37 replies to this topic

[cerealspiller]

w0rm, on 29 September 2013 - 01:18 PM, said:

Random is bad.

Im not implying anything be random. One would be able to track their crosshair sway and still shoot accurately with moderate heat.

Boz - We are in agreement

[IceLom]

This idea is awful..

All it would do is make Alpha striking the only viable build.

Front load all your damage so you can shoot it all when cool so all your damage hits without crosshair shake. Having your weapons split up into a more damage over time build would be allot less effective due to the crosshair shake.

Edited by IceLom, 29 September 2013 - 02:03 PM.

[Cest7]

I would rather have seen this than ghost heat.

[TB Freelancer]

Why not just go to the MW3 type of heat. A full energy alpha will instantly explode your mech, but you had (depending on the number of heat sinks) a really fast cooldown and given enough heat sinks could fire groups in rapid succession over and over without much to worry about.

Right now with high caps and low dissipation, ballistics (other than the AC2) are the only weapons that can pretty much fire at will and energy based builds are completely screwed in sustained fights....

....but given a few of the high profile PGI employees who have an expressed bias in favor of ballistics, it might be intentional....if irrational.

They can bury a broken heat system under as many bandaids as they like, but under all the ghost heat, gauss mechanic bandaids, its still a broken system and no amount of bandaids will correct it if they don't fix the heat system itself.

Edited by TB Freelancer, 29 September 2013 - 04:18 PM.

[shadN]

I would modify that system.


Do not penalize before 50 % heat.

Some blurring would be nice. Some red light in the cockpit would be nice. Sparks perhaps. Slow movement. Some crosshair sway.

[Nryrony]

Well we do have a a lot of issues with the mechs and the weapons, but they are not all solvable by a cross-hair shake.

Take the AC's high dps limited range - on paper. In reality they shoot and hit at much greater range then they should. Why take a ER PPC when an AC5/UAC5 does the same job - just better and without that kind of heat. They also have no weaknesses at close ranges. - Range must be limited, add more bullet drop and some kind of small un-precision - I'm sure not all AutoCannons where designed to be sniper rifles...

Hit-boxes and mech sizes are still broken too, ofc not every medium mech has to be size limited, but there are good examples and bad ones. In therms of hit-boxes just look at the commando and the spider there are worlds between them.

Also missiles are still broken, all of them. Lrms are still to un-precise, unreliable and take too much attention when you use them (you need to keep that target and can't even fire on some one else or you might loose your look). However when you boat them and team up, they can be a real beast, even unfair in a lot of cases. - A lot of mechs where designed to have them as a supportive weapon. We need to make them useful for solo players again and as a supportive weapon but less a boating option. Therefore the need to keep the lock must be replaced.

Srms are unreliable, at best they work like a shotgun, but still there work needs to be done here.

Ssrms do to much dmg. For lights this is a big issue, having one of the medium mechs boating 4+ ssrms while you can't run is a freekill/death. - To balance it dmg should be reduced but on bigger mechs they should target the CT more frequently.

[Dirus Nigh]

I made a very large post of what kind of heat effects could be added to the game. In my post I had them start at 45-50%. That was about two weeks after I joined closed beta. It was not ripped apart and trolled by the community.

in a nut shell I wanted effects that started at points along the the heat scale, and got worse as the heat rises.

effects I listed were.

HUD flickering/fuzzing.
Target Data taking longer to update.
Target locks taking longer.
Weapon cycle times taking longer.
Acceleration/deceleration being effected.
Torso, and arm movement being effected.
Mini map Icons blinking and fuzzing out.
Weapon convergence being effected.
Top speed being reduced.

These are the things that would properly represent the consequences of having high heat levels in a mech, as the TT and novels portray them.

The effects do not have to be huge, they can build to just enough to be noticeable by the pilot of the hot mech, and by others observing him.

It may be more work, but I think its a more elegant, immersive and dynamic solution to high alpha builds, than a heat tax system.

