1084 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

Mudhutwarrior, on 12 July 2013 - 03:46 AM, said:

PGi is just proving that they cant see the forest for the trees. No one wants to invest in such a steep learning curve except the geeks who are into that.

Ironically, which are the same people who absolutely hate this change.

[Lokust Davion]

Victor Morson, on 12 July 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

I'd also have to ponder what the people responsible for balance have actually been doing for the past year.

By contrast:

Networking Department - HSR, upping our engine speed soon.
Mech creation teams - Made several 'mechs
Map creation teams - Made some of the best maps in the game to date
Sound team - Doing all kinds of neat new sounds
Visual team - Still doing a great job with the models and animations!
UI team - UI 2.0 will likely be a great improvement coming around soon!
Programmers - Lots of nice new stability and little touches! Plus they got diverted to 3PV by the people dealing with balance. And making pointless heat systems. So they've been busy getting run around.

Balance Guys - Nerfed a few things that are usable. Puttered around. Kinda put them back but not quite. Promises aggressive changes. Delivers aggressive randomness. Refuses to admit there's a problem. Stay the course! Ignore the icebergs!

One of these things is not like the other. Balance defines gameplay. Gameplay is the lifeblood of a game. Their decisions are dragging down a lot of hard, excellent work throughout the game at this point and I think if their death grip is in fact not released, they will drag the franchise down with them before they'll give some other ideas a shot.

I can say without a doubt there's a few people in PGI's programming department that understand the game balance better than whoever all is responsible for primarily balancing it.

"It's a beta!" won't be an excuse for much longer and much of this they could have fixed months ago. Which leads to the frightening conclusion that they don't want to admit much if it is broken in the first place. Otherwise we'd be seeing some other changes in this "aggressive" patch. Ho-hum half-buffed SRMs could have at least come with a half hearted attempt to stop kicking the Large Pulse Laser.

there's only one person in pgi responsible for balance... his name starts with a P. guess who? i heard he's also responsible for designing the much delayed community warfare. o yea.. i also heard he likes to troll... hence we are being trolled by his game design decisions.

[Kazma]

As a 3x SRM6 Centurion I'd really like to see how the 2.0 damage will affect the gameplay.
I'm doing fine (no, I'm doing great) with them in its current state, but I think 2.0 damage will be too much even with the current problem

[Karl Streiger]

Could we please wait until we see how the boating stacking penalty works?
I don't want to see that the FOTM of Stalker PPC Warrior turns to the SRM Noobcats reign of terror again.

Instead of increasing DPS and damage - we should start to look for alternatives -> reduce damage for other weapons - until they are in relation to the SRMs

[arghmace]

Ordate, on 11 July 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

I find it amusing that there are so many yes votes, but at the same time bunches of people complaining about bandaid fixes on the heat issue.

That's because raising SRM dmg to 2.0 is not bandaid no matter what Paul says. That's the damage they should have even with all hit registration issues fixed.

[sC4r]

Quote

Taking damage beyond 120% heat.
This value is going to be reduced to 100%. Depending on how long you're in a state of overheat will determine how much damage you take. If you overheat by 1 point and are only in overheat for a very short amount of time, you probably won't take any damage at all.

i got a question on this one
if you really decide to go with this will you also reduce the automatic shutdown to lets say 90-95% for safety because if im going to take damage anyways beyond 100% the overriding will be for nothing(almost)
also will the damage taken be calculated the same as now or it will be changed

[Yenisey]

CapperDeluxe, on 12 July 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

I don't like much the idea based on a minimum X number of allowed weapons. Its complex and arbitrary to be honest.

Rather I had a previous idea that would make much more sense. I'm on a tablet so I can't go linkit but it was based on a proper heat curve that started low for all weapons at 2 and increased from there. Bigger weapons had bigger curves and smaller ones lower.

Indeed. I hate PPC boats, but penalty for simultaneously fire - not reasonable. Really! Don't do this! Just implement penalty for overheating like structure damage, maybe headsink explosion, lowering speed, accuracy of shots.

Edited by Marthe, 12 July 2013 - 04:16 AM.

[Lyteros]

Congratulations, you made the stock awesome even more unplayable.

You didnt fix the real problem of instant convergence and pinpoint alpha damage.

