25 replies to this topic

[DivideByZer0]

Hi everyone! I took an 8 month break, then ground out 10,000,000 cbills over the weekend!

I think the gameplay is a little better balanced now (I left in the middle of the ghost heat debacle), but I've been reading into how this went down (balance changes, quirks,etc).
Still, I had 4 friends who wanted to play with me this weekend (all new to MWO) and all they could talk about was the hitboxing. Well that and 3 of them crashed about every 10 minutes (no joke).

Netcode feels slightly better (still think the refresh rate is <25 tics per second)

I noticed some of the maps got a refresh, but hitboxing still seems to cause problems. Mech and environment.
Tourmalline desert is probably the worst offender of this hitboxing problem. There are many places where you can see through rock formations, but still can't shoot through them, or anywhere near them because of the hitboxing.

Has there been any word on a fix (or fixes) ?

**Edit**
As of townhall 1/15/2015 the answer to this post is basically "no"

Edited by DivideByZer0, 16 January 2015 - 12:43 PM.

[blood4blood]

Are they using 3P view? If so, it's not so much the hitboxes as mech geometry/hardpoint placement vs view angle over terrain with convergence issues thrown in. Ex. In a mech firing over a hill from low-slung arm hardpoints but viewed from overhead in 3P, it's going to look like you have a clear shot but when you fire it's going to hit the hill because the arms are lower than the viewpoint.

[levitas]

There's a town hall tomorrow, so you could ask Russ then.

[DivideByZer0]

No, it's not a 3pv issue. I can't even imagine who would play in 3PV..nevermind. Wrong thread. It's a terrain hitboxing issue for sure. The hitboxes for the terrain are HUGE and low poly in this game, it's like in a first person shooter when you try to shoot through a stair railing and the bullet gets stopped.

IDK if I will be around for the town hall, I'm not sure I care that much to wait in line to ask a question, haha. Also, this is a pretty fundamental issue to the game, if PGI hasn't said anything YET, they probably are hoping people don't bring it up, this isn't something you just don't notice as a dev. It's a huge bane to competetive gameplay. Figured maybe one of you knowledgeable forum goers might know something I don't..

Just so I'm not being all doom-and-gloom, I actually had a lot of fun playing this weekend, surprised myself. Couple new maps, piles of new mechs.. that stuff is awesome. Content-wise, the game is doing well.

Edited by DivideByZer0, 14 January 2015 - 12:13 PM.

[Pika]

DivideByZer0, on 14 January 2015 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, it's not a 3pv issue. I can't even imagine who would play in 3PV..nevermind. Wrong thread. It's a terrain hitboxing issue for sure. The hitboxes for the terrain are HUGE and low poly in this game, it's like in a first person shooter when you try to shoot through a stair railing and the bullet gets stopped.

IDK if I will be around for the town hall, I'm not sure I care that much to wait in line to ask a question, haha. Also, this is a pretty fundamental issue to the game, if PGI hasn't said anything YET, they probably are hoping people don't bring it up, this isn't something you just don't notice as a dev. It's a huge bane to competetive gameplay. Figured maybe one of you knowledgeable forum goers might know something I don't..

I think even the most hardcore of hardcore MWO fan will agree the terrain hit boxes are all over the place. Tourmaline is the worst offender and they've been getting better in the newer maps, but I completely agree. I would very much love the devs to go back to that map especially and tweak the terrain. Probably a by product of the slopes everywhere.

[DivideByZer0]

Pika, on 14 January 2015 - 12:05 PM, said:

I think even the most hardcore of hardcore MWO fan will agree the terrain hit boxes are all over the place. Tourmaline is the worst offender and they've been getting better in the newer maps, but I completely agree. I would very much love the devs to go back to that map especially and tweak the terrain. Probably a by product of the slopes everywhere.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at here. In this case I had two people (decently ranked) who play a lot of CSGO in game with me, that was the first thing they noticed. Tourmalline is defininitely one of the worst offenders. Lots of small crystal formations with jagged edges at terrain high points. At one point I was looking straight at a DWF and the guy UNLOADED on my raven. But he couldn't hit me because there was a huge terrain box between us, even though we both had crosshairs on eachother.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

Invisi-walls are definitely annoying. You can avoid them pretty well if you look at the little number (rangefinder) next to your reticule. If the number says anything less than 50, you're probably gonna shoot an invisible wall.

