1084 replies to this topic

[GaussDragon]

DisasterMedic, on 14 July 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

e: rehosted on imgur

This is ******* amazing. Thank you for posting this.

[Victor Morson]

GaussDragon, on 14 July 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

This is ******* amazing. Thank you for posting this.

Seconding this. Congratulations, you summed up PGI in a heartbeat.

God I wish somebody would step in and just outright fire people at this point. I don't mind mistakes, but when they are mistakes that are repeated over and over while completely ignoring tons and tons of good feedback, you simply have failed at your job and that's all there is to it.

If IGP steps in and replaces the show runner, I won't be unhappy. In fact, perhaps we should start a letter writing campaign to IGP directly because the current leads will never, ever get it I think at this point.

EDIT: I hate vaguely stating "PGI." There's a lot of good people there that aren't doing a bad job at all. I am reluctant to point fingers without more info, but I think we can guess who the top two problems are there.

Edited by Victor Morson, 14 July 2013 - 08:35 PM.

[Zankar]

Victor Morson, on 14 July 2013 - 08:22 PM, said:

Effectively this is how it really works: On most variants you'll want the menu toggle OFF. When you line up a shot with your arm reticle, you press and hold the arm lock key and BAM - instantly, your torso will snap to your gun arms and maintain a 1:1 lock.

We are not 100% wrong, but yeah I did not know you can do that BS torso snap. Some people are acting like it needs to be removed. It doesn't, It simply needs to be fixed and make the torso align at its normal speed, or sense its called "arm lock" return the arms to center on the torso, which given the name makes more sense to me.

[Victor Morson]

Zankar, on 14 July 2013 - 09:02 PM, said:

We are not 100% wrong, but yeah I did not know you can do that BS torso snap. Some people are acting like it needs to be removed. It doesn't, It simply needs to be fixed and make the torso align at its normal speed, or sense its called "arm lock" return the arms to center on the torso, which given the name makes more sense to me.

I've been saying if it's going to be kept, it should just limit your arm movement but play by all the normal rules other than that, or it will simply be abused as a way to rapidly align guns for flawless shots. Otherwise it'd be better to be removed than what it is currently.

[Erata]

Gwaihir, on 12 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

Balance in MWO has long been a contentious subject, on that is difficult to really look at clearly because of the number of factors that interact with each other. There is no one issue, or one single bullet fix, that can patch over the issues currently afflicting the game. It’s a complex integrated system, and there’s three main parts contributing to the current state of play.

Before I get into those three interlocking factors, I need to talk about weapons, and playstyles in a general sense.

What we generally have, are two (and a half, ish) sorts of weapon paradigms.

Weapons that are very efficient damage per ton, but with generally awful damage per heat. (Energy weapons)
Weapons with bad damage per ton, but excellent damage per heat. (Ballistics)
Weapons that fall into the middle ground, with a balance of both, with no extremes either way (Missiles)
There are variations inside the three categories (rapid fire ACs vs AC20s, etc), but Battletech starts with these three base sorts of weapons, and that’s where you need to start with the balance.

The different playstyles want different weapons:
Brawlers want weapons that are very efficient damage per heat- Generally once you are in a brawl, you aren’t able to disengage and spare time for cooling down, so you need to be able to keep up the most efficient damage for as long as possible.

Snipers want the most damage per ton, so they can front load the most damage possible. They generally always have an opportunity to back off and cool down, or rotate out with a friendly team mate.

Missiles fall into a mixed spot, with SRMs being invaluable for brawlers, allowing them to load up with decent damage per ton as well as damage per heat weapons, that are not as weight and size constrained as ballistics. They’re also essential for light mechs to be able to effectively engage heavier targets.

This is pretty simplistic, but that’s what a general overview of weapons should look like, and how they should work. Sooo, the current problems? Going down the list:

Mech health is generally far too low. Snipers rely on being able have enough heat capacity to burst enough weapons fire to critically damage an approaching brawler before their heat cap drastically cuts their DPS down.
For an ideal example, take the typical Highlander 732 with 3 PPC + gauss and 15 dhs, versus an AC20 + 3x SRM6 mech with 18 dhs. The highlander has a much higher peak DPS, almost double that of the brawling mech. However, it can sustain that level of damage for a much shorter time than the brawler can. If a fight managed to go on for 45 seconds, the brawling mech would pump out 500 damage compared to the sniping mech’s 350. Now, back in the golden age of SRMs, around November/December of last year, the brawling mech would have pumped out 780 damage vs the same 400 damage sniper mech.
This leads me to my next point:

All the brawling weapons are broken to unusability. SRMs, which are the bedrock staple of both brawlers and lights alike, are flat out nonfunctional in their needed role. Between hit detection and quite low damage, they just plain don’t work at all. See the above example for the difference in damage levels. That kind of difference between brawler damage over time and sniper damage over time was absolutely necessary to maintain a balance between weapons and playstyles.In addition to SRMs, the smaller ballistics need some serious weight and size reductions to fix the issues they have being useful on anything smaller than 65 tons.

