5
This is especially frustrating time, because all of our efforts seem to be doing no good and bad, desperate "fixes" to the issue are getting implemented despite heavy resistance and good reasons given by the community. In fact, I only decided to go forward with this since Garth's response to a similar thread made me think at least someone might actually read and even care about our vews and suggestions, so kudos to you if you're reading this. So, if you're one of the interested, this is me explaining my views a bit.
In the following I will go through a few points and ideas, focusing on gameplay design. I will mention things like canonity, realism and history, but the main point in this post as in my mind in general is always the gameplay and any feature's effect on it.
Part 1: Why is pinpoint alpha strike such an issue.
Spoiler
When transfering BTech tabletop game rules to a real-time simulation, there are some considerations that need to be taken into account. The weapon numbers (damage, range, heat, weight, size, other perks) are often stated to be problematic, but rarely with any explanation given. Chances are that some modification to these numbers might be necessary - the tabletop game itself isn't perfectly balanced - but this is entirely secondary and can only be done after the game design underneath is ready for balancing by numbers.
In short, the biggest game-breaking issue is the ability of (especially good) players to aim their weapons at certain spots in the target 'mech. This means that the 'mechs tend to die a bit fast and not fall apart bit by bit like on the TT and in the lore. This is what the core game design needs to tackle before any heat, damage etc. numbers can have any meaningful use for balancing.
Technically, instant pinpoint alpha strikes are actually not a problem that arises in the tabletop to simulator conversion. But that's simply because they would break the tabletop gameplay as well if they were allowed there. If you could build your 'mechs freely and deliver 60 points of damage to any part you hit-rolled in the tabletop game, it would be about as broken as the 'mech simulators that allow such alphaing.
Perhaps the most important reason for pinpoint alphas being such a dangerous gameplay element in addition to breaking the BTech 'mech structure model is because they are by far the most effective way to play. Getting an aimed pinpoint alpha into the CT, head or an already damaged component is the single best thing to do in nearly all circumstances on the battlefield and that's what you tend to do if you know how to build 'mechs and play MWO. Additionally, alphaing is also the easiest way to play, which detracts from the skill element within the game. You don't become more effective by learning to chain fire different weapons for example. the pinpoint alpha -ability is a new, overwhelmingly important balancing parameter in MWO and since it's new, it's difficult to control with existing BTech rules such as heat, the solution has to come from core gameplay.
In fact, I can think of two main situations where you would want to chain fire:
1) You are absolutely certain less than alpha amount of damage will take your opponent down AND you can't afford to alpha.
2) You have a very limited time window to deliver damage AND you can't afford to alpha.
Note that even in both cases above if you can afford an alpha, you are better off doing it anyway. There are other, usually weapon specific reasons for chain firing, like shaking the enemy with a stream of streaks or putting a smile on your face with dakka-dakka, but the situation where you would want to chain fire.
Specifically, the often cited use case of chain firing to "heat-manage" is a fallacy. Even in these cases you are better off holding fire, getting behind cover if possible or torso twisting and maneuvering like crazy if you can't and then launching a pinpoint alpha that really hurts when you are cooled down enough to do so. Chain firing will both spread the damage and lower your DPS, which is bad-bad. If you find yourself wanting to chain fire to keep the 'mech cool go to 'mechlab and do some proper heat management.
In short, pinpoint alpha strikes are both the worst thing you can do to BTech game balance AND the most effective way to play MWO. This is a really seriously dangerous situation from game design perspective. Additionally, it's also making the balancing effort itself immensely difficult - I would actually say impossibly so.
With group fire allowed, when PGI are balancing to make the Laser 9, AC/20, PPC 10 or the SRM 9 a balanced weapon in its own right, they are simultaneously not only tweaking the laser 54, AC/40, PPC 60 and SRM 54 as well but also all the possible combinations such as PPC 30 + Gauss 15. How the heck do you even begin to do something like that?
When balancing against huge pinpoint alphas it's not only weapon balancing that suffers. It is likely that a simulator will require some form of armor buffs purely due to the players' aiming accuracy. However, in an environment where you can smash 60 points of damage to one location, it's going to be a much greater buff if it is to have any effect. Balance-wise this means that bringing single weapons into the match becomes less enticing. Calculating and arranging a firing solution for an AC/5 for example (while you are exposed to 40+ dmg pinpoint alphas) is too much trouble in most situations for the small reward that is a single 5 point hit. The end result is that a system that is balanced for alpha boating encourages further alpha boating, since not only is it the most effective playing style, it can also become the only style when hitting with single weapons becomes basically meaningless.
