265 replies to this topic

[AllSpark]

Solution to high Alphas could just be a heat dissipation change. Low heat drops down fast, medium heat dissipates slower until it reaches the low heat treshold and high heat takes even longer to reach medium heat treshold.

Or you could straight up just have a Logarithmic heat dissipation curve.

The overall 100 to 0 heat dissipation time would not need to change,

The object here is to increase the sustained DPS difference between players who cycle their weapon groups and those who just Alpha strike all the time.

Smart cycling of weapon groups would allow you to keep a lot higher sustained DPS and alphas would be a more situational tool as it tanks your DPS.

Edited by AllSpark, 12 July 2024 - 10:27 PM.

[MechaBattler]

AllSpark, on 12 July 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

Solution to high Alphas could just be a heat dissipation change. Low heat drops down fast, medium heat dissipates slower until it reaches the low heat treshold and high heat takes even longer to reach medium heat treshold.

Or you could straight up just have a Logarithmic heat dissipation curve.

The overall 100 to 0 heat dissipation time would not need to change,

The object here is to increase the sustained DPS difference between players who cycle their weapon groups and those who just Alpha strike all the time.

Smart cycling of weapon groups would allow you to keep a lot higher sustained DPS and alphas would be a more situational tool as it tanks your DPS.

Well they did that a while ago. Raised dissipation and lowered heat cap. So as to favor DPS. It definitely helped. But I feel like they should have gone a little farther.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

AllSpark, on 12 July 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

The object here is to increase the sustained DPS difference between players who cycle their weapon groups and those who just Alpha strike all the time.

The question you need to ask yourself is "but why"? Why is this something that needs to happen? How does this play out with weapons designed for actual sustained DPS that DONT require that management? In other words, this kind of desire is short-sighted because it ignores weapons were designed differently (some are better for sustained DPS than others).

MechaBattler, on 14 July 2024 - 11:34 AM, said:

Well they did that a while ago. Raised dissipation and lowered heat cap. So as to favor DPS. It definitely helped. But I feel like they should have gone a little farther.

It didn't actually help, it actually made things worse because guess that's what gave way to giga-vomit builds.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 15 July 2024 - 06:45 AM.

[1453 R]

Gasboy, on 02 July 2024 - 09:55 AM, said:

You will have people who dislike any changes, and simplification doesn't necessarily mean more players.

And you're bonkers to say that that gameplay would be the same without the mechbay. Stock mechs are utter garbage in almost all cases, especially without skill quirks. Customization is easily the biggest draw in Mechwarrior and it'd be a terrible move to ditch that. You would definitely lose players with no guarantee that the change would attract enough new players to cover the loss.

Customization is the biggest draw of MechWarrior?

Not hardly.

I'm a dedicated Armored Core player as well as a longtime MechWarrior player. Customization is a core draw in Armored Core, yes. In MechWarrior? Nah. The draw has always been the unique way BattleMech combat works, and the wildly varied and cool designs you get to pilot. As Quicksilver said, MechWarrior had a lot of the trappings of the Hero Shooter before that genre existed. it's why purists are so kvetchy about the Stock Builds - those stock builds are the game's Heroes to those folks, and mucking with them just feels wrong. Everybody has their favorites, 'Mechs they'd buy and play even if those 'Mechs were bloody terrible (guilty: Penetrator plz).

Nah. Frankly, a MechWarrior game with no 'MechLab whatsoever, which also took the tabletop system/designs as inspiration to create a suite of competitively balanced machines without going full CoD-Kiddie Twisted Metal EDGEPUNK lollerskates a'la MechAssault would be a perfectly serviceable MechWarrior game. There's no need for a MechLab at all if the designs are actually balanced properly in the first place. If that means certain designs are altered, or even swapped out for "In Name Only" rebuilds? Then as long as we have all those other good-**** things that make piloting a BattleMech feel like piloting a BattleMech, people will get over not having the ability to tune their build.

Frankly, if no MechLab means I could pilot a Nova Prime that isn't a self-defeating deathtrap, or a skirmisher Shadow Cat that isn't a meme, because individual 'Mechs can be balanced around their specific unique loadouts rather than having to be empty skeletons you can do whatever with? Sign me the hecc up. I adore the Shadow Cat Prime, a single hard-hitting gauss rifle with knife-fighting backups on a nimble, agile high-speed* chassis is pretty close to my dream ride. But man - there is no world in which the SHC-Prime is not a laughingstock in modern MWO. And it sucks.