You did nerf a lot of seapons that were no real problem (large lasers? You have to keep aim for a full second, so you can neither poptart nor jump out of cover, fire an alpha and hide before you get the retaliation)

On the other hand the ssrm 2 max does not matter since those weapons almoust have no heat at all and everyone has to run around with mandators dubs. Many chainfired them for constant aiming shake.

For the srm6 which is only a problem on the splatcat, you didnt change a thing. SRMS in generall are still underperforming and thus not a good weapon. The restriction of 3 per alpha is pretty much what a lot of those pilots already did - firing 2 successive salvoes of 3, to keep the targets aim off and to better deal with heat. No change for those.

TL;DR: I dont like it because it fixes nothing - but makes a lot of weapons worse. Weapons which were already weak or not a problem.

Edited by Lyteros, 12 July 2013 - 04:40 AM.

[Jakob Knight]

Nebelfeuer, on 12 July 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

Though i agree mostly on the first part of you post and would have liked to see a solution that adresse all weapons alike I have to disagree on the other parts of your post


Splitting heateffective fire into groups instead of onebutton alphastrikes as the baseline for normal behavior does not destroy the usefullness of any stockmech. or custombuild. It makes it a bit more challenging to manage the recources and that is a good develpment.


So accepting one set of restrictions aka rules is ok and another is not? That does not make sense, does it?

Save that some of us only have two-button mouse controllers, and cannot effectively use more than two weapons groups. Should we then be penalized because we have effective designs that are adapted to this? Also, why should a mech like a HBK-4P, which is -designed- to alpha strike with it's Medium Lasers (you don't get into that close range to slowly wittle away at the target in a medium mech) be forced to only use half its loadout simply because someone cried that it wasn't fair it could? How does this prevent someone from simply writing a script to fire the weapons groups 0.002 seconds apart, satisfying the requirement that they 'not be fired together' while penalizing people not using scripts to achieve the same effect?

The problem is that these rules are coming -after- the design rules were set and applied in-game, soley because of personal feelings that mechs like the AWS-8Q, HBK-4P, and BLR-1G should not exist. They are a change instituted after agreed-upon contruction rules were in place, and -all such builds were legitimately built within the system agreed upon-, purely because someone thought they worked too well -within the accepted game system-. To add to the problems, equal-effect weapons (PPC and AC/10) are not equally penalized, destroying any claim this is about high-effect weaponry, and opening the entire concept to charges of being based on personal bias on the the part of some devs and players who rely on the devs to solve their problems instead of doing it themselves (an extention and obscuration of the 'gausscat' argument that still rages in some player's offended sensibilities).

To wit, this is the equivilant of PGI standing at the platform and telling the players "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further". While they can do this, and nothing we do can stop them, there is a reason why everyone knows that line is something wrong. Especially when the same people are effectively giving passes to one weapon type and not to an identically-effective or less-effective weapon system.

Finally, I will note that the heat system in place in MWO is -already- far harsher than that for which the original designs were constructed in. In the original rules, a BLR-1G could fire 5 medium lasers and stay at full speed while -never- generating heat, whereas in MWO this same mech would overheat very quickly. This change simply encourages even more customization specialization to take advantage of the new rules, and people will simply switch to the next 'best configuration', and you'll be right back where we are now with people claiming the devs need to do something to knock those designs out of the game too. It never ends once you start bending your own rules to appease people, especially when it is done with obvious inequality and lack of universal standards.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 12 July 2013 - 04:43 AM.

[ExAstris]

Glad to see that PPCs and ERPPCs will be considered the same weapon for the purposes of the heat nerf to alpha strikes. Though, I really think Gauss should be added to that list given their synergy with PPCs. Frankly, some of the best configurations out there right now are actually 2-4 ppc + gauss.


Also, I have to ask, why the LRM15 but not the 10 or 20?

Have you guys been spying on my mechbay and just want to punish me specifically? (j/k)


Forum reports do show the 20 to be pretty useless (spreads damage too much for its weight, doesn't give close to 33% more damage on target per volley), but it also shows the 10 (especially with artemis) to be pretty beastly. Any chance we could have the launchers flight spreads normalized and then treat them equally on the heat penalty scale?

Or at least an official explanation for why the 15 is on the penalty list but not any other LRM launchers?


