16 replies to this topic

[Animus]

Hi,

I have been reading all over the forum on how to balance the game, problem is the tug and war between FPS fans, Mech fans, Sim fans. I am a new player to mech, so please take my ideas as constructive and coming from someone who does not know all the "technology" in mech.

One of the core issues is the heavy alpha striking in game. I think this can be fixed with alittle finesse without having to make drastic gaming changes. Some examples of finesse balancing that will not change the overall game experience. You can choose many ways listed below, use 1 or multiple ways to balance incrementally.

1) Have real internal damage for overheating. You can start with a few points of internal damage, test this for a few weeks and increase/decrease as necessary. So if you overheat 1 time in a match its ok, but doing it 5+ times and your dead. Another idea, if you overheat multiple times the same weapon, it will explode from short circuit. So 5 overheats and those ppcs of yours are finished, or perhaps only work at 50% damage from then on.

2) Set heat penalty for boating weapons, using more than 2 of the same weapon gives a slight heat penalty. Make this very minimal so doing 4 medium lasers for example does very low penalty, but using 4 ppcs will give you extra heat. It can even be tonnage related. (This will focus on ppcs/guass as they weight alot.) More than 20 tons of the same weapons means heat penalty? Start small and work your way up.

3) Set energy penalty, when you boat weapons your power core gives you a speed decrease, so for every alpha strike you do, you move at 50-75% speed for next 15 seconds or something. Maybe your minimap turns off as your power core cycles? whatever, some kind of power decrease that is measurable and gives you a risk/reward. This can mean alot in a brawl where not only you have the chance to overheat, but your slow as hell right after. A ppc sniper wouldnt be able to run away if you rush them, their map would be off, ecm would turn off etc. You can still alpha all you want, just have to pay abit of a price for it.

4) Leave damage and heat but change ranges on PPCs, make it so that ERPPC has minimum range of 150, max range of 700m, so if your a sniper using them, up close your toast! Makes the risk reward be a factor. Give regular ppcs for example 0 minimum, and max 400 range, so there is a drop off, if you snipe with regular ppcs you will do less high alpha at a distance due to drop off damage. More of a choice when using them either for sniping or up close fighting.

5) Firing while using Jump jets will cause your weapons to do decreased damage. Think about it your power core is using all its juice to jump, so you have less energy available for weapons. Either do a damage reduction while jumping, or give a severe heat penalty while jump jetting. Perhaps even saying that weapons must be chain fired while jump jetting as alpha strike capability is disabled during JJ mode. Very simple fix and does not kill sniping in game, just makes high damage during a jump impossible.

So here are some of my ideas, the key to implementing any of them however is to do them incrementally, any penalties etc should be very small, increasing week after week with testing information. You do not want to change the whole game experience, just make small tweaks.
Notice I did not mention convergence, as I feel this changes the feel of the game, and I think this far into the game we can't afford to change the whole feel of it.

Anyways I hope there is more balance. I felt that missles were in a right place awhile back, then came the ECM brawling for awhile, and now its pure PPC/Guass pop tarting all match. We need a balance between brawling/long distance/missles.

[Multitallented]

Very solid advice. I may not agree with some of the methods of fixing alpha strike damage in excess of 40, but the method of incremental changes is a great idea.

[Monky]

I disagree with 2 4 and 5, 3 would be heat penalties (a different take on your 1st point).

I do like the 1st point though - and point 5 I think if it affected your ability to aim (not randomized cones but actually moved your crosshairs around) would be a better option, as how do you justify a ballistic weapon doing reduced damage (gauss/ac10/ac20)? Some of these weapons are not currently viewed as OP, sure, but you need a design that takes into account if they could be afterwards/in the future (particularly as we get new mechs with different hardpoint/jumpjet combinations).

[Nauht]

That's not finesse, that's a sledgehammer.

The weapons now are what we, the players, asked for over many months. PGI can't just keep changing weapon values every time the meta game changes, even slightly. I don't want to be playing "guess how the PPC is gonna perform this month". There needs to be some stability.

Also question: how'd you get gold not play this game for a year? If you really were the original account holder and played from she you joined you would know how he weapons have evolved and why. PGI did not just decide that that's how they were going to be like. Every weapon, bar the MG (as far as I can remember) have evolved cos of CB feedback and some feedback in early OB.

[topgun505]

Agreed. But you know what? It NEEDS a sledgehammer by now. I'm an extremely die-hard Battletech'er and even I'm getting fed up with this crap and am about ready to write off the $250-300 I've sunk into this game as a loss and walk away. It is just absolutely no fun to see 6-8 Stalkers and pop-tarting Highlanders firing off 40-60 alphas every few seconds game, after game, after game.

You can argue pop-tarting or high alphas are legit till you're blue in the face. But it just .... isn't ... fun. Heck even for people who resort to using that ... it MUST get boring hosing PPC bolts on things and killing them in one or two shots. How many times can a person do that before they say "You know this mech has legs ... maybe I should use them and actually go somewhere and do something more tactical?"

I still hold out hope that the ECM/Streak changes coming don't turn into a train wreck.
I still hold out hope that the coming LRM changes don't turn into a train wreck (again).
I still hold out hope that popping will somehow be tuned down at least slightly.
I still hold out hope that purposely overheating upwards of 150% will carry dire consequences.

But I'm not holding my breath on it.

Nauht, on 09 May 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

That's not finesse, that's a sledgehammer.

The weapons now are what we, the players, asked for over many months. PGI can't just keep changing weapon values every time the meta game changes, even slightly. I don't want to be playing "guess how the PPC is gonna perform this month". There needs to be some stability.

Also question: how'd you get gold not play this game for a year? If you really were the original account holder and played from she you joined you would know how he weapons have evolved and why. PGI did not just decide that that's how they were going to be like. Every weapon, bar the MG (as far as I can remember) have evolved cos of CB feedback and some feedback in early OB.

[Nauht]

topgun505, on 09 May 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

Agreed. But you know what? It NEEDS a sledgehammer by now. I'm an extremely die-hard Battletech'er and even I'm getting fed up with this crap and am about ready to write off the $250-300 I've sunk into this game as a loss and walk away. It is just absolutely no fun to see 6-8 Stalkers and pop-tarting Highlanders firing off 40-60 alphas every few seconds game, after game, after game.

You can argue pop-tarting or high alphas are legit till you're blue in the face. But it just .... isn't ... fun. Heck even for people who resort to using that ... it MUST get boring hosing PPC bolts on things and killing them in one or two shots. How many times can a person do that before they say "You know this mech has legs ... maybe I should use them and actually go somewhere and do something more tactical?"

I still hold out hope that the ECM/Streak changes coming don't turn into a train wreck.
I still hold out hope that the coming LRM changes don't turn into a train wreck (again).
I still hold out hope that popping will somehow be tuned down at least slightly.
I still hold out hope that purposely overheating upwards of 150% will carry dire consequences.

But I'm not holding my breath on it.

The games not fun for you so how you spend your time and money is your prerogative. I can understand where you're coming from as most definitely there have been games in the past that were disappointments to me. But I just dropped those and played something else. No point beating yourself up about it at all. Check back in a few to see if the state of the game will make it more fun for you then.

Edit: double post

Edited by Nauht, 09 May 2013 - 08:28 PM.

[Straften]

Well written thread. The main point being incrementally changing things, is the best suggestion in my opinion.

[Straften]

Neverfar, on 09 May 2013 - 09:52 PM, said:

Go too slow, especially in the wrong direction, though, and the game will hurt for it.

Example: if the ppcs are simply nerfed, the people dependent on them might be right: they'll just bloat-boat the next best thing.

There need to be some changes under the hood, structural changes to game mechanics, too.

I would have to disagree. If they were to nerf PPCs incrementally, I don't see how it could be a problem.

Let's say they drop the damage from 10, to 9.5. It will hardly be noticable in game. Monitor that weapons performance for a month and revisit it afterward. If you have destroyed PPC with the change, you reverse it back to 10. If it is still a problem, drop it to 9 and see how that goes. Nerfs don't have to make something horrible, and that is the idea behind incremental changes.

As long as they don't change anything more than 10% in any direction, it would be seriously hard to break the game.

[Animus]

Hi,

In response:

Yes I have been since the start of this game, however I have never played battletech before so my suggestions may not be "Canon"

Sledgehammer? this is exactly what I don't want. Large changes. I want small incremental change to help alter them meta game and reduce all alphas all the time.

[Animus]

Response:
Yes I think we need incremental changes for balance, not a reworking of the whole system as I have seen with posts about changing the convergence mechanic drastically etc. Chain fire should be the norm instead of alpha alpha alpha.

[MustrumRidcully]

Straften, on 10 May 2013 - 06:49 AM, said:

I would have to disagree. If they were to nerf PPCs incrementally, I don't see how it could be a problem.

But is that even the right type of nerf?

Just to make a ridicilous example. let's say there was a weapon that dealt 50 damage in one shot and produced 40 heat, with a cooldown of 20 seconds, 450m range, weighing about 25 tons. Would this weapon be "fixed" by adding a few points to its heat?
I am sure we could raise its heat significantly and quite possibly not make it useful anymore, but can we fix it, so it's balanced and useful without overpowering?

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 13 May 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[Tombstoner]

in order to "fix" or balance with finesse as you will.... The games needs additional degrees of freedom. for those that dont know what that means. its basically adding more points to the basic list of heat, damage, range, tonnage, space, hit points cycle time.

"But is that even the right type of nerf?

Just to make a ridicilous example. let's say there was a weapon that dealt 50 damage in one shot and produced 40 heat, with a cooldown of 20 seconds, 450m range, weighing about 25 tons. Would this weapon be "fixed" by adding a few points to its heat?
I am sure we could raise its heat significantly and quite possibly not make it useful anymore, but can we fix it, so it's balanced and useful without overpowering?
Edited by MustrumRidcully, Today, 12:21 PM."

how about adding accuracy to that example. make erppc's slightly less accurate at long range. leave lasers alone its hard to track a moving target nere max range... thats skill..... 4-6 linked erppcs pin point accuracy... not so much....compared to using erLL's or lasers in general thats not skill.

More degrees of freedom = better control/ finesse over game balance.

How might one realise this accuracy you speak of.... well a small cone of fire telling the player where in that circle the shots will hit. laser make a smaller circle ppcs slightly larger.... add more to the group and the circle grows. see its easy...

Edited by Tombstoner, 13 May 2013 - 11:49 AM.

[Animus]

The key to my arguement is incremental small changes, creating the following

• risk/reward
  
• options for gear rather than one loadout
  
• minimal changes to core gameplay
  
• balance between close and long range battles, mix of both rather than all ppc sniping for ex.

[Hobietime]

Hi there! Welcome to the forums.

Those are some interesting suggestions. It looks like Paul is considering an extra heat penalty for firing weapons together. So you are pretty close to what they're thinking.

Source:http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

The problem with changing ER/normal PPC ranges is that they are described in table top that way. It makes a bit more sense there because thing like ER weapons and Artemis were upgrades that contributed to the Battle Value (BV) of the mech. BV could then be used to balance the match. Since you were fielding more than just one mech in tabletop it was ok to bring cheaper, less effective mechs since you could normally get more of them with the same BV. T

The BV system has it's own balance issues and I'm kind of getting sidetracked. The strange range limitations are a holdover from BT Tabletop. However, the devs have change other weapons (such as the Gauss) so that they don't have a minimum range, so who knows.

What I was really hoping for was a muzzle velocity change back to the 800 m/s PPCs were originally. That would make sniping much more difficult.

[Lykaon]

None of those suggestions actually addresses the boating issue that tends to rear it's ugly head over and over again requiring something other than the core issue to be altered.

We have seen it time and time again.

Back in closed beta the medium laser boat resulted in medium lasers being adjusted
SRM boats were handled by nerfing SRMs not by addressing boats
LRM likewise addressed by effecting the weapon and not the boating
Gauss boats were addressed by nerfing gauss hit points not by looking at boating

Now we have proposed alterations to PPCs and of course heat generation and effects but not the hardpoint system that is in fact the core issue when it comes to boating.

By altering the mechanics to address boating we risk pushing core mech designs into the realm of being relegated to the garbage heap because they are by design boats.

With increases to heat generation for boating weapons will the Hunchback 4P or Awesome 8Q even work anymore in their canon configurations.Both mechs are by design "boats".

If the core of the issue (hardpoints) is not addressed directly we will see a perpetual cycle of adjustments and nerfs to individual weapon systems resulting in developer time spent in a constant nerf/buff/adjust cycle and shorting the development of content.