49 replies to this topic

[Inhibition]

The heat penalty for boating is the wrong direction for the game. It
is, at best, a temporary solution.
Actually, it leaves no direction for MWO. There is no future of MWO with this boating penalty.
WHY?

Perfectly legitimate builds are nerfed. Even stock builds (the Hunchback and Awesome) are nerfed. The boating penalty is nerfing builds that were not strong to begin with.
For example, My 3 large laser brawling C1 catapult turned useless because of the dice-rolling (random) jump jet reticle feature.
Now I can easily call my 3 large laser catapult garbage because carrying
3 Large Laser's is "boating".

It's disappointing that players don't have the freedom to build their own mech.
Curbing the freedom of customization is undermining the theme of "role warfare" and
finding a mech with a loadout that suits yourself.

I say that MWO has no future with this boating penalty because there are plenty
of mechs (stock and variants) that have not even been released yet that get nerfed with this penalty. How are clans going to be introduced?

Are assaults with 2 clan er ppc's and 2 gauss rifles just NOT going to
be introduced in the game? Very poor and simplistic way
to "balance" a game. This problem is evident in the fact that the Victor 9A
with two ballistics hardpoints (arm and torso)
was not one of the variants introduced.

also in response to the boating heat penalty:

Jakob Knight, on 17 July 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

People will -always- adjust their builds to take advantage of whatever is the optimal conditions of the game at present. If you try to make having four or more big guns penalized, then they will just go for mounting the maximum number of smaller weapons to make up the difference. Penalize having lots of small weapons, and they will grab the biggest single weapon they can stick on the mech. Penalize that, and they will take advantage of the fact that no mech can now kill them quickly and mount whatever produces the best combat performance for fast units because the slow mechs are not unable to kill them in the short periods of time they have before the light units get into their blindspot.

No matter what you do, players will adapt and have other players screaming for the devs to swing the nerf bat again for them. Until no mech is capable of doing anything, and players decide to go play something else.

The solution to 'boating' (which some mechs are designed to do, mind you) is not to keep slapping on restrictions but to have players use their brains to outthink those builds. Every weapon comes with its disadvantages. Mounting lots of only one weapon means you have nothing to cover those disadvantages. Got a 6 x PPC Stalker? Get up in his face where his weapons don't do damage. Got a 3x GR Cataphract? Run around him to his base and cap it while he slowly tries to trundle back. Got a 6xERPPC Hunchback? Wait till he shoots then headshot him while he's shutdown.

Point is, this is not a solution, and we've seen this sort of thing in one form or another since the game began. It isn't going to change because instituting these changes simply adjusts the environment for everyone, making other builds slide in where the 'boats' are now. Maybe next time it will be that Brawlers are able to close in and kill long-range support mechs without fear of death (remember that, anyone)? Maybe it will be that Scout mechs will become better than Heavies for main combat (again, remember that)? Maybe people will simply make every mech a gausszilla because they are not penalized by this system? In any case, there will be builds that work better than others, and those unwilling to think of tactics to beat them will cry for the Devs to 'do something to make the game what it should be'.

In conclusion,
the boating heat penalty is only a temporary solution at curbing the current meta.

[Shaddock]

My concern is the effect on players that are new to MWO but have TT or other MW1/2/3/4 experience and come into the game, mae their favorit build, overheat constantly, die, then log out and never come back. There is no clear in game or mechlab way of seeing why their heat is going to be far higher than they expect.

[Unbound Inferno]

Does not work as it really doesn't change the fact that PPC/Gauss/AC40 dominates the field.
It just changes how they dominate the field.

[Garruda]

The false premise is that "Balance" can be achieved. I don't care what game you play: MMO, MMORPG, FPS, RTS, every one of their forums is filled with complaints about imbalanced based on the latest FOTM. Patch it, and next month complaints are still there. The issue is that what is balance at the highest level of play may not be balanced at the lower levels of play. This can be seen very clearly in StarCraft where "easy cheesy" 90% win strategies that work in Bronze and Silver league games are suicide in Masters. You will never be able to balance weapons/mechs because you can't balance skill. Skilled players will look to give themselves the best advantage they can and will end up using the best configurations. The problem IMHO is that the ELO is hidden. I for one would like to see where me and my teammates stack up vs. our opponents and at least I know weather I lost strait up, because I was out-configed, or out-skilled. Right now it is just a whine-fest by the losers who think they are better than they are.

[stjobe]

Unbound Inferno, on 21 July 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

Does not work as it really doesn't change the fact that PPC/Gauss/AC40 dominates the field.
It just changes how they dominate the field.

