230 replies to this topic

[NextGame]

PGI, what exactly is the point of this thread if you aren't going to bother actually taking the feedback on board?

The heat changes as a whole are far too complicated, don't follow any discernible logic, punish newer players, (subjectively) decrease the level of fun players experience from the game, and are definitely not what this game needs. Please revoke them.

[MustrumRidcully]

Horrace, on 30 July 2013 - 11:23 PM, said:

The real problem is that people are not playing the game the way it was intended.

if the second part of your sentence is true, the real problem is something else: The game is designed in a manner that rewards a type of gameplay the designers didn'T expect or intent more than the one they expected or intended.

If you, say, want to have people use versatile mechs, you need to give these mechs an advantage over non-versatile mechs. But this game doesn'T do that at all. If you go versatile, you have to deal with different cooldowns, projectile speed, firing durations, ranges and all that - you have more work as a player to use your build effectively. You spend a lot of time aiming and shooting your different weapons, while your enemy boater just fires one large alpha, and then torso twists away from your efforts to deliver damage to him. If the goal of the game design was to have versatile mechs and boats be used in equal proportion, or maybe even with a focus on versatility, the game design failed to achieve this since boats have advantages over versatile mechs.

Some of the advantages go beyond specifics like cooldowns or projectile speed. Some of them are fundamental "normal" - specialist builds trump generalist builds. That is true in most games and most scenarios. If you don'T want that, you need apply artificial benefits for being generalist. Wishful thinking is insufficient when it comes to game design.

[bundy]

honestly wow you have lost your way PGI ever heard of K.I.S.S this is like watching an addict explain why they need to keep using

[Sweet Baby Pirate]

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

the PPC is still a better choice than the LPL at doing the same thing

If you're up against a decent light pilot, you'll have some trouble landing PPC shots. LPL on the other hand is hitscan, and made for blowing legs off.

[DeadlyNerd]

So when exactly are LPL going to become viable again? or are you still going to continue putting bandaids on the current broken system?

[AlphariusII]

This is the first time I've logged into either the forums or the client in several months. I just wanted to take a moment to say the following:

The first time I hopped into MWO, last August, it was a great experience. The look of the mechs, the environment, the overall aesthetics and feel of the game were well-executed, as was the overall feel of Mech movement.

Unfortunately, that is all the good I have to say about MWO. Since the Open Beta announcement, the game has been plagued with repeated failures on the parts of the development team. At some level, whether it's hiring/staffing, asset management, whatever, there is clearly an emphasis on real-currency cosmetic items over gameplay balance or playable content, both of which could easily be given multiple paragraphs to detail their failings. In short, it is not the content or experience of MWO that has kept it going to this point, it is merely the Mechwarrior name attached, and unless your launch event eclipses the Open Beta debacle by leaps and bound even that isn't going to be enough. The corpse should have been left in the ground.

[ChallengerCC]

I dont get damage at all from lava. Even when i stand 2 min in it.

[Zyllos]

Sprouticus, on 30 July 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

My 2 cents:

1) ERLL needs a heat reduction
2) LPL will not beneifit from this unless you make it hitscan like the PPC is at 300m (which is a terrible idea IMO).
3) MPL might be off the shelf. (compared to the medium laser which is still a sendary weapon at best)

4) The crit damage change. As Thonoror pointed out, if this impacts larger weapons, there will be real problems

Example:

PPC hits for 10 damage to a echs internals
PPC crits
PPC does 10 iHP to a weapon in that slot, destroying some component.
PPC does 10 points of additional internal damage.


That would be REALLY bad. I don't even need to test to verify that.

If you made it lbx/mg/flamer only, that would be ok at least for testing.

Even doing that would be a bad idea. It's enforcing too much on the idea that critical hits are worthless unless it's not dealing damage to internal structure.

[Vintage Rum]

SUMMARY OF BUG: Macro or even manually chain firing auto cannons is utterly broken now, it was sketchy before but its hell now. Its sequentially holding on to the heat of the last shot fired of the same weapon ( so for instance if you are stacking a/c2's which i like to do on my dragon 5n and only have one gun arm; I use 3 a/c2's and ams and nothing else)... they are seemingly stacking as if you were firing 1...2 ...3 ...4 and onward ac/s simultaneously if you fire another before the cooling of the previous auto cannon its stacking like you're firing 10 of them by the time you suddenly overheat. I'm not part of the livid ppc groupies as the most ive ever used was 2 on builds. But this has been happening since last patch sometimes... now happens 100% of the time. For one, I think chain firing should be tuned ( maybe even create a second rapid chain exclusively for same weapon types) for a/c's to actually fire sequentially based upon the cooling time of the individual weapon over the number of that weapon in the chain. So for 3 a/c's we would have .5/3 for the sequential firing. Which i don't even do that fast because it breaks your game a bit. Burst firing works fine as long as there isnt an ac2 still cooling to keep this stacking heat counter going. This is confusing to me that this is even happening as ac'2s arent even supposed to have an alpha penalty.

