48 replies to this topic

[Blind Baku]

Banditman, on 22 May 2012 - 01:03 PM, said:

Accuracy is a completely table top concept that has no place in this game. Your weapons are as accurate as you, the pilot, make them. If you pull the trigger at the wrong time, you miss. Pull the trigger at the right time, you hit. Simple as that. Size of the weapon is irrelevant.

Should not be the case. You ever fire a gun? let alone a big one that has recoil (for the shooter)? if not go find on and spend an hour lining up your shot and try to make 3 in the same place in a row...

Also you're original post fails apart after you've looked at it and weighed out more of what happens like range, accuracy, operating cost, etc...

[Mister Blastman]

Recoil is not harming the franchise because in Mechwarrior 2 and Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, ONLINE, you had to Lag Shoot which required a ton of skill. Mechwarrior 3 also had lag shooting but the netcode was ridiculously porked and it was quite easy to abuse it with ersmall toting Owens (they were WORSE than ShadowCats by far).

Mechwarrior 4 had no lag shooting. None. You could compensate with expertly timed forced recoil on an opponent.

So, without lag shooting and veritech style jump jets (a la MW 2 Mercenaries--was incredibly awesome fun btw), recoil needs to stay in. I don't want it so dumbed down that gameplay consists of endless circles of death just pressing the shoot button.

[Roland]

Quote

Mechwarrior 4 had no lag shooting. None.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are defining is "lag shooting", or maybe you are making a joke, but MW4 had huge amounts of what I would consider "lag shooting".

That is, once the hit detection moved to the server side after the initial patch, hitting with any travel time weapon required you to shoot where the mech wasn't... Not simply lead a mech based on his movement, but actually get your weapons to cross in front of him by multiple mech-lengths. On the shooter's screen, you wouldn't actually see the weapon's impact. The only way to know that you scored a hit was by checking the scoreboard.

[S3dition]

Roland, on 23 May 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are defining is "lag shooting", or maybe you are making a joke, but MW4 had huge amounts of what I would consider "lag shooting".

That is, once the hit detection moved to the server side after the initial patch, hitting with any travel time weapon required you to shoot where the mech wasn't... Not simply lead a mech based on his movement, but actually get your weapons to cross in front of him by multiple mech-lengths. On the shooter's screen, you wouldn't actually see the weapon's impact. The only way to know that you scored a hit was by checking the scoreboard.

In all the years I played MW4, I never experienced this. There were occasions where I didn't get credit for hits or kills, but I very rarely saw any lag or latency related issues.

[eZZip]

Roland, on 23 May 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are defining is "lag shooting", or maybe you are making a joke, but MW4 had huge amounts of what I would consider "lag shooting".

I think he meant leading the target, since MW4 had mostly hitscan weapons (exception was missiles and some explosive weapons, but even ACs were hitscan), while MW3 had non-hitscan ACs and PPCs and MW2 had non-hitscan lasers, ACs, or PPCs.

William Tyndale, on 23 May 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

Also you're original post fails apart after you've looked at it and weighed out more of what happens like range, accuracy, operating cost, etc...

When you include other characteristics, quantifying a weapon's effectiveness is pretty impossible without having access to statistics in the game, or at least the game itself. (In your list, operating cost is not a factor in balance, however, since that is external to games.)

[Roland]

eZZip, on 23 May 2012 - 02:16 PM, said:

I think he meant leading the target, since MW4 had mostly hitscan weapons (exception was missiles and some explosive weapons, but even ACs were hitscan), while MW3 had non-hitscan ACs and PPCs and MW2 had non-hitscan lasers, ACs, or PPCs.

Do you mean to say that you think that MW4's weapons were all instant hit?

[eZZip]

That is essentially what hitscan means.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia said:

Hitscan weapon is often used colloquially to refer to a projectile weapon which uses unmodified hitscan information to dictate whether or not it has hit its target — deploying the weapon calls the hitscan function, and if an object is detected in the path of the projectile, a hit is registered. Since the effect is immediate, the projectiles effectively travel at infinite speed and have a linear or otherwise simple trajectory — a practical but very crude simulation of a bullet's speed and accuracy.

Edited by eZZip, 23 May 2012 - 05:12 PM.

[Yeach]

Recoil worked badly in Mechwarrior3.
It was ANOTHER reason why nobody put weapons such as PPC or Gauss or ACs in the arms.
Placing these large weapons in the torso avoided this recoil.

[Roland]

eZZip, on 23 May 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

That is essentially what hitscan means.

Ya, I know what hitscan mean, but MW4 weapons were not instant hit.
Different weapons had travel time built into the code. Some of the groups which ended up making modifications to the game actually modified these travel time values to try and reduce some of the advantages that lasers had, in an attempt to increase the variety of weapon usage.

[Belisarius1]

Wow, that's actually Roland. I did not expect you to venture into these halls.

And yeah... ACs were definitely not hitscan in MW4. I have no idea what game you guys were playing.

Edited by Belisarius†, 23 May 2012 - 09:35 PM.

[Blind Baku]

eZZip, on 23 May 2012 - 02:16 PM, said:

When you include other characteristics, quantifying a weapon's effectiveness is pretty impossible without having access to statistics in the game, or at least the game itself. (In your list, operating cost is not a factor in balance, however, since that is external to games.)

