1084 replies to this topic

[Lightfoot]

I see Energy weapons are being nerfed heavily since Energy weapons are normally fired in groups and ACs/Ballistics will feel little or no effect even if it is 2xAC20.

Assuming the heat penalty is still 10 heat, 2xAC20 would get an additional 10 heat raising it to 22 heat/ 40 damage. Meanwhile 3xPPCs would=30 damage/ 37 heat. I don't see anything you would call balance there. Just an elimination of group-fire for energy configs.

DHS 1.4 is already an incredible nerf to any all energy mech, can we get rid of that now and just have a universal DHS value? If going over 100% heat will cause damage now, DHS will have to start working much better so players get the chance to manage their heat rather than waiting 10-12 seconds for their heat to drop to 50%. Ballistics are not going to have this weakness.

[Koniving]

SteelPaladin, on 11 July 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

It's a hamfisted effort to do those things that adds unneeded (though, of course, not insurmountable) complexity.

If the point is to encourage stagger fire, then the combination of weapons being alpha fired is irrelevant and having to remember the max number of each type of weapon you are "allowed" is an extra bit of unnecessary data that people have to consider (KISS; insurmountable or not, unneeded complexity is bad). Why is alpha firing 3 PPCs bad but alpha firing 2 PPCs and a Gauss Rifle okay?

As far as increasing weapon variety, it does nothing to address WHY people boat in the first place (things like the efficiency of having similar fire profiles and how specialization is vastly superior to generalization in the current game design). It's just smacking people in the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and going "bad!" when they make a build choice that otherwise seems completely logical. That un-intuitive result is just another bit of unneeded complexity.

It all boils down to this system treating symptoms and not causes, and the fact that they're going to do other things down the road doesn't mitigate that at all. If they're going to treat the causes, then treating the symptoms is unnecessary and superfluous. If they're not, then they're not focusing in the right place w/their design. In either case, this system is just a messy kludge.

The underlying causes being insanely rising heat thresholds per heatsink added + the 20% bonus to threshold with pilot 2x basic efficiency for threshold, and 14% faster cooling with the 2x basic coolrun. This results in high heat thresholds that allow firing such weapons at the same time even possible without shutdown.

Meanwhile the tabletop threshold of 30 might allow 6 ER PPCs at 15 heat each to be fired over a period of 10 seconds if they were fired one at a time with high risk of heat but would never allow even 4 MWO heat-level (read: 8 heat) PPCs to be fired at the same time without an instant shutdown (since 4 MWO PPCs generate 32 total heat = instant shutdown). We wouldn't even need this weird system with the rising threshold issue fixed.

The other being pinpoint convergence brought on with pinpoint ballistic weapons to include non-lore friendly single shot AC/20s that are fluffed in canon as "only mounted on certain battletanks," (since just firing one 203mm shell would cause the mech shooting it to fall over) and amazingly accurate PPCs.

Edited by Koniving, 11 July 2013 - 03:58 PM.

[armyof1]

Stoicblitzer, on 11 July 2013 - 02:04 PM, said:

hmm good points. i think once SRMs are buffed in august, we may see the return of medium brawlers. too bad it will take them a month to change a variable.

Aggressive but still slow changes, how does that add up really?

[FireSlade]

armyof1, on 11 July 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

It would take a few minutes to lower damage in case they finally get hit detection fixed. You make it sound like it would be difficult to change it back when in reality they just change the value on a variable and get that put in the patch and that's all.

It never takes a few minutes to patch with PGI. There are processes to go through and PGI has been known to take months to pull off except during the great LRMpocalypse which came about because of a bug in the splash damage code that actually broke the game. Here is my prediction in several months that it takes them to hunt down and fix hit detection. They fix it, patch it and then we find out that SRMs are OP, the meta shifts and you see nothing but SRMs and a few high alpha weapons like Gauss and AC20. After a couple months time then we see a damage nerf to bring SRMs in line with everything else. This is how it has always been so why would it change now? I rather take the step by step approach and fix the issue then fix the balance of the weapon, especially when we have more pressing issues like boating.

[Deathlike]

armyof1, on 11 July 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

Aggressive but still slow changes, how does that add up really?

