104 replies to this topic

[Pht]

Tombstoner, on 18 October 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

I think they're in love with the system because its a direct marketing strategy targeted at people who get there *** handed to them in games that have COF.

I really don't see any reason to believe this.

From what direct evidences we have from their statements, I believe they genuinely think that they've made/are making what they think is a good "mechwarrior" video game.

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Don't stick to cannon some of the time and toss it out when its needed.

Amen to that. There are plenty of ways for them to make it "their" game without having to resort to the excuse - and yes, it's just an excuse - that some of the guys that wrote the lore didn't like how it came out in the end.

On that standard, you'd have to interview ALL of the lore writers and add up everything in the lore they didn't like and take it all out. I'd be willing to bet PGI hasn't done this.

Consistency as to "this is what the lore actually IS" would be nice.

[DivideByZer0]

Ghost heat !?
I haven't played MWO in a few months, and stuff like this is why. I want to play this game, but , at this point, we're so far off of what we started with. Just watch the preview video from 3 years ago and tell me we haven't lost our way.
IMO, this mess all started with the addition of the fast fire mechanic. BT is about punishment. Make a bad decision, you get punished. That's what strategy is. But, since then , it's been band-aid after band-aid after band-aid on something that is just... BROKEN.
Also, speaking from a scientific standpoint, the hotter something gets relative to it's surroundings, the faster it cools down, not vice versa.
I come in here every couple months to troll.. but I will say this.

PGI geared this toward ultra trendy CoD console kiddies.. I'm not saying that to be mean. I am saying that because everyone I know who plays this game right now is not a BT fan. It's just a game to them. They WILL leave this game for something else new and shiny. Meanwhile , PGI is slowly alienating the BT fans. We are diehards, hell, we waited 12 years for this crappy game. I bought founders package before I even knew anything about this game, I was so happy to see battletech back in action. I have made worse investments, but... well, there's no good way to finish that sentence.

MWLL offered better "MMO style gameplay" than this: combined arms, better maps, deeper strategy, without the cheezy $5-10 dash ornaments, and those guys weren't even getting paid to do it.
I feel like MWO is an arcade game at this point. I really want to like this game. It's my childhood.

Hopefully , someone else picks up the torch, maybe in another 10 years, if that's what it takes.

Edited by DivideByZer0, 19 October 2013 - 05:32 PM.

[Chronojam]

Imperius, on 13 October 2013 - 06:51 PM, said:

Come now, Imperius, you can't fool us! You are wearing the scarlet star; you think Ghost Heat is fine and are just making this thread to troll the forums.

If you truly had a problem with Ghost Heat you would not have branded yourself in this fashion.

culverin, on 13 October 2013 - 07:04 PM, said:

I support the removal of ghost heat 100%.

Clearly false.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

It's funny when I respect people without badges more than the people with them.

It's hard for me to fathom spending money on a mech that has one differentiating feature...enhanced loyalty gains...which isn't even in the game yet and is tied into a feature that is a year late.

A year. How do you miss a deadline for a feature that is so simplistic by a year?

And yet people bought these mechs and still have the balls to complain about things the devs have made very clear they don't plan to change?

It's sad, and some of the people who purchased the Phoenix mechs were people who I thought knew better.

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 19 October 2013 - 05:40 PM.

[Chronojam]

GroovYChickeN, on 15 October 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

Ghost heat is fine as long as they make it on a PER MECH basis not across the board.

This also would allow mech that are currently lacking in the game to have a place to shine.

Let the Awesome be the only effective PPC boat.

How about instead of a punitive "You are playing the game wrong!" system to penalize players who do not use the blessed builds, you instead provide incentives to certain chassis? A missile lock time bonus to one, a heat capacity bonus to another, a ballistic re-fire boon to yet another.

A mech that is lacking in other departments can be given an acceleration or turning boost, a Streak accuracy bonus, an ECM range enhancement. Wouldn't that be great?