I agree, and I just want to add that it doesn't change that fact because it doesn't do anything to address any of the underlying problems:
* The heat system is, and has always been, broken. Adding a boating bandaid won't fix it.
* The direct-damage weapons are straight-up better than any other type of weapon, due to pin-point accuracy and broken damage/heat balance.

Edited by stjobe, 21 July 2013 - 03:08 PM.

[Inhibition]

Garruda, on 21 July 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

The false premise is that "Balance" can be achieved. I don't care what game you play: MMO, MMORPG, FPS, RTS, every one of their forums is filled with complaints about imbalanced based on the latest FOTM. Patch it, and next month complaints are still there. The issue is that what is balance at the highest level of play may not be balanced at the lower levels of play. This can be seen very clearly in StarCraft where "easy cheesy" 90% win strategies that work in Bronze and Silver league games are suicide in Masters. You will never be able to balance weapons/mechs because you can't balance skill. Skilled players will look to give themselves the best advantage they can and will end up using the best configurations. The problem IMHO is that the ELO is hidden. I for one would like to see where me and my teammates stack up vs. our opponents and at least I know weather I lost strait up, because I was out-configed, or out-skilled. Right now it is just a whine-fest by the losers who think they are better than they are.

As people have pointed out, there are MANY different reasons as to why the heat boating penalty does
not solve anything. In fact, it creates more problems. With that said,
I have been saying the same thing that you have been saying. There should be a public
display of the level of player (maybe not elo explicitly) but some form of ranking/level.

I agree it is a whine-fest. PGI will always shift to appease the whinners.
But is a handful of extraordinarily skilled players among the whiners
that complain about overpowered builds.

[Iron Hyena]

I have 12 different mechs. None of them were effected by this heat penalty.

Don't boat a bunch of the same weapons, end of story. You will lose, and you should lose, because your build has nothing creative to it.

Continue whining that your no skill mech using all the same weapon systems doesnt work so good anymore, or at the very least learn to manage heat.

[FupDup]

Dornhal, on 21 July 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

I have 12 different mechs. None of them were effected by this heat penalty.

Don't boat a bunch of the same weapons, end of story. You will lose, and you should lose, because your build has nothing creative to it.

Continue whining that your no skill mech using all the same weapon systems doesnt work so good anymore, or at the very least learn to manage heat.

So, does this mean that a build with 5+ unrelated weapon such as an LBX, LRM10, SRM2, AC/5, ML, SPL, and Flamer is for uber l337 pros?

Edited by FupDup, 21 July 2013 - 03:23 PM.

[Inhibition]

Dornhal, on 21 July 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

I have 12 different mechs. None of them were effected by this heat penalty.

Don't boat a bunch of the same weapons, end of story. You will lose, and you should lose, because your build has nothing creative to it.

Continue whining that your no skill mech using all the same weapon systems doesnt work so good anymore, or at the very least learn to manage heat.

Okay. If you want to boast your skill, what place you are in today's tournament?

You're saying something works well because it is in favor of you?
It's not about you. Nor is it about me. It's about the game's future.
My point is that the nerf is gimping viable builds and will eventually
extend to nerf the next strongest build.
This is a trend we are talking about here.
The next nerf will probably extend to give heat penalty to gauss rifles as others have mentioned,
which is absolutely ridiculous. This vicious cycle has to stop now.

Edited by Inhibition, 21 July 2013 - 03:19 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

My entirely baseless prediction is that the biggest change to the meta from the last patch will actually be the SRM buff. Heat scaling doesn't actually do much to most of the dominant PPC/Gauss configs.

[Unbound Inferno]

Royalewithcheese, on 21 July 2013 - 03:27 PM, said:

My entirely baseless prediction is that the biggest change to the meta from the last patch will actually be the SRM buff. Heat scaling doesn't actually do much to most of the dominant PPC/Gauss configs.

Hush you. We want to keep the SRMs under the radar a while longer before they get anymore bright ideas about it.

[Brainden]

Heat penalties won't change the meta. I'm actively working towards buying some highlanders to join the meta.

"The only way to show that something doesn't belong, or is bad is to abuse it. Not use it, abuse it.". This has become a personal mantra for myself in this game, which is sad because this is the only game I have ever played where I felt at a distinct disadvantage by not abusing a broken system.

I hope PGI starts listening to suggestions from the community when this heat system fails.

[Inhibition]

@Brainden

An ironic side effect of the jump jet nerf (randomized reticle shaking/aiming)
has made 3 large lasers on my catapult useless because I can't use jumpjets and fire
due to the one second firing time.

I swapped the large lasers for ppc's instead, which I guess has made me a poptart

Edited by Inhibition, 21 July 2013 - 04:01 PM.

