490 replies to this topic

[TOGSolid]

Lightfoot, on 05 September 2013 - 07:06 PM, said:

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.

You are completely ignoring MW4's meta that revolved around poptarting with PPCs and Gauss Rifles. The comparison is just not applicable at all in MWO.

[Davis Early]

From what I've been hearing (reading, mostly) from poptart players has been that the charge time either takes too long or takes to short a time frame to fire. If the current charging time is still 0.75 seconds, perhaps that is the one part of this change that needs a bit of revision. 3/4's of a second isn't necessarily any sort of scientificly significant time, is it? I'll bet that someone out there has done some work on human reflexes and the actual science of accurate sniper shooting. If the Gauss is intended to be a sniper weapon, then perhaps the timing of it's charging up to dicharge should be something related to that? Just thoughts, it seems like maybe just maybe the charge time is a best intentioned first guess rather than a best educated first guess, given the evenness of 0.75 seconds.

And why was the delay merely thrown in there anyway? If the flamers that alot of spiders are starting to mount can do damage as long as the button's held down, why can't the charging Guass be set to fire once the attendant buttton is released, after bewing held down to charge the weapon properly? If the charge had to reach a certain level before the round would fire correctly, then hey, THAT's a new dynamic that helps change the role of sniper up, you know? And perhaps even you could impose problems on the weapon if the charge wasn't managed correctly by the pilot? Damage to the section (gee, like falling damages legs...), a jammed weapon, a short in the charging system that forces a wait for a bit if the the charge is "held" to long.

Again, just thoughts.

[TOGSolid]

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If the flamers that alot of spiders are starting to mount can do damage as long as the button's held down

Show me a Spider running a flamer and I'll show you a new pilot that's never used a flamer before.

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From what I've been hearing (reading, mostly) from poptart players has been that the charge time either takes too long or takes to short a time frame to fire.

The opinions of poptarters really don't matter. Poptarting is not sniping, it's poptarting. They have plenty of other weapons to use for what they're trying to do.

[Marcus Roland]

Love the new balance on the gauss! Once I got used to it I thought it was better than ever!

[Entail]

Can the AC2 group firing penalty be removed?
Can it be looked at at least?
Please remove the AC2 from the grouping heat penalty as the AC2 does not create a high damage alpha
strike in any way

[Straften]

Buff pulse lasers.

[xDAMAGEx]

I understand the idea behind defining the role of the Gauss rifle and yes the mechanic takes a bit of getting used to but as a sniper weapon it's missing a bit of ease of use. I think the mechanic would fit better on PPC considering they would have to charge up. As for Gauss maybe their could be an arming switch that charges up the coils and while the coils are charge they slowly build up heat until the round is fired. It still gives Gauss that hair trigger that stays true to sniper weapons but it does slow it down with the added heat element.

[Icedman]

I don't hate the current gauss mechanic, assuming it gets tweaked a bit. First of all, it's currently adding an on-trigger .75 second cooldown to the weapon in a charge mechanic. Cut down the actual cooldown to account for this. If you add a charge mechanic to a weapon, the cooldown compounds issues.

Second, keep the charge up longer than 1.5 seconds. 1:3 or 1:4 ratio between charge time : decay will greatly help synergy. There is a fine line between "unique mechanic" and "frustrating mechanic" and right now it's on the side of frustrating by a bit.

Right now, the risk/reward for Gauss just isn't there. What the weapon brings isn't better enough than other choices to make it truly viable. Can you play with it, kill stuff and have fun? Yes. Will people still use it after the novelty of charge > fire wears off? No. At least not as-is.

[Aescwulf]

I like the recent patch. Because for Gauss and PPC you have to really think about your tactics more than you had to before the patch. Despite the changes and some of peoples opinions I still see Gauss and PPC in drops, which to me suggests that they have discovered tactics and builds.

[tulip]

The Gauss mechanic, I like it.

That said I feel that the weapon cooldown should be reduced by the length of the charge time (0.75s) and the amount of time it stays charged could be bumped up by half a second or so.

[Blue Shadow]

Gauss Rifle.

The good: Boost to projectile speed makes it feel more like a sniper weapon.

The Bad: I've found the new charge mechanic to hinder long range sniping when targets are moving in and out of cover, it's also reduced the weapons DPS.

Suggestions: If the charge is here to stay, then one or more of the following should be done; increase the time the charge can be "held", reduce the cool down time to compensate for the charge up, and/or increase the optimal range.

[Lightfoot]

TOGSolid, on 05 September 2013 - 07:52 PM, said:

You are completely ignoring MW4's meta that revolved around poptarting with PPCs and Gauss Rifles. The comparison is just not applicable at all in MWO.

That was all league dependent. If you played in a non-Force First Person (3PV) league like MW4 Vengeance League, yes, that's all you saw.

If you played in Starlance, Orbital Drop League, Battletech Universe, you never saw the pop-tarts because they were all FFP=ON leagues. FFP=ON defeated all pop-tarting in MW4, unlike MWO which allows targeting-locks without line of sight to the target. I spent many hours per week in the MW4 online leagues so I know this to be the factual truth.

