76 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

That build will suffer from heat penalties with an upcoming patch. Yes, you can do a 35 point alpha with 2 PPC + gauss, but you know what? That gauss is pretty darned easy to strip. Plus, the gauss + ammo is significantly heavier than the PPC's that you're replacing to stay under threshold. People cite this one corner case as an example of how the whole argument falls apart but, honestly, I think it's better than what we had before. I don't know what your gameplay is like, but in a lot of my matches there's substantially more brawling.

Every single time people keep saying it, it happens less often than it should (Gauss being removed, or right torso insta-coring me). My gameplay is the same.. but I see more brawling, and I take way too much advantage over the brawlers. That's a sad commentary on this game.

Even with the upcoming nerf, I'm pretty sure that I have a pretty good idea how to avoid the issue at hand. We'll see when that day comes, but if I succeed in it, I don't want to hear how "the nerf worked"... because I'm unfortunately confident that it fail.

Quote

All that said, people cite slow convergence as some sort of magic bullet, but I just don't see it. Enforced inaccuracy without mechanisms to make it predictable and correctable in skill hands seems pretty arbitrary too. I've actually seen a grand total of two community solutions I even liked or thought had promise. There are a million and one solutions I've seen that I think would be abject failures and would invite some pretty terrible game mechanics.

I don't know which "convergence fix" is the right answer, but I'm sure that whatever the current answer is totally wrong.

Edited by Deathlike, 17 July 2013 - 09:39 PM.

[Jukebox1986]

You can say what you want. Since the Patch i have started playing only because it´s fun again.

I like the heat-Penalty. Sure, it could have been implemented better, but as it is, i think it´s fine.

[Gallowglas]

Deathlike, on 17 July 2013 - 09:37 PM, said:

I don't know which "convergence fix" is the right answer, but I'm sure that whatever the current answer is totally wrong.

Then, respectfully, find one that you think IS the solution or else offer your own up for consideration. They may not listen, but at least that's more productive than simply telling them how terrible they were for trying to curb a metagame mechanic that the community asked to have reined in. I don't mean to sound snarky or confrontational. I'd just like to see more productive discussion than destructive venting.

[xRatas]

I do not think anything but real hardpoint redesign solves things. If that would be done, Awesome would be only mech that has 3 PPCs and nothing could mount 2 gauss or 2 AC20.

Divide those with 3 classes: Light, Medium and Heavy hardpoints (exact definions would alternate depending on weapon system (ballistic,energy,missile). You can mount lighter system on bigger hardpoint, ofcourse.

Heavy Ballistic hardpoint: Gauss, AC20
Medium Ballistic: AC10, LB-10X, UAC5, AC5
Light Ballistic: AC2, MG

Heavy Energy: PPC, ERPPC
Medium Energy: Large laser, Large pulse laser
Light Energy: Everything else

Heavy Missile: LRM20, LRM15
MEedium Missile: LRM10, SRM6
Light Missile: The rest.

There, took me 5 mins to solve boating issues. Now just check what stock mechs have, put in hardpoints to handle those, and give or take a little bit freedom. Much easier to balance, and different mechs would actually be different then. If some weapon is not perfectly balanced after that, at least it won't fill up the meta completely.

Edit: as an added bonus, when omnimechs (sadly) arrive at some point, they would actually feel like omni mechs too.

While at it, severely limit engine and chassis changes. Only allow upgrade or downgrade XL/standard to same rating engine it originally had, not size changes. That's why we had stock variants. Remove endo steel upgrade. If mech has it, it has it. Instant FerroFibrous fix there.

Finally, it would much better encourage people to buy mechbays and grind more mechs to their stable, as different mechs would really feel different.

Edited by xRatas, 17 July 2013 - 10:19 PM.

[Gallowglas]

xRatas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:09 PM, said:

There, took me 5 mins to solve boating issues. Now just check what stock mechs have, put in hardpoints to handle those, and give or take a little bit freedom. Much easier to balance, and different mechs would actually be different then. If some weapon is not perfectly balanced after that, at least it won't fill up the meta completely.

