1263 replies to this topic

[BR0WN_H0RN3T]

Solis Obscuri, on 14 June 2013 - 02:33 AM, said:

Going after five-PPC Stalkers doesn't fix anything. The dominant alpha boats are (and long have been) HGN-732 and HGN-HMs, and Cataphracts with 2-3 PPCs and a Gauss Rifle.

The heat penalty doesn't fix anything anyway, since the point of these high alpha builds is to put massive damage instantly into a very small target area. What you need is a divergence system for heavy-weapon group fire, which addresses systems like the AC/20, Gauss Rifle, and PPCs.

If you break the advantage in alpha-striking heavy point-damage weapons, people will have to adapt. As it is, they will only have to hit override slightly less often.

The idea of convergence speed based on weapon size is very sound. I really think medium and large weapons should converge proportionately more slower and arm lock has to go. Small laser convergence should be the default speed .I.e. no change. This might actually work and it's a simple idea. Thoughts?

[Splitpin]

Totally agree Dino. Why does weight continue to be ignored in all these discussions? To me weight is the most and first fundamental balance in the game. We can argue back and forward for example trying to justify the existence of the Awesome giving it tweaks and quirks to make it viable whereas it's whole reason of existence is that it carries a sh*tton of energy weapons while being the cheapest Assault in terms of weight. Give that 10 or 20 tons back to the rest of the team and it starts to make sense. Balance, it's a concept involving weight fundamentally.

[BR0WN_H0RN3T]

Ronin Starwalker, on 12 June 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

I don't know why everyone has their knickers in a knot.

I've done the RCA (Root Cause Analysis) and the issue is convergence, not heat.

But hey, lets try every other path first, preferably the longer and more complicated ones, before we come back to the root cause.

If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Ronin, I've taken the liberty of conducting an independent RCA using the Why Tree method and I do support the convergence RC but there are others, including competency of the developers, heat-breaking mechanics like coolant flush and the crappy state of small weapons that force more effective med and large options. I purport that this is partly due to not limiting hard point sizes on mechs.

[Sasha Volkova]

Misery's using 3LL - 2PPC - 1Gauss.
or
Misery's using 2LL - 3PPC - 1Gauss

I am calling it already.

This is not the end of high alpha pinpoint damage builds.

[G4M3R]

Things were good when there was at least chasis balancing in match maker. Those were the good days.

[Goose]

'Cause three PPCs and three ER PPCs isn't and adequate dodge?

[Marchant Consadine]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 June 2013 - 11:21 AM, said:

Nevermind that 100% is an absolute value, there's not actually such a thing as more than 100%.

oot responce:

Spoiler

Was this actually taught in a school at some point? I've heard it way too many times to be just misunderstanding. % means 1/100. Saying there's no such thing as more than 100% is saying there's no such thing as more than 1. This is true in certain contexts like propabilities, but that has nothing to do with percentages. As far as the definition goes there's nothing wrong with values over 100 (or below 0 for that matter).

On a sidenote it occurred to me that most of this confusion (and most other math myths) is caused by grade school teachers who are not mathematicians teaching math (at least in Finland and I imagine in many other places too). After all learning math is primarily learning a language and all other language is tought by teachers who have actually studied the language.

on topic. I have to say this looks good other than the stacking heat penalty. Terrible idea for reasons already mentioned in other posts. In general changes that encourage using macros are very bad. We already have AC2 to give advantage to people who have macro keyboards/mouse, and you should fix that. Not introduce more of them.

Also this doesn't do anything to solve the glaring problems with PPC in general. It used to be weak so you buffed it. That's fine but you went way too far with it. Major velocity increase was good, major heat reduction was unneccessary after that. If removing pinpoint aim is impossible (or you simply don't want to do it because giant robots of the future should be able to do it; don't know about lore but imo they should) just increace the heat a bit. You can increase it by 1 every patch 'till it feels fine. Small changes and often is always better for balance than major ones that overdo it and then don't get touched for months.

Also 150% of heat before you take damage is ludicrous. 100% is the shutdown treshold and I would imagine that's a failsafe to prevent this kind of damage, but if I were to design a mech I sure as hell wouldn't put that failsafe to 66% of damaging heat. Actually a better idea would be to let the players set this for their mechs. Let's say 100% is the point where you start taking damage (could be higher than todays 100% but not necessarily) and give the players a slider in mechbay to set where shutdown will occur. Just make the damage large enough to matter. This would also eliminate the problem of noobies who don't know that overheating can cause damage since naturally there would be a tooltip at the slider (or somehting)

Edited by Marchant Consadine, 14 June 2013 - 06:26 PM.

