62 replies to this topic

[DocBach]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

And many more, but those were ones I can remember off hand.

this plus convergeance is affected by heat level

[One Medic Army]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

-snip-

It's good to hear that PGI is looking into spreading out high pinpoint alphas.
Also good to hear you're going to try to avoid punishing those chassis that need to boat to be viable, and the point about not encouraging people to stand still makes sense.

[Shakespeare]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Design is looking at this, no worries, but I wanted to give my own opinions.

One thing I want to avoid is anything that punishes Light mechs for 'boating' similar weapons, or to make movement-based accuracy reductions. For the former, take the Jenner F. You really can't play the Mech without boating. Also - you NEED to alpha that damage as the beam time (of 1 second) means you want as much as possible hitting exactly where you want. The beam, though, means the enemy can react and spread the damage, which I LOVE - anything that can be countered with skill I enjoy seeing. For the latter, accuracy being reduced when moving will encourage people to never move, and will make things more stagnant, gameplay wise.

I want to tackle the problem weapons, which I think are pretty narrow - PPC/ERPPCs in large numbers, and combos of Gauss/AC20's/PPC's. Suggestions I've already forwarded from here, twitter, facebook, PM's, ingame, Reddit, etc:

-'Beam time' PPC's (shorter than a LL, but noticeable)
-'Charge time' PPC's (it takes 'x' of a second to charge up before firing)
-PPC's with 3 health
--PPC's with 3 health that explode, doing 10 damage
-Individual heat scales for PPC's (so PPC's can overheat and explode when constantly used)
-Give both ERPPCs and PPCs a minimum range of 'x' where they do ZERO damage.
-Allow only 'x' damage to a single location every 'y' seconds
-Give all ballistic weapons 'burst' fire - IE. Gauss could be 3 5 damage shots in quick succession, AC/20 is a pair of 10 damage shots, etc.
-Lower PPC travel speed
-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

And many more, but those were ones I can remember off hand.

I'd just like to thank Garth for popping in on us and participating in the discussion. Detailed topics like this with multiple points of view tend to have a bit of an echo-chamber effect, with ideas repeated but never really acknowledged.

I'm sure they'll be plenty of whining at even the IDEA of changes like those above - which, I'll reiterate, are merely suggestions being passed on, but for now, thanks for chiming in!.

(And yeah, PPCs need a hard minimum range ASAP. Even regular PPCs are murderous now, since closing does too little to protect oneself!)

Edited by Shakespeare, 11 June 2013 - 11:03 AM.

[AndyHill]

What do the lights NEED the alphas for? For making a lot of damage in a quick pass, I think, but again the question is should they actually have such ability, especially since it seems to be the designers' view that 'mechs die too fast? Note that if there were no alpha strikes period, light mechs' survivability would be greatly increased.

It would be nice if you added the no alphas at all -option to the list of suggestions, at least I would be extremely curious to try it out on a test server. Should be simple technically as well.

[Reno Blade]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

....

-'Beam time' PPC's (shorter than a LL, but noticeable)
-'Charge time' PPC's (it takes 'x' of a second to charge up before firing)
-Give all ballistic weapons 'burst' fire - IE. Gauss could be 3 5 damage shots in quick succession, AC/20 is a pair of 10 damage shots, etc.
-Lower PPC travel speed

My favorites.
Especially: PPC beams/charge and burstfire balistics (like MW3 had).

[Writer]

Do you honestly think PGI even cares at this point? They don't. We've been suggesting all of these things since CB. PGI didn't listen to us because it didn't fit their vision of the game. Only now, the balance issues are causing the game to buckle under the weight of itself while the player base slowly drifts away.

MW4 already showed how a more restrictive hardpoint system works to help balance out the game by reducing PPC boats. The guys at FASA just failed to recognize how 3rd person, their jumpjet mechanics, and mechs with 3 UAC/20's wrecked the game balance.

Edited by Rhenis, 11 June 2013 - 01:46 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

Hardpoint restrictions indeed will not solve the problem, it might be a bit of a distraction to the poll Mustrum - Though many excellent posters have already commented it is more about diversity.

Though - this does bring up an interesting situation. The changes proposed recently seem to be quite arbitary and targetted at particular builds more than an overaching fix.

If this is the way PGI wants to go for whatever reason because they do not want to touch thier heat mechanics (madness if you ask me) then this at least leads to them looking at hardpoint restrictions because they are actually doing a mech by mech punishment and as more mechs are added they will need to reconsider all of these things.

