I don't want GCDs purely because it is a very artificial mechanic. This is meant to be a sim. Solutions to in game balance issues should be intuitive and logical. In my mind trying to emulate the tabletop game is not the best solution because it was never all that balanced to start with!
I think there are a lot of more subtle changes that could result in emergent effects reducing the reliance on alpha. I think we have already seen it in the last patch. The changes to movement make it much more difficult to ridge camp - which is necessary for the high heat alpha as there is significant downtime with those builds. That combined with the 120% threshold limit seems to have made PPC stalkers almost extinct overnight (I have hardly seen any the last 3 days).
I think further small changes to heat - i.e. reduction in heat capacity, increase in heat dissapation. Also a rebalancing of PPCs. Currently a PPC is more heat efficient than a large pulse, has nearly twice the range, does instantaneous damage, and does only a tiny bit less total damage. They need a nerfing back to their original heat levels.
Again with the AC20 JM - they are a build that runs on a knife-edge making BIG sacrifices to get that ridiculous alpha. A small adjustment to the heat scale and I think it will tip them over into not-viable territory.
Even simple stuff like different drop modes or the respawn mode where you can come in with a hard counter to the enemy will help against the 1-dimensional builds.
Of course when we see a buff to SRMs then I think we will see a shift away from pinpoint damage and back to SRMs as a high damage secondary weapon system.
Put simply, players will take the best weapon and boat it. Currently PPCs are the best weapon, and due to the state of SRMs fast brawlers are few and far between - which is the natural counter to the PPC.
First we need to balance the weapons. Then we need to get all the gamemodes in. Then look at alpha as an issue. Then clans arrive and completely screw everything up!
In MW2, lasers dealt instant damage, and ballistics did multi-shot. 2 for AC/2, 5 for AC/5, 10 for AC/20, 20 for AC/20. It was a bit closer to lore, too, though lasers firing like bullets was actually a game design limitation of the time. Still people preferred the MG over all other weapons. Scary isn't it?
You should refresh your memory on MW2. Despite a "burst" sound effects the UACs shot 1 projectile at a time. What is interesting though, they had tremendous rate of fire. For example a single clan UAC5 did 5 damage every 0.3 seconds for a whooping 15.8DPS, while a PPC had 5 DPS (15 damage every 3 seconds). But they both pale in comparison to the clanMPL that was the most overpowered weapon ever. It's DPS was so high, that you only needed 2 of them for close range fighting (up to 350 meters).
You should refresh your memory on MW2. Despite a "burst" sound effects the UACs shot 1 projectile at a time. What is interesting though, they had tremendous rate of fire. For example a single clan UAC5 did 5 damage every 0.3 seconds for a whooping 15.8DPS, while a PPC had 5 DPS (15 damage every 3 seconds). But they both pale in comparison to the clanMPL that was the most overpowered weapon ever. It's DPS was so high, that you only needed 2 of them for close range fighting (up to 350 meters).
I never mentioned the UAC/5. However the people that made MW2 didn't really keep to the lore, either. It's written UACs are supposed to be smaller calibers and fire more shots than regular ACs, but have a secondary chamber that stores extra shots which can be fired while the first chamber is reloading at the risk of jamming.
I like the idea, but SSRMs, SRMs 4 and 6 would need to be looked at for a delay since 3 or more can still do good burst damage with its current damage and how Streaks can focus down CT for now.
I don't want GCDs purely because it is a very artificial mechanic. This is meant to be a sim. Solutions to in game balance issues should be intuitive and logical. In my mind trying to emulate the tabletop game is not the best solution because it was never all that balanced to start with!
I think there are a lot of more subtle changes that could result in emergent effects reducing the reliance on alpha. I think we have already seen it in the last patch. The changes to movement make it much more difficult to ridge camp - which is necessary for the high heat alpha as there is significant downtime with those builds. That combined with the 120% threshold limit seems to have made PPC stalkers almost extinct overnight (I have hardly seen any the last 3 days).
I think further small changes to heat - i.e. reduction in heat capacity, increase in heat dissapation. Also a rebalancing of PPCs. Currently a PPC is more heat efficient than a large pulse, has nearly twice the range, does instantaneous damage, and does only a tiny bit less total damage. They need a nerfing back to their original heat levels.
Again with the AC20 JM - they are a build that runs on a knife-edge making BIG sacrifices to get that ridiculous alpha. A small adjustment to the heat scale and I think it will tip them over into not-viable territory.
Even simple stuff like different drop modes or the respawn mode where you can come in with a hard counter to the enemy will help against the 1-dimensional builds.
Of course when we see a buff to SRMs then I think we will see a shift away from pinpoint damage and back to SRMs as a high damage secondary weapon system.
Put simply, players will take the best weapon and boat it. Currently PPCs are the best weapon, and due to the state of SRMs fast brawlers are few and far between - which is the natural counter to the PPC.
First we need to balance the weapons. Then we need to get all the gamemodes in. Then look at alpha as an issue. Then clans arrive and completely screw everything up!
