Armored Core 5 Discussion

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

Operator needs to be the player with the best mic. How's that AT setup working out, Owen?

[Mom]

I don't wanna talk about it. Finding a labtec mic has been hell, but it should finally be coming in soon.

[Nomrah]

Are these Team Battles really going to be slow enough to actually utilize an operator? Or is everyone going to be too busy battling it up to even care about directions from an operator? I guess I'll have to wait for some game play footage to see how they pull off this new "tactical" edge.

 

AC fights have always been very instinctual and "in the moment", some drastic changes would have to be made to allow for meaningful contributions from an operator.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Nomrah

[Harakiri Tiger]

That's true, we don't know just how much information the Operator has access to or how he's going to relay that information to the players yet. But if he has access to information like current enemy position and the players don't, that's more than enough to make him super important. Imagine if you could have one guy invisible and flying around the map in CoD, but he couldn't ever fight and had good voice chat. Even though the game has UAV available that guy would be one hell of an asset, especially if he wasn't just pretending to be a UAV and screaming "HE'S BEHIND THE EGGPLANT GEEEETHIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!1!~!21". He could give you a ton of information on directions they're facing while camping, weapons they have, blahblah. This is assuming that the operator role has access to information like this, though, yah.

 

As for the Bato thing. I don't know. If he's actually the best at the strategic concept of the game on the team and everyone listens to him and does what he says when he says it, I'd probably rather have him operate than play. The only time I wouldn't would be if he was just significantly better than anyone else on the team and at the same time noticeably better than his opponents while being in a very utility heavy AC or a strong defensive location. In a team fight setting coordination is almost always significantly more important than individual skill, I've rarely seen otherwise. Especially when the act of removing a specific player takes time. It's not like CoD where you can gang up on one guy and kill him with a few bullets and then push your advantage from there. It's much more like Halo in the need to focus significant firepower at any one target to remove them easily, especially since defensive play is likely to be strong like it is in most AC games. Catching them by themselves long enough to nuke them isn't easy. Games that have the option to reward strong aggression quickly are better for players with strong individual ability than games that reward defensive ability strongly. It could be possible that they made AC's easy to blow up, though.

 

Anyway, on your hypothetical team no one seems bad at general strategy or gameplay and I don't feel anyone excels so greatly at it as to be a one-man team in a team based AC game setting. This isn't a team setting like older AC games or MSL/OSL where you have a chain of 1v1's. This is a team setting that has multiple people on the field at once. More importantly, it's not just an engagement in which you get to sit in any old convenient formation and then engage each other and have group support all the time, like AC4/fA. You have to defend territory, so that gives the aggressors the ability to sidestep your team. This means there's a higher chance people will be caught in unmatched/imbalanced scenarios, 2v1's and such are more common when you can sidestep the 4v4 encounter entirely. Another thing is that most good AC players know that AC's typically run the show as much as, if not more than, the players skill, so it shouldn't be too far fetched to extrapolate that and say that a 2v1 fight in AC is very hard to win as long as your opponents are running decent bots with decent pilots, even if the solo pilot is very, very good.

 

It also all comes down to just how much weaker the weaker player is, too. Is he actually bad at the game, mediocre, or just the worst in a group of great players? If it's the last option then it won't really matter who you pick, since you'll probably break even no matter which way you slice it. It's a team setting, after all. I'm more likely to trust a truly weak player with a mechanical task where he can be supported by his team and gun emplacements than to trust him as the team support, though. There are tons of people who play games and are good at them because of their mechanics, but that lack any real significant critical thinking skills, too. So even mediocre players could potentially be more valuable on the field than in the support/coordination role than someone more mechanically competent than them. From everything I've seen in my life I can pretty easily say that mechanically competent people are vastly in the majority over critically competent people.

 

But yes, definitely a large portion of everything I've talked about is based pretty strongly on the Operator role having access to significant information and team play being valuable. For all we know they could just end up being a crappy version of a UAV, somewhat useful, but not something that takes a lot of work to do. From all the screenshots and such, the team play focus, and especially from the incorporation of territories that can be defensed up, I'm fairly certain that the Operator role will carry strong significance.

