20 replies to this topic

[Renthrak]

This is a simple poll to gauge the community's feelings on the issue.

Is the heat penalty for multiples of the same weapon, proposed here, a good idea or not?

EDIT:

Since PGI is determined to go ahead with the penalty, let's keep this poll going.

EDIT:

We now have the math for the heat penalty.

Edited by Renthrak, 23 July 2013 - 03:47 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

We can't know for certain until we get our hands on it live, but my instinct says it's bad. Far better to add increasing soft heat penalties to the heat scale between 25% and 100%, and hard penalties beyond 100% (soft means % reduction in performance statistics, hard means damage).

[aniviron]

The problem at this point isn't even boating. It's boating PPCs. Let me give you a breakdown of possible boats:

Flamer: not a problem
Machine Gun: not a problem

Small laser: not a problem
Medium laser: not a problem
Large laser: Can be problematic, might need a fix and might be okay.
Small pulse laser: not a problem
Medium pulse laser: not a problem
Large pulse laser: not a problem
ER large laser: not a problem
PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more
ER PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more

AC2: not a problem
AC5: not a problem
UAC5: not a problem
AC10: not a problem
LB10x: not a problem
AC20: Two could maybe be considered boating, depending on opinion. But as annoying as AC40 Jagers can be, they have serious drawbacks and are far from OP like most things this game has seen
Gauss: Would be a problem, if any mech could run more than two of them

SRMs: not a problem
LRMs: no longer a problem

Now, when most people look at this list, they notice that very few of these weapons are a problem when boated- in fact, only really three of them are. I admit there is some wiggle room, especially for those who hate LRMs or 6xAC2, but the game is not exactly overrun with people boating these weapons at this time. Given that fact, why is there a nerf affecting every weapon system with complex, arbitrary rules being put into place? Why not just adjust the weapons that are a problem? When this game had a problem with LRMs being boated, instead of nerfing everything, we got LRM adjustments until they reached a relatively balanced spot.

The other thing that bugs me is that the implementation of these rules is completely arbitrary, as I mentioned above. Who decided what was too many, and why? We are told that the limit to PPCs will be three to preserve the AWS-8Q's sacred canonical loadout, even though the 3xPPC 1xGauss highlander is one of the most dangerous builds in the game right now and is completely unaffected by this loadout. But even though it would be wrong to wreck the 8Q, word has come down that the cap on medium lasers will be 6, even though the HBK-4P has 8 stock. Why is this? Is the trial HBK-4P overpowered? If that were the case, I would figure that during the last two weeks we would have been overwhelmed by players taking advantage of the trial HBK-4P to kick some serious behind, but this has not been the case. The reasoning behind this decision absolutely baffles me. The only other mechs I can imagine will be affected right now will be the 6xPPC stalkers and 6xAC2 JM6-DDs, both of which are very gimmicky builds, and are rarely seen to do well given their significant drawbacks.

tl, dr; Why is this change going to affect every weapon, when the only guns that are a problem being boated right now are the (ER)PPC, Large laser, and (arguably) the AC20? Why not just adjust those weapons instead?

[OpCentar]

LRMs no longer a problem... yeah, because assault LRM boats made PGI nerf them into confetti launchers.

So how do you balance LRMs which don't rely on aiming? convergence/RNG are invalid for LRMs/SSRMs.


Anyways, I think heat penalties are a start. It will probably need a few pendulum balancing swings but it has potential.

[Adrienne Vorton]

it´s a good start, although i guess it will need some reworks after a while... but i don´t really care anyway, i don´t have a single build that would suffer too much from this

[Onmyoudo]

I think it's tangental at best, and addressing completely the wrong issue at worst.

Voted that boating isn't an issue because in principle I don't think it is. Boating huge weapons isn't an issue either, as long as there are sufficient drawbacks to doing so (lack of speed, armour, ammo, backup weapons, etc). Boating current PPCs is an issue but it's not because they're being boated, it's because they have very little in the way of sacrifice in order to be able to boat them.

[Renthrak]

Onmyoudo, on 18 June 2013 - 03:12 AM, said:

Boating current PPCs is an issue but it's not because they're being boated, it's because they have very little in the way of sacrifice in order to be able to boat them.