While on the topic of heat. Damage to the core should not happen at 100% heat. Auto shut down is a safety measure to insure that the fusion reactor is not damage due to high heat. 110% is a good place for damage to occur. Its a big enough opening that it will not out right threaten the player to just pushing the heat enough to shut down, while still retaining a big consequence for a sloppy player. After all, shutting down in the middle of a fight is harsh enough.

[Hexenhammer]

Slowing down the fire rate will slow down the game and people want to blow {Scrap} up. If PGI dropped weapon damage by 75% and increased fire rates by 50% people would be happy because there would be more action. Shooting = Happy.

Edited by Hexenhammer, 29 September 2013 - 09:42 PM.

[MasterErrant]

you realize that this is just the simplified TT rules many of us have wanted for months.

[akpavker]

cerealspiller, on 29 September 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

A few Problems with MWO:

Mechs die too fast
High Alpha to win
Some hitboxes greater than others

Heat Scale Penalties would fix all of this in a pinch.

Here's how:


Crosshair Shake Penalty
Add 3-4 intensities of crosshair shake to the Heat Scale. This alone would fix just about everything. The greatest intensity could even be less than what the old Jump Jet shake was. The shaking would make consistent, pin-point alpha strikes a thing of the past. Mechs would have greater lifespans in matches as a result because players would instinctivly wait longer between shots. This would even make brawling super viable because shots would still be more accurate at closer ranges. Crosshair Shake Penalty FTW.

Torso Twist/Turn Radius/Acceleration/Deceleration Penalty
Does this need an explination? No. The hotter the mech, the more sluggish it is to move around.

Who was it that said the easiest solution is the correct one?

[Drollzy]

cerealspiller, on 29 September 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

A few Problems with MWO:

Mechs die too fast
High Alpha to win
Some hitboxes greater than others

Heat Scale Penalties would fix all of this in a pinch.

Here's how:


Crosshair Shake Penalty
Add 3-4 intensities of crosshair shake to the Heat Scale. This alone would fix just about everything. The greatest intensity could even be less than what the old Jump Jet shake was. The shaking would make consistent, pin-point alpha strikes a thing of the past. Mechs would have greater lifespans in matches as a result because players would instinctivly wait longer between shots. This would even make brawling super viable because shots would still be more accurate at closer ranges. Crosshair Shake Penalty FTW.

Torso Twist/Turn Radius/Acceleration/Deceleration Penalty
Does this need an explination? No. The hotter the mech, the more sluggish it is to move around.

Who was it that said the easiest solution is the correct one?

Your an idoit

Edited by cdrolly, 30 September 2013 - 02:58 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 29 September 2013 - 08:02 AM, said:

Why not just increase the cooldown on weapons? has the same effect of making players wait longer between shots without having to waste PGI's time to code a horrible crosshair shake system into the game.

It sounds good Khob but Giving the option to fire under system duress is part of the fiction. Do I shoot with sweat stinging my eyes and every breath burning my lungs or wait till me Computer is able to track more accurately? The heat penalties are a tried an true way to limit alphas. Those who say we don't need them are missing the immersion. You fire an Alpha and you are now in a super hot sweat box, not the comfort of your living room, bedroom or basement! Play the game with your computer over heating. See how good your* skillz are then.

(You as in general player. Not You as in Khobai.)

[CaveMan]

IceLom, on 29 September 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

This idea is awful..

All it would do is make Alpha striking the only viable build.

Front load all your damage so you can shoot it all when cool so all your damage hits without crosshair shake. Having your weapons split up into a more damage over time build would be allot less effective due to the crosshair shake.

This right here is the problem with any "increased randomness due to heat" system. You can't retroactively penalize an alpha for generating tons of heat, the bullet is already out of the gun. You're only going to make the alpha problem worse.

Second, slapping on heat penalties to movement, while it's true to the canon, won't work in this game as a way to encourage brawling. It'll just make people even bigger sitting ducks for sniper/LRM fire, and they'll have to hide even more than before.