Operating Cost would be a factor. Ever play the Armored Core games? when you played PvP bullets and missiles were free, you used them, but generally when mission running you did everything in your power to avoid them for the first half of the game, you could beat a mission and be 2 - 3 times the reward in the hole for AC[Mech] repairs and ammo expenditures (you'd have to have sucked pretty bad for that, but it could happen). So if there is an operating cost, it may not affect the weapons effectivity and over all balance of the weapon's combat ability but it would play into how it is used in game because somepeople would avoid them, or use them only frugally. There is a reason the ML is the standard, good all around stats (range, damage, etc...) at the cost of not having any fancy tricks (knock back, homing, etc...) and still holding a stupidly low operating cost (no ammo, readily avaiable). Recoil and knockback (one for the shooter and one on the target) are trick ponies and worth noting but they are not the game changer, the human element is.

[HRR Insanity]

Belisarius1, on 23 May 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

Wow, that's actually Roland. I did not expect you to venture into these halls.

/snickers/ We're all here. It's only a matter of time now.

{HRR} Insanity

[Kenyon Burguess]

i didnt see anything in the MWO game footage that caused me concern over recoil and impact. even when the cat took ac ac/20 to the tip of it's nose, it just didnt seem all that roughed up over it. as far as MW4 goes, i ran around with assault lasers and a handful of machineguns. lasers vrs autocannon debate is pretty meaningless when you can use that setup

[Belisarius1]

We are all going to die.

[Mister Blastman]

Roland, on 23 May 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are defining is "lag shooting", or maybe you are making a joke, but MW4 had huge amounts of what I would consider "lag shooting".

That is, once the hit detection moved to the server side after the initial patch, hitting with any travel time weapon required you to shoot where the mech wasn't... Not simply lead a mech based on his movement, but actually get your weapons to cross in front of him by multiple mech-lengths. On the shooter's screen, you wouldn't actually see the weapon's impact. The only way to know that you scored a hit was by checking the scoreboard.

I never saw this, ever... and I had hundreds of hours into MW 4 and not to brag, was at the very top of the MW 4 stats page, i.e. #1 for some time (the stats for the whole community). There was no lag shooting.

If you had lag shooting, your internet connection was terrible or you lived on Pluto.

[Gremlich Johns]

recoil? Physics. Newton's Law specifically.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 24 May 2012 - 05:44 PM.

[Gabriyel]

Recoil goes both ways, you have ammo issues and if the devs make the mechs according to spec - ammo will be an issue in a fight.

Also, let's take an Archer for example or Catapult since that's in the game. If it's running at max speed and fires off several flights of LRMs, that has 'recoil' of it's own slowing the mech down 10 kph or so. Same with larger ballistic weapons and depends on the Myomer muscle/strength/weight of the mech... While I don't see it in the books/canon, the missile slow down I do see mentioned multiple times so far. Recoil is mentioned in the books, such as SRM/LRM hitting home and knocking a mech off balance, turned around and even knocked down as a result of missing arm throwing off balance.

To counterpoint the benefits of recoil and staggering attacks to throw off aim, take a Marauder with PPC/Large Laser setup and while heavy on heat has no ammo issues and is a pretty common and powerful mech for it's era.

Also keep in mind, anyone with a 'recoil' generating weapon will have ammo and that ammo can potentially explode. Their weapons can jam, i.e. AC and happens often in canon. Especially if said weapon is immersed in dirty water/swamp or something.

So there are tradeoffs to any mech design is all I'm getting at, but from the first 7-8 books I've read and prior mech games it's actually canon and to be frank, realistic and I vote for it to stay.

[Roland]

Mister Blastman, on 24 May 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

I never saw this, ever... and I had hundreds of hours into MW 4 and not to brag, was at the very top of the MW 4 stats page, i.e. #1 for some time (the stats for the whole community). There was no lag shooting.

If you had lag shooting, your internet connection was terrible or you lived on Pluto.

Well, like I said, it's in the code. Different weapons in MW4 had travel time. Not sure what to tell you if you thought they were all instant hit. Although I wouldn't call this "lag shooting" as much as I'd call it simply having to lead a target. Only laser weapons had zero travel time.

What I would call "lag shooting" would mean having to account for.. lag. And again, like I said, this was introduced in the patch that moved hit detection onto the server side. That coincided with the period when lasers became utterly dominant and started accounting for over 80% of weapons used when you looked at the server stats for the major leagues.

In terms of folks living on pluto, lots of folks played from all around the globe, so you weren't getting 10ms pings from everyone to the server.

I can't really explain why you wouldn't have noticed such things, but based on what folks who were modifying the game were doing, it was pretty obvious that every weapon wasn't instant hit.

[Needle Fingers]

Mister Blastman, on 24 May 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

I never saw this, ever... and I had hundreds of hours into MW 4 and not to brag, was at the very top of the MW 4 stats page, i.e. #1 for some time (the stats for the whole community). There was no lag shooting.

If you had lag shooting, your internet connection was terrible or you lived on Pluto.

Or you know, live in australia like myself. With things like AC's, i had to lead my targets by more then a few mech lengths in order to register a hit when not using laser weaponry.

Edited by Needle Fingers, 24 May 2012 - 05:04 PM.

[Belisarius1]

Yeah, I really have no idea what to tell you, Mr #1 zone stats. Accounting for lag was a huge part of playing the game. Either you hosted all your games, you only played on servers in your neighbourhood, or you racked up your hundred hours prior to Vengeance PR1 when they changed the hit detection.

You really mean to say that you never once experienced seeing PPC sparks on a target without registering damage? I find that impossible to believe.