490 replies to this topic

[Kattspya]

East Indy, on 05 September 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

I'd suggest the Ultra AC's drawback take advantage of the ability to model in time, since gameplay has already departed from the punishing tabletop rules.

Instead of randomly jamming, what if UACs cycled more and more slowly when used constantly, and returned cycle time to normal during a couple seconds' pause? Overall fire rate could be calculated to match the rate currently factoring in jams, rewarding disciplined bursts.

This is a really cool idea.

I've been playing red orchestra 2 and the expansion lately and really really like how the mechanics force realism organically. You tend to find yourself firing 3-5 round bursts with MGs, 2-3 with the BAR and so on to be effective. It makes for great gameplay and ambience. Being able to judge how seasoned a player is from their firing pattern is even greater.

Three thumbs up!

[Viral Matrix]

I think the change to PPC min range is over the top, too heavily nerfed. I dont care about the heat changes, but making them do zero damage under 90m isnt warranted. Esp, since you slowed the projectile speed and upped the heat. Normal PPCs are now too useless.

The rest of the patch changes seem fine. I like how the srm2/4 cooldown was decreased.

[Unspeakable Cuteness]

I like the changes to the Gauss Rifle. The only minor issue I have with the new Gauss Rifle is that the 1.25 second window to fire the shot feels a little too short. But maybe that's just my lack of skill showing.

Or it could also be because I've been running the Gauss Rifle on a Medium mech that can't afford to expose any section of torso for longer than a second

[East Indy]

Kattspya, on 05 September 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

This is a really cool idea.

I've been playing red orchestra 2 and the expansion lately and really really like how the mechanics force realism organically. You tend to find yourself firing 3-5 round bursts with MGs, 2-3 with the BAR and so on to be effective. It makes for great gameplay and ambience. Being able to judge how seasoned a player is from their firing pattern is even greater.

Three thumbs up!

Thanks! I tried the Ultra and disliked its uncontrollable nature — I've also been wondering if, even post-buff, players tend to mount 2-3 and chain-fire in part because jams are far less noticeable and irritating. This way, weapon effectiveness is entirely under the control of the user. Plus, maybe a very disciplined trigger would achieve a deadly-high rate of fire, raising the skill ceiling and making mastery of the gun a very valuable thing.

Edited by East Indy, 05 September 2013 - 02:00 PM.

[CHH Badkarma]

East Indy, on 05 September 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

Thanks! I tried the Ultra and disliked its uncontrollable nature — I've also been wondering if, even post-buff, players tend to mount 2-3 and chain-fire in part because jams are far less noticeable and irritating. This way, weapon effectiveness is entirely under the control of the user. Plus, maybe a very disciplined trigger would achieve a deadly-high rate of fire, raising the skill ceiling and making mastery of the gun a very valuable thing.

or maybe something real world kinda. The hotter you are the more likely it is to jam.

[Flak Kannon]

I've been critical of PGI and there communication, but I like the new mechanic of the Gauss.

That being said, please increase the charge hold time by about .5 to 1 seconds, the current charge hold time seems just too short.

Also, I feel the UAC5 is in a good place. Please don't hurt it's performance, it's my favorite weapon to date.

I think the LBX10 still needs more love...and pulse lasers, but everything else seems in a good place.

[Capfailboat]

The weapon is in a pretty good place now, but in light of these changes and PPC changes, I'd like to pose some comments and questions.

-Will you be re-balancing or eliminating ghost heat on PPC's since some additional heat has been added?

-Would it be possible to moderately increase the charge dwell time, while increasing the Gauss crit explosion modifier while charged?

-In the same vein, could the gauss crit explosion modifier be reduced while not charged?
This would increase the usage somewhat while offering a greater risk vs. reward for holding the charge longer.

-Any chance of pre-charger or pre-capacitor add-on for the gauss?

-Also could you reduce the weapon recycle rate to INCLUDE the charge into the total cycle time?

Edited by CapnFaiiboat, 05 September 2013 - 02:40 PM.

