54 replies to this topic

[Waking One]

Mystere, on 24 July 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

No, no, and hell no to the highlighted item.

You can't lead? See how much i care.

Thought everybody wanted more "skill"?

[Joseph Mallan]

Waking One, on 24 July 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

Funny how masses of players first asked for the PPC buffs back when you couldn't hit properly with them.

They need to be brought back to their old values: slowed down and heat increased.

The problem isn't the PPC. It's to many PPCs. Do we have to fear a Spider with a PPC(Panther wannabe?)? I know I don't. Sure it's an annoyance cause it kinda hurts and stays on the opposite side of it's assault team mate, but that is good playing. Now 6 PPCs that... is just us being Ashats plain and simple.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 July 2013 - 02:39 PM.

[Mystere]

Waking One, on 24 July 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

You can't lead? See how much i care.

Thought everybody wanted more "skill"?

Because I am too tired to retype what I had already written before, just go here.

[MasterErrant]

Waking One, on 24 July 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

Funny how masses of players first asked for the PPC buffs back when you couldn't hit properly with them.

They need to be brought back to their old values: slowed down and heat increased.

I'm sorry but the projectile speed is still a stupid. (Read idiotic mindless and lame) nerf for PPCs...the only real fix for them, =has always been to revert the heat to what it was and put in a real heat system.

There is noting wrong with PPCs or boating. it is now and always will be the lack of the counterbalancing heat system that made alll these weapons work and balance against each ofteh.
in the basic systen the weapons so closely balance that the differences are small enough to be absorbed by differences in play style. compulsive number crunchers are just that compulsive.


there is not one basic stock mech in this game that can't be played effectivly in TT with the right tactics.
(some of the variants are crap filler from the TROs and are marginal at best but most can be played well.)P

Edited by MasterErrant, 24 July 2013 - 03:24 PM.

[Steel Claws]

Sable, on 24 July 2013 - 01:58 PM, said:

I'm not expecting them to disappear or to be removed from the game. My hope is that they will not be the ONLY weapon that should be used in EVERY circumstance on EVERY mech for EVERY variant. I mean if we really want to do the most damage everyone would want to use gauss or ac/20s but they have their own drawbacks such as their weight, ammo capacity, surviability, and (now back to the original thought of this thread) projectile speed.

Its called a Particle Projector Cannon not a Particle Beam Cannon. The name itself implies it needs to be projected no beamed instantly to its target.

As of the 30th patch you should see fewer PPCs but currently I don't think there are that many. Yes you still have 4 or 5 mechs on each team that have at least one if not two PPCs but I don't consider this too many. I see about as many LRMs, ACs, lasers and SRMs in each drop. In fact I see more people brawling now than I have in months and those that aren't are mostly LRM boats.

PPCs are not an instant hit weapon by any means. They still have to be lead quit a bit. It takes a fair amount of skill to put them on target at moerw than 400 meters on moving targets.

Thats the whole problem though, too many people don't want to move. I saw a guy in a Jager just last night roll up on top of the crashed drop ship on Frozen and just stand there right in front of four or five mechs. He got hit twice and still stood there. He stood there getting hit time and time again till he died - about 7 seconds. He made no attempt to avoid shots or even move backwards.

[Sable]

I understand there is more brawling than before. But that hasn't changed the underlying problem of the PPC metagame. I don't object to the idea of putting a PPC on a spider and running around contributing to a fight i just don't think it should be practical and easy to accomplish as it is right now.

[jeffsw6]

MasterErrant, on 24 July 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

I'm sorry but the projectile speed is still a stupid. (Read idiotic mindless and lame) nerf for PPCs...the only real fix for them, =has always been to revert the heat to what it was and put in a real heat system.

I agree with you. Nerfing its speed will make it worse at the thing it's supposed to be good at -- sniping.

I have always advocated the following two changes to PPC:

• increased heat
  
• worsened minimum-range and drop-off mechanic inside that minimum-range

A PPC should be good for sniping. It should be bad for brawling. It shouldn't do 100% damage at 90m. In my opinion, it should start losing damage inside 180m and by 90m it should be dealing zero damage. This would make it worthless for brawling and actually move snipers more toward a dedicated role, or cause them to carry additional back-up weapons, or just ... die ... when a brawler manages to sneak up on them.

Would also be nice if, you know, seismic sensor didn't make it impossible to sneak up on anyone.

