3 replies to this topic

[Sasuga]

I understand that this is more of an FPS than the tabletop game, and that when a leg in MWO is damaged it's also more akin to a joint being damaged in tabletop than total leg loss.

I think it'd be neat if after massive amounts of damage to a leg, it would just come right off and the mech would become completely stationary.

I don't mind shooting around a broken leg, usually, but this isn't about that. I think the amount of damage the leg would need to lose to come off should be at least equal to what it is to break it right now, if not more, meaning that most of the time it would be wiser to simply move and shoot the good leg of a broken legged enemy. This suggest is purely more of an effect, appearance, ascetics, and mild gameplay thing.

Could be a real pain completely losing a leg and being stuck in place, but since the amount of damage it would take would be at least the same as dying (since it's be the same amount of damage again, as breaking it.. that's like destroying two legs) in the rare case you are legged and stuck stationary, you're still 'alive' and in the match where you'd sort of should be dead. And, it could be a real pain for trying to grab mission objectives.

Since mechs are super slow already when they have a broken leg, this wouldn't be much of an added benefit to those rare matches where teams leg a mech to then get the objective while keeping the poor enemy unit alive. Players already do that, with how it is now.

As an added feature, since with this suggestion a mech can't move once legged, it could become a Permanent fixture on the radar, with the last pilot seeing it hypothetically marking it as there, since it can't move, everyone with the same C3 computers would know it's there. (So, say, the legged mech kills the last person who legged it, it wouldn't be stuck and hidden from the enemy team... You can't hide when you can't move.. and, since pilots aren't really dead unless head shot-ted, pilots could still communicate the location of last known enemies.

[D V Devnull]

Hello there, Sasuga... Your idea introduces another Balance-related concern.

At current, a quote-unquote "Destroyed" Leg currently allows damage to transfer to the matching Side Torso that it exists beneath. If your idea were to be implemented, then an additional penalty in terms of vulnerability would be introduced to the same Side Torso that the Leg gets completely blown off from. While the Leg may no longer be there to transfer damage, the Side Torso would have taken a lot of added damage prior to the blow-off due to the currently implemented damage transfer mechanic. Therefore, if your idea were to get implemented, that damage transferring mechanic would have to be removed from destroyed leg limbs in order to prevent general over-penalizing. Otherwise, the game's TTK would dramatically speed up and decrease to unbearably quick levels, making the game stop being fun for people on the lower end of the PSR Tiers in general. At this time, we need to not lose players that are coming into MWO these days.

~D. V. "seeing a serious problem with your Leg-exploding idea" Devnull

[Sasuga]

D V Devnull, on 27 July 2021 - 09:46 AM, said:

Hello there, Sasuga... Your idea introduces another Balance-related concern.

At current, a quote-unquote "Destroyed" Leg currently allows damage to transfer to the matching Side Torso that it exists beneath. If your idea were to be implemented, then an additional penalty in terms of vulnerability would be introduced to the same Side Torso that the Leg gets completely blown off from. While the Leg may no longer be there to transfer damage, the Side Torso would have taken a lot of added damage prior to the blow-off due to the currently implemented damage transfer mechanic. Therefore, if your idea were to get implemented, that damage transferring mechanic would have to be removed from destroyed leg limbs in order to prevent general over-penalizing. Otherwise, the game's TTK would dramatically speed up and decrease to unbearably quick levels, making the game stop being fun for people on the lower end of the PSR Tiers in general. At this time, we need to not lose players that are coming into MWO these days.

~D. V. "seeing a serious problem with your Leg-exploding idea" Devnull

You bring up a good point, I was unaware of the fact that the game transferred damage from your foot (leg) to your side torso (like the tabletop).

I find that interesting.

It could continue to transfer the damage as usual, as well as build up damage to fall off.

Edited by Sasuga, 28 July 2021 - 06:40 AM.

[D V Devnull]

Sasuga, on 28 July 2021 - 06:34 AM, said:

You bring up a good point, I was unaware of the fact that the game transferred damage from your foot (leg) to your side torso (like the tabletop).

I find that interesting.

It could continue to transfer the damage as usual, as well as build up damage to fall off.

