Armored Core 5 Discussion

[Nomrah]

I agree. Honestly multiplayer battles look like a complete mess and the tactical edge they wished to incorporate looks non existent amid the sea of chaos. Its basically 4/FA with less distance covered per boost and more buildings in the way. Looks to me like the epitome of spam based combat with a lack of thought out clean maneuvers.

 

I've been watching a multitude of PS2 era competitive videos lately and they are absolutely perfect, why the hell is FROM so insistent on changing AC's core formula? How about get rid of QB or at least limit it to a degree where it can co-exist in the realm of old school AC. Also limit the capacity of those damn generators, OB'ing for a minute is just stupid.

 

One of the only things I'm impressed by at the moment are the animations and details on the AC designs. But who can even concentrate on any of that with the way these battles play out?

Edited October 2, 2011 by Nomrah

[Aokiryu89]

My interest is honestly pretty much gone, after watching vids and stuff, just seems very much like 4/FA without all the Gundam-esque flying around.

 

Hello everyone, I have been following this thread for awhile now, and have found it very helpful over the past year or so.

 

Relating to your statement Enganacious, could you show me the multiplayer vids you have seen. All the vids I have observed appear to be inconclusive for me in terms of multiplayer.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

having actually played a ton of FA and ACV beta, i can say that they may look the same but they are very different in terms of gameplay

[Aokiryu89]

having actually played a ton of FA and ACV beta, i can say that they may look the same but they are very different in terms of gameplay

 

I thought so. Oh yeah I had a question for you, I don't know if this was already answered but is the lock-on for blading still enabled? I've only seen the one video from ClericACO's channel showing a blade being used and it doesn't look like it has an auto lock or even a boost dash function.

 

From my observation it looks like it has some vertical aiming.

[Pendragon]

Well, since I didn't really hate AC4/FA, then this won't be a disappointment to me. I;d still like to play it for myself before making any judgements.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

blades dont lock on

[Aokiryu89]

Yeah I'm going to preorder the game regardless, even if it bombs commercially I know that I'll still enjoy the game.

 

 

 

blades dont lock on

 

So no trademark blade dash either? I'm cool with that.

 

But the ramming/kick looks like it takes the blade dash's place doesn't it?

[Mom]

Trademark? Only in AC4/FA-- not too much of a trademark to Armored Core. At least it'll help get rid of that lag-ridden fiasco of a game mechanic.

[Aokiryu89]

Trademark? Only in AC4/FA-- not too much of a trademark to Armored Core. At least it'll help get rid of that lag-ridden fiasco of a game mechanic.

 

 

Not auto-lock blade dash, regular no lock-on blade dash. Even in the first game, when you use your blade the boosters activate to propel the AC forward, except in flight.

 

Though there has always been some sort of auto-lock with the blade, it's not very obvious except in certain situations (While both AC's are trying to blade eachother during flight).

 

I know this because of the blade only duels I fought against my brother in the original AC and AC3.

Edited October 3, 2011 by Ogawa L.A

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

tracking =/= lock

 

blade tracking from ac1-aclr (something like that)

blade lock and tracking from ac4-acfa

 

neither in acv

[Aokiryu89]

tracking =/= lock

 

blade tracking from ac1-aclr (something like that)

blade lock and tracking from ac4-acfa

 

neither in acv

 

I can definitely get used to that.

[Harakiri Tiger]

I think Nomrah has been speculating too much. It's expected when the game takes so long to release, though. People get antsy. Haha. Lack of thought out maneuvers and clean play, along with the spam, are all the results of what I like to call "trash players". As it is a beta full of trash players who are also trying to get used to a new system, it's bound to happen. I like how you specifically compared videos of good players who are probably experienced at AC (potentially years of experience) vs people in the FROM QA beta test department and public testers. Considering how noob and I played given our two weeks of beta, I can safely assume there are leagues of room for improvement across the board in player quality. There was a lot of room for improvement for me and noob and we were actually doing pretty well online I'd say. Bottom line: everyone was trash.

