Patch #21, v1.4.302

Exactly, there will always be two components: Game Design AND Player Choice.

 

Absolutely, I never disputed that.

Again, for like third time now, if the solution is based in negativity, in my opinion, that is worse than a solution that is positive.

Extrapolate from that what you will, I already posted what I got out of it.

 

true.

out of curiosity, what would be considered a positive solution in the case of poptarting? or at least a solution you would have liked to see?

 

Considerable heat generation while jumping, cone of fire while midair, reduced recharge time so you can't jump on the recharge of your PPCs, reduced lift so pop snipers have to expose for longer before their weapons crest and they can shoot and fall, increased armor/internal HP so you can't drop mechs in 3 shots before they close.

 

If you ask me what would be the best solution to improve various balance issues that are directly related to the actual gameplay itself, would be this:

Make things move faster. Relatively speaking, not necessarily in game engine speed. I'm talking about how, well, the game isn't particularly hard for an entire community with extensive experience in first person shooters, what with humongous towering robots that slowly move across the middle of your screen with all sorts of data to allow you to take your precision even further.

Either that, or raise armor across the board. This one is actually more practical, for a variety of reasons, but I don't think it's an actual bar-raising thing like speed would be. Armor wouldn't up the game so to speak for the community, it wouldn't make it harder to core someone out - just take longer, which obviously has lots of various pros and cons.

When you think about it, the game actually is not very difficult at all. It is a free to play casual game, after all. Maybe that is my (and others) problem. It's stupid how fast you can kill somebody in this game, especially with poptarting. Why is it stupid? Because the actual beauty, the only unique aspect of MWO, is the flow of the combat and the countering, exchanging salvos, etc. MWO combat is best when it is like boxing.It's not like another squad-based FPS where you go around a corner and someone sprays you with a SMG and you die because there is no counter or time to react. There's rhythm, yes, but it's not like MWO. This is what makes MWO special, the titanic showdown with both guys firing bunch of shit and twisting and all that jazz. The game, in its best light, should reflect that consistently. Poptarting should tie into all of it, and it shouldn't be the end all be all tactic. It also shouldn't be nerfed just cuz everything else is shitty as hell. I think something like raising speeds (for more misses and thus reactionary chaotic situations) or raising armor (for more soaking and thus boxing or at least brawl feasibility) would do the game well to expand the tactics and meta beyond where it's stagnated at currently (for over a year now).

Simmer on that and if you want to get your cuticles dirty, I'll oblige you if you must press for a specific positive solution to bringing other tactics near to speed of poptarting in current meta. But I want to state the two above about speed and armor first, because I find them to be terribly terribly overlooked.

 

Armor seems like a very easy thing to test (in the PTS) if they actually cared enough to give it a try. Simply increase the armor values and keep everything else the same. See what happens. Test MORE options publicly to get valid data and input.

Speed seems like a difficult thing to increase... you have to deal with the balance of lights and mediums as well as the speed cap that cry engine can support (at least I thought there was a limitation?) How could speed be increased easily while. Maybe starting opposing mech lances closer to eachother and more isolated? Promote lance-to-lance engagements rather than giant deathballs?

@Tfun, those all seem like feasible solutions, particularly the cone of fire while mid-air. I have always thought continued screen shake while falling (although reduced) would be a good solution. Scale it based on mech weight class. However, this is another negative solution and inherently hurts the game.

The heat and JJ effectiveness is changing in the next patch it sounds like.
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/164345-jj-nerf-incoming/

 

Making the pinpoint weapons a little more inaccurate.

 

This is sort of a catch 22 situation but I am gonna weigh in on this one anyways.

Jump Jetting, in lore, is an extremely violent action that rockets you into the air like you are propelled on a Saturn V Rocket. When they added cockpit shake they got rid of some of the ability to poptart on your way UP but once you reach the apex and disengage your jets all of a sudden your shake is gone. The only way to mitigate the Downward Tart (this is a new Yoga maneuver) is to add the fall damage; the heavier the mech the harder the fall.

Removing the ability to fire while in the air would, while possible, be extremely bad for the game dynamic as it would eliminate pop-tarting completely. Adding cockpit shake on the way down would reduce the Downward Tart but wouldn't really be realistic now would it? The ONLY real option they have is adding fall damage.

 

Catch 22 is right.

Considering the weight of these mechs, cockpit shake on the downfall doesn't make a lot of sense, but it could be justified as aerodynamics. These mechs certainly weren't designed to fly and would be effected by drag and gravity. At least it is enough to justify and impact to accuracy imo.

 

It's not like fall damage never existed before, it just wasn't a game changer.

I like that it apparently makes other non-JJ lights more viable which seems to be a missing point, but it doesn't make lights as a whole more powerful... again it just makes good shit suck worse.

I appreciate the perspectives and thoughts people are putting in to these tangents.

 

Yeah despite my rage at that one battle and damage from people trying to push past/run into me I'm all for the falling damage but then I'm using the shock module on my lights.

Can't make heads or tails of the new JJ changes without some specific maths though as their graph can't be right. Can it?

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/164389-jump-jet-update/

I get the heat change as I used to deliberately lose heat in the air if in a close fight, maxed heat and desperately needing to put the other person off (spiders mainly).

The JJ distance and thrust changes I genuinely can't work out as no statistics.