Again, an honestly major point of concern in Game Balance there. A player's Team should have the ability and chance to save someone who has been rendered stationary like that. But, if the damage transfer mechanic from Leg to Side Torso is kept in-play, then by the time that stationary condition occurs, that player's Team absolutely will not have any chance left to save them. By the time that Leg was actually gone, there would not be enough left on the matching Side Torso to be able to continue Torso Twisting for even a short period of time in an attempt to survive any further. That would destroy most players' ability to earn the additional in-game bonus "Savior Kill" that can only happen when a Teammate is kept alive while taking down opponents, and would also further destroy the very concept of TeamWork itself because people will then become more afraid to stick their neck out for a Teammate who is under fire. This game of MWO and the Community currently present do not need 'Time To Kill' to speed up any further, they do not need Mech Survivability to get any worse than it is now, they do need to not end up unnecessarily feeling repetitively isolated during gameplay, and they also certainly do not need in-game payouts to get any worse. All of this is why both of those mechanics can not safely exist at the same time, as it would further result in any new players coming in and being shot down so fast that they would give up and uninstall MWO again, never to look back. It would also probably result in more people leaving the game who have been here for a while, as some people can not handle that kind of frenetic pace when they are not allowed to respawn anyway, and they are already sick of the MatchMaker taking longer than their Match itself lasts.

Frankly, you're leaving me to ask... Are you trying to kill off MWO for some reason? Are you trying to make gameplay less fun than the ancient "MechWarrior 2" made it? At least back then, players could put JumpJets in literally any design they made, with no worry over the HardPoints or allowance limits like what MWO has now. That at least meant they had some mobility if they did lose a Leg at all, and "MechWarrior 2" expressly did not have the damage transfer mechanic implemented, quite likely for the reasons which I have already mentioned above. But, if both of those game mechanics were in-play actively within MWO itself, the game quality would take an instant nosedive because of how limited the pool of playable Loadouts would become. There are too many people who would give up on playing if the battlefields got reduced to basically only having...

• Quad LB-10X Fafnir FNR-5
  
• Quad LB-10X Cyclops Sleipnir CP-S
  
• Quad LB-10X Kodiak KDK-3
  
• Quad LB-10X Annihilator (ANH in Several Variants)
  
• Dual UAC5/UAC10 Kodiak KDK-3
  
• Dual UAC5/UAC10 Mad Cat Mk. II MCII-B
  
• Dual UAC5/UAC10 Annihilator (ANH in Several Variants)

...as being about the only builds that could be fielded on the battlefields at any given time without being looked down upon as being sub-par. New players mostly do not have access to any of those, and would turn around only to leave upon running into that kind of hard wall. The same would happen with Veteran players who were unable to pilot that small pool of builds most of the time, rapidly reducing the player amount which the MatchMaker would have to work with. Then due to the MatchMaker not taking well to only having Assaults to allocate, the time between any Match occurring would rapidly increase to the point where it is like someone is waiting in a line for too long to get on a rollercoaster without many seats at what is called a "Fair" in the region where I exist. At that point, the very existence of MWO would be doomed to permanent shutdown, and there would be another dark age where basically nobody would have a well-established MechWarrior title to play. While the item known as "MechWarrior: Living Legends" may exist, too many would be extremely reticent to touch something whose status puts it out of the public eye due to not being on Steam or any other such thing. Also, while PGI's own "MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries" offering may exist out there, it does not have any PvP-Type Multiplayer available currently available to my knowledge, and has already received a horrible outlook from people due to the mess with that Epic Game Store stuff and that Tencent company which has a rather large Stock Sharehold in Epic Games themselves. To deck it off, there are people who act like something doesn't exist until it appears on their favorite Game Store or has some bunch of other features. So, anything that could potentially risk the destruction of MWO in entirety is really not a good idea to be pushing.

EDIT (about 27 minutes later) :: By the way... I'm seriously not trying to totally burn your idea down. I'm just saying that there is an honest limit as to what can be safely implemented at the same time before making the game unworthy of people and their playtime.

~D. V. "this isn't a situation where one 'can have their cake & eat it too' in regard to Damage Transfer & Leg losses" Devnull

Edited by D V Devnull, 28 July 2021 - 02:30 PM.