That was the proposal PGI was given. PGI directly responded that they did not have the time and resources to implement this system -- those resources were held up implementing Ghost Heat months later, instead. The opportunity was lost. Ghost Heat will probably never be branded a mistake or undone without a radical shake-up, because so many posting in this thread already rubber-stamped their approval of the system and now bear the scarlet star to let us spot them.

[Pht]

Chronojam, on 19 October 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

How about instead of a punitive "You are playing the game wrong!" system to penalize players who do not use the blessed builds, you instead provide incentives to certain chassis? A missile lock time bonus to one, a heat capacity bonus to another, a ballistic re-fire boon to yet another.

Or, if the had have used hard-sized weapons points in the chassis instead of rubber points, and had used the sprinting rules as a baseline to expand the 'mech's performance envelops while NOT allowing engine changes ... the 'mechs would have been a LOT more unique.

Why they allowed the weapons "points" to be rubberized to the free space in a given location is ... just beyond me. It gains you nothing in a F2P model.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Pht, on 19 October 2013 - 05:58 PM, said:

Or, if the had have used hard-sized weapons points in the chassis instead of rubber points, and had used the sprinting rules as a baseline to expand the 'mech's performance envelops while NOT allowing engine changes ... the 'mechs would have been a LOT more unique.

Why they allowed the weapons "points" to be rubberized to the free space in a given location is ... just beyond me. It gains you nothing in a F2P model.

Just one of many things that should have been adjusted when we started seeing 4-6 PPC builds, SRM Cats, etc.

These dev's refuse to admit to being wrong. It made for a terrible beta.

[MustrumRidcully]

But there is nothing wrong with the hard point system. There are Quad PPC mechs in the lore. Dual AC/20 mechs. LRM boats. All of that exists in Battletech. THe only purpose of the hard point system is to give mechs an identity. Trying to use it as a balancing tool will fall flat in face of lore mechs. If these lore mechs pose a problem, you need to rethink your other game mechanics - why are they a problem? Convergence + Group Fire? Excessive heat threshold but excessive heat generation? No heat penalties? Armor distributions based on a game with 2d6 rolls for hit location instead of player mouse aim? Look at that.

[FupDup]

MustrumRidcully, on 20 October 2013 - 12:01 AM, said:

THe only purpose of the hard point system is to give mechs an identity.

Our current system doesn't do a very good job of that, though.

[Pht]

MustrumRidcully, on 20 October 2013 - 12:01 AM, said:

But there is nothing wrong with the hard point system. There are Quad PPC mechs in the lore. Dual AC/20 mechs. LRM boats. All of that exists in Battletech.

In the lore, if you have enough money, access to the proper personell, and access to factory level facilities, you can convert any mech into virtually anything "mech" you want.

Should we go that route? I doubt many people would say we should. There's good reasons to have used some more restrictions against which only very poor arguments can be made.

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THe only purpose of the hard point system is to give mechs an identity. Trying to use it as a balancing tool will fall flat in face of lore mechs.

Yes and no - yes, it won't balance against the problems currently being had, if anything even remotely like an omnimech actually gets into the game.

No, in the sense that it WOULD restrict the other mechs in such a way as to make those that weren't made to be boats in the lore back into what they were in the lore, instead of being boats.

I made my post because the topic of the uniqueness of the 'mechs was directly addressed.

My sig pic carries a link to what I think is the right way to properly simulate the way the 'mechs behave in the lore while fixing the problems in combat.

[MustrumRidcully]

FupDup, on 20 October 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

Our current system doesn't do a very good job of that, though.

Maybe.

But in exchange, the artwork is getting better and better at telling you what kind of mech you have in front of you.

The whole "minimum of 3 chassis per mech" thingy is currently just a stupid grind mechanic I could go without. I'd be fine with no hard points and us just being sold mechs in their standard variant, and their models being perfectly adaptable to the equipment you take. No hard point limits.

The only thing that would need to be done would be that stock configs shouldn't be useless and actually be viable builds (al be it the Level 1 Tech ones being underpowered compared to Level 2 or Clan Tech. Unless we manage to reset the power levels there. Whatever).
That means - you want to preserve your mech's identity? Just use the stock loadout. You want to do your own thing? Do that instead.