[Mister Smile]

Customisation has always been part of the BatteTech universe (ever played against a locust with 10 small lasers in tabletop?). It wouldn't be a real Mechwarrior without a Mechlab.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Mister Smile, on 16 July 2024 - 12:25 PM, said:

Customisation has always been part of the BatteTech universe (ever played against a locust with 10 small lasers in tabletop?).

I actually haven't played against that in TT, custom variants have traditionally been limited if allowed at all when I've played (granted I've never played campaigns).

Assuming that one has played a certain way in a game seems pretty short-sighted, especially a TT that has a variety of ways to play (alpha strike, megamek, actual TT, RPG, campaigns, etc, etc) and especially one where balance is all over the place even with BV.

This kind of goes hand in hand of the question of "what is the hook of Mechwarrior to you" in how varied the answers you'll get to that.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 16 July 2024 - 01:37 PM.

[Dryderian]

That is the power creep. I'd also like it a lot if this would stay to be a strategical team shooter with roles more than a tactical fps for every weight class.That ship has sailed I guess.

Edited by Dryderian, 18 July 2024 - 02:51 PM.

[Kynesis]

Tarl Cabot, on 14 June 2024 - 04:36 PM, said:

When Alphas were max out at 35-40dmg or 60dmg ? GR and 2ERPPC. jumping Highlanders and Atlas pilots crying while walking through opened country, saying it is not fair cause they are not able to get close without taking lots of damage. And before they introduced Ghost Heat, thus 4-6PPC Stalkers firing away Long before quirks such as Structural/Armor, the skill tree was universal. The only difference for players are the actual modules (quirks) that could be added. iirc, that did not include any type of structural or armor modules.

See kids, this is how the pro's railroad an important topic away and really open it up for strawman and similarly disingenuous methods.

[Tarl Cabot]

Kynesis, on 18 July 2024 - 03:43 PM, said:

Tarl Cabot, on 14 June 2024 - 04:36 PM, said:

RockmachinE, on 14 June 2024 - 12:03 PM, said:

I agree. TTK is too short. Its too easy to cripple a mech. MWO was more fun when combat lasted longer.

When Alphas were max out at 35-40dmg or 60dmg ? GR and 2ERPPC. jumping Highlanders and Atlas pilots crying while walking through opened country, saying it is not fair cause they are not able to get close without taking lots of damage. And before they introduced Ghost Heat, thus 4-6PPC Stalkers firing away Long before quirks such as Structural/Armor, the skill tree was universal. The only difference for players are the actual modules (quirks) that could be added. iirc, that did not include any type of structural or armor modules.

See kids, this is how the pro's railroad an important topic away and really open it up for strawman and similarly disingenuous methods.

Dang the kettle trying to call the pot out? PGI gave MWO Ghost Heat, Jump Jet Shakes, GR charge up, Velocity changes in GR/PPCs, most Ballistics had their 3x ranges removed. Then even before that, doubling the Structural HP which inadvertently doubled the Armor HP and that lead to cooldowns being decreased. Cooldowns were closer to the Solaris TT Weapon Delays.

Defensively, PGI could change Structural HP to match Armor HP without quirks. The Formulary would need to be changed to not double the Armor HP though. Why Structural HP instead of Armor HP? Once the armor has been destroyed than critical hits and damage to remove components/weapons. Or keep the same formulary and increase Structural HP from 2x TT amount to 2.5.

Another or additional option but not nearly doable would have been to resize the mechs again but across the board instead of primarily within each weight class. 100-ton assaults should be smaller while those little pests Flea Locust, Spider, Mist Lynx, etc should not be shrunk any further while the 35-tons.

Or work with what MWO is the ghost heat, such as increase the time delay before firing that next weapon group to bypass GH.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 19 July 2024 - 04:14 AM.

[Lincoln Cross]

1453 R, on 15 July 2024 - 04:20 PM, said:

Customization is the biggest draw of MechWarrior?

Not hardly.

I'm a dedicated Armored Core player as well as a longtime MechWarrior player. Customization is a core draw in Armored Core, yes. In MechWarrior? Nah. The draw has always been the unique way BattleMech combat works, and the wildly varied and cool designs you get to pilot. As Quicksilver said, MechWarrior had a lot of the trappings of the Hero Shooter before that genre existed. it's why purists are so kvetchy about the Stock Builds - those stock builds are the game's Heroes to those folks, and mucking with them just feels wrong. Everybody has their favorites, 'Mechs they'd buy and play even if those 'Mechs were bloody terrible (guilty: Penetrator plz).

