14 replies to this topic

[mike29tw]

1. Every weapon is nerfed, except Gauss/AC20, because they are the weapons that are guaranteed to deal front-load 15/20 damage no matter you're fully converged or not, while 4 medium lasers or 2 AC5s need to fully converge on a target in order to compete. You're promoting boating heavy weapons even more.

2. Every one assumes that if there is no convergence, you can't hit ****.

Take Highlander 732 for example. 3PPCs in the right torso. I don't need to have my reticle fully converged to hit someone 3PPCs because all my PPCs are placed near each other. I only need to know where my "right torso" aiming point is in relation with my reticle, and then BAM, same as before. Maybe I can't one shot Jenner any more because of how small they are, but anything heavier than mediums? No problem at all.

3. Certain chassis are relatively buffed(not affected much by convergence), while certain chassis are f*cked.

Look at all the Cataphracts. The ballistic hardpoint at the right torso sits 1m away from my cockpit. Even though I'm completely not converged, I can hit wherever I want with my AC20. I just need to aim like I always used to, only compensate for the 1m difference. This means that I can run as fast as I want, torso twist like crazy while others try to slow down and line up their weapons, and then I can still hit them pin-point exactly where I want to, and them go back to maneuver myself. I can snap my neck 90 degree and still land my AC20/Gauss perfectly. An AC20/Gauss in the Cataphract's RT is completely immune to convergence, unless you propose that when your weapons are not "converged", they swing all around randomly, but at that point it's getting silly.

And then look at Cicada 2A. 6 energy hardpoints, two in the LT, two in the CT, and two in the RT. In any hope of actually landing shot with 6 of his medium lasers, I can A) slow down to let my reticle slowly converged, at which point I'm outgunned and get completely annihilated, or B ) keep running and chain fire LT, CT, and RT lasers individually, which does ridiculously low DPS and spread my damage even more. Mind you in the mean time you can still get shot by an AC20/Gauss, receiving 15/20 damage in any part of your mech.

4. All our weapon values will need to be looked at, again, in order to balance them in a completely new environment. This will negate any balance we have right now, no matter how small they are. Medium lasers and large lasers can no longer be used as a balance model, because they are severely nerfed in relation to other weapons since they now not only spread damage over time, they spread their damage if they are not converged. Given how PGI "balance" things in the past, it will take another six months to balance every weapon we have. Consider the time it takes to actually code for the convergence implementation, it's going to take more than that before we can play in a game as balance as we have right now.

[Roland]

Quote

1. Every weapon is nerfed, except Gauss/AC20, because they are the weapons that are guaranteed to deal front-load 15/20 damage no matter you're fully converged or not, while 4 medium lasers or 2 AC5s need to fully converge on a target in order to compete. You're promoting boating heavy weapons even more.

It encourages usage of heavy weapons, it doesn't encourage BOATING them.

Heavy weapons are supposed to hit hard.. That's how they work. That's the only real advantage that an AC20 has over 4 medium lasers.

The lighter weapons tend to compete based on the fact that they're easier to field.

A system which eliminates perfect convergence starts to eat into the efficiency of things like PPC boats, because they aren't able to just dump all of that damage into a single panel nearly as fast. If they alpha everything, it spreads around, and they aren't getting as much instant killing power in exchange for the heavy heat hit.

[Doctor Smiley]

Oh look another Convergence thread yay

[mike29tw]

Roland, on 10 July 2013 - 10:45 AM, said:

It encourages usage of heavy weapons, it doesn't encourage BOATING them.

Heavy weapons are supposed to hit hard.. That's how they work. That's the only real advantage that an AC20 has over 4 medium lasers.

The lighter weapons tend to compete based on the fact that they're easier to field.

A system which eliminates perfect convergence starts to eat into the efficiency of things like PPC boats, because they aren't able to just dump all of that damage into a single panel nearly as fast. If they alpha everything, it spreads around, and they aren't getting as much instant killing power in exchange for the heavy heat hit.

Well, if "encourage" is the word you want to use, it encourages using heavy weapons MORE than we have right now. Funny that you use PPC boats as an example, like the solution is proposed to nerfed it specifically, while the truth is it nerf smaller weapons even more, relatively to what we have right now.

Edited by mike29tw, 10 July 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

The 3 PPCs in one spot is more of a feature, I think. Simply because it's a "all eggs in one basket" situation - someone shoots that off, and you're screwed. Just ask how the Hunchback players feel about their weapon hunch. All drawback, no advantage.

