1084 replies to this topic

[Dadrick]

I saw a lot of 2 ppc & gauss builds as well as 4 ppc builds last night. They were still very much effective. I even saw a few stalkers still using the 6 Large laser build and they had no trouble doing in excess of 600 damage. So in short, I think heat scaling has missed the mark in terms of game balance. I really thing you guys at PGI should have a look at the weapon convergence mechanics.

[Hekalite]

From the few matches I've played this morning it does seem that the new heat scale system has changed the dynamics of the game for the better...a tiny bit. But I don't like it at all. It's too complicated. Mech customization is difficult enough for new players to understand, how are you going to let them know that they will fry themselves if they fire more than X number of a weapon at once with 0.5s? New players aren't going to read a CC post or even understand what you are talking about. They are going to buy a bunch of stuff that "fits", overheat & die and then rage quit.

There are other simpler solutions available to the balancing problems. Each weapon system already has a bunch of variables which can be used to tweak their overall effectiveness. Remove this band-aid fix and go back to basics, or at least fix the underlying imbalances and use the heat scale penalty as a last resort.

As for PPCs and ERPPCs specifically, I don't really mind those weapons being the king of long range combat, but when they also outperform all short range weapon choices then I do have a problem. Personally I think you should make them slower (and hotter), but really there are tons of good suggestions floating around the forums. Take your pick, just do something simple.

[Tombstoner]

Pht, on 16 July 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

How does this address the eventual addition of assault class omnimechs that will be able to mount 4 gauss rifles or lots of cool running heavy ballistics?

How does this address low heat DPS builds who can chisel a part of quickly at any given range?

How does this address stock builds in mechs like the stalker and others that have VERY high heat profiles, stock, which will make them lesser than other 'mechs that they're supposed to be better than?

---

The problem isn't just the PPC or heavy energy builds.

The problem is that the 'mech's ability to aim each individual weapon from the lore hasn't been modeled in any sort of robust way. Doing so would fix the PPC boating; it would fix future ballistics boating; it would allow mechs that are stock built with obscenely high heat for obscenely high damage curves to fit the roles they were designed for; it would reward player skill and give the game more replay value (read, $$$$$$$ income), not to mention it would have the 'mechs behaving like they do in the lore, which would make the game far more fun and less one/two dimensional.

This is a fix of a symptom.

Not a fix of what's causing the symptoms.

Whack a mole game design - Your valid observations will be addressed as they arise.

Assault class omnimechs able to mount 4 gauss rifles or lots of cool running heavy ballistics are not currently part of the game. thus no need to worry. The heat penalty system does take into account clan tech and clan mech designs.

if and when 4x Gauss becomes and issue it could be manages with a jam mechanic similar to the Ultra ac-5. more then 2 fired in .5 seconds and you run the risk of jamming.... see all better.....hey im kinda good at this game design thing. may be i should get into development... o wait i am in development.

If the devs can convince themselves that violating the laws of thermodynamics is ok. Then arbitrary adding in jamming gremlins for more then 2 gauss is well within there capacity.

so the game is in its best state ever......

[hammerreborn]

pesco, on 17 July 2013 - 01:19 AM, said:

No, it may make high per-shot damage more important, not high alpha (all weapons together) damage. Don't confuse the two.

So you're saying, for instance, an AC20 will be at an advantage over, say, 4 medium lasers (which add to the same per-shot damage)? That is exactly as it should be, compare the Swayback (HBK-4P) which mounts 6ML in place of the 4G's AC20. This is exactly what makes the ML in Battletech an interesting weapon; it does the highest damage per ton and space, but if you want all that damage focused you need a bigger gun.

That PGI don't understand this shows how much they really know about the franchise they are making a game for.

If kill time is the reasoning for the current pinpoint damage meta, then kill time will remain the driver in the new one. Which, even as you just admitted, will be the ac20s, gauss and ppc builds. Ya, it might take a little longer, but the end result is the same. High damage alphas to core as quickly as possible...just spread out a little more.

And you say the heat fix is a bandaid, at least it reduced the alphas used to some extent rather than artificially making aiming unintuative/randomized with the same load outs we have now to maybe get one or two more hits out of each mech before being cored.

