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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  MechWarrior Online  |  Topic: Ask the Devs #45 - August 22nd 2013 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Ask the Devs #45 - August 22nd 2013  (Read 6423 times)
Falconeer
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on: August 23, 2013, 04:44:16 PM

Here's the full thing. Below, what I consider important.

- Gauss will become a "sling" weapon. Charge it up and release, like a bow.
- Tonnage limits explained. With charts.

Quote
Answer from Paul: The 12 man queue resulted in a decrease in fail rate. I don’t have the exact numbers for you but it’s safe to say approximately 5-10%. It’s not due to some magic we’re pulling on our end, it’s just that people are more willing to try 12 vs 12 with bigger teams. This decrease should not indicate to you that we are happy where it’s at. We need to add proper limitations to 12 player launches in order to make the 12 vs. 12 queue a lot more balanced as to what teams bring to the battlefield.

As for launching in any sized teams, this requires the feature indicated in the above paragraph. Our end goal for Match Making is to introduce a tonnage limit for teams trying to drop. For example (please note these numbers are for DEMONSTRATIVE purposes only):


Group Size   Minimum Tonnage   Maximum Tonnage
2   40   125
3   160   180
4   210   245
5   265   305
6   315   365
7   370   425
8   420   485
9   475   545
10   525   605
11   580   665
12   630   730


While you’re group is preparing to launch, depending on the number of players, the team will have to figure out which Mechs they can bring and their total tonnage must fall between the minimum and maximum tonnage level. An example of this is if a team has 6 players and tries to launch with 6 Atlases, the group interface will not allow this because their total tonnage is 600 and the min/max allowable is 315-365. If the group however brings a Raven(35t), a Spider (30t), a Blackjack(45t), a Centurion (50t), a Jagermech (65), and an Atlas (100t), their team total tonnage would be 325 which falls in the min/max allowable. The team can now successfully launch. If a team tries to bring all lights, their tonnage would be under the minimum allowable and the team would not be able to launch. As you can see, this system requires teams to be very aware of their tonnage and make very conscious decisions as to which Mechs to bring.

Now that teams are launching within tonnage limits, the Match Maker can match players based on Elo for skill matching and just grab from the pools of teams/players that are in the Elo bracket and as long as there’s enough room in the match, the players will be added. You will notice that if all players took the maximum weight per group size.. a team of 10+2 = 730 tons. This is the same as a full 12-man.

This feature alone will greatly diversify what Mechs will be showing up on the battlefield as personal preference in the weight classes will also be part of the group building process.

That being said, this is not a simple feature to pop in. It requires backend verification that Mechs are viable and that they meet the launch requirements. It also requires UI support for building the teams and verifying the launch requirements. It also requires a revamp of the Match Maker to take into account the various sizes of teams and their weight limits. There is no timeline for this at the moment but there are engineers working through each of the requirements listed here.




Question from Oxyclean: In ATD 44, one of the responses mentioned de-syncing Gauss Rifles and PPCs as a means to help tone down the high pinpoint alpha of 2PPC1Gauss.

Can we have clarification on the nature of this de-sync? Is this refering to re-cycle times so that they don't have similar cooldowns, and thus creates a greater waiting period if you want to fire them together? Further differentiating PPC and Gauss travel speeds? Or is this implying a new mechanic that causes some sort of delay between trigger pull and shots leaving your mech?

Answer from Paul: The desync is coming in the form of a delay on the Gauss Rifle. Put the pitchforks down! The Gauss Rifle is a long range weapon that is supposed to have a minimum range. What we’ve done is put a 0.75 second charge up time at the initial button press to fire the Gauss. After it charges, it is ready to fire. You will have another 1.25 seconds to release the button to fire. If you do not release, the Gauss will lose its charge and require charging again.

This mechanic puts the Gauss firmly in the role of a long range weapon. Up close, it’s going to be hard to pull off a quickshot. Instead of putting a minimum range in, we decided it’s best to at least let you fire the weapon and try to hit instead if limiting it out completely.

When this mechanic comes into play, we will also be increasing the health of the Gauss Rifle making it harder to destroy.


Ironwood
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Reply #1 on: August 24, 2013, 01:14:56 AM

So, No-one is going to do premade groups anymore.  Check.

Guass Idea I don't like.  I don't know WHY yet, I just reacted viscerally with a WTF.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Typhon
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Reply #2 on: August 24, 2013, 06:23:03 AM

It makes the Gauss useless, that is why you don't like it.  For the size, weight and explodeability it's damage was balanced (for the weapon).  Add a .75 delay every time you want to fire it and the damage needs to be +25%, which they won't do.  And lets be clear, I thought that Gauss was an "ok" weapon, because I favor brawlers, so there is no "ma Gauss!?!?!" bias.

