461 replies to this topic

[Sandarbian]

I think you guys need to go back to designing Hello Kitty for the I1 phone and let the big boys design MWO......

[Bloody Moon]

Mystere, on 19 July 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

Well, unfortunately, that's the closest poll on the topic. Of course, you can start a new one. Are you up to it?

The mods deleted all the polls on the topic before that one.

[BPM]

Burpitup, on 17 July 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

My goodness this game is getting boring. Same thing happened to Battlestar Galactica online. they made each side completely equal, listened to all the whiners and nerfed all the good builds. Then they wonder why no one plays it anymore. Same thing will happen here. They will make the game unplayable here too if they keep listening to all the whiners that can't stay alive.

well said,top man
really all about pinpoint! and you know why? coz them little sniveling whiners cant really play/AIM,"and you realized your just not very goood at this game!",,,,, so whin away whiners........ you wil stil get torn to bits!

see you out there


BPM


PS ....... 10 DAYS TIL THE NEXT PPC NERF.....AND YOU WIL STIL GET RIPPED TO BITS

OUT........................................................................

[valkyrie]

Let me just say two little things, both of which are very important:

1. You can still boat weapons effectively. We've gone from "instadeath by PPCs" to "slightly slower death by PPCs". Woohoo, time for Vegas, gotta relax from all that hard work!

2. You have just completely screwed anyone who didn't read this week's patch notes and is purchasing a canon boat 'Mech, both now and in the future. Because this isn't documented anywhere, any new player who buys an PPC-based Awesome or HBK-4P is going to start getting slapped around by the heat issue and never have any idea why it's happening, then get frustrated and probably quit.

I think the heat restrictions are a good start, but for the love of god, START MAKING THIS STUFF OBVIOUS TO NEW PLAYERS. Or, you could've gone the alternate route and given us hardpoint sizes which are obvious in the MechLab and legitimize obsolete chassis, but that would be the smart thing to do and require some serious effort, so that's not happening.

Edited by valkyrie, 19 July 2013 - 10:45 PM.

[Flying Judgement]

the awesome need some love ... the 9m is quiet useless even more than it was... its a 3 ppc boat. it need different heat management its made to shoot 3 ppc how on earth can i shoot 3 ppc in a cicada ???? With the same heat effects? . . .
shall i take out one ppc???? like my 2 ppc spider? LOL LOOOLLLLLLLL it lives the same long on a battlefield do to its size
can u imagine the spider with two of the awesome arm mounted on the spider right arm................................................


stalkers didnt made for 6 ppc's... nor a spider for 2 or a cicada

how about the laser hunch ? its made to shot 6 lasers as a single cannon...
why can i shoot 6 lasers in the same way in a 2A cicada

different mechs need different unique abilities

[Jack Starborn]

heat penalties is BS --> just implement this PGI
http://www.qqmercs.com/?p=2780
(you don't even have to think, this guy did it for you for free)

[Flying Judgement]

the awesome is a 3 ppc boat not more not less it was a horrible mech now its just unplayable... as it intended. ssrm cant core the weakened brawlers what is fine but i cant shoot my 3 ppc in this giant guy made for 3 ppc man ............ i usualy chain fire them but sometimes its needed to shot all 3 at once now i just shot down from 1 alpha... really

Edited by Flying Judgement, 19 July 2013 - 11:58 PM.

[Flying Judgement]

some mechs need different heat scaleing the awesome made for 3 ppc not for two with two pps i rather chose my spider with no armor running 151 no one can hit it
this cicada haveing the same heat scale as the awesome? .... well if some one would hit the fire button in that cicada it would be melted like a chocolate bunny in a hot summer day.
pls dont apply the same rule to all the mechs all of them are specialized in something
like the laser hunch in the cicada 2A i can shoot the same weapons with no penalty like the hunch what is made for those lasser boating
my Cicada 2A have 38 alpha and less heat issues than my 39 alpha Awesome !!!! ....

