461 replies to this topic

[Roheryn]

arghmace, on 18 July 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

When shooting at a moving mech and/or you yourself are moving it makes all the difference in the world. 2 shots between half a sec are quite likely to not hit the same section if you blunder your aim even a bit.

I have only played a few matches in my ac40 jager since the patch, so it is too small a sample to draw from, but honestly I am not having any problem hitting the same section except on lights (combination of size speed and poor hit detection on lights).

Either way I just don't find it to be sufficiently punitive at .5secs.

[Razuko]

Soooo much QQ in here people losing their iWin buttons... Ermagherd now you actually have to try!

I've been loving most of the matches I've been in since the patch, exception to going up against teams full of LRMs since I prefer to brawl. Many matches have left me with parts glowing orange\red but still intact.The longer mech's live the more fun the match is, now they don't have to go and double the armor\internal values again due to the 'bull feces' alpha strikes. People are actually getting up in your face and scrambling rather than taking pop shots from halfway across the map the whole round.

It's forced people to have more balanced builds that aren't one trick ponies which is better for your team, Now there's less need to babysit baddies in their ppc\lrm boats so they don't get 'unwillingly forced into sexual intercorse' by fast mechs. Ya ya I know "let me play what I wanna play!". Problem is the way you wanna play adversely effects everyone else's enjoyment, ergo you are the problem, and you must be punished.

PPC: are much better and will be great on the 30th

AC40: are fine, it's easy as hell to keep on for an extra .5 seconds, just chain fire and hold the button down. People that claim they were hard to play because of the range are full of it. All you did or had to do was walk around objects or follow behind your team then wait until everyone is mixing it up and then go in and 'force sexual intercourse' face...They are actually pretty boring to play, this at least might make them a little more interesting but I doubt it. But then I run a max engine AC5\ML Firebrand so tastes may differ.

LL: at first I thought they should be bumped to 3 or 4 but I fire left vs right on my quad LL stalker anyways and didn't take hardly any adjustment since I already alternate to manage heat, The things even let you know when you can fire the next set based on the sound of the laser if you pay attention.

SSRM: they might not CT as much but they are now useful for legging lights which in turn makes them dead in the water. I like it.

Anyone that needs a macro to wait .5 seconds is just terrible anyways. You wouldn't even really benefit anything being that you have a 4 sec cooldown right after. You'll even waste heat and cooldown using it if the target does something crazy like moving... Far better off just firing a different group when you know you're on target. The AC\2 macro actually serves a purpose in being faster than chainfire to keep sustained dakka in someone's face so that they see anything.

My only gripes are the movement changes need to be dialed back a bit, There's terrain that mechs should clearly be able to walk up but can't(river city right path to upper...). Which has added to the greater occurrence of LRMs which I personally detest. Sitting in the back behind cover firing guided ordnance while someone else takes all the risk of getting hit for you... 'vaginal feces!' Also the new trend of full centurion lances\teams is pretty redonkulous... Dunno if the hitboxes are jacked up like people claim but gd trying to fight a pack full of those is frustrating.


Lastly, this isn't the fracking table top... Balance\Fun > Cannon\Lore. Get over it.

Edited by Razuko, 18 July 2013 - 08:11 AM.

[Waylander40K]

Like that you are trying to solve the issues, i.e. boating; but would much prefer a simpler more logical system to fix it.

e.g.
remove this extra heat system altogether

Replace with:

2 x AC/20’s
-cannot be fired together, i.e. firing 1 locks out the other one for 0.5 seconds
(logic; meches/targeting system cannot handle the recoil of duel firing).

PPC/ERPPC/laser etc…
- e.g. firing 2 of any PPC type locks out PPC’s for 0.5secs
(i.e. energy recharge effect or in other words a mech cannot power more than 2 simultaneously)

Guass
Introduce a minimum range (which, I believe is in the lore for this weapon)

-----------------------------------
Do like that damage now takes place the moment you overheat.