Nah. Frankly, a MechWarrior game with no 'MechLab whatsoever, which also took the tabletop system/designs as inspiration to create a suite of competitively balanced machines without going full CoD-Kiddie Twisted Metal EDGEPUNK lollerskates a'la MechAssault would be a perfectly serviceable MechWarrior game. There's no need for a MechLab at all if the designs are actually balanced properly in the first place. If that means certain designs are altered, or even swapped out for "In Name Only" rebuilds? Then as long as we have all those other good-**** things that make piloting a BattleMech feel like piloting a BattleMech, people will get over not having the ability to tune their build.

Frankly, if no MechLab means I could pilot a Nova Prime that isn't a self-defeating deathtrap, or a skirmisher Shadow Cat that isn't a meme, because individual 'Mechs can be balanced around their specific unique loadouts rather than having to be empty skeletons you can do whatever with? Sign me the hecc up. I adore the Shadow Cat Prime, a single hard-hitting gauss rifle with knife-fighting backups on a nimble, agile high-speed* chassis is pretty close to my dream ride. But man - there is no world in which the SHC-Prime is not a laughingstock in modern MWO. And it sucks.

You may feel that an MWO without a mechlab would be cool, I for one don't. Being able to customize your mech to suit your playstyle and aesthetic for how the mech works, is a huge boon to me. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I've been playing Battletech and Mechwarrior since the Crescent Hawks Inception and in all these years, for me, mech customization has been the core of Battletech and Mechwarrior.

[East Indy]

1453 R, on 15 July 2024 - 04:20 PM, said:

I adore the Shadow Cat Prime, a single hard-hitting gauss rifle with knife-fighting backups on a nimble, agile high-speed* chassis is pretty close to my dream ride. But man - there is no world in which the SHC-Prime is not a laughingstock in modern MWO. And it sucks.

It does. I'd say the problem isn't customization, since even stock mode highlights MWO's flaws. The problem is no depth at its core. MWO is easily solvable: two guns are always two times better than one. A good developer will know what that means for each weapon category and a grid-based damage system, and introduce constraints that support variety of build and play. (Credit for disparate geometry finally dawning on them, resulting in defensive quirks.) But as far as the SHC-Prime, if there's a game in which everything a player tries to cleverly swap out the Gauss for has its own diminishing returns (and that the game isn't so alpha-centric there's a place for support weapons), build selection returns to a matter of preference and playstyle.

[1453 R]

East Indy, on 20 July 2024 - 08:11 AM, said:

It does. I'd say the problem isn't customization, since even stock mode highlights MWO's flaws. The problem is no depth at its core. MWO is easily solvable: two guns are always two times better than one. A good developer will know what that means for each weapon category and a grid-based damage system, and introduce constraints that support variety of build and play. (Credit for disparate geometry finally dawning on them, resulting in defensive quirks.) But as far as the SHC-Prime, if there's a game in which everything a player tries to cleverly swap out the Gauss for has its own diminishing returns (and that the game isn't so alpha-centric there's a place for support weapons), build selection returns to a matter of preference and playstyle.

That underlined bit really is the issue, and it's an issue that cropped up in the new Armored Core, too. If One is good, Two is better, and Four is best. 'Mechs in tabletop are (theoretically) designed for multirole use and adapting to differing mission environs the way modern armored weapons are, but the realities of single-match arena play means overcommitting to a single specific narrow niche is always going to outperform a generalist.

And the whole pinpoint issue has never been solved by a single real-time MechWarrior game. The underlying BattleTech skeleton cannot tolerate every single weapon on a 'Mech striking the same component all the time, every time, and yet your guns not firing where the crosshair says they're gonna fire is the most cardinal sin of any FPS game. In the tabletop ruleset every MechWarrior game is built on the bones of, single large weapons have the advantage of putting more damage into a single component as compared to banks of smaller weapons - the HBK-4P deals half again the damage of the HBK-4G, but the 4G puts all twenty of its damage in one spot every time it hits while the 4P sprays damage all over the target.

