15 replies to this topic

[Sable Dove]

Rather than an arbitrary alpha limit and arbitrary penalties for specific weapons, every weapon should be given an alpha penalty that triggers for every weapon it is fired with (within 0.5 seconds of).

Take the Medium Laser, for example:
Let's say we give it a penalty of 0.1 heat.

If you fire a single ML, there is no penalty.
If you fire two, you get a heat penalty of 0.1 each, or 0.2 total.
Three ML together carries a penalty of 0.2 each (0.1 for each weapon it's fired with), or 0.6 total.
4 ML -> 1.2 heat extra.
5 ML -> 2.0
6 ML -> 3.0
7 ML -> 4.2
8 ML -> 5.6
etc.

By giving weapons larger or smaller heat penalties, they can be balanced. For example, firing 6 ML together is probably worth the penalty, but firing 2-3 PPCs is probably not.

So here's a very rough starting point for the alpha penalties:

Spoiler

Small Laser - 0.05
Medium Laser - 0.10
(ER)Large Laser - 1.00
SPL - 0.03
MPL - 0.06
LPL - 0.70 (Pulse lasers are already underpowered. Maybe lesser penalties would help them be more appealing.)
PPC - 4.5
ERPPC - 6 (Firing 2 PPCs generates the heat of 3; Firing 3 generates the heat of 6.)
Flamer - No one uses this seriously; no point in a penalty until it's even remotely useful.

AC2 - 0.10
AC5 - 0.30
UAC5 - 0.50
AC10 - 0.50
LB 10-X AC - 0.50
Gauss Rifle - 8.00 (Gauss rifles require tremendous amounts of power, and are very taxing to fire with other weapons.)
AC20 - 6.00 (Honestly, not much of a canon reason for this; just balance issues)
MG - Similar to the flamer, but not quite as useless. Maybe 0.005 per shot? Two MGs would have 0.1 HPS, four would have 0.8 HPS.

I'm not going to bother with missiles because they're so broken all the time. If they fixed the CT-seeking, and made some other changes to make them less frustrating, then it would matter.

Perhaps I'll make a spreadsheet. That'd make it easier to come up with more balanced numbers. Key thing to note though:
This would do away with the combination-alpha loopholes in the current system. Currently, 2x(ER)PPC/Gauss gets no penalty (19/25 heat alpha), while this system would penalize it heavily for being fired together (53/65 heat alpha). However, this does not invalidate the build; 2xPPC/Gauss would still be perfectly viable, so long as they did not fire all of them at once. The build retains its characteristic high-burst, low-sustained DPS, while losing the ability to load all of that damage on a single component without heavy penalties.



Personally, I'd rather be rid of ghost heat, and just have balanced weapons and regular heat penalties, but since we're obviously not going to get that, this is how to make the current boating penalties less arbitrary, and harder to exploit. It also makes chainfire more heat-efficient regardless of the weapon, allowing the player to choose between concentrated burst DPS, or sustained DPS in-game, rather than in the mechlab.

[Warge]

Problem in not in ghost penalties. Problem in heat threshold. Discussed alot. But PGI have their own weird vision on game balance.

[Sable Dove]

Warge, on 22 August 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

Problem in not in ghost penalties. Problem in heat threshold. Discussed alot. But PGI have their own weird vision on game balance.

I agree, but since PGI is adamant about not improving the core gameplay elements, I'm only suggesting improvements to ancillary systems. Since there are no sub-100% heat penalties, there's no reason for there to be the +30 heat threshold, but PGI likes gameplay that revolves around the highest alpha you can manage.

[Donnie Silveray]

Sable Dove, on 22 August 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

I agree, but since PGI is adamant about not improving the core gameplay elements, I'm only suggesting improvements to ancillary systems. Since there are no sub-100% heat penalties, there's no reason for there to be the +30 heat threshold, but PGI likes gameplay that revolves around the highest alpha you can manage.

I assume you have a source to cite that accusation that they like the current meta?
I believe in a previous Ask The Devs, PGI has exhibited interest in a -100% heating penalties

Quote

Question from Levi Porphyrogenitus: [color=#959595]Have you considered implementing a system of graduated heat penalties to the heat scale?[/color]

Quote

Answer from David:[color=#959595] This is another thing that I would like to see make its way into the game. Unfortunately, there are some synchronization issues that would need to be sorted out first.[/color]

Amongst other things they would like to incorporate mech specific quirks that may resolve some of the more chassis related problems.

I am generally in favor of a more organic scaling system where increasing number of weapons fired imparts some... issues. Maybe firing 2 PPCs on a mech not built for them or not enough heat sinks causes the bar to start dropping later in a linear/exponential amount following subsequent shots. I'm generally not in favor of slapping on a heat penalty to the gauss rifle, frankly I believe the problem simply stems from the fact that it synergizes too well with an ERPPC. But for the sake of preventing abusive boating on certain platforms I do suppose that having your system would accomplish much the same as the heatscale but more organically and possibly with a shorter equation.

This is, of course, assuming you are building into the current system.

Edited by Donnie Silveray, 22 August 2013 - 03:36 PM.

[Warge]

Sable Dove, on 22 August 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

I agree, but since PGI is adamant about not improving the core gameplay elements,

...than leave this as it is. Paul I. don't need our ideas.

• We talked about LRMs - we got ECM-abomination.
  
• We talked about ECM - he "invented" BAP-TAG.
  
• We talked about PPCs - we got ghost heat.
  
• We talked about AC/10/20 that should fire short bursts - we got ghost heat to ballistic! weapon.
  
• We talked about 1PV only games - we got what we got.