Edit: I guess in the example in the post above this it wouldn't work for the DWF. This tip only works if you're like poking around corners or peeking over hills. YMMV

Edited by Rizzelbizzeg, 14 January 2015 - 12:44 PM.

[Mechteric]

Rizzelbizzeg, on 14 January 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

Invisi-walls are definitely annoying. You can avoid them pretty well if you look at the little number (rangefinder) next to your reticule. If the number says anything less than 50, you're probably gonna shoot an invisible wall.

Only problem there is your weapons are off to the side a bit they can end up clipping the invisible portions of the wall when they appear they shouldn't.

[Rhaythe]

The HPG hitboxes, especially up on the ziggurat, are the worst, IMO.

[EgoSlayer]

DivideByZer0, on 14 January 2015 - 11:45 AM, said:

Hi everyone! I took an 8 month break, then ground out 10,000,000 cbills over the weekend!

I think the gameplay is a little better balanced now (I left in the middle of the ghost heat debacle), but I've been reading into how this went down (balance changes, quirks,etc).
Still, I had 4 friends who wanted to play with me this weekend (all new to MWO) and all they could talk about was the hitboxing. Well that and 3 of them crashed about every 10 minutes (no joke).

Netcode feels slightly better (still think the refresh rate is <25 tics per second)

I noticed some of the maps got a refresh, but hitboxing still seems to cause problems. Mech and environment.
Tourmalline desert is probably the worst offender of this hitboxing problem. There are many places where you can see through rock formations, but still can't shoot through them, or anywhere near them because of the hitboxing.

Has there been any word on a fix (or fixes) ?

You must not have played much, as Tourmaline is hardly the worst. HPG is 10 times worse, and the new Veridian bog has tons of small rocks/tree limbe/etc that stop any mechs in their tracks.

There have been some passes done on some maps, and if you look at the pinned thread at the top of this forum:
http://mwomercs.com/...ision-feedback/

That is where the feedback needs to be directed. Screenshot, or locations of where they occur and that is where they are going to look at fixing. Whenever they are scheduled to do a review pass - which is anyone's guess.

[blood4blood]

DivideByZer0, on 14 January 2015 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, it's not a 3pv issue. I can't even imagine who would play in 3PV..nevermind. Wrong thread. It's a terrain hitboxing issue for sure. The hitboxes for the terrain are HUGE and low poly in this game, it's like in a first person shooter when you try to shoot through a stair railing and the bullet gets stopped.

IDK if I will be around for the town hall, I'm not sure I care that much to wait in line to ask a question, haha. Also, this is a pretty fundamental issue to the game, if PGI hasn't said anything YET, they probably are hoping people don't bring it up, this isn't something you just don't notice as a dev. It's a huge bane to competetive gameplay. Figured maybe one of you knowledgeable forum goers might know something I don't..

Just so I'm not being all doom-and-gloom, I actually had a lot of fun playing this weekend, surprised myself. Couple new maps, piles of new mechs.. that stuff is awesome. Content-wise, the game is doing well.

Ah...that. Yeah, it's always been a problem, there's plenty of junk around where you can see through spaces but can't shoot through, some that looks like you can shoot or move past but you can't, etc. I honestly can't think of a game that doesn't have these types of problems where the visible scenery doesn't match properly with the hitboxes, I guess I'm just used to badly implemented game terrain and structures at this point.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

CapperDeluxe, on 14 January 2015 - 12:44 PM, said:

Only problem there is your weapons are off to the side a bit they can end up clipping the invisible portions of the wall when they appear they shouldn't.

Yep, that's another layer of trickiness on top.

I guess my suggestion only tells you when you'll ABSOLUTELY hit an invisible wall, not necessarily when you won't.