This.

[POOTYTANGASAUR]

aniviron, on 18 June 2013 - 01:01 AM, said:

The problem at this point isn't even boating. It's boating PPCs. Let me give you a breakdown of possible boats:

Flamer: not a problem
Machine Gun: not a problem

Small laser: not a problem
Medium laser: not a problem
Large laser: Can be problematic, might need a fix and might be okay.
Small pulse laser: not a problem
Medium pulse laser: not a problem
Large pulse laser: not a problem
ER large laser: not a problem
PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more
ER PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more

AC2: not a problem
AC5: not a problem
UAC5: not a problem
AC10: not a problem
LB10x: not a problem
AC20: Two could maybe be considered boating, depending on opinion. But as annoying as AC40 Jagers can be, they have serious drawbacks and are far from OP like most things this game has seen
Gauss: Would be a problem, if any mech could run more than two of them

SRMs: not a problem
LRMs: no longer a problem

Now, when most people look at this list, they notice that very few of these weapons are a problem when boated- in fact, only really three of them are. I admit there is some wiggle room, especially for those who hate LRMs or 6xAC2, but the game is not exactly overrun with people boating these weapons at this time. Given that fact, why is there a nerf affecting every weapon system with complex, arbitrary rules being put into place? Why not just adjust the weapons that are a problem? When this game had a problem with LRMs being boated, instead of nerfing everything, we got LRM adjustments until they reached a relatively balanced spot.

The other thing that bugs me is that the implementation of these rules is completely arbitrary, as I mentioned above. Who decided what was too many, and why? We are told that the limit to PPCs will be three to preserve the AWS-8Q's sacred canonical loadout, even though the 3xPPC 1xGauss highlander is one of the most dangerous builds in the game right now and is completely unaffected by this loadout. But even though it would be wrong to wreck the 8Q, word has come down that the cap on medium lasers will be 6, even though the HBK-4P has 8 stock. Why is this? Is the trial HBK-4P overpowered? If that were the case, I would figure that during the last two weeks we would have been overwhelmed by players taking advantage of the trial HBK-4P to kick some serious behind, but this has not been the case. The reasoning behind this decision absolutely baffles me. The only other mechs I can imagine will be affected right now will be the 6xPPC stalkers and 6xAC2 JM6-DDs, both of which are very gimmicky builds, and are rarely seen to do well given their significant drawbacks.

tl, dr; Why is this change going to affect every weapon, when the only guns that are a problem being boated right now are the (ER)PPC, Large laser, and (arguably) the AC20? Why not just adjust those weapons instead?

why are acs not a problem?????? Ac40 jags have no more drawbacks than my 4 erppc k2. So why shouldnt they get nerfed? they get my alpha with less heat and the ability for backup weapons? also ac5s and ac2s are strong when boated but not too strong so i agree on that. But seriously you think gauss/ac40 jagers arent massively OP?

[Homeless Bill]

Heat penalties will never effectively balance all classes of weapon. Ballistics don't look like a problem right now because we don't have an angry enough 'mech boating them. Imagine this or this or this dropping in-game, and you'll see just how close we are to another surge of tears. The implementation of the Clans will compound the problem exponentially.

There is only one way out.

[Sephlock]

Convergence is the issue, not boating per se.

[Rebas Kradd]

POOTYTANGASAUR, on 19 June 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

why are acs not a problem?????? Ac40 jags have no more drawbacks than my 4 erppc k2.

Your K2 also has excellently exploitable drawbacks. It's not the devs' fault that nobody is trying to exploit them and instead lie around whining at them to dumb the game down.

I wholeheartedly agree with Aniviron's reply. Take away the PPC boaters and I don't think people will be complaining even about convergence. Just watch.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 19 June 2013 - 04:26 PM.

[Strum Wealh]

Homeless Bill, on 19 June 2013 - 03:14 PM, said:

Heat penalties will never effectively balance all classes of weapon. Ballistics don't look like a problem right now because we don't have an angry enough 'mech boating them. Imagine this or this or this dropping in-game, and you'll see just how close we are to another surge of tears. The implementation of the Clans will compound the problem exponentially.

