230 replies to this topic

[Neverther]

* A % of critical damage done to the internals of a component will be applied directly to the inner structure of that component.

This is going to be a problem with current mechanics.
Currently if you get hit with PPCs, and they only strip your armor, your components still get destroyed by some % chance.
Ive had this happen many times in hunchback (40 armor on front side torsos), getting hit only by PPC fire due to how current balance is.
Once a dual PPC blackjack shot my 4G, armor was lost, no damage to internals on paperdoll, and I still lost a LBX10 AND one machinegun.
As the crit on PPC seem to be all or nothing, that would add up a nice deal to internal structure.
Seen same thing happen to Phil on NGNG youtube videos, so I am not the only one.

[ManDaisy]

This would make sense if it were ONLY applied to crits verus the engine. I some day hope the devs get around to making actual movement penalities for the actuator and gyros.

For example, you lose internal crit hps on your engine crits then it gets transfered to the torso internal at the same time. Right now its just urgh...

Edited by ManDaisy, 30 July 2013 - 11:37 AM.

[Lefteye Falconeer]

Deathlike, on 30 July 2013 - 11:09 AM, said:

If you take a look at the base numbers and the projected usage, the PPC is still a better choice than the LPL at doing the same thing, despite the slight heat increase and slot usage.

Doing the same thing? What thing? Hitting stuff under 90m?

See what I did there?

[Angel of Annihilation]

God now I am starting to wish I didn't invest in the Overlord Package.

Heat going up on PPCs/ER PPC...seriously???

They are too hot already for anything approaching a normal build, i.e. any build using no more than pair of them plus supporting weapons such as MLs and SRMs. Way to muck them up again. I mean seriously, everyone who uses them in a normal build, gets punished because a few fricken mech can mount 3-4 of them and people whine about them. Typical PGI balancing...break everything to fix one small issue if it even really existed.

Same goes for the internal damage. Mechs already die to fast so lets just make it so they die a bit faster to all weapons to buff MGs and LB-10Xs. How about just fricken fix the MGs and LB-10Xs? MG just need to stop firing in a cone and the LB-10x just needs a slight buff to pellet damage...done.

As for the ER LL buff, it is pretty obvious that the goal of that one is to try to make it more favorable to use. I mean just like PPCs were before they reduced the heat on them prior to this new F**ked up patch, no one used ER LLs because of the fact the heat generated was too much for the benefit of extra range so if they reduce the heat, maybe more people will use them. The F**ked up part is that this has nothing to do with balance, rather it is just a way to encourge people to use them more often than they currently do.

Seismic well I guess we have definative proof that if PGI listens to the community. Obviously if you whine enough, they will nerf something. Wasn't broken or OPed before but because some people couldn't adpat to it, lets nerf it.

Only thing that made sense is the Pulse Laser buffs because they were a bit underwhelming for the short range, heat and weight compared to the standard versions.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 30 July 2013 - 11:41 AM.

[LaserAngel]

Jman5, on 30 July 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

As others mentioned, I'm a bit wary of this change.

For larger mechs it wont be as big a deal, but what about smaller mechs with significantly lower internal hitpoints? The 16 internal hitpoints on a raven's side torso will be hit much harder than an atlas' 42 hp.

I understand why this is being done. You want to find a way to better reward +crit weapons and give the mechanic itself more noticeable value. However, instead of doing that, why not just a find a way to better show the player the impact of their critical hits? More of a: "Hey btw you just crit that guy's PPC out /thumbs up." I would like a little message to pop when you knock out an enemy's gun. Perhaps you could even add it to the end of round personal stat page. Show how many weapons/ammo you critical'd over the course of the game and perhaps give them a small monetary reward like you do for regular component destruction.

I personally do not believe the critical damage feature needs to be buffed. I just think its powerful effect is too subtle for most to appreciate. You have to better show players the positive impact their critical hits have.

I see it as a buff to Machine Guns and the LB 10-X. It'll really have to be a waiting and see approach. I think the Machine Gun is fine at 1 DPS, no heat, and 120m to sand blast people. It also doesn't need you to twiddle with the MG/LB 10-X damage.

[Deathlike]

Lefteye, on 30 July 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

Doing the same thing? What thing? Hitting stuff under 90m?

See what I did there?

I see what you did there.

I'm specifically referring to "hit and run" attacks.

[Scromboid]

Sorry... from this...