IMHO, with that solution you'd ensure that you saw mostly Awesomes in every match. People will naturally gravitate to whatever the best thing is. It also means that you'd make several chassis non-viable while still allowing several chassis to effectively boat. Lastly, it takes away a great deal of the customization options that people love about the mechwarrior franchise. You'd see a whole lot less variation in mech builds.

Maybe that's still a viable solution, but it's not without its own flaws.

Edited by Gallowglas, 17 July 2013 - 10:17 PM.

[Deathlike]

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 09:55 PM, said:

Then, respectfully, find one that you think IS the solution or else offer your own up for consideration. They may not listen, but at least that's more productive than simply telling them how terrible they were for trying to curb a metagame mechanic that the community asked to have reined in. I don't mean to sound snarky or confrontational. I'd just like to see more productive discussion than destructive venting.

That's fine. I respect that. I kinda like Homeless Bill's solution and Docbach's. Personally, if we were able even beta test the effects of either solution, it would be better for all. At least then, I can see how it would work out. The thing about these changes is that I must somewhat test how it operates and "the feel" of its effectiveness or lack thereof. Like the proposed Streak changes that were cited a month back, I was not entirely sure what it would look like... and although I dislike the implementation, I know exactly what is actually occurring and am willing to adjust from that basis. Many proposed mechanics needs to actually be "thoroughly tested" for flaws and/or downsides. At least then I can make a proper and informed decision. I cannot in good conscience agree to any changes otherwise.

The arbitrary changes like hardpoint I wouldn't mind in a limited sense (it could use some refinement of some sort IMO), but most people that advocate it go to an extreme that simply does not agree with me. Some want it more strict MW4-type system and/or truly limit choices that should still be allowed. I'm not against having 1 AC20s on a K2, but people seem to demand that NO AC20 on K2 is "acceptable balance" which really doesn't work in the grand scheme of things (the usual reasoning is that it isn't supposed to "fit" within the MG slot, which is complete BS when you are trying to promote customization). I try to be as reasonable as I can with these things... but suffice it to say...

I would best prefer to test changes to understand a proposed system. Otherwise, we're talking pure "TheoryWarrior" that isn't effective for productive system/implementation.

Edited by Deathlike, 17 July 2013 - 10:18 PM.

[Donnie Silveray]

xRatas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:09 PM, said:

There, took me 5 mins to solve boating issues. Now just check what stock mechs have, put in hardpoints to handle those, and give or take a little bit freedom. Much easier to balance, and different mechs would actually be different then. If some weapon is not perfectly balanced after that, at least it won't fill up the meta completely.

Recatagorizing each weapon into a specific group,
Modifying every chassis variant to the new system.
Another layer of something to keep in mind.
Effectively scrapping the vast majority of builds currently out there.
Another thing to keep balance checks on.

I see this 'solution' as taking possibly 2-3 months to implement at best as well as being a general pain in the arse. It doesn't really compare to slapping down several mathematical formulas to affect weapons themselves. This would have been a good solution had they had it in mind when starting out, but right now I see it as too much a pain to fix than it is worth it. Not unless they overhaul the system.

[xRatas]

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

IMHO, with that solution you'd ensure that you saw mostly Awesomes in every match. People will naturally gravitate to whatever the best thing is. It also means that you'd make several chassis non-viable while still allowing several chassis to effectively boat. Lastly, it takes away a great deal of the customization options that people love about the mechwarrior franchise. You'd see a whole lot less variation in mech builds.

Maybe that's still a viable solution, but it's not without its own flaws.

That's when you know you need to either fix Awesome or fix PPC then. Wouldn't be hard to guess which one in this particular issue, right? Fixing boating problem does not fix balancing otherwise, but it lessens it's impact. Current way of fixing boating just makes balancing harder.

I agree this solution has it's downsides, but I'm quite sure it would make game much more balanced and ultimately varied too. Ofcourse it would take a while to implement it, but actually it wouldn't be that hard. Start fixing mechs that are complained most, and see what happens. If they vanish completely, add more hardpoints.