PPCs should also get their speed buff rolled back, and their heat upped to 9 per shot. ERPPCs should keep the current projectile speed. They don’t really need anything other than that though, it’s the other broken weapons that need buffs.


Finally, the matchmaker. The interactions with the matchmaker and the game types just reinforce the existing problems. Since there is no tonnage matching right now, there’s no reason not to go 6 assault 2 fast mover- This also just happens to both almost require a sniper comp, as well as working best with a sniper comp.
The requirement is because, with 6 assaults, you’re going to be slow in general. You require the longer ranged weapons to exert the area control needed, since you can’t quickly reposition like a lighter force can.
The other half of the coin is that snipers work far better the heavier you are, because of their weapon choices- The ideal burst/sniper weapons are the ones that have the most damage per ton. Since their function relies on having enough tons to pack in enough of them for the highest burst, they really only work well on the heavier mechs. A more balanced 2/2/2/2 composition really just does not work out ideally with a heavy sniper composition, compared to 3/3/0/2, or even heavier groups. Anything lighter than 2/2/2/2 practically requires good brawlers, because it just plain does not have the critical mass of sniper burst power necessary to win.

tldr: It ends up being a self-reinforcing cycle of weapons, matchmaker, mech health, and the random map pool all contributing to there being only one viable choice of gameplay right now. However, ALL of it is solvable just with pure numbers tweaks. There is absolutely no need for extra complicated and unintuitive systems layered on top of the base gameplay in order to have a balanced game.

I've reached my Like quota for the day.
Also Gwiaiahir's a pretty informed Veritech pilot who is using pre-existing game mechanics to fix current problems without adding more systems to a game with so many weights and balances that it could tangle a dang spider web.

Edited by Erata, 14 July 2013 - 09:22 PM.

[Foster Bondroff]

So far i have critized the upcoming changes in this thread and forum. But I must admit after testing and adapting to the upcoming changes, i also look forward to it and changed my mind.

Although i never was a 4x or 6x ER PPC/ PPC boater, cause i really liked to play 2 ER PPCs + 1 Gauss, the changes announced forced me to rethink my approach.

And i came out positively surprised. I found a build that provides me with a stronger alpha while at the same time running much cooler (didnt manage to shut this build down) and so also giving me much higher DPS than my current 2 ER PPCs + 1 Gauss combo. Over the weekend i thoroughly tested this and was amazed by its performance.

This build is not effected by the announced changes. So with them going live this month, the performance of this build will even increase compared to the current high alpha PPC and AC20 builds. So i am happy. Baseline is, i have traded 7 kph speed for more alpha and for an extremely increased combat endurance.

Edited by Foster Bondroff, 15 July 2013 - 02:04 AM.

[Victor Morson]

Foster Bondroff, on 14 July 2013 - 10:48 PM, said:

So far i have critized the upcoming changes in this thread and forum. But I must admit after testing and adapting to the upcoming changes, i also look forward to it and changed my mind.

Although i never was a 4x or 6x ER PPC/ PPC boater, cause i really liked to play 2 ER PPCs + 1 Gauss, the changes on the test servers forced me to rethink my approach.

The problem is a lot of the competitive community already uses 3 PPC, 1 Gauss Highlanders, which will only take a minor hit with this stupid system. Even if it kills 4 PPC boats, it's useless at that.

Unless PGI does something even more massively stupid and makes Gauss have massive heat or something with them.

[jollyrancher1]

Please check out this thread for a breakdown of some of the ways to curb high pinpoint alpha hits and post your feedback.
http://mwomercs.com/...t-alpha-builds/

My favorite is pretty similar to the one they proposed, but with a weapon fire limit per time instead of a phantom heat penalty. If they would just change the numbers around a little it would be really similar to my favorite proposal. It fits so well that even the stock mechs make some freaking sense and still allows people to bring 6 ppc without much of a penalty! It only trips up on the awesome (needs the tweak of being able to fire 3) and some late clan and IS mechs that come stock boating ppc and gauss such as the Thunder Hawk, Pillager, Cerberus and Gunslinger... There is also a good underlying discussion topic in there as to how high is too high for an alpha strike.

Jason Radick:
So does a clan invasion era Warhawk with its primary load out with 4 ER PPCs count as a high alpha build? OMG the huge manatee! lol. Likewise later down the timeline when vintage mechs get revived that carry multiple gauss rifles ( Thunder Hawk, Pillager, Cerberus and Gunslinger to name a few) there will be an outcry from the masses to nerf and neuter.

@ Jason Radick Your telling me 40 damage to one location isnt a high alpha build?! How many mechs can take a hit from that and not get blasted wide open. A 40 ton mech has a 40 armor maximum in its left and right ct and most run xl engines. Shooting any 40 ton and below mech in 2 shots to the same place kills them. I think dieing in 2 shots is too quick for nearly half the mechs.