More stupid fucking decisions.  If this was really beta, and they had a year to learn about game design they might have a chance and I might play it.  As it stands, my confidence has now hit 0.
Falconeer
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Reply #3 on: August 24, 2013, 01:32:52 PM

The Gauss is gonna explode less after the change. Anyway I will have to try it in game, but I like the change. Differentiating weapon mechanics is potentially good for gameplay.


eldaec
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Reply #4 on: August 25, 2013, 01:34:54 AM

Staying charged for only 1.25 seems unduly short, but the principle seems OK. I prefer it to minimum range, which I always find to be a daft mechanic, and one players don't generally understand.

Personally I would prefer they do heat scaling properly. Give each weapon a retained heat % that gets added to every other weapon fired within one second. You could even apply it retrospectively to heat generated in the last second. Make sniper weapons add something like 30%-50%, make brawl weapons such as ML or SL only add a few percent and possibly shave a little off their base heat. Then make shutdown take longer, damage you more, or risk exploding some components or something.

Existing heat scaling is a counter intuitive mess that just makes you go for rainbow alpha.

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satael
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Reply #5 on: August 25, 2013, 01:55:21 AM

They should put something like a 10 second delay on any targeting info you get after a shutdown (and restart) if it was due to overheating.
Ironwood
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Reply #6 on: August 25, 2013, 04:38:43 AM

That wouldn't work.  Like min ranges, no fucker uses the R key.

Assholes.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
satael
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Reply #7 on: August 25, 2013, 05:36:56 AM

That wouldn't work.  Like min ranges, no fucker uses the R key.

Assholes.


Disable zooming too while the "targeting computer" is rebooting.
Typhon
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Reply #8 on: August 25, 2013, 06:54:14 AM

The Gauss is gonna explode less after the change. Anyway I will have to try it in game, but I like the change. Differentiating weapon mechanics is potentially good for gameplay.



Totally agree.  Totally disagree that this mechanism is good.  This simply makes firing the weapon more complicated, it adds no gameplay.

Just of the top of my head, add a 'cycled up' state to the weapon.  While cycled up the weapon 1) has a 'doors open + glowing effect', 2) does it's current damage (15), 3) is more susceptible to damage and explodes for more damage.  When not cycled up, the weapon 1) does reduced damage (12), 2) adds a small delay (0.1 - 0.25 sec) to the firing time, 3) is less susceptible to damage and explodes for less.

Now the player needs to cycle up/down the door in the right scenario - at range and not the target? Cycle up.  Stuck in a brawl? Cycle down.

"This doesn't fix the high-alpha meta".  Agree, it doesn't.  I think the high-alpha meta is fixed by active defensive counter measures targeting a specific weapon type that use up specific hard points - players must choose to either bring defensive or offensive weapons.

Something like this:
1) Mag Pulse - Mitigates ballistic weapons.  Takes up energy hard-point.
2) Fog Grenades - Mitigates energy weapons.  Takes up a missile hard-point.
3) Iron Curtain - Mitigates missile weapons.  Takes up ballistic hard-point.

Click to use, lasts a certain number of seconds, has a half-a-minute-ish cooldown.

If the AlphaRUs lance blindly alphas at HAHATank! as he comes over the rise to little effect (other than generating a lot of heat for themselves), and then gets their asses kicked, they'll immediately adapt - probably with a mix of different tactics so of which may still be to try to alpha, but at least they'll be smart about it.

Instead everyone seems hyper-focused on heat, which I think makes the game less fun.
Merusk
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Reply #9 on: August 25, 2013, 09:54:25 AM

Because that's what the Tabletop game used. Varying from that is verboten.

So the game will languish and fiddle but not thrive.  I can't think of a MW video game that didn't turn in to "how to boat and alphastrike best."

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Typhon
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Reply #10 on: August 25, 2013, 03:45:54 PM

Oh yeah, crap.  Honestly forgot about the "tabletop or death!" fan base.

...

never-mind!
Falconeer
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Reply #11 on: August 25, 2013, 06:34:12 PM

You are really wrong about this. It is true that the tabletop has been used for the original framework of rules and weapons and it will be probably always considered before any new implementation or change, but at the same time there's already a million things that have been changed from the TT and no matter how many old farts (like me) cried on the forum they keep adjusting stuff any way they wanted, regardless of the BattleTech. I can't quote now, but the lead designer specifically mentioned how some of the changes have been thought to keep the gameplay functional to the videogame, since obviously some things just don't translate well from the board to the monitor. Sure they are not gonna make up new weapons that are not part of the lore, but lots of lore things have already been discarded or even maimed so I wouldn't really account any of the game shortcomings to lore or the neckbeards' community.

