CapperDeluxe, on 31 May 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:
2. reticle shake from being hot doesn't really make much sense, instead perhaps they could introduce some vision filters that makes everything blurry (like in other FPS games where your vision is blurry when you're close to dying).
Quite the opposite, it makes a whole lot of sense.
I know that canon and TT rules are a cliche by this point on this forum, and I myself am no expert on them, however they had been put into place by the initial developers for a reason. Without the reticule shake when hot, you have the simple procedure "ok, I will overheat but my 6 PPC alpha will take him out, so I will live to fight another mech, even if I take some dmg from overheating".
That's the whole problem with boating, that the pilot stops caring about their mech as long as they get a better than 1:1 kill ratio. You can see that in the 6 PPC stalkers that shutdown after every salvo, the suicidal 2xAC/20 Jags that charge Atlai and everything in general head on, etc etc. As long as they keep that k:d ratio above 1, everything is fine. Tying heat level to shooting efficiency is all PGI needs to do in order to make players care about heat levels. And put the PPC bonanza under control. If your reticule starts shaking even mildly above 50-60% heat, then you will think twice about putting out that alpha and risking a 50% miss with a subsequent shutdown, a much better disincentive than any potential dmg after an alpha that will take out the mech charging you.
Obviously, Gauss builds are less susceptible to this, but what usually kills me when I lazily charge those guys, is the combination of PPC/Gauss not the Gauss alone. And considering the baggage Gauss brings with it (slots, tonnage, ammo, explosiveness :-))etc etc) I am willing to give it this one advantage.
AC40 builds, I have no direct counter, but since they must be close and they are sluggish, they are easy enough to avoid and blow up.
Victor Morson, on 31 May 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
I don't agree heat is causing all these issues.
That said, I wouldn't mind more heat effects (and a more user friendly override button ; it sucks holding it down) and I do agree that those weapons are not OP. My biggest problems are: Gun balance, lack of tonnage/BV.
Again though, bring on more heat effects. I'm down with that. This whole game would change pretty rapidly if 'mechs slowed down when running hot. I wouldn't even mind visual effects like the cockpit smoking up or the windows fogging over.
Heat however is practically the only thing stops the mech from firing everything constantly. It's the mechanism put in place to control exactly this kind of thing since the conception of MW.
oldradagast, on 31 May 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:
It's not the PPC, IMHO. The only reason they are focused on as the root of the problem is because folks can't bring 3 Gauss Rifles on a mech - yet.
The real issue, IMHO, is perfect weapon convergence on a single pixel at any range. If you can alpha strike a target half-way across the map and put all the damage on one spot, that's a problem and in no way feels right or makes for fun game-play. note that I'm NOT in favor of any of the funky, cumbersome "manual convergence using the mouse wheel" ideas I've seen tossed around - the last thing this game needs is another hurdle for new players and another feature that rewards sitting in once place or writing up macros to do your work for you. I do, however, feel that it shouldn't be that easy to put all damage in one spot at huge ranges. Maybe add a cone of fire or something...
The heat penalty ideas aren't bad, though I don't like penalizing all instances of firing lots of similar weapons at the same time since that basically just punishes nearly everyone who plays the game (since mechs are really meant to have multiple weapons of the same type and most people aren't going to run with 6 weapon groups.) It does nothing to reduce the superiority of pinpoint alpha strikes.
I don't like the idea of perfect convergence either. However, here is the problem. This is a game with a human at the controls, in a fake 3d environment. I cannot possibly think of a visual feedback system that would allow the player to know where each of their weapons would land if instant convergence was not in place. Ie, would you want to have a reticule for your arm weapons and a reticule
for each of your torso weapons ? Those reticules would also have to shift position depending on the range they are pointing. Just picture it for a second. On a stalker that would be maddening to say the least. You can test the non convergence thing on a CTF-4x before you get pinpoint. It's realistic, but confusing and frustrating to say the least.
Maybe putting some limitations on convergence would work better, ie, make it so that the target needs to be targeted (have the targeting computer track the target) instead of converging on anything that the reticule points at. That would minimize pinpoint alphas on long ranges on anything that moves, unless there was one of your teamates providing target information - a very frequent technique for modern weapons. It would also help with the poptart technique somewhat, though in that case JJ shake is the way to go I believe.
Edited by dimstog, 01 June 2013 - 01:39 AM.
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