Just about the only thing that would work to encourage people to fight up close would be to nerf the projectile speeds on all weapons except SRMs, hard, and drastically increase the damage falloff on energy weapons outside their optimum ranges. But doing that would make light mechs nearly immune to LRMs.

[The Boz]

CaveMan, on 30 September 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

But doing that would make light mechs nearly immune to damage.

Fixed that for you.
Adding more heat on movement isn't a bad idea. And I like the blurring and radar/sensors flicker idea. It doesn't outright disturb your sights like a view shake would but it does convey the general idea of all systems not being nominal.

[Zyllos]

CaveMan, on 30 September 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

This right here is the problem with any "increased randomness due to heat" system. You can't retroactively penalize an alpha for generating tons of heat, the bullet is already out of the gun. You're only going to make the alpha problem worse.

Second, slapping on heat penalties to movement, while it's true to the canon, won't work in this game as a way to encourage brawling. It'll just make people even bigger sitting ducks for sniper/LRM fire, and they'll have to hide even more than before.

Just about the only thing that would work to encourage people to fight up close would be to nerf the projectile speeds on all weapons except SRMs, hard, and drastically increase the damage falloff on energy weapons outside their optimum ranges. But doing that would make light mechs nearly immune to LRMs.

You do know you can just calculate the heat of the shot, determine if it surpasses the threshold for inaccuracy, then apply the penalty before the shot goes out, right?

It 100% circumvents any issues because the shot being made is calculated to see if a penalty is to be applied before the shot is fired. No way to out macro it or break the system because the shot itself is the determining factor if a penalty is applied.

Now, this doesn't mean I agree with the original poster's assessment. But I do agree that some inaccuracy penalty needs to be applied in some fashion. You can easily see from the tournament that we did that people just use weapon systems that they can group fire/alpha together to get the damage to land on the same spot so that when weapon's fire lands, it deals damage all to the same panel.

The whole issue, honestly, is three fold:

• Random Hit Armor System with Aiming System
  
• Poor Heatscale System
  
• Open Ended Hardpoint System

[Fuggles]

I really don't want to see energy heavy mechs like my stalkers and awesoms nerfed even farther with more heat nerfs. These ideas seem to be aimed at penalizing poor heat managment but when you have 6+ energy hardpoints and unable to fit more than 22 heatsinks in a mech there's not much you can do.

In my phracts I can pretty much just fire all match long till everything's dead and I wouldnt have to worry about accuracy at all. Energy mechs wich already have to deal with heat penalties, chainfire ghost heat, etc would just be further nerfed.

[CaveMan]

Zyllos, on 30 September 2013 - 06:47 AM, said:

You do know you can just calculate the heat of the shot, determine if it surpasses the threshold for inaccuracy, then apply the penalty before the shot goes out, right?

Except for the part where that completely breaks cause and effect with respect to heat penalties. Your targeting computer can't bloody well throw an error due to heat before you start overheating, now can it? Not to mention it requires an additional server-side check before firing, so that's going to make the game even more vulnerable to latency issues than it already is.

Besides, OP's suggestion was about reticle shake, not throwing the actual aimpoint of the mech off (which would be impossible for torso weapons anyway, since they don't gimbal in this game). There is no way you could make reticle shake happen before pulling the trigger, without access to a time machine.

Regardless, you can't force people to brawl, without designing the maps so that long sight-lines aren't possible (coincidentally, designing maps without long sight-lines results in lots of base rushing, because it's easy to walk right past the other team). Map design is a major reason why this game is so frequently lopsided.

Alpine makes it impossible to brawl, Terra Therma makes it impossible to use LRMs, River City Night completely sucks for snipers: either the maps have to be designed not to support one dominant playstyle, or there has to be a way to select a loadout for the terrain (which supposedly is coming with the lobby system). Otherwise there will be horrible balance problems.

[Almond Brown]

cerealspiller, on 29 September 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

stuff

im not suggesting (seizure inducing) screen shake. Im proposing slight crosshair sway

So at MAX Heat it is still just a "slight sway" that effects targeting a minimal amount then? Why bother then?