265 replies to this topic

[East Indy]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 01 August 2024 - 07:49 PM, said:

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?

The key would be for it not to suck! So, you'd take measures to address all of the play experience challenges.

Isolated from other mechanics, Chromehounds' recoil did what it was supposed to: prevent players from 1) feeling stupid for only mounting x-1 of a weapon type, or 2) distorting gameplay by making x mounted weapons a rigid meta. And that's what you'd want to do here.

Proportional recoil would accommodate builds not deemed excessive in design for the experience. Players would figure out, "Okay, this is too many guns that I should expect to fire with one trigger pull." Spread would be more common with smaller caliber, but much more limiting with large: again, Heavy Gauss is rarely run in singles and the argument here is that the "2 hitting simultaneously is mandatory" mindset isn't great. You'd instead have players perhaps running two but knowing they'd need to work for pinpoint. And then, say, 6 AC/2 wouldn't fly wildly off-course but they wouldn't be a high-ROF AC/12, either.

It wouldn't be inappropriate to have a reticle return to null after a shot, either! That'd greatly increase predictability and increase skill ceiling in a pleasing but controllable way.

Quote

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

Keep in mind, recoil is only for PPFLD. Other weapon systems in this set of assumptions have directly diminished damage. You'd want to avoid excess in terms of build or firing, but would simply be limited rather than punished.

Quote

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?

I actually think the concern about range is much more closely linked to a lack of smooth, early diminishing returns. If you get hit squarely by one long-range weapon as you're crossing the map, yes, it may matter more proportionate to your tonnage. But it's not bad. Yet when it's multiple weapons and high damage...long-range becomes king. Along the same lines, lately I've been running 45/50-ton 'Mechs and the instantaneous close-range stuff from 100-tonners just cuts you down. But if that were more spread over time and space...

Quote

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.

That's an interesting point. I do wonder if it seems that way because a 1v1 runs the game's flaws in slo-mo, though, and build choices that players feel competitive with are still very limited.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

East Indy, on 02 August 2024 - 11:10 AM, said:

Isolated from other mechanics, Chromehounds' recoil did what it was supposed to: prevent players from 1) feeling stupid for only mounting x-1 of a weapon type, or 2) distorting gameplay by making x mounted weapons a rigid meta. And that's what you'd want to do here.

Proportional recoil would accommodate builds not deemed excessive in design for the experience. Players would figure out, "Okay, this is too many guns that I should expect to fire with one trigger pull." Spread would be more common with smaller caliber, but much more limiting with large: again, Heavy Gauss is rarely run in singles and the argument here is that the "2 hitting simultaneously is mandatory" mindset isn't great. You'd instead have players perhaps running two but knowing they'd need to work for pinpoint. And then, say, 6 AC/2 wouldn't fly wildly off-course but they wouldn't be a high-ROF AC/12, either.

It wouldn't be inappropriate to have a reticle return to null after a shot, either! That'd greatly increase predictability and increase skill ceiling in a pleasing but controllable way.

Keep in mind, recoil is only for PPFLD. Other weapon systems in this set of assumptions have directly diminished damage. You'd want to avoid excess in terms of build or firing, but would simply be limited rather than punished.

This seems rather silly, like a combination of HSL and energy draw which only pushed larger mechs to be DPS boats. Why run big guns where you can't really concentrate fire anyway when you could just run guns that can overwhelm with sheer volume of fire anyway. And at that point what are you trying to balance? Is it really just PPFLD? Or is it big guns (which mind you even in this game aren't all PPFLD)? Because the balance of big vs small guns is complicated because of again how weapons are designed (ballistics trade off heavier weight requirements for better heat efficiency than you can get with energy + DHS) and how that plays with the drastic difference of crit and tonnage availability across classes (lights are tonnage starved, assaults are crit starved).