Freedom in mech designs is something many people like (including me), but it is actually quite heavily against the lore for game, and as we are trying to have a competitive PvP game, full freedom makes balancing rather painful.

Ofcourse there would be flavor of the month after that too, after all, it's only a boating limitation.

And I'd like to point out high alpha meta is fine for me. I like that things (including myself) get hurt when they are being shot at. But that's just me.

Edited by xRatas, 17 July 2013 - 10:37 PM.

[FupDup]

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

IMHO, with that solution you'd ensure that you saw mostly Awesomes in every match. People will naturally gravitate to whatever the best thing is.

PPCs are still the best thing. All that changed is that it's harder to carry a lot of them now.

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

It also means that you'd make several chassis non-viable while still allowing several chassis to effectively boat.

If all weapons were viable, this wouldn't be an issue because every mech would have enough hardpoints to mount some sort of useful weapons (all that would be different between each mech is which viable weapons you can carry).

Gallowglas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

Lastly, it takes away a great deal of the customization options that people love about the mechwarrior franchise. You'd see a whole lot less variation in mech builds.

The max alpha thing also results in certain "customization options" being invalidated, such as the 3 LL Heavy Metal--something that pretty much nobody ever complained about. Or an Awesome with the stock config of 3 PPCs (albeit with tech upgrades added). It arbitrarily decides what you can and cannot carry just like hardpoints do. The only difference is that it uses heat instead of mechlab graphics to tell you how many weapons you can use.

Edited by FupDup, 17 July 2013 - 10:36 PM.

[xRatas]

FupDup, on 17 July 2013 - 10:29 PM, said:

The max alpha thing also results in certain "customization options" being invalidated, such as the 3 LL Heavy Metal--something that pretty much nobody ever complained about. Or an Awesome with the stock config of 3 PPCs (albeit with tech upgrades added). It arbitrarily decides what you can and cannot carry just like hardpoints do. The only difference is that it uses heat instead of mechlab graphics to tell you what you can't use.

With being easily understood by anyone. As opposed to current solution, where you have zero chance to understand it without reading forums. Even patch notes are completely insensible. Good luck scrolling back half dozen patch notes a month or two from now, to find out why two 6 heat guns overheat you with 4 shots, while two 11 heat guns heat up less with same amount of firing.

[zazz0000]

Donnie Silveray, on 17 July 2013 - 10:16 PM, said:

Recatagorizing each weapon into a specific group,
Modifying every chassis variant to the new system.
Another layer of something to keep in mind.
Effectively scrapping the vast majority of builds currently out there.
Another thing to keep balance checks on.

I see this 'solution' as taking possibly 2-3 months to implement at best as well as being a general pain in the arse. It doesn't really compare to slapping down several mathematical formulas to affect weapons themselves. This would have been a good solution had they had it in mind when starting out, but right now I see it as too much a pain to fix than it is worth it. Not unless they overhaul the system.

I mostly look at the "...as taking possibly 2-3 months to implement at best..." part of your statement.
As a game dev, I can say that this could be done in about 4 hours of coding to the mechlab, and another 4 hours of assigning the numbers to all mechs. And 3 month of bi-weekly board room meetings and bureaucracy, so your estimate is off by a day.

You do not need to re-categorize weapons into groups, weapons already have crit sizes, so point #1 is checked off.

Every other point, yes. I can see it. Please read my thread http://mwomercs.com/...nt-restriction/ so as not to re-iterate myself.

[Unbound Inferno]

xRatas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:09 PM, said:

I do not think anything but real hardpoint redesign solves things. If that would be done, Awesome would be only mech that has 3 PPCs and nothing could mount 2 gauss or 2 AC20.

Divide those with 3 classes: Light, Medium and Heavy hardpoints (exact definions would alternate depending on weapon system (ballistic,energy,missile). You can mount lighter system on bigger hardpoint, ofcourse.

Heavy Ballistic hardpoint: Gauss, AC20
Medium Ballistic: AC10, LB-10X, UAC5, AC5
Light Ballistic: AC2, MG

Heavy Energy: PPC, ERPPC
Medium Energy: Large laser, Large pulse laser
Light Energy: Everything else

Heavy Missile: LRM20, LRM15
MEedium Missile: LRM10, SRM6
Light Missile: The rest.