[Rokuzachi]

The tunnel in frozen city has horrendous collision. I was having a nice brawl in there on my Crab last night with a few of the enemy... multiple volleys of fire from both sides were hitting invisible collision pretty often.

[Belkor]

blood4blood, on 14 January 2015 - 11:51 AM, said:

Are they using 3P view? If so, it's not so much the hitboxes as mech geometry/hardpoint placement vs view angle over terrain with convergence issues thrown in. Ex. In a mech firing over a hill from low-slung arm hardpoints but viewed from overhead in 3P, it's going to look like you have a clear shot but when you fire it's going to hit the hill because the arms are lower than the viewpoint.

Most of this is false as you can see with a laser weapon that gets blocked by invisible walls.

[LordKnightFandragon]

DivideByZer0, on 14 January 2015 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, it's not a 3pv issue. I can't even imagine who would play in 3PV..nevermind. Wrong thread. It's a terrain hitboxing issue for sure. The hitboxes for the terrain are HUGE and low poly in this game, it's like in a first person shooter when you try to shoot through a stair railing and the bullet gets stopped.

IDK if I will be around for the town hall, I'm not sure I care that much to wait in line to ask a question, haha. Also, this is a pretty fundamental issue to the game, if PGI hasn't said anything YET, they probably are hoping people don't bring it up, this isn't something you just don't notice as a dev. It's a huge bane to competetive gameplay. Figured maybe one of you knowledgeable forum goers might know something I don't..

Just so I'm not being all doom-and-gloom, I actually had a lot of fun playing this weekend, surprised myself. Couple new maps, piles of new mechs.. that stuff is awesome. Content-wise, the game is doing well.

LOL, and yet games like FEAR have perfect hit boxing on the terrain.....that game is what? 10? 15? years old? I could peak around the very tip of a corner and if my reticule is around the terrain, I shoot around the terrain and hit the target im aiming at......

What gives with these modern games? Terrain hit boxing so bad you have to totally in the open or your bullets hit the air feet above or around stuff. Crouching down and firing through railings? Not possible....Planetside 2? You would think having the high ground is an advatange, half the time it isnt, you cant fire through the railings in that game.

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 14 January 2015 - 09:43 PM.

[Rushyo]

LordKnightFandragon, on 14 January 2015 - 09:42 PM, said:

LOL, and yet games like FEAR have perfect hit boxing on the terrain.....that game is what? 10? 15? years old? I could peak around the very tip of a corner and if my reticule is around the terrain, I shoot around the terrain and hit the target im aiming at......

What gives with these modern games? Terrain hit boxing so bad you have to totally in the open or your bullets hit the air feet above or around stuff. Crouching down and firing through railings? Not possible....Planetside 2? You would think having the high ground is an advatange, half the time it isnt, you cant fire through the railings in that game.

In FEAR you can interact with one or two rooms with mostly rectangular features (thus, rectangular hitboxes, where you have eight vertices per object) at any given moment. in PS2 or MWO, you're looking at sparse environments containing lots of complex, non-rectangular models. To model shooting through railings in a PS2 base properly would require almost as many vertices in the hitbox collisions as interacting with an entire FEAR scene.

The fact is the engine like that used in FEAR could never even come close to replicating the dynamic complexities of levels in PS2 or MWO and would immediately crash trying to replicate any scene from either game. The comparison is pointless.

Linear corridor shooters cheat all over the place to minimise system resources. The price you pay for games with open non-linear environments is you can't utilise those cheats as easily.

Edited by Rushyo, 15 January 2015 - 05:53 AM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Rushyo, on 15 January 2015 - 05:51 AM, said:

In FEAR you can interact with one or two rooms with mostly rectangular features (thus, rectangular hitboxes, where you have eight vertices per object) at any given moment. in PS2 or MWO, you're looking at sparse environments containing lots of complex, non-rectangular models. To model shooting through railings in a PS2 base properly would require almost as many vertices in the hitbox collisions as interacting with an entire FEAR scene.

The fact is the engine like that used in FEAR could never even come close to replicating the dynamic complexities of levels in PS2 or MWO and would immediately crash trying to replicate any scene from either game. The comparison is pointless.

Linear corridor shooters cheat all over the place to minimise system resources. The price you pay for games with open non-linear environments is you can't utilise those cheats as easily.

Holy crap, but do the modern game hitboxes have to be so far out of wack? Its like the object is inside a big square block, and the block never actually goes away, and so its like a big rock inside a glass display case.....you can clearly see around the rock, but the big invisible display case is there so you try to fire around it and bam, hit the display case.....

Fear has railings you, PS has railings, yet FEAR you can throw a grenade under those, PS2, you cant fire between 2 that are actually a good portion apart from each other...or else the window to do so is very narrow.

HPG is a series of block objects, why, of all the maps, is THAT the map with hit box issues? Cant they just lower the magical wall around the upper platform?

I get its more complext and dynamic, but yikes.....It makes the game fair bit more irritating to play when you think, ok, lets fire from this nice covered position, pop out and dive back in.....you devise this wonderful plan and go to execute it and territory hitboxes just destroy you. I could understand a bit better if the hit boxes were off by a few pixels and crap, but its off my yards. Tourmaline, those jagged rocks, you might as well just stand on top of them before you fire. In the TG, I was firing at the awesome from behind the dropship and was some 400m behind a big rock formation, had the Awesome clearly in sight, fired, a PPC blast nailed the air like 5 feet from the rock formation.....

Surely, Computer power and Graphic design programs have evolved a bit better to where a designer can get hit boxes to be more accurate then older games...not less so.

And then Mechs, ive read that the Raven leg hit box was about twice the size of the actual mech's legs? How does that work?

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 15 January 2015 - 06:12 AM.

[kapusta11]

No and it's at the bottom of priority list as it takes a lot of time to fix, don't earn you anything and no one realy leaves the game because of it anyways so.. why bother?

[Mercules]

LordKnightFandragon, on 15 January 2015 - 06:11 AM, said:

Surely, Computer power and Graphic design programs have evolved a bit better to where a designer can get hit boxes to be more accurate then older games...not less so.

Actually they can get them all absolutely perfect where they mesh to the visual representations perfectly, but then all these people who are currently getting less than 30 FPS would be getting half that. They cheat them to save processing power and people keep complaining about the game running slow for them already. Now they can get them closer but it is going to take a lot of fiddly time consuming work and I'd rather they have the map guys churning out some new maps.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

LordKnightFandragon, on 14 January 2015 - 09:42 PM, said:

LOL, and yet games like FEAR have perfect hit boxing on the terrain.....that game is what? 10? 15? years old? I could peak around the very tip of a corner and if my reticule is around the terrain, I shoot around the terrain and hit the target im aiming at......

What gives with these modern games? Terrain hit boxing so bad you have to totally in the open or your bullets hit the air feet above or around stuff. Crouching down and firing through railings? Not possible....Planetside 2? You would think having the high ground is an advatange, half the time it isnt, you cant fire through the railings in that game.

FEAR like the single player shooter game? MWO is a pvp game that's server authoritative to prevent hacking, this isn't so much a big deal in single player games because no AI gets buttthurt when you're nigh undefeatable. The walls and things you see aren't what the server sees. The inivisible walls are what the server sees, the visible walls are what are rendered on your system and are generally more complex than the server's view because the server doesn't care about what looks like a rock and what looks like a tree. Then there are texture maps which are the skin over an object (think camo pattern... kinda) which can let you take a digital cube and with the right texture map, can make it look like a sphere. It takes less effort to render the cube, but it looks like a sphere. This is why modern games have these issues. Old games they didn't have to take any rendering/processing shortcuts because everything looked like crap and everyone just knew that crap was the best that could be done.

TL;DR: Modern games are more complex than old games, which adds complexity to the models underneath.

Edited by Rizzelbizzeg, 15 January 2015 - 08:22 AM.