The Shadow Cat is a nasty skirmisher in tabletop because a 'Mech that moves the way the Shadow Cat moves while carrying a big honkoff hole-punching Gauss Rifle is not cool for opponents without good screening elements to deal with, but in MWO there is absolutely nothing a gauss rifle can do that three medium lasers can't outside of shoot from further away, and the medium lasers are so vastly much more efficient that the gauss is rarely worth it unless it's accompanied by umpteen hundred lasers. It is amusing that the minimum functional tonnage for an IS Gauss is sixteen tons (discounting half-ton ammo). You load sixteen tons and what do you get? An oversized gun that don't pay the rent.

Until you solve convergence, multiple guns will always act like a single copy of that gun with double the stats. And it's extremely difficult for one gun to compare to two guns. Or four. Or sixteen. Either convergence needs fixing or locational damage does - you can't have BattleTech's classic locational damage system while maintaining the perfect flawless pinpoint convergence everyone expects from shooters. Ya just can't.

[Drenzul]

A easy solution would simply be to stop all convergence from torso weapons.

Arm weapons you've got slots literally dedicated to this. Means a reason to arm mount weapons over everything you can torso mounted and arms just shields if possible.

[1453 R]

Friend, people have been proposing 'easy solutions" for convergence for the literal entire existence of MWO. I'm not sure you realize how unspeakable a Cardinal Sin it is for an FPS game to not align shots to the crosshair. it is one of those things old game devs teach new game devs; "if you do this your game will fail."

World of Tanks managed with a complicated system of reticle bloom and many folks have suggested that, but WoT also only ever has to deal with one gun per entity. MWO allows you to have up to sixteen guns, all with wildly different firing profiles. They could either say "here's your Arms blooming crosshair and here's your Torso blooming crosshair" and confuse people with two different floaty circles of varying dimensions that have little to no relation to the weapons being fired (reminder: people already find MWO's reticle, with its floating disjointed arm aimpoint, deeply confusing and often unfun. Armlock exists for a reason, even if you're almost always better off learning how to fight without relying on it)...or you could have a different blooming reticle for every single weapon on the 'Mech and descend into absolute maddened chaos on the screen.

If there was an "easy" solution to convergence, Piranha would have implemented it while they still had engineers who could do stuff with CryEngine.

Edited by 1453 R, 22 July 2024 - 04:23 PM.

[Drenzul]

WoT is hardly the only game that has done this. Also calling WoT's system complex is
well.... its not lol.

If any game devs are teaching that as a hard rule, they are to put it politely, morons
If anything that rule applies to games like CoD, not games like MW which aren't exactly
a standard FPS. If people wanted to play a pure twitch/reflex based game like CoD.... they
would be playing CoD not MW.

If people are playing mech warrior, they are looking for a mech like experience. It doesn't
matter what game mechanic you add, some people will moan about it. No mech warrior
game is exactly friendly casual or the mech-lab wouldn't exist.

Crosshair bloom makes no sense unless the guns are not stabilised, so not really applicable
to mech warrior however.

Also the guns would still go where the cross-hairs are, they just wouldn't be converging
based on range. You'd still likely be hitting the target, just the damage would likely be
spread a bit more due to not all converging. Could even make it so you specify the convergence
range while building the mech (optimal range as default)

Also none of these changes actually require a dedicated cry-engine engineer. Its actually a relatively
simple change developer-wise. Even a new dev going in blind could probably implement it
in 1-2 months tops (I'm a software dev so not entirely talking about my arse here) and would actually
have some other good effects like making more mechs viable, particularly those with more arm
weapons which tend to somewhat shunned over torso weapons currently.

[1453 R]

Drenzul, on 23 July 2024 - 12:51 AM, said:

WoT is hardly the only game that has done this. Also calling WoT's system complex is
well.... its not lol.

I won't speak to the technical complexity of it, but the point remains that a single blooming crosshair is straightforward to implement when the user only has one weapon. There's a reason shooter games very rarely allow the use of multiple weapons simultaneously - especially when the discharge comes from the weapons mounting point and not the camera.

Drenzul, on 23 July 2024 - 12:51 AM, said:

If any game devs are teaching that as a hard rule, they are to put it politely, morons
If anything that rule applies to games like CoD, not games like MW which aren't exactly
a standard FPS. If people wanted to play a pure twitch/reflex based game like CoD.... they
would be playing CoD not MW.