It reinforces the point that there are big things in August.

[AndyHill]

That thunder was actually a brainfart of epic proportions. You need to get rid of high damage pinpoint alpha strikes, you want to get rid of high damage pinpoint alpha strikes, so you get rid of them by removing group fire and they are just gone, simply and extremely effectively. Instead of ranting for a millionth time on the subject just to showcase my dwindling patience and faith, I will simply ask one question:

How - on July 16th when the feature goes online, not some further date when UI 2.0 may come out - are you going to communicate to new and old players alike that their builds will now produce arbitrary feeling heat penalties after mounting x number of y weapons and firing them at less than 0.z second intervals?

PS An old friend of mine asked to say hi, he's felt neglected since all his friends have been buffed to match his performance. Now he's happy again - for a while, until the others inevitably catch up again in unavoidable future buffs to hot weapons.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...71e36ff4acaaf64 Hi guys!

[Khobai]

Heat threshold is not the problem. Battletech has a very lax heat system and is still relatively balanced due to the lack of weapon convergence. The problem is precise aiming and convergence of weapons.

Quote

2 SRM6 hitting at close range should hurt like an AC20. Period.

No they shouldnt. Because they weigh a fraction as much and take up less critical slots. Two SRM6s should hit hard but not nearly as hard as an AC/20. We do NOT need SRMs to be a superweapon again.

Edited by Khobai, 11 July 2013 - 02:18 PM.

[DeaconW]

Thoughts:

1. The Max Alpha thing is a kludge....fix pinpoint convergence and you don't need to screw with the heat system. Screwing with the heat system in this way will only add other problems and everyone will be out requesting buffs/nerfs for their favorite weapons...

2. 100% max heat causing damage is an excellent idea.

3. SRM's should be 2.0...I voted!

4. THANK YOU for publicly acknowledging the problem with hit detection...especially with smaller mechs. This kind of transparency is much appreciated by me and others I know and should be the standard for all game companies. Kudos. Please continue to trust us and we will support you. Here's hoping you can find the problem quickly.

BTW, not to rub salt in a wound after a well-deserved complement but could you add some of this transparency to the 3rd Person view thread? We are hanging in the wind over there trying to understand your logic on that decision. I mention it primarily due to the irony of you offering a poll of forum users to help decide what should be done with SRM damage (which , to be clear, is AWESOME) but ignored a poll of forum users concerning 3PV. Not trying to be a PITA but I am wondering...

[Stoicblitzer]

Deathlike, on 11 July 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

It reinforces the point that there are big things in August.

i may be mistaken though. apparently, they are doing a patch on july 30th also.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2547485

[Deathlike]

Stoicblitzer, on 11 July 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

i may be mistaken though. apparently, they are doing a patch on july 30th also.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2547485

That's 2 days before August. I'll let it slide.

[armyof1]

FireSlade, on 11 July 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

It never takes a few minutes to patch with PGI. There are processes to go through and PGI has been known to take months to pull off except during the great LRMpocalypse which came about because of a bug in the splash damage code that actually broke the game. Here is my prediction in several months that it takes them to hunt down and fix hit detection. They fix it, patch it and then we find out that SRMs are OP, the meta shifts and you see nothing but SRMs and a few high alpha weapons like Gauss and AC20. After a couple months time then we see a damage nerf to bring SRMs in line with everything else. This is how it has always been so why would it change now? I rather take the step by step approach and fix the issue then fix the balance of the weapon, especially when we have more pressing issues like boating.

I'm sorry but we're still talking 2.0 damage with no splash for a really short range weapon that always spreads damage. Your fears are just so terribly unfounded it's almost silly. SRMs at 2.0 won't even have half the damage potential they used to (due to splash used to damage multiple parts) before the March nerf, and back then people only had problems mainly with the SRMCat which is getting heat penalties worked in already. With every new map being bigger and long range fighting being clearly superior, you're worried about just making things at least a bit more even between long range and short range weaponry?

Edited by armyof1, 11 July 2013 - 02:18 PM.

