(a BL-6-KNT Black Knight engages a EXC-B2 Excalibur in desperate melee, circa 2780...)
This post was started off a conversation I participated in on one of the mechwarrior discords, when the subject turned to balancing the Mechwarrior experience to that of the Battletech tabletop game, and to 'legging' an opponent (that is; destroying one or both of a target's legs in the Mechwarrior games).
I asked:
should legging matter?
Is legging in a PvP game fun? is it fun to win via legging?
Is it ok to lose because of legging?
I don't think it is. Try applying legging to most other FPS action games, and it gets annoying, quick.
If a player is accurate enough to target someone's legs, then making the target even slower is just feeding a run-away-winner scenario.
and one of the responses really stood out:
You’re comparing quite different genres there. Those are FPS games, this is a vehicular combat simulation game.Which then led me to write up this response:
Stop thinking like an MLG and start thinking like a hardcore simmer :wink:
Also, using that logic, maybe we should remove arm destruction and weapon critical hits since if things like that were put in most action FPS games, it’s get annoying Quick
So would the heat mechanic,
But, I think you get the point
You can’t use those kinds of games as a comparison to MechWarrior as a basis against mechanics such as leg destruction
They play very differently, and therefore the mechanic might work great in one genre, but bad in the other
Could you imagine having section-based damage on TitanFall?
Or an FPS-style, aggressive cone-of-fire mechanic in MechWarrior?
It just wouldn’t work
But section-based damage readings work well in MechWarrior
And the cone of fire system, if done right, works quite nicely in games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc.
It's not exactly 'MLG or not', this (Mechwarrior)being a game it's all about players and the decisions they can make , or incentivized to make.
Also, Mechwarrior is not as sim-like as we want to believe.
Mechwarrior exists in a game genre like any other game does, open to criticism as well as evolution and experimentation.
re: Titanfall section-based damage, why not try it?
re: Cone of fire, this is actually more sim-like than Mechwarrior's pin-point accuracy. no targeting computer based on hard-scifi could compensate for the the source gun changing shooting position every split second of a mech's walk-cycle. The positional height difference would be insane, not to mention the pilot being shaken like paint in a can.
Originally I had a longer post about genre conventions and simulations, wanting to say that yes mecha-sims are a 'sim' but they handwave away of massive amounts of realism to make sure the experience is fun.
take it this way: you ever play World of Tanks? it's a great example of unfun simulation. It gets all rivet-counter on shot penetration and deflection mechanics, but somehow your invisible crew can jump out to repair a blown track while under fire...but wait there's more!
if you are hit again in the tracks, your repair meter is reset allowing opponents to functionally immobilize you after a single hit to your tracks. Sim-like? a little, but is it fun? god no. Player experience becomes sitting there, waiting to be eliminated.
re: "make legging more like tabletop" , that has some interesting stuff - like your speed and stability degrading over time as your legs are damaged, but do you really want to sit there in a hex, on your mechs stomach, immobilized for the next 20min? Players do not like it when game scenarios escape their control, and this effect needs to be managed (note: I didn't say removed).
End of the day, I'm saying that certain mechanics should be gamed out to their logical conclusion, assessed, and then adjusted to make sure the player has fun, or that most of the players have fun.
Limping along a giant map for even 5min with a busted leg isn't fun. If the player is playing a campaign, they will probably save-scum at that point, merely restarting the mission.
In multiplayer? might as well just slap the respawn button because functionally their vehicle is dead-in-the-water.
As it exists today: legging is a shallow mechanic that feeds into the run away winner problem. You either leg someone, then control the rest of the fight completely from there - to wit, you've already 'won' by this point. or you don't leg someone, and they don't leg you, and both of
yous are playing as if legging doesn't exist.
so what's the answer? honestly I don't know. I think we'll need a bunch of new mech games to take up the challenge to explore these trickier aspects of Mechwarrior style gameplay, and I look forward to playing them!
