1084 replies to this topic

[Kazly]

We appreciate the 30 pages of feedback on this issue. We will take it into account just like all the other decisions we have made that the community didn't like. It is OK if you expect things to be different this time, we understand the temptation.

Keep posting.

[Xerkics]

The issue with boating high alpha weapons like 6 ppcs is that it makes brawlers obsolete as even atlasses pop before getting anywhere near their engagement range. And if you think its bad now wait till its 12 vs 12 when you can have even more 6 ppc boats they also dont need to spam the the shots 2 of them firing 1 time still cores an atlas with pinpoint accuracy .

[Accursed Richards]

Jakob Knight, on 12 July 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

I would question how people using the design rules as they were implemented and without getting around any limitations are abusing anything. They made configurations that did the job better than others in the environment the game provides. That isn't abuse unless you think being successful is wrong (and there are those in the world who see things that way). And, I am not entirely against limitations, though I think we have enough as it is. What I am against are imposing limitations purely to curb valid success in the game, that are not balanced across the same weapon effects, and are thus unjustified. Until an AC/10 has the same limitations as a PPC in regards to the proposed changes, it cannot be said to be balanced (both weapons already have tradeoffs vrs each other, yet apparently the PPC does too much damage while the AC/10 is okay). And by limitations I mean actual restrictions....saying heat output is doubled on a PPC does not translate to an identical penalty when the heat is doubled on an AC/10, so is not the same penalty.

As to no game being balanced, this is a concept I understand, but is at odds with the current reasons behind the changes. The weapons in the game are already set up with strengths and weaknesses, but these are being changed purely in order to remove configurations that have proved more successful than others. There is no other reason for it. Do the Devs have the right to do so? Of course, it's their product. Are they right to do so? Not in my understanding of what is right and wrong. I was always raised with the concept of fairness, and that doesn't mean chopping off the knees of the winner in a contest because they played the game better (and yes, configuration selection is part of the skill involved in this game).

It's strange how you're talking about configuration like there's actual skill involved, rather than just checking the forums for the uber-build of the month. I can't blame players for flocking to what wins games, but to insist they should keep that advantage seems strange.

This is beta, and part of the point of having betas at all is to search for the over or underpowered stuff, so it can be bought in line, everything is a viable option and skill decides matches rather than taking whatever's overpowered at the moment. Success should indeed be punished and failure rewarded when they come from flaws in the game design rather than skill levels.

Edited by Accursed Richards, 12 July 2013 - 07:25 AM.

[Tarzilman]

What happens here is very interesting.
In general, all what you say is: "Oh come on, we are not stupid! If you bring us heat penalty to a weapon group, we will use another build with 2xPPC + 2xGauss or 2xLL to exploit this weak spot of the game!"

The problem aren't the changes, that'll come. I personaly have no problems with the coming changes, because I don't play boat builds. There are many weapons to play with. For me, fun comes with the variety of mech-builds you can play. Why should I use a build, everyone can deal maximum dmg with? Why is that fun to you?
The problem aren't the changes, that'll come. The problem is your desire to say "**** you, fun! **** you, variety! I just want to play the best build and kick everyone's ***! No skill needed..."

Edited by Tarzilman, 12 July 2013 - 07:25 AM.

[Rubidiy]

please explain about SRM splash damage. Will it remain after damage buff, so that one missile'll make 2.0 damage to the part it'll hit and 0,8 damage to other closest part? Or is it just 2.0 direct damage?

[Lonestar1771]

Tarzilman, on 12 July 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

What happens here is very interesting.
In general, all what you say is: "Oh come on, we are not stupid! If you bring us heat penalty to a weapon group, we will use another build with 2xPPC + 2xGauss or 2xLL to exploit this weak spot of the game!"

