75 replies to this topic

[5th Fedcom Rat]

On one hand I'm interested to see how this plays and whether I'll have the "skill" to hit a light crossing my path in spite of the charge up.

On the other hand, if this change is supposed to address the PPC+Gauss issue, all it does is make PPCs even more dominant once again.

I think what's increasingly annoying people about PGI's method of balancing MWO is they consistently refuse to get to the core of the problem (in this case PPCs, or even more directly, poptarting and pinpoint convergence), but instead they seem to favour adding increasingly convoluted and complicated game mechanics that briefly solve one balance problem but create two more.

[ebea51]

“KILL’ the Gauss OR the PPC.
I don’t care – kill ONE of them.

This is your *points finger at everyone* fault.
This is what happens when you abuse a mechanic to the point that PPC+Gauss has been abused.
This is the fruit of your cheesy labors.

Personally, ild rather the PPC be turned into a BEAM weapon.
You read the battletech novels and other literature and the PPC is described as an arc… or beam… that can track across the target gouging out huge furrows of armor.

Ild vote for the PPC being turned into a short duration, high damage, long range laser/beam weapon.

Regardless, something HAS to be done about PPC+Gauss and this is it.

[Reno Blade]

I can think of two effects this change will have for the Gauss + PPC builds:

1. You wait with your PPCs for the Gauss to "alpha". Meaning you will NOT shoot the PPCs if your target moves from LoS or the Gauss decharged before you could line up the shot.

2. You will shoot the PPCs and Gauss seperately.

Both effects bring the wanted results of lowering high damage pinpoint twitch-shots for this combination of weapons.

Now for the "Gauss vs PPC is better for this" question, I'd say to trade travelspeed of Gauss(1200m/s) with PPC(2000m/s) and the PPC would get the deserved "nerf" while the Gauss would now be the "proper" sniper.
That should reduce the twitch-shooting ability of the PPC "boats", right?

[Hillslam]

I have no sympathy for the snipers on here who are whining, as snipers in video games are typically the beady eyed weasel's without any courage who spend wind trying to convince others what they do takes skill.

However... alot of people use the Gauss to brawl. Its already been nerfed to its knees, leave it alone. Heck, leave the PPC alone too, and I don't even use them.

[oldradagast]

So... the goal here is to make the Gauss worthless? Who needs a direct-fire gun that doesn't fire when you pull the trigger, especially in a game where everything eventually gets to close range?! I guess it'll desync the Gauss from the PPC's.... right up until somebody writes a macro to get around this... but it also becomes useless for anything but sniping since a gun that doesn't fire when the trigger is pulled is only worth using if the target is far away / slow relative movement and not really aware of you. Not that the Gauss was a brawling weapon, but now it'll be so useless in a brawl that it will be a liability to have on anything other than a sniping build, which means this change just hurts everyone and yet, stupidly, still favors snipers since they'll be the only ones who will be able to use the new "fire when I feel like it" gauss rifle.

Ugh... no thought at all put into this change, clearly.

Edited by oldradagast, 26 August 2013 - 08:31 AM.

[GODzillaGSPB]

Monky, on 24 August 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

The concept of a charging weapon isn't that hard to master, especially for a sniper. You have time to pick your shots, you have distance seperating you from the enemy which means they only have a few viable counters.

Charging time on the Gauss is fine (and even very forgiving at 0.75 seconds)

The weapon will become unaffective against the current peek-out-high-alpha gameplay and the players laughing the loudest about the new gauss will be the poptarts. No way in hell will you be able to spot-charge-shoot them before they're back at the ground, waiting for their ppc-ac10-combo to be ready again.

The gauss will be the single most handicaped weapon in the game.

[Raudskeggr]

How about making the gauss charge actually do something, instead of charging to shoot you could shoot it anytime as it is now, but if it isn't charged you only do half the damage and also has half the max range.

.75 Charge 15 damage max range 1980 with faster bullet speed
Instant fire no charge 7 damage max range 990 normal bullet speed



Just a thought...

Edited by Col Red, 26 August 2013 - 02:05 PM.

[Latorque]

Hillslam, on 25 August 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

I have no sympathy for the snipers on here who are whining, as snipers in video games are typically the beady eyed weasel's without any courage who spend wind trying to convince others what they do takes skill.

However... alot of people use the Gauss to brawl. Its already been nerfed to its knees, leave it alone. Heck, leave the PPC alone too, and I don't even use them.

Right there with you. But of my 40 shots of ammunition, about 5-6 to a max of 10 were spent sniping before i started brawling / flanking. It's gone now, replaced by an LB-X. Gauss was better suited though, more reliable. And the classic camping sniper, completely unaware of his surroundings or of any kind of tactical necessities; is in all honesty least of of all in the gauss camp, and not even mainly in the PPC camp.