[Koniving]

Drakari, on 16 July 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

I would have much preferred they just get PPCs to spread their damage to adjacent components like Koniving suggested, and maybe a bump to their base heat. Really, they were the only weapons I had a problem with due to their ability to do massive, concentrated, burst damage at any range while having only moderate weight and size and being mountable in ridiculously common hardpoints. Gauss is more than twice the weight, more than twice the slots, and only 50% more damage, plus has limited ammo and explodes; seems fair. AC/20 has much shorter range, few possible mounting points even without considering the weight, and burns through its ammo fast if you miss.

PPCs are still high-tier weapons, none of the low-tier weapons were helped in any way, and many weapons that were previously fine got nerfed.

NGNG 79, 32 to 40 minutes in. That's a long term plan but first they must rewrite the cry engine's base explosive weapons script. But it's not something they can do 'now' to alleviate the PPC issue.

But working on that would have been much more productive than this heat scale thing.

[Koniving]

Drakari, on 19 July 2013 - 06:48 AM, said:

The problem is still the fact that people can put a lot of damage on CT without much of it hitting anywhere else. When you look at what weapons are the worst for that, it's AC/20 and PPCs. The solution? Make them spread their damage. Koniving has a lot of great ideas about pretty much everything, including a suggestion that the AC/20 be replaced with one or more burst-fire variants that do the same damage but spread it out over time (supported by the lore), and the PPCs just getting their damage spread around as splash (supported by the visual effects). The Gauss rifle would remain unchanged; it is extremely heavy, very few mechs can mount more than 2, it needs ammo for additional slots and weight, and it adds a weakpoint that can do heavy damage to your own mech when destroyed.

From what I've heard, PGI is working on fixing splash damage since their previous implementation was borked but ended up being too tied into other systems to easily change it. No word on burst-fire auto cannons.

Obviously you know about this, but since you mentioned it I figure it's worth throwing in here for those who didn't know about or see it.

So far the general consensus in response is keep the single shot AC/20 as well (turns out the King Crab does use it but that's because it's a long, wide, short mech with lots of horizontal area and not much vertical area; significantly shorter than a Stalker but far wider than an Awesome, and a huge circular bullseye from the top -- lrms anyone?).

An almost unanimous suggestion has been to change the DPS of the singleshot to 4, which is 5 seconds of reloading between shots.
All multi-shot AC/20s keep a DPS of 5.

Then factor in recoil and make minor tweaks as we go along.

[CrashieJ]

Rippthrough, on 19 July 2013 - 05:18 AM, said:

I agree with most of that, the only think I would say is to set both DHS and SHS to a threshold value of 1.0, or perhaps 0.9* to cope with pilot skill additions. (You could do the same with heatsinks, make the DHS 1.9 dissipation)
The devs said they were looking for a way to make SHS useful, well now there is, you can run a lot of SHS and have a higher cap and terrible dissipation, or DHS with a lower cap and good dissipation.

Bingo, both are useful, heat issues are solved, massive alphas are gone, the convoluted heat cap system can go in the bin where it belongs - and snipers can still use SHS for a higher heat cap to fire a few PPC's off, but get punished for it by being incredibly vulnerable to brawlers and lights.
And SHS's are a viable choice instead of DHS being an instant, immediate upgrade for any mech.


*The actual numbers will probably need to be lower, just an example.





Of course, this can't be viable as I'm apparently a basement dweller and hence must be wrong.

with 1.5 million Cbills you can upgrade yourself to Double-BasementDwellers... or at least 1.4

[arghmace]

Razuko, on 19 July 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

dunno why people still can't grasp this, they kinda spelled it out in the original heat scale announcement.

the values have changed but its still the same concept.
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2442114



example: ppc scale is 7 heat added to every shot fired over 2 within .5 seconds, so ...

1 ppc = 8 heat (8x1)
2 ppc = 16 heat (8x2)
3 ppc = 24 heat + 7 heat = 31 heat (8x3 + 7x1)
4 ppc = 32 heat + 14 heat = 46 heat (8x4 + 7x2)
5 ppc = 40 heat + 21 heat = 61 heat (8x5 + 7x3)
6 ppc = 48 heat + 29 heat = 77 heat (8x6 + 7x4)

and so on.

scale multiplayer times number of shots fired over the set limit, added to the total heat.