You may be a software developer, but you're clearly not a game developer, heh. In a shooter game like MechWarrior, the act of aiming and shooting at a target is the core thing players are doing. It is the central mechanic of the entire experience, and it HAS to work very well or the game doesn't feel good to play and fails. One of the best ways to make your shooter game feel bad to play is by allowing guns to disobey the crosshair. The entire interface of a shooter game, the whole entire identity of the genre at its core, is "put the Bullets-Here pointer on the Bad Thing and click until morale improves." If the bullets do not go where the Bullets-Here pointer says they'll go? Your game fundamentally does not work.

Bloom is fine. Bloom is still accurately telling the player what will happen - when you pull the trigger, your shot will go somewhere within the circle. Hundred percent guarantee. The system many, many, many people have suggested, wherein the torso-mounted weapons of a 'Mech simply point wherever they point and do not correct to the crosshair at all? At that poinmt the crosshair is lying to you. The Bullets-Here pointer is not, in fact, pointing to where the bullets will go. And when the core central mechanic of your shooter game consistently lies to the players?

Your game will fail.

Drenzul, on 23 July 2024 - 12:51 AM, said:

Crosshair bloom makes no sense unless the guns are not stabilised, so not really applicable
to mech warrior however.

Irrelevant. Realism takes a backseat to the player experience in every genre except hardcore simulation - and no, MechWarrior is not a simulation game. Reticle bloom may not 'make sense', but players understand it. They know what it means, without having to be instructed. It makes intuitive sense once they know how the basic genre functions.

No amount of instruction will make "your guns always shoot somewhere other than where the crosshair points" okay.

Drenzul, on 23 July 2024 - 12:51 AM, said:

Also the guns would still go where the cross-hairs are, they just wouldn't be converging
based on range. You'd still likely be hitting the target, just the damage would likely be
spread a bit more due to not all converging. Could even make it so you specify the convergence
range while building the mech (optimal range as default)

Not saying anything that hasn't been suggested a thousand times before. The problems remain - you're still breaking the Cardinal Rule of FPS, and in this case the Meta problem simply shifts to 'Mechs with scads of arm-mounted weapons. In your proposed system the Nova Prime and its twelve arm-mounted lasers is the new king of the meta. The system you propose also throws way more emphasis on lock-on missiles, being that they're now the only torso-mounted weapons which obey the crosshair. Nobody* wants more lock-on missiles, if the forum userbase's absolutely frothing-mouthed rejection of any sort of homing-weapon mechanic is anything to go by.

Drenzul, on 23 July 2024 - 12:51 AM, said:

Also none of these changes actually require a dedicated cry-engine engineer. Its actually a relatively
simple change developer-wise. Even a new dev going in blind could probably implement it
in 1-2 months tops (I'm a software dev so not entirely talking about my arse here) and would actually
have some other good effects like making more mechs viable, particularly those with more arm
weapons which tend to somewhat shunned over torso weapons currently.

If a brand new blind dev could make meaningful engine updates in one to two months tops, don't you think Piranha would've done it by now? When MWO started experiencing its resurgence during the pandemic and Piranha realized there was more money to be beaten out of this game's corpse, don't you think they would've done some of these things then? Why would they lie about not being able to make major adjustments to MWO, when making that admission cost them a ton of standing with the community and a lot of attendant dollars?

I never understand people who assume Piranha could totally make sweeping adjustments to MWO and are just lying about it. Bleh.

[VeeOt Dragon]

honestly at this point there is no real fixing the alpha strike bloat at this point.

now it has likely already been proposed here but i think that something like the crosshair bloom would work but link it to target lock. what you have the game do is have a relatively wide random target area (or just fire roughly straight out towards the where the crosshair is at.) but it then shrinks way down if you have that target box on the target. keep it not quite pinpoint at first (something like if you had it on the dead center of a mech all shots would hit the mech at a reasonable range (say 600m depending on the size of th targeted mech)) but then after you have your crosshair on the locked target for about a second everything will be as it normally is now. this would also keep things relatively simple compared to having torso and arms treated differently (though you will still have the arms be able to shift more than the torso weapons like it normally does). this would also open room for quirks or skills that speed up that time to pinpoint target time. (well that you can tie it into lock time for all weapons so you can improve how fast even locking weapons get their lock. of course the folks that like to stand back at 1200+m will have more trouble hitting the target let alone striking a specific spot with reliability (that is unless they have a teammate who is close enough to get targeting info for them.)) you could also work in TAG to give instant convergence on the target painted with it weather or not you have a lock on that mech (essentially the TAG operates as a laser rangefinder). keep in mind that any extra equipment a mech has to carry to get as pinpoint as possible as quickly as possible is tonnage and slots they can't use for weapons. the same goes for skill nodes, if you want those pinpoint skill nodes you have to sacrifice nodes from other things.

