78 replies to this topic

[TLBFestus]

Simple solution;

Cap LARGE weapons at 2 per mech loadout.

Large Lasers, ER Large Lasers, PPCs, Gauss, AC20, etc., would be limited at 2 of the same kind per mech.

You have 4 or 6 energy slots on a mech? Fine, but you can only place 2 of the same large weapon regardless. No more 6 or even 4 PPC Stalkers, etc. They'd have to pick 2 PPCs, 2 Larger lasers, etc.

don't like 2? Maybe 3 is good enough for most weapons then.

It would need some tweaking, but it could work fine, and encourage some more variety and more heat management.

Edited by TLBFestus, 03 July 2013 - 09:30 AM.

[General Taskeen]

There already is a better heat system. Its called fixed heat thresholds and higher disappation rates like other Mech Titles. Its already been solved, just not in MWO.

[Jestun]

Damage over 100% is pointless, as the OP says it will only effect complete noobs.

[SpiralRazor]

General Taskeen, on 03 July 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

There already is a better heat system. Its called fixed heat thresholds and higher disappation rates like other Mech Titles. Its already been solved, just not in MWO.

Exactly....Taskeen, and a few others, actually understand this as they have played some of the other titles. A normal scaling heat effect would be totally in canon, congruent with the board game and some of the other titles.

Damage over 120%?


Dumb.

Just institute a REAL heat scale, where your mech starts getting more and more sluggish the higher you go. Accuracy starts to get effected at the mid end(reticule shake), and ammo can start to explode....At the extreme upper end, you can have the whole cockpit start to waver as your pilot is pretty much passing out from heat exhaustion/heat stroke.

Fixed.

[MaddMaxx]

Valore, on 02 July 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

Summed up exactly. Why bother putting in a fix that really didn't fix anything.

Oh! Oh! Until it is in place, it cannot be tweaked. If all you want to do it Troll the Dev, fine. At least do it with some semblance of f'ing understanding of the BIG picture ffs.

[Obadiah333]

Valore, on 02 July 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

Again, you've missed the point. I might as well spell it out here. I play with people I consider the best PPC STK pilots around. The patch does NOTHING to them. They are still owning face. This is fine with me. What is NOT fine, is that a fix was put into place to attempt to solve a problem. This problem, in my mind, was people going into horrible torrents of QQ and breaking down in the forums crying for nerfs after being PPCed to death. And now we have said nerf. Which does absolutely zero to people who were wrecking the crap out of people causing them to QQ in the first place. With the JJ nerf, at least if somewhat made it difficult to poptart. This has not made anything difficult. At all. If your argument is that this is only part 1 of 2, then fine, you're a more patient sort. But I fear any such patience I had was used up in the 'oh, this is only the first part of the missile fix' debacle. TL;DR Why PGI put into place hack fix which only makes problem they wanted to fix worse?

Kinda like how they fixed poptarting by nerfing the jump jets on every chassis of mech with their ridiculous shake thing. STUPID.

[MaddMaxx]

SpiralRazor, on 03 July 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

Exactly....Taskeen, and a few others, actually understand this as they have played some of the other titles. A normal scaling heat effect would be totally in canon, congruent with the board game and some of the other titles.

Damage over 120%?

Dumb.

Just institute a REAL heat scale, where your mech starts getting more and more sluggish the higher you go. Accuracy starts to get effected at the mid end(reticule shake), and ammo can start to explode....At the extreme upper end, you can have the whole cockpit start to waver as your pilot is pretty much passing out from heat exhaustion/heat stroke.

Fixed.

And of course, you have to have your girlfriend, or boyfriend, dump a pale of water over your head when you Alpha to 99% to show how hot that Cockpit really is, like in your real life BattleMech...

[Rebas Kradd]

Victor Morson, on 02 July 2013 - 06:14 PM, said:

PS: We've waited. We've seen. We don't need to wait and see to say "Things are not going well."

It's been 24 hours. You're not credible yet.

Besides, as with any new system, it is open to tweaks and adjustments as time goes along.

[KuruptU4Fun]

Jestun, on 03 July 2013 - 09:08 AM, said:

Damage over 100% is pointless, as the OP says it will only effect complete noobs.

Since most PPC Stalker pilots are noobs who only care about min/maxing then this solves 80% of the problem...

[SpiralRazor]

Rebas Kradd, on 03 July 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

It's been 24 hours. You're not credible yet.