Spoiler

Gameplay Update:

Weapons - We’ve been busy getting more systems implemented for fine tuning our way to launch. Here are some of what’s been going on and is still in production:

S-SRMs are undergoing a revamp on their targeting solutions. There are 7 bones that are randomly selected by each SSRM missile. Right now, those bones are located at joints rather than center-points for each of the components. We are looking at changing that so the bones are placed further apart and more toward the center of each component. We are also looking at weighting the torso bones in a manner that make them not a priority for SSRMs. For example, all components would have a weight of 1.0. The Torsos however would take a weighting of 0.35(LT) 0.3(CT) 0.35(RT). The reasoning behind this weighting is that if all the torsos had an equal value of 1, each missile would have a 3/7 chance of going for a torso. Any sort of torso twist/movement would increase the chance of a missile in flight to hit the CT (since it’s the biggest component on a Mech) if they were to target a side torso.

Flamers and Machine Guns are getting a damage boost. Flamers will be increased from 0.4 damage to 0.7 damage. Machine Guns will be going from 0.08 damage per bullet to 0.1 damage per bullet. (June 18th Patch)

Pulse Lasers are being normalized to have their variances standardized between the different sizes. This is in preparation of them being tuned as we move toward launch. What this directly means is that for now, Small Pulse Lasers will have their damage increased to 3.4 and their heat reduced to 2.4. Large Pulse Lasers will have their damage increased to 10.6 but their heat is also increased to 8.5. This puts all 3 pulse lasers in alignment of having an approximate 1.25 variance for DPS and a 1.3 variance for HPS. Once this is implemented into the live servers, we will be looking at how they play out and making further adjustments as needed. (June 18th Patch)

Heat Damage at High Heat Levels
We now have a system in test that will apply damage to your Mech’s internal center torso if your Mech exceeds 150% of its tolerable heat level. While your Mech is above 150% heat, it will take damage over time. Once your Mech has cooled below 150%, it will no longer take heat damage. Be careful with that override button or high heat alphas when you’re near your max heat threshold.


Heat Penalty

Last update, I let it be known that we would be investigating a heat penalty for high alpha builds. It is understood that this raised the eyebrows of the many but at the same time a lot of assumptions were made which should hopefully be cleared up here.

We considered the notion of doing a max heat threshold reduction but this would have ended up nerfing every weapon system and every Mech in the game. This is why the heat scale penalty path was chosen since it lets us address every weapon individually and also allows us to take into consideration all Mech builds.

How it works:
We set a threshold of the number of weapons fired simultaneously. By simultaneously fired, we mean weapons of the exact same type being fired in under a 0.5 second time range. This 0.5 second time comes from the amount of time between weapon switches when Chain Fire is engaged. Chain Fire is a mechanism meant to help MechWarriors manage their heat and we do not want to punish those who use this mechanic.
If a player fires a number of weapons beyond the threshold, the heat scale will increase significantly for every weapon fired beyond the threshold.

An example:
Mech Model: Hunchback-4P
This Mech (known as the Swayback) is capable of firing 9 energy weapons all at the same time. There are 6 energy hardpoints in the pod on its shoulder, one on each arm and one on the head. The most common build for this Mech is to boat it with Medium Lasers.

We take into consideration that the 6-pack pod is intended to be fired all at once and a player should not be penalized for this. It is for this reason that we would set the Medium Laser threshold to 6; meaning that firing 6 MLs simultaneously will NOT suffer from a heat scale penalty. The 6 MLs will generate the standard amount of heat currently in the game.

The heat scale penalty kicks in when the player fires 7 or more MLs and for each ML fired beyond 7, the heat scale increases. The breakdown would look as follows (Keep in mind, these numbers are for demonstration purposes only):

6 ML fired = 0 heat penalty
7 ML fired = 5 heat penalty
8 ML fired = 10 heat penalty
9 ML fired = 20 heat penalty

To avoid the heat penalty while playing a Swayback is easily avoided if the player fires 6 MLs and waits 0.5 seconds and then fires the remaining 3 MLs. Doing so will result in 0 heat penalties.

How each weapon system will be individually tuned:
Weapons like the PPC would have their thresholds set to 3 with a higher heat penalty per additional simultaneous firing of PPCs.
3 PPC fired = 0 heat penalty
4 PPC fired = 10 heat penalty
5 PPC fired = 20 heat penalty
6 PPC fired = 40 heat penalty

Again, if a player wants to play a 6 PPC stalker, they can freely do so and can avoid heat penalties by triggering 3 PPCs, waiting 0.5 seconds and then firing the next 3 PPCs.

Missile and Ballistic weapon systems will be equally looked at in terms of their heat penalty thresholds.

At the end of the day, some weapons may never see a heat penalty the others will and in the long run, we hope this encourages a more varied build of player Mechs or make players much more aware of their heat management.

I’ll update this post for delivery dates as soon as I have confirmed them.