Hekalite, on 17 July 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

From the few matches I've played this morning it does seem that the new heat scale system has changed the dynamics of the game for the better...a tiny bit. But I don't like it at all. It's too complicated. Mech customization is difficult enough for new players to understand, how are you going to let them know that they will fry themselves if they fire more than X number of a weapon at once with 0.5s? New players aren't going to read a CC post or even understand what you are talking about. They are going to buy a bunch of stuff that "fits", overheat & die and then rage quit.

There are other simpler solutions available to the balancing problems. Each weapon system already has a bunch of variables which can be used to tweak their overall effectiveness. Remove this band-aid fix and go back to basics, or at least fix the underlying imbalances and use the heat scale penalty as a last resort.

As for PPCs and ERPPCs specifically, I don't really mind those weapons being the king of long range combat, but when they also outperform all short range weapon choices then I do have a problem. Personally I think you should make them slower (and hotter), but really there are tons of good suggestions floating around the forums. Take your pick, just do something simple.

Russ has said they are working on messaging for new players, but I assume it's just goin to be something worked into UI 2.0

And the problem with simple changes is that it hurts people only using 1, like a spider. This complicated method is aimed at hurting people using duplicates of weapons without hurtin those that aren't blessed with the ability to mount 6 of them. It's not perfect, but neither was a lot of things at their initial inception (netcode, movement, and now this). Seeing they are already tweaking it in a third patch in a month, it's clear they know its not perfect either

Edited by hammerreborn, 17 July 2013 - 06:27 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

I like the suggestions I've seen that call for visual heat affects. I believe it would add to the immersion of the game that, as you get above 50% on your heat scale the following things happen:
A localized "red fog" in the cockpit
Target Reticule Drift
Mech speed reduction
Random firing delays
Odd frequency shifts in cockpit radio where you get stuck on a "Yo' momma so ugly..." station
etc.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 17 July 2013 - 06:46 AM.

[Jakob Knight]

People will -always- adjust their builds to take advantage of whatever is the optimal conditions of the game at present. If you try to make having four or more big guns penalized, then they will just go for mounting the maximum number of smaller weapons to make up the difference. Penalize having lots of small weapons, and they will grab the biggest single weapon they can stick on the mech. Penalize that, and they will take advantage of the fact that no mech can now kill them quickly and mount whatever produces the best combat performance for fast units because the slow mechs are not unable to kill them in the short periods of time they have before the light units get into their blindspot.

No matter what you do, players will adapt and have other players screaming for the devs to swing the nerf bat again for them. Until no mech is capable of doing anything, and players decide to go play something else.

The solution to 'boating' (which some mechs are designed to do, mind you) is not to keep slapping on restrictions but to have players use their brains to outthink those builds. Every weapon comes with its disadvantages. Mounting lots of only one weapon means you have nothing to cover those disadvantages. Got a 6 x PPC Stalker? Get up in his face where his weapons don't do damage. Got a 3x GR Cataphract? Run around him to his base and cap it while he slowly tries to trundle back. Got a 6xERPPC Hunchback? Wait till he shoots then headshot him while he's shutdown.

Point is, this is not a solution, and we've seen this sort of thing in one form or another since the game began. It isn't going to change because instituting these changes simply adjusts the environment for everyone, making other builds slide in where the 'boats' are now. Maybe next time it will be that Brawlers are able to close in and kill long-range support mechs without fear of death (remember that, anyone)? Maybe it will be that Scout mechs will become better than Heavies for main combat (again, remember that)? Maybe people will simply make every mech a gausszilla because they are not penalized by this system? In any case, there will be builds that work better than others, and those unwilling to think of tactics to beat them will cry for the Devs to 'do something to make the game what it should be'.

[Wraith511802003]

Heat scale making the care bears who want to brawl only happy... because if you dont play the way they do they have to use better tactics to get close to the support mechs,

[Wraith511802003]

Solution DEVS should make all mechs weapons the same, but look different. Problem solved no more whining about another person build being better than the one you built.

[Kraven Kor]

Wraith511802003, on 17 July 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

Solution DEVS should make all mechs weapons the same, but look different. Problem solved no more whining about another person build being better than the one you built.

Actually, no.

If a Large Laser had the exact same heat, range, and damage of the PPC, but the PPC was a 'projectile' and the Laser a "damage over time beam" the PPC would still be the better option, by far.

