64 replies to this topic

[Draco Harkins]

DeaconW, on 12 May 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:

But everything in this game is synergistic. As you pointed out, they did the minor PPC buff in conjunction with:

1. Nerfing Missiles (they needed it because of the splash damage problem but they did overnerf)
2. Improving targeting (HSR made it easier to hit with a PPC)
3. Introducing large maps and statiscially biasing the map rotation toward those maps(biases toward LR weapons)
4. Introducing a mech with the hardpoints and mechanic(poptarding) to take advantage of 1-3 plus the minor PPC buff (Heavy Metal, then the rest of the Highlanders)

All of those had a positive multiplicative effect in making the game PPC/Poptard heavy.

Now that I read the above...a cynic might say that with the release of the Misery(another PPC+Gauss sniper mech) as the next mech after the Highlander and all the above changes, maybe PGI is crazy like a fox and planned this ridiculous shift in gameplay simply to spur Heavy Metal and Misery sales. If that view is correct, expect that missiles will get a huge buff right as a Missile Boat Catapult Hero mech gets released...

Sorry brother but i had to put this in. True thought.

Edited by Draco Harkins, 12 May 2013 - 03:38 PM.

[Asmosis]

stay within 50m. laugh as his 3-6 ppcs do the same damage as machineguns.

Also 1/3 of weapons are currently broken (missiles). please dont try balancing (aka breaking) other weapons around weapons that are broke, wait for them to be fixed in a couple weeks.

Edited by Asmosis, 12 May 2013 - 04:41 PM.

[Asmosis]

Canniballistic, on 11 May 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

Let me add my log to the fire...



Is that like... when they include all the missing weapons (swarms, streaks, ultras, LBX, thunderbolt, etc.), mechs with designs that change playstyle, clans (as were what... two years into the invasion now?), hot dropping into battle, conquest map, factions, real objective based game modes, etc., etc..

OT:
The ERPPC is 3 slots, no ammo required (so no asplosions), 7 tons and does 10 damage at up to 1620 range.
Now compare that to a similar ballistic weapon kids;
The AC 10 takes up 7(!) slots and requires ammunition (which explodes!) weighs 12 tons (remember thats before ammo ladies) and does the same damage at a range of 1350

If youre sitting on one of the many random mountains in the larger, newer maps taking hits from 3 mechs with at least two ERPPC's each... youre expected to be able to safely get to them?

The entire system that is used to ballance MWO should be called into question and whoever is making the changes.


TLDR: Slap whoever is in charge of ballancing MWO.

ER PPC's have falloff, like any other weapon. at 1620m range they do approx zero damage. at 1400m they do about 1 damage. They are only "effective" out to about 1km, which is still plenty good, about the same as a gauss that requires +10DHS.

[William Knight]

PPC's are just too cool. Tweek the heat a little and we should be good.

Edited by William Knight, 13 May 2013 - 04:54 AM.

[No7]

Impressive post #4. Pretty much sums it up perfectly.

The only thing I feel a need to add on is that the OP itself touches on one of the main issues with current state of PUGging.

Quote

[color=#959595]Currently with all other systems in place, there's absolutely no reason not to take the heaviest 'Mech you own, thanks to ELO not weight matching at all, with PPC's on board since they're so easily boated.[/color]

Here is the thing. Since you can drop with your heaviest mech, most people do. And if you haven't noticed, most PUGs today are at least 6 assaults on each team. The other 4 are almost always heavies or lights. Since light is the most effective counter to an assault heavy team.

This leads to PPC heavy teams, since it is the weapon many assaults should use. Also, if you haven't noticed the difference between PPC and ER PPC, please check it out. Do try and put 6 er ppc on a stalker and see how playable it is. Second, if you can't counter a 6PPC stalker, then you are doing it wrong. A 6PPC stalker is an extremely gimped mech and easily killed by its natural counters (for example a light or a medium/heavy brawler).

BUT, since we have these broken games with basically 16 assaults going at each other, it will be a lot of PPC.

AND, since it is the nature of PUGs to do things their own way, being the only brawler in a team of PUGers, things will usually not go the way you want.

The easiest win I've seen (PUG) lately was this.
6 assaults and 2 heavies on each side.
The other team were all brawlers.
The other team just charged in and swarmed us all, killing us all within 2 min 30 seconds.

Brawling is the easy mode in this game. It is everything else that needs to be tuned so that they are valid options.

Also, please note that using 1, 2 and even 3 PPC and ANY number of ER PPC is perfectly fine!

If you buff or nerf ppc now, you destroy the builds that uses 1, 2, or 3 of them. So how you gonna handle that?

If you want my opinion to add more dynamic game play, it could be done by adding a danger to massive over heating.
If you are at 90% heat and alpha with 6ppc, you gonna get internal damage or maybe even blow up.

But to tweak weapon numbers now is just stupid. Wait until everything else is back in the game. LRMs most specifically.
Also, the lobby system needs to be in so we don't have these stupid 16 assault matches.

7

[MasterBLB]

Well,I wanted to post here,but Ravennus in #4 already said all I wished to say.

Edited by MasterBLB, 14 May 2013 - 02:27 AM.

[Darkblood]

ArmageddonKnight, on 11 May 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

For the love of everything ..stop asking for weapon nerfs.

...

The Hardpoitn system: Simply put in restrictions, what they are specificaly can/has be discussed in other threads, but the end result is ..no more PPC's boats, and no more Bloatboats/alphahotboats. Vwala PPC's fixed.
The Heeat System : Lower heat capacity , increase coolof speed. End result, Hot alpha builds become very hard to use, no more PPC's boats, or other hotalphaboats.

This is so true I logged in just to quote it and like it.

[Lightfoot]

1.Make DHS 2.0.

2. Make ERPPCs 15 heat, PPCs 10 heat.

Re-think Large and ER Large Lasers so they have a .5 second and .33 second duration as part of the benefit of being 5 tons and high heat.

Done.


By the way. Clan Mechs will be carrying 25-30 DHS on Energy configs along with 7 critical Endo Steel. So all this balancing around DHS 1.4 is just a nerf to Inner Sphere tech that won't effect Clan Mechs by nearly as much. DHS 2.0 levels the tech a bit by allowing IS mechs to run standard loadouts without overheating all the time. I assure you Clan mechs will run cool at DHS 1.4 or 2.0.

Edited by Lightfoot, 14 May 2013 - 12:29 PM.

[LordBane]

Honestly I think PPCs are just fine. When I see a mech boating them it's an easy kill.
This game isn't about rock-paper-scissors mechs fighting each other. It's a game of teamwork and tactics.

Newbies boat PPCs because it's an easy way to kill less experienced players. And then they eventually learn the error of their ways.

[frag85]

To add to what http://mwomercs.com/...rmageddonKnight said on page 1[/url], damage to heatsinks/internals when massively overheating. I agree with many of the points of changing the 'base' of the pyramid being heat cap and dissipation. If you don't want to do this, bring the heat of PPC/ERPPCs back up, but just a little, no need for a knee jerk reaction change to make them a non-viable weapon.

On the damaging of heatsinks part, If you have a build that hits 60% heat (or more) on an alpha strike, and you do that with your heat already at 90% (lets say you alpha'd and went from 39% to 99%, let your weapons cycle and alpha again), that should cook your sinks. Your mech should start to malfunction. There are so many possibilities here that would reduce the effectiveness of your mech once you overheat by more than just a couple %. I believe something as simple as your heatsinks becoming damaged would be enough to reduce the super high damage+heat alphas. This is something I have supported and the way it should be.

I also like the idea of limiting hardpoint weapons. Like if the mech came equipped with something like a small or medium laser, you can't throw in a PPC in there, like you can't fit a 3 slot weapon in a 1 slot hardpoint. Maybe not something this drastic, but similar. Off the top of my head it would seem more viable like you can't fit something more than 1.5x or 2x the size of the original weapon, so you could still mount a 2 slot LL where a 1 slot medium laser was, but you can't do a 3 slot PPC.


This is just a brainstorm here but its like a car, you can overheat it a little, it'll still work fine, and if you shut it down you saved your motor. If you keep driving hard while its overheated and really start to overheat by quite a bit, even if you shut it down, the damage is already done. You just warped head or burned valves/valve guides making the motor less effective, Your power steering or power brakes might not work as well because the motor isn't running well, you'd be burning coolant, or even worse, you destroyed the motor and you are pretty much dead in the water. In a mech maybe you start to move slower, your energy weapons become less effective since they get their power from the engine, your lose some heat sinks, maybe an arm or a leg lock up or move slow, your torso turns slower. LIke I said, there are many possibilities here, but something as simple as damaging heat sinks is probably the most simple and easiest method to implement and help curb the high heat/alpha builds.

Edited by frag85, 15 May 2013 - 10:11 AM.

[Das Wudone]

power/energy limits. scale in proportion to how powerful the weapon or if its a high energy weapon. ex. gauss rifles can only be fired one after another in battletech lore.

[Mazzyplz]

ppc- how do we fix them.

we don't.

the ppc awesome was ridiculous until they were buffed.
if you have a problem with poptart then suggest a fix for poptart, but don't mess with a neglected mech by making it worse


edit:
not to mention if i want to run a spider with a single erPPC, absolutely nobody would say that is OP.
however you still would nerf it? gimme a break!! what about players who want to play it that way? you don't have to **** on ppc users and call it rain, just because poptarts may or may not be broken
other mechs are also pretty mild when running ppc, like the PPC K2, not only is it not "broken" in fact it's one of the weakest k2 builds. so please do some deep thinking before you cry nerf left and right. you might be affecting more than you bargained for

Edited by Mazzyplz, 15 May 2013 - 10:21 PM.

[Aegic]

Another thought.

Once LRMS work properly again, with the target decay module I imagine there will be many less pop-tarts.

[Cole Allard]

hello,

my name is Patrick P. Carles...why does everyone hate me on this forum?

[karoushi]

Un-buff the PPC's heat discharge, duh.

Maybe even make it so that jump-jetting disables weapons until you let go of the JJ button; then people would actually have to time their shots somewhat. Also make it so that if they fire their weapons (or attempt to) while they are jump-jetting, huge heat spike and risk of engine explosion.

Right now, if you get stuck en route to the enemy it is pretty much the "I Win" button of the game. All the person has to do is jump jet and pump PPC/ERPPC into you until you fall and you can't get close enough or do enough damage to get them back. That is why people do not like this situation, the weapon itself is fine (when balanced and not buffed beyond sanity) but the situation within the game is completely ridiculous.

Edited by karoushi, 16 May 2013 - 07:04 AM.

[Pinselborste]

karoushi, on 16 May 2013 - 07:01 AM, said:

Un-buff the PPC's heat discharge, duh.

Maybe even make it so that jump-jetting disables weapons until you let go of the JJ button; then people would actually have to time their shots somewhat. Also make it so that if they fire their weapons (or attempt to) while they are jump-jetting, huge heat spike and risk of engine explosion.

Right now, if you get stuck en route to the enemy it is pretty much the "I Win" button of the game. All the person has to do is jump jet and pump PPC/ERPPC into you until you fall and you can't get close enough or do enough damage to get them back. That is why people do not like this situation, the weapon itself is fine (when balanced and not buffed beyond sanity) but the situation within the game is completely ridiculous.

jumping should add a heat modifier to weapon firing.

PPC itself are fine, problem is that its more rewarding to mount 6 PPCs or other weapons instead of mounting less weapons and add heatsinks.

solution would be to lower heatcap and increase dissipation by heatsinks.

right now someone with more weapons and less heatsinks can pump out way more damage till overheat than someone with less weapons and more heatsinks.

example: my Awesome 9M deals 100 damage till overheat with 3 ERPPC and 22 DHS, a stalker with lets say 4 ERPPC and 2 PPC deals 120 maybe even 140 damage till overheat, and that with way less heatsinks, not to forget that his damage is easier to focus on a single location.

[Dude42]

So why not unbuff PPC projectile speed and heat now that HSR is in place, since lack therof was the reason it was buffed in the first place. Seems like that fixes the issue nicely. Doesn't really address missiles or anything, but at least PPCs won't be OP anymore. Also, heat damage even when not overriding shutdown is a good idea. Being able to overheat to the point of shutdown as many times in a row as you would like without risk is not cool.(pun intended) It's like "Heat level Critical? 99%? Who cares!? Alpha Strike ALL THE ERPPCS!"... suffers no penaly.

Edited by Dude42, 16 May 2013 - 08:13 AM.

[OriginAlien]

Nothing wrong with them imo.... Takes a while to get used to them, gauss is still superior and it hones your skill shots..

Punishes you if u miss because of heat and patients and timing is key. U in a ppc boat and something gets too close, a medium even.... And ur gonna have a bad time. Its not all about 1 v 1 its a team game. Everything has a counter

[Tarl Cabot]

From personal experience, even changing the speed will not change anything cause 99% of the shots are not at mechs moving laterally but either standing in one speed or moving forward/backwards with very little lateral movement.

I would still go with recycle time followed by work on the actual heat scale.

The issue is that there are more energy crits than there are ballistic crits/locations and no restrictions except for whether there are enough crit slots available.

[Dude42]

Tarl Cabot, on 16 May 2013 - 01:45 PM, said:

From personal experience, even changing the speed will not change anything cause 99% of the shots are not at mechs moving laterally but either standing in one speed or moving forward/backwards with very little lateral movement.

I would still go with recycle time followed by work on the actual heat scale.

The issue is that there are more energy crits than there are ballistic crits/locations and no restrictions except for whether there are enough crit slots available.

The people standing stock still or not keeping their transversal velocity up deserve to be cored. How does that justify not lowering projectile speed back to pre-buff speeds now that HSR has been implemented? If anything it simply raises the skill cap. Always a good thing in my opinion.

You're right about the heat scale tho. There are supposed to be consequences for running hot.