136 replies to this topic

[GHQCommander]

DireWolf307, on 08 June 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

This is done by balancing and various other methods, not by throwing tech in a game where it has no business being.

Besides, hitting legs and cockpits is harder than you think. Fire up a game of MW3 or MW4 or MW:LL (since those are the only ones that work on modern computers) and go around only trying to take out legs. It is definitely not as easy as it may seem. If PGI has mechanics and balancing down, legging will not be the end-all be-all it seems. Besides, in TT/Lore, legging didn't destroy a mech, just turned it in to a disadvantaged turret.

Disagree.

With a good joystick, programmable keyboard and patience when firing weapons a hell of a lot of fire power can be delivered to a targets legs in short time.

I can shoot a mechs legs when it is jumping through the air and by the time it lands a leg is gone while never standing still myself. I think torso twist on the joystick is probably what makes it easy. In my opinion it is easy to predict that this will be the first area of business when the game is released. I would bet money that this forum will have threads of players complaining that when under fire by many, their legs are taking out too quickly because there are teams well co-ordinated to do so.

Say it is a problem, what is the solution?

[GHQCommander]

BlackMoore, on 08 June 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

I have never been mean on any forum and i'll try not to be now, but... StarTrek, StarWars ect. has shields, MechWarrior doesn't. by the sounds of it, your not familiar with the BattleTech/MechWarrior Universe. So all I can say is, No need to re-invent the wheel. We have played single player, Multi-player and TT games in this universe for a long time and have had no need for them in any of the small skermishes or epic battles I have ever seen or been in.

One more thing. Shield tech is no big deal, in real life basic shields will exist in the next 30 years. The developers would easily get away with creating a shield mod that applies even a weak temporary energy shielding around the selected part of a mech.

I'm not talking big powerful bubbles and I am talking possible solutions to when this issue starts to be an issue. We'll find out soon enough won't we.

[DireWolf307]

GHQCommander, on 08 June 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

Disagree.

With a good joystick, programmable keyboard and patience when firing weapons a hell of a lot of fire power can be delivered to a targets legs in short time.

I can shoot a mechs legs when it is jumping through the air and by the time it lands a leg is gone while never standing still myself. I think torso twist on the joystick is probably what makes it easy. In my opinion it is easy to predict that this will be the first area of business when the game is released. I would bet money that this forum will have threads of players complaining that when under fire by many, their legs are taking out too quickly because there are teams well co-ordinated to do so.

Say it is a problem, what is the solution?

Well aren't you just the greatest ever.

There will be ways for them to "fix it" that don't involve throwing things in to the game that don't belong. Legging was frowned upon in TT, but still done, because you can't stop people from legging. However, this is the first Mechwarrior simulator where we have other factors, namely, XP and C-Bills. We don't yet know exactly how these will factor in, but it wouldn't be difficult at all for them to factor in some sort of "penalty" for resorting to legging, such as an XP or C-Bill deduction.

[Solis Obscuri]

Regen/autoheal mechanics are prevalent because too many gamers aren't hardcore enough to rely on healthkits any more. One thing that the L4D series is still doing right, but few others are.

The issue I see, in this sort of game, is that giving out lots of "heals" can make combat take forever 1v1, as long as one side can run away for a few seconds, especially considering how much of a pounding 'mech armor can take. Really, you begin to hit a point where focused fire from multiple units is the only way to kill anything. This isn't always bad, it does encourage team play, but shot calling becomes the dominant paradigm, and tactics like flanking and ambush quickly become more liability than asset, leading to very one-dimensional fights. The best way to deal with a lone enemy would likely be to try to cripple a leg, then gank, and while its tactically sound, it would also get one-dimensional and dull pretty fast.

All around, I think regenerating shields or armor would be a bad mechanic to add.

[OcO]

Legging is a viable tactic!

However in this game it does NOT blow the leg off it only causes a speed decrease as the mech limps around. If you dump the same amount of damage into an arm you could take out a weapon so the mech wont still be shooting everything it has at you while you are concentrating on its legs instead of killing it.