[Sable]

why is the projectile speed so precious and unchangable? Were PPCs ever and i mean EVER the premier sniper weapon in mechwarrior? In fact they are better, as in that they out perform every other long range weapon. The only other weapon that can come close to its speed of movement is the WEAKEST ballistic weapon. Doesn't that say something to you? That maybe its just tooo good. High damage, one of the 2 fastest traveling projectiles, infinite ammo. Managing heat isn't hard for any gamer. This is one reason jump sniping became popular to begin with. The time it takes you to get the height you need to get out of cover and fall back down is more than enough to cool off between shots. I don't think the answer is in the heat values.

Someone mentioned that a splash damage might be an alternative instead of pinpoint damage. Well if you're still fireing 4ppcs into one spot we'll see the same problem that LRMs had with their splash damage. In that case you won't even have to take time to aim just point and click and every component in that side of the mech will take damage.

Thats why i want them to try it out on the test server so the speculation over whether or not it would destroy the PPC in your minds or actually improve its balance.

[Lightfoot]

Have you tried moving laterally? At ranges over 700 meters few PPCs hit if you move, same with Gauss and AC2s, but you know, sometimes you do get tagged. I don't think they can fix that.

I was in my AWS-8V trying to stay at long range all day today and if over 700 meters not many PPCs, Gauss, or AC2's landed and my armor was just peppered lightly all over. If I had not kept moving I would have been cored pretty fast though. (grrr... why do tiny little rocks stop my mech from moving?)

Have you tried a Joystick? Moving and shooting excells with a joystick.



@Sable

Lasers were instant in all previous MechWarrior games and I mean ALL previous MechWarrior games. There was no burn duration or travel time so Lasers were the premier sniper weapon. 5x Clan ER Large in MW4. PPCs and Gauss Rifles were harder to hit with, but could knock mechs down.

What you should also be asking is why Large Lasers and ER Large Lasers have longer burn durations than Medium Lasers since only a Game Developer would design them that way. No 31st Century Engineer would.

[Dadrick]

I think the biggest offenders when it comes to PPC boating are assault mechs. What this game needs is proper weight balancing of mechs to limit the number of mechs that are most capable of abusing the current meta. To be honest, I very rarely see anything under a Blackjack using a PPC. When they do, I find their contribution to any fight is minimal. Even the quad PPC Quickdraw runs too hot to really be practical. The PPC meta won't last forever. I'm sure a few months from now everyone will have found a new "over powered" weapon to groan about. You just need to be patient. Personally I'd love to see the day when everyone is up in arms about how OP flamers are. =p

Edited by Dadrick, 24 July 2013 - 06:22 PM.

[Sable]

I know i started this thread by saying how anoying it was to be hit by them at extreme ranges but let me add that i know how to duck and cover and move at angles. Using PPCs myself i know you barely need to lead your targets at all because they move so fast. But when i'm shooting my Gauss rifle i have to aim several meters in front of them and it usually takes several shots to nail down the right lead distance. With PPCs its just hit after hit after hit and the only reason i might not fire is because of heat NOT because i'd actually miss them.

I agree with the approach the devs took with laser and them having a burn duration for the reason you mentioned. The burn duration adds a level of difficulty to a potentially almost equal damage weapon to the PPC. But with the difficulty of holding lasers on target comes better heat levels. And i think PPCs with their reward of long range and up front spike damage should have the difficulty of landing your hits

Edited by Sable, 24 July 2013 - 06:23 PM.

[Rigiroth]

A point: what else would you take instead of PPCs? All other energy weapons (with the exception of LRG PUL kinda) make torso twisting impossible. Piloting an Atlas without being able to torso twist is suicide. Right now, my Atlas build of choice is 2 PPC, 2ML, 1xAC20, 2xASRM4 (F-AS7-D). I've tried it with Large lasers and Large Pulse. The Large Pulse run way too hot (hotter than PPCs because of the beam duration and it feels like their is a scaling penalty when using both at the same time) and the LL require target lock for too long to allow me to protect my torso. It is the same problem I have with dual UACs...they are fun, it is just not being able to torso twist to dissipate damage is pretty damning on most mechs. It goes back to pin-point precision. I'm not saying we should be able to shoot the Left Torso and hit the right arm, but the ability to hold lock on a target for more than a second before having part of your mech ripped off is important.

Edit: MLs are good too, but they aren't high tonnage/damage energy weapons that are needed for this roll.

Edited by Steemship, 24 July 2013 - 06:35 PM.

[Entail]

Sable, on 24 July 2013 - 12:36 AM, said:

PPCs.... they really can't be the only optimal choice of weapon. I haven't played for a week because i got sick of PPCs and when i come back the one game i played there were quickdraws with ppcs.. jenners with ppcs, a freakin commando with a ppc. I used to think hey, thats just a funny little gimmic mech but when everyone is using them for everything all the time in the game it just isn't fun anymore.