[Rachis]

Bato is a guy you want playing. He's that much better than most people. I miss my old sparring buddy

[Harakiri Tiger]

I would rather have Bato playing on the field, too, honestly. But that's because I don't think he's very well suited to the Operator role as a personality at all. He'd probably go crazy and he'd probably rage a lot if people did something wrong, and that would lead to a whole ton of other problems, hahaha. I was just using a hypothetical Bato in my previous post.

 

=3

[Mom]

Nah he's actually pretty decent at calling shit out.

 

 

The call of duty example would be pretty good, but only if ACs themselves were far from powerful, and only died in a couple shots. That would mean the person with better info about the battle's ongoings would have better shot or first shot, and win pretty easily. Armored Core's pretty different though, as we all know.

 

It'd be interesting to see just how 'pathetic' they make the ACs to go with this strategic thinking. I've always been for a strategic AC, but I still want Armored Core type battles (real AC not AC4/FA)

 

 

We also know just how useless the operators you get are for the original Armored Core games!

[Densuo]

Good to know I'm seeing eye to eye with people. But wait. Operator and scan mode is the same thing?

 

Edit: here's hoping operator role is significant. If not, then it will really be a slot for a weaker player. And that's a bad thing.

 

Here's also hoping Human+/rebel/Option Intensify stays dead. Would you prefer it like ac4/fa with full use of cannon types? Or back to firing stance?

Edited March 9, 2011 by Densuo

[atdsutm]

can i be operator?

 

ill add music like a DJ

[Mom]

I'd be ok with flying around using light canons. Back weapon diversity never was the strongest of suits for some of the older AC games, but I sure don't want power lightweights flying around with big boomsticks shooting nukes into the ground like in AC4 or FA.

 

I'm not even sure if flying would be added in ACV by now. To have a really operator oriented gameplay, the ACs might even have to be ground-stricken, like Gundam: Zeonic Front or something.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

the operator doesnt have to be good at the game

they just have be smart and understand game mechanics, as well as know about different situations and how to deal with them

 

if youre a good player youre probably a good operator too, but you dont need pew pew skills to be a good operator

[renketsu0]

I'm not even sure if flying would be added in ACV by now. To have a really operator oriented gameplay, the ACs might even have to be ground-stricken, like Gundam: Zeonic Front or something.

I'd be so ready to quit AC if there was no vertical movement. Why would operator oriented play require no vert?

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

there is probably vertical flight but nothing to where you can fly over a building due to EN usage restrictions.

[Densuo]

It would be odd if there was no flight. We'd adapt of course. I can't wait to see some new reverse joint units. If there's limited flight, rockets are gonna be really strong as are zooks and slow firing weapons in general.

 

If there is perma flight/ fliers, perhaps the operator will have access to an altitude reading. Regardless, it's up to the pilots in the field to keep their eyes forward. If I say "Hey Niji, you have two ACs packing long range setups, bearing north east of your position and closing in fast!" Unless Niji is brain dead I'm pretty sure Niji will look at the entire screen to assess if the ACs in question are airborne or grounded.

[Harakiri Tiger]

This is a huge post, but I will follow my heart and defend the potential value the operator role until FROM reminds me that they're FROM SOFTWARE and always overcompensate. POW!

 

You can still be very handily hard-countered in AC, or have your time inefficiently spent or wasted doing something the wrong way. The maps aren't exactly small and you do have to take over territory. Warhawk in Zones mode is kinda like it, except territory loss/gain is permanent and you get to use AI controlled support weaponry in AC:V. In Warhawk, a lot of people run around in that mode like chickens with their heads cut-off, too. Having an operator in that game to co-ordinate the play would be amazing, hence why games where someone takes the leader position tend to be done more cleanly in Warhawk Zones matches.

 

Spoiler! --Click Here to View!--

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee60/Niji-87/spowpowpow.png

For AC:V, lets say you just use the glorified UAV concept Operator role and scan down a spot and see that there is a lone AC and 2 turrets on the far side of the map guarding a beacon you need to take over (top left), another lone AC is somewhere in the middle of the map on top of a building, and finally 2 AC's near the last beacon with 2 turrets by them (bottom right). How do you choose where to attack first? If you simply go for the lone guy in the center, how do you know he won't run or snipe and just cause harass-based damage while never truly engaging or falling back to the nearby turrets and teammates? If you attack the lone AC + 2 turrets guy, how do you know the other 3 AC's won't flank your team and pin you against their guy with the 2 turrets on his back? Should you all 4 attack the spot with 2 AC's and 2 turrets? Remember, they get an operator UAV bot too. How big the map is overall will be very important, especially in relation to the AC's ability to traverse it.