Don't you see? PGI have their own "vision" how to deal things!


P.S. Every patch - and MWO becomes worse.

Edited by Warge, 22 August 2013 - 04:06 PM.

[Sable Dove]

I read that more as a dodge to the question. "We'd like to, but there are other, non-specific things we have to do first, which we may or may not ever do or plan to do."

I'm judging their preference for the current meta from the fact that they are doing effectively nothing about it, in spite of dozens of suggestions that are far better than what they come up with, and that the devs have said that they're afraid that lowering heat capacity and increasing dissipation (making it so that high-alpha builds are not the de facto best builds) will cause more experienced players to build better mechs. Which is exactly how it should be, but PGI won't do that because they think variety in effective builds is worse than cookie-cutter max-alpha builds.

[Khobai]

Ghost penalties will never work because 1) theyre stupid, and 2) they make no sense.

[Sable Dove]

They're stupid, but they can be explained, and they can work. It's just that there are better ways to balance that PGI is ignoring, and they really mucked up their implementation of the ghost heat.

[jrgong]

Protip: Just remove Ghost Heat completely like any sane and rational person would

[Sable Dove]

jrgong, on 22 August 2013 - 06:28 PM, said:

Protip: Just remove Ghost Heat completely like any sane and rational person would

Uh, you do realize who this suggestion is intended for, right?

[Donnie Silveray]

Sable Dove, on 22 August 2013 - 04:17 PM, said:

I read that more as a dodge to the question. "We'd like to, but there are other, non-specific things we have to do first, which we may or may not ever do or plan to do."

Hit detection remains iffy -> Balance numbers skewed -> Ineffective modification.

I wouldn't be adjusting balance either if I had issues that'd cloud the numbers. That doesn't mean PGI likes the current meta.

[Taemien]

Donnie Silveray, on 22 August 2013 - 07:15 PM, said:

Hit detection remains iffy -> Balance numbers skewed -> Ineffective modification.

I wouldn't be adjusting balance either if I had issues that'd cloud the numbers. That doesn't mean PGI likes the current meta.

Pretty much the smartest statement on Balance I have seen in a while.

Everyone keeps suggesting changes to PPCs, Gauss, CoF, Convergence, and a myriad of other things. But the real problem is hit detection. One of these days they are going to crack that bug and we're going to see a different game pretty much overnight. What we don't know is how different it will be.

What sense does it make to make massive changes to how the game plays, only to have to revert those changes as soon as a bug is fixed. I say focus on this hit detection bug, then get everything else fixed. Bandaid fix things here or there if you can and can easily be reverted.

Things like Convergence, Cone of Fire, and across the board heat changes on all weapons doesn't seem to be the way to go about it. While this could be applied to heat penalties on boated weapons, I don't think it will be that bad once hit detection is fixed. Though it might make mixed loadout builds superior to boats... and that isn't a bad thing.

[Zordicron]

Taemien, on 22 August 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

Pretty much the smartest statement on Balance I have seen in a while.

Everyone keeps suggesting changes to PPCs, Gauss, CoF, Convergence, and a myriad of other things. But the real problem is hit detection. One of these days they are going to crack that bug and we're going to see a different game pretty much overnight. What we don't know is how different it will be.

What sense does it make to make massive changes to how the game plays, only to have to revert those changes as soon as a bug is fixed. I say focus on this hit detection bug, then get everything else fixed. Bandaid fix things here or there if you can and can easily be reverted.

Things like Convergence, Cone of Fire, and across the board heat changes on all weapons doesn't seem to be the way to go about it. While this could be applied to heat penalties on boated weapons, I don't think it will be that bad once hit detection is fixed. Though it might make mixed loadout builds superior to boats... and that isn't a bad thing.

You have summed up what I have been on my soap box about since March.

PGI needs to really focus down that detection bug. if only a certain part of the team can work on it, fine. The people doing balance stuff should pik up some other tasks for the interim like assisting with CW and UI 2.0, DX11, whatever. Things are going to go upside down when the detection stuff works IMO. Right now, the game seems OKAY. The worst thing currently is the random detection stuff. IMO, sweeping changes to every weapon or re-writes on mechanics at this stage is a fool's errand.

[Sable Dove]

See, you're assuming hit detection will be fixed. A little more optimistic than me.

I seek to make the current game better in a way that seems within PGI's abilities, and seems like they might actually be willing to do it (which is why I'm critiquing an already-implemented system, rather than offering new ideas).

I would rather they make a balance change now, and if they have to revert it in six months when they fix hit detection, then so be it.

[Zordicron]

I think they already know what the issue is with the detection.

When they fixed the match start discon bug a while back, they had to alter the HSR code to do it. I think they know exactly what broke, but they cant hardly revert it out and put the discon bug back in. That means, they have to either find a new way to fix the packaet loss issues with the HSR code so they dont get discon bugs, OR, daunting as it would be, and expensive in time and resources, do a partial or full re-write of the HSR code that isnt prone to the packet loss issues.

Figuring a work around to a packet loss bug is probably pretty dang hard. making a whole new HSR code that doesnt have packet loss issues is probably not somthing they want to do as a for profit buisness, but may be required for the long run. Either way would require a chunk of time, hence why i think it has been quiet on that note for a while.

Still, being that they have an idea what is the root of the beast(or they should considering) I hold out hope that they will slog through it eventually for us.

[Karl Streiger]

No no no - remove it - increase the heat dissipation and increase the weapon heat in the same manor.
27 heat for the PPC and 0.3 -0.4 heat dissipation for a SHS will give you the same game mechanics like Phantom Heat without "virtual" and "random" calculation