1063 replies to this topic

[Comguard]

There are several options for solving the problem with hyper-accurate laser fire, some good ideas already mentioned.

Problem: this Beta is a fake-beta because we never get to test stuff. PGI just tells us they are testing it (DHS, ECM), then release it in a broken state (DHS, Artemis, ECM - all somehow broken) - we test nothing.

The argument "it's beta" doesn't count because we are not beta-testing, we are just playing. It's basically the same as in Closed Beta. But there we had really hope it was there to polish the game.

Concerning weapon balance you are at the mercy of the devs and have to swallow what they offer.

[TitanSeraph]

Why I totally agree with you on this subject, and think that this the main issues, while being balance, should not be the first to be analysed for fix, but the reason for this.

I believe that all of these issues are happening because PG are trying to make a multiplayer BT game which is to be as "Fun to play" as possible to everyone in order to bring people to pay.

See the main issue here? They don't care about the balance, and some suckers on this site will viciously defend any notion of this game being broken. I have ringed the bell too, and am happy to see that I am not the only one worried.

The way this is going, this could either wreck any future BT franchise, or simply cause more imbalance in future releases.


Not that it is all. Far, far from that. I, for one, believe your weapon balance idea would work a lot, and should be tried. But people don't want a tough, challenging game. They don't want a BT game where you are an actual challenged dirty mercenary who may struggle to fix his mech, and thrive by combat. They don't want that.

What they want is to be able to use the game's money system to quickly level up and have powerful mechs which simply dominate that gameplay, and then hold their ground. Most players going against this are mainly doing it for the same purpose:
If this game becomes balanced, they will be losing more often, and will have lost their money. And meanwhile, PG will not obtain as much money if the game actually gets balanced.

Last time I checked, a PPC was supposed to be able to kill a pilot with a well placed strike.
Last time I checked, BattleMechs with hands could use melee where the damage was proportional to their engine weight, and even use fallen parts as weapons.

Where is the mercenary feel of jurry rigging?

And most of all, why are some mechs out of timeline?

[MustrumRidcully]

SpaceODC, on 09 January 2013 - 05:06 AM, said:

I really don't understand why lasers shouldn't be accurate ... WTF ?

The Laser itself may be accurate, but having multiple lasers on fixed mounts all hitting precisely the same spot while your mech is moving and the target is moving is something that is quite a lot harder.

Comparison to tanks like the M1 Abrams or the Leopard only get us so far here, because these tanks only have one single weapon installed on a single turret.
It may be better to compare to naval vessels that are equipped with multiple cannons.

[AtomCore]

Sorry if hurt someone's feelings.
I paid devs to see in future decent CryEngine 3 shooter + 700$ for new PC (which I don't really needed).
I waited from summer hoping on Xmas present...

1.Where is University 3050's content?
2.Where is CryE 3? DX11? - Didnt heard.
Besides this 5 maps: lots of tactics - maybe; imagination, creativity (different planets) - not a scrap! (in Ukraine in March we seeing same landscapes - only crashed tanker on river is lesser size)

Instead, devs spend money on commercial, netcoders and *******.

What will be in a year?
- Beta - dont laugh.. dont
- same 5+1(one more night) map (3000 fights/5 = 600 round each )
- same 14+3 mechs (average 200 fights on each mech)
Dont you think this is boring? Even faction content wont save from this boring bor... bueee

Please, stop post this silly topics about weapon balance (which is OP - devs should see it from killing logs), BT, TT rules. Do You like TT games? - Play it. Find browser BT MMO. By the way? You could spend this founders 100$ to invest your own browser TT emulator.
You distract theirs attention from making best FPS ever.

[pcunite]

I applaud the OP for making a case and providing ideas. Discussion is what we need before this game goes "live". I don't want to see a cone of fire approach, I like the current approach. However, something he stated caught my attention. I've quoted it below.

HRR Insanity, on 07 January 2013 - 06:13 PM, said:

... you can have that EXACT same effect and with more suspense if you make each weapon important. Rather than making each weapon a bare scratch on the enemy (as they are now), you can have people picking shots with that AC20. Right now it's very much a lot of fire for not much effect. I'd rather have less fire, more skill, and careful gameplay with actual heat, armor, and weapons value that resemble BattleTech. The alphastrike would still be there as a 'last resort' but unlike the present, it wouldn't be EVERY shot is an alphastrike.

I like the thinking here because MWO was supposed to be a chess game. A queen, rook, and even the humble pawn can take you out quickly. The way MWO works now is by requiring lockstep movements with your lance mates to do anything. All singular items and motion in this game are worthless. As a player you must fire at the same time and at the same mech as all your lance mates; basically forming a roving megatron. What fun is it when you can't do anything yourself, ever?