Edited by Waylander40K, 18 July 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[Tsenado]

all I see now are the lights hunting down shutdown mechs, with no SSRMers hunting them, literally.

medium mech drivers enjoying the freewill of not getting owned instantly, and very few (only the med laser boats) are getting hit by this "heat scale addition". Start to wonder if this idea of heat adjustments are coming from these guys.

heavy and assault drivers, sorry bud, you are getting owned here, you are now playing a chainfire mech, gauss sniper or LRM boat, with all these little mechs running around you. Try to enjoy your time when you get the "Heat Warning" and "Shutdown Engaged Heat Limit Exceeded", have a cookie or a cup of coffee next to you, time will go faster.

new players/casuals are getting owned by overheating, not knowing wtf is going on cause they don't read the forums.

Edited by Tsenado, 18 July 2013 - 08:14 AM.

[Sephlock]

Sephlock, on 18 July 2013 - 02:51 AM, said:

Then it occurred to me that a n00b is going to hop into this game, get massacred in a trial mech, pick one he likes, buy it, load more than 2 large lasers or ppcs on it, and explode the second he pulls the trigger.

Oh wait, this solves an age old mystery!



Look closely; he fires four PPCs!

He didn't get one-shotted: he overheated!

(Pause at 0:37 and you can count four ppc bolts.. unless that's just an artifact of the video compression- although I always remembered there being four...).

Noob shoulda torso twisted and evaded until he cooled down a bit instead of trying to fire a second quad ppc volley...

[Sephlock]

Also what is the cadet saying at around the 24 second mark (a bit after that).

Arm and hip actuators out?

[Razerbeast]

The patch proves PGI's lack of imagination in fixing some preceived problem.

[MustrumRidcully]

Another observation on the system.

The crucial "dial" seems to be max alpha. It doesn't look to me if the "heat scale multiplier" has much importance. It is there to implement the max alpha, but I don't think you will find many people that will actually equip and fire weapons so that they take that penalty.

The best example is the AC/20. It moves from a 12 heat alpha to a 30 alpha with the system. Basically 2 AC/20 produce the heat of 5. This trade-off is basically never worth it, unless it's this shot or your mech gets killed. (But at that point, will be you fast enough to switch from chain-fire to group-fire, and will your weapons be off cooldown so you can actually fire? Seems very unlikely, so even if it would have been a good choice, it will likely not be taken because the player won't react fast enough.)

So I am not sure if you shouldn't just keep the max_alpha value and instead of applyng a heat penalty, simply disallow firing any more weapons in that 0.5 second timeframe then allowed by max alpha. Basically, a kind of 0.5 cooldown enforced by the server.

Otherwise, the system has a lot of unneeded complexity. The other option is finding penalty values that are actually worth the trade-off.

My number is more a guess, but I'd say a "multiplier" of 9 might be sensible. Then the total heat of a Dual AC/20 alpha would be 21, equivalent of shooting 3 AC/20s. That's an interesting trade-off.

If you don't want it to be an interesting trade-off, then just don't use the heat penalty, just forbid alphaing more than max_alpha of any weapon.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 18 July 2013 - 12:43 PM.

[DeaconW]

Razerbeast, on 18 July 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

The patch proves PGI's lack of imagination in fixing some preceived problem.

Actually I think the opposite...it is an overly complex fix from an *overactive* imagination. . oh well, here's hoping they rollback this fix the same way they did the JJ shake...c'mon PGI...I know you can fix the high alpha thing without the heat scale..end perfect convergence, then use the tools you already have to balance weapons...heat, projectile speed, ammo per ton, crit space, weight...pls use those things, not this heat scale idea. A humble request from a passionate player who simply wants this game to succeed.

[Almighty Mania]

Personally i think its a good change , it seems to encourage more diverse builds and seems compatible with the canon battletech universe.
Keep up the good work PGI !

...and to everyone else, stop crying about balance changes until at least after the game comes out of beta!

[Lugh]

Sephlock, on 18 July 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

Also what is the cadet saying at around the 24 second mark (a bit after that).

Arm and hip actuators out?

That is a feature that was in all previous MW titles that hasn't made it into this one yet....