The problem aren't the changes, that'll come. I personaly have no problems with the coming changes, because I don't play boat builds. There are many weapons to play with. For me, fun comes with the variety of mech-builds you can play. Why should I use a build, everyone can deal maximum dmg with? Why is that fun to you?
The problem aren't the changes, that'll come. The problem is your desire to say "**** you, fun! **** you, variety! I just want to play the best build and kick everyone's ***! No skill needed..."

Winning is fun, losing is not, plain and simple. Take your altruistic nonsense somewhere else.

I doubt you will hear anyone say "I love losing!" and truly mean it.

[Xerkics]

The game would be a hell of a lot more balanced if there were more restrictions in what could go in what slots, stock variants are are not bad just inefficient but i wouldnt cry overmuch if we were restricted to those even.

[Tarzilman]

Lonestar1771, on 12 July 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Winning is fun, losing is not, plain and simple.

I see that point, but life's no bowl of cherries. Losing is part of it. Whining however definetly is NOT fun!

Quote

Take your altruistic nonsense somewhere else.

Uhm... nope.

Quote

I doubt you will hear anyone say "I love losing!" and truly mean it.

Belongs to the kind I (personaly) lose a game. If it was a good fight and my team didn't get slaughtered in a few minutes, then yeah, losing is also fun for me like winning! Als I want is a good (balanced) fight!

Edited by Tarzilman, 12 July 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[Nulnoil]

Tarzilman, on 12 July 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

I personaly have no problems with the coming changes, because I don't play boat builds.

I'm also have no problem with new heat penalties, my mechs are ok, because i dont use hot boats, but this system is worst anyway. And I dont want be in situation like in famous Martin Niemoller poem:

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Edited by Daumantas Galland, 12 July 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[PropagandaWar]

armyof1, on 11 July 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

Hit detection working worse for smaller mechs is true for all weapons not just SRMs. And you really don't consider how we're getting several large maps now that make boating a short-range weapon a lot less effective. And also the SRMcat won't even have half the firepower it used to, and have to run around avoiding ACs and PPCs for a long time to even get that close to the opponents. And even then your Seismic module will let you see any enemy getting within 400m of you, no more surprise rushes. What's with the you just have to aim centermass with SRMs anyway? SRMs are the hardest weapons to use already due to their slow travel speed, meaning you have to lead your shots a lot more than any other weapon on moving targets. And you still think SRMs will be the most powerful thing? Yes you are most certainly worrying over basically nothing.

Yeah these guys either have short term memory or haven't played long enough to know. The splash bug gone things will be a lot different with the splat cat. People originally went with the streak cat, ecm nuetered it so they tried splat. BAP counters Streak so it became viable again. Yet the splat/streak cat became more rare with Alpine and even more so with Tourmaline. To much open between the two maps to risk for rook pilots. One thing i would be fine with is being unable to mount artemis on SRM's never understood it in the first place. They are dumb fire.

[Aim64C]

Jakob Knight, on 12 July 2013 - 07:09 AM, said:

Note that none of the heat changes would have been necessary if the Devs hadn't shyed away from using the heat scale as originally designed because it would, ironically enough, limit gameplay. Having a marginal heat generation result in reduced speed, turning, increased cursor shake, or even ammunition detonation as heat built up always kept all but the most foolhardy players from ignoring heat in the original material, and having that shutdown at the top of the heat scale last a long time made pilots avoid shutdown like the plague.

However, because this is a video game and the devs didn't want to put brakes on the action, here we are. Putting more and more breaks on the action.

Honestly, that solution doesn't work in a real-time environment.

In Tabletop - your heat is calculated at the beginning of each turn. You can fire a trio of PPCs. So long as you have 15 double heat-sinks installed, you're good at the beginning of your next turn. Your mech suffers no heat penalty.

If, however, you only had 10 double heat sinks, you now have 10 points of heat on your mech, and will suffer penalties.

Translating the penalties to a real-time environment doesn't work without serious renovation to the idea. A Jenner 7F fires 3 medium lasers and is momentarily at 50% of his heat capacity, which is going to, say, cut his movement speed by 20%. He just went from 140kph to 112 kph. He just became a trebuchet with a fraction of the armor.

