464 replies to this topic

[Lemming]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:33 PM, said:

Are you really suggesting that it's impossible for someone to figure out that firing too many weapons at once generates more heat, but they'll quickly figure out, say, lrms getting destroyed because their missile doors are blown off? Or that having heat sinks in their legs cools them faster when in water? Seriously, how are people going to figure that out without someone telling them? Yeah, if someone looks up "dah ubberz buildz" on the internet and tries to copy it (but a new player can't anyway, since they have to grind the cbills), they're going to die horribly now. Of course, if they figured that out then they probably read enough to know its a bad idea.

You know another game that's completely un-intuitive and about to fail? World of Tanks... even though wargaming.net is rolling in cash right now. Seriously, you can get 1 shot by a tank which has a gun with less penetration than you have armor. Invisible tanks can hit you as a full camo TD when you can't see them (technically impossible according to the item/skill descriptors). Yeah, they're rolling in money and they started without so much as a tutorial.

It's pretty obvious to everyone reading your posts that you don't have any real grasp of the situation. I didn't say it was impossible, I said it almost was. To everyone with a brain this is clearly an exaggeration that means it would be very difficult or take a lot of time.

Things like having your weapons destroyed when your arms/torsos are destroyed makes perfect sense and is completely intuitive. It's very simple and easy to figure out. Having weapons destroyed because armor is stripped is less intuitive, but at the moment you die so fast once you lose armor in a location it doesn't really have that much effect on the game, and you can tell after a while "Oh, once my armor is gone, sometimes my weapons are destroyed before the body part is." That part of the game is conveyed to the player through gameplay pretty well.

Having heat sinks be more effective in water is completely irrelevant since SHS are complete garbage, and the effect is pretty marginal anyway. Incidentally, the fact that SHS are worthless is something that newer players can figure out pretty quickly if they look at their cooling ratio, but the fact that DHS in your engine cool 2.0 and everywhere else cools 1.4 is completely stupid and unintuitive.

Your WoT example is also irrelevant because those are things that don't show up to new players. The game teaches you its mechanics as you play it. There are edge cases at higher levels, but it's not a system like in MWO where a new player could buy a Jaeger with their cadet bonus, put one AC20 on it and do fine, and then put a second AC20 on it and overheat constantly for seemingly no reason.

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

As compared to a... completely unexplained mechanic? Seriously, you're saying it's counter intuitive because you don't agree with it, not because you can actually prove it's less intuitive than anything else in the battletech universe. "Hey, fired my lasers and my ammo blew up! lolz!"

It's incredible how little you understand. The point isn't that unexplained mechanics (in the sense that there isn't literally a manual you are forced to read about the feature before you can start playing) are bad, it's that unexplained mechanics that the game doesn't convey to you through the gameplay are bad.

[Kattspya]

To all those thinking or even saying this does anything to PPC's need to read the patch notes again. Currently it does nothing to 2ERPPC + 2PPC builds and will do nothing to 2ER/PPC + Gauss builds. People are just playing around with different layouts because they are tired of PPCs. But that is still what is best so that is what people will gravitate to. Maybe SRMs and more medium/heavy brawlers will counteract that.

hammerreborn, on 16 July 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

Well Paul did say anything big would die extremely fast to 2.0 srms, but still the community mashed that button. So...you really only have yourselves to blame.

That just means they haven't fixed the broken code for three months. I'd rate having working combat systems in a combat game fairly high on the list of things to fix. I wonder what the coders are doing.

I do not think heavies die too fast to SRMs. I need to play more and things need to stabilize. But without any other viable brawling weapons apart for the AC20 I think the SRMs should stay where they are for now. If they fix pulse lasers, or any of the lighter short range weapons then a debuff might be in order.

[TehSBGX]

About the flickering terrain fix and performance imnprovement. I've noticed that flickering terrain certainly seems fixed. But My performance varies wildly from map to map, on caustic for example it's down to 25 fps average instead of 40 but on frozen which I did experience flickering terrain most often my frame rate is still 40. I have Roughly 30 on canyon network instead of my usual 40. Is any one else experiencing a framerate decrease on certain maps?

Edited by TehSBGX, 16 July 2013 - 03:02 PM.

[fil5000]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

As compared to a... completely unexplained mechanic? Seriously, you're saying it's counter intuitive because you don't agree with it, not because you can actually prove it's less intuitive than anything else in the battletech universe. "Hey, fired my lasers and my ammo blew up! lolz!"

