91 replies to this topic

[Zyllos]

I agree that PGI's solution is not a well thought out idea but I think the OP's idea is also bad.

The reason why certain weapons, boats, ect, are so good is due to the "duck taped" phenomenon of weapons right now.

All arm weapons hit a single point in space of where the arm crosshair is pointed.
All torso weapons hit a single point in space of where the torso crosshair is pointed.
Arm locking or not moving/torso twisting allows for all weapons across all locations to hit a single point in space where both crosshairs is pointed.

This is why we have a problem, not because of heat.

[StalaggtIKE]

Currently, there is not enough concrete information from Paul to form an educated opinion. It's only a theory at the moment.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 11 June 2013 - 01:13 PM.

[Writer]

If PGI had just implemented the MW4 Hardpoint system like some of us told them to none of this would be happening right now. Mech weapon hardpoints were restricted by size, meaning you couldn't cram in PPC's or AC/20's into hardpoint slots that were too small for them. This outright eliminated a percentage of boating problems (albeit not all of them).

You were warned but you refused to listen.

Edited by Rhenis, 11 June 2013 - 01:18 PM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

- First and foremost: This punishes small 'mechs. If you bought a BJ-1X get ready to throw it in the trash, because the limit on numbers of guns will absolutely wreck it.

The ONLY small Mechs in the game this affects is the BJ1X and the HBK-4P, and it ONLY affects them when you both mount only 1 type of weapon and you fire all of them exactly at the same time. This Heat Penalty has 0 impact on the HBK-4P and the BJ-1X even if you mount only MLs so long as you fire 6 of them followed by firing the remaining 2 or 3 of them 1/2 a second later.



- Goodbye, Secondary Guns. Does your 'mech have backup weapons? Lasers or streaks in case they close the distance? Well if you pop those 3-4 backup guns...

The Devs are not punishing the use of backup weapons. There is no evidence that firing 4 small lasers will be penalized, and we have already established that firing 4, 5, or even 6 MLs will not be penalized,.


- That's the whole point to some variants! In addition to the light variants that are damaged, but what about 'mechs like the Catapult A1? You've effectively rendered the 'mech worthless. What about a less popular example, the Awesome 8Q? No more PPC builds for that! Good thing nobody is using that laserboat Hunchback, too, because that's going to be a joke now.

As stated by the Devs, they are already taking canon loadouts into consideration, such as accommodating the Awesome 8Q's 3 PPCs, and the Hunchback 4P's 6ML Shoulder-bank without any penalty.



- Twin Gauss is Coming. ...By attacking builds running more than one PPC...

They are attacking builds with more than 3 PPCs, not "more than 1."


Many other points were quite valid, but I wanted to comment on the over-reactionary statements... we should take this in fully before saying that any Mech with more than 1 PPC will be ruined.

[Lord Ikka]

Victor Morson, on 11 June 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Lots and lots of people run builds like: 8 Medium Lasers, 3 SRM6, 4 LRM10, etc. 4 PPC Stalkers hit roughly as hard as 2 PPC + 1 Gauss. 6 PPC Stalkers suck anyway and are clearly inferior to these.

If we trade the current 4x PPC Stalkers for 3x PPC 1x Gauss Misery, how is that going to help anything other than Misery sales? (Perhaps I have said too much!)

Considering how they haven't said what their limit may be on missiles, its pointless to speculate that 3 SRM6s or 4 LRM10s will get hit. And no, there are not many mechs that can run 7 or more medium lasers. Awesome 8Q, Hunch 4P, and Blackjack 1X are the only Mechs that can do that, and you don't see many of those (other than the people leveling up the new Blackjack) that often.
For the PPCs, penalizing over 3 is really the only way they can implement this without completely screwing over TT standard builds (not saying TT is good, just that auto-penalizing a stock build is bad- Clans don't figure into this for a bunch of reasons).

I know that this doesn't address a lot of issues that we have right now- BV/tonnage balance, convergence etc..., but it is a minor repair to an issue that we have.

[armyof1]

Victor Morson, on 11 June 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

They clearly laid out specifically how it will operate, which will specifically hurt lights & mediums at worst and make mechlab a convulted mess at worst. And it still doesn't address the actual issue anyway.

All you need to draw the conclusion that this is terrible is the ability to read.