How are GCDs an "artificial mechanic"? And the current MWO is imho much more close to a casual shooter than to an actual sim... I mean what can you actually do with your mech? Move and shot... You have no influence on how critical systems work, no damage control, and all your equipment can't be damaged,... it's either "fine" or "broken". I don't think that piloting a Mech would be anything like this in reality...
Instead of being an "artificial mechanic" GCDs would add more realism to the game, because there is not a single tank or plane in reality which fires all of its weapons in one single blast. And you never see such stuff in any scifi movie.
It just looks better and more realistic if weapons are fired delayed in time. And fluff-wise this would make much more sense than the current mechanic.
It is not about adapting the TT 1:1, it is about transfering the ESSENTIAL FEELING of Mech Warfare from a TT into a FPS.
And i don't see giant warmachines ridge humping and fighting like they ware dudes in a WW1 trench.
Stalkers are still in basically every Match i play, so if you see none of them anymore, good for you, but I don't have that luxury,... :/
Thats because the patch didn't change anything about the mechanic of blowing components up in 1 to 3 shots.
And you cannot touch a JM6 via heat-scaling. The AC/20 is just too cool. And as said before: Heat is about reducing DPS, NOT Burst-DMG.
From my point of view the Alpha issue has to be dealt with NOW, because it is breaking the essential game mechanic. You cannot balance the weapons as long as high Alpha builds are superior, since DPS weapons will always be a waste of tonnage this way and people will boat the FotM.
And if PGI implements Clans as they are into the current Metagame with Clan PPCs, than this game will be absolutely no fun anymore...
Praetor Shepard, on 09 July 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:
I like the idea, but SSRMs, SRMs 4 and 6 would need to be looked at for a delay since 3 or more can still do good burst damage with its current damage and how Streaks can focus down CT for now.
Yeah, currently SRMs are really weak and thats why i kept them out of the GCD atm. If they get a buff, like increasing DMG at the cost of a little bit more spread, they could be added. But it depends how they work and how they spread their damage...
That said, I don't like the idea of a global cooldown. Without the rising heat threshold, we simply won't have the problem because your alpha limit for DHS would be the same for 10 Standard Heatsinks. Try it with 10 standard heatsinks and see what happens. Want to shoot once or twice and shut down, be my guest. I'll take you apart with my chainfired weapons.
To help illustrate:
In CBT I ran a 6ppc(both standard and erversions) aws before dhs was in, you would get oneshot to 90% with standard and I never did the math but about 5 seconds shutdown with er, then the next shot shuts you down for 30-50 seconds depending on the map(something like 50-90 with ER, its been a while but i do remember having a minute and a half of shutdown on caustic with ERs)... it was a sure kill and I played in groups so it worked at the time but was nothing like the madness dhs brought. (I forget how many shs/engine it used, max armor)
Edit: obviously this was also with the very high heat values on ppcs
Edited by Trev Firestorm, 14 July 2013 - 08:52 PM.
Reminds me. I need to backtrack and respond to the big sticklers about why it'd be a 6 month thing. But the short end of it is that however long the work takes it needs to precede the other cooldowns in order for the check to work properly. Which means it could potentially break the others.
From there, it'd need its own bar to keep track of.
This is after a month of it being on the table for the pros, cons, whether to implement it or not, and etc. The "early Development stage."
After those, it needs PGI's usual testing time of 2 months to see if they can break it.
Then it'll be introduced for a month, and quickly pulled as unlike their testing team, we will find some way to break it. Then it'll under go around two months of refining, assuming it doesn't take a back burner...
And ultimately it's a timer that wouldn't be necessary if we couldn't safely generate as high as 110 or more heat just to reach 100%.
30 heat, 60 at the most, and the general need for anything like this simply wouldn't exist.
PGI's short term fix is pretty stupid -- on paper it isn't so bad but it's about as much work or more than the global cooldown and both of them, unfortunately, ignore the root of the issue to treat a symptom.
PGI's long term fix is semi-brilliant for PPCs according to NGNG-Podcast 79 about 32 mins to 40 mins, a splash mechanic for PPCs after they completely re-engineer CryEngine's Explosive Damage mechanic to take from a pool of damage rather than multiply a base amount (2.5 damage per missile turning to 12 to 18 damage per missile anyone?).
Convergence, meh, Paul's making it overly complicated.
Recoil, the PPC splash, and the weapon variants that have been on the backburner since December, combined with the threshold fix, would help everything along considerably.
The sad irony? I know we'll get all of the above except a correction to threshold. Recoil is a big maybe with a fair 'doubtful.'
well the ppc haters all like you post...
But I'd like to point out a logical failure in you assumption.
take an awsome...three PPCs. RA, RT. LT. facing another Awsome at four hexes. the fire where do the ppcs hit if niether mech moves? LA, LT, RT three weapons spread three or sso meters apart.. now add movement in three axies immpact shake dumb luck, skill , timing,visibility.............not to mention that while these are fixed weapons fired in broadsides. there are targeting computers and enough servos to allow for stabilization....the problen still isn't alpha strikes or boating...it's the lack of the heat system. the whole mechdesign and weapon style was designed to work within. and to allowance of precision targeting of multiple weapons in multiple locations.