Sorry; i never had any kind of problems with any of these weapons or even combined builds - at least they have to show their heads to fire; and peak-a-boo is not a punishable offense in itself.

Give me those guys over a 100ton atlas / 90 ton Stalker / 60 ton Catapult farting endless streams of missiles (with practically no heat) while depleting his team of his durability and any other kind of direct-fire loadout he might take any day.

Well, i guess the gauss is gone, one way or the other. I just hope the LRM gets nerfed to hell and back in return.

[Raistlic]

Ok, I don't want to white knight and I don't want to offend any players personally.

First of all. I cant tell if the fix/nerf/altreration of the Gauss is a good thing. I simply dont know. But I agree with most of you on the fact that something has to be done with the 2xPPC/Gauss combo. The current solution might not be the best, but it's a first step to adress the problem (and you know, there are serveral other pressing problems that are -- sadly enough -- not addressed now).

But sometimes I'm amused by our forum discussions over a certain feature when it's not even implemented (which isn't necessary a bad thing to have such discussions). But the ways our discussions sometimes take are often mysterious to me. And sometimes I got the impression that it is due to a specific player's mentality that came up during the last years.

I'll try to scetch it out:
Don't nerf Gauss (like intended) because it will render the weapon useless in sniping.
Ok, but I think it will just making ind harde to snipe. (One weapon group sniping) and that only when we leave macros out.

Don't nerf Gauss because it already has significant drawbacks.
Often mentioned in this regard "It explodes when critted." Right, but it takes time to crit it, savely stored in a 75t upwards sniper-mech standing miles away. "Aditionally it has a minimum range..." - a minimum range that doesnt affect the 75t upwards sniper-mech standing miles away, in the first place. "It's ammo dependend" - true, but it also just generates one (1) heat with fifteen damage.

A valid argument concerning close range:
Of course some of us use the weapon for brawling. And indeed I think, that the intended charge-up mechanic will make it quite difficult to do so. But aren't there other weapon choices then if one intends to brawl? What about our good ol' AC20?

It seems to me, that some players (no offense intended) are trying to get the best weapon for all possible scenarios. Like "I want to be a heavy armored sniper and once they get past my killbox and I get cornered I want to make them pay for that. But to sniper really effectivley i need to move unseen, with an ECM, for instance" And that is exactly the mentality I believe I have observed. Since "Splinter Cell" many people seem to be obsessed with this whole stealt approch. "I can see you while you can't see me. I can hurt you, why you can't. But once you caught me, I want to have a chance to punish you for that. And I dont like to play on maps like terror therma, because although I got my 1-heat-Gauss, it messes up my heat management concerning my other two ppcs. And last but not least I want my efforts to be represented in the stat list at the end" I guess that mentality is the cause for the influx of snipers in fps titles or rogues/tricksters in mmorpgs or moobas.

We are always complaining about missing variety, but exactly this mentality is killing any possible variety no matter what. Already now matches are mainly fought out over long distance. Brawlers (in PUGs) can easily sit back the first 5-7 minutes of a match without missing anything important. If they don't they are most likely sniped away. Trying to get theta on tourmaline in a medium? Possible, but not without coordinated fiering cover...so just sit back and let'em snipe it out.

See, I dont want to interfere with one's favorite playstyle. But once you chose a style, you have to take it with all of it's drawbacks. But while we try to figure out a good alternative for fixing something (and plenty of them are already mentioned here) we should leave personal preferences, "lore"-arguments and scientific proof (Gauss cannot explode when there is no charge...) aside as far as possible.

Just my 2c.

Greetings

Raist

[Alex Warden]

funny how people cry out because the single best,strongest, coolest highdamage longrange pinpoint brawler weapon is gonna be brought in line...

if you think that the gauss needing some timing effort will "kill the gauss"... well... you probably should use streaks...

[MechWarrior131925]

Yea...I think they are missing this one.

Listen to the players, the gauss isn't the issue, PPC's are the issue. We are even seeing more and more Light mechs using PPC's...not gauss. I just don't understand the train of thought here. Put a charge time on a ballistic weapon rather than an energy weapon. This not only puts a nerf on PPC/gauss snipers it nerfs anyone that wants to use a gauss. Lights are hard enough to hit already with the current hit detection issues, putting a delay on the gauss if you are engaging a light up close will pretty much take that weapon out of the picture.

So what is this going to do? More people will simply skip the gauss and put either dual UAC5's, dual AC5's or an AC10. Are we gonna nerf those too when this happens? Maybe a better solution would be to delay the PPC's, put spread damage on the PPC's or once again increase heat on PPC's.