There is only one way out.

If any 'Mech stands to "make ballistics a problem", it's the VTR-9A1 variant of the already-announced Victor.

Strum Wealh, on 04 June 2013 - 08:52 AM, said:

For that, one would again turn to the VTR-9A1 and hope that PGI implements it with something like:

• RA: x2 ballistic hardpoints [x1 AC/20]
  
• RT: x1 ballistic hardpoint [x1 Machine Gun (moved "up" from Right Leg)]
  
• LT: x1 ballistic hardpoint, x1 missile hardpoint [x1 Machine Gun (moved "up" from Left Leg), x1 SRM-4]
  
• LA: x2 energy hardpoints [x2 Medium Lasers]

Here is the record sheet, for those interested in the design's layout.

Even with minimum hardpoints (-1 ballistic from the quoted post), it could be easily capable of triple-Gauss (and have the tonnage to pull it off better than the Ilya Muromets) or triple-UAC or triple AC/20 (which neither the heavier and vaunted Thunder Hawk or Annihilator could pull off, due to the presence of arm and/or hand actuators).

Though, it remains to be seen if the 9A1 will be among the variants implemented; it is one of six timeline-appropriate variants, so PGI has plenty of other options if they don't feel like dealing with the 9A1's potential impact on the game.

----------

To answer the thread question: IMO, the heat penalty idea as a concept, in and of itself, is not wholly disagreeable... though, if I had any say in the matter (which I don't), I would have changed a few other things in addition (or, perhaps, instead of) implementing it.

----------

Sephlock, on 19 June 2013 - 03:54 PM, said:

Convergence is the issue, not boating per se.

Personally, I've come to like the idea of removing convergence from torso-mounted weapons (arms would still follow the convergence system) and replacing it with a system known as "gun harmonization".
See here and here for how it could be made to work in MWO.

[Homeless Bill]

Strum Wealh, on 19 June 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

If any 'Mech stands to "make ballistics a problem", it's the VTR-9A1 variant of the already-announced Victor.
Even with minimum hardpoints (-1 ballistic from the quoted post), it could be easily capable of triple-Gauss (and have the tonnage to pull it off better than the Ilya Muromets) or triple-UAC or triple AC/20 (which neither the heavier and vaunted Thunder Hawk or Annihilator could pull off, due to the presence of arm and/or hand actuators).

----------

Personally, I've come to like the idea of removing convergence from torso-mounted weapons (arms would still follow the convergence system) and replacing it with a system known as "gun harmonization".
See here and here for how it could be made to work in MWO.

For that reason, I'm not so sure we'll be seeing the 9A at all (or particularly the 9A1). For the sake of the future, I hope it is the next ball of cheese so that they'll be forced to address ballistics. From what I've seen though, they're avoiding the mixing of assaults and large ballistics like it's the plague. Don't be surprised if those machine guns go away or get moved to some place that's less-than-ideal.

To me, the non-torso-convergence thing has all the downsides to the wholesale removal of convergence (irritating, hard to adjust, not well-suited to any sort of mainstream gamer) with half of the solvency and twice the negative side-effects. It basically obsoletes chassis that rely heavily on torso weapons, while making 'mechs capable of mounting lots of arm weapons must-have. The Warhawk would become a god.

It makes perfect sense, and that's the way it should work if sense mattered most; however, with game balance in mind, I think the selective removal of convergence will create all sorts of awful problems and obsolete 'mechs.

And though I'm personally not against manually setting convergence (in fact, I'd really probably enjoy it), I think it's just too hardcore / simmy for most gamers. If they're putting in 3rd-person view, they're playing hard for the core market.

[Renthrak]

With a mere 7.41% of respondents believing that the heat penalty with fix everything, and only 35.19% in favor of the idea at all, these results seem pretty clear. Still, only 50-odd votes isn't a big sample size. Hopefully more people will participate after the new announcement.

[Tarl Cabot]

The penalty is a good start, it sorta fits in the Heat Scale but it is not enough.