There, took me 5 mins to solve boating issues. Now just check what stock mechs have, put in hardpoints to handle those, and give or take a little bit freedom. Much easier to balance, and different mechs would actually be different then. If some weapon is not perfectly balanced after that, at least it won't fill up the meta completely.

Edit: as an added bonus, when omnimechs (sadly) arrive at some point, they would actually feel like omni mechs too.

While at it, severely limit engine and chassis changes. Only allow upgrade or downgrade XL/standard to same rating engine it originally had, not size changes. That's why we had stock variants. Remove endo steel upgrade. If mech has it, it has it. Instant FerroFibrous fix there.

Finally, it would much better encourage people to buy mechbays and grind more mechs to their stable, as different mechs would really feel different.

Better suggestion on Energy/PPC

Ballistic Energy Hardpoint; PPC/ERPPC

Large Energy: LL/ERLL/LPL
Medium Emergy: ML/MPL
Small Energy: SL/SPL


Otherwise, i could get behind something like that.

[Shootanoob]

Well, I guess it takes time to see to what ends that new changes affect the balance by doing a couple of thousand games, watch statistics and then come back to think over whether or not this was a good idea.
From my point of view, the heat-solution has the potential to encourage players to either non-boating or handle those high-alpha all out one weapon salvos with more care. They are still usable, but now come at a price which is basically a good thing - for the whole of MW is build around the concept that there are no Uber-Weapons and you still will have a chance if you have a mixed layout against a boat.
The idea of giving the target the (agreed, really short) reaction time to twist away, hide in cover or turn an already hit zone out of the shooters target (because of him shooting not simultaneously any longer to avoid the penalty) also may add to the game experience. For in most of the TT games I played and nearly all of the books I read the situation of "wow, all PPCs are hitting the same spot and instantly destroy the target" very seldom appeared. Now it is still possible with MWO, but becomes less likely and - speaking of certain set-ups - come at a price.
Is this a perfect solution? Well no, but at least one that was probably fast & cheap to implement, and with a decent chance to work, so I guess it was worth trying at least. And yes, there should be produced some kind of warning for the new players like "Firing all of your nice grouped Weapons can do serious harm to your Mech".
At the end, this is still in process of being balanced, and to be honest, in all competitive online games with new content added over time, balancing will never stop totally. But before saying "hey, this is total crap" I think we should at least give it a chance and see whether it improves our gaming experience (well, at least if you're a non-boater)

[Mystere]

Nexus Omega, on 17 July 2013 - 03:51 PM, said:

The Heat Penalty System is a silly idea, a Bandaid fix to a problem which could be solved easily,

When an area takes above X Damage over say 1 seconds (Say 30, based on the 4P 6xML hunch) any extra damage is transferred to adjacent areas, (not including the head) Boom! pin point Alpha Fixed.

I'll have to disagree as I find this even sillier. At least the heat penalty is forcing people to learn how to manage heat.

Now, if only PGI creates a good tutorial on how the heat system works to help the new players ...

[Shootanoob]

zazz0000, on 17 July 2013 - 11:03 PM, said:

I mostly look at the "...as taking possibly 2-3 months to implement at best..." part of your statement.
As a game dev, I can say that this could be done in about 4 hours of coding to the mechlab, and another 4 hours of assigning the numbers to all mechs. And 3 month of bi-weekly board room meetings and bureaucracy, so your estimate is off by a day.

Not working in the gaming industry but doing IT projects on banking software and I would like to point out that this is sadly true for more or less everything related to implementing software changes into a live environment :-)

[Angel of Annihilation]

zazz0000, on 17 July 2013 - 07:57 PM, said:

I'm not missing the point of the fix, trust me, the logic behind it is straightforward. I just find it an ugly, illogical solution.
Before you say it, yes, I know, it's a game about big stomping robots. But this solution is just unrealistic beyond any logic.

Please refer to this thread (be forewarned, it's mine) http://mwomercs.com/...nt-restriction/ for further thoughts on this issue.

