LocationGoro Company Dropship MK1, Long live Lord Shang Tsung.
Posted 21 July 2013 - 09:22 PM
Josef Nader, on 21 July 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:
Ah, but that half second delay lets the good player on the other end spread the damage. That alone is a significant nerf. If your first volley hits my left torso, and the second volley hits my left arm, you really haven't hurt me as much as you would have if all of your weapons hit my left torso. This is a significant change in how snipers work that good players can take advantage of.
It is a micro-nerf that affects good players just enough to give other good players in non-sniper builds a chance to spread their damage and close in. Snipers need to still be good in the right hands, they just can't be overwhelming. Before the heat nerf, they were overwhelming. Now they're managable, provided you've got a little skill.
TL;DR: The heat scale nerf does less to affect snipers and more to affect brawling.
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A boat running 4 PPCs has about 3.75 DPS. A robot running 4 or 6 MLAS + 2 SRM6s has about the same non-stop DPS, sometimes worse depending on the robot.
The difference is that the PPC robot has upwards of 300 meters leeway on the brawler robot, giving it significantly more time to cripple the incoming robot.
That's all I'm trying to say. It doesn't matter that the damage is spread because it just leads to situations where the approaching brawler-robot has weapons destroyed when it begins to enter optimal range, taking its DPS below that of the PPC sniper. On top of that, if a robot's running 4 PPCs, they can mix it up with the inclusion of gauss and medium lasers to compensate for high heat situations.
If you're using medium lasers as a primary brawling weapon, you've built a terrible brawler. Two SRM6s -alone- put out 6 damage per second, nearly double that of the 4 PPC sniper. Medium lasers only drop your brawling DPS thanks to their terrible damage-to-heat returns. Your hypothetical brawler would be much better served by leaning on those SRMs till a hole in the armor appeared, then finishing it off with a blast from his mediums. He's still putting out double the damage as our sniper friend for absolutely zero penalty -and- he has the precision firepower to take advantage of holes that appear.
TehSBGX, on 21 July 2013 - 09:19 PM, said:
TT Lore Aside. It's actually more efficent to have a team of specialists I.E. A couple brawlers or skirmishers, a couple snipers, a couple lrm support and a scout or two in M:WO. Each Specialist covers the Others weaknesses, a team of generalists will excel at nothing in this game. I'd rather be a skirmisher with some LRM support covering me than being a jack of all trades with some other frankenmech trying to back me because it makes more sense from a tactical standpoint.
Except that if you're both in Frankenmechs you can look at the Skirmisher's build and figure out where it's weak, and then gang up on him before turning to his LRM buddy and taking him out where -he's- weak. Flexibility is a dangerous ability on it's own. Specializing only means you have specific, exploitable weaknesses.
However, in the current state of MWO I agree that dedicated specialists are significantly better. I, personally, think this is a problem. Specialists and frankenmechs should be on equal terms. The specialist might be significantly better in one situation, but the frankenmech should have the capability to force him out of that situation and into a fight the specialist can't win.
If you're using medium lasers as a primary brawling weapon, you've built a terrible brawler. Two SRM6s -alone- put out 6 damage per second, nearly double that of the 4 PPC sniper. Medium lasers only drop your brawling DPS thanks to their terrible damage-to-heat returns. Your hypothetical brawler would be much better served by leaning on those SRMs till a hole in the armor appeared, then finishing it off with a blast from his mediums. He's still putting out double the damage as our sniper friend for absolutely zero penalty -and- he has the precision firepower to take advantage of holes that appear.
But this is fundamentally wrong.
You should be able to build a brawler purely out of medium lasers. There are mechs built specifically to boat nothing but energy weapons. If they cannot find a use fielding a large quantity of medium lasers, then they have no use, period.
Medium lasers should have such a high heat-efficiency advantage that PPCs cannot match them within their optimal range, as they should run into the heat capacity limit within two alphas - yet sadly, this is currently far from reality. This needs to be rectified. Both the heat capacity needs to be reduced and PPC heat itself should be reverted to pre-buff levels before we can see anything resembling balance. Medium lasers also could really do with a heat nerf reversion as well.