[FupDup]

MustrumRidcully, on 20 October 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

Maybe.

But in exchange, the artwork is getting better and better at telling you what kind of mech you have in front of you.

The whole "minimum of 3 chassis per mech" thingy is currently just a stupid grind mechanic I could go without. I'd be fine with no hard points and us just being sold mechs in their standard variant, and their models being perfectly adaptable to the equipment you take. No hard point limits.

The only thing that would need to be done would be that stock configs shouldn't be useless and actually be viable builds (al be it the Level 1 Tech ones being underpowered compared to Level 2 or Clan Tech. Unless we manage to reset the power levels there. Whatever).
That means - you want to preserve your mech's identity? Just use the stock loadout. You want to do your own thing? Do that instead.

I use a much more "loose" definition of identity than just "uses stock loadout."

For instance, the identity of the Awesome is, IMO, an assault mech that can carry a lot of big energy weapons (and in some variants, missiles). It doesn't matter if you're using PPCs, Blazers, LPL, or whatever, as those all fit the overall role of carrying big pew pew weapons. The Hunchie, as another example, it just about carrying one really big gun in your right torso (or several smaller guns on other variants, or split torsos on the 4SP), being more durable than most other mediums (which it is currently lacking), and being slower than most other mediums.



On a side-note...no hardpoint limits would result in epic MW3-esque trolltasticness. It would initially be utterly hilarious to build a Locust with 10 Small Lasers or a Jagermech with 20 Machine Guns, but in the end this would lead to some seriously obnoxious combinations of weapons, and the invalidation of chassis that have bad hitboxes (well, to an even greater extent than we see now because sometimes the bad chassis can at least hold decent weapons). And with convergence...we can already see where this is going....Ghetto Gausszillas and King Crabs everywhere, with a side of 4-5 AC/5 dakka boats.

Edited by FupDup, 20 October 2013 - 04:37 PM.

[The Justicar]

Spheroid, on 13 October 2013 - 07:28 PM, said:

I really don't agree with conclusion that ghost heat is the "lazy" approach to mitigate overly lethal time to kill. As the number and types of weapons increases the workload involved to holistically balance their specific behavior becomes huge. Heat is a in place mechanic and changing the ghost heat value is possibly the quickest and most efficacious way to reduce X weapon combinations of pinpoint damage. All the other ways I can think of addressing the pinpoint problem would carry more CPU/server load then a simple heat table lookup. Also don't you want programmers working on more important bug fixes like HSR instead of inventing new code to achieve the same end?

I can only agree on the "its not lazy" point. The best way to fix the problem that ghost heat has failed to fix is also the least complex, and least resource-intensive (zero). The magic bullet? A global heat cap accompanied by a dissipation buff to heat sinks, and /maybe/ a split between heat sink functionality.

Its not hard, PGI (probably Paul, specifically) is just too stubborn to admit that they were so completely wrong. The system is broken, let's go full steam anyway! This seems to be PGI's M.O., because its happened a lot: 3pv, coolant flush, ECM, forum re-organization, etc. There's a pattern here, and it's not a good one.

The game could be great, but there are little details and "features" that are holding it back in a huge way. I can't even point at a logical argument or half-true statement (the 3pv retention metric after 1 week, LOL) from PGI and say, "At least they had reasons." All I see is failure. Failure to understand the game at its core level, failure to define a global direction for gameplay, failure to recognize weak links in the developmental process and personnel and respond. I see heads in the sand and wallets drifting away.

Edited by The Justicar, 20 October 2013 - 10:10 PM.

[Imperius]

I complain because I want this to be a great game not a COD game skinned with robots. Sadly COD is more fun than this game at least the support class gets heavy weapons. Where are assaults fight to bring enough balanced firepower and not overheat or get this weird ghost heat penalty. I feel like a giant moving brick with pillows as weapons.

