.5, thoughts

[Cik]

hello everyone (devs in particular) thought i should start a thread detailing the beauty and glory (and slight bugs!) of v.5

variants: after a few hours of playtesting in SA (which is p. cool) a few things come to mind: the new variants are awesome. the CMPL uller is actually very viable early game, and a nice counter to the owens. the prime is alright, and the CUAC is surprisingly useful now! the SSRM uziel is alright. some of the heavy variants were redone, i particularly like the new thanatos variants. the LBX especially is very nasty. the tweak on most close-range assaults is very welcome, as they were all worthless before. a word of warning: the atlas C is dangerously close to overpowered. it should be increased in price, because it can reduce any heavy or assault to slag in 20 seconds or less. test it yourself, it destroys anything. don't take it's weapons away though, as it's actually a viable close-range asset and we don't want to lose that.

bugs: minor. i've crashed, which is unusual, but only once in a 8 hour period so that's nothing terrible.
bouncing shells: a bug on the new maps (and maybe old) where CUAC/LBX shell casings don't fade and instead sit there and bounce forever. sort of funny, minor bug. there seems to be a bit of stutter whenever duncan fisher talks in SA, minor.

price changes/rebalances: the shadowcat A variant probably didn't need the price increase. it's nothing major, but it was fairly balanced, the B variant for early-game light-swatting, the A for attacking larger targets.
i don't know if it was a joke, but you lowered the price on the best close-range brawler heavy, thus making it cheaper. (thor A)(and it seems to be entirely unchanged, i mean the thing tears lances apart with a good pilot (please don't touch it!))

exploits: the walls are too thin in the jungle arena. it is entirely possible to clip a light, small mech through the wall and back into the hangar bay. this allows a beat-up pilot to sell his mech and acquire an atlas or something in the middle of a round. might want to fix that, or it's going to be exploited once the pubbers figure it out.

[Spanish Inquisition]

A, a thread for our 0.5 feedback?

From the other thread about Uziels:

to be honest i really hate the uziel D reminds me way too much of the vulture with all ssrms it just feel cheap to use on other players if you know what i mean.

A little, perhaps, but you've only got 3 shots. The mech can hit like a hammer on heavier/stationary mechs, but I wouldn't call it cheap. It will suffer the same disadvantages as the Vulture too. The price is probably the biggest problem; this mech is only 58k. It'll be raping all sorts of face, I feel.

• Not sure what the E is for though. It's got some AA... and a NARC... Er, that's it. Perhaps LBX5s would have been nicer... or too powerful. Not sure. That's for the devs to decide. I'd drop the GECM and MASC, give it a BAP, and lower the price, maybe toss in LBX5s instead of UACs. Now you can have an AA mech. I feel 70k is just too much for this Uziel when you could just buy the SRM version for 10k less.
  
• The LBX5 Partisan is now a usable AA platform, in my opinion, when you enable chainfire. Unfortunately, AC muzzle flare and smoke particle effects absolutely kill my FPS. I can drop from 40 to <20 with sustained firing on high particles. Medium drops it to 25.
  
• Does the Huit mount DHS or HS? It's a clan unit.
  
• Also found a trick involving tanks, movement direction, and heat.
  
• NICE AC hit effects. Try shooting an AC2 or similar at a unit and watch the sparks fly. And machine guns against a mech? Sweet sound and sparks.RAC5/2 doesn't have the effect, perhaps for good reason. What they do have instead is FPS killing muzzle flare. While necessary, I feel that, if there is time, somebody should take a look at that. FPS is pretty important for a weapon like the RAC5.
  
• Warhammer got more expensive it seems, but it is more effective, I believe.
  
• The Awesome E is confusing though.
  
• Great job with the Thanatos. I love every variant, even if it's got an xboxhueg torso.
  
• The CMPL Kit Fox is a nice shooter. It's great in SA.
  
• An Extremity arena? Brilliant! Shame about Extremity itself.
  
• I have a feeling SA will be pretty popular. I just wish there was a message saying it's limited to 16 players at a time.
  
• My thanks to the devs for creating a largely bug free release that allows us all to play without any issues that would detract from gameplay or using certain assets (SSRM bugs, tank turret bugs). Also, good job on fixing the old bugs.

[Spooky]

I don't find the SRM Uziel cheap (yet), it's just sometimes very hard to fight against.

[[SF]JT Kirk]

I installed it today, was very easy and i had no problems, i will sink my teeth into it next week
At first glance it looks like the added features are a really nice addition to whats already an outstanding package.

Sincere thanks to the team for this, it looks fantastic

[thEClaw]

I only played one game of SA, but watched two of them. And i noticed a slight problem, maybe it is caused by my hardware:
Duncan Fisher, the crowd and the fireworks don't sound correctly for me. It feels like the sound was everywhere, though it should be more "positional".
The fireworks should sound like real fireworks over a huge arena, for me it just sounds like another gun (and i cannot localize it).
The crowd works pretty well, but it could use a tweak too.
Duncan Fishers voice might be emanating from speakers, but i am not sure how this works in Battletech. In my opinion it would be great to hear it vary in volume when you are moving over the map and to clearly hear where it is coming from.
At the moment these ambient-sounds don't sound like they were part of the "game-world" but more like an overlay to it inside of my pc (or the cockpit of a 'Mech).

Other than that i have not noticed a single flaw to the game (except for two crashes maybe). The new assets seem really nice, the new pricing is too. Finally the Owens C is not destined to be the best choice in the early game anymore and at least one of the Bushwackers is available for under 65k cbills. I wasn't good enough a player to really experience the heavier assets until now so i might not even notice the change in weapons and pricing there. But i'm sure it's all for the better.