And medium lasers (as well as other beam weapons) are the next on the block for a balance pass.
If Mediums DO get buffed then increase the DPS number of my above statement to include them. Either way, the CQC build is still burning down the sniper very quickly.
Colonel Pada Vinson, on 21 July 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:
nothing is "nurfed" with this patch, only "more skill required" to hit the same point with an alpha now.
Wut? This patch didn't change anything about the lack of skill required with pinpoint shooting. It slowed down how fast people are dying a smidge, but it's still as easy as ever to plink at someone from range.
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".
Inadvertent nerfing of a build you yourself believe was sub-optimal to begin with is a weak argument against solving the primacy of jump-snipers - not that reticle shake has much to do with this topic. On-topic, your difficulty with large lasers doesn't argue for scrapping the system - it argues for tuning the system, just as PGI is already going to do.
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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.
The problem with this argument is that it doesn't account for reality - when nearly all successful pilots find that an identical loadout "suits themselves," and other types of builds are consistently outperformed by the flavor of the month... That's when you need a change. In actual fact, high-alpha nerfing (of any kind) makes other types of builds more viable - exactly what you're asking for.
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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.
This is pure speculation, backed by one piece of flimsy circumstantial evidence; you couldn't convict someone of a parking violation with this much proof, much less stretch the facts to cover your assertion.
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also in response to the boating heat penalty:
Spoiler
Jakob Knight, on 17 July 2013 - 08:08 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.
Sadly, the agument you quoted ignores stark reality. It's really a verbose expansion of the basic refrain of balance trolls everywyere: "It's fine, just learn to play." It is patently untrue. To summarize the quote, Knight says that since people will always try to find the optimal build - creating a new flavor of the month, which he assumes will then also be nerfed- attempting to reign in overperforming weapons and/or combinations of weapons is a fool's errand which will inevitably lead to the destruction of the game, since "no mechs [will be able to] do anything," and all the players will then quit. Rather, he says, it is the responsibility of players to think their way around overpowered builds - he offers overly simplistic examples which border upon fairy-tale fantasy (a 6xERPPC Hunchback is a mythological creature much akin to a unicorn - save that it is possible that unicorns could exist.) This viewpoint attempts to cloak itself in the guise of sweet reason, but in fact is extremely offensive.
This view oversimplifies the balancing process, and attempts to smuggle in an insult to poison the well against dissent - anyone who wants weapons balanced is "unwilling to think," and "crying for the Devs." Even when it engagest in honest argument, it ignores what actually happens during the balancing process, most notably weapon buffs, in favor of a gambler's fallacy - the wrong belief that past events always determine future outcomes. If they nerfed high-damage weapon builds this one time, then nerfing overpowered weapons/builds must always be their solution, leading to the End of the World (of Mechwarrior) As We Know It! As if this apocolyptic hysteria wasn't bad enough, he then goes on to blame the victim, claiming that it's the players' fault that some builds clearly outperform others. This is like telling a community, "There will always be crime, and increasing police patrols in the worst areas will just alter the environment for everyone, causing the muggers to shift to other neighborhoods, until we all live in a police state! Instead, you people should use your brains to avoid being mugged!"
In fact, the problem with high-alpha builds was that they allowed players to put too much damage at once onto the same location, and to repeat this process too many times before shutdown. The boating penalty is an adequate solution to this problem. Are there other ways they could have done so? Certainly; bet you a dollar they talked about some of them before going with this one. Regardless, the solution they chose will do what they wanted it to do - especially as balancing is an ongoing process toward a semi-subjective goal, not a cookie-cutter oversimplification of reality.
In fact, the problem with high-alpha builds was that they allowed players to put too much damage at once onto the same location, and to repeat this process too many times before shutdown. The boating penalty is an adequate solution to this problem. Are there other ways they could have done so? Certainly; bet you a dollar they talked about some of them before going with this one. Regardless, the solution they chose will do what they wanted it to do - especially as balancing is an ongoing process toward a semi-subjective goal, not a cookie-cutter oversimplification of reality.
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Josef Nader, on 21 July 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:
