265 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 22 July 2024 - 02:43 PM, said:

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.

Convergence isn't really the issue because not all weapons are equal on their own, maybe if all weapons were equivalent tonnage that might be more of a thing but it's not. Honestly the game just needs more diminishing returns built into the mech building. It has diminishing returns in engine upgrades and somewhat with firepower but that can somewhat be circumvented with different weapon types that are just more heat efficient (thus why the whole dynamic of ballistics versus energy is problematic to begin with). Heat sinks, armor, speed, etc. The more you specialize the less benefit you get from it.

That isn't even to encourage generalists either, that helps shrink the gap between assaults and lights.

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.

If you think this game is remotely close to "twitch" based games like CoD (which ironically had a reticle bloom for a long time), then you might need to get your game sense checked. This has and always will be such a lazy comparison.

Drenzul, on 24 July 2024 - 04:52 PM, said:

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.

We had this once, it currently breaks with HSR and it didn't even stop the problem it just exacerbated the issue between those with clustered weapons (like the Gaussapult which was the best mech during that era) and those that don't (anything with spread and awful hardpoints). It doesn't fix or address the actual problem because the problem never was convergence.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 26 July 2024 - 09:40 AM.

[Drenzul]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 09:35 AM, said:

Convergence isn't really the issue because not all weapons are equal on their own, maybe if all weapons were equivalent tonnage that might be more of a thing but it's not. Honestly the game just needs more diminishing returns built into the mech building.

No, it was a way to make alpha strikes less deadly, kinda the point. Doesn't matter that much if you are hit by 4 UACs5 or 2x Gauss or 1x Heavy Gauss, its still the same damage. In many ways its helps equalise the difference between the heavier and lighter weapons since you can only fit so many weapons in the arms.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 09:35 AM, said:

If you think this game is remotely close to "twitch" based games like CoD (which ironically had a reticle bloom for a long time), then you might need to get your game sense checked. This has and always will be such a lazy comparison.

You might want to re-read what I said. You just agreed with me. Rules for twitch based FPS aren't applicable to MW was exactly my point.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 09:35 AM, said:

We had this once, it currently breaks with HSR and it didn't even stop the problem it just exacerbated the issue between those with clustered weapons (like the Gaussapult which was the best mech during that era) and those that don't (anything with spread and awful hardpoints). It doesn't fix or address the actual problem because the problem never was convergence.

Completely agree that some mechs would need changing to keep up. I seem to remember that was all weapons that didn't converge then however not just body weapons? And wasn't that a bug rather than something they actually tried? I know they made a few changes around convergence in beta.

Its all pretty much pointless to discuss since its not going to change anyway

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 10:55 AM, said:

No, it was a way to make alpha strikes less deadly, kinda the point. Doesn't matter that much if you are hit by 4 UACs5 or 2x Gauss or 1x Heavy Gauss, its still the same damage. In many ways its helps equalise the difference between the heavier and lighter weapons since you can only fit so many weapons in the arms.

Except it does matter because all weapons have drastically different cooldowns. That upfront damage comes at a cost, and its DPS whether it be through hard caps (cooldowns) or soft caps (heat).

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 10:55 AM, said:

You might want to re-read what I said. You just agreed with me. Rules for twitch based FPS aren't applicable to MW was exactly my point.

This is a generalization that's not really relevant. I see a lot of commonalities between tactics of say Counterstrike and Mechwarrior despite one being considered more twitchy. There's still things you can learn from other games in FPS even if they are faster paced (like utility usage with grenades in CS for example, of which mechwarrior doesn't really have a comparable feature) because they typically are governed by similar rules even if mechanics aren't necessarily the same.

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 10:55 AM, said:

Completely agree that some mechs would need changing to keep up. I seem to remember that was all weapons that didn't converge then however not just body weapons?

Convergence was delayed for all weapons, regardless, you're trying to fix a problem with an solution that indirectly impacts alpha strikes and has a lot of other consequences rather than trying to address the actual problem. There is no golden panacea and it requires multiple tools to address the perception issue but also figuring out what exactly the goal of the change is in the first place.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 26 July 2024 - 11:57 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

BLXKNTRR, on 26 July 2024 - 02:46 PM, said:

same apologists for mwo devs here again.

Wat, can safely say this is the first time I've been considered a "PGI" apologist, but I can definitely say your wrong. I blame Paul for a lot of the early design decision that unfortunately stuck with this game throughout it's lifetime. However I'm realistic that nothing big is going to change at this point, hell I'm honestly surprised they redid LRMs a few years ago (even though it fixed none of the issues) and a lot of people's "silver bullet" solutions to all the game's ails are based in dream land and are typically ignorant of the consequences of them, energy draw, anything convergence related, AI combatants, "objective oriented" game modes, etc, etc they've been literally dreams people have had since even before MWO existed and all of them are short-sighted.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 26 July 2024 - 03:43 PM.

[BLXKNTRR]

we need a hitbox and gameplay reinterpretation of mwo. When a mech is destroyed, it shouldnt be...- at first. There needs to be a badly damaged effect that leaves the mech operable, and somewhat dangerous, I suggest, 3 categories. 1 for core, 1 for the mechs physical condition, and one for the targeting. If the core is destroyed the pilot has 5 seconds to do something before exploding. This could be optional for assaults and 70-75 ton heavies or by quirk. The physical condition of the mech should have a badly damaged level of hp, varying across tonnage. perhaps not available for most lights. This should slow the mech similar to being legged, but also reduce torso turn rate, free aim. And for the targeting system, which could hit like a headshot although it would more interesting if the systems were located in different placed on different mechs, aiming could become very difficult. lrms would need to be dumb fired. Lasers would fire in a spread pattern, ballistics could swing wide. But these patterns would be somewhat learnable and could be overcome using the right amount of skill and luck and teamplay

This sort of system, paired with new hitboxes and gameplay mechanics around movement, specifically torso turn being made more viable through effects that lend to a more visceral experience, one with more informative queues such as different sounds for arm or torso or ct hits, or leg hits, etc.

Id like to see lights and mediums with more detail and nuance put into their respective characteristic movement options

Along all this, it would be an opportunity not to reduce weapon damage but increase it. Individually. or in pairs. or for some weapons, in 3's. Have mechs stand and fight. Heat should be a very critical element of the game play. Huge alphas were fun for a while, but , creating an experience where each individual weapon system feels like its effective alone, that is where the game will see growth. The pilot with the most skill, and better designed loadout will have more to add to each game, the skill reward ratio will be fun.

The weapon effects also need to be redone so they are crisp, enjoyable, and rewarding. Different strikes need corresponding sound queues. so on and so forth.

but noone cares about these excellent ideas because excuses.

Mwo 2 will happen in the next 5 years probably. And the devs needs to get past the f2p garbage format and do what they need to do to create the right mwo 2. not mwo .85 which all my money is on that happening

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Like I said, dreams that have no idea what they want to accomplish and somehow it all works "magically" and gives you the best experience.

[Drenzul]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 11:46 AM, said:

Except it does matter because all weapons have drastically different cooldowns. That upfront damage comes at a cost, and its DPS whether it be through hard caps (cooldowns) or soft caps (heat).

Completely irrelevant to the point at hand, which that it would reduce the pin-point alpha damage. I never said some other rebalancing might not be required around it.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 11:46 AM, said:

This is a generalization that's not really relevant. I see a lot of commonalities between tactics of say Counterstrike and Mechwarrior despite one being considered more twitchy. There's still things you can learn from other games in FPS even if they are faster paced (like utility usage with grenades in CS for example, of which mechwarrior doesn't really have a comparable feature) because they typically are governed by similar rules even if mechanics aren't necessarily the same.

Amazing how you can flip 180' after someone pointed out you just agreed with them lol.
You are sounding really trollish now.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 11:46 AM, said:

Convergence was delayed for all weapons, regardless, you're trying to fix a problem with an solution that indirectly impacts alpha strikes and has a lot of other consequences rather than trying to address the actual problem. There is no golden panacea and it requires multiple tools to address the perception issue but also figuring out what exactly the goal of the change is in the first place.

Except no-one was talking about removing ALL convergence, just that for torso weapons.... even then it
could be set to a fixed distance instead of infinity. Just it wouldn't auto-converge on your target range.

Everyone knows what the goal is, stopping the insta-splat that happens far too easily, particularly in mids.
Yeah we could just do a flat % armour increase, but that would be very limited in effectiveness.

Completely agree it has other consequences, just they are generally positive!

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 09:58 PM, said:

Except no-one was talking about removing ALL convergence, just that for torso weapons.... even then it could be set to a fixed distance instead of infinity. Just it wouldn't auto-converge on your target range.

Again, changing convergence for arm/torso whatever is a poor solution because all it does is exacerbate the importance of mounts and their locations. Mechs that have wide hardpoint spread just become worse because now their convergence is torched. This has been debated in several other threads and it's still a terrible idea because of that. The only thing the game needs convergence-wise is the ability to enable target-lock based convergence and/or manual range setting of convergence to help minimize the detriment of mechs with poor convergence due to awful mounts.

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 09:58 PM, said:

Completely irrelevant to the point at hand, which that it would reduce the pin-point alpha damage. I never said some other rebalancing might not be required around it.

It isn't irrelevant if that's the trade-off those weapons make meaning it's not just a rebalance that you are talking about, it's a full redesign. May sound like semantics but the point is the effort involved becomes more.

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 09:58 PM, said:

Amazing how you can flip 180' after someone pointed out you just agreed with them lol.
You are sounding really trollish now.

It's almost like you making sweeping generalizations are bad.....I never agreed with you, Mechwarrior can learn from other FPS because there are common patterns with how they are played (trading, positioning, etc) and how they are paced (weapon ranges, damage potential, movement mechanics, map design, etc).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 26 July 2024 - 10:27 PM.

[Drenzul]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 10:24 PM, said:

Again, changing convergence for arm/torso whatever is a poor solution because all it does is exacerbate the importance of mounts and their locations. Mechs that have wide hardpoint spread just become worse because now their convergence is torched. This has been debated in several other threads and it's still a terrible idea because of that. The only thing the game needs convergence-wise is the ability to enable target-lock based convergence and/or manual range setting of convergence to help minimize the detriment of mechs with poor convergence due to awful mounts.

Like they aren't already? This would simply place more value on arm mounts which are currently underused as they always die when the torso does and can be blown off separately.

And because they would have convergence at default range or a fixed range, or maybe just they converge slower, mount position would be less of an issue.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 10:24 PM, said:

It isn't irrelevant if that's the trade-off those weapons make meaning it's not just a rebalance that you are talking about, it's a full redesign. May sound like semantics but the point is the effort involved becomes more.

So your argument is never change anything because it could have knock on effects.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 26 July 2024 - 10:24 PM, said:

It's almost like you making sweeping generalizations are bad.....I never agreed with you, Mechwarrior can learn from other FPS because there are common patterns with how they are played (trading, positioning, etc) and how they are paced (weapon ranges, damage potential, movement mechanics, map design, etc).

Which was almost exactly the point I made in the post you replied to......

You keep trying to disagree with me, however since you clearly either didn't read the post or completely misunderstood it, you are failing. Clearly you are just looking to disagree with whatever anyone posts cos you've now tried to argue both sides of the same argument.

You realise trolls aren't meant to come out from under their bridges right?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 11:35 PM, said:

Like they aren't already? This would simply place more value on arm mounts which are currently underused as they always die when the torso does and can be blown off separately.

Or we could make it like MW4 where arms simply weren't blown off on side torso destruction and you've accomplished the same thing without making certain mechs feel awful.

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 11:35 PM, said:

So your argument is never change anything because it could have knock on effects.

Drenzul, on 26 July 2024 - 11:35 PM, 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.

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.

My argument is despite your pretending that this is a simple easy change, this is not because it has a more sweeping consequence. Now maybe you meant just the change itself and not the impact of it but point is, this ain't happening in MWO, just being realistic. If we are playing the hypothetical game where we are talking about a future PvP Mechwarrior, then there are other ways to tackle this without exacerbating an existing issue (despite what you pretend about mech viability).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 27 July 2024 - 08:53 AM.

[Drenzul]

Yep, I was literally talking about the dev time to make the change. I thought that was pretty
clear......

There would be design time as well ofc, but they clearly still have the ability to change mechs
since otherwise they couldn't realise new ones either.

Also I don't think that as many changes would be needed as you seem to think. This is far far far
less drastic than in beta where all convergence was disabled, like 1/10th of the effect of that, if that.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Drenzul, on 27 July 2024 - 09:20 AM, said:

Also I don't think that as many changes would be needed as you seem to think. This is far far far
less drastic than in beta where all convergence was disabled, like 1/10th of the effect of that, if that.

Convergence wasn't disabled in beta as far as I remember, it was just delayed (I think it was roughly 0.25-0.5s) and was removed for the addition of HSR because the systems didn't play nice and it really didn't impact the pinpoint meta at the time given it was the Gaussapult and then the Boomapult after we got DHS.

[Drenzul]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 27 July 2024 - 12:03 PM, said:

Convergence wasn't disabled in beta as far as I remember, it was just delayed (I think it was roughly 0.25-0.5s) and was removed for the addition of HSR because the systems didn't play nice and it really didn't impact the pinpoint meta at the time given it was the Gaussapult and then the Boomapult after we got DHS.

By HSR do you mean BSR (ballistic state rewind) or something else? Not heard it called HSR if so.

There was a period very early beta convergence didn't work, I thought that was what you were referring to. Or at least didn't work on all mechs/hardpoints. May of even been alpha, too long ago to remember.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Drenzul, on 27 July 2024 - 01:43 PM, said:

By HSR do you mean BSR (ballistic state rewind) or something else? Not heard it called HSR if so.

There was a period very early beta convergence didn't work, I thought that was what you were referring to. Or at least didn't work on all mechs/hardpoints. May of even been alpha, too long ago to remember.

HSR = Host State Rewind, not sure where you got BSR. From what I understand of HSR it is very similar to Valve's subtick. Delayed convergence lasted for all of beta until HSR was introduced as far as I remember and got dropped for HSR.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 27 July 2024 - 02:56 PM.

[Drenzul]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 27 July 2024 - 02:45 PM, said:

HSR = Host State Rewind, not sure where you got BSR. From what I understand of HSR it is very similar to Valve's subtick. Delayed convergence lasted for all of beta until HSR was introduced as far as I remember and got dropped for HSR.

BSR was the initial version since it was only applied to ballistics. Was back in the days when certain lights were basically
untouchable due to netcode crap. Might of been during the founder only really early period. They played around with a few ideas with convergence right at the start.

[Dogstar]

Gasboy, on 13 June 2024 - 12:53 PM, said:

There needs to be a definition of how high is "too high", as well as proof of alphas being too high. And what is expected to make them not too high.

I've always considered more than 30 pts of damage in an alpha to be too high

A solution would be to decrease hsl and link more groups together for hsl - but that wouldn't be fun for a lot of people

[East Indy]

Dogstar, on 01 August 2024 - 06:58 AM, said:

I've always considered more than 30 pts of damage in an alpha to be too high

A solution would be to decrease hsl and link more groups together for hsl - but that wouldn't be fun for a lot of people

Yeah, 20-30 is it. You take highest caliber and pace the game around a 'Mech mounting just one, otherwise players correctly avoid "main weapon" chassis for hardpoint bags, or skip the high-caliber weapons altogether until they can mount 2+. And of course, the key is just spreading downrange damage over a second or two.

The ill-fated Power Draw followed what you describe, but the problem is heat penalties are crude and heavy-handed; unintuitive effects that feel like punishments rather than sensible limitations.

What devs want (for MWO 2, too late for this game) is smoothly but asymptotic diminishing *damage* returns with physics that reflect the weapon: good candidates are sequential recoil for PPFLD, lowered effective damage for hitscan, collision and reload time for missiles. Intuitive, no disconnected punishment, no loopholes to work around, doesn't discourage mixed loadouts, direstars are still bad ideas.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

East Indy, on 01 August 2024 - 03:57 PM, said:

What devs want (for MWO 2, too late for this game) is smoothly but asymptotic diminishing *damage* returns with physics that reflect the weapon: good candidates are sequential recoil for PPFLD, lowered effective damage for hitscan, collision and reload time for missiles. Intuitive, no disconnected punishment, no loopholes to work around, doesn't discourage mixed loadouts, direstars are still bad ideas.