When transfering BTech tabletop game rules to a real-time simulation, there are some considerations that need to be taken into account. The weapon numbers (damage, range, heat, weight, size, other perks) are often stated to be problematic, but rarely with any explanation given. Chances are that some modification to these numbers might be necessary - the tabletop game itself isn't perfectly balanced - but this is entirely secondary and can only be done after the game design underneath is ready for balancing by numbers.
In short, the biggest game-breaking issue is the ability of (especially good) players to aim their weapons at certain spots in the target 'mech. This means that the 'mechs tend to die a bit fast and not fall apart bit by bit like on the TT and in the lore. This is what the core game design needs to tackle before any heat, damage etc. numbers can have any meaningful use for balancing.
Technically, instant pinpoint alpha strikes are actually not a problem that arises in the tabletop to simulator conversion. But that's simply because they would break the tabletop gameplay as well if they were allowed there. If you could build your 'mechs freely and deliver 60 points of damage to any part you hit-rolled in the tabletop game, it would be about as broken as the 'mech simulators that allow such alphaing.
Perhaps the most important reason for pinpoint alphas being such a dangerous gameplay element in addition to breaking the BTech 'mech structure model is because they are by far the most effective way to play. Getting an aimed pinpoint alpha into the CT, head or an already damaged component is the single best thing to do in nearly all circumstances on the battlefield and that's what you tend to do if you know how to build 'mechs and play MWO. Additionally, alphaing is also the easiest way to play, which detracts from the skill element within the game. You don't become more effective by learning to chain fire different weapons for example. the pinpoint alpha -ability is a new, overwhelmingly important balancing parameter in MWO and since it's new, it's difficult to control with existing BTech rules such as heat, the solution has to come from core gameplay.
In fact, I can think of two main situations where you would want to chain fire:
1) You are absolutely certain less than alpha amount of damage will take your opponent down AND you can't afford to alpha.
2) You have a very limited time window to deliver damage AND you can't afford to alpha.
Note that even in both cases above if you can afford an alpha, you are better off doing it anyway. There are other, usually weapon specific reasons for chain firing, like shaking the enemy with a stream of streaks or putting a smile on your face with dakka-dakka, but the situation where you would want to chain fire.
Specifically, the often cited use case of chain firing to "heat-manage" is a fallacy. Even in these cases you are better off holding fire, getting behind cover if possible or torso twisting and maneuvering like crazy if you can't and then launching a pinpoint alpha that really hurts when you are cooled down enough to do so. Chain firing will both spread the damage and lower your DPS, which is bad-bad. If you find yourself wanting to chain fire to keep the 'mech cool go to 'mechlab and do some proper heat management.
In short, pinpoint alpha strikes are both the worst thing you can do to BTech game balance AND the most effective way to play MWO. This is a really seriously dangerous situation from game design perspective. Additionally, it's also making the balancing effort itself immensely difficult - I would actually say impossibly so.
With group fire allowed, when PGI are balancing to make the Laser 9, AC/20, PPC 10 or the SRM 9 a balanced weapon in its own right, they are simultaneously not only tweaking the laser 54, AC/40, PPC 60 and SRM 54 as well but also all the possible combinations such as PPC 30 + Gauss 15. How the heck do you even begin to do something like that?
When balancing against huge pinpoint alphas it's not only weapon balancing that suffers. It is likely that a simulator will require some form of armor buffs purely due to the players' aiming accuracy. However, in an environment where you can smash 60 points of damage to one location, it's going to be a much greater buff if it is to have any effect. Balance-wise this means that bringing single weapons into the match becomes less enticing. Calculating and arranging a firing solution for an AC/5 for example (while you are exposed to 40+ dmg pinpoint alphas) is too much trouble in most situations for the small reward that is a single 5 point hit. The end result is that a system that is balanced for alpha boating encourages further alpha boating, since not only is it the most effective playing style, it can also become the only style when hitting with single weapons becomes basically meaningless.
Part 2: How about other options to counter high damage pinpoint alphas?