Besides, as with any new system, it is open to tweaks and adjustments as time goes along.

Tweaks and adjustments as time goes along, is PGIs absolutely worst aspect. Theres been no improvement since last June.

KuruptU4Fun, on 03 July 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

Since most PPC Stalker pilots are noobs who only care about min/maxing then this solves 80% of the problem...

Thats probably true sadly enough....the current glut of PPCs is a lot of "monkey see, monkey do".... Ive watched enough kill cams to see just A) how bad matchmaking still is and how bad most are with heat, leading targets, target priority and etc(all of which add up to "skill" imo).

[KuruptU4Fun]

SpiralRazor, on 03 July 2013 - 09:51 AM, said:

Tweaks and adjustments as time goes along, is PGIs absolutely worst aspect. Theres been no improvement since last June.




Thats probably true sadly enough....the current glut of PPCs is a lot of "monkey see, monkey do".... Ive watched enough kill cams to see just A) how bad matchmaking still is and how bad most are with heat, leading targets, target priority and etc(all of which add up to "skill" imo).

What's even sadder is that most people simply ignore that fact in their argument. It will be a few days to week before the noobs realize this is hurting more than it's effective and the flavor of the month changes to something else. But since people bitching for change has to happen immediately then we're stuck with the loudmouths who are simply wasting our time right now.

[NinetyProof]

Valore, on 02 July 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

What is NOT fine, is that a fix was put into place to attempt to solve a problem.

Ahh ... no?

TLDR: PGI is fixing the "penalty phase" portion of heat before they actually deploy changes that push more people into that penalty phase. This is not rocket science, but obviously we have a lot of McDonalds / Tele-markers on these forums

A little late to the party, but it's simply amazing how people can't see the big picture ... either in multi-interconnected systems, or in overall game development, or in business in general.

PGI Developer A: Let's fix Boating ... answer: Heat Penalty when firing multiple weapons ... it's even somewhat canon based.

PGI Developer B: Wait, Isn't our "Over Maximum heat" state not quite right? So if we implement additional heat penalty, should we not fix our "Over Maximum Heat" penalty system first?

PGI: Developer A: Yes, We should go ahead and fix the code that deals with what happens to Mechs that enter the "Over Maximum Heat" state before implementing a system that pushes them over the heat limit and into that state.

PGI: Deploys first iterations of "Over Maximum Heat Penalties"

Community: PGI is the dumbest folks ever thinking this patch will fix boating.

PGI: Tweaks numbers to be more punishing

Community: PGI is the dumbest folks ever thinking this patch will fix boating

PGI: Deploys Boating Patch that pushes mechs further into the penalty area faster, mechs start to Assploading every where ... Big Alphas start to be the exception instead of the norm.

Community: PGI is the dumbest folks ever for making the 6PPC Stalker Asspload all the time, they are just trying to force me to buy a Hero Mech!11!1!!!!

PGI: *sigh* ... Why do we do anything for this whiny stupid community? ahh ... did I say that out loud?

Edited by NinetyProof, 03 July 2013 - 10:19 AM.

[Aim64C]

TLBFestus, on 03 July 2013 - 09:00 AM, said:

Simple solution;

Cap LARGE weapons at 2 per mech loadout.

Large Lasers, ER Large Lasers, PPCs, Gauss, AC20, etc., would be limited at 2 of the same kind per mech.

You have 4 or 6 energy slots on a mech? Fine, but you can only place 2 of the same large weapon regardless. No more 6 or even 4 PPC Stalkers, etc. They'd have to pick 2 PPCs, 2 Larger lasers, etc.

don't like 2? Maybe 3 is good enough for most weapons then.

It would need some tweaking, but it could work fine, and encourage some more variety and more heat management.

Mechs like the Clan Super Nova use 6 Clan ER Large Lasers for their stock loadouts.

The Awesome has 3PPCs as part of its standard loadout.

The thing is that those are both relatively unique chassis that have a particular 'personality' to them. The NovaCat for the clans is the Clan version of the Awesome (more or less).

A hybrid hardpoint system would be a much better solution than what you propose. You could allow for 4PPCs in some mechs that have that as their 'personality' - while 2 would be about as much as you could get on most mechs - they would be better of to pack batteries of smaller or shorter ranged weaponry unless building around long-ranged direct-fire.