I personally like the spread damage idea. For example; if you hit CT, then 80% damage goes to that area and 10% damage goes to the adjacent areas - right and left torsos. If you hit the right arm, then 10% goes to right torso the other 10% is lost. BY NO MEANS should any spread to the head though.

If this is too much work for them to do, add the charge time to the PPC's. Ballistics already suffer from the need to run ammo and their potential ammo explosion (in the case of gauss its the weapon explosion).

Competitive drops use the PPC/Gauss combo because it is effective. This isn't going to stop or slow down PPC usage it is just going to render the gauss rifle a non-used weapon.

[Latorque]

Alex Warden, on 27 August 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

funny how people cry out because the single best,strongest, coolest highdamage longrange pinpoint brawler weapon is gonna be brought in line...

if you think that the gauss needing some timing effort will "kill the gauss"... well... you probably should use streaks...

Well... you had quite the price to pay to equip it. There are ways to adapt; but taking ballistic sniping more or less out of the equation? Call me a doomsayer; but closing in to the enemy isn't always a walk in the park in this game. It shouldn't be, but one of the reasons i loved to equip the gauss was that it got the enemy to keep in cover after a few hits. Current long range weapons are gauss, ER PPC (PPC to a lesser extent) and the LRM, LLas is not a good deal i'm afraid.

Saying "go brawl then" is a little shortsighted - i like brawling, but you need speed, a certain skill (i won't claim i mastered this ) and some kind certainty that you or someone else keeps the enemy suppressed while you close the distance. Even with the gauss in its current state; this is pretty often a suicide run thanks to LRMs and yes, enemy gauss and PPCs.

I freely admit that it's a gut feeling, but i pretty much fear nerfing the gauss will make static / sniping gameplay even more widespread. Guys with sniperbuilds will fumble nervously on their triggers (or solve it by macro), guys with mixed builds will drop them or feel severely disadvantaged when they get in range and first must cater to the whims of their main gun before firing it.

I wouldn't say it's gamebreaking (and i don't have a PP package to cancel ) - but pulling the 3PV-stunt to make the game more accessible while planning to complicate the process of firing a gun and possibly hitting the balance severely is an... interesting route.

Here's to my newfound love, the LB-X.

Edited by Latorque, 27 August 2013 - 04:30 AM.

[oldradagast]

The thing is, it is not going to be "brought in line" - it is going to be rendered useless. A direct fire weapon (that is not guided and has no area effect) that sits around, twiddling its thumbs for close to a second before firing after one pulls the trigger is useless. This really irks me since my 733 Highlander is now a 90-ton paperweight since it really needs a Gauss to carry its tonnage (and they still haven't fixed the SRM single-fire bug on the Highlanders, but that's another story...)

This constant nerfing of the most powerful weapon(s) or weapon combos is growing tiresome and really solves nothing. The real problem is perfect convergence and zero incentive to not play the biggest, nastiest mech you can since nothing else other than winning through kills produces any real rewards.

Edited by oldradagast, 27 August 2013 - 05:36 AM.

[lshtaria]

Look guys this is PGI we're talking about. We know they will never change a planned "feature" because we don't agree with it, even though it's blatantly obvious to every man and his r***rd this will be a disastrous change to make.

We can tell them until we're blue in the face that it needs to go on the PPC but they just will not listen to us. Well this is a promise from me, if this change to the Gauss comes it will be one wrong change too far from you guys so I will be seeking a refund for as many of my purchases as I'm legally entitled to, including Phoenix Overlord.

[Bhael Fire]

Hey! Paul, I'm sorry for flying off the handle, going all Henny Penny n' sh*t.

After using the new charge up mechanic for the last few days, I can dig it. Here's the "but...":

Design

- Please increase charge hold time; it's annoyingly short. Maybe 4 seconds?
- Reduce recycle time to 3.25 seconds? Since the 0.75 seconds to charge up makes up for it.


Sound

- The charge up sound needs to be more distinct and louder.

Art

- Please give a visual indicator when the weapon is charged in the HUD; either as a change in the targeting reticle or as a message like the overheating warning. Preferably as part of the targeting reticle.

Put those changes in and I think we'll have a winner.

Now...about those UAC/5s....

[anilator]

The gauss is no longer an enjoyable weapon. Its just too much of a hassle to use. It needs to be improved I am used to it but don't care for it knowing my chances are better with a ppc, med laser, or most other weapons now. Like said charging would fit a ppc better if you wanna go that route but if you do remember it could be an optional thing for more power instead of necessary.