The Atlas with an AC20 says: "Hey, that tickled" and puts said autocannon into the now slowed Jenner. Sure, he's at 40% of his heat capacity and suffering a 35% movement penalty - but he's an Atlas. 65% of ponderously slow is not exactly changing much.

Working that into a real-time environment would require some sort of mathematical system that builds penalties over time (and decreases those penalties over time) based on how long heat remains at certain levels. Higher amounts of heat would transfer into penalties more rapidly than lower amounts of heat sustained over time, and penalties would not simply drop as the heat dropped, but linger for a while before dissipating, themselves.

This would simulate "engine temperature" and "chassis temperature." Heat-sinks dump heat into the environment so that the heat stays out of the mech's systems. As their capacity to store heat is taxed, some of it invariably escapes into the chassis before the heat sinks have a chance to vent it into the environment. Since the chassis dissipates heat more slowly, effects of high heat would linger for a little while before fully resolving after the mech has run cool for a while.

That is not really a complicated concept/idea, and would not be all that unorthodox to program into the game. Why it was not thought of and implemented in a game that proclaims to be something of a simulator/shooter is beyond me, and leads me to believe very little thought actually went into the design aspects of this game (or, more likely, one person put a lot of thought into it and was very passionate, but couldn't see the gaps in his/her thought process).

[IceSerpent]

Mogney, on 12 July 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

Another simple way to make long range sniping with 60 points alpha strikes harder is to make it harder to aim the darn thing.

You could make that red box that goes around your target kind of hover and rotate while it slowly over 2 or 3 seconds locks in on the target and becomes centered, which of course only happens if that mech is stationary. If its in motion it should never lock in. Thus making it much harder to aim when doing long range sniping.

You kind of lost me here - what red box are you talking about and how does it affect aiming? People aim at the target mech itself, not some sort of red box...

[arghmace]

I really do not understand this talk of people supporting or opposing changes based on what they play. Seriously, are there really players that only play PPC boats or LRM boats or pop tarts? Must be boring as heck playing only certain types of builds. I like playing with various different mechs and builds. Recently my favourite has been Fang with max engine, 2xAC5 and 2xML. Those AC's can keep on pounding 6.66 dps indefinitely. Very fun to attack a PPC boat that has already fired off a couple of alphas and is on the verge of shutdown.

I agree that winning is more fun than losing but in my mind losing only becomes a problem when you lose more than win. Losing streaks make me angry. But as long as you win at least half of your battles I'm fine. I'd rather play with many different fun builds and win 55% than only play with a single cheese build and win 75%.

Also that "First they came for the Jews..." poem hits the nail head on. I have absolutely no respect for people who do not want things to be equal but instead only advocate their own goals.

Edited by arghmace, 12 July 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Jakob Knight]

Accursed Richards, on 12 July 2013 - 07:22 AM, said:

It's strange how you're talking about configuration like there's actual skill involved, rather than just checking the forums for the uber-build of the month. I can't blame players for flocking to what wins games, but to insist they should keep that advantage seems strange.

This is beta, and part of the point of having betas at all is to search for the over or underpowered stuff, so it can be bought in line, everything is a viable option and skill decides matches rather than taking whatever's overpowered at the moment. Success should indeed be punished and failure rewarded when they come from flaws in the game design rather than skill levels.

But where did those uber-configs come from in the first place? Someone had to figure it out. And then, just putting the config on your mech does not hand you victory...you have to learn how to use it, or you will still fail when your opponent hits the flaws in your design. Also, using that uber-build in a situation where it doesn't work well will still get you into trouble because you didn't recognize how to compensate for it. All of this requires skill, despite your apparent confidence that configuring a mech in the game is simply a matter of cut-and-paste. And why would it seem strange that players should keep an advantage they have put in the effort to learn, rather than have it taken from them by players without the effort to learn how to counter them? That seems much stranger to me.