Hardpoint restrictions actually fit better with thier current plan in some ways as it allows them to laser target canon boats with penalties (or not) depending on their impact on the game.

It is not sophisticated but it does allow chassis by chassis balance.

As long as the restrictions are not overly harsh as i always asy they do create diversity but balance needs much more thought.

[Asmudius Heng]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Design is looking at this, no worries, but I wanted to give my own opinions.

One thing I want to avoid is anything that punishes Light mechs for 'boating' similar weapons, or to make movement-based accuracy reductions. For the former, take the Jenner F. You really can't play the Mech without boating. Also - you NEED to alpha that damage as the beam time (of 1 second) means you want as much as possible hitting exactly where you want. The beam, though, means the enemy can react and spread the damage, which I LOVE - anything that can be countered with skill I enjoy seeing. For the latter, accuracy being reduced when moving will encourage people to never move, and will make things more stagnant, gameplay wise.

I want to tackle the problem weapons, which I think are pretty narrow - PPC/ERPPCs in large numbers, and combos of Gauss/AC20's/PPC's. Suggestions I've already forwarded from here, twitter, facebook, PM's, ingame, Reddit, etc:

-'Beam time' PPC's (shorter than a LL, but noticeable)
-'Charge time' PPC's (it takes 'x' of a second to charge up before firing)
-PPC's with 3 health
--PPC's with 3 health that explode, doing 10 damage
-Individual heat scales for PPC's (so PPC's can overheat and explode when constantly used)
-Give both ERPPCs and PPCs a minimum range of 'x' where they do ZERO damage.
-Allow only 'x' damage to a single location every 'y' seconds
-Give all ballistic weapons 'burst' fire - IE. Gauss could be 3 5 damage shots in quick succession, AC/20 is a pair of 10 damage shots, etc.
-Lower PPC travel speed
-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

And many more, but those were ones I can remember off hand.

Some of these look ok Garth - however please, please please - make changes that are consistent and not arbitrary. There are simple and elegant ways to balance things but adding idea on idea creates a layer of bandaids that do not fix core issues and will break other parts of the game quite often.

For instance - individual heat scales for weapons would be overly complicated for newbies and even for veterans.

Changing all single hit weapons into stream fire would be interesting but might kill the USP of that weapon.

Thank you for commenting and showing some ideas you are feeding back that is excellent though, I still wish Paul would give some more explanation to some changes - but also to the ideas they throw out.

[Zyllos]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

...
-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

I think Homeless Bill has a good idea on this: http://mwomercs.com/...oats-and-clans/

Each mech has a Tactical Computer which is a constantly fluctuating value based on weapons fired. This value decreases constantly and each weapon introduces different values. If the Tactical Computer has a value, that means your Cone-of-Fire will be larger. I would suggest reading his thread, linked above.

If you combined the above ideas with more hardpoint restrictions and heat scales, this game will be SO much more balanced in terms of crazy alpha strike damages onto single points.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

For the former, take the Jenner F. You really can't play the Mech without boating. Also - you NEED to alpha that damage as the beam time (of 1 second) means you want as much as possible hitting exactly where you want. The beam, though, means the enemy can react and spread the damage, which I LOVE - anything that can be countered with skill I enjoy seeing. For the latter, accuracy being reduced when moving will encourage people to never move, and will make things more stagnant, gameplay wise.

That's why my favorite is half heat cap, double dissipation.

6 MLs produce 24 heat. That's still under a halved heat cap for most builds (you need to use single heat sinks to have less).
Then double the dissipation.
10 DHS -=> 4 dissipation/sec. So after 4 seconds, the Jenner is already down by 16 heat. Not enough for a full alpha, but it's enough for anther 4 MLs, and if he waits 2 more seconds, he can fire another alpha.

If you want to be on the safer side for light mechs and harsh on heavier mechs, instead of halving the heat cap set it to 30. That's generous for lighter weapons (7 MLs are doable without alpha overheat), but punishing for heavier weapons (More than 3 PPCs lead to an overheat). It's quite possible some weapons could still use fine-tuning for their heat per shot (wouldn't be surprisd if AC/20 and PPCs could add 1 to 2 heat again and still be fine.)

[Star Captain Obvious Kerensky]

Why not, oh, I don't know... Make the weapons that are supposed to counter PPCs better?

SRMs? They don't do nearly enough damage anymore.

Ballistics? If you're not using Gauss/AC20, get out.