Recoil doesn't really work in this game due to the ability to shoot multiple weapons at once. How does recoil handle then, not to mention recoil is typically more impactful for automatic weapons which have significant more damage potential than semi-automatic.

That said, what you mention about diminishing returns and heat does have a role to play in that, however it alone won't do the job. You'd likely need some other system such as diminishing damage with stacking like weapons, diminishing the tonnage differences between the largest mechs and the smallest mechs, and/or some new more comprehensive design for weapons in the mechlab that impacts how you build a mech.

HSL is full of holes and also unwieldy (microseconds off in timing being the difference between shutting down for 5 million years and being perfectly fine is just a problematic mechanic).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 01 August 2024 - 04:10 PM.

[East Indy]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 01 August 2024 - 04:08 PM, said:

Recoil doesn't really work in this game due to the ability to shoot multiple weapons at once. How does recoil handle then, not to mention recoil is typically more impactful for automatic weapons which have significant more damage potential than semi-automatic.

Proviso that I'm talking about an MWO 2. For this game I think you mix beam HSL more tightly, split a lot of weapons with splash damage, limit indirect missile damage, etc.

Anyway, recoil definitely works for FLD. Weapons fire fractions of a second apart and in between each is recoil proportional to caliber. Fire a group and they spread. Fire one, pinpoint. Chromehounds, a game from almost 20 years ago, did it. Worked perfectly and felt natural.

Quote

That said, what you mention about diminishing returns and heat does have a role to play in that, however it alone won't do the job. You'd likely need some other system such as diminishing damage with stacking like weapons, diminishing the tonnage differences between the largest mechs and the smallest mechs, and/or some new more comprehensive design for weapons in the mechlab that impacts how you build a mech.

What I mentioned diminishes returns for like weapons! And the effect would help greatly with 20 vs. 100 since the 100 couldn't rip half the 20 with one shot. And from there, fewer "only right" builds gives players permission to do more fun stuff.

Quote

HSL is full of holes and also unwieldy (microseconds off in timing being the difference between shutting down for 5 million years and being perfectly fine is just a problematic mechanic).

Agreed there. If it could be worked out you'd want a sliding threshold so if you waited 450 milliseconds you'd only have 10% of the effect, that kind of thing.

Edited by East Indy, 01 August 2024 - 05:27 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

East Indy, on 01 August 2024 - 05:26 PM, said:

Anyway, recoil definitely works for FLD. Weapons fire fractions of a second apart and in between each is recoil proportional to caliber. Fire a group and they spread. Fire one, pinpoint. Chromehounds, a game from almost 20 years ago, did it. Worked perfectly and felt natural.

Looks like it had predictable recoil (I didn't play it, but I remember many from the MW4 days playing it) but the problem is you couldn't stage weapons to give you time to adjust your aim to account for the recoil which is one of the problems. If recoil is implemented such it is effectively no different than cone of fire even if predictable, that's kind of a problem IMO. And if we are just chaining a bunch of the same weapons together, what makes Mechwarrior any different from an FPS where you have one gun that just has different rates of fire?

East Indy, on 01 August 2024 - 05:26 PM, said:

What I mentioned diminishes returns for like weapons! And the effect would help greatly with 20 vs. 100 since the 100 couldn't rip half the 20 with one shot. And from there, fewer "only right" builds gives players permission to do more fun stuff.

There's a difference between the two though and it's an important distinction. With shrinking the tonnage gap, assaults can still specialize. With recoil or anything that isn't actually directly diminishing returns, you typically are forced into damage volume spam pushes where spread matters less or mixed builds which is why any sort of change

I think it's also worth understanding that killing power is important for keeping fangs in ranged plays and the amount of damage is important to that. I think the larger problem is honestly much like with tonnage gap, too much disparity in range is what helps create the frustrating experience of helplessness taking a brawl mech (map design also plays into that, and the bowl-esque maps don't help) which is partially what this is about. Whether that requires multiple weapons or a single weapon IMO is pretty inconsequential, who cares if the effect is the same?

When we talk about 1v1s of similar weight classes, TTK isn't that bad, which leads me to believe the actual issue is just one of extremes where the firepower/armor disparity across the different weight classes is just too high.