Spoiler
There have been many interesting ideas about how to curb pinpoint alphas while still allowing group fire to happen. Perhaps before explaining why I think the removal of group fire is the only reasonable option it's useful to state why I think some of the proposed options might not be effective enough.
1) Anything to do with heat.
Heat is one of the parameters for setting up the balance between weapons. In addition to damage (and cooldown) it is the only one available to PGI, since they don't want to touch size and weight due to wanting to stick with canon. Fair enough, I don't object to that.
But. Heat is only one variable and only touches certain weapons that subsequently get a nerf while weapons that offer big size and weight at low heat get a buff. Soon after the data-driven game design at PGI rings alarms as nobody takes the high eat weapons anymore and they get an inevitable buff and soon we're back where we started. Interestingly, we have just about completed the first circle in the cyclic development with the Gauss cat from closed beta days about to make a comeback after the upcoming heat nerf.
Also, heat is bad for weapon and build variety. In the tabletop, there was such a thing as "cool enough" and you might take kicker weapons instead of heat sinks. In the already overly hot MWO this is practically never the case and you are always better off boating heat sinks.
With that said, I would like to see incremental heat penalties implemented, but mostly as an interesting gameplay element, not to discourage boating.
2) Hardpoint sizes
I believe hardpoint sizes would be good for providing variety to different chassis designs and should be implemented to do just that. However, some designs are natural boats, so this solution will not stop alpha-boating. In fact, with the existing alpha boating -dominated game design this would make the born to boat -designs markedly superior to the others reducing variety. One more reason to get rid of group fire in my book, not so much a solution for it.
3) Cone of fire / convergence
Cone of fire should help the pinpoint issue, but not necessarily stop the alpha strike and hide -meta. It is useful to hit hard and hide before the other guy can retaliate even if you don't get all the damage to a single location. Also, this offers the opportunity for some frustration, because a completely random system would occasionally give you the lucky bullseye convergence and hurt bad and it would still be beneficial to try to achieve it. A pseudo-random spread might provide possibilities for exploitation, depending on the implementation.
This kind of element of luck is not the kind of design I want to see, but that's largely also a personal opinion. I feel that the flowing, skill-based fire and motion gameplay is superior to WoT's stop, hide and ambush that kept me and 70M+ people entertained for a good while. And that's saying something.
As for convergence, it's an interesting concept, familiar to me from flight simulators.
With fixed convergence you could still strike a single location at a given range. Note that relatively close to that range the spread is still very small, so the opportunity for pinpoint strikes is real, although more difficult to achieve than what we have now - except for tracking shots where fixed convergence would actually make pinpoint shots easier, since you are not converging on a terrain spot far behind the target.
With no convergence broad designs and arm weapons would become useless. There's also a fluff explanation for torso weapon convergence, but it could be overridden on gameplay grounds if it was beneficial. With arm weapons converging, designs without arm weapons would become useless and this option wouldn't actually touch the currently greatest pinpoint alpha offenders.
Convergence that take a bit longer to achieve is an interesting idea, but would only serve to make alphaing more challenging, not give any incentives to do anything else. I believe this is also true to many convergence suggestions, they make the alphas less effective, but don't really encourage you to chain fire.
Except of course if the chain fire gives you perfect convergence unlike alphaing. This is actually quite interesting and a notable incentive to chain fire, which begs the question (that needs to be answered at some point anyway) why should we even keep the alpha strike then? This approach would already be very close to my idea of simply getting rid of group fires so why not just go the simple route? Why leave the door open for designs such as Splatcat and any boat shooting many weapons from single point that don't care much about convergence issues when group firing or the Streak Cat that is completely unaffected by it? Let alone its future clanmates with loads of SSRM6 onboard? Only allowing pinpoint accuracy in chain fire is IMRO a pretty good solution, but it doesn't quite cover all the bases and leaves the group fire demon alive ready to resurface given the slightest chance such as a momentary quirk in weapon balance.
There have been many interesting ideas about how to curb pinpoint alphas while still allowing group fire to happen. Perhaps before explaining why I think the removal of group fire is the only reasonable option it's useful to state why I think some of the proposed options might not be effective enough.
1) Anything to do with heat.
Heat is one of the parameters for setting up the balance between weapons. In addition to damage (and cooldown) it is the only one available to PGI, since they don't want to touch size and weight due to wanting to stick with canon. Fair enough, I don't object to that.
