Jump to content

Desert Fox

Members
  • Posts

    39
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Desert Fox's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (2/11)

  1. Speaking personally, I found FA a lot more fun. AC4 just wasn't as enjoyable to design or play for me. I played FA first.
  2. I agree completely. I had much more fun designing and playing NB than LR, (than NX too) although I still didn't like the heat mechanics, and there was a lot of stuff to better balance.
  3. Just tried it in AC3 and it seems to track a lot better than SL, maybe I was dealing with client lag, who knows. Probably also the SL increased speeds from MOB. NX accuracy was crazy especially with severe heat. NB was my preference overall in terms of accuracy. Close to NX but better able to dodge and heat a bit less severe. More onus on the dodger to dodge, rather than the attacker to make it hit. Sort of like AA in a way. I hated NX/NB RS with boosted lockbox size from WS L guns though, that was lame and like you say point, click, hit. No boosting of lockbox sizes with L guns would've suited me better. (even then RS should've had a bit longer reload) I enjoyed the speed and movement in AC3/SL, I just would've liked more gun accuracy, particularly in SL - AC3 being slower helps and I feel the gun tracking is a bit tighter and more accurate.
  4. Thanks for the links, the MOC3 fights are interesting to look back on, if not as interesting to watch due to the flat open spaces. Sandman/Karl is pretty fun to watch. Franko didn't use the super shell def arms I see, so he could be hurt more easily by shell weapons, I think his heavy was totally legit. Noticed for the GNL you actually have 3 levels of use, 1st shooting no double lock or too far, 2nd level hold double locks, 3rd position or time it (like when opponent changes directions strafing there's sometimes a brief window) so the shooting no double lock still hits. In SL when you hit client lag it becomes a dice roll with cannons so you have to use that more and take your chances on a lot more iffy shots. XCG20 was unreliable when I played LCC in SL. Maybe it was the same for most guns and I noticed it more due to limited ammo, but I remember it being wonky - sometimes it would lead the target, and sometimes it wouldn't. Didn't seem to matter, it did it even when double locked. You'd shoot and sometimes it would lead the target and sometimes it would shoot where they had been. I remember one match we played LCC redzoned and was in my sights at short (nearly CQ) range and 3 shots in a row missed because it didn't track, even though he was double locked. To me, that kind of lack of reliability is messed up. Other times but inconsistently it would lead him and nail him with surprising accuracy. (last shot in one of the following videos) I used it anyway, and wanted to like that gun - I used it to make mid and lite-heavy SL jousters, but it was too inconsistent to hold up with the top tier guns, it's hard to deal with pressure situations or comeback if suddenly your big gun misses several shots due to not tracking at critical moments. Here's a couple vids to illustrate:
  5. Franko's XCG20 use would've been interesting to see, it tracked for shit in SL, (like often a 50-75% odds will it track or not track) my impression is it would've tracked better in AC3, tracking all around seems better in AC3, although I'm not sure of that vs humans. Harder to support XCG20 without proper options too. I figured GNL in AC3's open stages would be pretty dominating, whereas in AA GN210>GNL (though NIGHT mitigates this...) Quads were pretty slow on the ground in AA and Sandman's AC was essentially paper-mache for armor. He was pro with it and had top tier weapons, but I think the AC itself is at a disadvantage vis-a-vis OB GN210 jousters and Oliver style light Sawa AC for example, just because of the grounding of quads sans boosting to use the cannons. Someone dedicated to hovers in AA-SL would probably be a better example.