Edit: Sorry but there should most definitely NOT be a C-bill or xp penalty for legging or cockpit shots for that matter. Anywhere you can land a shot you should go for. I know as a potential Atlas pilot if I can leg a few of those annoying light mechs that keep running circles around me so I can slow them down and take them out I most certainly will be doing so.

Edited by OcO, 08 June 2012 - 11:39 AM.

[Yogibear24]

Personally, I would prefer to just stick with the 3 armor types: Ferro Fibrous, Reactive, and Reflective. Shields would give unfair advantages. For example, if I put a shield on an assault mech. The weakness of an assault is that it's slow, and other weight classes have an equal chance against assaults because of this. Put shields on an assault and the assault can block the fast attacks of lower weight classes and then counterattack. If that were to occur, gameplay would not be balanced, and everyone would be going for assault mechs immediately.

[Grendel408]

Regenerative armor and energy shields?

NO! Go play Armored Core or something of that nature... and no... we won't have a Ragnorok/Ymir 'Mech with an energy shield either in this... That was MechAssault2 and not completely canon...

I'll stick with what I've been promised from the Devs vs some wing-nut idea to make combat "better"

[OcO]

Buddahcjcc, on 08 June 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

what are shields?

This isnt Armored Core
This isnt Star Trek
This isnt Star Wars



I take it youre in the Beta and know this for a fact?

They seem kinda touchy about that NDA

If you have read all the dev blogs and Q&As you would know this. It has been verified by a dev you can not blow legs off.

Edit: To not be a total *** I'm not exactly sure where that is referenced from. I know I have seen it verified but could not tell you from what source or thread.

Edited by OcO, 08 June 2012 - 11:57 AM.

[General Panties]

Paladin1, on 04 November 2011 - 10:47 AM, said:

Regenerating armor? Umm, no. That's as wrong as trying to introduce sentient aliens into the timeline.

...actually, this was done in the Battletech novels, one of the older ones... something about a combat jumpship (warship) mis-jumping and ending up in an unknown part of the universe... they were bird-like people and, well, they never revisited it. THANK GOD

[Hyperius]

GHQCommander, on 08 June 2012 - 11:09 AM, said:

One more thing. Shield tech is no big deal, in real life basic shields will exist in the next 30 years. The developers would easily get away with creating a shield mod that applies even a weak temporary energy shielding around the selected part of a mech.

I'm not talking big powerful bubbles and I am talking possible solutions to when this issue starts to be an issue. We'll find out soon enough won't we.

I don't think energy shields work the way people think they would work based on what I have found on them. Shields would be used to protect a person or spacecraft from electromagnetic and ionizing radiation. They aren't like the star trek shields that can stop concentrated energy beams or projectiles, something that armour can already do. Based on this and the technological state of the inner sphere it really wouldn't be feasible or effective to use shields.

[Chico]

No to shields...No..No.

I say this from the view point of a Dedicated Light Driver/pilot.

The lack of shields and the use of armor are what have me the most excited about this game. The fact that a light mech will be able to do damage 100% of the time to even the heaviest Mech is reason to give anyone that is planning to be a light pilot a warm fuzzy feeling of happiness.

I will be coming over from World of Tanks. Having driven and played light tanks. I can tell you now that the most annoying and frustrating part of that game is how often a light tank will do ZERO damage to heaver tanks due to the mechanics of Glancing and non armor penetrating shots. I do not want to see that in this game, as it will greatly reduce the fun and enjoyment factor for light pilots.

I do not want to see the roll of a light pilot reduced to just passive and suicide scouting.

I do not want to see situations in MWO like the ones i see in WOT, where one side will have one light tank left to face a single Heavy tank. Knowing there is no chance the Light tanks will be able to penetrate the armor of the heavy tank it is forced to face.

I know it will still take many more hits from a light mech to take down an assault mech in MWO but IMO having to take 20 hits to take out a much heaver mech is better than hitting that mech 20 times for Zero damages.

[DireWolf307]

OcO, on 08 June 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

Legging is a viable tactic!

However in this game it does NOT blow the leg off it only causes a speed decrease as the mech limps around.  If you dump the same amount of damage into an arm you could take out a weapon so the mech wont still be shooting everything it has at you while you are concentrating on its legs instead of killing it.