The reason why people haven't grasped this is the fact that this is not how it goes.

First of all I would like to point out that in the original announcement 3rd, 4th and 5th PPC gave each a penalty of 10 while the 6th gave a penalty of 20. While not exactly exponential when talking math, even arbitrary increasing penalties can be called "exponential" in everyday speech, I suppose. You will notice that in your formulas this is not the case, the heat penalties that you claim are completely linear.

Now for some tests. I rolled out a 4 PPC Atlas out with 19 DHS = 75.12 heat capacity.

1 PPC's fired: 12% heat
2 PPC's fired: 24% heat
3 PPC's fired: 53% heat
4 PPC's fired: 93% heat

When we change those percentages to heat we get:
1 PPC's fired: 9 heat
2 PPC's fired: 18 heat
3 PPC's fired: 40 heat
4 PPC's fired: 70 heat

Weird thing here is that according to my test PPC heat actually seems to be 9 instead of 8, huh. Well let's assume that true.

1 PPC's fired: 9
2 PPC's fired: 18
3 PPC's fired: 27 + 13 penalty
4 PPC's fired: 36 + 34 penalty

How do these tests fit into your formulas, pray tell? How can we get those numbers with a scale multiplier 7 unless there are many more multipliers and weird things in the formula used by PGI?

[arghmace]

OK, I was just informed that the math is now available, good job:
http://mwomercs.com/...cale-the-maths/

The extra heat I get in the above post must be from the map. I tested in River City which I've always thought to be heat neutral, but I guess not. It obviously makes the mechs run hotter than base numbers suggest.

EDIT: River City seems to be about 15% hotter than neutral. That way my tests fit the formula provided my Paul.

Edited by arghmace, 20 July 2013 - 07:09 AM.

[DeaconW]

How this game mechanic addition looks in personal auto repair terms. An allegorical tale, if you will...yes, I've got too much free time on my hands...thx for asking!

(Driver walks into an auto repair shop)

Driver: "Excuse me, Sir? I need some help."

(auto shop owner looks up from the open shipping box he was deeply focused on)

Auto Shop Owner: "Oh, I'm sorry...just got a new shipment of pine-scented air fresheners...probably the most important part of this business! You wanna buy one?"

Driver: "Um...No."

Owner: "Oh...OK. Then what can I do for you?"

Driver: "My front left tire is low on air. I noticed it was pulling a little to the left and you can visibly see the tire is low".

Owner: "OK, well let's go have a look."

(Both walk outside to view the vehicle)

Owner (after closely examining the vehicle): "Hmmm...how long can you leave it?"

Driver: "Leave it? The tire just needs some air. You have a compressor right over there."

Owner: "No, this job is going to be more complicated than that. We'll need to weld the driver's side door shut first."

Driver: "Weld the door shut?!? For a tire with low air pressure? Whatever for?"

Owner: "Well, it'll need to become part of the structural support for the car. So, yeah, it'll have to be welded shut and reinforced before we bolt the one arm axle to the door."

Driver:" One arm axle? What in the <expletive> are you talking about...the tire is LOW ON AIR...just fill it up!"

Owner: "Yeah, that tire is low on air, but what we are going to do is bolt a new axle to the drivers side door with a new wheel to provide the needed support you got from your fully inflated tire before it lost some air. Plus you'll have five wheels...that's better than four. More stable."

Driver: "You have got to be kidding me...JUST PUT AIR IN THE TIRE! How would that affect the handling anyway...how would I STEER?"

Owner: "Oh, you'd need to come back a month after I do this initial work and tell me about the handling...then I can decide what to do with the steering. We could probably put the new wheel on a swivel like an office chair...but I'd need more data to see if that could work."

Driver: "We are done..I am going to take my car somewhere else!"