[Zyllos]

MustrumRidcully, on 31 July 2013 - 02:30 AM, said:

If you, say, want to have people use versatile mechs, you need to give these mechs an advantage over non-versatile mechs. But this game doesn'T do that at all. If you go versatile, you have to deal with different cooldowns, projectile speed, firing durations, ranges and all that - you have more work as a player to use your build effectively. You spend a lot of time aiming and shooting your different weapons, while your enemy boater just fires one large alpha, and then torso twists away from your efforts to deliver damage to him

This is one of the largest problems in this game right now.

Alpha striking gives the ability to torso twist away and focus damage while generalizing forces you to maintain facing to fire your mixed weapon loadout and is much harder to focus damage.

This is why a CoF, more restrictive hardpoints, better heat system, tonnage limits, and overall weapon balance is so much needed in this game.

[MaxStr]

zizi05105, on 30 July 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

what about the seismic sensor range? i heard it will be greatly reduced

That happened in the latest patch already.

[dal10]

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

All I was suggesting was that it didn't really address more of the core problems of the weapon itself. I can kinda imagine it being in a different niche of a hit and run weapon, but the range and heat makes the PPC equally viable for the same task.



The difference in the projected changes looks like this:

LPL
7 tons, 2 slots
10.6 damage
3.25s cooldown
.5s duration (best guestimate)
8.6 heat
300m optimal

PPC
7 tons, 3 slots
10 damage
4s cooldown
9 heat
540m optimal, 90m min

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.




The changes are mediocre at best.

Edit: Fixed the cooldown on the LPL.

by your logic the lpl is better at ranges under 300 meters.

[Sprouticus]

Zyllos, on 31 July 2013 - 05:12 AM, said:

Even doing that would be a bad idea. It's enforcing too much on the idea that critical hits are worthless unless it's not dealing damage to internal structure.

NOTE: The evaluation below assumes the crit system operates as worded. It is possible that we are misinterpreting how it works.

Flamers, MG and LBX do very little actually iHP damage per crit, so the internal damage bonus would not be game breaking (or atleast not on paper, in game might be different so testing is important)

For instance

LBX-10
1 pellet hits an open panel
Each pellet does 1 point of damage
Each pellet have a 24% chance of crit
Each crit does 2, 4, or 6 iHP of damage to components (average of 3.0 dmg)


If my napkin math is correct, that would raise the average damage by 0.75 per shot due to crits. But ONLY when hitting open panels, so the actual damage increase would be significantly less.

Example.

LBX is shot against an injured mech
1 pellet misses = 0 dmg
5 Pellets hit armored sections = 5 dmg
4 Pellet hit open panels = 4 dmg
1 Pellet crits = 2, 4, or 6 iHP of dmg to component, plus the same amount of damage dmg to internals (average of 3.0 dmg)

In reality this has very little impact on the outcome of the battle, although the crit function WILL rip apart mechs with internals open very nicely. Which is sort of the point since the LBX is useless right now. It gives those weapons a niche of killing mechs with open panels faster at the expense of being effectively useless against armored foes.

I have not done the math with the other weapons, but I would expect them to operate the same way.

Now, if non crit seaker weapons can do this, THEN you will have problems.

[Sprouticus]

dal10, on 31 July 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

by your logic the lpl is better at ranges under 300 meters.

Technically it is, IF you don't take into account the DoT nature of the LPL (notice he does have beam time listed).

But with beam time and several (3?) DoT 'ticks' in each beam, it is hard to concentrate damage with pulse lasers. So PPC's will always win, even with the 90m min range.

[Frost Lord]

MustrumRidcully, on 31 July 2013 - 02:30 AM, said:

if the second part of your sentence is true, the real problem is something else: The game is designed in a manner that rewards a type of gameplay the designers didn'T expect or intent more than the one they expected or intended.

