115 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

Snipers that use both arm and torso weapons will need to slowly sweep their aim across the battlefield as they track a target in preparation to fire, but if their arm reticule sweeps slightly ahead of the torso reticule, then you can't bring all your guns to bear on-target...

I would love a button that will toggle forced-arm/torso-convergence on and off so I can choose when my arms are freely sweeping across my firing arc and when they are locked to the torso. This can be envisioned as a braking-mechanism for your arms so they move more slowly than normal. This would be helpful for some combat situations, specifically Sniping where your reticules HAVE TO BE perfectly aligned to snipe a moving target from a long range with both torso- and arm-mounted weapons. There are other times, too, when I would want forced convergence such as springing an ambush.

Please note that this topic has nothing to do with the "convergence" your Mech deals with when adjusting for firing diststances in the way your own eyes "converge" to focus on things.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 11 May 2012 - 02:29 PM.

[Monky]

This is a good idea, and simple to impliment. Would really smooth out long range engagements and help focusing direct fire on a trackable target.

[Sprouticus]

Why not just move your reticule more slowly. All a lock is going to do is force that slow movement. I cant imagine it will be that hard to minimize the seperation on your own.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Sprouticus, on 11 May 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Why not just move your reticule more slowly. All a lock is going to do is force that slow movement. I cant imagine it will be that hard to minimize the seperation on your own.

I'm not talking about traget-lock, just manual aiming.

[Monky]

I think, for clarity, it's best to have an example.

Say there is a McGaussMech 400 meters away from you popping in and out of cover for shots, and you are having to move your reticle to his new point of entry each time. Now, you can move your arms faster if they have relevant weapons, but if you want to bring your full weapons load to bear, you'll have to wait for your torso to align. The trick is, 400 meters is a LONG DISTANCE. It may sound like just a number, but we've seen mechs in gameplay footage that look tiny at about 200 meters. If your reticle isn't completely settled, you'll likely miss with your torso weapons. Arm lock would negate that problem in exchange for hindering your response with arm based weapons.

Essentially it is a problem of the difference between really small angles (like 2 degrees difference between torso and arm) becoming rather signifigant at long ranges.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Exactly, Monkey. I would use an Awesome for an example - it has a PPC in the Arm and 2 in the torso, but if you slowly sweep your aim to hit someone and your arm always leads your torso, then you can't Alpha a distant moving target.

[Aegis Kleais]

I'd rather see a module increase the player's convergence than a button instantly converge weapons to the reticule. Otherwise, players will have to get a feel about holding a reticule on target for X time or to move the reticule more slowly in order to ensure shots converge at that location. Just my $0.02.

[Ogresan]

I think this is exactly the reason they went with the 2 reticles. If you want them to stay together then only move your reticle as fast as your torso can move and they should stay aligned as your arms won't be moving faster. (This is where the skill comes in.)

[Monky]

IIRC, even moving the arms slowly in the vids has torso lag. Can any of the devs confirm?

If the torso always moves at max speed then yeah, it would be moot once you got familiar with your mech, but I don't recall that being the case.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Aegis Kleais™, on 11 May 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:

I'd rather see a module increase the player's convergence than a button instantly converge weapons to the reticule.

Weapons convergence onto your target reticule is a different topic entirely, as per the small text below my proposal. What I am saying is there should be a "braking mechanism" that slows your arms down so they match the aim-sweeping-rate of your torso.

Ogresan, on 11 May 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

I think this is exactly the reason they went with the 2 reticles. If you want them to stay together then only move your reticle as fast as your torso can move and they should stay aligned as your arms won't be moving faster. (This is where the skill comes in.)

How do you know the arm reticule will align with the torso reticule when sweeping slowly? Once you start the sweep we can see from the gameplay videos that the arms' reticule always jumps ahead of the torso. That's a reflexive measure to help you quickly bring a gun to bear on an unexpected or quickly moving target, but sniping with weapons spread across your chassis requires locked recitules that move as one, traversing at the torso's aiming rate. There is nothing wrong with asking your Mech to keep the arms pointed straight ahead and rigid to match the torso weapons' aiming position.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 11 May 2012 - 02:31 PM.

[Pht]

Prosperity Park, on 11 May 2012 - 12:47 PM, said:

Snipers that use both arm and torso weapons will need to slowly sweep their aim across the battlefield as they track a target in preparation to fire, but if their arm reticule sweeps slightly ahead of the torso reticule, then you can't bring all your guns to bear on-target...

I would love a button that will toggle forced-arm/torso-convergence on and off so I can choose when my arms are freely sweeping across my firing arc and when they are locked to the torso. This can be envisioned as a braking-mechanism for your arms so they move more slowly than normal. This would be helpful for some combat situations, specifically Sniping where your reticules HAVE TO BE perfectly aligned to snipe a moving target from a long range with both torso- and arm-mounted weapons. There are other times, too, when I would want forced convergence such as springing an ambush.

= win button vs anyone not using it.

Bad idea.

Quote

Please note that this topic has nothing to do with the "convergence" your Mech deals with when adjusting for firing diststances in the way your own eyes "converge" to focus on things.

MWO has no other (revealed so far) convergence factor. This idea would put us right back to mw4 style aiming, towing along with it all the mw4 style snipers-only misery by removing (as far as we know) what is the only deconvergence (read, simulation of how a 'mech performs) system in the game.

