players with counter-play tools. But it should not be spoon-feeding players. Otherwise what you end up with is a lower and lower skill ceiling and a very shallow game, one which players will quickly lose interest in.

The kind of player who doesn't learn is usually not so "invested" into a game anyway. They may dabble in it for awhile and then move on to the next shiny thing. Trying to cater to them is a losing proposition in the long run.

Nesutizale, on 04 June 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

Maybe I didn't explained it well enough. I DON'T kick you down while you are in a crouched position. I wait till you get back up and you will get back up because, as you said, your movement and options to hit me are limited.
So either you wait crouched till its over and you are dead or you will get up and stand again at some point. That is the moment I kick you down again and we start it all over.

AGAIN I allready did that in the older games. Not fun at all.

No, that's not how it works. I get up into a crouch, and I can still turn and twist to shoot at you. I might only be moving 20 kph or whatever, but I'm not helpless. The moment I rise up fully, then you can try to either ram me or shoot me, at which point I can react appropriately. If you're trying to ram me from the side, I can simply ignore it because it won't knock me down. If you're ramming me from behind, I can lean backward into it / throttle-forward. If you try to ram me from the front, I lean forward / throttle-reverse. Similarly for incoming weapons fire.

Hell, fighting games have a term for something akin to this: "wake-up games". And those are far far more unforgiving, in some cases relying on anticipation and mind-games (making "reads") rather than reflexes because it all happens so fast. What I'm proposing is far far more slow paced than that, and is firmly in the "on-reaction" side of the equation, allowing for countering post-impact.

Problem is that players were exposed to PGI's initial implementation of knock-down, and are totally allergic to the entire concept itself, instead of being correctly focused on the flaws of the implementation rather than the concept.

But that's been the story of MWO by PGI. Cool concepts, with minimally viable implementations, and when they can't seem to make a concept work, completely throw it away instead of figuring out how to refine that concept.

Edited by YueFei, 05 June 2020 - 08:03 PM.

[Dauntless Blint]

I think limited stagger might have worked but not knockdowns, adding minor involuntary vectors to movement. Mech legs currently can't side strafe in MWO, they have to turn so not really an option in some directions. Knockdowns would be essentially the same as a death but worse than LRM's and not having spent all your armor or heat.

It would make sense for a 100Tonner to be able to push a face hugging light and stop heel checking.
It would make taking AC20's a different kind of option too when shooting lighter chassis.
Lights ramming assaults would be like 5year olds trying to tackle their parents.

The easiest thing they could do is make lighter weights give way to heavier right now instead standing immune to hull-breaking physics and blocking 100 tons with 20 and near impunity. We don't have any close quarters melee but it could be used to push off a ledge for instance and get some death from above in or break legs if the height was enough of a fall. Maneuver kills.

Games hard enough to balance as it is probably, excuse the pun.

The old thermal was nice to see again, I think they ended up taking out the molten metal shaders because you could ignore the paper-doll for "Just shoot the glowing parts" it would be nice if they implemented it solely for thermal vision again and dulled down thermal vision by default or made enemy mech heat bar enhance thermal vision as the match progressed.