The real problem is more that if you don't have convergence, every weapon has a different distannce from the crosshair point, and you either need to learn that, or we need a dynamic reticule that shows the hit point for each weapon. I think that's an unnecessary technical and UI challenge for the problem, and it might still alienate players from the game. Maybe not the hardcore crowd we have there, but if PGI believes we need 3PV for this game to attract new players, complicating matters like that is a big issue.

The AC/20 / Gauss advantage in single shot damage would be fine if heat wasn'T blown so out of proportion with 3x fire rate but 1x dissipation. THis is its own problem that needs fixing independent, of course, but just think of this:
To deal 20 damage you need 14 tons if you use the AC/20, but you need only 4 tons if you medium lasers. In the table top, you have to add 8 tons for the AC/20 standard heat sinks and 12 tons for the medium laser standard heat sinks to balance this out (getting us at a 22 vs 16 tonnage), but in MW:O... Well, the pessimistic variant is that you need 15 for the AC/20 and 40 for the Medium Lasers, and that breaks any semblance of balance.

But if you don't deal with convergence + group fire, Boats are here to stay and rule. Maybe you add the heat cap change or that extra-heat-for-boating system Paul cooked up (Does that beat the 3PV masses litmus test, by the way?), but then you get into trouble when someone starts boating Triple Gauss (Okay, 1 Gauss produces 1 heat, but 3 produce 40. Okay, that makes sense.) or whatever the future holds. (Or we just don't add any mechs that could do this, and kill the chance for dozens of fan favorite mechs to enter the game.)

[Roland]

mike29tw, on 10 July 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

Well, if "encourage" is the word you want to use, it encourages using heavy weapons MORE than we have right now. Funny that you use PPC boats as an example, like the solution is proposed to nerfed it specifically, while the truth is it nerf smaller weapons even more, relatively to what we have right now.

It doesn't actually aim at nerfing any particular weapon at all, but rather aims at fixing the underlying source of most of the balance issues.

Certainly, it could impact certain smaller weapons, but in reality with weapons like Medium lasers, you tend to be fighting at much closer range anyway, so even with zero convergence you could land all of the Torso mounted lasers from a 4P on a single location.

In many cases, it really would only have a subtle impact on the game. It wouldn't make your shots go all over the place. It'd just result in them not all hitting a singular point in space.

Certain mechs like the stalker would suffer more than others, due to the placement of its weapons.. but it already benefits from its current weapons placement.

[mike29tw]

MustrumRidcully, on 10 July 2013 - 10:51 AM, said:

The 3 PPCs in one spot is more of a feature, I think. Simply because it's a "all eggs in one basket" situation - someone shoots that off, and you're screwed. Just ask how the Hunchback players feel about their weapon hunch. All drawback, no advantage.

Ah right. Because last time I checked all those PPC highlanders really afraid of losing their RT as much as hunchbacks do......

How can you devise a solution to stop PPC/gauss/AC40 boats, and then leaves one of the most rampant PPC boats nearly unaffected?

MustrumRidcully, on 10 July 2013 - 10:51 AM, said:

The real problem is more that if you don't have convergence, every weapon has a different distannce from the crosshair point, and you either need to learn that, or we need a dynamic reticule that shows the hit point for each weapon. I think that's an unnecessary technical and UI challenge for the problem, and it might still alienate players from the game. Maybe not the hardcore crowd we have there, but if PGI believes we need 3PV for this game to attract new players, complicating matters like that is a big issue.

The AC/20 / Gauss advantage in single shot damage would be fine if heat wasn'T blown so out of proportion with 3x fire rate but 1x dissipation. THis is its own problem that needs fixing independent, of course, but just think of this:
To deal 20 damage you need 14 tons if you use the AC/20, but you need only 4 tons if you medium lasers. In the table top, you have to add 8 tons for the AC/20 standard heat sinks and 12 tons for the medium laser standard heat sinks to balance this out (getting us at a 22 vs 16 tonnage), but in MW:O... Well, the pessimistic variant is that you need 15 for the AC/20 and 40 for the Medium Lasers, and that breaks any semblance of balance.

But if you don't deal with convergence + group fire, Boats are here to stay and rule. Maybe you add the heat cap change or that extra-heat-for-boating system Paul cooked up (Does that beat the 3PV masses litmus test, by the way?), but then you get into trouble when someone starts boating Triple Gauss (Okay, 1 Gauss produces 1 heat, but 3 produce 40. Okay, that makes sense.) or whatever the future holds. (Or we just don't add any mechs that could do this, and kill the chance for dozens of fan favorite mechs to enter the game.)

