14 replies to this topic

[BillyM]

(Note: I did a nice 6-kill 1140dmg match in my 4ppc Cataphract1x last night, so I am not just asking to disrupt a gameplay style I don't partake in. I have been taking full advantage of PPC-Warrior-Online and honestly I've never had less fun, but brawling is simply crap right now. I do miss my HBK-4SP, LL/ML 1x, LL/AC5 K2 though.)

I have watched this game go from a good mixture of short and long range moderate-duration brawls to super-alpha-warrior-online. This has always existed, but the current weapon balancing has GREATLY exacerbated the issue. I am currently seeing a ton of support for changing the heat system, or slowing convergence. These are not solving the underlying issue that ruins gameplay!

We have gotten ourselves cornered by not realizing the underlying issue, what we honestly have issues with; the fact that we are losing a good game and punchy-robot-goodness to insta-alpha warfare. Think of every build we have raged about short of the cheeze (ECM and Rock-n-Roll SSRM) but otherwise...

SRMcat - direct-fire alpha (pre-nerf, now SRM's are worthless)
Gaus/AC20cat - direct-fire alpha
Gaus/AC20jag - direct-fire alpha
JumpSnipe - direct-fire alpha
Highlander - direct-fire alpha
PPC-Stalker - direct-fire alpha

These builds do not lead to good battles or what can be considered honorable game-play. These lead to sneeky-peeky full-out alphas and tactics to minimize exposure. If you run one of these builds, you stick near cover because you know you can alpha and duck down for the recycle time. If you run against one you now have to similarly play peek-a-boo, for the fear of not seeing these enemies before you take a 30-60dmg alpha to the face.

So, in-short, my suggestion is to make Gauss/PPC/AC20 fire with a delay between them. Maybe 1/2-second between direct-fire weapon shots? That 60dmg stalker-alpha or 45dmg highlander-alpha isn't so scary spread across a few components as you twist away and assess the situation.

No more *BANG* (critical damage) or *BANG* (light leg destroyed)

Thoughts?

--billyM

[Snowseth]

Voting No.

I don't think putting hard limits on how you use your weapons/loadout is a good idea.
I would rather see a heat-based soft limit, where player skill with resource management (HSs, heat management, weapon firing, etc) is what 'limits' the player. It's only a hard limit when you're so hot you explode.

Directly restricting the player, I don't think is good here.
Indirectly restricting the player (heat damage, etc) is the better option, IMO.

[Dishevel]

If you want crappy mechs that do not work very well you can always stick to trials.

[buckfast]

what your saying is you dont want to play mechwarrior as it should be a tactical first person shooter where u have to use cover and duck and dive and kite your targets (kite to make your target do what/go where you want them to. following you round a corner into 3 of ur m8's for example) and begin a faceroll game like cod where u just run in circles shooting people as you go?

the time between fireing weapons would make carrying more than 2 irrelevant as for e.g your saying a 2sec cooldown 1ppc 2 secs 2nd ppc 2secs thats 4 secs so i can fire my 1st again which has a 3sec cooldown so why would i then mount more than 2

also this cooldown your saying to stop them from been fired all at once means that a 6ppc stalker is worse than a raven 4x as it cant fire its weapons at any decent speed

every map has loads of cover use it

what is need'd is more maps some with lots of cover on large maps some small maps with near no cover and some in the middle and a load of dif variations even large maps with no cover

river city night is horrendous to use norm ppc's as u just turn a corner and ur within 90m o dear ect ect

take your time b4 moving from cover to cover is the advise ill give u

buckfast

[danger uxo]

Voted no.

Boating and alpha strikes are not the problem; boating is canon (see the Hunchback 4P) as are alpha strikes. The overuse of each of these is a symptom of two balance issues; pinpoint damage and a flawed heat system. The ability to do 40+ points of damage at long ranges while suffering negligible heat effects are driving the most used FOTM builds right now.

BattleMechs are designed from a game design PoV to have damage applied in a spread out manner based on the probability curve of 2d6; it's how their armor is laid out. Pinpoint damage allows players to focus all damage on a single hit location of a target. The armor layout of BattleMechs is not designed to absorb damage from multiple weapons striking all the same hit location, people have figured this out. By including the pinpoint damage mechanic PGI is encouraging players to use builds that employ weapons that deliver all damage immediately: ballistics and PPCs.

On the heat side of things, by adding 30 'invisible' heat sinks to a 'Mech's heat capacity while completely throwing off the heat generation/dissipation cycle ratio PGI compounded the pinpoint damage issue by making it totally viable to alpha strike multiple high heat weapons without danger of exceeding heat capacity. Sure, depending on your build you may not be able to alpha again as soon as your weapons finish cool down, but you can do it not too long after. Add to the artificially high heat cap the lack of any real penalties for running your 'Mech at 99% heat all day long.

So why did we only just start seeing the multiple PPC builds showing up in force this past month?

Four words: Ballistics Host State Rewind.

Once the PPC received the benefit of HSR it became the perfect weapon to take advantage of the perfect storm of pinpoint damage and artificially high heat capacity. Given current conditions the PPC fits the bill for alpha builds perfectly: it's a ton lighter than the lightest burst damage weapon (the AC 2 at 8 tons), doesn't require ammunition, has a decent recycle time and does good damage.

My opinion for fixing the situation? Develop some sort of damage spread mechanic (or find some other means preventing ridiculous amounts of pinpoint damage), remove the 30 'invisible' heat sinks from the heat capacity, switch the heat generation/dissipation cycle ratio back from the current 3:1 (ish) to a roughly 1:1; and if we're going whole hog, re-institute those 30 'invisible' heat sinks as the 'overheat' scale complete with penalties to things like movement and weapons accuracy as you climb the heat scale.

[Hellcat420]

NO

[Hammerfinn]

Umm, no. Not the answer you're looking for.

[Purplefluffybunny]

Even if they forced it, it is so easy to get around with modern hardware.

[Gremlich Johns]

Voted no. Learn to configure your weapons groups in such a way as to maximize your efficiency according to your gameplay, do not rely on a game default to do it for you, you may well fail.

In short, think for yourself.

[Syllogy]

This wouldn't prevent macro users from firing all weapons at once by assigning each weapon to its own weapon group and setting up a macro for 1 button to press the 1-6 keys on the keyboard to fire all groups at the same time.

I vote No.

[Bishop Steiner]

BillyM, on 02 May 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

(Note: I did a nice 6-kill 1140dmg match in my 4ppc Cataphract1x last night, so I am not just asking to disrupt a gameplay style I don't partake in. I have been taking full advantage of PPC-Warrior-Online and honestly I've never had less fun, but brawling is simply crap right now. I do miss my HBK-4SP, LL/ML 1x, LL/AC5 K2 though.)

I have watched this game go from a good mixture of short and long range moderate-duration brawls to super-alpha-warrior-online. This has always existed, but the current weapon balancing has GREATLY exacerbated the issue. I am currently seeing a ton of support for changing the heat system, or slowing convergence. These are not solving the underlying issue that ruins gameplay!

We have gotten ourselves cornered by not realizing the underlying issue, what we honestly have issues with; the fact that we are losing a good game and punchy-robot-goodness to insta-alpha warfare. Think of every build we have raged about short of the cheeze (ECM and Rock-n-Roll SSRM) but otherwise...

SRMcat - direct-fire alpha (pre-nerf, now SRM's are worthless)
Gaus/AC20cat - direct-fire alpha
Gaus/AC20jag - direct-fire alpha
JumpSnipe - direct-fire alpha
Highlander - direct-fire alpha
PPC-Stalker - direct-fire alpha

These builds do not lead to good battles or what can be considered honorable game-play. These lead to sneeky-peeky full-out alphas and tactics to minimize exposure. If you run one of these builds, you stick near cover because you know you can alpha and duck down for the recycle time. If you run against one you now have to similarly play peek-a-boo, for the fear of not seeing these enemies before you take a 30-60dmg alpha to the face.

So, in-short, my suggestion is to make Gauss/PPC/AC20 fire with a delay between them. Maybe 1/2-second between direct-fire weapon shots? That 60dmg stalker-alpha or 45dmg highlander-alpha isn't so scary spread across a few components as you twist away and assess the situation.

No more *BANG* (critical damage) or *BANG* (light leg destroyed)

Thoughts?

--billyM

No.

Sorry but it's a stupid idea. Wow....my stream of fire direct fire MGs now have to chainfire? Even more useless?

[Szkarlat M]

Sigh voted no. I think the real problems with the high damage weapons are not the damage they deal. It is that they don't have enough disadvantages to carrying them. Weapons should just be rebalanced by adding more features/sacrifices, some of which may be hard for PGI to implement at this point. If the weapon accuracy or range restrictions were adjusted, I think we may see more balanced weapon loadouts. Example 1. Make the PPC a more dedicated sniper weapon by increasing the damage reduction at close range say <150m. This means sure boat PPCs but if the enemy can close brawl distance you're screwed as your 6 PPCs end up dealing the equivalent damage of 6 ML with higher heat and longer reload time. An addition to this idea may be a time to focus the PPCs ie... you need to hover the reticle over the target for say 0.5 to 1s for the PPCs to adjust convergence which means pop sniping is useless and they effectively become open sniping weapons making the platform more vulnerable. Example 2. AC20s are pretty much the equivalent of large bore mortars so give it a cone of arc of fire. People will say hey its the 31st century and guns aim where you fire but the reasoning be its the shell that's inaccurate not the pilot. Therefore effectively limiting it to close range engagements <270m. Over 270m you can still fire but don't expect all the rounds to land on the reticule target. Basically sacrifices should be introduced for carrying the high damage weapons that limit their effectiveness discouraging the boating, while not eliminating their usefulness from the game entirely and for mechs that don't boat them. Stalkers would probably then reduce their PPC loadouts to have some close in protection while AC20 builds will want to sacrifice some ammo to bring other ranged weapons to bear.

[blah40000]

I'm going to abstain from voting on this, but I don't totally disagree. we do need some form of limit on burst damage, the game simply isn't fun when you take 45-60 damage in a single spot instantly.

I would love to see a game mode implemented that consisted of purely stock mechs, it would make the game a lot more challenging and fun.

[MustrumRidcully]

Alpha Strike is canon, yes. But the table top rules call it an alpha strike if you fire each gun once in a 10 second time frame (the turn). It doesn't say that this happens simultaneously in a split second. And there is even fiction in the Battletech Universe implying that weapons cannot always be fired al ltogether because of the energy load.

Alpha Strikes may be canon, but Convergence + Group Fire is not canon.

But it's not really relevant whether something is canon. The question is - is something balanced?

And Convergence + Group Fire means that it's always better to boat then to mix weapons. You will never be able to balance a canon boat against a canon mech with a mixed weapon loadout. And that's bad for the game, because players will perfer generally what works, and if that means everyone has to drive a 4 PPC Stalker or a Dual AC/20 Jagermech or (hypothetical future, but definitely canon) or Triple Gauss RIfle Thunder Hawk, theyll just do it.

And just realize, when PGI gets greedy or desperate, they will sell you these boats for MC.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 05 July 2013 - 02:45 AM.

[Drunk Canuck]

Why not just make PPC boats explode when they alpha? Seriously, if you are running 4 or more in linked mode, you should overheat and blow up, or your torso should be dealt enough damage from the overheat that it exposes your core. I think the overheat penalty above 120% was a good move, but the damage being dealt is very small. You should touch orange in the CT with one overheat from PPC's, hopefully someone will finish you off in an LRM boat. Chain fire wouldn't even work, as doing so builds up more heat in the long run then a single alpha because your heatsinks don't cool fast enough between the currently built in chain fire system. They could always lower the heat penalty for chain firing and increase it for alpha striking or firing multiples at once.

Edited by Drunk Canuck, 05 July 2013 - 06:44 AM.