(Driver storms off)

Owner: "I don't get it...that extra wheel would totally fix his problem...plus I didn't even get the chance to tell him what I was going to throw in for free. I was going to black out all the windows and then put a camera on a welded rod attached to his rear bumper that goes up 15 feet in the air looking down at a 30 degree angle...you know, so he can have a "Third Person View" of his car to drive. Driving a car in third person is way better than the view from the dashboard."

(Pause as owner goes back to the pine-scented air freshener box)

Owner: "Oh man...he didn't even buy a pine-scented air freshener!"

(fade to black)

[Meta 2013]

Let the book burning begin. Sadly I bought the phoenix package before I realized the ludcrious way PGI choose to deal with PPC boats.

While we are not quite to the point of just making 4 stock mechs with no customization other than paint, that is where they are driving this. With every patch, the ability to build a mech and run it the way you want slips away. This fix to heat is just plain silly. If your at 5% of your max heat, and your heat sinks are not saturated to capacity, how can you possibly take a heat penalty.

The fix to the problem was extremely simple, without limiting the rest of us for no reason. So, one has to wonder which of the 2 choices drove this decission, either PGI doesn't think thier coders are smart enough to come up with a real solution, or they don't want to spend any more developement money on the issue. Or both.

This fix has nothing to do with addressing the problem, its a managment decission to not expend anymore resources to this problem.

The simple answer was to cause random :permanit destruction of a component when you exceed X heat level over 100% if you engage override.

Now you run the risk of blowing that pricey xl engine, or maybe just lrm ammo. Roll them dice! - maybe exclude engines ..but nothing else.

set the non override limit at 120% ... you exceed that ...poof something blows up that you will have to buy again. and blow up another random component for each additional 10% you go over 120%.

Now for those who gamble with the over ride button ... when THEY hit 100% start the random component destruct.

Will you still run into a 6 ppc stalker... yes untill he/she cannot afford to replace the ones that blow.

ALSO on top of those penalties - once 120% is reached ... engine should take non permanit damage and slow your speed like you where legged. Weapons should deal half power. After all your power plant is now damaged.

Next on top of that, at 101% you should lose random electronics ... oh like your hud! or targeting, or that sezmic sensor, maybe that target decay stops working for the round ... how good is that 4 or 6 ppc stalker now. Maybe the wires going to the ppc in the right arm fry from the over heat. Each subsquent over heat should increase the chance of losing items, and increase the item count chance for loss. Yes this require more coding - so we probably won't see it, but it would be more realistic, and not punish those that manage heat activily.

So yes he has 6 ppcs which after the first over heat now only deal the power of 3 ppcs for the rest of the match, or untill he over heats again and his power halves again. - simple solution, allows the person to run and shoot what they want at the're own risk.

and nothing says you cannot make that cumlative should he/she over heat again... second time noob boy fires the 6 ppcs and over heats ... he's down to 1.5 ppc power.

Scale the in battle effects for over heating, not nerf the game for operating within your normal heat range. Thats just wrong and a very bad way to try and balance a game.

Penalizing folks when they have not even exceeded their max heat is just a lazy bussiness desision, or lack of coding skill sets.

Given HSR doesn't work , little mechs can still take 3 times the beating of a large mech, and now you take damage from shots that miss. The fact Quake, and then Valve, got this right 20 years ago ...well some coding skills/creative ability could be in question.

More likely a money thing by management - but only they know the real truth.

There are so many other ways to approach and fix this problem without penalizing those who manage heat and are not following cheese of the week --- splat cats return. Your way strangles loads that aren't even close to cheese. Also 6 medium lasers can do 30 damage, yet 2 large lazers only do 18 .... umm even 3 large lasers only do 27 ... why are you hitting those so hard?

so guys, let them (the cheese) roll the dice, don't strangle us up front. Its no differnt than pushing redline ... you know the risk... you know the poteinal gain, its your choice... Roll them dice. But no crying when you have to replace that 600k ppc.

Meta

[Rippthrough]

Why have we got an official feedback thread when the devs dismiss it all as just 'noise' anyway?