EDIT: Also, while SRMs are clearly underperforming, I don't know if this is the best way to go about fixing it. A buff straight to 2.0 is serious business, and will in all likelihood be great for gameplay until the hits on fast-movers get sorted out. But please don't do something silly and say, "I told you so!" when the hit-detection gets fixed if they need renerfing. Deal with that problem then.

And that's a general lesson. Deal with balance as the game stands NOW. Then, when the game changes, rebalance. We don't want to play the broken version for 6 months until all the code gets worked out. Balance the best you can to the systems and gameplay that exist now, then rebalance when the core gets ironed out some. It'll save us all a lot of frustration, because frustration is exactly what we're all having build up when the balance decisions that need to be made are repeatedly not implemented because "well, we have these other systems planned that will balance things out... in 3 months." We play now, balance for now, then rebalance then.

Edited by ExAstris, 12 July 2013 - 04:41 AM.

[MountainCopper]

Homeless Bill, on 11 July 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

Heat Penalties - Terrible. Convergence is the issue, and jury rigging such a delicate part of balance to fix that problem is doomed to fail. Please, please consider starting over from scratch with one of the numerous alternatives that players have proposed.

I agree with the heat penalty system being the wrong try to solve a general problem. I absolutely agree with high alphas strikes into one single location are a major flaw in the game.
Trying to slow the rate of fire of these shots doesn't address this issue, just tries to make it slightly less appealing to do so.

Also some of these proposals don't make any sense. IE Medium Lasers: penalizing only the Hunchback-4P and Blackjack-1X for their ML builds... Why? Did we have any trouble with one of these models being the ruler of the battle field? I have to say, no.

You can't really put a high enough penalty onto high-alpha ballistic builds because of the three weapon kinds, they produce the least amount of heat.
A dual Gauss can't be nerfed at all that way and according to my maths, a dual AC20 Mech with 10 DHS can right now fire 5 times w/o overheating, so the penalty to nerf this one "high-alpha Mech model", you would like to nerf especially, would have to be huge.

The same with SRMs. You only seem to try to nerf a 4x SRM6 weapons loudout on a few Mech capable of mounting it... (Catapults, Jager-A, Stalkers) Had we really a problem with them?

If you want to hear my 2 cents about PPCs... the combination of huge range and high projectile speed are much to blame for the current trouble we are having with them. I also believe that trying to make it less appealing to use them with heat penalties isn't enough, nor the right way to solve it.

Regards.

Edited by GoldenFleece, 12 July 2013 - 05:57 AM.

[Black Templar]

i voted no because buffing SRMs now will backfire. i agree that SRMs need a buff but they should fix the problems with hit detection first and balance from there. i can already picture the meta for the next couple of months where SRMs will be the most dominant weapon on the battlefield. why don't you take them to 1.8 instead and see if that works out?

on to the "heat penalty balance mechanism". to my mind this doesn't make sense at all. while it will affect LRM boats, 4 and 6 PPC Stalkers and AC40 mechs, it leaves out powerful mechs like the dreaded poptarts. 1Gauss + 2 PPCs on Highlanders and Cataphracts are not affected at all. this mechanism also punishes mechs that are, by intention, boats. it will punish the Awesome and the Catapult for being what they are.

i see that your intention is to nerf the insane boating meta that is going on right now, but even if you exclude the Awesome and the Catapult from your "fix" people may just transition into these mechs and start boating again.

you are fixing the symptoms of a broken system!

you need to get to the root of the problem and i suggest reading through the posts of some people here in the forums. stop applying first-aid (for some reason the word a i d s is censored here)! here are some links i would suggest going through!

1.) http://mwomercs.com/...oats-and-clans/
2.) http://mwomercs.com/...-balancing-mwo/
3.) http://mwomercs.com/...rned-from-mwll/
4.) http://mwomercs.com/...olution-inside/
5.) http://mwomercs.com/...rior-balancing/
and
6.) http://mwomercs.com/...eedback-thread/

now go read!

Edited by Black Templar, 12 July 2013 - 04:46 AM.

[Felio]

You've missed the point. It doesn't make much difference to me whether someone is using four of the same big gun or four different big guns. The end result is still getting one-shot-killed or having to play very gingerly for the rest of the match, sometimes after the first shot fired, and often without doing anything wrong.