We don't need identical weapons.

We need more than one or three or five viable builds.

2x LRM-15 + 2x Large Laser should be a perfectly viable build; it really isn't.

1x Large Laser, 1x AC/5, and 4x Medium Lasers should be a viable build. It really isn't.

Anything that gets you about a 20 to 40 point alpha and a heat efficiency of 1.3 to 1.5 should be a perfectly viable build.

I don't know what to recommend, to be honest, at this point. And they will do what they gonna do anyways.

[Wraith511802003]

Kraven Kor, on 17 July 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

Actually, no.

If a Large Laser had the exact same heat, range, and damage of the PPC, but the PPC was a 'projectile' and the Laser a "damage over time beam" the PPC would still be the better option, by far.

We don't need identical weapons.

We need more than one or three or five viable builds.

2x LRM-15 + 2x Large Laser should be a perfectly viable build; it really isn't.

1x Large Laser, 1x AC/5, and 4x Medium Lasers should be a viable build. It really isn't.

Anything that gets you about a 20 to 40 point alpha and a heat efficiency of 1.3 to 1.5 should be a perfectly viable build.

I don't know what to recommend, to be honest, at this point. And they will do what they gonna do anyways.

Apparently any thing that kick you but in game play is OP so it gets nerfed by the dev who only seem to listen to those who cant play worth a darn. AN the TT whiner who want the game to be TT on pc.

[Jakob Knight]

Kraven Kor, on 17 July 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

I don't know what to recommend, to be honest, at this point. And they will do what they gonna do anyways.

Honestly, I think the best thing they could do, surprisingly, would be to put everything back to TT levels, where they were designed to work in the first place, including armor levels. While this might seem like it would work against the idea of stopping boating, the reason boating works now is that the armor levels allow an overgunned mech time to line up their shots without fear of dying to anything but another overgunned mech. A 6x PPC Stalker that had to worry about it's armor being breached and its torso critted before it could get a perfect shot off won't have the time for pinpoint accuracy, and will also die quicker to builds that use weapons that do less single-hit damage. At the same time, a heat scale that properly penalized mechs with high heat (explosion, random long-duration shutdowns, ect) would make it far less likely anyone would risk shutdown unless they were willing to suicide.

That's my own recommendation and opinion. I think when the devs decided to make the mechs last longer and not suffer penalties for high heat in order to appeal to the video gamers who just want flash and bang, they laid the basis for all the problems they are facing now by removing the balances that had been worked out over decades of gameplay.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 17 July 2013 - 08:04 AM.

[Milt]

TT values are a starting point but they are currently invalid. With the introduction of Rate of Fire and cooldown. armor values and ammo/ton are both totally off. It seems that most ppl forget that TT was based on a 10sec round while MWO is realtime.

[Wraith511802003]

Milt, on 17 July 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:

TT values are a starting point but they are currently invalid. With the introduction of Rate of Fire and cooldown. armor values and ammo/ton are both totally off. It seems that most ppl forget that TT was based on a 10sec round while MWO is realtime.

TT is not valid in a online first person shooter stlye game.. if it were a turn style strategy yes.. but this is not that.

Edited by Wraith511802003, 17 July 2013 - 08:41 AM.

[Tombstoner]

Jakob Knight, on 17 July 2013 - 08:02 AM, said:

Honestly, I think the best thing they could do, surprisingly, would be to put everything back to TT levels, where they were designed to work in the first place, including armor levels. While this might seem like it would work against the idea of stopping boating, the reason boating works now is that the armor levels allow an overgunned mech time to line up their shots without fear of dying to anything but another overgunned mech. A 6x PPC Stalker that had to worry about it's armor being breached and its torso critted before it could get a perfect shot off won't have the time for pinpoint accuracy, and will also die quicker to builds that use weapons that do less single-hit damage. At the same time, a heat scale that properly penalized mechs with high heat (explosion, random long-duration shutdowns, ect) would make it far less likely anyone would risk shutdown unless they were willing to suicide.

That's my own recommendation and opinion. I think when the devs decided to make the mechs last longer and not suffer penalties for high heat in order to appeal to the video gamers who just want flash and bang, they laid the basis for all the problems they are facing now by removing the balances that had been worked out over decades of gameplay.