(Or do you actually think this is going to do anything at all to the typical 1 Gauss + 2 PPC builds, or the upcoming 2 Gauss Victor builds? Because it won't. At all.)

Once again not enough info, we haven't been told at what amount of for example MLs will be the limit before a heat penalty. How can you be so absolutely certain how lights will be punished without even this basic info?

Personally I don't mind Gauss and 2xPPC, since if you want to use them at 400-500m or so there's a substantial chance the Gauss and PPCs won't hit the same mech part due to travel time. Well unless you're standing absolutely still at which point you pretty much deserve it.

[Victor Morson]

Sprouticus, on 11 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

you do realize that if you convert a PPC to an ERPPC that you have given yourself a heat penalty on your own, right?

At least you gain an advantage out of it. Besides, the 2 ER PPC 2 PPC Stalkers are pretty effective anyway, possibly more than any other Stalker in PUGs.

But don't fear, you can always buy a Misery.

Sprouticus, on 11 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

On topic:

I like this model. They can tweak it as needed on a per weapon basis, it is another tool they can use to balance weapons. Think of it this way. Right now they only have 2 axis that they can balance on, heat and damage. Now they have a 3rd, max weapons per shot.

Another tool to scramble Mechlab where it isn't necessary and make things way more complicated than they need to be. Doing per-weapon heat modifiers is going to be a complete train wreck.

Sprouticus, on 11 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Boating has always been a problem in MWO. 9 ml fast hunchies, Streakcats, splatcats, lrmboats, PPC boats, and PPC gauss boats. Even 5 LL cataphracts are nasty. The issue is PGI has to manage weapons based upon the worst case scenario (max boating, so mechs with only 1 or 2 of any hardpoint are useless.

You're seriously arguing against 9 Medium Laser Hunchbacks in their current state? Did you notice they went away already because the underlying problems (engine speed cap) were fixed?

Sprouticus, on 11 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Not so if they can penalize boating without penalizing non boated versions!

There is absolutely no reason to penalize boats. There is a reason to stop everyone from driving 'mechs that can fit 50+ tons of guns without breaking a sweat, though.

Sprouticus, on 11 June 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Example:
6 ML Jenner- no panalty
2x PPC Cent-AL- no panalty
3 PPC/2 LL Cataphract- no penalty

By your logic:
3 PPC / 1 Gauss Highlander - No Penalty.
3 PPC / 1 Gauss Misery - No Penalty
2 PPC / 2 Gauss Victor - No Penalty

Boy, I'm sure glad they fixed the "real reasons" high damage alphas are an issue. Clearly, it's boating and not the fact most teams exceed 700 tons.

[Pando]

Victor Morson, on 11 June 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Before voting blindly I would encourage you read this. If you dislike alphas, at least keep an open mind and see why this is bad - and not for the reasons you might think.

http://mwomercs.com/...32#entry2436932






So, let me count the horrible, horrible ways that this is the single worst idea for a reactive low-ELO nerf in the entire game. I know a lot of you are already likely jumping to say what a glorious day this is, but if you are, you don't understand why "High alpha builds" were a problem in the first place.

- First and foremost: This punishes small 'mechs. If you bought a BJ-1X get ready to throw it in the trash, because the limit on numbers of guns will absolutely wreck it. This and other 'mechs were designed to boat large arrays of lasers, so forcing them to stagger that fire out will absolutely, positively kick light and medium pilots in the balls again.

- Most high alpha builds don't carry many guns anyway! Everyone rambles about the 6 PPC Stalker, which is clearly far worse than the 4 PPC Stalker. This will punish the bad build and not punish the good one; likewise the most common setup is 2 PPC, 1 Gauss, which this will not even impact. That's because small numbers of big guns are better at heavy damage, high focus hits than large numbers of small guns a lot of the time!

- This won't stop synergy. I've said it before, and I will say it again: If you cap how many of X weapon I can effectively run, I will simply run Y and Z that have similar firing characteristics. Stop me from running 3 PPCs and I'll run 2 PPCs and a Gauss; maybe 2 PPCs and 2 Gauss, 'mech depending. Stop me from running 5 Large Lasers and I'll run 4 and an ER Large. No matter how much you smash this, it will never stop it.

