A bit of manual transcription and some comments and questions...
Heck maybe the devs might even answer a few of them.
Anyways, it's nice to have more details, so thanks to Bryan, Russ, Randall, and Rob, for your time!
If I seem a bit blunt... well. I'm blunt. So, no, I'm not picking on you guys or trying to be a pushy ****...
On to my silliness...
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41:13-42:44 Russ:
... from the digital side of things we have similar problems with MWO but they manifest in other ways because we are a live simulation. we don't need to use a lot of the rule sets that are created and written about in the more expanded combat manuals.
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Pht:
Any chance we could know which rules in particular?
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We get a lot of stuff for free because we are using a physics engine,
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Pht:
Using it for what... weapons fire behaviors? IE:Ballistics? Or are you referring to how the 'Mechs move and interact with their environment and things like losing a large amount of armor or a limb very quickly affecting the 'Mech's balance? Or are you using the PE for the environment itself?
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... because we have line of sight, and we have the ability to do raycast and detect whether we are hitting objects. We don't need to create or simulate randomness or pilot skill, so that's one of the advantages we have, ...
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Pht:
LOS detection I presume is just an easy way to replace the TTR los stuff? The joys of the computer format...
Raycasting - I'm guesing this is possibly to replace the to-hit mechanic? I can see getting rid of all of the rolls and such that represent the pilot's direct "gunnery" skills ...
(IE what the MechWarrior directly controls - aiming with the reticule, choosing when and in what mode and with what kind of ammo to fire from the weapons he chooses, and ultimately controlling how long his 'Mech's Targeting and Tracking suite gets to "chew on a fix" before firing)
... which we can control with our PC's. The game is, after all, all about putting US in the MechWarrior's seat as much as we possibly can be.
That said, is it recognized that the non-pilot gunnery skill modifiers provide a performance baseline ...
By "baseline" I don't mean slavish adherence to the form of the TT rules, but rather that those rules give a working outline of the capabilites of what's being modeled in MWO
... of the weapons (IE, the Heavy lasers are less accurate and are +1 to hit) and of the BattleMechs ability to use those weapons as well (IE, the target movement/in what kind of conceal/cover, type, range, and other modifiers for targets, along with the modifiers taken from what the firing 'Mech is doing while firing, etc)? These can be used, and would carry along with them the inherent balance already known and well documented from the parent gaming system (read, no need to pull your hair out on unintended consequences in balancing stuff).
These other rules lay out a nearly comprehensive set of BattleMech performance capabilites; IMO it's in getting these right that the MW video game genre would really move
forwards into being a good First Person Armored Combat sim instead of just another different looking version of Wolfenstein 3D along with most of the other games on the shelves today.
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... but that's also a disadvantage in the sense that we now have to balance every time that we introduce a new 'mech or a new weapon, ...
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Pht:
I don't see that this would be a huge problem if the performance baselines of the weapons and BattleMechs were picked up from the parent system. You guys would know how the system would behave and how the players for the most part would interact with it; heck, all you'd have to do us bug Randall, or Weisman, they'd know it in depth.
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... especially when the clan technology comes in we have to make sure that we don't introduce something that completely destabilizes the game making it so that the previous vehicles ... the previous 'mechs are no longer valuable to it's player base. so, for MWO's point of view the way we are designing how the combat works and how the simulation works... our focus is to make sure that we don't destabilize with the introduction of new content, in fact we hope to kind of add to the overall experience and the overall strategy by introducing things like arenas and maps that cater to the new introduction of new 'mechs and new weapons.
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42:45-42:48.5 Randall:
and that’s got to be a difficult situation...
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Pht:
I can imagine so. Look at all the unintended consequences that all the (seemingly arbitrary?) changes to the parent gaming system stuff as implemented in MW4 resulted in... armor values, damage values, the addition of a "one shot protection", nearly the whole combat mechanic being different as a result ...
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50:09-50:54 Rob:
So when it comes to making a faithful video game adaptation of battletech one of the things that has really struck me in playing the battletech board game lately is ... boy, everyone is a crappier shot than I remember and I mean its ... I mean ... (laughs) I am joking but it's really a core component to ... to sort of the strategy and tactics of battletech which is that most of the time you are going to miss terribly ...
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Pht:
Geeze rob. Quit trying to fire on those +7's and +8's and up all the time!
In all seriousness, though, when the MechWarrior (+3/+4) factor is taken out and you look at the capabilities of the weapons (the weapons are TERRIFYINGLY capable of hitting) and the capabilities of the BattleMechs in using those weapons... Um, no, one is not consigned to missing all the time, and the BattleMech's aim is not crappy; BattleMechs are capable of picking off other 'Mech sized targets on the horizon with direct-fire weapons.
I think it's safe to say that the weapons and the BattleMechs are more capable of hitting the target more reliably were they "perfectly Piloted" than all but the most extremely capable MechWarriors. Sort of how most RL guns are way more accurate than their users...
