3
http://www.nogutsnog...hp?topic=1956.0
Recorded: 17 April 2014
Aired: 23 April 2014
Disclaimer: I do not work for PGI, or NGNG. My intention is to provide a thorough summary of this interview for people who cannot or will not listen but still want the information. Also, I have nothing against Hungarians. (clarifications are in parenthesis) [My editorial comments are in brackets -Peiper] There is bias in this summary. In trying to take all those words and present them in a concise, written format, I quote very little and reword most everything. It is impossible for my personality or thought processes to not tilt the meaning toward my own understanding of what was said. If there are inconsistencies between what I write and what is fact, please say so in a private message. As far as the timing of the release of this summary. I couldn't possibly get the summary or even announcement out. Too much going on, and I get my information about these podcasts no faster than you guys do. Special thanks to Cimarb. Go give him a gold star on his profile or something nice!
This one is for my fans. It's feels good to be appreciated. 
-Peiper
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The following is a summary of an interview conducted by Phil and Daeron of the No Guts No Galaxy podcast. The interviewee is Paul Inouye, lead designer at PGI.
2:30 Paul describes his day to day activities. He watches everybody and keeps up on what they're doing. He keeps tabs on what's coming down the pipe. He sounds like he's involved in every aspect of the game, from number-crunching weapons balancing to community warfare, which is priority for him right now.
Daeron prefaces the following questions about what Paul has a hand in/what he is responsible for, and what he is not:
3:50 3rd person view? While he was adamantly against it, there were external (outside of PGI) and internal pressures to incorporate it. There was a lot of tension in the studio over it, and it sounds like the external pressures won [investors other than founders, I'm presuming -Peiper]. So Paul took on 3rd person with the goal of making sure that 1st person was ALWAYS the choice, tactically, to go with. Better to have a useless 3rd person than a 3rd person that would destroy PGI's goal and/or the founder's wish of an immersive cockpit feel/simulator. [He doesn't go into the debacle of how it was handled with the founders/community. I often wondered if they presented it the way they did, almost ninja-like knowing that we'd absolutely flip out over it and they could point to their puppet masters and say: We told you so, suckas! However, consumables and other issues lead me to think that the studio was just so tunnel visioned by that point that they weren't that clever. -Peiper]
6:00 Paul is describing his job as anything to do with the 'gameplay experience.' Like UI 2.0, how the game PLAYS, the enjoyment of the game, making the user experience a positive one. [If by saying he was in charge of the mechlab when he mentions UI 2.0, we're doomed. - Peiper] He says there's a bunch of what sounds like middle-management stuff too.
6:35 Phil presses him for more info on the 3rd person debacle. Phil points out that it was people outside the USA that wanted 3rd person and Paul agrees that there was tremendous pressure from external territories, IE: other countries to put 3rd person in. This pressure was put on IGP, which was otherwise neutral on the subject, down to PGI where there was some internal debate over 3rd person. It was decided to add 3rd person to placate the (extra terrestrials or Hungarians or whoever really, really, really wanted 3rd person.) [Could it be part of a deal that in order to set up servers and/or allow players overseas access to the game that it had to have certain features? Or were they simply large amounts of BT/MWO fans who wouldn't play without 3rd person as an option? If that were the case, then where are all those 3rd person players? I hardly ever see the flying remote that when I do I often try to shoot it mistaking it for an enemy UAV! Conclusion, it was the E.T.'s at work pulling the strings, and not the Hungarians... - Peiper]
8:00 Daeron points out that Paul has been thrown under the bus for some other things like the in-game economy (lack thereof?) and the overall marketing of the game (clan packages?). Paul takes responsibility for the first iteration of the economy – rearm/repair, which back in closed beta days backfired early on as some people went into negative c-bills because they spent more money repairing and rearming than they earned. After that, it was no longer his call on how the economy – which translates in the metagame to 'the grind' – was to function. He had input, but reading between the lines, he'd still like to see rearm/repair like many of us do. In the end, though, balancing the grind (mechs/gear earned over time played) meant removing repair and rearm. This was to keep from discouraging newer players, and I'm guessing, [my interpretation from here on] simply to keep the math more easily managed when figuring out values of C-bills, MC, and the like. Repair/rearm brings in another set of variables on top of dual currency already in game, and makes calculating things like cadet bonuses and achievement rewards more difficult as well.