- Goodbye, Secondary Guns. Does your 'mech have backup weapons? Lasers or streaks in case they close the distance? Well if you pop those 3-4 backup guns, you're going to take a huge heat penalty now, despite the fact they likely carry less than a tenth of your firepower. I know I'm not going to want to eat surges of heat for firing a bank of small lasers.

- That's the whole point to some variants! In addition to the light variants that are damaged, but what about 'mechs like the Catapult A1? You've effectively rendered the 'mech worthless. What about a less popular example, the Awesome 8Q? No more PPC builds for that! Good thing nobody is using that laserboat Hunchback, too, because that's going to be a joke now.

- This won't stop the true problem. The reason "high alpha builds" have become such a subject of ire (among the non-frankenmech crowd even) has absolutely nothing to do with the number of guns being boated. It is almost exclusively because of a lack of weight restrictions in the game (Which was one of the longest running pre-beta threads on the MW:O forums, mind you, so I can't say some of us didn't see it coming) resulting in every single person driving a Stalker or Highlander.

- Twin Gauss is Coming. Sure the Jagger and K2 can do so, but they're fragile. The 4X can do it but it's slow. Around the corner is the Victor, that can likely sport 2x Gauss and PPCs. By attacking builds running more than one PPC, all you will do is force everyone here next. Again, alpha strikes are not the underlying problem!

The problem: Guess what, no matter what you do to alpha strikes or weapon arrays this won't make the problem go away. As long as 85-90 ton 'mechs are allowed to be the majority on the field, they will ALL hit so hard you will be unable to pilot anything else!

-

Please PGI, do not go this route. I know you login to the forums and see a million angry threads about alpha strikes and want to give your casual players what they want, but the problem is they honestly do not know what they want, if they're blaming that. They're blaming the very most superficial thing, firing multiples of the same gun, and not thinking through any of the other ramifications.

Do not throw lights and mediums under the bus here, in particular 'mechs designed for that very purpose.

-

So what do we really need?

Weight Restrictions. If everyone isn't driving a heavy or assault and mediums are pushed into the mix, 99% of this will go away overnight. I've heard lobbies might be apart of UI2.0 and my God I hope they are. Sacrificing over half your game content on the altar of a quick match button is not working out. I don't mind if there's a no restriction lobby, though!

More heat effects. I've always been a big fan of organically adding heat effects. If heat slowed your 'mech down more at higher levels, it would make a big difference and people may manage their high-heat builds accordingly. This alpha-nerf system on the other hand will not.

Most of all, a wider look at this and other issues. When the forums light up angry about a specific element, I think it's proven disastrous time and time again to just react directly to it (with a few exceptions, such as the consumable roll out plan) rather than facing the underlying causes. Everyone complains high alpha builds pretty much because some TT-Frakenmech players have screamed it loud enough that newbies who are tired of being cored by Assault 'Mechs that are running a few really big guns have chimed in.

As I've pointed out before, however, most of the good alpha builds aren't even running very many guns. At all. 3-4 tops - the NUMBER of guns has absolutely nothing to do with the problem. It's because, in general a small number of really big guns is better than a larger number of smaller guns if you have the weight to run it.

In Conclusion

Effectively this reactive concept is flawed from it's very conception. It's punishing the wrong 'mechs and doing nothing about the issues that are actually frustrating people.

You obviously are far to emotional to comprehend the message Paul wrote. I strongly suggest sleeping it off. Then, after you've had a nap read Pauls post and edit your own.

My main reason for this message, you mentioned how worthless the 4p will be. Read exactly what Paul said about the 4p. Read where its chassis/weapon specific...meaning we've been provided with examples that are subject to change. Which means specific variants might not have a heat penalty at all.....take a nap.

Thanks.

[Tennex]

Rhenis, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

If PGI had just implemented the MW4 Hardpoint system like some of us told them to none of this would be happening right now. Mech weapon hardpoints would be restricted by size, meaning you couldn't cram in PPC's or AC/20's into hardpoint slots that were too small for them.

You were warned but you refused to listen.

i didnt want that system because i supported choice and customization.

but if we have to have this bad boating penalty system instead.

i would gladly take the hardpoint (small/med/large) system

Edited by Tennex, 11 June 2013 - 01:16 PM.

[DaZur]

Victor Morson, on 11 June 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

Are you completely open to living with a horrendous broken system for 6 months?

Hyperbole much?

