78 replies to this topic

[Lykaon]

BillyM, on 13 July 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

Agreed with the original poster, it was one of the numerous buffs that need to be undone...

--billyM

Now here is a flaw.

3 or more PPCs are the cause of the problem complained about.But nerfing all PPCs effects singular use of PPCs as well as boats.

Essentially a dragon with one PPC isn't coring anyone in one trigger pull but because Stalkers with 4+ PPCs need nerfing the dragon takes a hit as well.


One needs to understand the problem to understand a course of action to repair the problem.

And when we analyze the problem we discover it's not PPCs.The problem is any weapon that deals all of it's damage to one pinpoint location all at once and can also be "boated" is the best means of exploiting the design choice to have distinctive armor values for specific mech body locations and only needing to deplete the armor value of a single location to land a kill.

So essentially nerf PPCs to not be a problem and we will see boated AC20 or Gauss rifle platforms as the dominant builds.Nerf the AC20 and gauss and it will become AC 10s and 5s or whatever weapon system allows for the most efficent application of concentrated damage.

Any real solution needs to address the actual problem and not simply pick apart symptoms.

[Mystere]

Modo44, on 13 July 2013 - 11:34 PM, said:

So the answer is "no". Thanks. Get unstuck and realize that this is not about realistic anything, but about balancing a game.

Given we're in the 21st Century, I figured the answer was very obvious. But, I guess there is at least one Time Lord lurking in these forums.

A good solution is to increase heat, and not something as extremely silly as an energy blast that's slower than a spitball. But, if people really insist on changing the speed of the PPC "projectile", then make it the speed of lightning.

Even better, don't mindlessly charge like the Light Brigade.

Edited by Mystere, 14 July 2013 - 02:13 AM.

[xRatas]

Modo44, on 13 July 2013 - 11:34 PM, said:

So the answer is "no". Thanks. Get unstuck and realize that this is not about realistic anything, but about balancing a game.

Thing is, there are bucket load of ways to balance it reasonably while retaining some suspension of belief. After all, computer game nerds today know a thing or two about physics, and being nerds we actually care. Why not use something else as a way to balance?

Any decent sci-fi balances on careful edge of reality and fiction. Too far to fiction, and it becomes unbelievable, which then makes it bad sci-fi. Some things are easy to make right, some are harder. But too much freedom from physics make only bad jokes. Mechwarrior series is a light simulator in it's core, and needs some realism to do that well enough. Indeed, it has lot of things that are far from reality, but that is even more a reason to keep the laws of physics in place. It is the feel of energy and weight what basically determines good and bad mech game IMO.

Edited by xRatas, 14 July 2013 - 06:10 AM.

[Modo44]

Thing is, the PPC shot was a slow-moving energy ball in many previous MechWarrior games, making it distinclty not a different-colour Gauss projectile. Now it's just meh. And they broke the sound on top of that.

Edited by Modo44, 14 July 2013 - 07:26 AM.

[BillyM]

Step1, un-do everything they did to PPC's before HSR.
HSR changed EVERYTHING and no other weapons saw buffs prior.

Step2, analyze from there, but I'm guessing returning heat and projectile speed will bring it immediately into balance.

--billyM

[xRatas]

Modo44, on 14 July 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Thing is, the PPC shot was a slow-moving energy ball in many previous MechWarrior games, making it distinclty not a different-colour Gauss projectile. Now it's just meh. And they broke the sound on top of that.

Not in "many". It was that in MW2. And it was useless in that game. I'd rather have useful PPCs in this game. Original MW had them instantly hitting, MW4 was quite fast travelling, and I seem to have forgotten their speed in MW3. Certainly not slow balls though, that I'm sure.

Edit: quick youtube checks shows MW3 having almost instantly hitting PPCs. Nothing less would have not been good for microprose though, they used to be quite serious on simulations back then.

Edited by xRatas, 14 July 2013 - 09:41 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Lykaon, on 14 July 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

Now here is a flaw.

3 or more PPCs are the cause of the problem complained about.But nerfing all PPCs effects singular use of PPCs as well as boats.