Edited by Rippthrough, 20 July 2013 - 03:03 PM.

[keith]

Rippthrough, on 20 July 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

Why have we got an official feedback thread when the devs dismiss it all as just 'noise' anyway?

because the devs know better then ppl who play the game longer then they work on it. not that i do it any more, it in such a **** shape:P

[LCCX]

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%

tldr; The weapon restrictions are unrealistic and frustrating in a way which significantly detracts from the fun and immersion far more than it improves any gameplay balance issues. Please just roll it back; really, it is horrible. The heat-damage threshold reduction is good though.

Long Read:
I've had a chance to play with this patch for quite a few matches now. I believe I understand the issues that this patch was intended to help resolve - game balance, weapon variety, loadout variety, build variety, the preeminence of "alpha-strike" damage, etc. I also appreciate that the game is barrelling towards the "Out of Beta!" deadline, perhaps necessitating brave leaps at improving gameplay and game balance before that date when another round of professional reviews can be expected and, for better or worse, will potentially have a significant impact on the short-term and medium-term financial success of this game/product and thereby the financial position of your company(ies). However, I personally believe that this particular change (artificially limiting weapon selection and loadouts without even the slightest attempt at in-game rationalization) ultimately did not work out in the best interests of the game or player community. It is true that the intended/targeted builds got nerfed and it feels like there has been a little less alpha-striking. However, I think that may have happened simply from the heat-damage threshold reduction. Also, the cost of this change is not as easily calculated as some game-balance statistic, because the cost is in the immersion, accessibility, and fun. It breaks immersion big-time because it makes no sense that I can have 2 PPCs and 2 ERPPCs but not 4 PPCs (admittedly the most extreme example), no previous Battletech or MechWarrior games had this or anything similar, and players have to leave the game to come look at this list until they have memorized how many of which weapons are permitted since there is no indication as to the limits in the mechlab. It hurts accessibility because the mechanic isn't something anyone could reasonably be expected to guess would exist within the game. It additionally reduces the fun of the game due to the feeling of arbitrariness of this rule. As has already been mentioned above, this even hits "stock" and "canon" builds, which feels wrong. It is certainly bad for the game if there exists a one-true-build situation, but the battlefield had not gotten to that point. This is worse. It was an okay idea and it was acceptable to give it a try, but it did not work out. Please just roll this change back.

The heat-damage threshold reduction, on the other hand, is excellent. It punishes excessive alpha-striking, adds value to the player-skill of heat management and monitoring, and adds a convenient in-game explanation as to why the mech would automatically shut down at such-and-such heat level. It would be nice if there were an additional alert when heat was causing internal damage and if the overheat override could be a permanent toggle rather than a temporary override.

[Edit: I just saw this and I hope you see it too: http://www.qqmercs.com/?p=2780 ]

Edited by LCCX, 20 July 2013 - 07:14 PM.

[Burpitup]

i understand why the heat scale was done. People walking around with 6ppc's is a large amount of damage. i could kill just about any light mech with one shot. I even understand why you did it to the ac 40 set up, but i think it is a little rediculous that it was nerfed so much more than the rest. when i am getting close to my heat limit and i am about to get some one down so i shoot both guns at the same time it kills me. I just think it was over done.

[Alienfreak]

Burpitup, on 20 July 2013 - 10:22 PM, said:

i understand why the heat scale was done. People walking around with 6ppc's is a large amount of damage. i could kill just about any light mech with one shot. I even understand why you did it to the ac 40 set up, but i think it is a little rediculous that it was nerfed so much more than the rest. when i am getting close to my heat limit and i am about to get some one down so i shoot both guns at the same time it kills me. I just think it was over done.

Huh?
Ac40 = 12 base heat + 6*0.08*24 heat penalty. So you end up having 23.52 heat?
With 10 heatsinks you have a maximum heat of 60 and dissipate 2.3 per second
I fail to see how this kills any mech... You should easily be able to make three alphas before shutting down...