9:40 Paul isn't directly in charge of marketing. He can put forth suggestions and ideas through Matt Newman who is PGI's liaison with 'marketing.' Marketing is not in Vancouver, it is in IGP's hands. He didn't have any input and found out fairly late about the 'clan invasion' promotion. It was a shock to him but 'needed' at the time. [To please Microsoft? -Peiper] He doesn't deal with when new mechs are released, sales, etc... He leaves that to the money men.
11:15 Heat Scale/Ghost Heat: Phil says how “we can all agree that it worked” [bulls**t -Peiper] and asks Paul to explain it. Paul admits it's his fault, er, I mean, brainchild. It was his way of dealing with the high alpha, the idea of blowing a whole through a mech in as short a time as possible, which plagued previous MW titles. He was concerned not so much with boating or pinpoint damage, but with overall damage output. Heat scale is the only thing that stops it. He's heard the community's idea of lowering the heat cap and increasing heat dissipation, but it doesn't STOP high alpha damage. Sure, you'll shut down, but then you'll wake up right away to do it all over again. What the ghost heat does is say, okay, you CAN fire alpha strikes, but there's a good chance that you'll die doing it. It's okay if people DO find ways to get around it and or pull off alphas, but to do so is a skill/talent, and they are fine with people pushing the envelope. He thinks that ghost heat is currently up to the task of balancing it all out, and he can concentrate on tweaking individual weapons or combinations of weapons to fit with that scale template. Not big changes, just little tweaks.
[Note, desynching Gauss rifles WAS about pinpoint damage, but that wasn't a heat issue. However, firing PPC's and Gauss together WAS a way to get around the tremendous heat and do pinpoint damage. So I do see his point on how the heat scale is there to prevent overall massive amounts of alpha strike damage, but balancing out particular weapons deals with boating. The contradiction there is: ghost heat is directly related to the number of similar type weapons fired at the same time, which is encourages people to take a variety of weapons systems IE: an anti-boating measure. -Peiper ]
14:30 Daeron agrees with Phil that he thinks most people agree that it works. [Yeah, covering a wall with aluminum siding will help protect a wooden wall from rain, but you don't need it if you built your house out of stone or brick. I probably am in the minority, but hard point size restrictions would make ghost heat unnecessary. The only mechs that would have high, pinpoint alpha damage would have their own set of problems. Give me a reason to take variants and otherwise dead mechs, rather than allow us to make just a few of them better than all the rest. Die frankenmechs, die!!! -Peiper]
15:00 What is Paul doing to help teach new/confused players how the heat system works? Paul suggests bitching Betty tells us every time we fired more than 6 medium lasers, you know, so we get a slap on the wrist whenever we do something the computer doesn't like. It's somewhere in the design plans, but no where near the worktable right now.
16:30 The front end team is working hard on launch module/private lobbies. Next, they'll be working on implementing Clan mechs into the game and they're going to have to redo/alter/add to the way mechlab works. [Will we get a warble or pop sound instead of a beep every time we mouse over stuff related to clan mechs? I hope the font gets more illegible so only genetically engineered supermen can read the clan specs. - Peiper]
16:50 Phil and Daeron are hard at work redoing the official tutorial videos for the MWO pages that will include how weapons and heat work. Phil goes on to praise ghost heat some more.
18:35 Paul explains how a new player isn't going to be number crunching like veterans and metagamers do. They're just trying to figure out how to play the game, understand the basics enough to make a mech that won't shut down, that will be fun to play, etc... [Sized hardpoints and a heat scale you don't need an abacus to figure out might help instead... - Peiper]
20:32 Why were the changes made to Autocannon 2s? 1st step was to 'normalize' AC DPS (looking at DPS instead of damage per hit.) AC20 = 5dps, AC10 = 4dps, AC5 = 3dps, and the AC2 SHOULD = 2dps, but at that would make the weapon nonviable because of it's tonnage. So they kept it at 3dps, kept its high rate of fire, and kept it's optimal range above that of an AC5, but they pulled back it's extreme range to below that of the AC/5s. The extreme range is still 1440, which is well above the range of an LRM, but the AC/2 becomes more of a giant semi-auto gun than a machine sniper weapon. Though it now also fires slower, it is much cooler than it used to be and you can keep up the sustained fire longer with multiple AC/2s than previous. Apparently, it used to fire so fast that even in chain fire, the game considered it as worthy of generating ghost heat. Slowing the weapon down helped with that. They are still monitoring the heat generated in games from these weapons in case it needs further tweaking. [You're not going to ask him about the reasoning behind the big missile changes?? That is a much bigger deal than the AC/2s! All of the other weapon changes this year we were warned about. But LRM's were dumped on us with no explanation. Is it a taboo subject? -Peiper]
28:20 Is Paul making changes to the weapons currently that we don't understand because you're pre-balancing for weapons/gear/mechs that have yet to be released? [good question] The changes from this point on with weapons will be microchanges. No more big sweeping changes. Granted, clan weapons may perform differently and have different options, but what we are currently familiar with will probably remain just about the same.
30:13 Phase II of the SRM hit detection changes will go live on the 29th. Some changes MAY have be be made now that we will finally know what it's like to hit with all of them when we aim correctly. Paul says that hit detection in Phase II will be SO different/noticeable that they'll probably have to pull back the damage on SRM's to keep them from being the new OP weapon. It MAY not be the 29th, but soon.
31:20 Phil says 'exspecially.' [I find this a fascinating phenomenon. - Peiper]
32:07 Paul talks about how SRM's were/are doing damage to places where they weren't actually hitting. Mechs would get hit on the front and take damage to the back. That should be fixed the 29th. The other problem was a desync issue where missiles that should have, just didn't hit. That bug has been identified, but the fix might not be in on the next patch.
The Clans
33:00 Paul explains that clan tech is his responsibility, but reminds us marketing is another department.
34:00 Phil remembers the let down of the clan invasion announcement and Paul sympathizes. He understands that the actual (historical) event of the Clan Invasion is the #1 biggest (playable/documented) event in Battletech History and that there is a big emotional divide between clan and inner sphere loyalties among lore based and veteran players. They are scrambling to help rectify the anachronistic and game development disconnect between the role-playing/planetary capture based event and the giant mech sale, but the designers don't control what's marketed and how it is.
25:30 What's changed/what will change with the clan mechs entering into the game, and how are you preventing them from being super-overpowered?
35:50 Clan autocannons will be shooting in bursts [which is how they were originally described as working in Battletechnology – early Battletech days when multiple calibers were first introduced. - Peiper] Non-committed example: An AC/20 will fire a five round burst of bullets that will do 4 damage each. So, though it weighs less and takes less space than the inner sphere version, it will do damage over time, and spread that damage out over the target. It'll make it difficult for clanners to one-shot light mechs with their AC boats. Phil corrects Paul, and Paul confirms that the clans don't have standard autocannons. The only have LBX and UAC's. They don't explain this, but I'm presuming that maybe Paul is talking about LBX cannons firing solid shot or UAC's being fired semi-automatically. [Phil and Daeron, WTF? Have him clarify this! - Peiper]
37:40 Clan lasers weigh less, take less space, shoot further, and do more damage than their inner sphere equivalents. To balance this out, Paul is messing with beam duration in this case, LONGER beam duration. This will apply to ER and Pulse lasers (Clans don't have standard lasers).
38:34 Clan missiles weigh less, take less space and all the SRM's are streaks, and all the LRM's are hot-loaded (no minimum ranges). To balance them, they'll be firing in sequence “stream firing” which will allow AMS to more effectively defend against them. To address hot loading, they may have diminishing damage the closer you are to your target within 180 meters.
40:15 Other clan weapons? ATM's they're still evaluating whether they should bring them, and some other systems at all. Dave Bradley will have a command chair post addressing these weapons sooner or later.
40:50 Clan LBX weapons are causing some design/engineering challenges. Paul is pushing for selectable ammo to be a Clan only feature. (All LBX/AC's normally can fire solid OR scattershot ammunition – in tabletop, you bought the ammunition by the ton, so needed at least two tons of LBX ammo to have a choice of both, and kept track of ammunition expenditures accordingly.) The reason he doesn't want to allow the Inner Sphere to do that is because the LBX/10 is lighter and fires faster than the standard AC/10, and it negates the need for inner sphere AC/10's altogether. The Clan LBX10 will also fire in bursts, unlike the Inner Sphere LBX/10s and AC/10s which do all their damage with a single shot, creating a reason for some to choose on technology type over another. This is an example to help illustrate overall why people will actually have to choose which type of technology they want to use, where before in previous games, going clan tech was a no-brainer. By making clan tech different but equal, your Awesome will still be just as awesome now as it will in the future.
42:57 Ghost heat will ideally be the same for Clan mechs as it is now. We shall see.
43:27 Will Clan double heat sinks be super-duper? Paul will let Dave Bradley answer that in the future, as that is his department.
Community Warfare
44:30 How's development coming along? Paul says he understands the doubt that's building in response to how long it's been taking (and other reasons?). He can tell us that right now, CW is going through design lockdowns. Paul is directly involved with guaranteeing that every inner sphere player will have a role in community warfare, which is something Bryan didn't go over in his slide show in San Francisco. When a planet gets taken over, EVERYONE will have a chance to take part in it. He then says some ambiguous, nebulous words of how thoroughly they're building this part of the game, vetting every part on the way through so as to not find loopholes later because they were too hasty now. There is a lot of designer/engineer back and forth so that both parties know how to add, change or fix an issue so everyone can participate in it's production.
[Why do I predict that all the IS players will be put in a bucket, and all the clanners will be put into a bucket and we'll play 1000 generic matches and after those matches are done, they'll compare the win/loss ratio and determine if the planet is conquered or not? Why, because that's really lame, easy to manage, means they only have to worry about two REAL factions at a time, and because there's nothing more satisfying to a player to think that his accomplishments counted for a fraction of a percent of a total victory! - Peiper]
48:10 Why is CW taking so long? PGI has a small team. Each segment of the game whether it's the UI, clan tech, sandwich making, its 'all hands on deck' for each step. [This could explain the mechlab. Each employee had to make a different feature. Each one did a really great job. All together, it's an overengineered monstrosity but each precious part is a jewel in the crown of UI 2.0 – Peiper] So, he's basically saying that even though they gave us approximate dates for each feature of the game over the last couple years, they didn't take into account the fact that every feature required every employee to shift their focus 100% to that one feature until that feature was done. As different features were worked on, community warfare kept being pushed out of the way, 'not off the radar,' but out of the way. That's the reason why this year they're better able to give us dates for feature releases. They KNOW how the studio works and needs to be managed now, where before they didn't.
51:20 Because they're such a small studio, clan mechs are taking all of their resources, which is why we're not seeing much in the way of content lately and up until June 17th. That slowness of new features/content will be even longer for community warfare, as it will take a much longer time to develop that.
52:39 Phil talks about launch module, excitement over it by the community, and asks Paul about the one-team-per-public-queue rule. Paul says he was involved in that decision. There was a debate between 3 and 4 mechs, but they went with the Battletech lance to keep with lore. [And maybe to avoid firebombing by small units that can't field 12? -Peiper] Phil goes back of the history of pug stomps and why a large team in a drop would just be a pug stomp.
54:17 Phil says 'exspecially' again.
55:32 Paul's final words include thanking everyone for their faith and patience. There's still lots of stuff coming for the game. He apologizes (for the speed of delivery) but promises that their tiny team is really passionate about creating a perfect game.