To all of you that oppose global cooldowns for instant-damage weapons: have you played on the 12vs12 server?
12 players focusing fire with PPCs and Gauss have have enough heat capacity to take down 2-3 assault mechs before overheating. In one game we took upper city 10 seconds before the other team walked in. A Highlander and a Jagermech died after our first salvo. The third one to go was a Misery. The game ended with 12vs0 score.
In the next game, we were a little bet too late, I got focused on and died quickly, and in the end we lost with 3vs12 score. The games looked like the battle of Stalingrad in the "Enemy at the gates" movie. Anyone leaving cover was taken down in seconds.
All of this is because you can unload all your guns in a split second and then move back to cover. This is the reason for pop-tarting. This is the reason for ridge humping. This is the reason MWO feels like a generic shooter with cover-mechanic.
Global cooldowns would prolong the engagement time and spread the damage without introducing any random mechanic. It would not require messing with convergence or heat penalties. It would increase the skill cap of the game, because it is more difficult to hit that light mech's leg 4 times in a row than in a single blast. It would "even out" the damage spikes and diminish the value of cover. A 6PPC Stalker that can only chain fire is not overpowered in any way. It is still useful against assault mechs, but lights will tear it to shreds.
Mechs that use lasers would benefit form torso twisting, but suffer form spreading damage over enemy mech and mechs that use PPC/Gauss/AC would have less time for torso twisting, but could delver the damage more precisely.
We should say no to one-shot kills. They diminish the "Big stumpy robot" feeling and turn it into a generic shooter.
Imagine how this scene would play in MWO (fast forward to 3:20):
The Vulture would get it's center torso opened by 12 PPC hitting him at the same time and died in 0.2 seconds. It would not be nowhere as "cool" as in the cinematic.
PS. SRMs and LRMs should ripple fire. Think shooting through NARC tube, only faster.
To all of you that oppose global cooldowns for instant-damage weapons: have you played on the 12vs12 server?
12 players focusing fire with PPCs and Gauss have have enough heat capacity to take down 2-3 assault mechs before overheating. In one game we took upper city 10 seconds before the other team walked in. A Highlander and a Jagermech died after our first salvo. The third one to go was a Misery. The game ended with 12vs0 score.
In the next game, we were a little bet too late, I got focused on and died quickly, and in the end we lost with 3vs12 score. The games looked like the battle of Stalingrad in the "Enemy at the gates" movie. Anyone leaving cover was taken down in seconds.
All of this is because you can unload all your guns in a split second and then move back to cover. This is the reason for pop-tarting. This is the reason for ridge humping. This is the reason MWO feels like a generic shooter with cover-mechanic.
Global cooldowns would prolong the engagement time and spread the damage without introducing any random mechanic. It would not require messing with convergence or heat penalties. It would increase the skill cap of the game, because it is more difficult to hit that light mech's leg 4 times in a row than in a single blast. It would "even out" the damage spikes and diminish the value of cover. A 6PPC Stalker that can only chain fire is not overpowered in any way. It is still useful against assault mechs, but lights will tear it to shreds.
Mechs that use lasers would benefit form torso twisting, but suffer form spreading damage over enemy mech and mechs that use PPC/Gauss/AC would have less time for torso twisting, but could delver the damage more precisely.
We should say no to one-shot kills. They diminish the "Big stumpy robot" feeling and turn it into a generic shooter.
Imagine how this scene would play in MWO (fast forward to 3:20):
The Vulture would get it's center torso opened by 12 PPC hitting him at the same time and died in 0.2 seconds. It would not be nowhere as "cool" as in the cinematic.
PS. SRMs and LRMs should ripple fire. Think shooting through NARC tube, only faster.
I haven't been there yet, and will likely not be able to make it. But this was to be expected, and group fire/ Alpha strike certainly help a lot here. THough in general, the amount of damage that will be around in 12 man teams might become a problem.
GCD + general slowed down rates of fire might help.
I find it really hard to keep caring and to keep playing this game right now,... I played other stuff for the last two weeks and I tried MWO again yesterday and I have to say; the new patch made it even worse...
By giving LLs roughly the same penalty as PPCs is just plain madness. I'm getting kinda frustrated and I start to doubt that this game is developing into the right direction...
Not bad but this would handicap lights and mediums who must boat to be efficient on the battlefield. I rather see AC20' PPC's and gaus to increase cooldown if one is boating them. For example if one fires 4x PPC the cooldown would increase respectively I dont know something like CD = 4*2.5 CD = 10. So one must wait 10sec to shoot even one ppc after big alpha strike...
Not bad but this would handicap lights and mediums who must boat to be efficient on the battlefield. I rather see AC20' PPC's and gaus to increase cooldown if one is boating them. For example if one fires 4x PPC the cooldown would increase respectively I dont know something like CD = 4*2.5 CD = 10. So one must wait 10sec to shoot even one ppc after big alpha strike...
All you state here is already being handled by my solution... I have to assume you didn't read the post...
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