Since my last thread was jettisoned (great way to make your community feel listened took if you want more specifics give me a chance to respond next time) Here is a more specific post with why i don't feel like playing MWO currently.

In my own personal experience with all the previous mechwarrior titles and gaming in general, I feel like the best approach to dealing with the PPC "issue" is to slow down the projectile speed. They just move too fast with the amount of damage they do and the range they have. When firing a weapon of equal damage such as the AC/10 there is nowhere near the same amount of accuracy above 500m as the PPC. Even with Gauss rifles you have to lead your target and time your shots.

In the previous mechwarrior games that we all loved, PPCs were slow"er" traveling balls of energy than what we see in the current game. Sure they had extreme range but you would only be hit with them at 1000m if you were standing still or weren't paying attention. I thought they were fine in closed beta and the heat change was nice back then. But when you sped them up the problem slowly began to take form.

Before the Heat scale was introduced i used to run a dual AC/20 jagermech and although it was deadly at close range, hitting moving targets greater than 450m was quite challenging. I still find it unusual that 1 weapon with very managable heat has such a huge penalty for firing a second. I understand it was meant to address the high alpha issue but logically it doesn't make sense at why an additional shell being fire from a separate gun in a separate location would incure such a huge buildup of heat. But i'm getting off topic here.

In the current game at 1000m i can step out from cover and instantly get tagged by ppc after ppc. Its like bopping a dog on the nose with a newspaper. So freakin anoying with little chance of them missing. If PPCs were more difficult to hit with i truely believe their popularity would shift into a different role, from a super awesome sniper weapon thats paired with Gauss rifles to a medium range brawling weapon. ER Large lasers would become useful as its easier to hit with a beam than a timed projectile. The PPC would not be appealing on light mechs for the same reason autocannons aren't appealing on them. Its much harder to fight off other fast and light mechs with weapons that require timing to land your hits.

As for the heat scale, I constantly have to go back and read the command chair post and look at all the pictures and graphs to tell what kind of penalty i would get for certain weapon max alphas. And i literally can't figure it out without those charts. There's nothing in the mechlab to tell me or warn me or provide any kind of insight as to the limits of the weapon systems. I know you guys put a lot of work into developing it but i think it causes more problems than it will solve. I'm thinking about future mechs that have variants that blow this heat scale way out of proportion. And those are stock variants that will have problems. Even the hunchback with the 8 medium lasers will throw the new guys under the bus because they won't understand why their heat is so out of control.

If you do come back and read this i hope this gives you some insight.

Edit: Since we have a handy dandy Test scheduled on thursday would you consider adjusting PPCs speed and let the community have at it? I understand your testing is currently for the 12v12 stability but weapon testing seems like it could reveal some interesting results. Even if those changes never came to be, adjusting them in all sorts of ways would provide valuable data.

It's strange that complaining about ppc's led PGI to nerf two AC20's.
Maybe people that complain shouldn't complain anymore to prevent breaking MWO further

[Sable]

Entail, on 24 July 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

It's strange that complaining about ppc's led PGI to nerf two AC20's.
Maybe people that complain shouldn't complain anymore to prevent breaking MWO further

I threw AC/20s in there to illustrate that their travel speed limited their effectiveness at longer ranges. I did go off topic a little but i admitted that and tried to refocus. I only really used my jagermech with duel ac/20s as a bug squash-er for light mechs. With their vulnerable side torso they can't compete with assault mechs that well on their own.

[Lightfoot]

PPCs were bugged at first of course and no one used them at all, except on Patch-Day. The bug was that they did irregular damage. Sometimes correct, sometimes damage to all Mech sections, sometimes the damage never showed up. We did repeated tests on stationary Mechs to eliminate Lag as a factor in missing the target. Finally in January or February PPC damage was fixed and they showed how nerfy Lasers were. So everyone basically replaced their Large Lasers with PPCs.

Now rather than demand a fix for Large Lasers to make them work within the MWO combat enviornment and be more competitive with PPCs, everyone posted "Ibbeen CORED by PPCs!!!" and they must be nerfed. Of course I agree the 5-plus PPC boats are not possible and needed to be squashed. They have been. 3 or 4 PPCs is common in MechWarrior and Battletech so that actually has to be balancable. Supernova, AWS-9M, etc.

Back to Large Lasers, they need to have a lower burn duration than Medium Lasers as part of the 4 extra tons they weigh. This would make them desirable over PPCs and I think that is where you start. PPCs actually have a travel time just slightly slower than the speed of light so I don't really oppose making them 1200 meters per second, but 2000 meters per second is already slow for a PPC.