[Zordicron]

Not sure if it pays to even responde here, at 51 pages I have a feeling the devs quit reading this.

Anyway, huzzah heat changes, Streak changes.

But you know, Hit detection is so freegin screwed right now for some weapon systems, it is beyond pointless to adjust any dmg or heat or anything right now. I just got out of a match where i dumped 5 salvos of LRM45 plus artemis onto a stalker. The last 3 were on the back of the stalker as it ran away. all hit torso, and the last 2 did absolutely nothing to it. I got a laser shot or two in also before i got cored. End of match, 268 dmg shown, stalker had orange armor.

So what, "buff LRM"? Nerf PPC? Who cares. maybe PPC are actually seeing hit detection, and thats why people QQ about it, because their laser or missile return fire is only hitting 30% of the actual dmg. Or .1% like my last almost 100 dmg worth of missiles did on that stalker.

So you know what? Who cares what is changed. Really. Some time down the road a programmer is going to find out what is causing the huge, huge discrepancy in hit detection, fix it, and then OMG the proverbial doo doo will hit, and all this time and testing will have to be reworked.

I saw this same type of scenario play out in early days of city of heroes. There was this one defensive power set, was able to do things you wouldnt beleive, tank enemies by the scores, nigh invulnerable. Devs nerfed it, every 6 weeks for like 9 months. Then, one day HEY! This power is supposed to do a hit check every second, but oops, it is checking and applying every .1 second. Result= 10x defensive values were applied. So they fixed it, and left other nerfs in, and the set went from demi-god to wet paper. And then they spent the next year trying to figure out how to repair it.

Dont do it PGI. Dont build the mansion on top of a balloon. Down the road the balloon is going to burst.....

[Necroconvict]

See now you guys are looking for more "varied" builds, except, there are only so many builds many mechs can make with the current design of mechs. What sucks here is, many of these mechs were bought for the specific reason you guys are now nerfing. We payed a lot of either in game money for these mechs, or some went to route of MC... being told we have to buy 3 mech varients, in order upgrade piloting skills, and with a specific set of common builds for those mechs... we are going to start having problems. Now I myself favor the Centurion A, that has 3 missile pods in the shoulder, I usually run 3 SRM 6's, The 18th isn't that far away from now, will I have to look for a new mech to pilot? Already my damage has been reduced in the last several patches. Including somehow during the last sets of LRM adjustments... SRMs seem to have been hit during the hot fix for splash damage. I used to break the 1k mark often enough to impress people, and now I run out of ammo around 6-700 damage (maybe I had 900 missiles when I was doing the 1k - 1400 damage).

[Necroconvict]

See now you guys are looking for more "varied" builds, except, there are only so many builds many mechs can make with the current design of mechs. What sucks here is, many of these mechs were bought for the specific reason you guys are now nerfing. We payed a lot of either in game money for these mechs, or some went to route of MC... being told we have to buy 3 mech varients, in order upgrade piloting skills, and with a specific set of common builds for those mechs... we are going to start having problems. Now I myself favor the Centurion A, that has 3 missile pods in the shoulder, I usually run 3 SRM 6's, The 18th isn't that far away from now, will I have to look for a new mech to pilot? Already my damage has been reduced in the last several patches. Including somehow during the last sets of LRM adjustments... SRMs seem to have been hit during the hot fix for splash damage. I used to break the 1k mark often enough to impress people, and now I run out of ammo around 6-700 damage (maybe I had 900 missiles when I was doing the 1k - 1400 damage).

[piracetam]

Do not implement this boating heat nerf. Instead, force weight balancing as the highest matchmaking priority.

[Name140704]

Weight balancing would make this less necessary

[Wired]

Yea there is a good point passed around about just mixing up high damage weapons. Plus PPC and ER PPCs.

Seriously agree with the points made that high heat needs to have an effect on your mech beyond just shutting down. If you dont want to do damage, other effects like decreased engine speed would do good.

Or how about if you get over a certain threshhold, Your heat dissipation decreases? Meaning that you can volly with those high yield weapons, but coming back down is going to take forever.

[Corvus Antaka]

Marchant Consadine, on 14 June 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

oot responce:

Spoiler

Was this actually taught in a school at some point? I've heard it way too many times to be just misunderstanding. % means 1/100. Saying there's no such thing as more than 100% is saying there's no such thing as more than 1. This is true in certain contexts like propabilities, but that has nothing to do with percentages. As far as the definition goes there's nothing wrong with values over 100 (or below 0 for that matter).