No, it's counter intuitive because it's not intuitive. Fire weapon, weapon generates heat and/or consumes ammo. These things can be gleaned by looking at the ammo and heat readouts in game or by watching the videos PGI has made. Establishing how much heat a given weapon generates can be intuited by firing one of them and looking at the heat meter go up. Working out how much heat capacity you have can be intuited by how many times you can fire that weapon once you've intuited how much heat it generates.

It should not be the case that firing two of a given weapon generates an extra amount of heat. Because that doesn't make sense. 2xAC/20 = 2xAC/20 heat. It does not equal 2xAC/20 + ???? where ??? is a number that has something to do with a number on a table in some patch notes THAT IS IN NO WAY EXPLAINED IN THOSE PATCH NOTES.

I'm not interested in whether or not it's more or less intuitive than things in the Battletech Universe, I'm interested in whether it's more or less intuitive than other things IN THIS GAME. And it's less intuitive for the reasons I've given you. Whether I like the mechanic or not isn't the point. I've not even mentioned that it doesn't actually fix anything up until this sentence, I'm addressing specifically the issue that it isn't signposted, explained or properly documented.

[MechFrog1]

Crimson Angel, on 16 July 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

"Sips from tea cup"

Ah, have waited so long for this.

"Sips from tea cup "

The finest tears for my cup, the tears of the ppc boater.

"Sips from tea cup"

No more 6 ppc for you my friend.

I have some really bad news for you...

[Ken Fury]

Horrace, on 16 July 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

I'm getting a refund for Phoenix, they seemed quite concerned I was unhappy and we had a nice email chat about it.

Can I talk to them about my state of unhappiness? Even if I didn't buy Phenix, but I could pretend I had bought it...

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Horrace, on 16 July 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

I'm getting a refund for Phoenix, they seemed quite concerned I was unhappy and we had a nice email chat about it.

Good for you.

[Kattspya]

Crimson Angel, on 16 July 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

"Sips from tea cup"

Ah, have waited so long for this.

"Sips from tea cup "

The finest tears for my cup, the tears of the ppc boater.

"Sips from tea cup"

No more 6 ppc for you my friend.

Noone uses 6PPCs. I haven't seen a six in quite some time. Usually four is max, sometimes less if they want more DPS than alpha.

[MaxStr]

Tank Boy Ken, on 16 July 2013 - 03:04 PM, said:

Can I talk to them about my state of unhappiness? Even if I didn't buy Phenix, but I could pretend I had bought it...

You can complain about new founder camo, then bait and switch them into discussing something else maybe?

[hammerreborn]

fil5000, on 16 July 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

This is a terrible comparison. The specific issue is that the "boating fix" is a badly explained mechanic that isn't shown AT ALL within the game. The UI literally has nowhere to show it. If you look at the heat generated by an AC/20 heat and look at how many heat sinks you have you can work out how many shots you can fire before you hit heat cap. Once you get into the game, you fire two and you generate DOUBLE the heat. This is not intuitive. Even if you read the patch notes, it isn't actually clear exactly WHAT will happen other than if you use more than one AC/20 a "scale multiplier" will kick in. And what exactly that means isn't defined in the patch notes.

If you put LRMs in your arm and your arm gets blown off, you lose the LRMs. Because they were in the arm. And the arm was blown off. This makes perfect sense.

The difference between these two seems fairly clear to me.

[REDACTED]

If you are going with a completely new player who knows nothing about the game (you're very argument relies on this), then firing 2 AC20s and generating double the heat would only seem normal to a new player AS THERE IS CURRENTLY NO INFORMATION IN THIS GAME THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CALCULATE HEAT DISSIPATION OR CAP.

The description for double heat sinks is this "increases heat dissipation per ton but takes 3 critcal slots". Not increases heat dissipation by 1.4 (ONLY OUTSIDE THE ENGINE!) or 2.0 (ONLY INSIDE THE ENGINE!), or increasing the heat cap similarly. The only indication of your heat dissapation is the heat efficiency bar which might as well not exist for how useful it is. There is nothing stating the base heat cap is 30, nothing stating how it increases, or if it even exists. The only thing that indicates how cool your mech will run is in game testing.

So my point is, if they can figure out their own heat cap/dissipation rate, then they've already been to the forums and can figure out the new heat scale.