Edit: Sorry but there should most definitely NOT be a C-bill or xp penalty for legging or cockpit shots for that matter.  Anywhere you can land a shot you should go for.  I know as a potential Atlas pilot if I can leg a few of those annoying light mechs that keep running circles around me so I can slow them down and take them out I most certainly will be doing so.

I think the C-Bill or XP penalty would be a last-ditch effort if legging truly became a problem.

There are a myriad of other ways around the issue though.  I honestly think the fact that a leg just "pops off" when the internals were damaged was a little bit unrealistic in previous games.  If it is true that a destroyed leg just limits mobility, I think that's way more realistic.  It's not hard to imagine that a 'mech would have a built in "safety" that locks down the knee when the leg reaches a limit of damage and just limits mobility...  Certainly a lot more plausible than said leg just popping off because the ankle actuator is destroyed.

The point is, there are a lot of things the devs can do to balance the issue of legging without resorting to taking a crap on canon in order to make a bunch of ADHD kids happy.  A LOT of things.

Edited by DireWolf307, 08 June 2012 - 12:10 PM.

[Siilk]

KingCobra, on 02 November 2011 - 01:41 PM, said:

Also it would seam by 3049 there would have been adaptive regenerating armors if you were in hiding for a certian lenght of time they would renew or possibly energy shielding to withstand the assault of heavy weapons placed on mech type weapons platform.

No. Just no. With ideas like that, you're better off playing Hawken. Mechwarrior games has no place for "health regeneration".

[AdamantVallation]

What are you talking about! Shields definitely have a part in Mechwarrior, in fact they've been around for a long time!!



See its right there!! Shields!

Edited by AdamantVallation, 08 June 2012 - 12:17 PM.

[wpmaura]

no no and no. while were at no healing mechs either

[General Panties]

NO & NO...
nuff said.

[Hyperius]

Okay if people are really so concerned about legging why don't we just make it so that all the mechs are static turrets with no legs to destroy, that way legging can't happen! Problem solved.

In all seriousness though I don't know what the **** is wrong with all you "hardcore" gamers. You're all whining and moaning about how "games aren't hard enough" and "games are so dumbed down" and that they don't have enough challenge for you and then you want to take legging out of a game like Mechwarrior to make it less challenging to play. Make up your minds.

[Dreden Aelnir]

Dear OP,

God no. Nothing would be more detrimental to game play (and canon) then regenerative armor, or *gasp* shields. Matches would take FOREVER and frankly it would just be stupid. Ablative armor is what BT is and has always had...move on.

And just for the record, the Blue Shield is not an energy shield. Since it ONLY works against PPC's one can assume that it is some sort of armor charging unit that counteracts the particles (the first P) being shot at it.

[wpmaura]

Hyperius, on 08 June 2012 - 12:20 PM, said:

Okay if people are really so concerned about legging why don't we just make it so that all the mechs are static turrets with no legs to destroy, that way legging can't happen! Problem solved.

In all seriousness though I don't know what the **** is wrong with all you "hardcore" gamers. You're all whining and moaning about how "games aren't hard enough" and "games are so dumbed down" and that they don't have enough challenge for you and then you want to take legging out of a game like Mechwarrior to make it less challenging to play. Make up your minds.

what hardcore gamer said no to legging? that automaticly takes them out the running. But there is no legging its been stated its more akin to mw4 rules. need to take out both legs to down a mech

[Hyperius]

wpmaura, on 08 June 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

what hardcore gamer said no to legging? that automaticly takes them out the running. But there is no legging its been stated its more akin to mw4 rules. need to take out both legs to down a mech

There's a mini-debate going on a few posts back and based on what I've seen of this forum most gamers here consider themselves to be of the hardcore variety. I generally have no issue with that except lately there has been a lot of whining and hypocrisy in the gaming community in general about issues like this. And yes I remember the devs distinctly saying that you can only kill a mech through legging when you take out both legs but I can't remember where which is why I haven't posted it.

Buddahcjcc, on 08 June 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

you forgot to link where that wasnt as I linked where theyd said it was in the game

When he mentioned legging there he was referring to both legs being destroyed I'm pretty sure.

Edited by Hyperius, 08 June 2012 - 09:56 PM.