[stjobe]

Royalewithcheese, on 21 July 2013 - 03:27 PM, said:

My entirely baseless prediction is that the biggest change to the meta from the last patch will actually be the SRM buff. Heat scaling doesn't actually do much to most of the dominant PPC/Gauss configs.

Funnily enough, I took my triple-ASRM-6 CN9-A out for a spin today for the first time in months. Must be coincidence

[Deathlike]

stjobe, on 21 July 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

Funnily enough, I took my triple-ASRM-6 CN9-A out for a spin today for the first time in months. Must be coincidence

Damn Cents! So OP, that we must nerf SRMs back into oblivion!

Speaking of which, I saw a good Cent player clean up in a match I was in.... those were fun days (driving a Cent).

Edited by Deathlike, 21 July 2013 - 04:22 PM.

[Josef Nader]

Massive alpha boats have always been a problem in competitive Mechwarrior. It's -always- been too easy to put a ton of the same or similar weapons on a mech and blast things apart in a single shot. I still have memories of running around with tons of large lasers in MW3 and insta-gibbing enemy mechs because they were perfect hitscan. In a video game adaptation of Battletech, it's always better to pack tons of weapons on and blast things apart in the shortest possible window.

The heat penalty changes that. It is a mechanic hard-coded in to -force- you to space out your shots. tl;dr We need mechanics to specifically combat the things that have broken Mechwarrior games from the start, in that Battletech is balanced around random hits, and nobody likes random hits in a video game. So, how do we prevent people from insta-gibbing other mechs? We forcibly prevent them from packing that much firepower into a single trigger pull.

The system is solid. The numbers need tuning.

The ultimate goal of this is to make building like mechs are built in Tabletop more desirable and, in fact, the best way of building. The only way to force that is to introduce mechanics unique to the video game adaptation that discourage the behaviors that break the game at it's core.

[Zylo]

I'm not sure that the heat penalty is the best option but something needed to be done to get away from everyone piloting only high alpha designs.

Since the changes went in I have seen more than just PPC boats everywhere, I'm even seeing medium mechs more often. The solution isn't perfect but players are no longer required to take specific builds to be competitive and this is a good direction for the game.

It is expected that the PPC boat pilots would be upset about these changes. I support any changes that nerf the effectiveness of those PPC boat builds.

[FupDup]

Josef Nader, on 21 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

The heat penalty changes that. It is a mechanic hard-coded in to -force- you to space out your shots. tl;dr We need mechanics to specifically combat the things that have broken Mechwarrior games from the start, in that Battletech is balanced around random hits, and nobody likes random hits in a video game. So, how do we prevent people from insta-gibbing other mechs? We forcibly prevent them from packing that much firepower into a single trigger pull.

It only forces you to space out your shots if you use "too many" of the same weapon. If you avoid hitting the max alpha number limit, you can fire everything you have in a single salvo as much as you wish without being penalized. With the right combinations, you can still instagib or get fairly close to it.

Josef Nader, on 21 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

The ultimate goal of this is to make building like mechs are built in Tabletop more desirable and, in fact, the best way of building.

How are you defining "like mechs are built in Tabletop"? If you mean having a mixed loadout that has 6+ completely unrelated weapons that have no synergy whatsoever, than you're only partially right. There are indeed a very large amount of "balanced" stock builds in TT, in fact the vast majority of them are. But to say that boats are against TT is just plain false. I don't think I need to use a bazillion Sarna links, we all know what the TT boats are.

Edited by FupDup, 21 July 2013 - 04:53 PM.

[jeffsw6]

We've got developers who don't understand the game-play well enough to recognize that MG is weak and PPC is strong now implementing another layer of complexity to deal with problems created by said lack of understanding.

[MustrumRidcully]

1) The heat penalty is a bad system, that is in no way actually balanced in the penalties it causees, the system is rather arbitrary and needlessly complciated for not really balancing anything but saying "this much boating is bad" - you could do this without heat and just disallowing firing more than max_alpha within 0.5 seconds.

2) If Tripe or Quad PPCs are too powerful for the game, then whatever you invent to make it less effective must affect every mech. People didn't build Quad PPC Stalkers because they are "non-canon", they build them because they are effective. They hurt gameplay because they are more effective then many alternative build and turned the game into a sniper fest, instead of a game allowing different routes to success. That was and is bad for the game, and that means that no mech can hide behind a "but it's canon" argument. Not even the Awesome or the Hunchback 4P. We can argue whether 3 PPCs or 8 MLs are actually broken, but we cannot argue that they are broken only when they appear on non-canon mechs. That's just "aesthetical displeasing" or "boring", but not broken.