Edited by Destined, 16 July 2013 - 04:31 PM.
Insults

[Chronojam]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:08 PM, said:

Don't be coy. Price is not strictly a financial value either. But while you're still putting words in my mouth then harassing me for things I'm not saying:

1 WRONG! Where did I say my friends tried it? Literacy, my friend, separates us from the animals. None of them have even been to this website. They DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES.

2) I get invited to 8 mans all the time when I'm online. I think your problem is how you treat people, not the ability to find a match in the game.

3) You're trying to argue intrinsic and extrinsic value to me. Nobody cares about how you will look back on this game in 20 years. That has no value to the developers. Nostalgia means you are no longer paying and therefore is a non-factor. Online games have little to no extrinsic factors. You don't actually get anything from playing the game. I guess you could print out your K/D ratio and frame it though.

That leaves what you are getting out of the game right this minute. That's the way all online games, especially micro transaction games, work. The value for PGI is what you spend, and the value for you is enjoy the game right that moment. Don't believe me? Try out some other micro transaction games. Look at how many items you pay real money for and expire - yet people buy them. Why? Because they are having fun with them right that moment without caring whether they'll be usable in 3 days. Thats why candy crush is raking in millions of dollars a month selling 5 more moves at $1 right when you run out... because people care more about that level that they are playing right that moment than whether the next level will be twice as hard.

You're lecturing me on literacy when you were complaining about PPC "laser boats" with "exploits" and fusion reactors leaving "nuclear craters." Pause for a moment to consider the ground you stand on here.

Anyhow, you're not the only person here who has friends who are grown up, have jobs, wives, kids, and all of that. Yet, somehow, many of us are able to cope and play. We must prioritize which games we give our scant hours to -- waiting over half an hour to find a match due to lack of players is therefore a major factor that has caused a sense of general disinterest. Player retention should be paramount. Secondary or tertiary queue systems, forcing people to wait to have exactly-eight to drop in a larger group, these kinds of things contribute to making it harder to get in a match quick..

I know you'd like to pretend that my time spent waiting for an 8-man is time spent trying to find a group to play with, but the truth is, there simply aren't enough other exactly-8-man teams looking for a match. We can't expect them to sit on standby, watching "Searching for a match" for an hour. They don't have time, we don't have time, wives, kids, etc.

Players need to hold interest, or it becomes a failure cascade. Not finding a match means you don't keep trying to find a match, and will leave before another 8-man finally shows up. Why do we try? Because we like Mechs enough to keep trying and keep caring. Not about MechWarrior Online necessarily because we're being continually disappointed, but about Mechs and MechWarrior. That's what's keeping most of us here, that's why I mentioned nostalgia. To be fair, there were several good months during closed beta which you could argue we are nostalgic for.

Bullshit new mechanics don't make players stick around, though! Fixing the problems would.

[Bishop Steiner]

Haven't run it in match yet, but I notice my Medium Pulse seem to be escalating in Testing Ground. I have 3 on my new VTR-9k. Anyone else see this?

[101011]

Guess this will be my new loadout until the 30th: Quad PPC Blackjack

[Gwaihir]

Bishop Steiner, on 16 July 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

Haven't run it in match yet, but I notice my Medium Pulse seem to be escalating in Testing Ground. I have 3 on my new VTR-9k. Anyone else see this?

None of your heat talents work in testing grounds. Neither does ambient heat on maps. That would be your difference.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Bishop Steiner, on 16 July 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

Haven't run it in match yet, but I notice my Medium Pulse seem to be escalating in Testing Ground. I have 3 on my new VTR-9k. Anyone else see this?

Testing grounds are fubar for weapon testing.

I think this is on purpose after what happened with missiles.

That turned into a giant cluster of unnecessary hot fixes to help out spiders and commando's, which is funny since now Spider's have a messed up hitbox in the other direction.

[Gwaihir]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 16 July 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

Testing grounds are fubar for weapon testing.

Yes, missiles do double damage on testing grounds compared to live.

[Chronojam]

Dawnstealer, on 16 July 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Going to be interesting with people running the AC2/UAC5 macros and how fast they'll overheat.

Looking forward to playing this - might be changing up a few of my builds and I'm not even really boating anything. Even as a Stalker pilot, I never loaded up the 6PPC version. Now I feel like I missed out.

Even so? GLAD they tweaked it, glad they're still tweaking things, and this is really starting to feel like a great game coming together. I'm going to be ecstatic when 12v12 hits and hopefully we hear a bit more about community warfare.

Good job, PGI!

Aren't the people using jam-avoidance and overheat-avoidance macros going to continue to not-jam and not-overheat? .