On a sidenote it occurred to me that most of this confusion (and most other math myths) is caused by grade school teachers who are not mathematicians teaching math (at least in Finland and I imagine in many other places too). After all learning math is primarily learning a language and all other language is tought by teachers who have actually studied the language.

Sorry but no. 100% is an absolute value of whatever the total is. There is never such a thing as more than 100%. Corporations might say "we made a 200% profit" however, infact what they should say is that they "made twice the profit from last year" or that last years profit was 50% of this years profits"

Examples:

Spoiler

If you are expecting 10 people to come to a party and 11 show up, you do not have 110% of the expected guests, because 110% cannot exist. The guests are only 100% and you only expected 90.9% of them.
So to answer your question, there is no such thing as 110%. Those are just expressions used by people who are not very good at math.

or...
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using percentages greater
than 100%. Whether this makes sense depends entirely on the context.
A percentage is simply another way of writing a fraction with a
denominator of 100. For example, 6% = 6/100. Just as you can have an
improper fraction (a fraction whose numerator is greater than the
denominator), such as 4/3, so you can have what we might call an
"improper percentage" like 120% or 300%.
There are situations in which a percentage greater than 100% makes no
sense. For instance, "The Math Doctors answered 146% of the questions
received last month." This makes no sense because if we received 5061
questions, we couldn't possibly answer more than all of them. It's
just as nonsensical as saying "I ate 4/3 of the cake."
On the other hand, sometimes percentages are used like this: "The
number of questions received was up 15.7%, from 5450 in February to
6305 in March." In other words, the increase from February to March
was 6305-5450 = 855, and 855 is 15.7% of 5450. (These facts are true,
by the way.)
Now, what if the number of questions received went up to 14000 in
April? (It didn't.) This would be an increase of 122% from March to
April. There is nothing wrong with this - no law says that the number
of questions can't do more than double from one month to the next.
So the answer is, there is such a thing as a percentage larger than
100%, but not everything can have a percentage larger than 100%.

Now, this may seem off-topic. But it's not.

If in example PGI gives us a 150% heatcap before blowing up (their current concept for shutdown damage)

They are in fact giving us a heatcap of 150 value vs the current 100 value, and inserting a hidden heat value, for example your CPU has a TJMax of 105 Degrees. that means 105 degrees is 100% heat for your CPU, anymore and it'll blow. Not 105 and then 52 more for a total of 150% and THEN your CPU blows up.

Same thing with your mech.

whatever the blowup cap is, etc etc, it needs to be properly displayed, implemented and easily understood by people. the 100% thing is, while seemingly insignificant to the mathematically uneducated, in fact quite a significant factor in the proper logic and reasoning behind fixing the entire heat mechanic & alpha/boating/overheat damage, etc etc.

If its still over your head, go back to school.

[AndyHill]

Nik Reaper, on 14 June 2013 - 02:42 PM, said:

Balancing can not be done just by heat penalties and a cone of fire is out of question so creating artificial weapon restrictions seems the only solution to limiting high alphas, even as that solution is so very bad...

The after effects of the said alpha less relevant because players will find a way over, it unless the shutdown period was 6-10 times longer or it would force permanent damage at witch point everybody would complain. So what would we find acceptable more , having forced restrictions or sharp, sharp limitations and penalties on heat management ?

Good points all over. I think it's important to realize that heat alone can never stop pinpoint alphas since you can alpha without heat with certain combinations. Also I think it's a fundamentally flawed assumption that with heat penalties for PPCs we'll get PPC boats with greater weaknesses. Just like the JJ nerf made poptarts go away and move on to the next best thing (PPC boats), any nerf to PPCs will make the people to go to the next best build and this all starts over again. There is always the next favorite build.

There is always the next favorite build. And without real changes to the game mechanics nothing will change except the name of the weapon people complain about. Until they give up.

As I've already mentioned many times over, for me the answer is simple. Drop group fire entirely. It doesn't exist in the tabletop game, it's a thing invented by MW2 and copied to every MW game since - of which none have been terribly well balanced affairs. Heat penalties are good for gameplay, but don't solve the boating / alpha issue. Weight limits can be good for gameplay, but can't solve boating / alpha issues (Think about pure medium rounds where Laser45 Hunchbacks core everything in two shots). Hardpoint limitations would be good for gameplay, but they won't solve the boating / alpha issue (boat builds do and should exist). Some cone of fire implementations can help the alpha issue, especially for sniping, but I'm not convinced about how great gameplay it would be. Something to consider, anyway. Convoluted, arbitrary heat penalties are bad for gameplay and do not even begin to fix the alpha / boating issues, so...