 

What if we decide to send Bato to the lone guy that has 2 turrets as backup, Strategist and LCC to the 2 AC's + 2 turrets guys, and have TM run support for LCC+Strat if they need it but still close enough to the lone guy in the middle of the map to stop any shenanigans he might do that could cause Bato problems. Now this might sound fine and dandy, but since we're in glorified UAV mode we don't actually know what we just committed everyone to. We could have just mismatched everyone to where they should be going, effectively giving our opponents the upper hand in design/stats forcing us to have an incredibly strong hand as far as raw player skill is concerned.

 

What if Bato is in a light CQC bot and the target we sent him to (1AC + 2 Turrets) is a guy that has sniper cannons and machine guns and the support turrets behind him are both designed to shoot high tracking, poor range zook rounds (Or Machine Gun Turrets)? What if this was in a city street? AC's are smaller remember, so buildings are taller. What happens if the guy snipes while Bato approaches and then falls back past the turrets while still sniping? Is Bato just gonna tank the fire and drive through a bunch of zooks and sniper rounds that could slaughter his AP only to find a guy who suddenly comes rushing towards him and the turrets again with machine guns? Does Bato spend 10-15 minutes flying roundabouts on the guy and turrets so he can slowly kill him? Do you lose your best player to a crappy player who's just using a hard-counter + local defenders advantage against him? What happens to TM, LCC, and Strat then? What if they're in a similar counter-productive situation, wouldn't it have been better for Bato to go back and support them? What might the guy in the middle TM is supposed to be guarding do if Bato does try to leave? Might he go out and try to catch him and as he retreats, snipe him to chip off more AP, or maybe team up with the other lone guy and follow TM and Bato back, effectively flanking the entire weakened team between 2 guys and 2 more guys with 2 turrets behind them? It's a lot of what ifs to be betting your success on.

 

Glorified UAV doesn't cut it in an AC game because AC's are not even remotely equal, especially in a team game where the chances of more specialized roles being taken on is higher. It's no better than a simple function radar. On top of that you have stationary turret defenses, at least. Who knows what other kinds of defenses FROM has put in? It's very easy to be screwed by your opponents design + map + defenses. Just being really good doesn't cut it in those scenarios. So now you need to scan down the enemies so Bato doesn't attack the wrong group and so you don't end up losing 20 minutes to a frustrating fight against players who are significantly weaker than you. If you scan them down, you can accurately determine things like what kind of weapons they have, what kind of AC they seem to be piloting and any bias it might have, as well as what kind of turrets and terrain you'll be fighting in. They have a strong local-level defenders advantage, you can't just be better and smarter than them and win. It's not necessarily about killing them or not being killed, it's about territory. It's not Slayers. It's not Team Deathmatch.

 

On top of all of this, you can't take 30 minutes to scan the enemy down, relay all the information from your multitude of scans to the team, and then have them deliberate over what they should do and then continue doing this over the course of the entire match as the situation changes. That would make your entire team about as slow as a snail on glue. You'd be better off shooting the operator in the chest and just playing from there. Just taking the time to relay all the information in a scan could take a while. Have you seen the AC scan pics from a few pages back? Having a bad operator will require just that, though, because then the players have to have the information relayed to them and have to interpret it into a game plan all in real time while not stepping on each others feet. What if LCC and Bato both go after the same guy when they don't need to, because they heard the info relay and had to act on it individually? Does Strategist then die to a bunch of turrets and AC's and we just call it a fair trade? Do they spend a few minutes deciding who should go? What if they both head out and then LCC turns around halfway thinking better of the situation only to find that the guys Strategist was going to attack actually went on the offensive since their operator told them he was solo? If LCC shows up late, does some damage, watches Strat die, and then the guys retreat to the turrets without dying but still damaged... fair trade? It's 4v3 total now, but the enemy is damaged right? Do the stationary defenses not count? What if Strat was your sniper guy?

