11 replies to this topic

[Bogsveigir]

This is not addressed to anyone in particular, but rather to an ongoing theme in many posts in the forums. I was going to post it as a reply in a post I was reading, but decided that it covered more than the topic of the post. This is part rant, part plea, part statement of opinion; take it as you will.

I have played since the Founders packs went for sale. I've read the forums, and have seen many posts on the same topics over and over. Person A is in a Light mech and complains about person B in an Assault that keeps knocking them down and killing them. Person B is in an Assault complaining about person A in a Light that keeps shooting them, and they can't do anything about it. Person C is in a Heavy or Medium, and brags about how they keep running back and forth over the Light keeping them knocked-down while their teammate(s) pummel the light to smithereens. . . Person D complains about x being OverPowered (while bragging in a build thread about how they have 6 or 9 of y, and how much they love it.) or that z is nerfed, and needs to be buffed. Person E complains (frequently) that the game isn't ready, and that the company will surely go out of business, or lose money, or fail at this or that if they don't do <insert action item here> right now.

There is a lot of work to be done on the mechanics of this game. The knockdowns and collisions are needed, but not at the frequency they were happening. Until a few patches ago, I was being knocked-down if I ran within 50-90 meters of another mech (in my Jenner or Commando). To put it in perspective, an average mech is 15 meters tall (10 to 20 according to Sarna). That means that I was being knocked-down as far away as 3 to 6 times the height of the mech I was passing,or 5 to 9 times my own height. I know the distance because I target the mechs I'm firing-on. For a while, the Dragon was the ultimate cheese: you could run into it with an Atlas, and the Atlas would fall. You could pilot it through a line of mechs, knocking-down Atlas after Atlas, if they were lined-up correctly. The Devs have made many changes to the knockdown formula, and will likely make many more. I have faith in their skills.

I'm fine with knockdowns, as long as they're warranted. Grazing another mech shouldn't warrant one. Colliding with a mech above certain speeds should, depending on the angle of impact.

For the people that say an Atlas shouldn't be able to trip a light: they're not doing it right. The light pilot should be able to dodge the attempt if there are no obstacles, or choke-points, or other teammates, or enemies, or whatever . . . Add the Environment, and you have tools to use against the other mech. You can trick the light into thinking they have more room than they actually do by adjusting your throttle, or you could maneuver them into running into a wall, or off a cliff, or into your buddy, or into their buddy. We don't have disc-brakes or ABS on our mechs; accelerating, turning, and stopping take time . . . not to mention that we have to split our attention between the radar map, targeting you, avoiding terrain obstacles, avoiding your (or our own) teammates, and the bullets, missiles, and beams aimed at you, us, or other people; and all of this at a higher rate of speed than you. No matter how good the pilot, you are going to miss something at some point. Any light pilot that says otherwise is feeding you a line, or trying to sell you something.

That being said, lights should recover faster than mediums, which should be faster than heavies, which should be faster than Assaults. Also, the animation should be optional. I would rather remain in the cockpit view, and not see the surrounding mechs drilling me, or about to. If we have to have the external view for the collisions, we should have an external view as an option for gameplay. . . Which I am also against. Is the external view from our ghosts that got knocked out of our bodies and mechs? Just sayin'.

I consider myself to be a Scout Pilot. I have been forcing myself to play in Meds and heavier for the last week or so, so I can gain the experience of what it is like for the heavier mechs to deal with scouts, and with their roles on the battlefield . . . I am not doing this because I'm masochistic, or because I'm bored with Scouting. I'm doing this to try to be a better Scout. I am looking forward to more specialized Role Warfare, and the direction that the game has been announced to be heading.

As for using knockdowns as a strategy . . . Do you think that your heavier mech should be invulnerable to 20-40 tons of mech slamming into it at 130kph? Force = Mass x Accelleration . . . An apple weighs about 4-6 ounces. It falls from one meter with a force of 1 Newton-meter. A baseball weighs about the same, so falling from the same meter distance, has the same 1 Nm. That same baseball thrown at 100 miles per hour now measures 230 Nm. A .357 round fired at about 1000 feet per second (682 miles per hour) has 450 Nm on impact from it's 1/3 ounce of mass. My math fails me when I try to scale it up to 100T@64kmph vs 35T@140kmph . . . I would imagine that the combined energies would be enough to take-out the Jenner, and shear-off half of the Atlas as well. If my guesstimation is accurate, and the Devs accounted for real-world physics for collisions, All mechs would be going to great lengths to avoid collisions the way most Lights try to.

So instead of all the bickering about Lights being hard to kill because they are fast, and Heavies being bullies because they are heavier and try to trip you, why don't we all enjoy the game? This is, after all, a game. Free to Play. Open Beta, which still means Beta. The Devs will most likely be fixing things, breaking other things, and turning things on or off at times to test various functions. . . This is what Beta means. Open Beta is not Release, or even Release Candidate. Be patient and understanding; file bug reports, suggestions, and ideas; Enjoy this Free game; If you can't accept bugs and issues, you may want to check-back with the game after it Releases to 'Production', and see if it is more stable, and has the problems fixed. MWLL (http://mechlivinglegends.net) is a nice game. I don't enjoy it as much as MWO, and I don't like the mech progression, or how slow the lights feel. The fastest mech feels as slow and responsive as a moderately slow heavy in MWO, to me.