Right now - the main draw-back to this hardpoint system is that you are penalized for choosing smaller weapons. You can't have two MGs where you'd put an AC2, normally. But you can put a gauss rifle in where a machine gun used to be.

Assaults suffer from absolutely horrible hardpoint options. Part of the reason they "boat" PPCs is because they may get 5 energy hardpoints to work with. Energy weapons have the advantage of being smaller. You can pack 3 PPCs onto anything... but don't you ******* DARE have an assault that allows for 2 gauss rifles or 2 AC20s.

It's beyond silly. It's broken. The only weapons you really 'can' boat are energy weapons and the few mechs that have enough missile slots to make boating missiles practical. Otherwise, you've got a few mechs that can try to 'boat' ballistics - but that's really the realm of Assaults that pack the heavy weapons, ammo, and tend to use banks of small and medium lasers to deal with hostile threats.

Which is precisely why the Battlemaster is going to turn into another PPC boat. It has a bank of 6 medium lasers... but you can validly put 6 PPCs in there. Can you put in 8 small lasers? Nope.

You might even be able to put 7 PPCs on it if you put one in the arm.

You could pull off a full alpha in that thing without kersploding. Would it be a practical build? Probably not... but, there again - 70-point alpha. More than 4 gauss rifles' worth (something that, having two of, is taboo on assaults, apparently). Pretty much anything hit by that other than a center torso of an assault is going to disappear.

You might be a glass cannon... but all the good that does the enemy when you crack open the CT of three assaults for any Locust to make short work of. Or just make a Jenner explode in a screeching mess of particle radiation, radio static, and a clap of thunder (all that's left are two legs that go tumbling across the ground).

That's the problem with the current hardpoint system. Unless you have a stupid number of hardpoints for your mech to use - there's absolutely no reason for you to not take weapons like the PPC - because you can and because you can turn a small laser into a PPC, a bank of small lasers into a bank of PPCs, etc... but where a PPC used to be, there can be only one small laser.

[Tankopotomus]

SpiralRazor, on 03 July 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

Exactly....Taskeen, and a few others, actually understand this as they have played some of the other titles. A normal scaling heat effect would be totally in canon, congruent with the board game and some of the other titles.

Damage over 120%?


Dumb.

Just institute a REAL heat scale, where your mech starts getting more and more sluggish the higher you go. Accuracy starts to get effected at the mid end(reticule shake), and ammo can start to explode....At the extreme upper end, you can have the whole cockpit start to waver as your pilot is pretty much passing out from heat exhaustion/heat stroke.

Fixed.

I like this. I've only been playing for a few days, so as a noob my experience with the heat bar is pretty much: if it gets to 100%, you stand still for a few seconds while your screen flashes red.
It's not very "sim"-like, and quite frankly I don't think I'm competitive enough for an overheat shutdown to really affect my experience.

Making the heat system a bigger part of the game in terms of player experience would be awesome.
Now I don't really have any experience to match up with the old-timers that have done tabletop/battletech stuff for several years (my first experience with the Mech universe was Mechwarrior 3), so if this isn't canon/in line with the battletech universe, then at least you know why.

As Spiral mentioned, I think you should start seeing more negative effects begin to pile up as your heat increases.
The parallel I'm about to draw is a bit whack, but bear with me:

Imagine you're out drinking one night. Your first two drinks don't really do anything (couple of weapon discharges in your mech, the heat is a negligible 10-20%) . As you approach your 5-10 drinks, you begin to feel the effects more and more like slurred speech, difficulty concentrating, effected motor skills, but you're still able to function pretty well/move around/do stuff (20-60% heat level). Then you're approaching your drinking limit. Once you get into the 12-17 drinks then things start to get pretty bad. You may forget where you are, start falling/running into things, be unable to really communicate sensibly, etc...THEN you hit your blackout/passout point. Your body shuts down to protect itself from further harm as it realizes that any more alcohol could be absolutely fatal.

At this point, your body will not recover after a few seconds of pause. It has shut down for at least a few hours to give it time to recuperate. The blackout/passout point is the ABSOLUTE HIGHEST LIMIT it can reach in terms of alcohol tolerance before you lose the ability to function altogether (temporarily).

So why not implement a similar system for the heat management in MWO? The 100% automatic shutdown limit for a Mech should be the ABSOLUTE highest limit of abuse the Mech can take before effectively being taken out of the battle. The machine is already designed to take a serious beating on the outside from the various weapons it faces in battle. The pilot should know better than to ALSO subject it to serious internal damage from overheating its weapons. I think that the punishment for overheating should be much heavier (and would cause people to be even more careful with how they unload their alphas).