[Psychasthenia]

The stuttering is partially to blame for the SSRM boats being overpowered at the moment.  Right when I get my crosshairs lined up after the shaking has subsided the screen freezes... unfreezes and the target mech warps 20m to the side... then warps back closer to the original position.   I am all for them in TC/TSA because while they have their uses in brawling they definitely aren't overpowered when it comes to a team game with mixed units around to cover each other.  It's a huge sacrifice giving up any range >350m in the team modes just for the off chance you can screen shake a solitary unit to death.  Right now I find myself targeting SSRM Vulture/Uziel as priority #1 in LMS and SA modes and wouldn't take one myself until the stuttering is resolved.

[Spooky]

The stuttering is partially to blame for the SSRM boats being overpowered at the moment.  Right when I get my crosshairs lined up after the shaking has subsided the screen freezes... unfreezes and the target mech warps 20m to the side... then warps back closer to the original position.

Yep, same thing happens here.

[Ingrater]

Coulud you describe more detailed what you mean with "stuttering" ?

[Spooky]

Coulud you describe more detailed what you mean with "stuttering" ?

For me it's basically the same behavior as the stutter that sometimes occurs when Duncan speaks. So right before Duncan speaks, sometimes the game hangs for ~half a second. During heavy fights the same thing happens, but I can't tie it to specific events or weapons yet. After this hang occurs, the enemy I was fighting often warps around to various places.

[^sPikE-]

I only played one game of SA, but watched two of them. And i noticed a slight problem, maybe it is caused by my hardware:
Duncan Fisher, the crowd and the fireworks don't sound correctly for me. It feels like the sound was everywhere, though it should be more "positional".
The fireworks should sound like real fireworks over a huge arena, for me it just sounds like another gun (and i cannot localize it).
The crowd works pretty well, but it could use a tweak too.
Duncan Fishers voice might be emanating from speakers, but i am not sure how this works in Battletech. In my opinion it would be great to hear it vary in volume when you are moving over the map and to clearly hear where it is coming from.
At the moment these ambient-sounds don't sound like they were part of the "game-world" but more like an overlay to it inside of my pc (or the cockpit of a 'Mech).

Other than that i have not noticed a single flaw to the game (except for two crashes maybe). The new assets seem really nice, the new pricing is too. Finally the Owens C is not destined to be the best choice in the early game anymore and at least one of the Bushwackers is available for under 65k cbills. I wasn't good enough a player to really experience the heavier assets until now so i might not even notice the change in weapons and pricing there. But i'm sure it's all for the better.

.

i have to completely agree with this.. 0.5 is awesome, and the sound fx in SA are awesome, but the effect would be MUCH bigger if they were ambientaly implemented instead of just playing in the players head. maybe its hard to do or would cause performance issues, so maybe its with reason.

i love the soccer cheering anthems tho!

[Vlaad]

For me the stuttering manifested itself as game freezing or braking for a second or two (sometimes more). It started with 0.3. It ended with me messing with sound cards. I stuck in an age old LIVE! and downloaded indi drivers. It all works perfectly now, even when i set the default back to onboard sound. WHY? I dunno. It just does. It so does not make sense that it can leave a person traumatized. * *

Anyway, heres the link in the techforum for sound problems, maybe it will help http://forum.mechlivinglegends.net/index.php/topic,10620.15.html

[thEClaw]

...blabla...positional and ambient sound...bla...

.

i have to completely agree with this.. 0.5 is awesome, and the sound fx in SA are awesome, but the effect would be MUCH bigger if they were ambientaly implemented instead of just playing in the players head. maybe its hard to do or would cause performance issues, so maybe its with reason.

i love the soccer cheering anthems tho!

Technically i don't really see a problem. Crysis definitely supports positional audio (all other effects can be localized clearly and they don't break the game) and the arena-like feeling might be done with some sort of filter applied on runtime or even to the raw data.

[=CJW= Zone Warden (W)]

Haven't had any problems at all so far, SA works fine, haven't tried LMS though. I'm happy with the tweaks and changes except one thing thats bugged me for a damn long time.

-insert mass groaning here-

I took out a Mauler in a third the time it took me to kill a damn Owens C. When those things are moving they are still near invincible. I've been told its a hitbox issue but I thought it was pretty laughable, yet annoying at the same time, that an Assault would go down quicker than the light when the same amount of fire was pumped into both of them.

Aside from that, I'm enjoying the new patch. Great work guys, bravo. 

[Ingrater]

...
Technically i don't really see a problem. Crysis definitely supports positional audio (all other effects can be localized clearly and they don't break the game) and the arena-like feeling might be done with some sort of filter applied on runtime or even to the raw data.

The crowd sounds are positional. Duncan is not.

[thEClaw]

...
Technically i don't really see a problem. Crysis definitely supports positional audio (all other effects can be localized clearly and they don't break the game) and the arena-like feeling might be done with some sort of filter applied on runtime or even to the raw data.

The crowd sounds are positional. Duncan is not.

Well, i said earlier that the crowd really is not that much of a problem. If you could make Duncan sound a little more "inside the game-world" i would be happy about it. And i still think the fireworks should be changed a little bit so it feels more like real fireworks high above you (maybe a slight echo-effect would be nice, after all the player is inside an arena).

The fact that i am nit-picking here should show what a great job you all have done with this release . I would just like to have the perfect atmosphere for an arena-match .