Final section regards all the complaints of PUG vs Premade. Most Premades are PUGs using VoiceComms (TS/C3/Mumble/etc.) . . . Many PUG Premades or Premade Non-Outfit get violated by Outfit Premades the way PUG Non-VoiceComms do by the PUG Premades. The Outfits are the Organized Groups like the BWC, SoR, HSX, RRR, and the like. These are people that play together repeatedly, are organized, and practice tactics. I can't tell you how many Non-VoiceComm PUGs I've played in where I try to coordinate over the in-game texts, telling my team where targets are, and lighting-up enemies to be targeted by LRMs, only to have my team fire LRMs at an enemy scout that's 90m away from them, and ignore anything reasonably tactically sound. I enjoy meeting new players to PUG with in TS. I'm looking into applying to join one of the organized groups. Please, people, understand that this is a Team Game. Even when you're PUGing, you cannot win if you don't help your team as a whole. The smallest teams will soon be a Lance (4 mechs), and we may soon have Company vs Company (3 Lances = 1 Company).

Flame me, berate me, single me out on the field, if you feel you must. All I ask is that you consider the points I'm trying to make, and to try to have fun. Real life has too many problems without us trying to manufacture them in a game.

Thank you for your time, and consideration. Practice radical Lagom.

[Tennex]

i assume spock is Gauss cuz it is OP as ****

[Bryan Ekman]

Hey I'm wearing that T-Shirt as we speak..

[Fire for Effect]

Bryan Ekman, on 02 November 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

Hey I'm wearing that T-Shirt as we speak..

Pictures, Bryan, Pictures....Talk is cheap... as Proof its you, show us a nice Marauder miniature in your left hand ;-)As for the original poster (to long I only quick read it ^^) its sadly normal that many people will complain about anything. Optimum balace is if all are complaining but each half is claiming the completely opposite of the other...

[Khobai]

Quote

That being said, lights should recover faster than mediums, which should be faster than heavies, which should be faster than Assaults.

Nope. Why would a 35 ton jenner get up any faster than a 100 ton atlas? Theres 300lb football players that can get up faster than 140lb men because theyre in better physical condition. Weights got nothing to do with it.

Especially when the Atlas devotes slots to hand actuators and the jenner doesnt. Mechs with hand actuators should get up faster than mechs without hand actuators. So yeah you could maybe make an argument that the Commando should get up faster than an Atlas, but a Jenner certainly shouldnt.

Edited by Khobai, 03 November 2012 - 07:27 AM.

[Morashtak]

(Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, Bacon. And Bacon always wins.)

Full C3 implementation and proper use of it will narrow the pug vs premade W/L ratio.

[Scarlett Avignon]

1. I'm willing to bet that you go to an external view during knockdowns to prevent the player having to see terrain pass through their cockpit as a result of clipping issues.

2.

Tennex, on 02 November 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

i assume spock is Gauss cuz it is OP as ****

You have no idea how Rock, Paper, Scissors works, do you?

[AvatarofWhat]

Franklen Avignon, on 03 November 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

You have no idea how Rock, Paper, Scissors works, do you?

But spock always wins....

[Stone Wall]

people just have to accept MW has a huge learning curve. nerfing for casuals isn't the way.

[Blis]

Bogsveigir, on 02 November 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

.................

As for using knockdowns as a strategy . . . Do you think that your heavier mech should be invulnerable to 20-40 tons of mech slamming into it at 130kph? Force = Mass x Accelleration . . . An apple weighs about 4-6 ounces. It falls from one meter with a force of 1 Newton-meter. A baseball weighs about the same, so falling from the same meter distance, has the same 1 Nm. That same baseball thrown at 100 miles per hour now measures 230 Nm. A .357 round fired at about 1000 feet per second (682 miles per hour) has 450 Nm on impact from it's 1/3 ounce of mass. My math fails me when I try to scale it up to 100T@64kmph vs 35T@140kmph . . . I would imagine that the combined energies would be enough to take-out the Jenner, and shear-off half of the Atlas as well. If my guesstimation is accurate, and the Devs accounted for real-world physics for collisions, All mechs would be going to great lengths to avoid collisions the way most Lights try to.


...................................

Dude, your physics need some polishing...

.357 round at 682 mph (~310m/s) has kinetic energy of 450 J ... 35 ton jenner traveling at 140km/h would have kinetic energy of 26,6 MJ (10^6 joules), 100 ton atlas traveling at 64km/h has roughly 15,8 MJ (10^6 joules)... For comparisons sake a gauss rifle firing 100kg projectiles at lets say at 2000m/s, would have kinetic energy of 200 MJ (10^6 joules)....

So, my point I'm trying to make. Knockdown is totally feasible with any combination of mech's in BT universe, survivability of full-speed head-on is no big deal when reviewing the energies involved, afterall even a jenner can take a slug from gauss straight to face and survive...

Edited by Blis, 03 November 2012 - 10:20 AM.

[Vapor Trail]

Have to do this...

F = m a isn't a formula for collision mechanics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision

Momentum and the conservation thereof during inelastic collisions...
Uf = Uo
U = m1v1 + m2v2
yadda yadda...

Newton-Meter is a unit of torque.

Newton is a unit of force, but again not used in collisions.

[Reno Blade]

Great post Bogs!
Too bad it will probably not be read by many of these people who post the everyday "spam" here.

Edited by Reno Blade, 04 November 2012 - 10:46 AM.