Pulse Lasers? Regular lasers are better in every circumstance.

Fix those weapons, then come back and look at how precision alphas PPCs might need to change.

[RJF Falconer]

[Lord Rip]

I would make grouped ballistic and PPC weapons not hit the same location, how that is accomplished isn't important.

It is the same issue as the one with streaks. Give them some "spread".

[Dirus Nigh]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Design is looking at this, no worries, but I wanted to give my own opinions.

One thing I want to avoid is anything that punishes Light mechs for 'boating' similar weapons, or to make movement-based accuracy reductions. For the former, take the Jenner F. You really can't play the Mech without boating. Also - you NEED to alpha that damage as the beam time (of 1 second) means you want as much as possible hitting exactly where you want. The beam, though, means the enemy can react and spread the damage, which I LOVE - anything that can be countered with skill I enjoy seeing. For the latter, accuracy being reduced when moving will encourage people to never move, and will make things more stagnant, gameplay wise.

I want to tackle the problem weapons, which I think are pretty narrow - PPC/ERPPCs in large numbers, and combos of Gauss/AC20's/PPC's. Suggestions I've already forwarded from here, twitter, facebook, PM's, ingame, Reddit, etc:

-'Beam time' PPC's (shorter than a LL, but noticeable)
-'Charge time' PPC's (it takes 'x' of a second to charge up before firing)
-PPC's with 3 health
--PPC's with 3 health that explode, doing 10 damage
-Individual heat scales for PPC's (so PPC's can overheat and explode when constantly used)
-Give both ERPPCs and PPCs a minimum range of 'x' where they do ZERO damage.
-Allow only 'x' damage to a single location every 'y' seconds
-Give all ballistic weapons 'burst' fire - IE. Gauss could be 3 5 damage shots in quick succession, AC/20 is a pair of 10 damage shots, etc.
-Lower PPC travel speed
-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

And many more, but those were ones I can remember off hand.

Just about all of these ideas are unnecessary over complications that would just muck up the game. You guys lowered the heat of PPCs and large lasers because players would not learn how to play with in the heat system of the game. Lowered heat on large energy weapons encourages over use of those weapons. Did you not raise the heat on medium lasers for this very reason?

Raise the heat of both PPCs and large lasers back up to their original MWO levels. That way a good player can handle at best three ERPPs or four PPCs on one mech with out shutting down. Of course in order to do this a player would have to not spam fire the weapons. For example firing them in ones and twos, or chain firing them. Kind of like how the 3025 TRO said good awesome pilots use their PPCs. HINT HINT

Try that first, see what happens after a week or two.

However there is a good ideas that stand out from that list. Giving ERPPCs a minimum range is a good idea. It may not be cannon but it will go a long way to balance that weapons. I use a griffin like load out on my centurion AL. This idea will hurt its effectiveness when I get caught at short ranges, but that's OK. It just means that I have to play more carefully.

Adjusting weapon convergence is another solution. However it should not be a cone effect like in COD or BF. Weapons need to have a predictable like of movement according to its location on a mech and how it moves to line up with the cross hairs. For example a laser in the right torso at the same hight as the cross hairs should move left to right at a predictable speed according to how fast the mech is moving, and how close the target is. Of course remaking the arm ring and cross hairs so it has hash marks according the a mechs hard point placement should be done.

I do not like this idea because it makes random luck a big factor in hitting your target more than the players ability to line up a shot. How many times in COD or BF did a shot miss because the game said it missed even though the target was lined up perfectly?

I think a better solution to high damage alphas is heat. Not just adjusting heat generation back to original levels for weapons but giving more concequences to over heating. Right now its just shutting down. Sure that leaves you vulnerable but for a sniper mech thats not much. Here are some ideas that have been said by me and others sense Closed Beta.

Heat scale cap is the same for all mechs. A mech will auto shut down at 30 points no matter how many heat sinks a mech has. This number could be adjusted to say 40 or 50. Heat sink dissipation for both single and double heat sinks could be raised as well for this to work.

negative effects due to heat level. Things like top speed, acceleration, deceleration, torso twist, arm movement, weapon convergence, and fuzzy hud effects could all start coming into play after the heat scale reaching certain percentage.

These effects would not come all at once nor should they be an all or nothing effect. The effects can start gradually at different times, and with increasing intensity as the mech's heat increases. I think a good bench mark for the start of these effects would be 40-50% on the heat scale. Starting with a slightly fuzz effect for the hud that comes and goes. The hotter the mech is the more the hud is effected.