If you want to snipe in the system as they've revealed it, learn the map, find a hide, park your mech, and allow the torsos and arms to align and put the reticule on the spot where you know targets will be, and DON'T move.

As far as we know, it seems this allows all weapons traveling at the same velocity to hit the same single armor panel all at once... snipers have no reason to complain; all they have to do is make sure to have the two reticules perfectly aligned to get this behavior.

Wait for target to show up in FOV, time the trigger pull for when he's in the right spot for all of your weapons to hit him.

Rise, wash, repeat, preferably with whatever weapon has the highest velocity/shortest travel time in the largest group possible.

Edited by Pht, 11 May 2012 - 05:00 PM.

[Belisarius1]

This thread is doomed because you used "snipers" in the title, but I think this is important and should be implemented.

The key thing is that the merged reticule moves at the speed of the torso and not the arms, so the precision comes at the cost of slower tracking. That makes it fair.

Hey, you even woke Pht up.

Edited by Belisarius†, 11 May 2012 - 05:00 PM.

[Pht]

Belisarius†, on 11 May 2012 - 05:00 PM, said:

The key thing is that the merged reticule moves at the speed of the torso and not the arms, so the precision comes at the cost of slower tracking. That makes it fair.

If they did it this way than everyone would take the mech with the fastest torso rotation that could fire an appropriately large group of whatever would be the highest velocity/shortest travel time weapons, to the exclusion of 'mechs with slower torso rotation rates, and use the toggle almost exclusively.

Breaking the only de-convergence (mech simulation) game mechanic is not a good thing, no matter how you break it, and break it this idea does.

Edited by Pht, 11 May 2012 - 05:07 PM.

[Belisarius1]

Pht, if you're not even aware that weapon convergence and arm/torso desync are different things, I'm really not sure what to tell you.

[Pht]

Belisarius†, on 11 May 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Pht, if you're not even aware that weapon convergence and arm/torso desync are different things, I'm really not sure what to tell you.

There is no other system in mwo that we know of that spreads the weapons fire around in an attempt to simulate how well a 'mech handles it's weapons other than the torso/arm desynch.

The desynch is the ONLY system that does this that we know of in mwo.

---

Remove the desynch and you have mw4, as far as we can tell.

[Monky]

The Devs have stated Torso weapons have a convergence time (otherwise they would alwasy fire straight forward, making them less useful in a brawl since you couldn't focus on a specific point of armor).

[Pht]

where?

Because from what I can see in the videos, the seperate groups have a 0 convergence time with all the other weapons mounted in torso... or arms.

[Felicitatem Parco]

"Weapons convergence" as defined by the MW:O developers is the mechanical action of weapons focusing their fire on the point-of-aim for said weapons.

"Reticule Convergence" as defined by Prosperity Park means keeping the arms slowed down such that their movement speed matches the aiming rate of torso weapons. I can't believe people are saying that slowing your arms down to match the torso aiming rate means an instant win button.

The game developers added the feature of weapons divergence as A BUFF, NOT A DEBUFF. It allows you to engage targets that you would otherwise be too slow to engage. This is what the developers have said. Giving players an option to temporarily disable this feature will not make people instant winners because, all of the sudden, they can't swing their arms around to target a new hostile.

And the idea that snipers are supposed to find a camping spot, point their guns down a valley, and wait for an opponent to casually walk through their sights? No. Snipers are supposed to have the ability to actively slew their weapons onto a target, track it, and fire when they feel comfortable. Locking the arms to the torso allows this to become a reality. Not allowing your arms to lock with the torso means you have to baby the joystick and accelerate your aim extremely slowly from a standstill to the target's movement speed to prevent your arms from jumping ahead of your torso... that shouldn't even be a concern.

I guess ther's nothing more to say - I want the ability to slow my arms down, and if you don't want this ability, then don't toggle it on.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 11 May 2012 - 05:38 PM.

[Belisarius1]

It's not even about sniping; you really have shot yourself in the foot there because you've opened yourself to the anti-MW4 army that's currently out in force.

It's about the fact there there will be situations in which I want to make a snap shot with arm mounted weapons, and there will be situations in which I want to sacrifice speed to be sure everything goes where it should.

If I'm threatened by an unexpected target I will often want to disrupt its fire by shooting as quickly as possible; in that case I want my arms unlocked. Conversely, if there is a light moving across my screen at moderate range, desync becomes frustrating because my reticules are constantly separated while tracking. In that situation I would want them locked.

Newbie players would probably lock it and just play like MW4, but newbies do a lot of silly things. Hopefully, more skilled players will value the extra twitch speed that the arms give them in combat, and unlock except when tracking fast lateral targets. There's advantages to both. If it does turn out that desynch isn't worth the price even to good players, then you could reassess the situation.

Edited by Belisarius†, 11 May 2012 - 09:31 PM.

[Redshift2k5]

Locking the arms to the torso is not an 'i win button', it has both advantages and disadvantages

The arms have much faster target acquisition time, for moving targets and close in fighting you will need the ability to move those arms! But if you want to strike with an arm-mounted PPC or laser and a torso mounted one, you'll want those reticules to line up before you fire. A toggle would be helpful for those ranges, but useless in close where it would remove your faster weapon seek from the more mobile arms.