This was done. i played before they doubled armor values and the ppc's sucked at that time.
large lasers and pL where using TT values and people died way too fast. Remember this was with single heat sinks only.

lowering armor would in fact have the oposit effect and make people go for the kill in one shot thus the first one that get in two hits wins and walks away. in my opinion that is.

The central number one ground floor granddaddy issue is grouped direct fire damage can be placed onto the ct reliably.

yes the heat scale need to be more then polar on/off. it should bake you move slower at the least and thus turn slower. high heat is bad should a pillar for game balance but its kinda not.


TT game balance even if acheaved over 30 years is optimized for TT only. when its ported over you get lots of issues.
one is ten second turns for weapons fire. it's slow, boring and explored during friends and famly event pre beta. it doesn't play well. Things need to be sped up and thus fire rates increased. add in the complete substitute of random hit locations for player skill and you get cored CT's and short games. add in DHS and you get better boats and even more damage to the CT and shorter life expectancy... add in better boats and damage goes up life goes down.... add in clan tech the same thing all over again.

TT armor valuse and mech construction rules are for TT only but PGI has insisted on changing fundamental rules but keeping the rest in order to preserve some semblance to BT TT and its kicking game balance in the junk again and again.

PGI has only themselves to blame for he current stats of the game.

[Geminus]

What blows my mind is that they have been systematically lowering the heat on all the weapons away from table top values, and now they want to add extra heat penalty's on top of the heat they generate to penalize players for having the audacity to mount 2 or 3 of the same weapon.
AND, ALL the weapons are getting a heat scale change, so your telling me that ALL the weapons are overpowered? How the hell does that work? If every weapon needs to be nerfed, then dosnt that mean that none of them do?
Equally mind blowing is the complaints that assault mechs carry to many heavy hitting weapons. Their assault mechs, that's what they are supposed to do. they trade speed and mobility for firepower. Light mechs are less fire power but more mobile and easier to hit. Trade off.
Whats the next OP? are we going to add heat multipliers onto light mechs for every 1 KPH they go over max speed for an atlas?
This is all ludicrous, Its supposed to be about building a mech to fill a role in a team and suite your playstyle, now I guess its to fit the play style that the DEVS are telling us we should have.

Edited by Geminus, 17 July 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[Tombstoner]

Geminus, on 17 July 2013 - 08:41 AM, said:

What blows my mind is that they have been systematically lowering the heat on all the weapons away from table top values, and now they want to add extra heat penalty's on top of the heat they generate to penalize players for having the audacity to mount 2 or 3 of the same weapon.
AND, ALL the weapons are getting a heat scale change, so your telling me that ALL the weapons are overpowered? How the hell does that work? If every weapon needs to be nerfed, then dosnt that mean that none of them do?
Equally mind blowing is the complaints that assault mechs carry to many heavy hitting weapons. Their assault mechs, that's what they are supposed to do. they trade speed and mobility for firepower. Light mechs are less fire power but more mobile and easier to hit. Trade off.
Whats the next OP? are we going to add heat multipliers onto light mechs for every 1 KPH they go over max speed for an atlas?
This is all ludicrous, Its supposed to be about building a mech to fill a role in a team and suite your playstyle, now I guess its to fit the play style that the DEVS are telling we should have.

The devs are squishing the design space to make room for clan tech.

[Geminus]

Tombstoner, on 17 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

This was done. i played before they doubled armor values and the ppc's sucked at that time.
large lasers and pL where using TT values and people died way too fast. Remember this was with single heat sinks only.

lowering armor would in fact have the oposit effect and make people go for the kill in one shot thus the first one that get in two hits wins and walks away. in my opinion that is.


You make some good points, but my take is this, no said that the weapons, say the PPC for example, has to do 10 points per shot. Take the IS ERPPC, 10 points of damage per hit on TT rules. TT is one turn 10 seconds, 1 shot per turn. For a FPS make it so the ERPPC can shoot, say for arguments sake and simplicity of numbers, 5 times in 10 seconds. Then each individual shot does 2 points of damge, 5 shots in 10 seconds, that equals 10 points in 10 seconds, meets TT numbers. Also, they would fix a lot of problems if they made the ACs real ACs, big mech machine guns that are rapid fire, have magazines that hold the rounds are ejected and are reloaded. then you apply the same math to the ACs. If an AC 20 des 20 points in 10 seconds, than break down the number of rounds that the AC fires in 10 seconds and assign damage point per round fired. It also adds the gameplay value of the magazine system for the ACs.
The central number one ground floor granddaddy issue is grouped direct fire damage can be placed onto the ct reliably.

yes the heat scale need to be more then polar on/off. it should bake you move slower at the least and thus turn slower. high heat is bad should a pillar for game balance but its kinda not.