However as with the cockpit shake when using jump jets it should never in hinder the player from seeing any thing. Just make it slightly more difficult.

Edited by Dirus Nigh, 15 June 2013 - 02:46 PM.

[Hotthedd]

How about we have players send in RL videos of them strapping laser pointers to their head, chest, Right and left torsos, and each arm, then having the beams all converge on a single 1 foot by 1 foot target. Have them do this while running and jumping and switching back and forth between targets 10 meters away, 50 meters away, and 100 meters away. Every player that shows video proof of being able to do this can have pinpoint alphas in the game (that is skill-based, right?)


OR, remove pinpoint convergence when firing multiple weapons at the same time. Alpha strikes can fire directly in front of you (taking skill to hit), or convergence distance can be set in the mechlab (again, taking skill to hit with multiple weapons in one spot).

[Mahnmut]

I voted for hard point restrictions but not in the way it's been suggested...

I posted an alternative way to handle hard point restrictions which doesn't actually limit what weapons you can mount but incurs minor penalties for doing so. See Hard Point Restriction (Alternate Idea)

[Lex Peregrine]

Garth Erlam, on 11 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Design is looking at this, no worries, but I wanted to give my own opinions.

One thing I want to avoid is anything that punishes Light mechs for 'boating' similar weapons, or to make movement-based accuracy reductions. For the former, take the Jenner F. You really can't play the Mech without boating. Also - you NEED to alpha that damage as the beam time (of 1 second) means you want as much as possible hitting exactly where you want. The beam, though, means the enemy can react and spread the damage, which I LOVE - anything that can be countered with skill I enjoy seeing. For the latter, accuracy being reduced when moving will encourage people to never move, and will make things more stagnant, gameplay wise.

I want to tackle the problem weapons, which I think are pretty narrow - PPC/ERPPCs in large numbers, and combos of Gauss/AC20's/PPC's. Suggestions I've already forwarded from here, twitter, facebook, PM's, ingame, Reddit, etc:

-'Beam time' PPC's (shorter than a LL, but noticeable)
-'Charge time' PPC's (it takes 'x' of a second to charge up before firing)
-PPC's with 3 health
--PPC's with 3 health that explode, doing 10 damage
-Individual heat scales for PPC's (so PPC's can overheat and explode when constantly used)
-Give both ERPPCs and PPCs a minimum range of 'x' where they do ZERO damage.
-Allow only 'x' damage to a single location every 'y' seconds
-Give all ballistic weapons 'burst' fire - IE. Gauss could be 3 5 damage shots in quick succession, AC/20 is a pair of 10 damage shots, etc.
-Lower PPC travel speed
-Have weapons lose convergeance the more weapons are fired at once

And many more, but those were ones I can remember off hand.

I would like to add my thoughts to the ideas posted above hoping to contribute to any decision making:

- Beam PPCs: yes I also sugested this a long time ago, shorter than LL for sure, maybe similar to large pulse but without the pulse effect
- Charge time PPCs: agree, no more than a second, audio feedback
- PPCs with lower health and stuff: is that really necessary? make them too bad and noone will use them
- Individual heat scales: it would add to the complexity, another heat bar?
- er/PPC minimun range: not really necessary if you make them a short beam AND require charging time, instead I sugest splash damage so you damage yourself if fired at point blank range
- x damage on location per y seconds: disagree, not the way, would much prefer lower weapon convergeance
- ballistic weapons burst fire: I like the idea, except for the gauss, actually my idea would be an AC20 would burst fire 20 shots with 1 damage each, AC10 would be 10 shots and so on, LBX could still shoot them all at the same time in shotgun style like it does now. Current implementation of AC feels wrong, its like AC20 has a bigger cannon shot than AC10, instead all cannon shots should be same size, but bigger weapons fire more of them with each volley
- lower ppc travel speed: neg, speed is fine as it is, but would sugest beam duration as well (so its different than LL because it takes time to reach distant target, but higher damage over shorter beam duration)
- weapons loose convergeance: its a possibility, would make more sense if the weapons lost convergeance with increased heat levels