But. Heat is only one variable and only touches certain weapons that subsequently get a nerf while weapons that offer big size and weight at low heat get a buff. Soon after the data-driven game design at PGI rings alarms as nobody takes the high eat weapons anymore and they get an inevitable buff and soon we're back where we started. Interestingly, we have just about completed the first circle in the cyclic development with the Gauss cat from closed beta days about to make a comeback after the upcoming heat nerf.
Also, heat is bad for weapon and build variety. In the tabletop, there was such a thing as "cool enough" and you might take kicker weapons instead of heat sinks. In the already overly hot MWO this is practically never the case and you are always better off boating heat sinks.
With that said, I would like to see incremental heat penalties implemented, but mostly as an interesting gameplay element, not to discourage boating.
2) Hardpoint sizes
I believe hardpoint sizes would be good for providing variety to different chassis designs and should be implemented to do just that. However, some designs are natural boats, so this solution will not stop alpha-boating. In fact, with the existing alpha boating -dominated game design this would make the born to boat -designs markedly superior to the others reducing variety. One more reason to get rid of group fire in my book, not so much a solution for it.
3) Cone of fire / convergence
Cone of fire should help the pinpoint issue, but not necessarily stop the alpha strike and hide -meta. It is useful to hit hard and hide before the other guy can retaliate even if you don't get all the damage to a single location. Also, this offers the opportunity for some frustration, because a completely random system would occasionally give you the lucky bullseye convergence and hurt bad and it would still be beneficial to try to achieve it. A pseudo-random spread might provide possibilities for exploitation, depending on the implementation.
This kind of element of luck is not the kind of design I want to see, but that's largely also a personal opinion. I feel that the flowing, skill-based fire and motion gameplay is superior to WoT's stop, hide and ambush that kept me and 70M+ people entertained for a good while. And that's saying something.
As for convergence, it's an interesting concept, familiar to me from flight simulators.
With fixed convergence you could still strike a single location at a given range. Note that relatively close to that range the spread is still very small, so the opportunity for pinpoint strikes is real, although more difficult to achieve than what we have now - except for tracking shots where fixed convergence would actually make pinpoint shots easier, since you are not converging on a terrain spot far behind the target.
With no convergence broad designs and arm weapons would become useless. There's also a fluff explanation for torso weapon convergence, but it could be overridden on gameplay grounds if it was beneficial. With arm weapons converging, designs without arm weapons would become useless and this option wouldn't actually touch the currently greatest pinpoint alpha offenders.
Convergence that take a bit longer to achieve is an interesting idea, but would only serve to make alphaing more challenging, not give any incentives to do anything else. I believe this is also true to many convergence suggestions, they make the alphas less effective, but don't really encourage you to chain fire.
Except of course if the chain fire gives you perfect convergence unlike alphaing. This is actually quite interesting and a notable incentive to chain fire, which begs the question (that needs to be answered at some point anyway) why should we even keep the alpha strike then? This approach would already be very close to my idea of simply getting rid of group fires so why not just go the simple route? Why leave the door open for designs such as Splatcat and any boat shooting many weapons from single point that don't care much about convergence issues when group firing or the Streak Cat that is completely unaffected by it? Let alone its future clanmates with loads of SSRM6 onboard? Only allowing pinpoint accuracy in chain fire is IMRO a pretty good solution, but it doesn't quite cover all the bases and leaves the group fire demon alive ready to resurface given the slightest chance such as a momentary quirk in weapon balance.
Part 3: How would the game change if group fire was removed?
Spoiler
Edit for clarity: Removal of group fire in this context means literally complete inability to fire several weapons at a time, with any macros or other means available or unavailable to people.
For the purposes of this thought experiment I am assuming semi-arbitrary numbers of 10 seconds cooldown for all weapons and a minimum of 1 second between firing different weapons. These figures are probably not optimal, but possibly in the ballpark.
- Hey, wouldn't this provide very boring gameplay!?!?!?!
No, say the 70M+ WoT players who deal with this kind of firing rates all the time.
No, says logic, since most 'mechs carry more than one weapon. In fact, in some designs you would be firing non-stop and still not getting all the shots out before the the first fired gun has cooled down. In fact, on average you would be doing boom-boom-zwiishh-dakka-dakka at a vastly higher rate than currently. Especially, if you're used to piloting alpha snipers that often already have 10 seconds effective cooldown due to the need to cool down and hide between shots.
So, if group fire was removed, what would change gameplay-wise?
1) it would take much longer to take 'mechs down and concentrating fire on single locations would be more difficult. Maybe even so much so, that the doubled armor and internals could be taken away, hard to say without testing.
2) Imagine pop-tarts holding target for 3 full seconds to get 3 PPC and Gauss into a single location. Might not be enough to stop the menace, but would certainly help.
3) Weapons would be balanced against each other, not as combinations of different guns striking the same spot. Compared to the current option this is actually possible, which is somewhat good.
4) Practically every flavor of the month -build ever would be nerfed simultaneously. It would still be advantageous to carry similar weapons and be very effective under given circumstances, but at least it might be feasible to consider a more varied loadout. Missile mechanisms and lag shields would need another solution, but that can be arranged and at least removing group fire wouldn't make anything worse than it is now.
5) The dynamics of the game would change fundamentally. To deliver a lot of hurt you also need to be exposed for a reasonable length of time. It's hard to say exactly how things would be without testing, but my guess is we would see - or at least be able to achieve through other balancing means - a better balance between sniping and brawling.
6) The skill cap would be higher. It would take more effort to get a lot of damage into a single location. Perhaps even varied loadouts with a pilot able to juggle a number of different weapon types would prove more effective than the easy mode alpha strikers of today.
7) Heat buildup would by necessity be slower and more gradual, which would make it feasible to apply BTech-style gradual heat penalties as a gameplay element. Current insane bursts of heat are actually making gradual heat penalties very difficult to manage, which is preventing their implementation.
8) If heat was kept at tabletop levels, we should see more varied designs when the only good option wouldn't always be "bring more sinks". This is of course not dependent on group fire, but is a possible result of the suggested changes and related to 7)
Removing group fire would also make the game far more future proof than it is now. Currently we are seemingly struggling with a limited number of problematic designs, but that is absolutely not the truth. If the current pinpoint alpha builds are nerfed, the next variation is just around the corner and the corner is very near. Also, clans will bring incredible boating possibilities with virtually every design.
Removing group fire is technically maddeningly simple. It would literally be a few minutes' worth of programming work in itself, the design changes would of course be more dramatic.
Removing group fire is also completely foolproof. The instant alpha-ability would be completely gone as a defining balancing factor introduced to BTech rules by MWO (or rather MW2 originally, but MWO chose to include it despite the feature not being present in the original materials). Because pinpoint group firing is so effective, it is somewhat dangerous to choose any other method that might encourage the use of chain fire effectively. The menace of pinpoint alpha will always linger just one poorly conceived - however small - change in gameplay if it is allowed to exist as an option.
Removing group fire would go a bit against realism, since because of its effectiveness, 'mechs would surely be built to take maximum advantage of it. I think that gameplay reasons can trump realism in this case, though, and I'm sure we can find someone to write convincing fluff about why it's not possible to group fire.
Removing group fire would not remove anything central to the franchise. It's certainly not possible in the tabletop game, in lore it's supposedly used as a measure of desperation, which is by definition a rare event. Personally as a 'mech pilot I would become very desperate every time 100 tons of armor and guns rolls towards me at 60kph. Also, if group fire is supposed to be a desperate last ditch measure it can't be very effective or it will be used all the time. If it can't be effective due to lore or gameplay reasons it can't be important to the game and thus can't have many important positive sides to offset the negatives and should thus be removed.
I suggest you check out the list above concerning the effects of removing group fire. I think it's a pretty impressive list and if I'm right about even just some or one of them, wouldn't that merit considering the implementation of the idea? Also note that removing group fire is not the perfect answer to absolutely everything. IMRO it is the solid beginning MWO design never really had, however.
Edit for clarity: Removal of group fire in this context means literally complete inability to fire several weapons at a time, with any macros or other means available or unavailable to people.
For the purposes of this thought experiment I am assuming semi-arbitrary numbers of 10 seconds cooldown for all weapons and a minimum of 1 second between firing different weapons. These figures are probably not optimal, but possibly in the ballpark.
- Hey, wouldn't this provide very boring gameplay!?!?!?!