[SpaceODC]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 January 2013 - 05:19 AM, said:

The Laser itself may be accurate, but having multiple lasers on fixed mounts all hitting precisely the same spot while your mech is moving and the target is moving is something that is quite a lot harder.

Comparison to tanks like the M1 Abrams or the Leopard only get us so far here, because these tanks only have one single weapon installed on a single turret.
It may be better to compare to naval vessels that are equipped with multiple cannons.

still, if any of these lasers is able to target right alone, why would it be different when they fire together ? there are no additional forces or anything

fixed supports ? they could point slightly inwards, after all, there are range limits

as for the balancing, this is easy to change, but the question is what and how

[Roland]

Abrahms, on 08 January 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

Boating should be viable, just not the best, route. An NO, do NOT add spread. Its the fastest way to remove skill when you reduce almost everything to chance. The noob will win because his spread dice roll did better than yours, regardless of skill = fail.

This is just another example of you guys talking past each other, and just assuming that the other side of the discussion wants something terrible. You are arguing against strawmen.

Let us be clear here... your interpretation of weapons spread here, where you just roll dice to determine hits, is not something that anyone in this thead is suggesting.

Here are some clear examples of situations, to help clarify:
Take a 4P... even if you removed all convergence of his torso mounted laser, what would happen?
They would fire in a very well defined, player understood manner. They wouldn't shoot around randomly. They'd fire in what would actually be a fairly tight cluster, since they are all mounted in a fairly tight cluster. No Dice rolling there.

Or imagine a case where you implement what is essentially reticle spread in certain situations.. such as firing multiple weapons, or moving at high speeds, etc. Even in those cases, it's not really "dice rolling".

You, as the pilot, can control the situations which cause that spread.. thus, it becomes an issue of skill, since you are forced to make piloting decisions to control your accuracy.

Also, folks need to realize... reticle spread is something which has been incorporated into essentially EVERY competitive shooter there is, for the past decade. This is not "rolling dice". This is how modern shooters work. You guys understand that, right? Serious question.. you do in fact understand this, right?

Again, I don't even really care that much about weapons spread... but arguments such as the one presented here by Abrahms seem to be misunderstanding what the other side is even suggesting, which is going to preclude any kind of understanding.

[ParasiteX]

I made a few illustration to show what a fixed convergance would do.

Heres how it currently works in-game. No matter hwere you aim from, your shots will always converge on the point your aiming at. Making cheezy boating nuilds, like the 6PPC stalkers, way more deadly than they should be.


Now if we where to instead have the convergance fixed to the range of the farthest target in previous illustration. you would instead end up with a more spread out pattern, if you where to shoot something closer to you.


Now my third example, would be if we instead set weapons to converge at the middle target. Which instead would cause the furthest target to have a more spread out shot, as the shot would converge at the middle range. But you would have a much tighter grouping on closer targets.


So yeah. no dice rolling at all. you simply have to adjust your aim slightly, depending on range, to accoutn for weapon convergance. requiering more skill from player obviosly. but making bigger single shot weapons like the AC20, more viable. than 9ML boats.

The effect would be three fold. First it would make alpha strike boating less viable. Secondly, it would be more in line, with how TT works. And thirdly. It would be more realistic.

Edited by ParasiteX, 09 January 2013 - 09:01 AM.

[AndyHill]

One of the biggest reasons for boating being so effective is the heat model chosen by PGI. They cohse slowly dissipating heat with massive alpha capacity and virtually no penalties for overheating. If the heat capacity was much lower compared to the cycle rate of weapons AND there would be significant penalties for overheating (slow down, internal damage) it would encourage chain firing and virtually eliminate boating. Alpha strikes would truly be a special tool for special situations.

[Corvus Antaka]

Comguard, on 09 January 2013 - 05:06 AM, said:

There are several options for solving the problem with hyper-accurate laser fire, some good ideas already mentioned.

Problem: this Beta is a fake-beta because we never get to test stuff. PGI just tells us they are testing it (DHS, ECM), then release it in a broken state (DHS, Artemis, ECM - all somehow broken) - we test nothing.

The argument "it's beta" doesn't count because we are not beta-testing, we are just playing. It's basically the same as in Closed Beta. But there we had really hope it was there to polish the game.

Concerning weapon balance you are at the mercy of the devs and have to swallow what they offer.

I hope you are wrong.

[Yokaiko]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 January 2013 - 05:19 AM, said:

It may be better to compare to naval vessels that are equipped with multiple cannons.

I assure you they aren't close to pinpoint, even the gyro stabilized mounts we have today.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Roland, on 09 January 2013 - 06:17 AM, said:

Or imagine a case where you implement what is essentially reticle spread in certain situations.. such as firing multiple weapons, or moving at high speeds, etc. Even in those cases, it's not really "dice rolling".