I will add further sugestions concerning convergeance: Someone wrote about a targeting computer, I like the idea and it feels battletech, the target computer should be an important component in a mech, located in the cockpit so it could be damaged when cockpit is hit, its also a good idea to give clan mechs a better computer like they're meant to have. Target computer should affect weapon convergeance, destroyed computer means torso mounted weapons should fire straight ahead and arm mounted weapons more innacurate; Both crosshairs should be circular, with arm crosshair circle smaller, fired weapons should converge on a location inside the circle but not necessarily the middle. Movement speed, jump jets and heat could dynamically change the size of the crosshair, as well as mech tree unlocks, modules and a clan targeting computer.
This should not be an arcade game where people with good mice will be better than others less fortunate because they can aim better, having a circular crosshair means you may want to stop if you want to hit a target 1km away, but if you stop you're a sitting duck too, and for targets at closer range you dont need to, it just means you'll probably hit multiple locations and not just the center torso you're aiming at or whatever, there are plenty of ways an experienced player can shine, while noone likes getting cripled in the first minute of a game just because someone spoted you 800 meters away and fired 6 ppcs at your center torso.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Arbitrary things like a targeting computer with a weird "tracking capacity" function just seem wrong.

Charge-time for any weapon is bad.

Limits to how much damage a location can take in a give time are bad (unless damage transfer kicks in to compensate, and that would need very careful tuning to avoid exploits).

Fragile PPCs make sense as that would promote ranged combat over brawling and help keep the weapon in its proper role, but would not fix pinpoint damage.

Heat effects on targeting and maneuverability seem like the most flavorful, balanced, and skill-friendly way to modify the current system.

PPC minimum range being a hard limit would be nice, and even adding a minimum to ERPPCs might be okay (but I'd suggest 45m for ERPPCs and keep the 90m for PPCs). My preference would be to impose a hard limit on convergence for any weapon with a minimum range (including Gauss and AC2) where they stop converging once they hit that minimum range (so the closest a PPC can converge is 90m in front of your mech). They'd still be useable up-close, but it'd be nearly impossible to concentrate damage then and it'd take a lot of skill to aim precisely inside a weapon's minimum.

This same principle could be modified and applied across the board for ranges beyond Optimum as well, but it would need careful tweaking to make it work right.

Beam time for PPCs might be an okay fix as well, though I'd rather it be more like a 0.1s timer or something similarly very tiny.

"Beam" time for ACs could be interesting too. Make each round do 5 damage (except the AC2 and Gauss which would stay as they are). AC5 would fire one shot, AC10 would fire 2 shots, and AC20 would fire 4 shots. The burst would need to be very fast, and Ultra would just extend the burst time (and thus the number of rounds fired) at risk of jamming (and jams could happen midway through a burst).

LBX ACs need far more damage per pellet (1.5 each seems like a good starting point), but keep them at one pellet per AC rating (10 for the LB-10X). Keep them otherwise the same as they are now.

PPC projectile speed being reduce somewhat seems like a good idea. It'd help the ERPPC to have an accuracy advantage while making the PPC far more of a medium-range fire-support weapon and keeping the ERPPC as long range and sniper capable.

[Keifomofutu]

I like the idea of alpha strikes having no convergence and chain fire having perfect convergence. Would create a new system where you can either have a bunch of damage all at once OR accurate dps fire. But not both like we have now.

More or less Homeless Bill's targeting computer system where only a set amount of specific types of weapons could fire together with accuracy.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 23 June 2013 - 07:24 PM.

[Bhael Fire]

I think I'm the only freak that thinks that there's nothing wrong with the heaving hitting weapons...even the dreaded PPC and AC/20. In fact, I generally think that the other weapons need to be beefed up a bit rather than the heavier hitters being nerfed.

For example:
- SRMs need to be restored to at least 2 points of damage each, though I'd be fine with them going back to 2.5 damage.
- MGs (if they are to be considered a viable weapon instead of a harassing distraction) need to dish out at least 0.2 points of damage per round (i.e. 2 DPS). Reduce ammo to 1000 per ton.
- Flamers need to increase the enemy's heat way more rapidly.
- Pulse lasers need more damage and/or lower heat even if that means shorter range, as they are primarily brawling weapons.
- NARC needs longer range and faster velocity.
- AC/2, AC/5 and AC/10 need their cooldown reduced; AC/2 = 0.25 seconds AC/5 = 1 second AC/10 = 2 seconds
- LB 10-X needs tighter blast pattern at short range and increased crit chance against stripped armor

If many of the oft-neglected weapons were more made attractive in their own right, not only would you see less QQ about "PPC hurt my butt" or "AC40 ate my baby"...you'd see more varied builds on the field. There's no reason to nerf something fun just because something else isn't fun. Make ALL the weapons "fun" and very useful in their own specialized way.