I agree it is illogicaly but what do you suggest, PGI asking people nicely not to boat and instead run mixed builds?

The other options is hardpoint restrictions which seems to be a popular solution...right up until people find that they can no longer build the builds they want and it dawns on them how restrictive something like that is really going to be.

The most popular option is for them to break weapons to the point no one uses them and then everyone will be happy blasting away at each other with only a pair of medium lasers because anything more will be too hot to use.

Here is another option. PGI just plain outright makes it so you can't mount more than 2 PPCs or 1 Gauss/AC/20 on mech.

None of these are logical so like Pavlo's dogs, press lever A (boat PPCs/AC/20s) and you get a shock. Press lever B (use a mixed build) and get a reward. Eventually, people only press lever B. Now that logic anyone can understand and that is eactly what PGI is doing.

[mania3c]

xRatas, on 17 July 2013 - 10:28 PM, said:

That's when you know you need to either fix Awesome or fix PPC then. Wouldn't be hard to guess which one in this particular issue, right? Fixing boating problem does not fix balancing otherwise, but it lessens it's impact. Current way of fixing boating just makes balancing harder.

I agree this solution has it's downsides, but I'm quite sure it would make game much more balanced and ultimately varied too. Ofcourse it would take a while to implement it, but actually it wouldn't be that hard. Start fixing mechs that are complained most, and see what happens. If they vanish completely, add more hardpoints.

Freedom in mech designs is something many people like (including me), but it is actually quite heavily against the lore for game, and as we are trying to have a competitive PvP game, full freedom makes balancing rather painful.

Ofcourse there would be flavor of the month after that too, after all, it's only a boating limitation.

And I'd like to point out high alpha meta is fine for me. I like that things (including myself) get hurt when they are being shot at. But that's just me.

What you suggested is really not solution ..especially if you are aiming to fix boating.. some mechs are just designed for boating.. if boating meta would be still as strong as pre-patch.. everyone would just switch to FOTM mech which actually can boat.. in another words, it wouldn't change anything..

actually this heat scale seems to be fixing issue more generally ..it works everytime, everywhere on every mech .. again..maybe not ideal..but it's closer to goal which they are aiming for..and which hardpoint size system can't handle..

[Corvus Antaka]

FupDup, on 17 July 2013 - 10:29 PM, said:

The max alpha thing also results in certain "customization options" being invalidated, such as the 3 LL Heavy Metal--something that pretty much nobody ever complained about. Or an Awesome with the stock config of 3 PPCs (albeit with tech upgrades added). It arbitrarily decides what you can and cannot carry just like hardpoints do. The only difference is that it uses heat instead of mechlab graphics to tell you how many weapons you can use.

The 3 LLAser hvy metal is far from invalidated. its just a little hotter to fire all 3 LLaser at once.

DOOM!!!

get real.

[xRatas]

mania3c, on 17 July 2013 - 11:38 PM, said:

What you suggested is really not solution ..especially if you are aiming to fix boating.. some mechs are just designed for boating.. if boating meta would be still as strong as pre-patch.. everyone would just switch to FOTM mech which actually can boat.. in another words, it wouldn't change anything..

actually this heat scale seems to be fixing issue more generally ..it works everytime, everywhere on every mech .. again..maybe not ideal..but it's closer to goal which they are aiming for..and which hardpoint size system can't handle..

But boating mechs could be balanced otherwise without nerfing anything but the boating mech, and their inclusion to game would be easily controlled. We have "quirks" already. They can be hard ones too.

[mania3c]

xRatas, on 17 July 2013 - 11:41 PM, said:

But boating mechs could be balanced otherwise without nerfing anything but the boating mech, and their inclusion to game would be easily controlled. We have "quirks" already. They can be hard ones too.

but how?? how you can balance something so strong as massive alpha with quirks? I can't really think about anything which could bring these 4-6 PPC alphas into line without breaking whole mech chassis. if you will balance these mechs around these alphas, they will be nerfed to hell when someone will try more balanced build.. or maybe I just don't see what you want to say..