Essentially a dragon with one PPC isn't coring anyone in one trigger pull but because Stalkers with 4+ PPCs need nerfing the dragon takes a hit as well.


One needs to understand the problem to understand a course of action to repair the problem.

And when we analyze the problem we discover it's not PPCs.The problem is any weapon that deals all of it's damage to one pinpoint location all at once and can also be "boated" is the best means of exploiting the design choice to have distinctive armor values for specific mech body locations and only needing to deplete the armor value of a single location to land a kill.

So essentially nerf PPCs to not be a problem and we will see boated AC20 or Gauss rifle platforms as the dominant builds.Nerf the AC20 and gauss and it will become AC 10s and 5s or whatever weapon system allows for the most efficent application of concentrated damage.

Any real solution needs to address the actual problem and not simply pick apart symptoms.

See this has always been my point as well. Except for some testing, I have never run more than 2 PPCs or ER PPCs on any of my mechs and definately don't find them in the least bit overpowered even as a pair. You start dorking around with making them hotter or making the projectile much slower and you competely break them in normal use.

Also I have played that version of MWO. They were changed to what they are now because they were hotter and slower and NO ONE USED THEM. They were useless, totally and utterly useless and all it did was make people use Boat Gauss, LLs or MLs instead. It didn't fix one thing, just made it so we had even less options when chosing weapons to mount and it made the game a 100x less fun than it is right now.

[hammerreborn]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 13 July 2013 - 09:15 PM, said:

1600 or even better 1200 m/s would solve a lot of problems.

No. Making it the same speed as guass is a recipie for disaster, especially since we'll likely be seeing a shift to 2ppcs + guass build at months end.

[xRatas]

Viktor Drake, on 14 July 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

Also I have played that version of MWO. They were changed to what they are now because they were hotter and slower and NO ONE USED THEM. They were useless, totally and utterly useless and all it did was make people use Boat Gauss, LLs or MLs instead. It didn't fix one thing, just made it so we had even less options when chosing weapons to mount and it made the game a 100x less fun than it is right now.

I did use those, I've always been a PPC user in every battletech game. And the funny thing is, I did well with PPCs much before buffs. Broken blast damage was a problem with them, but I still often used at least 2-3 of them. It just makes my eyes bleed, when I see awesome or K2 without PPCs. Speed buff was good but heat was uncalled and stupid, they were excellent already before that

[Majorfatboy]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 13 July 2013 - 11:42 PM, said:

No one will ever pickup an ERLarge over an ERPPC until the ERPPC is slow enough that hitting fast strafing targets at long range starts to become more difficult.

Really? Then Why do I never equip PPCs or ERPPCs, But have one or two ER large lasers on damn near everything I drive?

PPCs are bigger.
Weigh more.
Generate more heat.
Dump all their damage on a single point, meaning you can't correct your shot mid-blast.
All for one extra point damage per cannon.

(ER)PPCs and their speed are not the problem, people mounting a crapton of them on a single mech and dropping with other players doing the same are the (Sort of) problem.
As has been said by many others before Me, if PGI limited mounting to critical slots per area instead of X amount of weapons per area this would never happen.

Example:
A Catapult-K2 is allowed five crits total of energy items in each of it's arms, two crits energy per side torso, and two crits ballistic per side torso. You can now have the stock K2, or a custom but still energy-based variant, but never be able to mount more then two PPCs, or four large lasers, or two AC2s, or Etc.

Applying a hardpoint restriction like this would solve most complaints instantly.

[FupDup]

Majorfatboy, on 14 July 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

Really? Then Why do I never equip PPCs or ERPPCs, But have one or two ER large lasers on damn near everything I drive?

PPCs are ...
Generate more heat.

ERLL is 9.5 heat. PPC is 8 heat.

[Fulcrom Kerensky]

Viktor Drake, on 14 July 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

See this has always been my point as well. Except for some testing, I have never run more than 2 PPCs or ER PPCs on any of my mechs and definately don't find them in the least bit overpowered even as a pair. You start dorking around with making them hotter or making the projectile much slower and you competely break them in normal use.