[Mad Cow Jenkins]

Its a dirty hack that is not a "good enough" solution, i would rather have time penalties/delay for using certain weapons as has been stated by others, it won't directly fix boating but it would make it possible to reduce the effect of them.
AC20 shot gives a 500 ms delay where no other weapon is fired. PPC a 200 ms delay, large laser 50 ms etc. (Dunno if the sound would end up stupid though)
Then when alpha/group fire take them in order lowest delay to largest, i think that will lead to a more natural setup where you would try an have some low delay weapons.
The rest of the balance would have to be with heat, range, speed, cooldown, ammo, crit etc. i mean that should give enough tools.
You can even start differentiating certain mech with different delays, like AWS low delay on energy weapons to give them some special property (yeah i have a bunch of them and they are collecting dust).

Edited by Mad Cow Jenkins, 18 July 2013 - 01:32 PM.

[JP Alpha]

The LL scale penalty should be >3, not >2.

[Bloody Moon]

DeaconW, on 18 July 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Actually I think the opposite...it is an overly complex fix from an *overactive* imagination.

They simply took the idea from an overly anti-boat community member (the idea itself circulated on the forums for months). That is not what i would call overactive imagination. However i wouldn't mind that if they'd have taken one of the sensible options presented by the community instead of this abomination. Rest assured there were plenty of those.

[Joseph Mallan]

Niko Snow, on 16 July 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Tell us what you think of the new Heat Scale Additions!

Spoiler

Heat Scale Addition
Heat scale has been added to certain weapon systems. This is a heat penalty applied to weapons that are fired in an Alpha Strike manner. The following chart shows the MAXIMUM number of that weapon type that you can fire at the same time with no heat penalty.

Weapon System	Max No-Heat Penalty Alpha	Scale Multiplier
PPC	2	7.0
ERPPC	2	4.5
ML	6	1.0
LL	2	2.8
AC/20	1	24.0
SSRM	4	1.0
SRM2	4	1.0
SRM4	4	1.0
SRM6	3	1.0
LRM15	2	2.8

Maximum Heat Threshold
You will now take internal damage at 100+% heat. Reduced from 120%

This is the stupidest thing since 90's Solaris 7 Cyclic rates! Only some weapons are penalized? Stick it to everyone or nobody. This does nothing to to fix the problem. I can still deliver 67 damage with my Atlas and suffer 0 Heat penalties firing 6-7 weapons. The DEVs are totally doing it wrong.

[Mystere]

DeaconW, on 18 July 2013 - 04:14 AM, said:

Besides your excellent n00b point also consider this: This heat scale nerf/buff mechanic will not be constant. It will now change continuously as people vie to nerf weapons that they don't like and advocate ones they do...so which weapons are "good" or "bad" will now be on spin cycle...so they will "fix" the "LRM loophole" next month...and then the "Gauss boating" (evidently 2 of the same weapon type is now "boating"...have you noticed? As ridiculous as saying 2xAC20 is "boating") If it goes the way I fear, pretty much the only weapons we will be able to have more than one of without penalty in 3 months are MG's and small lasers....and there will be people crying about those...

The weapon "spin cycle", as you called it, has already been around even before the new heat penalty mechanic. It's nothing new.

[DeaconW]

Rippthrough, on 18 July 2013 - 04:37 AM, said:

People are already crying about machineguns ffs....

Really? Wow...hadn't seen that.

[Mystere]

DeaconW, on 18 July 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

Really? Wow...hadn't seen that.

I saw that one too. But, I don't know if the OP was really serious or just trolling.

[DeaconW]

Mystere, on 18 July 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

The weapon "spin cycle", as you called it, has already been around even before the new heat penalty mechanic. It's nothing new.

True...but adding another layer in which to "spin" doesn't help...it just obfuscates how to really balance the game. The tools they already have weren't even tried after HSR was fixed.

[Orzorn]

Villz, on 17 July 2013 - 11:04 PM, said:

make engine size dictate the total capacity of heat on a mech. Add another layer of risk reward to XL engines!

No, none of this. engine size is already disproportionately supporting large engines because of the ability to put your heat sinks in the engine.

I think the heat cap should be a static 30.

Edited by Orzorn, 18 July 2013 - 03:41 PM.