  6. I remember back in the day we were aware of that and for the most part everyone just refused to do it as virtually everyone considered it lame. It's the whole win-no-matter-how mentality that pervades too much of everything these days, most noticeable in sports. We didn't want to play chip damage and run clock for a lame timeout, we wanted to blow up the other guy. Like you say if you can win the lamest way possible, who gives a shit? That's no fun to play, no fun to play against and no fun to watch. Only people with fragile egos will get so hung up on winning they will go with maximum lame all the time - can't win by skill so they'll try to take skill out of the equation. Like sports where they'll injure an opposing player who's better than them. Frankly I didn't mind when people picked any particular style, as long as there was a reasonable chance of winning by adapting playstyle to it. It was the ones where you couldn't adapt to it where we got into bans. (CROW) And sometimes there was no easy fix so we put it up to people not to be lame. Bans discussions essentially boiled down to how much advantage did it give and could it be reasonably countered without fighting fire with fire or being specifically hard-countered. Also had to give significant advantage over all or almost all designs. That's why we were so hung up on balancing parts, with proper balance it wouldn't be possible to go super lame and boost your win count significantly despite lack of skill. You'd be able to try but you wouldn't get enough advantage to matter. This was typically true anyway for the most part, with the bans we made in place. With the more refined skillsets nowadays there might be holes, but I think they were still pretty decent given what From gave use to work with. Part of designing was taking the archetypes into consideration, it was often up to the designer if they felt they needed to maximize equal footing (MOC3 Watcher) or stay true to their style and accept likely more disadvantage. (MOC2 Sandman - not sure best example, but you get idea) I still feel PS2 era AC missed its potential by not being online. (plus all the part balance fixes they should've had) The old crews of the day, many who were in geographically separate areas being able to play each other regularly with some kind of spectator mode would've been sweet. Could've had fairly regular tourneys among the forum regulars and lots of entertaining vids for vets to watch other vets in action, and for newbies looking to enhance their skills. Ah well.
  7. I'm almost sure FLEET wasn't banned until LR, at least on the forums. It's on my SL staple and no one batted an eye about it in the day, I'm sure I'd remember. I recall the discussion about it centering on FLEET + HUESO in AC3, with the majority deciding HUESO were the problem vs FLEET. LR was the first AC I remember where we agreed it was necessary to ban a booster across the board, that was a big deal and some people thought it was ridiculous until they saw it in action. RF220 was the best gun due to the huge box (should've been standard), plus overall deep killpower plus ability to heat. I see it like 008 core in SL, it's best but the margin's not so large - clearly best doesn't mean needs ban for me. I had no human vs back in AC3 era, so I never got to test it. I remember it was the RF220/HZL50/HUESO/FLEET that was AC3 uber-AC. I'm pretty sure HUESO was the only part banned, at least initially. We decided the weapon combo was best, but like 008 core, not so much better than other options it needed banning. Maybe you guys decided that later in the Cali groups. It'd be easy to put at least some limits on heavies by banning the heaviest arms, but the speed boost leaves the end result pretty similar. If I remember right, everyone back in the day decided we didn't want to go down that road and so we just collectively said they were lame and put it on disdain to discourage. I do remember ammo to crack the superheavies and tanks being a concern when designing. It just got more ridiculous in SL with solid shields and PEGASUS. You could try and deal with weapon inaccuracy in AC3-SL by limiting boosters to weaker ones, I've been messing around with them for fun in the arena, but then GNL and/or LQ15 are super-dominant.
  8. EDGE are more nimble and agile than mid legs, even if stats are same or better. Jump higher, run faster, and I think turn faster. I noticed when I put my staple on lights legs in AC3 and NX recently. Harder to handle though, usually drainier and less armored - unless you're going really light or with something that empties fast, it's pretty hard to mount a mid-weight or heavier missile pack and get enough of a connect rate to make up for the speed loss. CROW was banned and definitely the worst offender. HZL50 wasn't but could be by MG800 ban logic. Was it HUESO, or just with FLEET banned? I forget. RF220 didn't need banning in my opinion, at all. Blades would fix the super defense problem to a degree, the heavies had more limited mobility without MOB cores and higher weight - and without HZL50 they wouldn't be nigh un-bladeable. I dunno, the AC3 maps were lacking - Wasteland was ok but you can't see much taking out a big part of the fun, Structure was ok but screws my staple verts or the dual verts. :/ Military Base, Trene, Crest Base, and the inside crest base (forget the name) and the tall pipes stage add a lot to the SL vs battles. Lag screws it up a lot though. Can't remember if Trene was in AC3 as a stage. The green blade is basically the 3-claw from AA, though admittedly it looks more like Wolverine with 3-claw so its cooler.