You, as the pilot, can control the situations which cause that spread.. thus, it becomes an issue of skill, since you are forced to make piloting decisions to control your accuracy.

Also, folks need to realize... reticle spread is something which has been incorporated into essentially EVERY competitive shooter there is, for the past decade. This is not "rolling dice". This is how modern shooters work. You guys understand that, right? Serious question.. you do in fact understand this, right?

It depends on the type of bloom your implementing, If stationary is zero bloom then yes weapons are still accurate, if at stationary there is still a small amount of bloom, then it is random because your shot falls somewhere inside of that bloom, you don't decide that.

The problem with this type of game and a CoF is by implementing it, you nullify or severely hamper multiple styles of game play.

Team A plays a high pressure movement based style of game, their style of game play has just been dealt a massive blow because they suffer either an enforced accuracy penalty for playing in that manner, or to stop/slow down increases their exposure time to the enemy resulting in them taking more damage from enemy fire, they lose their ability to play on the move and dictate the pace of the game.

Team B is one of those static camper type teams, the CoF system suits them, as they can just pick a spot camp it out and not have to worry so much about the CoF, they are only ever going to be walking up and down to spot or fire, because of this they have a reduced exposure time their CoF is not as big.

In most modern FPS games, a CoF works because none of this matters, you spray and prey while jumping like a lunatic, or your hip fire and still pump out 100+ rounds into something that can take 1-3 hits tops.

There is a greater degree of tactics and strategy behind a mechwarrior drop, a CoF system simply will not work without removing viable tactics and turning the game into stationary camping wars.

Convergence is still the best way forward.

[Sug]

DV McKenna, on 09 January 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:

Team A plays a high pressure movement based style of game, their style of game play has just been dealt a massive blow because they suffer either an enforced accuracy penalty for playing in that manner, or to stop/slow down increases their exposure time to the enemy resulting in them taking more damage from enemy fire, they lose their ability to play on the move and dictate the pace of the game.

Team B is one of those static camper type teams, the CoF system suits them, as they can just pick a spot camp it out and not have to worry so much about the CoF, they are only ever going to be walking up and down to spot or fire, because of this they have a reduced exposure time their CoF is not as big.

Team A switches to high damage single weapons instead of boating smaller weapons. They can still fire accurately while moving.

Team B will be fine firing while standing still as long as no one targets them. Even if standing still gives Team B the accuracy we currently enjoy they still need to be able to hit moving targets. Since it is much harder to hit a moving target than a stationary target Team A will still be able to use their tactics effectively.

That being said I not sure if the OP brought up adding a motion penalty to accuracy. I think that was thrown in later. A cone of fire that only comes into effect while firing multiple weapons was the original idea i believe.

[Jot Nara]

Best thread I have read in a long time. OP is spot on. Implement please.

[Fastidious]

Roland, on 09 January 2013 - 06:17 AM, said:

Also, folks need to realize... reticle spread is something which has been incorporated into essentially EVERY competitive shooter there is, for the past decade. This is not "rolling dice". This is how modern shooters work. You guys understand that, right? Serious question.. you do in fact understand this, right?

It's not a fact and you are wrong. CoF is mainly used to remove skill and make games console friendly since controllers lack the precision of a mouse. That's why it's used so heavily lately due to console dominance over the last decade or so.

[CTsai]

Read the OP and skimmed through the first few pages and all I can say is that I don't really agree with the OP.
I will admit that the only battletech game I've ever played before mwo was mw4 and I literally don't know jack about TT games.
(And yes, I am probably one of those so called "CODer" in some people's eyes.)
Honestly, I don't see any reason why we need to completely overhaul the system like op and some others suggested.

1. Ac20(or other single high dmg weapon) is merely a shadow of its TT counter part? Maybe. Like I said, ive never played TT before, but I would imagine that it takes considerably longer to fire an ac 20 again after its been shot(compared to mere seconds of cycle time in mwo). So yeah, its not as devastating in one shot compared to TT, but over the same amount of timr its still disgustingly scary, despite armor values being doubled.

2. Penalize group firing weapons by introducing fire cone or remove convergence in torso-mounted weapons altogether?
As stated above, idk if weapons group exists in TT, but regardless, it feels like a perfectly balanved system. I mean, you trade some of your alpha firepower for a more managable heat generation and avoid waste of ammo by not firing both long and short range at the same time. The "penalty" already exists in the form of attack output per trigger pull imo.
And as far as the argument "weapons are supposed to hit different locations depending on where they are mounted on your mech because thats how it works in TT". We can argue it several ways.
Lore wise, the P-51 pilot argument is enough to justify torso mounted weapons convergence, for me anyway.
As far as gameplay goes, I would like to argue the the op pretty much brought up my arguement when he tried to rebuttal the P-51 justification. Forget about lore and everything, mwo is a game, specifically, it is a DIFFERENT game from TT.
Like it or not, mwo IS a fps game, the only difference is that we are fighting in giant machine of death instead of super regenerative soldiers. And imo in a true skill based competitive fps game, you hit where you aimed.
You can make the weapons harder to aim all you want, but at the end of the day, weapon impacts where the crosshairs was pointing when the trigger was pulled.