[Mechteric]

Here's a repost of something more like what I think would be appropriate, where there would only be a slight penalty for firing low quantities, but higher as you fire more along a curve rather than a hard set number.

#PPC  Heat Multiplier Net Heat
1  8  1  8
2  16  1.1  17.6
3  24  1.25  30
4  32  1.5  48
5  40  1.7  68
6  48  1.9  91.2
  
  
#MLaser Heat Multiplier Net Heat
1  4  1  4
2  8  1.05  8.4
3  12  1.1  13.2
4  16  1.15  18.4
5  20  1.2  24
6  24  1.25  30
9  36  1.5  54

To summarize, firing 4 PPCs would be similar to firing 6 PPCs currently, while firing 3 would be just less than firing 4 currently, and firing 2 wouldn't be bad at all. Medium lasers would only really start to get effected once you're over 5 or so.

[Aliencreature]

I think MechCommander 2 had the right idea about ranges. I still remember my hilariously bad 4x ER PPC builds.

At long range, they owned, I'll give them that. But it took a while for them to fire again, and by that time, the entirety of the enemy force had closed beneath minimal range, and the Awesome was torn apart by the hordes of Jenners and Hunchbacks until I could send backup.

Penalize firing weapons out of their intended range. That way, you are welcome to boat; the hexa-PPC Stalker will still work. But said Stalker will find itself getting owned at close range because its weapons suffer a 90% penalty to damage. It's certainly much easier to code than a proper convergence system, which seems to be beyond PGI's capabilities.

And as an AC/40 pilot, I have to say, the current meta is terrible. I have been forced to permanently park my LPL/SRM-6 Stalker brawler and get with the AC/40 Jager trend, since I get double the C-bills per match that way.

Oh, also try doubling armor. It certainly feels terrible to be one-shotted by the penta-PPC boats without even firing a single shot.

[Enigmos]

Weaselball, on 11 July 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

It's frankly insulting that PGI would even need to ask this question.

"Hey community, we know you've been asking for SRM damage buffs for upwards of 3+ months, but..... do you want their damage buffed?"

I think it is a case where the genie looks down from the glowing cloud from the ancient brass lamp peering soberly into your eyes with a hint of perplexed disbelief, fully aware of something you hadn't adequately realized, and asking you 'Are you absolutely sure you want everything you touch turning to gold?'

Edited by OriginalTibs, 12 July 2013 - 04:59 AM.

[PanzerMagier]

I think this is relevant:

[arghmace]

Aliencreature, on 12 July 2013 - 04:55 AM, said:

Oh, also try doubling armor. It certainly feels terrible to be one-shotted by the penta-PPC boats without even firing a single shot.

I say this again. Both armor and internal structure are already doubled. Making them 4 times bigger than TT and previous MW titles would be insanity. If we have a problem of mechs dying too fast, then we have to curb the DPS by some means, not by increasing mech durability AGAIN.

[Mechteric]

arghmace, on 12 July 2013 - 05:05 AM, said:

I say this again. Both armor and internal structure are already doubled. Making them 4 times bigger than TT and previous MW titles would be insanity. If we have a problem of mechs dying too fast, then we have to curb the DPS by some means, not by increasing mech durability AGAIN.

Spot on, increasing armor even more would just make high alpha mechs even more necessary.

[Milocinia]

Many of you complaining about the 4P(C) and the alpha penalties are simply clueless and pathetic. You obviously don't have the skill to chain fire and hold the reticle on target, or even build an efficient mech for that matter. You've relied on high pinpoint alphas for so long you just don't have a clue.

My HGN-HM has 1x Gauss 3x LL and I chain the LL's, never alpha them. This is so I can have a constant stream of fire laid down on my opponent with minimal gaps between firing. Its proficiencies are maxed and I never overheat apart from the caustic caldera and tourmaline when I occasionally have to wait a few seconds to cool off.

So all you need to do is adapt your firing pattern and you'll actually find yourself doing better with less HPS and more sustained DPS over time.

So now it's my turn to say "adapt or die" like the PPCwarriors say to us none PPC adopters. Unfortunately I've already adapted and have been for some time, playing the game how it should be played.