  9. Thanks, I was curious. HZL50 was the L arm MG800 of AC3. Struck me as a gentlemen's ban. Without it in play, everything else for L arm is reasonably viable. After the initial ooo-ah, it seemed dumb. Cool laser swords or an awkwardly lobbed bomb. Blades probably could've used a bit of a boost though, maybe 10-15% more damage - it's more obvious when using the first two swords, they are plain weak for the effort.
  10. Well blading's fun, even if HZL is way more effective. Btw, anyone know what Watcher's staple Owl was running AC3 era? I'm curious if he was using the HZL or a blade. Can emulators run the old games (AA-SL) and play people online? You'd think someone would be able to hack that and fix SL's client lag if they had a mind to, or some up and coming game designer could do that as an exercise or something. If there was interest, which there probably isn't...
  11. So I played through AC3 again, and did the arena thing with various ACs and a few things struck me. Gameplay really was a lot of FUN. Just boosting around with all the old techniques is still really fun and cool. Old AC games were hard. You have to just grit and keep going with your crummy AC performance until you can cobble some money for not-awful parts. (especially boosters and generator) I admire From's forcing you to do that slowly, to enhance appreciation of upgrades. It's a bit funny having to OB drift in starter missions just to get half decent speed. Blading was good, but blading with OP-I should've been the default with HZL50 in play. Tracking was just so much better with most heads and FCS's than I remember, totally don't get why they messed it up for SL. OB was drainy, but stages and areas were smaller so it wasn't that noticeable. HZL50 needed some tweaking, more weight, less ammo, slower reload. Maybe all of the above to a degree. OP-I was actually fun even without cannons, although obviously still a game breaker. The VS stages kinda sucked, no open skies with cover. Weapon tracking felt tighter, but it might be because ACs were slower with no MOB. Double locks felt a little faster. Kinda feel it actually was tighter, to a degree. Definitely had the capability - as OP-I Sawa guy clearly shows. It was fun to see all the badly designed ACs in the arena, then as you get closer to the top you can see noticeable improvement in the designs, and at the top equipped with some of the best weapons. Fun to mess around with the starter AC, Gundam ACs, and other giant robot lookalikes. Or self-challenges like using the starter AC frame etc. Potential It's a bit disconcerting there was a bunch of potential they still never went anywhere with. Among other things... - Advanced tutorials by arena Ravens (allies?) once you reach various ranks. OB drift/glide, OB run, OB jump. - Level/Stage editor to let players design their own.
  12. Actually I just beat this guy again recently with a few bots. I messed around with starter AC frame, limited it to 002 boosters and RF150/RFL150, the starter or 2nd missile pack and the R24 extensions. Takes longer than you'd think with that monster shell def L shield he's got. Just a chipping game. One of those challenge yourself type exercises - Nameless, #1 and Corpse Maker are fairly rough with that setup, due to their aggressiveness and high RoD with OP-I AMS.
  13. L solid shields were insane because they were designed for part breaking, even though they don't break... Speaking of which playing SL the other day I had my BZ30 get broken, hadn't remembered seeing that before. Plus the benefits are almost the same as L en shields with zero drain. The solid shields should have NX/NB style stats, with the en shields having unchanged SL stats with maybe 1/2 or 3/4 the drain usage. Not sure how viable it is, but with the 90 coverage en shield you can trade shots using LQ15 until your en runs too low, then you have to try and figure out how to take the shield down without taking too much damage. Not sure how workable it is against a competent opponent, but it might have some feasibility. Cuts damage noticeably but not hit-brick-wall of defense. Anyway it's fun to mess around with some of the old stuff and see if it's workable, or how broken it really was. WALL is pretty borderline, it's almost acceptable in my opinion unless on the already powerful designs. The block rate seems to be around 10-20% against the XC50 or LQ15, not sure if it's the same for all guns.
  14. It's AC3, not SL. The HZL works fine, blading is just cooler and more fun. Plus blading isn't not so wonked as SL.
×
×
  • Create New...