honestly something like this would make sense within Lore as the computer needs a second or two to get all the weapons lined up on target (its not the processing speed but rather the time it takes to move the limbs or shift actuators in the torso weapons). without targeting data the computer has nothing to work with. if nothing else its getting the right range for the convergence. though it wont help with the Alpha strike bloat it would likely help with the TTK since unless you are someone who religiously presses the R key you are going to have trouble hitting with any real precision. (this is mitigated somewhat the closer you are to the target of course so brawl monsters will still be scary but they have the disadvantage they always have in having to get in close before they can do real work.)

[BUD LIGHT]

VeeOt Dragon, on 24 July 2024 - 11:56 AM, said:

honestly at this point there is no real fixing the alpha strike bloat at this point.

now it has likely already been proposed here but i think that something like the crosshair bloom would work but link it to target lock. what you have the game do is have a relatively wide random target area (or just fire roughly straight out towards the where the crosshair is at.) but it then shrinks way down if you have that target box on the target. keep it not quite pinpoint at first (something like if you had it on the dead center of a mech all shots would hit the mech at a reasonable range (say 600m depending on the size of th targeted mech)) but then after you have your crosshair on the locked target for about a second everything will be as it normally is now. this would also keep things relatively simple compared to having torso and arms treated differently (though you will still have the arms be able to shift more than the torso weapons like it normally does). this would also open room for quirks or skills that speed up that time to pinpoint target time. (well that you can tie it into lock time for all weapons so you can improve how fast even locking weapons get their lock. of course the folks that like to stand back at 1200+m will have more trouble hitting the target let alone striking a specific spot with reliability (that is unless they have a teammate who is close enough to get targeting info for them.)) you could also work in TAG to give instant convergence on the target painted with it weather or not you have a lock on that mech (essentially the TAG operates as a laser rangefinder). keep in mind that any extra equipment a mech has to carry to get as pinpoint as possible as quickly as possible is tonnage and slots they can't use for weapons. the same goes for skill nodes, if you want those pinpoint skill nodes you have to sacrifice nodes from other things.

honestly something like this would make sense within Lore as the computer needs a second or two to get all the weapons lined up on target (its not the processing speed but rather the time it takes to move the limbs or shift actuators in the torso weapons). without targeting data the computer has nothing to work with. if nothing else its getting the right range for the convergence. though it wont help with the Alpha strike bloat it would likely help with the TTK since unless you are someone who religiously presses the R key you are going to have trouble hitting with any real precision. (this is mitigated somewhat the closer you are to the target of course so brawl monsters will still be scary but they have the disadvantage they always have in having to get in close before they can do real work.)

[Drenzul]

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

I won't speak to the technical complexity of it, but the point remains that a single blooming crosshair is straightforward to implement when the user only has one weapon. There's a reason shooter games very rarely allow the use of multiple weapons simultaneously - especially when the discharge comes from the weapons mounting point and not the camera.

Yeah but I never suggested any form of blooming system so kinda irrelevant.

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

You may be a software developer, but you're clearly not a game developer, heh.

Irrelevant for the purposes of how long it would take to implement this change. That's
pure software dev. That's the same for games or any other piece of software.

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

In a shooter game like MechWarrior, the act of aiming and shooting at a target is the core thing players are doing. It is the central mechanic of the entire experience, and it HAS to work very well or the game doesn't feel good to play and fails. One of the best ways to make your shooter game feel bad to play is by allowing guns to disobey the crosshair. The entire interface of a shooter game, the whole entire identity of the genre at its core, is "put the Bullets-Here pointer on the Bad Thing and click until morale improves." If the bullets do not go where the Bullets-Here pointer says they'll go? Your game fundamentally does not work.

Bloom is fine. Bloom is still accurately telling the player what will happen - when you pull the trigger, your shot will go somewhere within the circle. Hundred percent guarantee. The system many, many, many people have suggested, wherein the torso-mounted weapons of a 'Mech simply point wherever they point and do not correct to the crosshair at all? At that poinmt the crosshair is lying to you. The Bullets-Here pointer is not, in fact, pointing to where the bullets will go. And when the core central mechanic of your shooter game consistently lies to the players?

Your game will fail.