Ultimately, if you keep going down this path, it simply will not matter if you have a Flamer or an AC/20 on your mech because, despite you spending 16 times the weight and 10 times the critical spaces for the AC/20, it will afford no advantages. This is the final result of your ideal of 'everything being viable'. Everything should -not- be viable, but rather each have its own strengths and weaknesses that determine its viability or not in a given situation. Right now, because of the situations presented, some weapons are more viable than others, but this is not a fault in the weapons, but in the situations presented. However, it is the weapons, and not the situations which are being changed, so the problems simply multiply.

I am afraid we will simply have to agree to disagree, as I can see we have different basic concepts of what is a flaw and what is a strength.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 12 July 2013 - 08:05 AM.

[Tarzilman]

And what the hell is this **** about "You (PGI) are stupid, heat scale isn't the problem, the problem is convergence and your silly heat penalty is way to complicated!"??

A new player joins the game and asks for some hints. You tell him: "Watch your loadout! More than X weapons of this group will come along with a bad heat penalty, that increases exponnantially, if you use them all together (called alpha strike)!"

Now imagine same scene with a new convergence system. The one, discussed in one thread here, explained with some drawings of new reticles, that could be involved.
"Yeah well, the outer cross is the reticle for alpha strike and it extends, when you move, because of your weapon convergence. Your weapons need a bit to focus your target. While the inner reticle is for your weapons get shot in chain, because in single shot they can aim faster (?). Btw. the left bar of the outer reticle is for the weapons on the left side of your mechs body and so on, but not the arms, because uh, yes, there are to circle-reticles in the middle of the two cross-like reticles and they behave similar to the outer reticles, the crosses, you remember? Important to know, that the left side of the outer, inner circle-reticle is for the weapons in the left ARM of your mech and........."

Hello? *knock knock*
Less complicated?

[Ph30nix]

also did they even bother to think about how badly this will screw over the new players piloting the heat death trap trials? even experienced mech warrior players probably over heated plenty when using the trial mechs to start just because they needed to get used to the heat system.

(the damage over 100% heat part)

Edited by Ph30nix, 12 July 2013 - 07:57 AM.

[Rubidiy]

Lonestar1771
please leave it to your fellow crabs. Just say it out loud "I have no skill at all, so my only hope is in OP 'mechs". This thing occurs in any multiplayer. So stop complaining and don't fool yourself.
The reason behind blaming players who abuse OP weapons and mechs is that Mechwarrior game exists only when all weapon types and 'mech classes are balanced. Todays PPC boating is not a Mechwarrior. It's more like a very slow and stupid counter strike game.

[MrMadguy]

I was playing this game for just pair of months, but already donated 60$ into it and was thinking about donating more in a nearest future, but now I have doubts and after today's announce even start thinking about quiting. Why? This game becames too "hardcore" for me. Step to the left, step to the right - execution? Managing rotation with tens of second precision? Unobvious game mechaincs? Not intuitive gameplay? Unhelpful UIs? No room for mistakes, i.e. 100% heat cap insted of 120% or at least 105-110%? That's not for me. But the main reason - losing of mech variant uniqueness. What do I mean? You know, I could equip any of Jagermech variants with the same 2 ballistic and same 2 energy weapons. Also I could equip any of Altlas variants with same 2 energy, 1 ballistic and 1 missile weapons. So what the point of having 4 different variants? It's evident to all, that to find some role and purpose for any of them. So my AS7-D is balanced multi-purpose variant, my AS7-D-DC is high survival rate brawler variant, my AS7-K will be sniper variant someday. And what about my AS7-RS? It's intended to be laserboat due to variant configuration! So what? I installed 4xLGL, scrapped almost all other weapons, filled it with 20DHS. And now what? You telling me, that it's somewhat "illegal" and should be punished? You telling me, that I should manage 0.5s delay between shoots somehow? You forcing me to switch two of four LGL to 2xPPC (and I hate PPCs) to avoid penalty? You want me to replace 2xLGL with 2xMDL+some heavier ballistic to turn it into the same AS7-D? My answer is NO! Soooooorry, but I won't play this game, if some mech variants are considered as "broken" in it.