No, say the 70M+ WoT players who deal with this kind of firing rates all the time.
No, says logic, since most 'mechs carry more than one weapon. In fact, in some designs you would be firing non-stop and still not getting all the shots out before the the first fired gun has cooled down. In fact, on average you would be doing boom-boom-zwiishh-dakka-dakka at a vastly higher rate than currently. Especially, if you're used to piloting alpha snipers that often already have 10 seconds effective cooldown due to the need to cool down and hide between shots.
So, if group fire was removed, what would change gameplay-wise?
1) it would take much longer to take 'mechs down and concentrating fire on single locations would be more difficult. Maybe even so much so, that the doubled armor and internals could be taken away, hard to say without testing.
2) Imagine pop-tarts holding target for 3 full seconds to get 3 PPC and Gauss into a single location. Might not be enough to stop the menace, but would certainly help.
3) Weapons would be balanced against each other, not as combinations of different guns striking the same spot. Compared to the current option this is actually possible, which is somewhat good.
4) Practically every flavor of the month -build ever would be nerfed simultaneously. It would still be advantageous to carry similar weapons and be very effective under given circumstances, but at least it might be feasible to consider a more varied loadout. Missile mechanisms and lag shields would need another solution, but that can be arranged and at least removing group fire wouldn't make anything worse than it is now.
5) The dynamics of the game would change fundamentally. To deliver a lot of hurt you also need to be exposed for a reasonable length of time. It's hard to say exactly how things would be without testing, but my guess is we would see - or at least be able to achieve through other balancing means - a better balance between sniping and brawling.
6) The skill cap would be higher. It would take more effort to get a lot of damage into a single location. Perhaps even varied loadouts with a pilot able to juggle a number of different weapon types would prove more effective than the easy mode alpha strikers of today.
7) Heat buildup would by necessity be slower and more gradual, which would make it feasible to apply BTech-style gradual heat penalties as a gameplay element. Current insane bursts of heat are actually making gradual heat penalties very difficult to manage, which is preventing their implementation.
8) If heat was kept at tabletop levels, we should see more varied designs when the only good option wouldn't always be "bring more sinks". This is of course not dependent on group fire, but is a possible result of the suggested changes and related to 7)
Removing group fire would also make the game far more future proof than it is now. Currently we are seemingly struggling with a limited number of problematic designs, but that is absolutely not the truth. If the current pinpoint alpha builds are nerfed, the next variation is just around the corner and the corner is very near. Also, clans will bring incredible boating possibilities with virtually every design.
Removing group fire is technically maddeningly simple. It would literally be a few minutes' worth of programming work in itself, the design changes would of course be more dramatic.
Removing group fire is also completely foolproof. The instant alpha-ability would be completely gone as a defining balancing factor introduced to BTech rules by MWO (or rather MW2 originally, but MWO chose to include it despite the feature not being present in the original materials). Because pinpoint group firing is so effective, it is somewhat dangerous to choose any other method that might encourage the use of chain fire effectively. The menace of pinpoint alpha will always linger just one poorly conceived - however small - change in gameplay if it is allowed to exist as an option.
Removing group fire would go a bit against realism, since because of its effectiveness, 'mechs would surely be built to take maximum advantage of it. I think that gameplay reasons can trump realism in this case, though, and I'm sure we can find someone to write convincing fluff about why it's not possible to group fire.
Removing group fire would not remove anything central to the franchise. It's certainly not possible in the tabletop game, in lore it's supposedly used as a measure of desperation, which is by definition a rare event. Personally as a 'mech pilot I would become very desperate every time 100 tons of armor and guns rolls towards me at 60kph. Also, if group fire is supposed to be a desperate last ditch measure it can't be very effective or it will be used all the time. If it can't be effective due to lore or gameplay reasons it can't be important to the game and thus can't have many important positive sides to offset the negatives and should thus be removed.
I suggest you check out the list above concerning the effects of removing group fire. I think it's a pretty impressive list and if I'm right about even just some or one of them, wouldn't that merit considering the implementation of the idea? Also note that removing group fire is not the perfect answer to absolutely everything. IMRO it is the solid beginning MWO design never really had, however.
TLDR; Yeah, it probably was.
Edited by AndyHill, 14 July 2013 - 02:26 PM.