Increase CD so those who pack AC20/Gauss will be forced to bring back up weapon. I guarantee you if Gauss needs 5 seconds to cool down it will still be as good at sniping as before. PPCs RoF on the other hand should be governed by intense heat, and this is why we need real heat penalty with heat scale. AC20 might not need a reduced CD if they lower the range of that thing. It's supposed to be the premiere brawling weapon after all.

[mike29tw]

Roland, on 10 July 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

It doesn't actually aim at nerfing any particular weapon at all, but rather aims at fixing the underlying source of most of the balance issues.

When I say "nerf" I mean relatively to what we have right now. All weapon combination will be less powerful than it is, but the ones that are causing troubles, namely PPC/Gauss/AC20, are the least effected. When you say "most balance issues" what do you really mean? Because only PPCs/Gauss/AC20 are having balance concerns right now. Every other weapon combinations are considered pretty well balanced(well SRM could use a buff but that's it). Convergence changes affects ALL WEAPONS, when in fact only a few is causing the real problem.

Roland, on 10 July 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

Certainly, it could impact certain smaller weapons, but in reality with weapons like Medium lasers, you tend to be fighting at much closer range anyway, so even with zero convergence you could land all of the Torso mounted lasers from a 4P on a single location.

Which brings the 3rd point of my post. 4P is one of those rare variants that are less affected by convergence because most of its weapons are in one place. For other chassis that has M.lasers in more than 1 body part, they are significantly hindered because closer range actually means that convergence is less predictable, especially when you're trying to torso twist and maneuver. Think Cicada 2A, there's no way it's going to deal full damage to a single location.

Roland, on 10 July 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

In many cases, it really would only have a subtle impact on the game. It wouldn't make your shots go all over the place. It'd just result in them not all hitting a singular point in space.

Certain mechs like the stalker would suffer more than others, due to the placement of its weapons.. but it already benefits from its current weapons placement.

Eh no. Stalker can mount 2 PPCs in the RA and 2 in the LA. That is guaranteed 20 damage in each arm. You simply just lower its effectiveness to AC40 Jagermech's standard, which means not much lowered really.

Edited by mike29tw, 10 July 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[Otto Cannon]

Those 2 issues are not insurmountable.

1) Single large > multiple small weapons: If convergence is affected more by target speed than your own speed then lighter faster mechs with small guns have a slight edge when shooting at slow heavily armed assaults. The balance shifts toward single AC20 vs. 4xML groupfired. This makes sense as well, because you can set up targeting systems to compensate for your own mech's motion patterns but not for enemy movements.

2) Weapon mount position affecting spread: There aren't that many mechs that would take full advantage of this by having most weapons in a single location. I would suggest that actually that 'advantage' is also the weakness of those builds because you can shoot off their main firepower by destroying a single location - the Hunchback 4P being a good example. If further action is needed because of the Highlander etc. the torso weapons can always be split between reticle points e.g. top, right and bottom crosshair markers. It might look slightly 'unnatural' on certain mechs but that's a pretty small price to pay compared to the whole game being borked.

Edited by Otto Cannon, 10 July 2013 - 12:02 PM.

[Roland]

Quote

Eh no. Stalker can mount 2 PPCs in the RA and 2 in the LA. That is guaranteed 20 damage in each arm. You simply just lower its effectiveness to AC40 Jagermech's standard, which means not much lowered really.

But that's ok.

The point of the convergence system isn't to make mechs that are good now suddenly totally useless.

Having a stalker hit you with 2 PPC's at a time really isn't the end of the world. That's perfectly acceptable to me.

[Homeless Bill]

mike29tw, on 10 July 2013 - 10:23 AM, said:

1. Every weapon is nerfed, except Gauss/AC20, because they are the weapons that are guaranteed to deal front-load 15/20 damage no matter you're fully converged or not, while 4 medium lasers or 2 AC5s need to fully converge on a target in order to compete. You're promoting boating heavy weapons even more.

2. Every one assumes that if there is no convergence, you can't hit ****.

Take Highlander 732 for example. 3PPCs in the right torso.

3. Certain chassis are relatively buffed(not affected much by convergence), while certain chassis are f*cked.

4. All our weapon values will need to be looked at, again, in order to balance them in a completely new environment. This will negate any balance we have right now, no matter how small they are. Medium lasers and large lasers can no longer be used as a balance model, because they are severely nerfed in relation to other weapons since they now not only spread damage over time, they spread their damage if they are not converged. Given how PGI "balance" things in the past, it will take another six months to balance every weapon we have. Consider the time it takes to actually code for the convergence implementation, it's going to take more than that before we can play in a game as balance as we have right now.