Note that adding heat might make things even worse. In BT you might load up on many different kinds of weapons for for example different ranges, because sometimes you simply had enough heat sinks so it made sense to add kicker weapons and create varied builds. In MWO the 'mechs are already so insanely hot that there's no such thing as enough heat sinks. It's never a good option to add a few med lasers to a sniper build just because they can come in handy, being so efficient at close range fights. In MWO you have to focus on one single thing - preferably frontloaded pinpoint alphas, because pinpoint damage is by far the most effective way to fight, but also because thanks to the insane heat, DPS doesn't really exist.

If I post 15 times about removing group fire, does that count as 15 votes or something?

Edited by AndyHill, 15 June 2013 - 01:51 AM.

[Elizander]

I believe that the heat penalties for weapons should be listed with each individual weapon in the UI for the sake of new players knowing how many they can pack. A mention of the 0.5 second rule should also be included and none of these should adversely affect stock configurations.

2 Gauss are like 3 PPCs so I see no problem there

Edited by Elizander, 15 June 2013 - 02:16 AM.

[Kattspya]

Who in PGI thought it was a good idea to bring in more variables when you can't even balance what variables you have? This is already as complex a balance job as any game I've ever played and you think more complexity will help with balance? That is maybe not insanse but just very inept. Have you learned nothing? Do you know nothing?

[AndyHill]

BTW that percentage discussion is some of the weirdest stuff I've seen for a while. Of course it's equally ok to say that a company's profit margin compared to last year was for example 200% as it is to say that compared to this year, last year's profit margin was 50% (as I think was noted later in the post).

In our context the percentages are simply comparisons to the maximum safe operating temperature of the 'mech's fusion engine (considered 100% heat). Beyond 100% it is no longer safe to operate the engine and it will take damage if running at those temps, for example at 125% of maximum safe operating temperature the engine will take damage at rate x when running. Although the number of 150% might be questionable, it's perfectly correct to say that at temperatures as high as 150% of maximum safe operating temperature level the engine will start to take damage even if shut down.

[Praslek2]

Was SSRM damage ever brought back up to the overall desired levels? Last I heard the damage was nerfed and they are still pretty much useless. This would just take a bad weapon and completely remove it from the game.

The anti-boating penalties seem incredibly unwieldy. This is going to bite you in the a** and you guys already know it.

People will just duplicate their old builds in your new set of rules, with whatever adjustments they need: 4 PPC's + 1 Gauss Rifle. Are you guys pushing this through to force people to pay for Misery?

It also takes even more choices away from your players, in a game that is ostensibly about being able to make whatever mech you want.

It does bring things closer to the Battletech system of firing a few weapons at once.. There must be a better way to do this.

Here's a wild idea, take it or leave it (numbers are arbitrary):

Change the mechanic behind maximum heat..

Make the heat gauge read from 0-200%..

Anything under 100% has no penalties to your mech..

Anything over 100% gives progressively worse penalties..

200% is the new shutdown/override level..

Of course the amount of heat that is represented by 100% would have to be lower than it currently is (perhaps something like half.. that would limit people in a similar way to what you are talking about in the ridiculous anti-boating idea), but I'm putting this statement last so people don't freak out when it's the first thing they read.

On the down side, this would mean that some low heat weapons would probably need adjusting [Gauss Rifles].

This would still allow an occasional alpha strike, but the cost would be much higher: it would need to be a strategically valuable shot, and it would no longer be the standard method of firing.

In addition, penalties beyond just "Your mech takes damage" or "Your mech shuts down" would add some flavour and interesting situations to the game. You could also use it as an opportunity to push the game closer to the canon rules, and satisfy some of the hardcore fans in that camp.

This is just feedback and ideas, it's not intended to be taken as the written word of God or anything. Also, don't do the anti-boating thing, do something else. Almost anything else would be better.

[Black Templar]

Victor Morson, on 13 June 2013 - 06:25 PM, said:

[...]They need a small, focused number of players from the community that they actually listen to. Sure the typical pug gamer might not like that (when I suggested it originally, I was practically burned at the stake for being a newbie hating elitist), but the bottom line is if you've got people who understand things helping you balance stuff - the newbies are likely to have a far better time, too, in particular if they put a little more time in to appreciate the changes[...].

they acutally do this in EVE Online. the whole playersbase can vote for their representatives to assist in the development process. the candidates are chosen from the most influential corporations on the server.
still this kind of idea would be hard to implement in MW:O.