[Jakob Knight]

Aim64C, on 12 July 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Honestly, that solution doesn't work in a real-time environment.

In Tabletop - your heat is calculated at the beginning of each turn. You can fire a trio of PPCs. So long as you have 15 double heat-sinks installed, you're good at the beginning of your next turn. Your mech suffers no heat penalty.

If, however, you only had 10 double heat sinks, you now have 10 points of heat on your mech, and will suffer penalties.

Translating the penalties to a real-time environment doesn't work without serious renovation to the idea. A Jenner 7F fires 3 medium lasers and is momentarily at 50% of his heat capacity, which is going to, say, cut his movement speed by 20%. He just went from 140kph to 112 kph. He just became a trebuchet with a fraction of the armor.

The Atlas with an AC20 says: "Hey, that tickled" and puts said autocannon into the now slowed Jenner. Sure, he's at 40% of his heat capacity and suffering a 35% movement penalty - but he's an Atlas. 65% of ponderously slow is not exactly changing much.

Working that into a real-time environment would require some sort of mathematical system that builds penalties over time (and decreases those penalties over time) based on how long heat remains at certain levels. Higher amounts of heat would transfer into penalties more rapidly than lower amounts of heat sustained over time, and penalties would not simply drop as the heat dropped, but linger for a while before dissipating, themselves.

This would simulate "engine temperature" and "chassis temperature." Heat-sinks dump heat into the environment so that the heat stays out of the mech's systems. As their capacity to store heat is taxed, some of it invariably escapes into the chassis before the heat sinks have a chance to vent it into the environment. Since the chassis dissipates heat more slowly, effects of high heat would linger for a little while before fully resolving after the mech has run cool for a while.

That is not really a complicated concept/idea, and would not be all that unorthodox to program into the game. Why it was not thought of and implemented in a game that proclaims to be something of a simulator/shooter is beyond me, and leads me to believe very little thought actually went into the design aspects of this game (or, more likely, one person put a lot of thought into it and was very passionate, but couldn't see the gaps in his/her thought process).

I think that simply putting in the chance of ammunition explosion (or reactor meltdown as in MW4 to keep energy-only mechs honest) and making the shutdown period dangerously long would be enough, especially if they became more and more likely before actual manditory shutdown.

And yes, the original heat scale -has- been done in a real-time combat environment. MUX-type real-time battlemech sites used it to great effect and it worked. The only reason it would not be appealing in this game is that it would be a brake on the video game crowd that can't understand why their 6 x ERPPC Awesome with an AMS exploded when they pulled the trigger ("Huh?? Wh'd I duuu??"). Of course, this isn't just about heat, as autocannon are the most powerful damage output weapons currently in the game, and this wouldn't address that, but the weight and crit limits on those weapons are there for a reason.

Seriously, the system worked. When they decided to tamper with it for 'fun factor', they caused all the supposed problems they are facing themselves.

[Kraven Kor]

Uh, we need poll options for the Heat Scale / Multiple weapon thing?

Or is that so set in stone that we just need to deal with it?

I think it is a bad idea, it will not address the actual problem. It is arcane, needlessly complicated, and will further hurt newer or less experienced / less knowledgeable players much much more than the pros running FOTM builds. They will just use macros.

Please rethink this and use one of several possible solutions to the high-alpha problem.

My personal favorite being: Add actual heat penalties below 100% heat - slower convergences, slower arm and torso movement, slower target lock-on, lower sensor range, lower acceleration / deceleration, fog and or steam in cockpit, glitches in cockpit display, something, anything that reflects the Tabletop heat penalties. Make running cooler, lower damage builds a viable option (note: this will not affect gauss rifles, not exactly sure what to recommend there other than making them actually generate more heat - and I think they should.)