 

The real thing, and probably only important thing, to worry about is the retail game balance. As it stands, beta was actually pretty well balanced. There were a few things that seemed imbalanced at first, but I think that just required a bit of player experience and metagame evolution to change. The thing is that the beta only allowed for about 50 parts out of 500. That's a lot of room for imbalance to come knocking out of. Believe me, this game could get raped by imbalance. Way more than any other AC game before it.

 

As far as ACV game mechanics go though, I think they're just fine as they are. I actually like the overall mechanics in the game quite a bit, though I do wish they would re-release an AC Collections Anniversary Edition with MoA+AA+SL+LR on one big blu-ray disc with online ability implemented. I also fully understand why they're changing the game mechanics, though, so expecting any kind of serious return to pre-AC4 mechanics is a waste of energy. There's a higher chance that Raor would be raptured straight into heaven than AC go back to the pre-AC4 mechanics. Though ACV does incorporate quite a few pre-AC4 mechanics.

 

Time for me to potty now.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

shotguns need some sort of buff

thats my only gripe about beta though

[Harakiri Tiger]

Yah, they get raped by KE defense way too easily. Idk how you'd fix them, though. Tbh I wouldn't mind the resistance scaling to not be so god damn insane, haha. SGs doing 4 AP damage a bullet is just sick.

[LCC]

Technically blades do lock in ps2 games, it's just instant. And the reason is because i'm the president of the united states of america.

 

 

The real reason is because blades don't track at all angles so they need to be within the invisible lockbox at the right range to track, hence locking on.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

watering down the defense type scaling would help out a lot in terms of gameplay. defense has a too big an impact on the game as of right now imo

 

either they reduce the positive and negative effects of defense types or they make it easier to omnitank with more parts in the full game (though i hope its the former because if it were the latter then it would give rise to frame archetypes far too easily and defense would overrule almost all other bonuses provided by different frame parts)

[Aokiryu89]

watering down the defense type scaling would help out a lot in terms of gameplay. defense has a too big an impact on the game as of right now imo

 

either they reduce the positive and negative effects of defense types or they make it easier to omnitank with more parts in the full game (though i hope its the former because if it were the latter then it would give rise to frame archetypes far too easily and defense would overrule almost all other bonuses provided by different frame parts)

 

Ah, do they let you guys play around with upgrading the weapons too? Me being the headstrong type would still build a lightly armored unit with strong attacks even if it means I don't win face to face matches.

[Harakiri Tiger]

My big gripe is how the defense system works, yah. I think making omni-tanked parts would just bring about LR style stupidity again. I really, really like the way the defense metagame works as it is now. I just don't like the scaling.

 

The actual damage scaling is terribly insane. It's just a bit too far on the overkill side. I mean, weapons have a max multiplier right now of 2.5x listed attack power in AP damage if the targets defense is low enough. So a gun with 10,000 attack can potentially do 25,000 AP in a single shot. I think that's not too bad, though I would prefer a cap of just 2x. 2.5x is tolerable, though. The problem really comes in on the actual damage reduction. You can reduce weapon damage to literally under 1% of actual listed attack power. I mean you can take a gun that has 1000 attack and make it do 20 AP damage a shot at optimal range and 5 AP damage at any range outside of optimal range easily. Potentially 0 damage, if they're far enough away. Far enough isn't too far, either. That's a huge gap. 20 - 2,500 AP damage, depending on target defense (assuming optimal range). Really, I mean 100 damage a shot would be fine. That's already 90% damage reduction vs 250% damage escalation. The same weapon could do 100 vs one AC and 2500 vs another AC. We good. You don't need to go any farther than that, but FROM thinks it's sane to go all the way.

 

Shotguns, for example, can shoot 12 bullets each? Or was it 16? I honestly can't remember now, but let's assume it was 10 just to be safe. I know they had 800 attack power per bullet and you could dual wield them. So the potential single simultaneous shot from them could do a huge range of damage. Listed attack power from two shotguns if all bullets hit would be 10 x 800 x 2 minimum. 16,000. That is then modified by opponent defense on a scale of 0.01x to 2.50x damage. Lol.