[Blimie]

The major problem I see with this is the haphazard approach to this. I could (almost) see if they had said something along the lines of: "firing more than 20 SRM's or 30 LRM's at one time would result in additional heat build up from mech exhaust porting not being able to effectively vent the exhaust." Or "firing energy weapons that exceed "X" heat will overtax heat capacitors resulting in additional heat." Something similar to the above for ballistics. Then at least it would make some kind of sense.

As it is there seems no logic behind this, just pick and choose witch weapons are affected. I can't fire 4 SRM6 on my Catapult C4 without incurring a heat penalty, but I CAN fire 3 SRM6 and 4 SRM4 on my Catapult A1 without a heat penalty? 3 LRM15's on my Awesome will incur the penalty, but 4 LRM20 on my stalker won't?

Similar examples can be raised for energy and ballistics weapons, the SRM's and LRM's are just much more obvious (6 AC2's generating 12 heat and 24 DPS won't generate additional heat, but 2 AC20 generating 12 heat and 10 DPS will).

[Taxxian]

We do not need Heat-Penalties!

We need Balanced Weapons and Balanced HitBoxes!

If you compare the surface Areas of Spider and Atlas, you will find out that the Spiders armor is double as thick as the Atlases... that can not be balanced by Heat Penalties ever. As long as everyone is able to target an Atlas/Awesone/Whatever CT at will and no one even tries to target a Spider/Commando/Whatever CT, since its impossible, the only effective Weapon balancing is damage spreading, not raising or lowering it.

[scJazz]

I hate the Heat Change that is going into the game. Something needed to be done about high alpha pinpoint damage but this totally misses the mark. It doesn't change my Cataphract 3D even one little bit. However what is most damning about the change is the PPC/ERPPC part.

Basically, the fact that PPCs and ERPPCs are different on the 16th but lumped together on the 30th means two things occured.

1 ) Paul told the engineers to add this code and give each and every weapon a different "ID" for purposes of counting the Heat Penalty. In doing so he totally neglected the obvious PPC and ERPPC mix.

2 ) The engineers received the request and did not use their own common sense to lump PPCs and ERPPCs together. Or they saw the problem but are not allowed the latitude to make such common sense decisions on their own. Or they saw the problem and ignored it because Paul didn't ask for it (white mutiny http://everything2.c...le/White+mutiny).

Either way Paul is at fault... but having the engineers act as specifically as possible and ignoring the obvious is damning.

[xZaOx]

If this was any other franchise, we'd all stop playing this game a long time ago. This game depresses me. We all want it to be so good, and its so fundamentally broken, and missing all the core features they promised. Remember those pillars they talked so much about?

[scJazz]

You know while I'm at it I thought of another thing... here we are 26 hours from Patch time and we don't know what the heat increases will be or at the very least I haven't found them.

Firing 2 PPCs no penalty, firing 3 small penalty, firing more large penalty... what exactly is the penalty?

[Ningyo]

As far as I remember from when I saw this first mentioned (can't find it now, maybe he changed it too) it was 5 heat for first weapon over, 10 for second, 20 for third etc...

However on patch day regardless of the penalty the only changed to any used mechs are as follows.

4 PPC stalker becomes 2 PPC/ 2 ER-PPC stalker (most are anyway)
6 PPC stalker becomes either 3PPC /3 ER-PPC stalker, get changed to a 4 PPC stalker
9 ML hunchback switches 3 ML for players mix of LL, MPL, SPL, SL
Blackjack refer to hunchback above lol
Splat cat becomes 3 SRM6, 3 SRM4
AC/40 Jagger likely drops 1 ML to add another heatsink though many may ignore this entirely.

Nothing in game changes noticeably
New players are vastly confused at why their mechs have unfathomably random heat.
Forums continue to rage at Paul.

did I miss any consequences?

[Milt]

imho, ppc and erppc heat needs to be brought back to previous lvls(10 and 15). ammo/ton also needs to be adjusted to the increased rate of fire in mwo. for example in TT ac/5 ammo would last for 300 secs of constant fire, in mwo its about 45sec. we also need to have armor/ton increased to match up with the increased rate of fire.

[WolvesX]

Why not just add a poll for the HPS?

I for one hate the system because its complicated, user unfriendly, new player unfriendly and badly though out.

I would vote for no.

[scJazz]

Ningyo, on 15 July 2013 - 07:42 AM, said:

As far as I remember from when I saw this first mentioned (can't find it now, maybe he changed it too) it was 5 heat for first weapon over, 10 for second, 20 for third etc...

You can't find it because the post was deleted.

[Midgie]

So why is there a limit for LRM-15s and no other LRM systems?

[Deathlike]

scJazz, on 15 July 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

You can't find it because the post was deleted.

It's still there.

http://mwomercs.com/...te-june-112013/

[MavRCK]

xZaOx, on 15 July 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

If this was any other franchise, we'd all stop playing this game a long time ago. This game depresses me. We all want it to be so good, and its so fundamentally broken, and missing all the core features they promised. Remember those pillars they talked so much about?

People have no idea how much the die-hard fans are dying inside... most of us grew up worshiping big, stompy robots and want this title to succeed and be the end-all of all stompy robot games...