Not sure if you read my post... or if you don't understand what convergence is.
All weapons would still obey the cross-hairs. They just won't auto-converge based on
automatically calculating the range to the target.
Your argument seems to be bloom, which literally makes the gun disobey the x-hair is
fine... but not having convergence, which is far easier and more predicable isn't? Makes
more sense to have convergence.

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

Irrelevant. Realism takes a backseat to the player experience in every genre except hardcore simulation - and no, MechWarrior is not a simulation game. Reticle bloom may not 'make sense', but players understand it. They know what it means, without having to be instructed. It makes intuitive sense once they know how the basic genre functions.

No amount of instruction will make "your guns always shoot somewhere other than where the crosshair points" okay.

No-one claimed it was a sim. I said people want the experience of piloting a big stompy mech. Otherwise they would be playing a more modern FPS instead of this.

Your arguments are only applicable to very casual friendly games. MW games have never been particularly casual friendly. So sure, your arguments might have some merit if they were talking about CoD or similar. They have no relevance to a mech warrior game.

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

Not saying anything that hasn't been suggested a thousand times before. The problems remain - you're still breaking the Cardinal Rule of FPS, and in this case the Meta problem simply shifts to 'Mechs with scads of arm-mounted weapons. In your proposed system the Nova Prime and its twelve arm-mounted lasers is the new king of the meta. The system you propose also throws way more emphasis on lock-on missiles, being that they're now the only torso-mounted weapons which obey the crosshair. Nobody* wants more lock-on missiles, if the forum userbase's absolutely frothing-mouthed rejection of any sort of homing-weapon mechanic is anything to go by.

Wow, circular logic much? No point fixing any issues because something else would be an issue still is a terrible argument.
Got cancer? No point going for treatment cos you might have another illness as well!

How about the fact that EVEN in the worse case, you can never fit as much firepower in just the arms of one mech as you can currently in the arms and side torsos combined..... so even if not perfect has seriously reduced the issue. Not to mention the other benefits of making a lot more different builds more viable.

1453 R, on 24 July 2024 - 09:17 AM, said:

If a brand new blind dev could make meaningful engine updates in one to two months tops, don't you think Piranha would've done it by now? When MWO started experiencing its resurgence during the pandemic and Piranha realized there was more money to be beaten out of this game's corpse, don't you think they would've done some of these things then? Why would they lie about not being able to make major adjustments to MWO, when making that admission cost them a ton of standing with the community and a lot of attendant dollars?

I never understand people who assume Piranha could totally make sweeping adjustments to MWO and are just lying about it. Bleh.

I don't understand how people who know nothing about software engineering or development in general think they do and think they know more than an actual software engineer.
Piranha haven't claimed they couldn't make small changes like this.
This is a really simple change, because its so simple, actually code change should be like 20 lines. Majority of the time would be taken finding the right code to change and testing it.

Let me educate you, since you seem to need it.

Currently there will be a function that calculates the convergence of the guns.
So it will be passed, the gun's offset from centre point, that will then calculate
the number of degrees it needs to modify the aim away from the cursor direction
to converge on the target.

So at the top of the function all you need to do is add:
if (weapon.location !== 'arm') {
return CONST::Default_Conversion;
}

Worst comes to worst, it may be also passing the weapon location into the function if they don't already pass the entire weapon as an object. Either way its a very very minor change that doesn't involve digging into the guts of cry-engine.

Big difference from that and the major changes that Piranha have said they can't do.
Only reason Piranha can't do something like that is because they don't want to.

Most likely reason for that is they either don't think its a good idea (I disagree but fair enough) or because they don't want to risk making a large gameplay change that might cause a lot of players to stop playing.... change is scary, particularly since this could make a lot of mech builds obsolete. Making a change like that is often a make/break moment in a game and given the age of this game, the chances of the actually getting a lot more players to join given all the other issues are minimal.

But hey, you continue to think you understand software engineering and ignore any other possibilities if it suits you. No skin off my nose.

[VeeOt Dragon]

yeah as far as anything that would require any amount of programing time its not going to happen with MWO. also keep in mind that its running on an old version of Cry Engine. not only is it an old version but its been patch and jurry rigged so many times and by so many different people that it is my guess that the code is a real mess at this stage, spaghetti code only begins to cover it. mind you i am by no stretch of the imagination a programmer. though i did have quite the skill set and training in the hardware end of things though that is WAY out of date (we are talking around 3 decades) at this point.