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... and I mean how do you make that sort of ... the problem with the mechwarrior games at least is that the controls are just too good, everyone is too accurate. Are you going to try to do anything to sort of show up the limitations of 'mechs a little bit?
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Pht:
Yeap. You're right. There's a very good reason that MW4 has been called "Quakewarrior IV." It's because mw4 concetrates all the fire of all weapons of a similar velocity fired at the same time on a single point, instead of doing it like the lore and the parent system; spreading the damage across the target.
This oversight has done horrible harm to the combat balance of the various MW video game interpretations of the Lore and the parent game system. It has bloated armor values, tossed the penetrating hits system into the toilet, made a oneshot protection a necessity, thrown weapons damage values out of whack, ruined the small weapons viability, and made Light BattleMechs as a class almost a joke in terms of combat, not to mention nearly completely changed the combat environment from somewhat epic to maddeningly "you twitch l3ss good and your comput3r is too slow, now you're d3ad, HAHAHA!"
Seriously, using the hit tables to establish how capable a BattleMech is of concentrating its fire and translating that into Video Game terms would go a LONG way towards curing this bumper crop of problems and short falls.
Not making a concerted effort to model how well a BattleMech can (or can't) concentrate it's multiple weapons under varying conditions across a target ... eech. I shudder to think of it.
I want to feel like I'm piloting an armored combat unit, where the BattleMech is bringing the weapons to bear...
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50:54-51:50 Bryan:
I think there’s a few things ... I mean on the one hand no ... you know that's somewhere that you know we are just plain different and that's proper for a video game you know that we ... you're rewarded based on uh ... your skill level and your skill level is based on a lot of things and how you maneuver your 'mech but for the most part if you're just better ...
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Pht:
Ok, Ok, I'm pretty sure you can't answer this at this point, but I'm going to ask anyways
... Our skill at ... what in particular?
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... you're going to hit more often and you're gonna win and it's not gonna be about you know random dice rolls so that it's true I think that in and of itself is a true statement for sure about our game as when it comes to a board game. ...
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Pht:
Wait, are you talking to the pinpoint accuracy/convergence problem, or are you talking about something that you think would take over the pilots "direct gunnery" skills I mentioned earlier? ... or is it something else?
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... Um, however, there are a couple of interesting things we are doing that puts a little more depth into how you shoot you know your weapons um rather than perhaps saying being all at um, one pinpoint accuracy point but that there's some slight difference between weapons that might be on a torso than might be on your arms.
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Pht:
Wait, are you guys raycasting out of individual weapons ports as a way to balance things? That would be a nightmare! No wonder Russ was talking about balancing being an issue... :S
Good lord, artwork that's made on cool factor instead of balance ... determining balance. :phear:
I do not envy you guys if you're trying to go this route.
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51:50-53:32 Russ:
Well, because everything is driven by a players skill initially ...
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Pht:
Um, there aren't avatar skills that will directly affect weapons fire resolution/weapons damage or the things that we can control directly from our PC's, are there?
I recall you guys said there would be no avatar skills that would give overwhelming advantages in combat...
You're giving me goosebumps, and not the good kind.
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... like how well they can control their 'mech in a battlefield ... we don't have to artificially introduce randomness. The simulation by virtue of how fast you're moving, um the limits on how fast you can rotate and aim and the fact that there's geometry so world geometry in front of you and a human thinking opponent on the other side doing exactly what you're doing trying to avoid you, getting shot and getting destroyed while killing the opponent. Those factors and those variables take care of having to create this ... this randomness and addresses you know, pilot skills and all the things that exist in the tabletop ...
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Pht:
How does this set of stuff relate to the performance capabilites of the weapons and the BattleMechs that I mentioned earlier?
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... all the rules that exist in the tabletop game to make the game fair not just say, "I shoot you with all my weapons and I hit 100% of the time" so that's why there are dice in tabletop games is if there weren't you would always choose to do the maximum amount of damage. So we don’t really have as many of those problems ... uh, we have other problems though, which is if you have a really good player how ... what happens than ... is he able to be as efficient as possible within the game space and maximize his kills ...
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Pht:
Again, with the goosebumps. If you're not giving avatar skills that make a huge difference in combat ...
and I don't think the skills that relate to keeping a 'Mech on its feet and upright and not shutting down could induce these problems
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What's causing these problems?
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... so we're always trying to balance how fast you can move with how fast you can shoot with how fast you can aim to make sure that players have a chance ... how much damage weapons do to make sure that you know you don't just walk around the corner and you're dead um that players have a chance to react and use tactics.
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Pht:
Amen. Pace of combat and the lack of tactics and strategy being tweaked to allow for somewhat more "epic" combat is awesome.
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Edited by Pht, 30 December 2011 - 06:52 PM.
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Dihm, on 29 December 2011 - 11:06 AM, said:
