267 replies to this topic

[Franchi]

Pinselborste, on 18 May 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

Paul, why not decrease the heatcap and increase heat dissipation granted by HS and DHS?

the PPC fire rate reduction affects mechs with only 1-3 PPCs like the awesome way more than the 6 PPC stalkers that strip the armor of a location with a single hit.

the reason for this is that the damage you can deal before overheating is way higher for the 6 PPC stalker with its low ammount of heatsinks than for the awesome with its high ammount of heatsinks.

not to forget that the damage is easier to focus for the stalker. if you would reduce the heatcap to 35 for example, and greatly increase heat dissipation the game would require more balanced loadouts, compared to the massive focus on high alpha damage we have right now.

also, weapons could need better balancing, especially the weapons that use ammo like the autocanons, just increasing ammo and firerate doesnt help, damage increase would be a good addition, if the AC2 for example would deal 3 damage per shot but with the same damage per second, wich can be done with lower firerate it would be way better.

It would have different effects:

the damage can be focused easier

the enemy can react better cause of less explosions covering the screen

it would be worth more for the 6 tons the gun needs without ammo

and the last thing, it would run cooler than other weapons wich should be an advantage of the ballistic weapons since they need nearly half their weight for ammo to be used for a full match.


balance should be more important than a number from a TT rulebook or a weapons name.
Those weapon stats where made for the game mechanics used by the TT game and not for a real time game that will be made more than 20 years later.

I was saying this for months, as far back as closed beta, now I've given up and just troll.

[cyberFluke]

Franchi, on 18 May 2013 - 09:58 AM, said:

I was saying this for months, as far back as closed beta, now I've given up and just troll.

Don't give up dude, take heart in the fact a lot of people are finally catching up. You were right all this time

[Sassori]

cyberFluke, on 18 May 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

I do also agree that for the sake of 'mech variety and maintaining the intended purpose and flavour of the range of available 'mechs, hardpoint sizes really need considering. Should you really be able to mount an ERPPC where there was a small laser? Should you really be able to mount an AC20 where there was an MG? Not if you want any semblance of that role warfare stuff that supposedly forms a "pillar" of the game...

Who cares about boats? There's nothing WRONG with boats, there are Canon Boats, mechs' designed around a single platform superiority.

The problem is these BOATS are able to put all their damage into single locations which is something they COULD NOT DO in the rules this game is (now very loosely) based on.

Stop fighting boats. Fight the real problem, and that is pin point accuracy.

MustrumRidcully, on 18 May 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

They might try it to make it such, but it fundamentally can't do this job. The problem is that there are canon mechs that are designed as boats. Unless they carefuly avoid all canonical boat configurations of mechs (which would also require removing several mechs we already have from the game), you cannot escape this problem. Should we ever get Omnimechs, the problem will get worse, because those are supposed to be completely freely configurable in their omni pods.

It's a futile approach. The only thing hard points can give us is distinction between different mech variants, and enforcing their aesthetics or maybe their role (but the latter is currently not done. You can turn an LRM boat into an SRM boat, and that is definitely not role-preserving. It is aesthetics-preserving, however).

Balance the weapons themselves. That's the first step to mitigate the advantages of boating - avoid that using multiples of one OP weapon, you get the power advantage multiplied.
Then figure out how you ensure that you don't want all weapons at once at once to maximize the benefits of convergence. Lowering the heat cap is a relatively easy approach to do that. Raising the heat dissipation to keep energy weapons useful would help, and would also buff stock mechs (even those that use Single HEat SInks). At least now heat generation and heat dissipation are closer to the rate these mechs were designed for.

[Coolant]

eh, like Paul said, don't go flying off the handle until you see how it's implemented. But I've seen this argument in another thread that jumpsnipers aren't affected by heat lol. Just like they won't be affected by the extra recycle time jumping to 4 seconds. If you can't fire because ull overheat or because the recycle time takes longer you can't do as much damage. Your overall damage will decrease. It's like you think you will never ever face a brawler the whole map. The extra heat or recycle time will affect you then. Tired of seeing these posts that make it seem like jumpsnipers are invincible because they are behind cover. It WILL affect you, just not the entire map.

Edited by Coolant, 18 May 2013 - 10:06 AM.

[Franchi]

Coolant, on 18 May 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

eh, like Paul said, don't go flying off the handle until you see how it's implemented. But I've seen this argument in another thread that jumpsnipers aren't affected by heat lol. Just like they won't be affected by the extra recycle time jumping to 4 seconds. If you can't fire because ull overheat or because the recycle time takes longer you can't do as much damage. Your overall damage will decrease. It's like you think you will never ever face a brawler the whole map. The extra heat or recycle time will affect you then. Tired of seeing these posts that make it seem like jumpsnipers are invincible because they are behind cover. It WILL affect you, just not the entire map.

You have to wait for the jets to come back up to full capacity before you jump again, this means that your weapons are often fully charged and staring at the back of a hill, Jump snipers will be the least affected by this nerf.

cyberFluke, on 18 May 2013 - 10:01 AM, said:

Don't give up dude, take heart in the fact a lot of people are finally catching up. You were right all this time

The problem is PGI does not care, they have their way that they want it to be and that's the way it is going to be.

Edited by Franchi, 18 May 2013 - 10:16 AM.

[cyberFluke]

Christopher Dayson, on 18 May 2013 - 10:03 AM, said:

Who cares about boats? There's nothing WRONG with boats, there are Canon Boats, mechs' designed around a single platform superiority.

The problem is these BOATS are able to put all their damage into single locations which is something they COULD NOT DO in the rules this game is (now very loosely) based on.

Stop fighting boats. Fight the real problem, and that is pin point accuracy.

What the chuff are you on about?

cyberFluke, on 18 May 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

I agree with your sentiment here.

Doing something worthwhile with convergence or otherwise altering the 100% precision of weapons will help solve the sniper/boating issues far more effectively in my opinion. The problem isn't so much the fact that so much damage is being thrown, but it's all hitting the same section of the mech. The entire game design of BattleTech/MechWarrior isn't built that way. Damage is expected to be much more spread out, if you even hit at all. This is how the game fundamentally works, it's why 'mechs have sections that contain the different parts that they do, so that as the mech takes fire, different parts cease functioning and the 'mech becomes more challenging to use. What's the point of CASE if your assault 'mech's centre torso gets cored in three shots, for example?

100% accurate fire is the root of the problem here. Changing it doesn't have to remove skill either. Numerous methods have been discussed on the forums, describing a plethora of ways to add more required skills than a twitch reflex and the ability to point and click.

[cyberFluke]

cyberFluke, on 18 May 2013 - 09:54 AM, said:

• Change 100% accurate aiming to something with more depth.
  
• Add some hardpoint size limitations. (ie. Not all hardpoints need a size limit?)
  
• Rework heat. (Less heat capacity, more dissipation)

Can we agree at least that these suggestions (distilled down from this discussion) are as worthy of consideration as Paul's described system?

Paul, I'm aware (from various AtD answers) these have essentially been ruled out by yourself, could you enlighten us as to why please? It may help shed more light on the subject at hand.

Edited by cyberFluke, 18 May 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

So, this is curretly a thread inthe Gameplay Balance discussion section, a place for Users to generally discuss the state of gameplay balance and stuff.

There is an Official Feedback thread created specifically for Users to post their feedback to the Developers regarding Paul's Weapon Balance thread. This current thread in the GamePlay Balance section isn't going to be locked or anything (by me), but after reviewing the community discussion and getting our thoughts in order, the Feedback Thread would be a good place to present opinions to the Developers...

[Chavette]

I agree, convergence should be nerfed to not go all in a single point. It shouldn't be hard to shoot a mech with say a heavy metal(weapons very far apart) but all the current issues go back to pinpoint damage, NOT boating.

Heat isnt the proper way either, If a mech comes out that can mount 2-3 gausses, we're at the same place again.

[Franchi]

Jackson Jax Teller, on 18 May 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

Id think all the stuff BEING discussed here IS about balance and gameplay.
See? This is why we should have a General Discussion forum not 30 subforums. Noone knows where to post anymore
AND Paul has replied in this thread so its more expected he's looking here than there.
Unless he just posted here to say he was misquoted and is now ignoring the thread

With a single general discussion forum the playerbase has a place to go to discuss the game, this provided a place where critical mass was generated and we got threadnaughts that shook PGI's vision of the game.

This could not be allowed.

Edited by Franchi, 18 May 2013 - 10:23 AM.

[Chavette]

jeffsw6, on 18 May 2013 - 03:27 AM, said:

If they were to nerf convergence rate enough to have any impact on pop-tarts, it would make it so you are constantly shooting big X's of lasers when brawling, totally missing your opponent and zapping the sky or terrain, because your weapons take too long to range when you aim at someone.

No one said it cant scale over range.

[Sable]

I think the heat scale is fine stop trying to make it more troublesome than it already is. Lower heat cap would be horrible. I don't want to worry about over heating every 1.5 seconds because my alarms are going off every time i fire. When i sustain firing and my heat goes up Then alarms go off letting me know i need to take cover and let it dissipate.

As for convergence, you're in a freakin big stompy mech running at 50-70 kph on average why would your engine not be able to move your arm more quickly to converge your weapons?

I believe that after testing this heat thing people have been whining for they will come to the conclusion that its just not practical. Besides i play with a friend who uses a 6 PPC stalker from time to time and he isn't alpha blasting people all the time, he knows he can only shoot once or twice before completely overheating so he takes his time to line up his shots. Unless this penalty has a very high cooldown like 15 seconds or more it won't effect this build at all. OH NOES... It will still be used! The new flamer changes will make this much harder to use though. Light mechs will be able to get in close and keep these mechs from being able to effectively use high heat alphas.

[Corvus Antaka]

well maybe jumpsnipers will have other problems to deal with in the future. like heatseeking missiles, or jumpjet shake.

[Rippthrough]

Jesus, I leave for a few weeks because I got fed up of the direction the game was taking, then read this.

Screw it, I'm going to build a big stompy robot in my garage, at least the only person to **** it up then is me.

[hammerreborn]

Jackson Jax Teller, on 18 May 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

I think we should have the TT heat scale and NOT have HS add capacity to it, just dissipate heat after its generated.
TT was 30 heat max. Thats 3 PPCs then hard shutdown

No more 6 PPC mechs getting off more than one shot and the 6 pc mechs would be down twicfe as long as 3 lol

The problem with this is that in TT there were plenty of heat neutral 3 ppc mechs (awesome immediately comes to mind). Just cutting the Max heat without changing how heat is generated, dissipated, and how shutdown works would ruin many cannon mechs more than they already are.

[LockeJaw]

[REDACTED] Early development means just that. Things are subject to change.

[REDACTED]

Edit: @Paul. You should post on twitter more so I can stalk you more routinely. Garth is getting boring.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 18 May 2013 - 11:30 AM.
edited per Code of Conduct

[MustrumRidcully]

hammerreborn, on 18 May 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

The problem with this is that in TT there were plenty of heat neutral 3 ppc mechs (awesome immediately comes to mind). Just cutting the Max heat without changing how heat is generated, dissipated, and how shutdown works would ruin many cannon mechs more than they already are.

The Awesome did fire 3 PPCs over a 10 second period. The rules in TT do not indicate whether these are fired simultaneously or chain-fired. What we do know that the TT Awesome did have only a low chance of hitting the same location twice or three times in a turn. With convergence, that seems highly unlikely - unless something were to force the Awesome to fire the weapons not simultaneously, requiring the pilot to take aim for each shot seperately, to account for the enemy's movement or torso twisting between each shot.

If we'd take a heat cap of 30 and assume that the Awesome did indeed not fire them simultaneously, then the Awesome would work just fine. The only remaining "problem" is that the MW:O Awesome can fire each PPC 2.5 times (with the suggested cooldown of 4 seconds) in 10 seconds, while the TT Awesome could fire it only once.If we kept the current dissipation level, the Awesome would heat up more than twice as fast as in the table top - so we can either reduce the heat (and probably damage, which is obviously also increased compared to the TT) per shot, or increase the dissipation rate.

[Hellwife]

I agree, to an extent, with the OPs concerns about heat/boating and the natural boating MWO/Btech sees. However, I find it hard to take someone seriously who cannot post without making emotionally charged posts, and insults. The forums are indeed here to provide feeback, and prompt discussion, however, I do not believe Paul has in depth discussions with anyone about balancing and mechanics other than David Bradley and a few others at PGI.

This is not design by committee. There are thousands of people who feel that their approach is the right one. It would be helpful if they all intelligently, maturely post their viewpoints. I am sure PGI takes this feedback into consideration. I do NOT see them discussing individual approaches on game design.

I don't see Paul "digging in his heels" here. It appears he wanted to reiterate what he stated in his other post. Whereas others want him to start engaging them in discussion. Post your take on the issues and move on. You are not a unique snowflake. You are not a developer on MWO. YES your ideas might be great ones. YES, your ideas should be posted and reviewed by PGI. NO, you are not the only one with a viewpoint.

It's difficult to wade through the emotionally charged negativity to try and gleen what you are trying to say. If you are truly trying to give constructive feedback, take some for yourself, learn to post without the name calling and negativity. It adds nothing to your case. In fact, it hurts it.

[Sable]

Here's a new idea, split PPC damage, right now its 10, could change it to 7 direct hit with 3 splash damage to surrounding parts. Would deal with the "pinpoint damage" issue that people keep bringing up and it already is a big burst of energy awesomeness.

[jakucha]

Hellwife, on 18 May 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

It's difficult to wade through the emotionally charged negativity to try and gleen what you are trying to say. If you are truly trying to give constructive feedback, take some for yourself, learn to post without the name calling and negativity. It adds nothing to your case. In fact, it hurts it.

I agree, it's a problem on the Internet in general, but seems bigger than average on these forums.