45 replies to this topic

[Tiy0s]

How acceptable kit bashing to you as a player unfortunately is not relevant. I have explained the art standard PGI strives to hold itself to. That alone kills this idea in its tracks.

If a player would like to mod it in, kitbashed or just tacking 10 weapons on a component, there is nothing stopping them. By all means, make the mods you like that help improve your enjoyment of the game. That is the purpose of mods.

But I have explained why PGI will not do it. The level of work required to meet our internal standards is not economic for the gain. Plus I have explained the balance reasons which would kill the idea before it even reached work mapping stages.

[The6thMessenger]

Tiy0s, on 10 July 2025 - 07:49 PM, said:

How acceptable kit bashing to you as a player unfortunately is not relevant. I have explained the art standard PGI strives to hold itself to. That alone kills this idea in its tracks.

If a player would like to mod it in, kitbashed or just tacking 10 weapons on a component, there is nothing stopping them. By all means, make the mods you like that help improve your enjoyment of the game. That is the purpose of mods.

But I have explained why PGI will not do it. The level of work required to meet our internal standards is not economic for the gain. Plus I have explained the balance reasons which would kill the idea before it even reached work mapping stages.

Fair, but as I have said before, I don't agree with KV's dumb idea, my venture is purely with the concept of technical side, future-proofing the choices of hardpoints. From a practical stand-point, the bespoke hardpoints would work as fine, so long as the plan isn't to expand selected hardpoints.

Likewise, I have conceded that it is the standard. Sure, ok. I was just discussing points of inconsistency with the other dude, starting with the AC20 on the locust.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 10 July 2025 - 08:29 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

The6thMessenger, on 10 July 2025 - 06:55 PM, said:

The only leeway I can give you is the difficulty of business-decisions -- that even if it's technically possible, it is not by the issue of contraints which I was open to begin with.

But like I said with consistency, that puts things into question especially when the contention was when it's technically possible, and they were at the time doing it, yet here you are retreating to "business-decision" defense.

Your position is everywhere, and it's almost like you're saying just anything to "win".

All development decisions come down to business decisions, that's the part you don't seem to quite get. The first step of almost EVERY startup or development process is getting it working first, duct tape and all. Then you figure out where the pain points and fix them. Most players just simply aren't going to care about this process, and without knowing the full process of getting these created/added we are just guessing on what bottlenecks/pain exists in the current process. A change purely for "consistency" is almost always wasted resources, there has to be some sort of RoI for that effort. All of this explains why charge-up doesn't work for non-ammo based weapons, why energy weapons can't have ammo, etc. It wasn't relevant until a decade later, so clearly they made the right decision at the time.

It isn't me being "everywhere", it's that there's a lot that goes into decisions and you just hand-waving them away "cuz mods do it" like that's a reasonable answer. It isn't. Future proofing is nice, if you know what you are future proofing for, and not everyone knows what's in the cards. Given MWO was new territory for PGI, yeah, them not accounting for everything isn't shocking.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 10 July 2025 - 08:15 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:12 PM, said:

All development decisions come down to business decisions, that's the part you don't seem to quite get.

On the contrary. I have posts about this from the get-go, even addressing it with the first tiy0s reply to me.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:12 PM, said:

A change purely for "consistency" is almost always wasted resources, there has to be some sort of RoI for that effort.

Sure. But you can't just say "they don't model everything", or else you're going to have that AC20 locust spat at your face, every god damn time.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:12 PM, said:

It isn't me being "everywhere", it's that there's a lot that goes into decisions and you just hand-waving them away "cuz mods do it" like that's a reasonable answer. It isn't.

You don't even understand why the mod part was brought up do you? I literally even pointed this distinction out on the very response you are replying. Even when you yourself accepted the compartmentalization between technical and business choices -- even raised it.

Like a brick wall.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:12 PM, said:

Given MWO was new territory for PGI, yeah, them not accounting for everything isn't shocking.

We're at MW5: Clans now at the latest, and MW5 Mercs having it's Clan DLC -- that is by the way, still has dumb AI.

They aren't green to this mech-building stuff, this ain't new territory -- it is in fact the same territory they are treading over and over, for over a decade (12 years actually). I think we can hold them into account now.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 10 July 2025 - 08:41 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

The6thMessenger, on 10 July 2025 - 08:20 PM, said:

Sure. But you can't just say "they don't model everything", or else you're going to have that AC20 locust spat at your face, every god damn time.

Sigh, your comprehension is rough, I said everything for 2-10 hardpoints, not 1, 10 different hardpoints (as in most sections have at most 10 crit slots available which means potentially 10 different guns to position). So you throwing that "in my face" is a meaningless throw, because it's not what I said or meant.

The6thMessenger, on 10 July 2025 - 08:20 PM, said:

You don't even understand why the mod part was brought up do you?

No, I understand, it is just a meaningless addition to your argument. You brought up some stuff about kitbashing being historic to gaming. Which kitbashing is historic to a lot of things (I mean a lot of sci-fi designs were kitbashed after all), that doesn't mean it works for all things all the time or just be accepted at face value.