Yes, I sense your urgency and can appreciate your call to action but I think you and others are having a knee-jerk reaction of epic proportions based on IGPs patterned history up to this point.

To answer your question "yes"... Based purely on the premise that some balance metrics need to be birthed from real-world application that can't be fabricated in lab or simulated.

IMHO the end justifies the means...

[FerretGR]

Well said, OP. This is a nonsense solution, as other posters have pointed out, a bandaid instead of a fix. It's going to punish laser use (ie. rarely do I use a single laser or chain my lasers) in particular, and small mechs who are limited in their choice of weapon (ie. think of all the Mediums and Lights you have in your garage with 4+ medium lasers).

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

ETA misread. Still not a huge fan of this as there are certainly other configurations that will be needlessly impacted.

Edited by FerretGR, 11 June 2013 - 01:39 PM.

[armyof1]

Victor Morson, on 11 June 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

What even qualifies as a PPC boat? Because again, outside of the niche Stalker, everyone runs Gauss + PPCs. Again I cannot stress enough the Victor will allow 2x Gauss at Awesome 9M speeds, too. Do 3 PPCs count? Because that sucks, to remove the alternate 3 PPC (instead of 1 Gauss + 2 PPC) build as a viable option - poor Awesome 8Q, too.

Are we talking 4? Because if we're talking 4, we're talking about one specific Stalker build. Once you go past 4 and into 5-6 you're back to "the build is terrible anyway" logic, so why nerf that in the first place?? Are they seriously going to call 2 PPCs a boat?

There is absolutely no way this will work out to stop pinpoint damage, high-alpha snipers. None.

I think 3xPPC or more should get a bit of heat penalty yes, because there's no way you can avoid getting all the damage in the same spot due to identical travel time. 2xPPC and Gauss though have quite the different travel speed so anything moving a bit sideways to your point of view will have a chance to get hit in different mech parts when fires at the same time as long as the target is just a a couple hundred meters away.

[Acid Phase]

SMDMadCow, on 11 June 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

Agreed.
All they need to do is crank PPC heat per shot back up to 10 for standards and 15 for ERs.

I Agree, but with the hit penalties kicking in from 110%. 150% is too lenient.

[General Taskeen]

Haha, they said lower heat threshold doesn't work, when its clearly too much work to rework heat/heat sinks apparently. Sigh.

[Lord Ikka]

FerretGR, on 11 June 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

Well said, OP. This is a nonsense solution, as other posters have pointed out, a bandaid instead of a fix. It's going to punish laser use (ie. rarely do I use a single laser or chain my lasers) in particular, and small mechs who are limited in their choice of weapon (ie. think of all the Mediums and Lights you have in your garage with 4+ medium lasers).

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Try reading the limit for medium lasers that the Devs have proposed BEFORE posting. 7 or more medium lasers would be penalized, not 4 or more- that would be PPCs. No Light Mech would be penalized, as no Light can fit 7 energy weapons.

[Multitallented]

3PPC 1 Gauss Highlander unaffected
2 ERPPC 1 Gauss Cataphract unaffected
5 PPC Stalker affected
4 PPC 1 Gauss Misery affected

I guess it solves part of the problem while making new ones...

Where's the SRM damage buff? Where's the PPC heat nerf?

[FerretGR]

Lord Ikka, on 11 June 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

Try reading the limit for medium lasers that the Devs have proposed BEFORE posting. 7 or more medium lasers would be penalized, not 4 or more- that would be PPCs. No Light Mech would be penalized, as no Light can fit 7 energy weapons.

Yr right, I did misread that bit and reread based on posts in this this thread, and just came in here to edit my post to reflect that. I'm still not in favor, but at least it doesn't hurt lights and most meds.

Edited by FerretGR, 11 June 2013 - 01:25 PM.

[Lord Ikka]

Sorry Ferret, realized that I may have been a bit harsh, but half the posts in this thread are mentioning the exact same thing as you, and apparently none of them read the Dev post all the way.

[Victor Morson]

Prosperity Park, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

- First and foremost: This punishes small 'mechs. If you bought a BJ-1X get ready to throw it in the trash, because the limit on numbers of guns will absolutely wreck it.

The ONLY small Mechs in the game this affects is the BJ1X and the HBK-4P, and it ONLY affects them when you both mount only 1 type of weapon and you fire all of them exactly at the same time. This Heat Penalty has 0 impact on the HBK-4P and the BJ-1X even if you mount only MLs so long as you fire 6 of them followed by firing the remaining 2 or 3 of them 1/2 a second later.