 

It makes sense then that it would be much more efficient and intelligent to choose an operator who knows what the teams capable of and can interpret all of that information quickly, then being able to apply that information in a practical method to the team by understanding what the team can realistically do. This is very hard to do if you're not at least good at the game mechanically, because you don't understand the stress levels inherent to actions you're trying to get the team to do. To accurately assess all the information and the map layout + stationary defense placement in a short time while relating it to your team will certainly require a high level of game sense, knowledge, and understanding. You don't have all day. They could be getting ready to stick their dicks in your butts any time now, and they have defenses to fall back on in case of emergency... as far as we know you don't.

 

This is all based off the assumption that you can scan the opponent down, learn their position, get a decent visual or readout of their AC parts, a visual on the terrain, and the ability to recognize basic stationary defenses. That's not really all that much. I'm fairly certain you can do that in AC:V when I look at those screenshots. This is also based on the concept of the map being large enough with enough terrain obstacles to be game changing. AC:fA maps were more than large enough, they just didn't have the terrain obstacles needed. AC:fA also lacked the stationary turrets and the primary goal to take over territory, so team battles will be significantly different from that and vastly different from older AC games.

 

We have some pics that were already posted in this thread, so I'll get those for reference here.

 

-----

 

In this first pic we see, what I assume to be (1x Zoom), the full size map known as Mining Area.

Spoiler! --Click Here to View!--

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2248/rbrnutvlwd9lgdi31sz4u5x.jpg

We see two zone beacons placed pretty far apart and with what seems to be an impassable gap between them. Maybe it's a cliff or one beacon is inside a large cave complex. I can't say for sure. This means you might have to backtrack and take the long way around to get to the other beacon, so if you need someone to pull back and support, there may not be enough time to do so. We're not sure, though, since we don't know the actual size of the map relative to how fast AC's can traverse it. This is one of our current big dillemma's. We simply don't know how fast the AC's are in this game yet.

 

I'm sure you can see that on that map layout there appears to be more than enough room for all kinds of bizarre scenarios like the ones I was talking about up top to arise. It certainly doesn't look like any AC:fA map I've ever seen. This doesn't mean we know for sure, because we don't know just how high the AC's can fly (which can help them somewhat negate terrain : example fA) or just how fast they can fly (which can help them negate retreat/re-enforcement times : example fA). Does flying high get them out of sniper turret or missile battery range? We don't know yet. If not, then flying high will only open you up to attack from AI controlled units, which you can't afford to be wasting AP, attention, and time on.

 

-----

 

In this second pic we see a zoomed up (4x Zoom) portion of the same map, Mining Area, that helps put the map size in a slightly clearer perspective.

Spoiler! --Click Here to View!--

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/167/iygxlpnqitmhxkxh12829ck.jpg

This zoomed in picture seems to help a lot more. Near the top by the beacon up there you can see what seems to be 3 trucks, buses, or semis that have been trashed and are blocking the road slightly. From pics you can tell that AC's really aren't very tall at all now in relation to the vehicles, completely unlike AC2. That means an AC probably takes up about as much space as 1/4th of one of those buses. With that you can much more clearly extroplate the size of the map. It's pretty damn big. Look at the Recon scan size in this pic and compare it to the older pic. They're different sizes. Does this mean something? No one knows yet, but maybe! Does scanning take time or use up some commodity like energy for the operator?

 

The AC's are given big buttons with triangle hats and a poop trail to discern their past movement and current direction, too. They certainly don't seem to be flying over all the territory like you'd expect of an AC:fA AC. They'd be far more likely to be straight lines then. Also, what do the red dots signify? Are they MT's, mini-turrets, etc? Either way, it seems like the maps are quite large compared to the AC's and the AC's don't seem to be able to traverse all of the terrain by just flying right over it.

 

You'll also notice they misspelled mining in this pic.

 

-----

 

Finally, do you think it would be a good idea for Bato to just go after a random lone AC by some gun emplacements with his generally CQC/Rusher style without first checking what's there?

Spoiler! --Click Here to View!--

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/875/ebbdxtj38xapg9cd61a6d6q.jpg

What happens if that's the surprise waiting for him?

 

That's sure to be a fair fight.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Are these Team Battles really going to be slow enough to actually utilize an operator? Or is everyone going to be too busy battling it up to even care about directions from an operator? I guess I'll have to wait for some game play footage to see how they pull off this new "tactical" edge.

 

AC fights have always been very instinctual and "in the moment", some drastic changes would have to be made to allow for meaningful contributions from an operator.

 

To be honest, I could see an operator being present and useful even in the old AC games. Owen and I were talking about this a bunch yesterday, and a point I was trying to make is that the single biggest benefit to having a corner is that they can see things from the outside and they're probably not undergoing the same amount of stress you are since they're not trying to fight. They have a unique view of how the match is progressing and they can convey the information along with strategies to get you a win. This was kind of a big deal for a lot of my boys and I back in the day at AC tournaments, during AC3 and SL period especially. We were constantly in each other's ears during matches trying to net wins.

 

Granted, all of us were big boxing/sports fans so it seemed intuitive to us to have corners. I don't think anyone else did. I bet that was one of the reasons why we were so dominant, though.

 

That's even before we talk about how operators might be able to gather and relay info on opponents and the like.

[Mom]

Just admit it you were rubbing each other off to boost morale during matches.

[Adonael]

Here is a thought. What if the operator can order AI units too? That would be interesting as well.

[Griffon]

Here's also hoping Human+/rebel/Option Intensify stays dead. Would you prefer it like ac4/fa with full use of cannon types? Or back to firing stance?

Kneeling was great. It gave Quadrupeds and Tanks a very clear give-and-take advantage. A quad user had to deal with high drain, somewhat low weight capacity, and low aerial maneuverability for the benefit of cannons, and tanks had to do away with any kind of maneuverability whatsoever.

It made you think about wether the use of cannons was really worth those downsides, and made players make a very important choice when designing, rather than "Hurr I liek big gun *slap it on*"

 

I saw a couple things hint to something that personally, I'd like to see. Take a look at these for a moment.

 

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9267/picture1fhv.png

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/4926/acv19.jpg

 

The first picture shows what it pretty clearly a kneeling AC, and the armored piece on its leg seems to have widened when compared to other pictures.

The seconds clearly shows an armored leg piece that is in fact, extending. I'd like to see bipeds still require a kneeling stance for heavy cannons, but perhaps the ability top go into an "Armored mode" where you're immobile, but defense gets raised to help compensate.

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

Those points on the back of the feet look like they can either fold down while standing or fold into the back of the knee while kneeling.

[Harakiri Tiger]

It looks like a kneeling plate, not an armor plate. It's on one specific knee, not both. It could extend to provide a more stable kneeling position, too. The other option is that it's a stabilizer. It's not like they're likely to take stabilizers out of the game series now that they added them in. Anyway, if it's a kneeling plate that would kinda make sense, though it's very likely just a decorative stabilizer, haha.

 

http://www.beeswaxrubberstamps.com/KNEELKNI.gif

 

^ He could use one, I bet.

 

As far as the operator goes, like I said at the beginning of my last post... FROM SOFTWARE loves to overcompensate. If you look at the AC games and their progression you'll see that when FROM tries to fix or upgrade something they overdo it. While we're worried about the operator role not being useful enough, either due to people dismissing it or the role granting only glorified UAV abilities, there's a high chance FROM SOFTWARE will overdo it and make the role too important. Like TM said a few posts back, what if they try to make it operator-centric, instead of just adding in a nice operator ability. They could make operator special abilities so important to use and so slow to use that it makes the whole game play slowly, for example. It's worrisome. Haha.

 

Here's to hoping they don't fuck it up.

 

=3

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

that would be pretty sweet if you could slide into the kneeling position

instead of making a complete stop and then waiting for the kneeling animation to finish

[Harakiri Tiger]

You can do that in the older AC games, up to NB. They removed a lot of the inertia that was around in the older games from LR, though. Made me super incredibly unhappy.

[Mom]

Still kneeling was a terrible idea, not only as a competitive aspect, but a gameplay aspect. I like the idea behind it, but from software carried it out poorly. Wouldn't mind to see a buffer kneeling.

[13th Knight]

Wait a second. Is this demo supposed to come out on the TWELFTH of March for Japan? Or is it supposed to be released on the Twelfth in our timezone, which is really the thirteenth of March in Japan?

 

Because if it's the former, we can cash in on awesomeness Friday.