Not to mention that the entire buildup system (slowly becoming more sluggish/losing accuracy/having malfunctions/etc...) to gradually warn the pilot with more and more intensity and urgency that they're close to a critical threshold. I think it would make the game more immersive and fun to play.

Also, as a side note, maybe we can implement one of those systems where your pilot's field of vision (I'm not talking HUD here, I'm talking human eyes) gradually gets more red/flashing/narrower (kind of like in CoD when you're getting shot at) for a bit more immersion to simulate the increased heat buildup and pressure inside the cockpit if you're overheating. Maybe hear some grunts of pain as well?

Wish I could keep going, but work calls again.

P.S: Flame away!

[Aim64C]

NinetyProof, on 03 July 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

Ahh ... no?

TLDR: PGI is fixing the "penalty phase" portion of heat before they actually deploy changes that push more people into that penalty phase. This is not rocket science, but obviously we have a lot of McDonalds / Tele-markers on these forums

The heat system is not the problem - though the damage for overheating is a nice addition that has been long overdue.

Quote

PGI Developer A: Let's fix Boating ... answer: Heat Penalty when firing multiple weapons ... it's even somewhat canon based.

Let's not take the most short-sighted idea ever posted on these forums regarding heat buildup and use it as the basis for 'fixing' things.

I'm not really sure where you're pulling 'canon' from for this:

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Alpha_Strike

Different iterations of the game and lore have handled the concept of firing many weapons at one time differently.

Quote

Community: PGI is the dumbest folks ever for making the 6PPC Stalker Asspload all the time, they are just trying to force me to buy a Hero Mech!11!1!!!!

PGI: *sigh* ... Why do we do anything for this whiny stupid community? ahh ... did I say that out loud?

You can't really blame people when PGI seems to come up with some of the most senseless ideas for balancing a game. It's like they are so hell-bent on doing things differently from any other MechWarrior that they've created everything the other systems specifically aimed to avoid.

Mech3's mechlab was much better because, at the very least, you weren't shoe-horned into only mounting one energy weapon in the torso section of an Atlas. You could build assaults using weapons other than large lasers and PPCs.

This system creates the worst of both the "restricted by hardpoint" problems that appeared in Mech4 and the "infinite customization" problems that led to abuse in Mech3.

And how do they plan to fix it? By making the 4 medium lasers you converted into ERPPCs give you an extra 30% spike to your heat because your mech was only built for 2 energy weapons to be fired at the same time (or... something like that).

Which means that the 4 medium lasers it came with also suffer the same penalty, and it would be insanely stupid to take those 4 medium lasers and convert them to 6 small lasers because that will give you a 50% spike (or whatever) to the heat from those small lasers.... even if that were an option.

This will actually make PPCs MORE common. Why bank 6 lasers in a blackjack when 2 PPCs won't trigger the heat penalty and will give you full damage against a target?

Assuming light mechs get hit with the same penalties - it will make them disappear. A Jenner that gets a 50% penalty to heat generation because it's carrying 6 small pulse lasers will be abandoned. Lights are already frustrating enough to pilot while some people still cling to weapons like large lasers and others that provide the option to not have your leg or torso instantly blown off.

You either take an unreasonable and arbitrary heat penalty for a design that essentially -has- to boat smaller weapons... or you stagger your fire and distribute it across a mech with superior armor and firepower to you.

"That's fine and encourages skill" right up until said superiorly armored and armed mech uses the weapon 'eat face' because all you're allowed to do is **** it off... or **** it off and overheat.

[TLBFestus]

Aim64C, on 03 July 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

Mechs like the Clan Super Nova use 6 Clan ER Large Lasers for their stock loadouts.

The Awesome has 3PPCs as part of its standard loadout.

The thing is that those are both relatively unique chassis that have a particular 'personality' to them. The NovaCat for the clans is the Clan version of the Awesome (more or less).

A hybrid hardpoint system would be a much better solution than what you propose. You could allow for 4PPCs in some mechs that have that as their 'personality' - while 2 would be about as much as you could get on most mechs - they would be better of to pack batteries of smaller or shorter ranged weaponry unless building around long-ranged direct-fire.