Firing a bunch of medium lasers is pretty much why these 'mechs were designed. However, even if you got around that, they are not the only 'mechs impacted by this. There are a series of Jenners, Cicadas, etc. that can carry a fairly large bank of small weapons that will also be hammered by this.

Prosperity Park, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

- Goodbye, Secondary Guns. Does your 'mech have backup weapons? Lasers or streaks in case they close the distance? Well if you pop those 3-4 backup guns...

The Devs are not punishing the use of backup weapons. There is no evidence that firing 4 small lasers will be penalized, and we have already established that firing 4, 5, or even 6 MLs will not be penalized,.

If they are going to an individual-gun penalization system that punishes very specific combinations of weapons using a highly artifical method, this might trade many of these concerns for sheer massively-over complicating mechlab. All the current top tier players will just find the best ways to exploit this, and the more difficult builds are to make (with massive hidden - I suspect they are hidden anyway - stats) the more this issue will divide worse.

Prosperity Park, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

- That's the whole point to some variants! In addition to the light variants that are damaged, but what about 'mechs like the Catapult A1? You've effectively rendered the 'mech worthless. What about a less popular example, the Awesome 8Q? No more PPC builds for that! Good thing nobody is using that laserboat Hunchback, too, because that's going to be a joke now.

As stated by the Devs, they are already taking canon loadouts into consideration, such as accommodating the Awesome 8Q's 3 PPCs, and the Hunchback 4P's 6ML Shoulder-bank without any penalty.

I've long been for a general extra buff for chassis to gain advantages to specific weapons and the like, so that aspect I like fine. However, if they specifically start putting in wonky exceptions like this, they are effectively damaging customization by more or less pushing specific variants for per-determined weapon setups. It's not the same thing as offering, say, the Awesome a small bonus to PPCs.

It is good this is being thought of. However, this implementation sounds quite frankly really bad.

Prosperity Park, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

- Twin Gauss is Coming. ...By attacking builds running more than one PPC...

They are attacking builds with more than 3 PPCs, not "more than 1."

If it's more than 3 PPCs, then this has already become a serious joke anyway. You might as well just take a hardpoint off the Stalker at this point.

The only 'mech that runs more than 3 PPC is the Stalker; the 4 PPC model is roughly on par with 1 Gauss / 2 PPC in performance. Anything over that is far, far under performing anyway.

Simply adding more heat effects will solve these gimmick Stalkers! They simply are not very good. Unless the plan is to try to push the Misery!

Prosperity Park, on 11 June 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

Many other points were quite valid, but I wanted to comment on the over-reactionary statements... we should take this in fully before saying that any Mech with more than 1 PPC will be ruined.

The way the system was explained was disastrous.

Given the track record of how bad features get added and then are forced to linger while they are "corrected," the concern level is admittedly higher than it would be if I thought there'd be a reasonable chance of it's removal / alteration on a normal time frame. I do not want something like this added only to hear "No time to fix it! UI 2.0! " Don't add it if it can't be tuned very promptly!

Finally, this is again a system that seems entirely designed to nerf a popular Stalker build by tearing the whole game balance apart and that is fairly ludicrous.

Meanwhile, the thing this was designed to correct (Everyone having high alpha builds) will be totally ignored. So in a way you're right: This won't impact me or doom many people but it's not going to fix anything either.

When everyone is driving an 80 ton Victor sporting twin Gauss with some PPCs soon, everyone is still going to be getting cored out by devastating sniper fire, because everyone is in an assault!

I really am still at a loss how they think running a set number of PPCs has anything at all to do with this.

EDIT: Seriously, if this whole thing is about the Stalker, just add a heat penalty for PPCs to the Stalker as a quirk or something; to my knowledge there's no core builds that have PPCs. Or even better, just add a buff to them for another 'mech and people will leave this.

Going on this rampage to revamp the entire way alpha strikes work to correct a dislike of these very, very few 4+ PPC builds (that again, as I keep repeating, SUCK ANYWAY) that is kind of like using a flame thrower to deal with a termite problem.

[FupDup]

Hey guys, look at the bright side: MGs are getting another minuscule damage buff! Triumph!