Please post your feedback here: http://mwomercs.com/...ate-11-jun-2013

to this....

Spoiler

Weapon Balance continues on track as we head toward Launch.

This week, you see the linking of heat scales as well as buffs to the Air/Artillery Strikes. Seismic Sensor has taken a significant reduction in their effective radius.

Next patch, you will see the following:
A % of critical damage done to the internals of a component will be applied directly to the inner structure of that component.
Large and medium pulse lasers are going to have their beam durations reduced.
ER Large Laser is going to have its base heat reduced.
PPC and ERPPCs will be bumped by 1 base heat each.
p.s. Noticed a question about Terra Therma... yes... you will take damage if you stand in exposed lava. The longer you stand in it, the hotter it's going to get so be VERY careful.

Not a lot of effort went into this...

[Goose]

Sir: I don't think anybody not on your payroll understands the crit mechanic in MW:O; Knowing the table-top mechanic seems to even be a detriment to doing so …

[SuperJoe]

might as well remove customization from the game and force ppl to play stock mechs cuz all the heatscale does is limit peoples choices even more and does little to stop the ppc+guass meta.

[Roheryn]

Lonestar1771, on 30 July 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

At this point what is there left to nerf? Mechlab!?

It's coming. I think it is called UI 2.0

[Crazyeyes244]

Lonestar1771, on 30 July 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

At this point what is there left to nerf? Mechlab!?

That was pushed back waiting on UI2.0.

EDIT:

Damn, beat me to it. Work computer is too slow.

Edited by Sam Donelly, 30 July 2013 - 11:47 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

What is so hard about changing a value in a .xml file that we have to wait an ENTIRE WEEK for it to be done?

[Goose]

One Medic Army, on 30 July 2013 - 11:17 AM, said:

Actually, we've been able to damage the engine for a long time…

Funny: There's a couple of games where I was told by Betty I'd lost heatsinks, only all my HSs were internal to the engine …

[Redshift2k5]

You're telling us what's going in next week's patch?

Who are you and what have you done with the real Paul Inouye?

[Tragos]

Tried Terra Therma - the lava is way to WEAK. Right now you can ignore it completely, since walking through it will increase your heat by 2-10% depending on your speed...only if you PARK in it and shoot all the time you will get problems.

[arghmace]

Viktor Drake, on 30 July 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

Heat going up on PPCs/ER PPC...seriously???

They are too hot already

How exactly is PPC too hot when it has the same dmg per heat ratio as ML, is only slightly hotter than LL and is cooler than LPL? Also the ER PPC is very close to ER LL. Too hot? A weapon that does front loaded damage should certainly be hotter than a duration beam weapon so currently PPC's are indeed too cool.

[Gallowglas]

Paul Inouye said:

• A % of critical damage done to the internals of a component will be applied directly to the inner structure of that component.

Thontor, on 30 July 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

I'm a little worried about this. Having a critical hit do actual damage to the internal structure will just make mechs die faster in general. And they already die too fast IMO.

I understand it's a bigger buff to crit seeking weapons like the LB 10-X, Machine guns, etc... but it's still a buff to other weapons as well.

I really hope you guys are considering increasing mech health so they live longer....

I agree 100% with Thontor on this. I'm never one to over-react, but this single line has me extremely concerned. The life cycle of a mech that has reached internals should be longer, not shorter. I definitely understand the need to make the LBX/10 more valuable, but unless you're buffing the health of the component internals, this seems ill-considered.

[Elizander]

I tried it in testing grounds the heat wasn't working cause I swam in the center lava pool. Make it so that heat rises up constantly 'til a mech shuts down... forever. Or at least bring everyone up to 90% heat until they walk out of it.

I actually expect lava to deal damage to my mech too!

[Erata]

arghmace, on 30 July 2013 - 11:52 AM, said:

How exactly is PPC too hot when it has the same dmg per heat ratio as ML, is only slightly hotter than LL and is cooler than LPL? Also the ER PPC is very close to ER LL. Too hot? A weapon that does front loaded damage should certainly be hotter than a duration beam weapon so currently PPC's are indeed too cool.

They are so cool, infact, that all the popular robotech pilots field them with their gauss builds.
You want to be cool, too, don't you?

[Suri Curume]

AlexEss, on 30 July 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:

It is not the XML change that is important. it is the effect it will have on the game that takes time to test and evaluate...

Imagine if they had a group of gamers numbering much greater than their entire employee count. Imagine if they could implement the XML changes, and then patch them into a large server environment where said group of gamers could test the new stuff out and give them appropriate feedback. In fact, I think I'm going to call this theoretical group of gamers "Beta testers" and this large server environment a "Beta trial".