[The6thMessenger]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:39 PM, said:

Sigh, your comprehension is rough, I said everything for 2-10 hardpoints, not 1, 10 different hardpoints (as in most sections have at most 10 crit slots available which means potentially 10 different guns to position). So you throwing that "in my face" is a meaningless throw, because it's not what I said or meant.

Interesting. Lets read back shall we?

Spoiler

Quicksilver Aberration, on 09 July 2025 - 02:19 PM, said:

KursedVixen, on 09 July 2025 - 01:14 AM, said:

Quicksilver Aberration, on 08 July 2025 - 08:51 PM, said:

The6thMessenger, on 08 July 2025 - 08:09 PM, said:

So, saying "it just takes more work, so we didn’t do it" doesn’t exactly inspire confidence—it kind of reads like they didn’t even try smarter ways to pull it off.

From what I’ve seen messing around with Unreal Editor (before my hard drive gave up on life), the weapon hardpoints on mechs are super bespoke—custom-fit to each spot like puzzle pieces, and where they technically attach is at the origin with the mesh body itself just nudged to where it's supposed to be. From the standpoint of modularity, that's not good.

Now, coming from my FO4 modding background—making guns with snap-on parts—I think there’s a better way. In Fallout, meshes (NIFs) are edited in Nifskope, and they’ve got snap-points built right into the body, so parts just mate together, even if not cleanly. That’s what modular should feel like.

What PGI could have done is set fixed snap-points on mech bodies—just predetermined spots where weapons would naturally snap into place. Then instead of forcing the weapon to match each mech’s geometry, you use an intermediary mesh—kind of like that ring on Urbie’s arm when it’s got a cannon

Even if they did make it "snap-on", each different weapon model and its positioning has to be accounted for which is the actual problem. The problem isn't that they don't "snap-on" it's that all possibilities then have to be accounted for and they also don't even always look good.

The crux of the issue is that by using dynamic geometry like that, regardless of what you do, it creates artificial barriers to adding new hardpoints, adding weapons, or just balance adjustments in general. Which is why I still kinda prefer static geometry even if it doesn't necessarily match up with what you run in it. As funny as the doomfist Victor was, it kinda shows a reason to NOT actually bother showing every weapon distinctly with dynamic geometry and instead just treat the mechlab and the weapon placement more as an abstraction, there isn't a "big" red laser weapon so treating multiple instances of it as a single weapon in a section doesn't seem too far fetched IMO.

i don't think you have one clue to how modeling works once the intial model work is done it can easily be reused, it's not like they have to make the model of the gun barrel every single time it's used on a new mech or locatioin it's as simple as a line of code that says this model goes here, Full omnimechs while totally unfair in MWo could easily have been done IN MW5 with little problems for balance since there is to my knowledge no PVP play. I can prove this with a model of the timberwolf in Garry's mod which i personally edited, each weapon 'module' per say has a specific position it can appear at on the timberwolf mech in gmod since all the coding for it is already done it's as simple as flipping a switch to put a weapon on the arm, I went into blender myself to change some things about the model and yeah i changed the geometry easily so saying weapon placement is hard is a false argument the same can be done with bolt ons as long as there are placements coded in already it's as simple as saying "This model" goes here." in a line of code.

I don't think you know how modeling works either because they don't model every possible thing it could ever have in the game. They limit it to a set of lore variants and that's it. For example the Timber Wolf A variant existed in the models well before the variant was added to the game, but the Viper F was not modeled when the Viper was added, that was done well after the fact.

You're line about a "single line of code" also tells me you know literally nothing about coding or the process of taking a mech concept to being in a game.

Nope, nothing there. Someone's making stuff up to save face, and it ain't me.

Not to mention that, AC20 is actually 10 slot, so it CAN fit on a locust.

I doubt KV's claim on just "line of code" because it's obviously just a framework that he's already leveraging. But the recycling of meshes isn't far off.

So when you went with "neither are you", from someone who has a congruent experience in creating modular weapon system -- actually, yes, you have to account for those attachment, if you are to offer a modular platform, be it a weapon or a mech.

So when they do 10 hardpoints on a single component -- they have to. In fact, you can see this from many other weapon boats from the game, from the Stone Rhino, to the Hunchback, the only difference is that they haven't gotten that far with that much hardpoint.

One also quick note, If I remember correctly, the banshee has this cluster of 4 machine-guns, clumped together, while the ACs are scattered around the component. So yeah, it is possible to snap the weapon parts everywhere, if you really have to do KV's dumb omni-slots.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 July 2025 - 08:39 PM, said:

No, I understand, it is just a meaningless addition to your argument. You brought up some stuff about kitbashing being historic to gaming. Which kitbashing is historic to a lot of things (I mean a lot of sci-fi designs were kitbashed after all), that doesn't mean it works for all things all the time or just be accepted at face value.

It's just as meaningless as "you don't know stuff because position", so maybe don't have those, and I won't respond as such.

Stupid question demands stupid responses and all.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 10 July 2025 - 09:14 PM.