1. Fixed Heat Cap instead of the current adjustable one that is dependent on the number and type of heat sinks. When Clan DHS arrives the current problem will only increase (C DHS takes up 2 crist, allowing more to be fitted into a mech chassis).

2. Additional penalties before hitting the 100% mark. A hotter mech should be slower and sluggish. This does two things: more difficult to target a mech, much less aim at a specific area (unless mech walks right into it) while also giving another physical indication to the pilot that he is running hotter than he needs to be. Then he either holds his fire or switches to single fire.

3. Of course convergence but from the recent update it is not high on the to-do list. What should happen then is to remove the pilot skill that deals with convergence now instead of later.

[Urdnot Mau]

I can't decide if this is a good solution... A part of me feels that it's not gonna cut it. Here's why : YOU ARE STILL ABLE TO USE THE WEAPONS. So, theoretically you are still able to cause the same damage. The result ? You aren't able to fire as much often. This will result in a overall damage reduction, but in the real battle, those TORSOS are still gonna open up !!!

BUT... that damage reduction might be enough to make people want builds that have a better overall damage.

we can also expect that battles are going to be slower, if people decide to ignore heat penalties

[Sephlock]

^ Aren't you forgetting about the whole "taking damage from heat" thing?

[Renthrak]

My own opinion is solidly against the multi-weapon heat penalty. Not because it wouldn't make some of the current high-Alpha builds less viable, because it will have an effect. I'm against it for two primary reasons:

1. It's too arbitrary. Just deciding that a given number of a particular weapon is too powerful and adding a specific penalty seems like an awfully ham-fisted way of addressing a problem that is more complex than 'boating = bad'. Never mind the fact that it's a kick to the groin for the Awesome's canon purpose.

2. This heat penalty system will take a huge amount of time and effort away from the rest of the game. People will quickly find workarounds to bypass the multi-weapon limitation and maintain massive damage Alpha Strikes as the dominant form of combat. That means that the devs will have to go through all the new builds and figure out how to add more weapon nerfs, which players will then find another way to circumvent, requiring another round of balance changes, rinse and repeat. 6xPPCs is a problem because it allows a 60 damage pinpoint Alpha Strike. If taking 6 of the same weapon is punished, then people will use a mix of different weapons to get the ~60 damage Alpha Strike. All this will do is start an arms race between devs nerfing OP builds and players coming up with new OP builds.

Damage over 120% heat was a great idea, but damage over 100% means that shutting down becomes irrelevant. As someone else said, if you're going to take damage anyway (and shutting down doesn't make your heatsinks work faster), then why not keep moving?

I wish we could get some kind of coherent explanation for why canon heat penalties are not being considered. Slower movement, targeting difficulty, potential ammo explosions, if these appeared BEFORE you hit 100% heat, and get worse as you get closer to 100%, then there is a real reason to keep your heat low. Without that, players will take the biggest Alpha Strike they can fire without hitting the magic heat limit, and the gameplay will NOT CHANGE.

We're in this mess in the first place because the weapons fire, and thus produce heat, at 1.8x to 20x the original rate, but heat sinks cool at or below 1x. With so much heat being produced, the game is unplayable unless there are no problems with running hot, so the devs buffed the heat scale and added 'Mech efficiencies to compensate, totally destroying the previous means of balancing weapons based on heat. So, they have to start balancing from scratch, which takes resources away from finishing the rest of the game.

'Reinventing the wheel' was coined to explain why scrapping something that was already working because you think you can do it better isn't a good idea. Hundreds of people spent thousands of hours over several decades figuring out ways to make BattleTech's heat system work right. It was far from perfect, but a couple dozen people can't try to duplicate that kind of effort in a year and expect to have something useful.