[AndyHill]

Genuinely sorry guys, I almost made a huge mistake in forgetting to mention that recognition of the hit detection issues is an immensely fantastically brilliant thing, great work.

[Stoicblitzer]

Deathlike, on 11 July 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

That's 2 days before August. I'll let it slide.

no word on seismic. guess they can't multitask. (needed more negativity in here)

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Khobai, on 11 July 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

Not sure what people are thinking. SRMs doing more damage isnt suddenly going to bring back brawling. The game is reprehensibly screwed right now by the sniping meta. And all PGI is doing is making PPC/Gauss Highlanders the new flavor of the month.



Uh yes there is. Because in 8v8, and 12v12 especially, when you have multiple mechs focus firing one mech and everyone is doing 35 damage to a single location... mechs die in less than 10 seconds. It makes the game extremely unfun.

The most damage you should reliably be able to put into a single location is 20 damage with an AC/20. That is how battletech works and that is how MWO should work.

This.

3 things.

Stop INSTANT convergence. You can still have convergence, but you have to actually work for it, and it has to have downsides (IE not moving, and not being able to make as many defensive manuevers).

Cut the heat maximum in half and double dissipation.

Keep the "over 100% heat = damage" and you have a few reasons not to boat.

[aniviron]

To all the people suggesting removing group fire: excellent idea, I can't see this being abused by people with macros to create faux-groups that do the same thing, at all, ever. It also seems reasonable to expect pilots to manage up to 12 weapons at once without firegroups that go at once.

MrTarget, on 11 July 2013 - 01:46 PM, said:

631 votes to bring back the SRM cat. Remember who decided to bring it back when people QQ.

Oh, come on, really? Like the splatcat was any worse than the ac40 jag is now? Face it, the game has changed dramatically since the a1 last walked the field of battle, and I honestly don't see it being any more powerful than anything else is right now.

[Deathlike]

Stoicblitzer, on 11 July 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

no word on seismic. guess they can't multitask. (needed more negativity in here)

I don't have enough energy to discuss the sanctioned wallhack.

It'll be dealt with like how PGI has dealt with ECM.... rage inducing coma.

[Red October 7000]

Have to add my own $0.02. The boating penalty is, as many others have said, terrible. Needlessly complicated in a game already rife with complications, penalizing too many builds and indeed entire 'Mech chassises which either have nothing to do with the problem to begin with or are already labouring under the weight of some other disadvantage. Counter-intuitive beyond all reason. Stark, staring, barking mad.

Better idea:
-Restore PPC/ERPPC heat to original values.
-Implement the heatscale penalty from tabletop, (if so many thing from tabletop have to be carried over, why not this important control?) to give aiming and movement difficulties at high heat.
-Make overheat damage start at 110%, maybe 105. Every emergency shutdown should not lead to damage.

[IQwrassler]

Thanks for the update, Paul!

I'm glad to see weapons getting aggressive changes, even though my 4x LLAS CTF-3D was dear to my heart haha ... I'll give it a run on the test server tonight.

Personally, I'd like to see any balance changes withheld until their dependent fixes are done (ie. SRMs and the underlying hit detection problem). It seems the buff will go through, however, and this will still bring some variety back onto the battlefield with SRM builds running around more commonly.

Can't wait for the LPLAS to get a balance pass too!


As a side note:
When a 2xPPC, 2xERPPC stalker gets smashed by a 6xSRM6 catapult, who cries at whom?

Edited by IQwrassler, 11 July 2013 - 02:26 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

To all the people suggesting removing group fire: excellent idea

Its a terrible idea actually. Alphastriking has always been part of battletech/mechwarrior. The problem isnt that you can alphastrike. The problem is that you can alphastrike all your weapons into the same location.

And this heat fix does NOTHING to stop that. I can still run a large laser, two ppcs, and a gauss and fire them all at the same location and do very nearly the same amount of damage. The only difference is you have to downgrade a ppc to a large laser now. boo hoo.

Edited by Khobai, 11 July 2013 - 02:24 PM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 11 July 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

Oh lastly, did you account for the fact that the Awesome has 3 PPC's in cannon?

THIS!
Give the Awesome a Max Alpha of 3 PPC. PLEASE!!! It needs this.