[El Space Doctor]

I'm very worried about them "taking a look at uac's" as it currently is one of the very few interesting weapons to use left in this game and has a huge downside of having to face the enemy pretty much constantly to get off enough shots and the need to carry 8-10 tons of very explosive ammo to last a full 12 v 12 round. I do agree the very recent buff to jam frequency was an idiotic move to begin with, but now I fear the knee jerk reaction is to nerf them to hell. So please remember, if you accidentally take one step backwards, the remedy isn't to take two more.

If anything, I'd return the jam rate, or even increase it to 50% if need be. The touble tap should be a last ditch effort.
And if it's all done to pave way for the upcoming bigger uac's.. Just don't bring the bigger uac's, atleast not yet. The game is just not ready for that and they'll most likely end up being either ridiculously overpowered or so erratic to operate that they will just become useless. I just can't see any common solution for balancing the uac mechanic for larger rounds as the reward just gets bigger and risk smaller as the caliber grows, and with the recent history off adding asinine mechanics any new solution is likely to be less than ideal and people will have to do a lot of complaining to eventually get it removed.

To me, even though I liked my gausses and still do, the weapons PGI should be looking into are LBX10 and the whole array of pulse lasers. Otherwise, I'd be happy to work around these new mechanics and get used to them before suggesting anything else.

[Alex Wolfe]

Good to see there appears to be some serious balancing effort. Possibly. Right on time too, it's only been a year.

Although saying that the gauss treatment is fine, and implying that medium "buffs" were satisfactory in any way doesn't give me much hope for the future.

I guess we'll see.

[Lightfoot]

You won't really know how the various weapons balance out until you tell players the map (or they choose the map) before Mechlab.

I remember in MechWarrior 4 no one brought a Gauss Rifle to a City or close range map and no one brought an LBX20 to an open map. If you did either, you lost and the only difference really was range vs damage and longer recharge by two seconds for Gauss Rifles.

I won't be using MWO's Gauss Rifle though. There is no reason too. The one thing the Gauss had was ease of use over UAC-5's and other AC's which do much higher DPS per ton/recharge than the Gauss Rifle. Now the Gauss is harder to use and does lower DPS per ton than ACs. Makes no sense balancing-wise.

I think it's that Assault mechs carried a single Gauss Rifle and probably PPCs, and Assaults usually beat anything lighter than them due to higher armor that the Gauss Rifle was singled out, because it certainly is far from the best DPS ballistic. Now those Assaults will be carrying 2xUAC-5's which do more than double the Gauss Rifle's DPS for an extra 3 tons.

I'll say no more. I am sure you see what I mean.

[Dan Nashe]

Ultimately I would rather see this gauss charge up removed.
And the recycle time on a gauss rifle just raised to 8 seconds. That lets people take fast shots at people moving at a distance in and out of cover, but renders it terrible in a brawl. Less than 2 dps means a large laser out dps's a gauss then. And even the AC10 would be higher dps by a lot, but the gauss would be effective for sniping.

[And I understand why they can't do a minimum range - coding that on a ballistic is a lot harder given the high velocity. And I believe missiles probably cheat for coding. Just a guess.]

[DC1]

I only have one question: can you please consider an increase to the amount of time the gun holds its charge? its very hard for me to line up my shots atm.

[Heldar1]

My thoughts are simple.

1) If we need to 'charge up' the guass, alter its exploding mechanic to work only when charged. That is why the exploding mechanic was put into place in the first place, to help balance it and for the lore junkies - exploding capacitors.

2) Make the charge time faster, around 0.5 seconds +/- 0.1 second.

3) Make the firing time longer - 1.25 seconds isn't long enough to RELIABLY snipe in a lot of cases, and even less so in anything closer than 500 meters. Its effectiveness has already been reduced by essentially making it a 4.75 second reload that gimps itself every 1.25 seconds. Before, a missed shot was just a missed shot. Now its a 5 second reload with a 1.25 second "oh ****! I gotta shoot now, or get pummeled for anther second/hope for another shot."