At this point it is a lot more about what Paul Da Man Inouye thinks is right and good for the game than any other limitation. About that, I will link it when I can, but he addressed once again his stance on alphas and big damage blasts and seems like he is doing all he wants (even stupid messy things like the heat scale) in order to fight that.

Falconeer
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Reply #12 on: August 25, 2013, 11:21:48 PM

Quote
Question from Sturmwind: Russ has stated on twitter that the purpose of the heat scale is to “reduce the amount of high pinpoint damage”. Why, then, are weapons with a high tendency to spread damage and/or very low damage, such as LRM-10s, AC/2s, and SRM-2s, being punished by heat scale? Were these weapons truly considered in need of nerfing?

Answer from Paul: I need to address something first before detailing your question. After reading through the reams of responses and comments about Heat Scale, there is one common theme that keeps coming to the top and I would like to try to clear it up here. What is the purpose of Heat Scale?

Russ touched on the reason but his quote is a tad off. Heat Scale is meant to address high DAMAGE alphas. Nothing relating to pin-point accuracy. Heat Scale is the result of months of design and redesign trying to figure out the global issue of combat in MechWarrior as a whole. Previous versions of MechWarrior suffered from the arms race or high alpha usage. Alpha strikes were a RARE occurrence in BattleTech. They were last ditch efforts against enemies. All previous MW games allowed this mechanic to become almost the norm of gameplay.

The way we picture combat in MechWarrior Online is to bring back that aspect of first stripping armor, then going for internals/crits and then finally going for the kill. The problem with high damage alphas was that people tend to try to build Mechs that punch holes through other Mechs instead of the aforementioned layered combat. Our intention is to increase the time to kill, not reduce it.

There was a critical flaw in the BattleTech translation to real time gaming and it was starting to rear its ugliness with the impending Clan technologies. Something had to change in the core rules of weapon systems or we’d be drowning trying to balance the differences between IS and Clan tech. Taking a step back and looking at the overall problem, it started to become clear what the problems were. Keep in mind, that we really don’t want to block the way Mechs are built, that’s what lets variants have so many varieties. Locking down hardpoints would not work because of our want of maximum customization. Heat Scale doesn’t limit your build, it only limits how you fire the weapons. If a player wants to build a 6 PPC Stalker, they can, but they will need to know how to manage their heat.

Something that was brought up by the community was to decrease the maximum heat threshold while improving the efficiency of heat sinks. The problem with this is that it does very little to high damage alphas. Yes it increases the time between alphas but not the limitation of damage as what Heat Scale does.

The other thing that Heat Scale addresses, is the mentioned Clan tech. The Heat Scale on weapons can be moved up and down depending on the needs of balance and gameplay stability.

So far Heat Scale is addressing what we wanted but there may be a few tweaks to the numbers themselves, but overall it’s performing very well. The multiplier applied to LRM/10, AC/2 and SRM/2 are set to 1.0 and can still be adjusted to be lower. It’s a slight increase that we’re looking for and a reduction will likely happen.

satael
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Reply #13 on: August 25, 2013, 11:42:47 PM

The idea of stripping armor and then going for criticals before going for a kill I kind of agree with but saying that high alpha in general is as bad as high pinpoint alpha is  swamp poop
Ironwood
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Reply #14 on: August 26, 2013, 01:31:22 AM

I really have no idea what Paul is going on about.  I really, really think they've lost the plot a little.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Goreschach
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Reply #15 on: August 26, 2013, 03:41:57 PM

Paul was once traumatically owned in a company match of COD, now any mention of aim convergence during meetings is strictly verboten.
Hoax
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Reply #16 on: August 27, 2013, 04:41:52 PM

Because that's what the Tabletop game used. Varying from that is verboten.

So the game will languish and fiddle but not thrive.  I can't think of a MW video game that didn't turn in to "how to boat and alphastrike best."

This game has deviated so far from the TT its not even funny. You'd be better off with the TT stats and them implementing the TT heat system and overheat penalties properly including the heat penalties as you go up the scale to accuracy and movement. A direct port from the TT and you'd have a better game than this pile. Not even joking. Instead they've changed the stats on everything 20 times, invented a bunch of extra complications and generally fucked about for months.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2013, 04:44:04 PM by Hoax »

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