My proposal avoids every single one of these problems.

1. This does not apply to my system because each weapon has its own TCS value. Examples of things you can fire with no penalty: 8xML, 4xLL, 2xPPC, 1xAC/20.

2. This is the primary reason my system also has a slight cone of fire - so that even with the loss of convergence, the Cheese King 732 and chassis like it spread damage. I agree that leaving it as convergence-loss-only guarantees some chassis are better just because of weapon locations.

3. Again, this is why I have cone of fire - to fudge the advantages gained by certain hardpoint locations.

4. My proposal completely avoids this because it allows for a reasonable limit of every weapon type to be fired simultaneously. Aside from the addition and slight tweaking of the TCS numbers, absolutely nothing else will need to be re-balanced.

[MustrumRidcully]

mike29tw, on 10 July 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

Ah right. Because last time I checked all those PPC highlanders really afraid of losing their RT as much as hunchbacks do......

How can you devise a solution to stop PPC/gauss/AC40 boats, and then leaves one of the most rampant PPC boats nearly unaffected?



Increase CD so those who pack AC20/Gauss will be forced to bring back up weapon. I guarantee you if Gauss needs 5 seconds to cool down it will still be as good at sniping as before. PPCs RoF on the other hand should be governed by intense heat, and this is why we need real heat penalty with heat scale. AC20 might not need a reduced CD if they lower the range of that thing. It's supposed to be the premiere brawling weapon after all.

I'd like to point out here that the PPCs recycle rate was increased and DPS consequently decreased by 33 % in the middle of the whole PPC deal. Maybe another 25 % would now do the trick, but I am very sceptical.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 10 July 2013 - 12:31 PM.

[mike29tw]

Roland, on 10 July 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

But that's ok.

The point of the convergence system isn't to make mechs that are good now suddenly totally useless.

Having a stalker hit you with 2 PPC's at a time really isn't the end of the world. That's perfectly acceptable to me.

It's OK in our current environment. Will it be OK after the convergence solution? Keep in mind that every weapon is going to be affected after your convergence solution, so the same standard can no longer be applied. Those that don't bring PPCs/Gauss/AC20 are suddenly at more disadvantage than we have right now because multiple small weapons require convergence to deal pin-point high damage, while PPCs/Gauss/AC20 don't.

Edited by mike29tw, 10 July 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[mike29tw]

Otto Cannon, on 10 July 2013 - 11:49 AM, said:

Those 2 issues are not insurmountable.

1) Single large > multiple small weapons: If convergence is affected more by target speed than your own speed then lighter faster mechs with small guns have a slight edge when shooting at slow heavily armed assaults. The balance shifts toward single AC20 vs. 4xML groupfired. This makes sense as well, because you can set up targeting systems to compensate for your own mech's motion patterns but not for enemy movements.

If convergence is affected more by target speed than my own speed, than the system is simply flawed. I can target a stationary enemy in order to gain better convergence so I can hit a fast moving mech, or I can even NOT target any mech so weapon stay unconverged and my shots land exactly where I want them to be by compensating for it manually. You see what's happening here? In a scenario where you're supposed to have less accuracy, you can actually hit where you want to hit more than ever.

Otto Cannon, on 10 July 2013 - 11:49 AM, said:

2) Weapon mount position affecting spread: There aren't that many mechs that would take full advantage of this by having most weapons in a single location. I would suggest that actually that 'advantage' is also the weakness of those builds because you can shoot off their main firepower by destroying a single location - the Hunchback 4P being a good example. If further action is needed because of the Highlander etc. the torso weapons can always be split between reticle points e.g. top, right and bottom crosshair markers. It might look slightly 'unnatural' on certain mechs but that's a pretty small price to pay compared to the whole game being borked.

Which makes it even more complicated. See the 4th point in my original post.

[Otto Cannon]

mike29tw, on 10 July 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

If convergence is affected more by target speed than my own speed, than the system is simply flawed. I can target a stationary enemy in order to gain better convergence so I can hit a fast moving mech, or I can even NOT target any mech so weapon stay unconverged and my shots land exactly where I want them to be by compensating for it manually. You see what's happening here? In a scenario where you're supposed to have less accuracy, you can actually hit where you want to hit more than ever.

Not true. You seem to be imagining a slow convergence change system, unless that was the case (which it shouldn't be) then that objection is invalid.