4) A secondary thought to circumvent all of this needless timing and gimping of the weapon, simply make the recharge longer. Say 5-6 seconds, +/- 1 second. Makes people think twice about firing in case they miss, but doesn't add any unnecessary confusion.

Over all, in concerns of the guass, I think its a step in the right direction. Just needs more tweaks. Everything else seemed good to me and like how it plays out.

P.S I do feel the Orion's CT is a little too big, but that's just a personal observation.

[TOGSolid]

I can't remember who originally made this suggestion so apologies to that guy for repeating his idea:

Make the UAC class of weapons into burst fire weapons where each pull of the trigger shoots a number of shots equal to the rating of the gun. A UAC/5 would shoot a burst of 5 1 damage shots. A UAC/10 would shoot 10, and so on. Firing again before the recycle timer is up would work as it does now.

This would give the UACs a very distinct flavor compared to the regular Autocannons and introduce a real tradeoff. Regular ACs would be doing focused damage while UAC/s will have a higher DPS potential with the drawback of that damage getting spread around. When Rotaries are eventually introduced they will then be able to function as just a straight up autocannon chaingun (which is basically what the UAC/5 is right now).

EDIT: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2727092

There's the post! It would do a lot to fix the eventual shitshow with UAC/20s.

Edited by TOGSolid, 06 September 2013 - 10:31 AM.

[Chronojam]

The suggestion was to have regular auto-cannon work that way, firing a series of projectiles depending on caliber. The UAC would be "hold trigger until it overheats/jams." This would make it similar to fixed fire-select in other FPS games.

[TOGSolid]

Chronojam, on 05 September 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

The suggestion was to have regular auto-cannon work that way, firing a series of projectiles depending on caliber. The UAC would be "hold trigger until it overheats/jams." This would make it similar to fixed fire-select in other FPS games.

Then what are Rotary Autocannons supposed to do?

Making regular ACs into single shots, UAC/s into burst weapons, and the eventual Rotaries into full auto cannons would give each class of weapon a really distinct feeling and purpose.

Edited by TOGSolid, 05 September 2013 - 05:31 PM.

[Chronojam]

I don't know if MWO will ever approach introducing RAC weaponry. Personally I think the UAC should be a simple toggle between single-shot and faster full-auto (with a chance to jam if firing at full auto speeds), standard AC should be an "assault burst," LB-X should be slower than a single-shot UAC but be able to switch between single slug and scatter, and RAC could have a proper "overheat" system where it becomes less reliable over time if not allowed to cool.

The odds of these changes we're talking about are quite low anytime soon, and really wouldn't even be super welcome until they get their other **** in order.

[DocBach]

TOGSolid, on 05 September 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Then what are Rotary Autocannons supposed to do?

Making regular ACs into single shots, UAC/s into burst weapons, and the eventual Rotaries into full auto cannons would give each class of weapon a really distinct feeling and purpose.

I think the UAC should be a burst fire weapon and perform similarly to how the M16A2 or AN94 functions in other shooter games, where a small deviation from recoil between the two shot's point of impact occurs. Lighter caliber AC's like theUAC/2 and UAC/5 would have less severe, more predictable deviation from recoil, with Ultra AC/10's and 20's having severe effects from recoil.

[Mr Nikson]

Now gauss absolutely useless. Congratulating, PGI. Who's next? Offered - just leave the machine guns (without crit) - and this will be the perfect mechscharrior, with long long long-lived mech

[Lightfoot]

I have had some previous experience with charge-up/ charge dissapate type weapons on a Mech. MechWarrior 4 Vengeance's Bombast Laser gave you 4 seconds to fire for a 25% damage bonus over regular Large Lasers. It was so difficult to use vs live opponents in PvP that no one used it at all and it was removed from MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries, MW4's finale ex-pak.

I guess these things work in Quake, etc., but can't make the jump to a walking arsenal like a mech. If past equals present the current Gauss will fail also.