Also I have played that version of MWO. They were changed to what they are now because they were hotter and slower and NO ONE USED THEM. They were useless, totally and utterly useless and all it did was make people use Boat Gauss, LLs or MLs instead. It didn't fix one thing, just made it so we had even less options when chosing weapons to mount and it made the game a 100x less fun than it is right now.

You cannot use logic in these forums sir it is against TOS!

FupDup, on 14 July 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

ERLL is 9.5 heat. PPC is 8 heat.

ERLL- does not have a minimum distance and has a longer reach...

Edited by Fulcrom Kerensky, 14 July 2013 - 10:21 AM.

[Lefteye Falconeer]

As odd as this sounds, you know what would make sense and would help with balance? To have the "bullet" to take like a couple tenth of a second, or even up to half a second, to fire. As if the energy were charging up and could not be ready to fire the instant you hit fire. Pretty much as it was (for technical reasons though) in closed beta. That used to make it pretty hard to hit with PPCs and would balance things out a bit without having to slow down the projectile.

Problem with this solution? It isn't fun. Nothing worse than having a weapon lag on you by design. Too bad. Because I agree, PPCs as they are now are just too good. Mind, Gauss are the same thing (slower projectile isn't that much of an issue when you are good with it), but at least you can't have more than two (which is the equivalent of three ppc anyway) and they can run out of ammos, and they explode easily.

PPC needs to be changed, this is for sure. Given that they can't change projectile speed and they can't change range, I think they should and actually have to work with two other factors.

Heat and cooldown. Either they raise the heat on it, or raise the cooldown to 5 or 6 seconds. It's a high-power high-efficiency all around/sniper weapon. Make it the slowest weapon in the game. Try with 6 seconds cooldown and see what happens. Still viable for long range alpha sniping, but less omnipresent as a good-for-all-situation high hitting weapon.

[xhrit]

FupDup, on 14 July 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

ERLL is 9.5 heat. PPC is 8 heat.

ANd this is the problem right here. PPCs should be generating a -lot- more heat then they do right now.

[FupDup]

Fulcrom Kerensky, on 14 July 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

ERLL- does not have a minimum distance and has a longer reach...

ERLL also requires you to be face the enemy for one second to deal full damage, making your CT vulnerable to enemy alphas.

[Fulcrom Kerensky]

FupDup, on 14 July 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

ERLL also requires you to be face the enemy for one second to deal full damage, making your CT vulnerable to enemy alphas.

I know I use them in many of my setups this is not a problem for me.

[Joe Mallad]

xhrit, on 14 July 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

ANd this is the problem right here. PPCs should be generating a -lot- more heat then they do right now.

should be at least 10 heat per PPC and like 12 for ER PPCs

[hammerreborn]

hammerreborn, on 14 July 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

No. Making it the same speed as guass is a recipie for disaster, especially since we'll likely be seeing a shift to 2ppcs + guass build at months end.

That being said, having 2000/1600/1200 erppc/ppc/guass could lead to interesting results, but is unlikely to matter with the heat changes as people will likely only choose one or the other (most likely ppcs will be killed off entirely)

[Roughneck45]

The new heat changes are a boating nerf, not just PPC's. I think It will help in the long run.

Slow down that projectile speed. It is just way too easy to use.

It doesn't even make the weapon that much worse either, it just widens the skill gap required to use it, potentially reducing the amount of boats and players using it as an "I win" alpha.

In fact, id be in favor of switching the speed of the gauss rifle and PPC as they are now.

[Corvus Antaka]

hammerreborn, on 14 July 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

No. Making it the same speed as guass is a recipie for disaster, especially since we'll likely be seeing a shift to 2ppcs + guass build at months end.

I agree. The gauss is at 1200, so the PPC should be 1000 or 1600, though 1600 may still be to fast. Maybe we should slow the gauss down more to make it more skillful to use too either way, 2000 is way to easy and fast for the PPC.