 

So you can potentially do anywhere from 160 AP damage total to 40,000 AP damage total in a single shot from dual shotguns, depending on your target. If they're within optimal range and all your bullets hit, of course. The problem is that it's easy to get roughly 800-1000 KE defense. Just equip any old midweight part and you're good. Once you break roughly 850-900 KE defense the shotguns have lower attack than the target AC has defense, so they go under the 1.0x multiplier. Meaning it's pretty hard to capitalize on any real damage bonus with them, unlike sniper rifles, etc. So you're already down to 16,000 max AP damage vs even some of the weakest ACs. Then you take into account the ultra long reload time and the optimal range and the weapon becomes very difficult to capitalize on in normal use, though not impossible. SGs lose power outside of optimal range fast, too. So that 16,000 becomes like 3,000 at like 75 meters. Then you take into account the beta metagame state where everyone and their mother was running around with roughly 2 midweight parts on their AC or a tank and your 16,000 max potential drops to like 8,000 max (0.5x multiplier) with that stupid long reload/optimal and it all starts to go out the window. Tack on the weirdo's who ran stacked anti-KE frames and that damage dropped to like barely 500 AP damage a volley if you got lucky. There were a lot of anti-KE stacked bots, too. Albeit that means TE/CE were buff, it was still pretty lame for anyone who wanted to try and use SGs.

 

Anyway, the point of my rant is that I do like the strange gouging system along with no omni-gouged parts (outside of ultra-slow permanently grounded tanks), but I don't like just how extreme they took it. I really would have prefered something like 0.25x to 2.00x damage scaling over the current 0.01x to 2.50x damage scaling. But yah, I'd really prefer if they did something like up the shotgun reload to like maybe 1 shot per second and also upped the minimum optimal range damage to 0.25x. I don't care about falloff too much since it makes sense that the weapons would lose power outside of optimal like that to me, but optimal damage shouldn't be 0.01x. That's just silly.

 

I definitely don't want to see omni-tanked parts, though. That would ruin the entire system for me and just kill all the variety and metagame space this game could have. I'd rather just play LR in that case.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

id actually aim for an even less extreme defense modifier and put it at 0.50/1.50 or even 0.75/1.25, especially since theres 3 different damage types. theres still a pretty damn big damage difference at 0.50/1.50 but its not at the point where shell vs shell means the difference between 200ap and 1000ap

 

and yah i dont want omnitank stuff. thatd ruin frame versatility

 

from better get on this! they have a reputation to uphold with dark souls now, so they cant fuck up the balance/mechanics (i hope)

Edited October 4, 2011 by noob

[Liarbird]

sadly its two different teams

[Pendragon]

I'll be honest, I'd rather deal with some imbalance, then to simply have every weapon be a carbon copy of every other weapon, because the former at least makes things interesting.

[Aokiryu89]

My big gripe is how the defense system works, yah. I think making omni-tanked parts would just bring about LR style stupidity again. I really, really like the way the defense metagame works as it is now. I just don't like the scaling.

 

The actual damage scaling is terribly insane. It's just a bit too far on the overkill side. I mean, weapons have a max multiplier right now of 2.5x listed attack power in AP damage if the targets defense is low enough. So a gun with 10,000 attack can potentially do 25,000 AP in a single shot. I think that's not too bad, though I would prefer a cap of just 2x. 2.5x is tolerable, though. The problem really comes in on the actual damage reduction. You can reduce weapon damage to literally under 1% of actual listed attack power. I mean you can take a gun that has 1000 attack and make it do 20 AP damage a shot at optimal range and 5 AP damage at any range outside of optimal range easily. Potentially 0 damage, if they're far enough away. Far enough isn't too far, either. That's a huge gap. 20 - 2,500 AP damage, depending on target defense (assuming optimal range). Really, I mean 100 damage a shot would be fine. That's already 90% damage reduction vs 250% damage escalation. The same weapon could do 100 vs one AC and 2500 vs another AC. We good. You don't need to go any farther than that, but FROM thinks it's sane to go all the way.