Isn't that explicitly the advantage the macro confers? I don't see how making macro use more effective diminishes macro use, the heat change specifically targets people who rely on the game's built-in group fire.

[hammerreborn]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Translation: I think you're stupid because I have an opinion you don't agree with. Your facts aren't right because I say they aren't right, and everyone knows that you can disprove a point just by saying it's not valid or your example is flawed.

Your counter points are laughable. Really, water cooling SHS doesn't have to be intuitive because they're garbage? Since when do entire functions of the game become relevant based on your perception of their value?

Fact: Your saying new players won't find the new heat system intuitive. Fair enough.
Fact: New players are going to start with trial mechs and SINGLE HEAT SINKS.
Fact: Those heat sinks are more effective when in water.
Fact: Nothing tells the player that - it's not intuitive.
Fact: You said that the function doesn't need to be intuitive because they're garbage anyway.
Fact: That garbage is extremely important to new players.

So lets get this straight... your entire argument is that the new heat system is difficult to grasp for new players and is therefore bad, but new players can go screw themselves when it comes to the heat sinks they are literally forced to play with for 10+ games because you think they're garbage anyway? Sounds more like you're conjuring excuses for a build that was just invalidated through a very thin attempt to help "the new guys."

The rest of your post is pretty self serving and not worth my time. I have to run off for a meeting anyway.

Not to mention the fact that the current heat system is completely unintuative in the first place...so his point is moot.

[Chronojam]

hammerreborn, on 16 July 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

I can't hear you over the sound of your ********.

If you are going with a completely new player who knows nothing about the game (you're very argument relies on this), then firing 2 AC20s and generating double the heat would only seem normal to a new player AS THERE IS CURRENTLY NO INFORMATION IN THIS GAME THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CALCULATE HEAT DISSIPATION OR CAP.

The description for double heat sinks is this "increases heat dissipation per ton but takes 3 critcal slots". Not increases heat dissipation by 1.4 (ONLY OUTSIDE THE ENGINE!) or 2.0 (ONLY INSIDE THE ENGINE!), or increasing the heat cap similarly. The only indication of your heat dissapation is the heat efficiency bar which might as well not exist for how useful it is. There is nothing stating the base heat cap is 30, nothing stating how it increases, or if it even exists. The only thing that indicates how cool your mech will run is in game testing.

So my point is, if they can figure out their own heat cap/dissipation rate, then they've already been to the forums and can figure out the new heat scale.

So your argument is essentially "There are problems and obscure mechanics, so it is safe to introduce problems and obscure mechanics." This sounds absurd on paper, so I would like to ask you to clarify your position.

[Lemming]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Translation: I think you're stupid because I have an opinion you don't agree with. Your facts aren't right because I say they aren't right, and everyone knows that you can disprove a point just by saying it's not valid or your example is flawed.

Your counter points are laughable. Really, water cooling SHS doesn't have to be intuitive because they're garbage? Since when do entire functions of the game become relevant based on your perception of their value?

Fact: Your saying new players won't find the new heat system intuitive. Fair enough.
Fact: New players are going to start with trial mechs and SINGLE HEAT SINKS.
Fact: Those heat sinks are more effective when in water.
Fact: Nothing tells the player that - it's not intuitive.
Fact: You said that the function doesn't need to be intuitive because they're garbage anyway.
Fact: That garbage is extremely important to new players.

So lets get this straight... your entire argument is that the new heat system is difficult to grasp for new players and is therefore bad, but new players can go screw themselves when it comes to the heat sinks they are literally forced to play with for 10+ games because you think they're garbage anyway? Sounds more like you're conjuring excuses for a build that was just invalidated through a very thin attempt to help "the new guys."

The rest of your post is pretty self serving and not worth my time. I have to run off for a meeting anyway.

You have, again, managed to miss the point of my post. SHS being more effective in water is irrelevant in part because the effect on the game is extremely marginal. There are not many places where the effect is available, and even when it is, it doesn't affect the cooldown on your mech to a significant degree.

I agree that it is pretty unintuitive, but the major reason that it's irrelevant in this argument is that you brought it up as a game mechanic that is not intuitive, therefore it's fine to add other game mechanics that are also unintuitive. That is a pretty terrible position to take when the unintuitive system that is already in the game is pretty low impact and the unintuitive system being added to the game is pretty high impact on several builds that people actually play with (dual AC/20 builds, 3+ LL builds, etc), while not actually improving the balancing or making the game better in any way.