If you, say, want to have people use versatile mechs, you need to give these mechs an advantage over non-versatile mechs. But this game doesn'T do that at all. If you go versatile, you have to deal with different cooldowns, projectile speed, firing durations, ranges and all that - you have more work as a player to use your build effectively. You spend a lot of time aiming and shooting your different weapons, while your enemy boater just fires one large alpha, and then torso twists away from your efforts to deliver damage to him. If the goal of the game design was to have versatile mechs and boats be used in equal proportion, or maybe even with a focus on versatility, the game design failed to achieve this since boats have advantages over versatile mechs.

Some of the advantages go beyond specifics like cooldowns or projectile speed. Some of them are fundamental "normal" - specialist builds trump generalist builds. That is true in most games and most scenarios. If you don'T want that, you need apply artificial benefits for being generalist. Wishful thinking is insufficient when it comes to game design.

I finde mixed range mechs do better anyway you dont need as many heat sinks in most cases.

[Frost Lord]

ChallengerCC, on 31 July 2013 - 04:35 AM, said:

I dont get damage at all from lava. Even when i stand 2 min in it.

its the flowing stuff jump off the platform in the middle

[Butane9000]

Honestly this isn't really the "aggressive" weapon balancing I was expecting.

What about the broken hit detection that's been in since the last few patches?

What about applying the same SSRM limb targeting system to LRMs so that LRMs don't core out a center torso?

What about buffing SSRM's to 2 damage like their SRM counter parts?

Are you going to correct pulse laser heat output to make them more competitive with regular lasers?

What are you going to do about the giant loophole created by your new heat system (Gauss + 2 PPC)?

I honestly expected balancing and bug fixing patches every week. That was the only way I could see the game being in shape for launch. Clearly you expect it to be ready in the next month and a half with only about 3 patches between and I don't see how anyone could have that idea.

[Frost Lord]

one thing that would be good is if they made the position of weapons effect shot placement more, you do notice when you fire a weapon that is in a higher position like the jager mechs arm mounted weapons compared to its chest lasers but I think there needs to be more.

the way i would do it is make arm weapons pin point on there targeting retina like normal unless you are say 80% of the way over to say the left side of the screen then the right side arm weapons will be off by a bit and vice vercer.
head weapons would be slightly above the center of the cross and perhaps the tines bit to one side depending how its positioned, then the left and right torso weapons would be slightly to the appropriate side, some could be high or low as well depending on posishon. then chest weapons would be centered or slightly low. this would do a couple of things one make alpha strikes require more skill as only a dead centered shot or close to it would devastate a single component and they could tweak it to make less effective mechs more viable.

[Frost Lord]

Butane9000, on 31 July 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

Honestly this isn't really the "aggressive" weapon balancing I was expecting.

What about the broken hit detection that's been in since the last few patches?

What about applying the same SSRM limb targeting system to LRMs so that LRMs don't core out a center torso?

What about buffing SSRM's to 2 damage like their SRM counter parts?

Are you going to correct pulse laser heat output to make them more competitive with regular lasers?

What are you going to do about the giant loophole created by your new heat system (Gauss + 2 PPC)?

I honestly expected balancing and bug fixing patches every week. That was the only way I could see the game being in shape for launch. Clearly you expect it to be ready in the next month and a half with only about 3 patches between and I don't see how anyone could have that idea.

unless you have a hell of a lot of LRMS you cant really core anyone without tarring the rest of its components apart in the process.

and I don't know why you would think they would suddenly put out a patch every week, as long as they do decent stuff in the two they release each month it doesn't make a difference really, also balancing is always something that is sorted out after a launch anyway, I just want to see the important stuff sorted out.
the last patch or two should be big since they are a couple of version ahead of what we are playing.

[Sprouticus]

Butane9000, on 31 July 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

Honestly this isn't really the "aggressive" weapon balancing I was expecting.

What about the broken hit detection that's been in since the last few patches?

What about applying the same SSRM limb targeting system to LRMs so that LRMs don't core out a center torso?

What about buffing SSRM's to 2 damage like their SRM counter parts?

Are you going to correct pulse laser heat output to make them more competitive with regular lasers?

What are you going to do about the giant loophole created by your new heat system (Gauss + 2 PPC)?

I honestly expected balancing and bug fixing patches every week. That was the only way I could see the game being in shape for launch. Clearly you expect it to be ready in the next month and a half with only about 3 patches between and I don't see how anyone could have that idea.

You assume (incorrectly) that people WANT all of these changes. I agree with some. I dont agree with all of the, More importantly, PGI does not agree with all of them. In the end they will make the choices.

Also, you realize they are doing a patch next week, right?