I'd argue the real problem with PPFLD vs DPS is that DPS in this game has typically not had the damage potential like in traditional FPS that keep it powerful, and that's because it is waaay too focused on sustained DPS and not enough in burst (ie do more damage faster but also get hotter a lot faster). Which would in turn allow for better involvement of twisting rather than having to stare down your opponent just to do appreciable damage. Make twisting more of a thing, not less. If you think people are just going to fire, twist, fire, twist, fire with big weapons, I'm gonna be honest I think you overestimate what a person can honestly do while playing. It increases the skill ceiling sure, but to a point that I don't think it's really achievable in a real way and even if it is you're still back to the same issue, you've just reduced the number of people who can do it.

East Indy, on 02 August 2024 - 11:10 AM, said:

If you get hit squarely by one long-range weapon as you're crossing the map, yes, it may matter more proportionate to your tonnage. But it's not bad. Yet when it's multiple weapons and high damage...long-range becomes king.

I think this is a pretty large generalization. Multiple weapons isn't really relevant to the determination of the meta, just the high damage and how strong it's sustained DPS is relative to that.

East Indy, on 02 August 2024 - 11:10 AM, said:

That's an interesting point. I do wonder if it seems that way because a 1v1 runs the game's flaws in slo-mo

It's not, it's because of two reasons: large disparities between firepower/armor across weight classes and focus fire creates scenarios where a mech making a bad exposure can get popped relatively fast. Two people watching an angle suddenly doubles the damage potential against a target that makes a bad exposure and that partially is possible because the best scouting is unfortunately visual which means you have to be cagey about where and when you poke, it isn't like MW4 where you had wallhack radars that you could leverage to get a better idea of how safe it was to move out of cover.

The only thing that changes this runs the risk of reducing the importance of cover shifting this game away from a tactical game actually more towards a CoD style mecha where it is more about running and gunning with good mobility (which is actually a current issue with the meta is how MASC centric it is).

[East Indy]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 02 August 2024 - 11:50 AM, said:

Why run big guns where you can't really concentrate fire anyway

That answer is from the mindset this game has encouraged! You'd absolutely be able to concentrate fire, just not in a single shot. Weapon groups and engagement tempos would be far less simplistic and abrupt than currently.

Just seems PGI's failure to design on a basic level has limited thinking on how a game with multiple weapons and types, and grid-based damage, might play. And you're certainly intelligent enough to understand; probably more than me! But the suggestion that a 'Mech shooter can only work with a certain pace and meta (boating and single mouseclicks) isn't persuasive.

I've laid out concepts here and it's all good you disagree, so we can move on. Really, the answer is for a different dev with an understanding of this genre and this game's specific problems to rebuild. They'd still have a niche game but I think they'd attract and retain much more of the total audience.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

East Indy, on 03 August 2024 - 06:45 AM, said:

That answer is from the mindset this game has encouraged! You'd absolutely be able to concentrate fire, just not in a single shot. Weapon groups and engagement tempos would be far less simplistic and abrupt than currently.

So the bolded part is wishful thinking. At this point when people say the "alpha problem" it generally has gone hand in hand with various other gripes people have with the game, namely specialization. Boating falls into this category because effectively when people argue against boating, they flex the term to really just mean any specialized build even if they don't technically boat (DPS Osiris for example which runs lasers, MGs, and either SRMs or rockets would still be considered a boat by many even though it really shouldn't be).
They typically want people to have to use weapons that are very disparate and don't complement each other in using and that is just counter to what happens to pretty much any game with customization. If you want that to be successful you will HAVE to do stock mechs only because honestly this reminds of me any conversation about optimization vs roleplay/theme builds any basically any game (Magic, D&D, TT, Guild Wars, etc).

Really the best thing you can do is make sure that weapons can synergize with each other well while still being different (gauss + lasers is a good example) and use a more restrictive hardpoint system to sort of disallow some of the boating of like weapons and/or have a system that provides diminishing returns for stacking like weapons (as that punishes it at all ranges unlike systems like recoil, etc).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 03 August 2024 - 10:57 AM.

[Davegt27]

wow 12 pages

did we come up with anything ??

the game is getting a lot of new players, everyday as I watch MWO twitch I see new MWO streamers

would a new player even realize that an Alpha is to high ??

I still feel like MWO is hanging on by a few threads

just a few thoughts

[Xetelian]

Double armor and ammo and reduce heat making a more DPS style?

I am not an expert if I am wrong I apologize I'm not preaching dogma I'm thinking this would help and do some kind of voodoo to make it so people can't add 30 more tons of weapons with no armor but man we need to scale the health with the power creep with ghost armor/structure

[Tarl Cabot]

Xetelian, on 04 August 2024 - 08:26 AM, said:

Double armor and ammo and reduce heat making a more DPS style?

I am not an expert if I am wrong I apologize I'm not preaching dogma I'm thinking this would help and do some kind of voodoo to make it so people can't add 30 more tons of weapons with no armor but man we need to scale the health with the power creep with ghost armor/structure

Baseline Armor and Structure points were doubled long before the game came out of early beta, though Armor was by accident. Only Structure was supposed to be doubled at the time. Without quirks, taking Survival kill nodes, IS can be increased by a max of 33% and Armor by 18%. At that time, we did not have the current Skill tree but a simplified tree that everyone tried to fill out to obtain an extra module, which is now built into the current Skill tree, and you had to skill up three of the same mech, i.e. Jenner, Atlas, etc.

How many of the player base use those survival nodes, but instead max out many of the Firepower nodes?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Tarl Cabot, on 04 August 2024 - 10:37 AM, said:

How many of the player base use those survival nodes, but instead max out many of the Firepower nodes?

I'd hazard a guess most use both (minus cooldown nodes for the most part).

[CFC Conky]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 04 August 2024 - 10:40 AM, said:

I'd hazard a guess most use both (minus cooldown nodes for the most part).

Yup, armor and structure tress are pretty much a given for most mechs. As for the firepower tree, heat gen for sure, cooldown and/or range to taste.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[Swamp Butt]

Nerf heat sinks more. Increase risk of overheating, such as more damage from overheating, and maybe increase damage taken from overheating. Increase time between forced shutdown and power up. Add more weapons to there respective ghost heat groups.

[Davegt27]

Swamp *** MkII, on 04 August 2024 - 12:16 PM, said:

Nerf heat sinks more. Increase risk of overheating, such as more damage from overheating, and maybe increase damage taken from overheating. Increase time between forced shutdown and power up. Add more weapons to there respective ghost heat groups.

what would that do ??
would it cause players to stop shooting ?

or would it cause players to engage more ?

[Mister Smile]

It would just enforce hide and peak more.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 04 August 2024 - 10:40 AM, said:

Quote

How many of the player base use those survival nodes, but instead max out many of the Firepower nodes?

I'd hazard a guess most use both (minus cooldown nodes for the most part).

Just to make sure we are on the same page, did you mean most players select the Survival nodes over the Firepower nodes? I would hazard that many use more of the Firepower nodes over the Survival nodes, to reduce the heat, increase weapon ranges and fire weapons faster. I will admit I was in that situation until a year or so ago, started with the Armor nodes, and starting to increase the Structural nodes. It would be interesting if PGI would post the percentage of players who use primarily Firepower nodes vs Survival nodes.

[VaelophisNyx]

Davegt27, on 04 August 2024 - 07:06 AM, said:

the game is getting a lot of new players, everyday as I watch MWO twitch I see new MWO streamers

The Jarls player count status tracker seems to disagree, as outside of the current event, new player signup is an ever decreasing slope

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Tarl Cabot, on 05 August 2024 - 03:42 PM, said:

Just to make sure we are on the same page, did you mean most players select the Survival nodes over the Firepower nodes? I would hazard that many use more of the Firepower nodes over the Survival nodes, to reduce the heat, increase weapon ranges and fire weapons faster.

Typically you go full structure/armor and at least full range. Heat gen is on most of mine but some more heat efficient builds. Cooldown is rarely used in the upper tiers mostly because the benefit is negligible for the cost.

VaelophisNyx, on 05 August 2024 - 03:47 PM, said:

The Jarls player count status tracker seems to disagree, as outside of the current event, new player signup is an ever decreasing slope

That's because it is attributing a slope across the past 8 years, after about season 30 it has been pretty consistent which is actually somewhat surprising.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 05 August 2024 - 03:53 PM.

[VaelophisNyx]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 05 August 2024 - 03:50 PM, said:

That's because it is attributing a slope across the past 8 years, after about season 30 it has been pretty consistent which is actually somewhat surprising.

Still quite low, given that the game isn't free to host and develop. And I can't imagine many long term players are showering PGI in cash of late.

But on the actual direct topic: Alpha strikes as of right now, can get far too high. It barely feels like Mechwarrior at all. Rounding a corner to get guns on target only for a fresh, fully armored MAD side torso (with *quirks* for extra armor!) to go from fresh to *gone* in less than 1 second, is not fun. It's rather infuriating in fact.

[1453 R]

Did you round a corner to get your guns on target only to get shot by five heavy and assault 'Mechs?

Reminder: a tabletop game rarely lasts more than ten-odd rounds, and in a game of tabletop single, individual weapon hits can be meaningful. A single AC/20 shot can usually go internal and cause critical damage to a light 'Mech anywhere on that light 'Mech. Any weapon 15 damage and up has a chance to instantly decapitate a BattleMech and eliminate it from play - whereas in MWO headshots are so rare they're a statistical anomaly and a fully armored head component can survive a single hit from literally any weapon, and multiple hits from most of them. Engines can be crit out in TT, and a 'Mech disabled while it still has all eleven eight component areas remaining. 'Mechs die really fast in tabletop; MWO 'Mechs are horrifying juggernauts by TT standards that can generally only be disabled by destroying more than half the 'Mech outright.

Alpha damage isn't really the issue. Focus fire is the issue, and the fact that nothing in the game serves as an incentive to break up the giant blobular twelve-man murderballs. Eight-plus 'Mechs will always Irase one 'Mech far faster than the one 'Mech is comfortable with, and in modern MWO? it's incredibly difficult to ever end up fighting fewer than eight other enemy 'Mechs at once.

[VaelophisNyx]

It was ironically only three enemies, none of them of the same weight class. Certainly felt the one assault with what appeared to be a HAG and a small pile of lasers? It just kinda sucks to play right now if you aren't running the most braindead assault builds. you die on contact with what used to be a well paced engagement. It's now a game of who shot first, not truly skill or positioning.

For context in that one second before I could even stop, to try to get moving in reverse, I lost my arm, side torso, *and* CT. Literally the entire mech before I could react. (I was twisted; didn't just lose one ST. Standard engine.)

Edited by VaelophisNyx, 05 August 2024 - 05:22 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

VaelophisNyx, on 05 August 2024 - 05:20 PM, said:

It was ironically only three enemies, none of them of the same weight class. Certainly felt the one assault with what appeared to be a HAG and a small pile of lasers? It just kinda sucks to play right now if you aren't running the most braindead assault builds. you die on contact with what used to be a well paced engagement. It's now a game of who shot first, not truly skill or positioning.

The game is not any different than it's every been. PUGs literally haven't changed since closed beta or any of the numerous different metas. The game is about skill and positioning same as it ever was. Teams still decide to take low grounds and go into a corner and die a painful death because they gave up complete map control and let the enemy get a concave firing line around them. The fact that happens tells you that yes, positioning does matter. However due to 12v12, if you are looking to carry and have little trust in your teammates, it is generally about burning through people one by one with ego duels.

Not sure why you think skill/positioning means you should survive a 1v3 encounter.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 05 August 2024 - 05:42 PM.

[Swamp Butt]

I believe it would allow players to engage more. Hit and run tactics would be used more than they already are as well.