Right now - the main draw-back to this hardpoint system is that you are penalized for choosing smaller weapons. You can't have two MGs where you'd put an AC2, normally. But you can put a gauss rifle in where a machine gun used to be.

Assaults suffer from absolutely horrible hardpoint options. Part of the reason they "boat" PPCs is because they may get 5 energy hardpoints to work with. Energy weapons have the advantage of being smaller. You can pack 3 PPCs onto anything... but don't you ******* DARE have an assault that allows for 2 gauss rifles or 2 AC20s.

It's beyond silly. It's broken. The only weapons you really 'can' boat are energy weapons and the few mechs that have enough missile slots to make boating missiles practical. Otherwise, you've got a few mechs that can try to 'boat' ballistics - but that's really the realm of Assaults that pack the heavy weapons, ammo, and tend to use banks of small and medium lasers to deal with hostile threats.

Which is precisely why the Battlemaster is going to turn into another PPC boat. It has a bank of 6 medium lasers... but you can validly put 6 PPCs in there. Can you put in 8 small lasers? Nope.

You might even be able to put 7 PPCs on it if you put one in the arm.

You could pull off a full alpha in that thing without kersploding. Would it be a practical build? Probably not... but, there again - 70-point alpha. More than 4 gauss rifles' worth (something that, having two of, is taboo on assaults, apparently). Pretty much anything hit by that other than a center torso of an assault is going to disappear.

You might be a glass cannon... but all the good that does the enemy when you crack open the CT of three assaults for any Locust to make short work of. Or just make a Jenner explode in a screeching mess of particle radiation, radio static, and a clap of thunder (all that's left are two legs that go tumbling across the ground).

That's the problem with the current hardpoint system. Unless you have a stupid number of hardpoints for your mech to use - there's absolutely no reason for you to not take weapons like the PPC - because you can and because you can turn a small laser into a PPC, a bank of small lasers into a bank of PPCs, etc... but where a PPC used to be, there can be only one small laser.

Thanks for the well thought out reply. Beats the reply some other thumb-sucker made earlier.

I have no problem with some "personality" mechs that exceed the restrictions I suggested, especially if they are less customizable as a result.

I'd forgotten some of my past Mech limitations, and maybe some blend of hard points that limits their use based on weapon size and firepower.

Biggest problem is the impact on the mechs that we already own would be. Imagine all our loadouts no longer being viable. Imagine the outcry over that.

[Duromon]

Aim64C I was thinking the same thing when the PPC frenzy started. I wish they would use some of the hardpoint ideas from past games but keep it so we can still customize. The fact everyone is using PPC is not really a bad thing, just shows it is being exploited. Same thing happens everytime LRMS are extremely deadly. Maybe they just want to test them and were planning on bringing back heat damage after. ERPPC should be 15 heat, I have no idea why they thought changing it would improve balance. But hey if I was developing this I would bring back the overheating dmg causing mechs to explode like in early beta. It would stop people from taking alpha shots in brawls right after powering back up.
Still think its funny to see light mechs with 1 ERPPC and nothing else running around. The boating is just game breaking though. Camping PPC boats is now the norm and brawling is just something that happens between the boats skirmish. Hopefully they buff SRM and put PPC heat values back to where they are supposed to be. I want to see more lasers and less snipers on the battlefield.

[Stonefalcon]

I think there is more to this patch then what we are seeing. I took my PPC boat out and I saw some unusual things not listed in the patch notes. The most peculiar thing was when I alpha striked, normally my alpha would take me to 50% heat which I was seeing here but for a split second the heat shot up to 70% then snapped back to 50% before dissipating. I did not see this effect when chain firing and the heat steadily rose to 45% without spiking.

Upon further testing I found when firing from 40% heat and my heat would normally rise to 90% i instead shut down. When I powered up my mech's heat was at 70% suggesting the heat spiked to 110% which forced the shutdown but then began dissipating from 90%.

Has anybody else seen this strange occurence? And if you have, have PGI mentioned it anywhere? I think this is a precursor to their heat penalty patch and PGI is testing the water.

[Fate 6]

Sprouticus, on 02 July 2013 - 06:01 PM, said:

And the really good jump snipers are still jump sniping...because they can.

Complaining because someone is good at the game and can maximize a difficult (relatively) build is just...stupid.

There isn't really anything difficult about running a 4PPC Stalker. Come back after you run a BJ-1 for 20 games