3. As far doubled armor value making mechs harder to kill, I'd say this is pretty subjective.
For me it felt like mechs in mw4 takes A LOT longer to kill, while mechs here crumble like some ****** cookies.

[Roland]

Fastidious, on 09 January 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

It's not a fact and you are wrong. CoF is mainly used to remove skill and make games console friendly since controllers lack the precision of a mouse. That's why it's used so heavily lately due to console dominance over the last decade or so.

What modern shooters do not incorporate ANY cone of fire, and always fire with absolute precision?

Your suggestion here, that its intention is to "make games console friendly since controllers lack the precision of a mouse" doesn't really make much sense. I mean, certainly gamepads are less precise than a mouse... but introduction of a CoF into modern shooters was not done to address this issue. Why would adding additional imprecision to an already imprecise control mechanism help it?

Generally, in console based shooters, what you saw added to address the imprecision of the gamepad are things like auto-aim or sticky aim... Getting the reticle "kind of near" the target causes it to kind of "snap" to it.

Again, I honestly do not really care either way in this regard... for MWO, I could take or leave such things. In the current system, you ALREADY have a spread of fire for virtually any target moving of appreciable speed, since you have to aim in front of them, which causes weapons to not converge at a different range, and end up spreading damage.

[Soy]

Roland earlier you said it's not a dice roll.

Sure, if you want to get semantical about it.

However, it is a RNG that simply buffs out skill or lack thereof into a happier medium.

Tuned Mass Damper is a bad idea in this game, in my opinion. Unless the idea is to retain as many noobs as possible, in which case I say run with it. And stick in a bunch more hand-holder mechanics as well.

[SilentWolff]

#1 Cry less on these boards
#2 Practice aiming in game
#3 Problem solved

[Roland]

Soy, on 09 January 2013 - 01:45 PM, said:

Roland earlier you said it's not a dice roll.

Sure, if you want to get semantical about it.

However, it is a RNG that simply buffs out skill or lack thereof into a happier medium.

Tuned Mass Damper is a bad idea in this game, in my opinion. Unless the idea is to retain as many noobs as possible, in which case I say run with it. And stick in a bunch more hand-holder mechanics as well.

Well, it's not quite a RNG, if the damage spread is always linked directly to actions of the pilot though, right?

For instance, if I'm playing CoD, I don't just hold down the trigger, right? Because whatever gun I'm using is gonna spread fire all over the place... Not being able to just spray fire isn't knocking noobs out of the game.. because noobs are the ones who are just holding down the trigger. Understanding how to control your fire is part of the game.

Likewise, in numerous games which adjust the accuracy of weapons depending on the stance of the player, it's not a reduction of the skill level required to play the game. It is merely another aspect of gameplay which must be understood and used by the player.

The really critical aspect here though, which I think is a key aspect of your position, is that accuracy must be kept linked to player actions. You cannot allow it to be determined randomly, regardless of player action, because it injects "luck" into play, which is somewhat at odds with the notion of a skill based game.

For instance, imagine something like adding not even a cone of fire effect, but rather... reticle shake, perhaps... as an effect for when your mech is running very hot. That's not simply reducing the skill level to play the game, right? Because it's simply a penalty for running your mech really hot. You, as the pilot, can choose to reduce the inaccuracy by letting your mech cool down. Or hell, you could even just fire through the shake if you wanted, and could time it right.

Anyway, I'm honestly not a huge proponent of damage spread at this point (I'm kind of happy with the effect on lasers at this point), and I really could care less about adhereing to battletech... I was just trying to maybe help folks who are arguing on different sides of this issue realize that the other side isn't really just trying to "ruin the game" or whatever folks imagine their internet enemies to be trying to do.

McKenna brought up a good point though, regarding things like tying accuracy to something like movement.. I like to run around, and it would kind of suck to be penalized for movement. Even so, I suspect that the system could be made deeper somehow, without just ruining everything to turning it into a bunch of dice rolling. If not, then I'm totally with you... because I don't want to play some dice rolling game either.

The Laser effect though is an implementation of damage spread, and frankly, I think it's pretty awesomely well done. I think it shows that such things can have a good impact on the game, if done well.