That said, no one used the Bombast Laser in the FFP=ON leagues where it was impossible to poptart and I am sure no one used it in the MW4 Vengeance League which was poptarts-only.

So you must not have been playing in one of the MW4 leagues, but even in singleplayer the Bombast Laser was a total flop, even with 4 seconds to fire it. It just doesn't work as well as a normal weapon which is always ready to fire. And singleplayer AI mechs are very predictable as you know.

Edited by Lightfoot, 06 September 2013 - 08:26 AM.

[Lightfoot]

And now, for the rest of the story........

I also wanted to point out the the Gauss charge-up/ charge dissapate nerf unfairly impacts Joystick users and was obviously designed and balanced for the Mouse which is granted point and click shooting by MWO's mechanics.

The Joystick is an actual simulation or certainly not point and click. Mechs have joystick torso characteristics, the reticles take much longer to allign, (sometimes I wonder why this isn't transfered to Mouse aiming since everyone seems to want less convergence).

Anyway, it takes a few seconds to line up a Joystick shot, but the charge/dissapate gives just a second to shoot. So this nerf as implemented makes the Gauss Rifle unusable for Joystick users. Of course I think the whole idea was to make the Gauss Rifle more un-aimable, so success.

As time goes on though, the trend will be for players to migrate to joystick gameplay because it is so much more immersive and you just have a much greater sense of how your mech moves and where it is. Once you learn to pilot a mech with a joystick you can never go back to a mouse.

[Chronojam]

TOGSolid, on 05 September 2013 - 07:52 PM, said:

You are completely ignoring MW4's meta that revolved around poptarting with PPCs and Gauss Rifles. The comparison is just not applicable at all in MWO.

MWO's meta revolved around poptarting with PPCs and Gauss Rifles, too. For the majority of its playable existence.

[Fenris]

Really great patch, one of the best so far imho.

Please don't nerf UAC5s. There is no real problem with those - or state the problem that your data shows you...

[FireSlade]

Fenris, on 06 September 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:

Really great patch, one of the best so far imho.

Please don't nerf UAC5s. There is no real problem with those - or state the problem that your data shows you...

I will name one problem with them. Which version should you always bring? The AC5 or the UAC5? At the moment for 1crit/ton more you get an AC10 (AC20 DPS wise) with little drawbacks. The 15% jam rate makes it too reliable and virtually makes the ammo the only drawback. Personally I think PGI really messed up on the interpretation of the weapon and instead made the Rotary AC5 since it had a similar rate of fire with their UAC5's double tap and it also jammed.

[TOGSolid]

FireSlade, on 06 September 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

I will name one problem with them. Which version should you always bring? The AC5 or the UAC5? At the moment for 1crit/ton more you get an AC10 (AC20 DPS wise) with little drawbacks. The 15% jam rate makes it too reliable and virtually makes the ammo the only drawback.

The funny part is that it's always been like that. All these people crying out not to tweak the UAC/5 seem to be under the VERY mistaken belief that it wasn't already a solid weapon that outclassed the AC/5. With the lower jam rate it's not absurdly overpowered but it's definitely in that "a smidge too good" territory.

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Personally I think PGI really messed up on the interpretation of the weapon and instead made the Rotary AC5 since it had a similar rate of fire with their UAC5's double tap and it also jammed

Yeah, it's been a grumble of mine for a while that the UAC/5 is not a UAC, it's functionally a Rotary Autocannon.

I'm definitely of the opinion that this:

TOGSolid, on 05 September 2013 - 04:30 PM, said:

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 due to the burst fire. 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.

Would help give the ACs, UACs, and the eventual RACs their own distinct function and help prevent the eventual stupidity of the UAC/20 annihilating everything.

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MWO's meta revolved around poptarting with PPCs and Gauss Rifles, too. For the majority of its playable existence.

And now it doesn't. Funny how that works.

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As time goes on though, the trend will be for players to migrate to joystick gameplay because it is so much more immersive and you just have a much greater sense of how your mech moves and where it is. Once you learn to pilot a mech with a joystick you can never go back to a mouse.

Eh, the fine aiming capabilities of the mouse still keep it as the preferred option. The joystick is more fun, but it's not the best and that's coming from someone who's been using a stick in sim games since he was a kid.

Edited by TOGSolid, 06 September 2013 - 10:45 AM.

[-Muta-]

What really makes me happy is the fact that something will be tweaked on lights... We have been forgotten

[Bipper]

A charge-up mechanic for the Gauss would've been sufficient... but the current goofy timing game that one has to play with every shot is overkill. If you want to have the weapon have a minimum usable range then set it up like you did with the PPC where anything under X meters is 0 damage. Or, make it reduced damage under x meters.

I also don't see how this mechanic inhibits pop-tarting. A simple macro is all it takes to simultaneously fire PPCs and the gauss (even with the delays).

Edited by Bipper, 06 September 2013 - 11:05 AM.

[Sandarbian]

"About Guass and moving backwards"

.....there, fix it!

PGI, you are fixing things to oblivion. Quit 'fixing" and finish the game.

Because if I don't get the complete game soon, my money, and I've spent alot of money on you yahwhoos, will go elsewhere.

Edited by Sandarbian, 06 September 2013 - 11:22 AM.