 

Shotguns, for example, can shoot 12 bullets each? Or was it 16? I honestly can't remember now, but let's assume it was 10 just to be safe. I know they had 800 attack power per bullet and you could dual wield them. So the potential single simultaneous shot from them could do a huge range of damage. Listed attack power from two shotguns if all bullets hit would be 10 x 800 x 2 minimum. 16,000. That is then modified by opponent defense on a scale of 0.01x to 2.50x damage. Lol.

 

So you can potentially do anywhere from 160 AP damage total to 40,000 AP damage total in a single shot from dual shotguns, depending on your target. If they're within optimal range and all your bullets hit, of course. The problem is that it's easy to get roughly 800-1000 KE defense. Just equip any old midweight part and you're good. Once you break roughly 850-900 KE defense the shotguns have lower attack than the target AC has defense, so they go under the 1.0x multiplier. Meaning it's pretty hard to capitalize on any real damage bonus with them, unlike sniper rifles, etc. So you're already down to 16,000 max AP damage vs even some of the weakest ACs. Then you take into account the ultra long reload time and the optimal range and the weapon becomes very difficult to capitalize on in normal use, though not impossible. SGs lose power outside of optimal range fast, too. So that 16,000 becomes like 3,000 at like 75 meters. Then you take into account the beta metagame state where everyone and their mother was running around with roughly 2 midweight parts on their AC or a tank and your 16,000 max potential drops to like 8,000 max (0.5x multiplier) with that stupid long reload/optimal and it all starts to go out the window. Tack on the weirdo's who ran stacked anti-KE frames and that damage dropped to like barely 500 AP damage a volley if you got lucky. There were a lot of anti-KE stacked bots, too. Albeit that means TE/CE were buff, it was still pretty lame for anyone who wanted to try and use SGs.

 

Anyway, the point of my rant is that I do like the strange gouging system along with no omni-gouged parts (outside of ultra-slow permanently grounded tanks), but I don't like just how extreme they took it. I really would have prefered something like 0.25x to 2.00x damage scaling over the current 0.01x to 2.50x damage scaling. But yah, I'd really prefer if they did something like up the shotgun releod to like maybe 1 shot per second and also upped the minimum optimal range damage to 0.25x. I don't care about falloff too much since it makes sense that the weapons would lose power outside of optimal like that to me, but optimal damage shouldn't be 0.01x. That's just silly.

 

I definitely don't want to see omni-tanked parts, though. That would ruin the entire system for me and just kill all the variety and metagame space this game could have. I'd rather just play LR in that case.

 

Now I got the picture, I don't think that counts as a rant, it was all informative and detailed haha.

[Nomrah]

I think Nomrah has been speculating too much.

I'll do that from time to time, but I ended up hearing some very detailed and descriptive intel, which I greatly appreciate.

 

That info revealed about defense and damage scaling was quite surprising. To me it seems like From really wants to shift some love towards Tank AC's and other heavyweights, that tank in the trailer was pretty badass. I like the idea, I've always personally found heavyweights to be a bit overshadowed throughout the series and have always wanted to see some real juggernauts take more of a front seat in the action.

 

I do wish they would re-release an AC Collections Anniversary Edition with MoA+AA+SL+LR on one big blu-ray disc with online ability implemented.

I hope this happens before I die, I'd trade in gold jewelry for that.

[The Fallen Raven]

http://soundcloud.com/search?q[fulltext]=fromsound+records Apparently FROM put out 30 some second previews of all they're songs from Armored Core Reprises on this site.

 

 

Edit: Paste the whole site because the it didn't link the whole URL.

Edited October 6, 2011 by The Fallen Raven

[Pendragon]

Pretty sweet tracks. Reminiscent of the older days of AC. I feel my heart aglow with nostalgia. Edited October 6, 2011 by Pendragon