[Zyllos]

aniviron, on 18 June 2013 - 01:01 AM, said:

The problem at this point isn't even boating. It's boating PPCs. Let me give you a breakdown of possible boats:

Flamer: not a problem
Machine Gun: not a problem

Small laser: not a problem
Medium laser: not a problem
Large laser: Can be problematic, might need a fix and might be okay.
Small pulse laser: not a problem
Medium pulse laser: not a problem
Large pulse laser: not a problem
ER large laser: not a problem
PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more
ER PPC: Very problematic in groups of four or more

AC2: not a problem
AC5: not a problem
UAC5: not a problem
AC10: not a problem
LB10x: not a problem
AC20: Two could maybe be considered boating, depending on opinion. But as annoying as AC40 Jagers can be, they have serious drawbacks and are far from OP like most things this game has seen
Gauss: Would be a problem, if any mech could run more than two of them

SRMs: not a problem
LRMs: no longer a problem

Now, when most people look at this list, they notice that very few of these weapons are a problem when boated- in fact, only really three of them are. I admit there is some wiggle room, especially for those who hate LRMs or 6xAC2, but the game is not exactly overrun with people boating these weapons at this time. Given that fact, why is there a nerf affecting every weapon system with complex, arbitrary rules being put into place? Why not just adjust the weapons that are a problem? When this game had a problem with LRMs being boated, instead of nerfing everything, we got LRM adjustments until they reached a relatively balanced spot.

The other thing that bugs me is that the implementation of these rules is completely arbitrary, as I mentioned above. Who decided what was too many, and why? We are told that the limit to PPCs will be three to preserve the AWS-8Q's sacred canonical loadout, even though the 3xPPC 1xGauss highlander is one of the most dangerous builds in the game right now and is completely unaffected by this loadout. But even though it would be wrong to wreck the 8Q, word has come down that the cap on medium lasers will be 6, even though the HBK-4P has 8 stock. Why is this? Is the trial HBK-4P overpowered? If that were the case, I would figure that during the last two weeks we would have been overwhelmed by players taking advantage of the trial HBK-4P to kick some serious behind, but this has not been the case. The reasoning behind this decision absolutely baffles me. The only other mechs I can imagine will be affected right now will be the 6xPPC stalkers and 6xAC2 JM6-DDs, both of which are very gimmicky builds, and are rarely seen to do well given their significant drawbacks.

The only reason why you list most of those weapons as "not a problem" is because the PPC and Gauss Rifle is the best at the current mechanics in the game.

As soon as one weapon falls out of favor, the next weapon in line will become the "problem".

This is because pin point convergence is the underlying issue.

If you allow any number of weapons to hit a single location, it will be exploited.

[aniviron]

Zyllos, on 14 July 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

The only reason why you list most of those weapons as "not a problem" is because the PPC and Gauss Rifle is the best at the current mechanics in the game.

As soon as one weapon falls out of favor, the next weapon in line will become the "problem".

This is because pin point convergence is the underlying issue.

If you allow any number of weapons to hit a single location, it will be exploited.

Small lasers all hit the same location; are they a problem?

Which weapons do you suspect will become much too good once ppc is scaled back a little? Would it be lasers, with their relatively low ranges and long beam times? Pulse lasers, with silly high weight and low range? AC2/5/10, which do low damage given their weight, and have punishing ammo requirements? SRM, with its max range of 270, effective range of 175, mediocre damage, and high heat? LRM, which is negated by a long fly time and anyone smart enough to not stand out in the open?

Honestly, I feel like with the exception of PPC, the game is fairly well balanced, at least regarding weapons; weight class is a whole 'nother can of worms. SRM, Lb10, and pulse lasers need some tweaking, but lb10 and srm at least could both be fixed with modest damage buffs. Nothing else stands out as being far too good in every situation like PPC is right now. Some weapons are very good at their niche, but tend to be pretty awful outside of that niche, and more importantly, their niches are not so good that they can force the entire metagame to revolve around it like how PPC makes the whole game become about dodging long-range fire and not getting singled out. Every weapon that I could think of being a problem when boated (llas, lrm, ac2, ac20) is boated fairly regularly, and it turns out that the 6/4x AC2 Jags, ac20 Jags, LRM60 stalkers, and 6 llas stalkers/awesomes, and 4x llas quickdraws are all just... not that good. They all have pretty exploitable flaws, and while the llas and lrm builds are at least viable, when I see them I don't have to immediately drop out of sight or risk immediate death- you can fight them.

Edited by aniviron, 14 July 2013 - 07:03 PM.