79 replies to this topic

[RedDragon]

All pay-to-win discussion aside, Coolant Flush is just a really bad game mechanic. It advocates maxed-out builds and doesn't really help people who already run balanced builds. So it rewards people for building silly and cheesy configs and punishes those who stay true to the spirit of the game.
The heat-mechanic is the fundamental pillar on which rests the whole balance for BT and MW, and introducing a feature that lets people circumvent that balancing factor is a really, really bad design choice.

[Glowhollow]

Hi !

I really try to be constructive...

Having Consumables - as a "module" is a absolutly no-go. Sorry, but this is so.

You should think about, having additional "module" slots, which are not declared as module slots - but as "consumable-slots"...

For example Raven 3L - maximum Skills - having 4 module slots which is cool, for this mech because of its role on the battlefield.

Reducing the "ability" of this mech by reducing the available Pilot-skill based module slots, because of using module slots, wich has a "one-way-ticket" to useless - i can not see the "game-design" here. This is no design - this is stupid.

Coolant Flush, from my point of view could be cool because its exists in mechwarrior 4 and it normally should be available for all Pilots, not depending on "module-slots" or "Pilot-Skills"...

Let me explain.

I know, its YOUR game - but WE are the Customers.

In Mechwarrior 4 - Coolant Flush was a possibility - in critical situation u used this, to disengage the enemy or kill with a last shot before overheating. The SKILL was the the right usage, in the right time with the right amount of coolant flush (which was limited)...

What you delivered - is a LIMITATION of Possibilites - the Player could choose.

Lets go a step ahead...

If your plans for the future will be based on this System, for example having an Artillery Strike as a module, without having slots in the command console free for choosing of OPTIONS of the Battlefield Behaviors or Strategy - you are reducing the Game Experience (squared).

I will focus on this problems in a special thread later.

As i said, this system has not deeply thought and also the Advertising here is missplaced.

P.S. I know that this is Beta - and you are testing all the stuff on functionallity. Its ok. But why doing the work twice ?

[Deathlike]

Here's some math for you PGI, since this is a very important issue.

Heat containment math is very simple...

You have a base of 30.

You add 10 pts for a 250 engine using SHS.. 20 pts fo DHS. So, 40 pts of heat can be contained for a mech w/SHS, 50 pts for a mech with DHS.

When you have mastered a mech through its efficiences, you gain 20% more thru "Heat Containment. This means, SHS engines will start at a minimum of 48 pts of head, and DHS engines have 60 pts of heat. That's a lot at this point.

"Cool Shot 6" for a SHS based mech is 12.5% (6/48) of the mech's heat capacity. It's only 10% (6/60) for a DHS based mech. That's fine for the most part and is negligible. The capacity in terms of % is lowered as more HS are added, so that's not too big a deal.

However...

"Cool Shot 18" for a SHS based mech is 37.5% (18/48) of a SHS based mech's capacity! On a DHS mech, it's 30% (18/60)!!!

Even if you built a mech that had 20 DHS (10 engine, 10 external), you are cooling 3.4 pts of heat/sec. It would take at least 5 seconds to do the same as "Cool Shot 18" would do in that amount of heat dissipation". This is very significant in terms of combat effectiveness.

"Cool Shot 18" by design would effectively remove you out of the "Heat Critical" warning (assuming you aren't seriously overheating). That's too much cooling at the rate it is being applied at (1 second).

The only proper way to rebalance this correctly is to do the cooling over time. If the 18 pts of cooling was done over 6 seconds for instance, it would effectively double the rate of cooling on a 20 DHS mech, instead of providing instant-relief from "Heat Critical". Everything is simply wrong with this evaluation of the entire heat system.

Edit: The Heat Capacity of a 20 DHS mech would be 88.8 if my math is correct. This is slightly about 20% (18/88.8) which is practically almost instant removal from "Heat Critical" status.

Edited by Deathlike, 19 March 2013 - 05:38 PM.

[Synra]

I haven't bought and tried any of these yet, but hopefully that doesn't invalidate my perspective. I am in a pinch on this. Now that they are available in game, I feel that I absolutely do need to buy and use these in order to stay competitive. However, I am absolutely NOT paying MC for a consumable. And the Cbill prices are outrageously high. With the Cbill versions you can easily spend 50,000cb every match. But if you do NOT have premium time, it's very possible to take a loss where you only earn 37,000cb. Even if you do have premium time; win or lose, 50,000 per match is a massive loss of cbills over time.

This is Pay to Win, that's all there is to it.

Edited by Synra, 19 March 2013 - 08:13 PM.

[Neozero]

personally I am not happy about coolant flush being added. It takes away from heat management and has no basis for being in MW at this time line. I am not against consumables as I am very much looking forward to the air strike and arty packages however coolant flush is just lame imo. Never liked flush in the other MW games and think it should go away.

[kiltymonroe]

GorgoHammer, on 19 March 2013 - 03:50 PM, said:

This is a completely Pay to Win add on / enhancement only made possible because HEAT MANAGEMENT IS BROKEN in this game.

How you ask ?

Because we pay 1.5 million cbills to equip Double Heatsinks, but in the MWO universe only Double Heatsinks internal to the Engine are truly double as in x2 heat dissapation. External heatsinks are only worth x1.4 Single Heatsinks. This is not true to Table Top rules deliberately to keep pilots from boating energy weapons and being able to apha strike on every weapon recycle. But that is the exact reason Double Heatsinks were even added to the game rules, to INCREASE RATE OF FIRE FOR ENERGY WEAPONS. But when PGI decided to go from table top to arcade game and triple the fire rate of energy weapons and double the armor on mechs, they conveniently forgot to double or triple the heat dissapation !!!

So what is the PGI answer to deliberately nerfing external Double Heatsinks in MWO ?

Let's add a "Pay To Win" consumable item and module to make up for our "Energy Weapon" nerfing. 15000 GXP takes forever to earn, unless you just buy it with MC.

Garbage programming from a dev team that can't even fix the common bugs in the game like battlemap display glitches, map texture glitches, mechs stuck in maps, crappy looking night vision, thermal vision and advanced zoom vision. Don't even get me started on overpowered ECM and all the "Hero" mechs with the best Hardpoint locations . . .

You actually want people to pay real money to play this? Seriously ???

Might as well leave this game in Open Beta forever . . . .

The worst post. I'm a college student AND I have a job and I've still accrued about 50k GXP over the three months I've been playing. DHS are actually still very overpowered right now, and I like energy weapons.

Missed the mark on hero 'mechs too. Some of the hero 'mechs are good, most are crap, and there's really only one that's currently not suboptimal for competitive play (and even that one might be replaced by the Jagermech now).

[CrazyPenguin]

Pay to win, canon-breaking garbage. I'm done with MWO for now, not because Cool Shot has a high effect on the battlefield, but it's a major step down the anti-Battletech line PGI has been courting for months, and shows that PGI has no interest in creating the Battletech experience I originally paid money for. Maybe in another five years a developer will come along who doesn't have their head in the clouds and their feet in a pile of dollar bills.

[DrunkandDisorderly]

Please remove this crap crutch, bad enough you have 6 ppc stalkers, now there gonna alpha, flush, alpha, and that poor SoB he's shooting looks like a doughnut.

Edited by DrunkandDisorderly, 20 March 2013 - 01:18 AM.

[Kmieciu]

Cool shot 9+9/18 will probably see some use in D-DC brawlers. Cool shot 9 helped me to squeeze off one more 2xAC20 salvo on a JM6-S. At 40k price it is to expensive for regular use. I will save it for 8vs8 games.

[kiltymonroe]

Synra, on 19 March 2013 - 08:12 PM, said:

I haven't bought and tried any of these yet, but hopefully that doesn't invalidate my perspective. I am in a pinch on this. Now that they are available in game, I feel that I absolutely do need to buy and use these in order to stay competitive. However, I am absolutely NOT paying MC for a consumable. And the Cbill prices are outrageously high. With the Cbill versions you can easily spend 50,000cb every match. But if you do NOT have premium time, it's very possible to take a loss where you only earn 37,000cb. Even if you do have premium time; win or lose, 50,000 per match is a massive loss of cbills over time.

This is Pay to Win, that's all there is to it.

I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario where you pop 50,000 C-Bills worth of coolant flushes and aren't fighting enough to earn at least that much back at the end of the match, that happens frequently enough that you end up with a net loss over time.

[Battlefinger]

15k gxp is a very unreasonable price, gxp accumulates far too slowly as it is. Beleive me PGI, it is in your best interests to get players access to more content quicker. At least we are up to 6 different maps now, but that's an absurdly small number compared to other games, and it's taking a long time to increase that number. Still no dropship mode, so we are stuck on two different gamemodes that are intrinsically similar, so playing this already feels like a lot of repetitive grind. It took me so bloody long to unlock the capture accelerator, I still can't afford to buy it, but I had also used MC to get a boost in my gxp. It feels like cheating, having to do that, because modules are endgame content but you are making the only viable way of getting them the pay-to-win method. People essentially have to choose the one or two moduls they want, because it'll be months before they can buy them. Any sane person does not want to play this for so long, because it's absurdly repetitive and not hugely rewarding. I so desperately want this to be a good game, but this has nearly been in beta for a whole year. You can't get away with that for too much longer, you will have to release this as an actual game, but so many promises are still undelivered. It's an extremely low map count, a decent mech count, no sign of community warfare whatsoever (it seems like oyu guys forgot about this I don't understand how we could be fighting over planets with only 6 maps, and why would we fight over the same battlefields on the same six planets when none of them seem like a planet the faction would want to control; ice wastelands, desert wasteland, destroyed city, a river, and an acidic wasteland), a really lacking implementation of the pilot trees (they are totally indistinct and overlapping in their categories, and we don't realistically get to unlock more than two things without paying money), no clan invasion which should have almost begun by my reckoning and not to mention none of the mercenary corp functionalities that I was initially very excited for.

[SJ MetalDeath]

could do with work but as whole good ... in all other MW game Coolent was free now we pay... seems all you guys want us to do is spend money.

an improvement would be to make it Rechage or .... to at least reload it self to the mech each match so i dont have to do it manally

[Reno Blade]

I don't understand all the hatred.
First of all, everyone can use module slots that are less powerfull, but if you want to have the maximum version, you either use GXP (farmed over time or converted with MC) or MC to unlock/buy the biggest modules (9x9 or 18).
This does not mean it's P2W !
Why not?
Because you need to play 6 weeks for 15k GXP or pay 1$ to convert XP is not P2W. It's called time=money. You get something faster with money.
People play WoW for 8 Years farming 5 Raids for 24 months for 4 Armorsets on 3 Chars, but complain about a few months of actuall fun ingame (or are you all bots playing because you "need" to get item X or Y ?).

Even with CS18 you still need 15k GXP for the 20% upgrade (that increase efficiency of all CS by 20%).

It's a one time unlock. You will have these unlocks forever! The longer you play the game, the less it had cost you in the bigger picture.

The effect is nice, but does not mean you need to use it, if your mech runs cool enough.
A mech that never runs hot is not a "balanced" build.
It's a one time use ingame and gives you an "emergency" button, if you can't use a better module (like advanced range on brawlers...).
Nobody can tell me it would help enough if you go from 99% heat to 50% if you are in a gimmic build (6ppc stalker), because your still overheating.
It's uses lie in the balanced builds that can run hot after sustained dpsing and thats because people still tend to alphastrike too often.

[agenttbc]

There needs to be a checkbox to automatically rebuy coolant flushes if you use them in battle, just as there used to be for ammo. This is so obvious I'm surprised it got by without happening.

[Iacov]

meh...
i don't buy them and won't buy them
though i find coolant flush per se interesting
i'd prefer the option to buy via mc a permanent version of the coolant flush

[Cervantes88]

I prefer to actually think on how to balance the heat generation of a mech rather than pay to buy a consumable just to run some cheese-stacking pile of garbage.

On a side note, I hate consumables on all games.

[AgroAlba]

Tried 'em out a few times last game.

Not bad! Kept forgetting to use them, and when I did, it was a neat little mechanic. I don't think it'll make or break any games, to be honest.

[CoreHunter]

they want to make money why not make a ecm consumable for non ecm mechs 15mc would probably sell ><

[Cervantes88]

CoreHunter, on 20 March 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

they want to make money why not make a ecm consumable for non ecm mechs 15mc would probably sell ><

Oh god.

[CoreHunter]

what? ECM is fine >< (don't hit me!)