TT game balance even if acheaved over 30 years is optimized for TT only. when its ported over you get lots of issues.
one is ten second turns for weapons fire. it's slow, boring and explored during friends and famly event pre beta. it doesn't play well. Things need to be sped up and thus fire rates increased. add in the complete substitute of random hit locations for player skill and you get cored CT's and short games. add in DHS and you get better boats and even more damage to the CT and shorter life expectancy... add in better boats and damage goes up life goes down.... add in clan tech the same thing all over again.

TT armor valuse and mech construction rules are for TT only but PGI has insisted on changing fundamental rules but keeping the rest in order to preserve some semblance to BT TT and its kicking game balance in the junk again and again.

PGI has only themselves to blame for he current stats of the game.

[Wraith511802003]

Tombstoner, on 17 July 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

The devs are squishing the design space to make room for clan tech.

I give it 6 more months and it will be about dead, at the rate their going appeasing the poor mech builders and those who cant seem to learn tactics.

[Geminus]

Jakob Knight, on 17 July 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

People will -always- adjust their builds to take advantage of whatever is the optimal conditions of the game at present. If you try to make having four or more big guns penalized, then they will just go for mounting the maximum number of smaller weapons to make up the difference. Penalize having lots of small weapons, and they will grab the biggest single weapon they can stick on the mech. Penalize that, and they will take advantage of the fact that no mech can now kill them quickly and mount whatever produces the best combat performance for fast units because the slow mechs are not unable to kill them in the short periods of time they have before the light units get into their blindspot.

No matter what you do, players will adapt and have other players screaming for the devs to swing the nerf bat again for them. Until no mech is capable of doing anything, and players decide to go play something else.

The solution to 'boating' (which some mechs are designed to do, mind you) is not to keep slapping on restrictions but to have players use their brains to outthink those builds. Every weapon comes with its disadvantages. Mounting lots of only one weapon means you have nothing to cover those disadvantages. Got a 6 x PPC Stalker? Get up in his face where his weapons don't do damage. Got a 3x GR Cataphract? Run around him to his base and cap it while he slowly tries to trundle back. Got a 6xERPPC Hunchback? Wait till he shoots then headshot him while he's shutdown.

Point is, this is not a solution, and we've seen this sort of thing in one form or another since the game began. It isn't going to change because instituting these changes simply adjusts the environment for everyone, making other builds slide in where the 'boats' are now. Maybe next time it will be that Brawlers are able to close in and kill long-range support mechs without fear of death (remember that, anyone)? Maybe it will be that Scout mechs will become better than Heavies for main combat (again, remember that)? Maybe people will simply make every mech a gausszilla because they are not penalized by this system? In any case, there will be builds that work better than others, and those unwilling to think of tactics to beat them will cry for the Devs to 'do something to make the game what it should be'.

I love you

[Master Q]

They are trying to fix the game with heat scales the way that a man who only has a hammer thinks he can fix his TV by smashing it.

"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

The unsung, uncredited genius whose idea it was to turn lasers into beam weapons (eliminating the "zap zap perfect convergence" laserboat issue they were worried about from basically every Mechwarrior game that had ever come before) was indeed a genius. Ever since then the remaining design goal seems to be just to smack any problem with "yay heat scales" in an obvious Golden Hammer approach.

Here's my challenge to the developers: ALL of you. Play one hour a day with real players in real PUG play. Make fake accounts to be anonymous if you have to. See the game from our eyes and see the actual way the game is functioning.

Play the game WITH us and you'll see it. The reason trying to balance with heat scales isn't working is that the heat mechanic isn't what is broken. It's the pinpoint convergence + instant damage given to the ballistic cannons and PPCs causing the issues, just like pinpoint convergence + instant damage caused issues for Lasers in previous Mechwarrior titles.

Edited by Master Q, 17 July 2013 - 10:04 AM.