Another gripe not related to this topic is the weapon effects in the game. They are just udder {Scrap}! The sounds are good but the weapon effects nope...

[Blacksoul1987]

PGI was not wrong. when MechWarrior started diversifying weapons like having lasers instant hit and autocannons with different velocities that was a direct nerf to any mixed loadouts from cbt. Ghost heat penalizes boats in the same manner by at least forcing them stagger fire their weapons by .5 seconds giving a small window for a mixed loadout to try and readjust their shot and compete. Boating has been a plague on the MechWarrior franchise for years now and none of your solutions will fix it.....convergence that will create chassis imbalance,......locked hardpoints will create chassis imbalance,....... low heat cap high dissipation will only adjust balance between ballistics and energy but boating will be supreme. in the MechWarrior franchise mixed loadouts were nerfed since the beginning it is about damn time they bring boats down to the same level only then will we be able to use our favorite loadouts from battletech.

[The Justicar]

Blacksoul1987, on 21 October 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

low heat cap high dissipation will only adjust balance between ballistics and energy but boating will be supreme.

Not sure how you reached that conclusion, because a heat cap would do infinitely more to combat boating than ghost heat. Instead of being unviable to alpha 3 PPCs or 4 ERLLs it becomes impossible. It does this while also not nerfing mech's like the 3 PPC Awesome into the ground.

What's not to like?

[Blacksoul1987]

The Justicar, on 22 October 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

Not sure how you reached that conclusion, because a heat cap would do infinitely more to combat boating than ghost heat. Instead of being unviable to alpha 3 PPCs or 4 ERLLs it becomes impossible. It does this while also not nerfing mech's like the 3 PPC Awesome into the ground.

What's not to like?

for sure it will limit laser boating but with a heat cap of 30 and no ghost heat you can run builds such as 6srm6 and dual ac20 and they would be with greater efficiency since you cool faster so you can repeatedly spam them. and builds such as that would dwarf other brawling configs.

[Chronojam]

Who cares if you can run dual AC/20? It's big, it's short-range, it takes up a lot of weight, and it's only viable on a select few chassis. Compare this to 2PPC1Gauss that fit on virtually everything and hit you from across the map. When ghost heat killed dual AC/20 brawling fits, it only made 2PPC1Gauss more attractive and more powerful.

How many mechs do you know that can fit 6 SRM6 launchers, either? Those, too, are very short-ranged weapons and difficult to control spreadwise. They certainly do not all hit the same precise point and already generated a ton of heat on their own. Ghost heat sacrificed brawling at the pain of increased sniping where managing cooldown is less important, and ensured that brawlers that finally got into range in one piece were able to lay down less fire at the full-health sniper-fit opposition.

All for what, killing the 6PPC gimmick Stalker? You can't even use AC/2 effectively anymore because of Ghost Heat's poor implementation, and for some absurd reason the SRM2 was impacted by ghost heat as well.

Edited by Chronojam, 22 October 2013 - 01:18 PM.

[The Justicar]

Blacksoul1987, on 22 October 2013 - 04:27 AM, said:

for sure it will limit laser boating but with a heat cap of 30 and no ghost heat you can run builds such as 6srm6 and dual ac20 and they would be with greater efficiency since you cool faster so you can repeatedly spam them. and builds such as that would dwarf other brawling configs.

If it becomes a problem, raise AC/20 heat. Its simpler, better, more player-friendly, and would result in a much better game. CBT mechs would be viable. Trial mechs would be playable. Combat would be more about using the right weapon at the right time instead of a heat race.

[Blacksoul1987]

The Justicar, on 22 October 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

If it becomes a problem, raise AC/20 heat. Its simpler, better, more player-friendly, and would result in a much better game. CBT mechs would be viable. Trial mechs would be playable. Combat would be more about using the right weapon at the right time instead of a heat race.

raising heat on ac20 would nerf any build that uses it when only the build that uses 2 is considered to powerful and easy to use. Honestly the heat system isn't even a concern of mine I do not believe that you should be able to simultaneously fire multiple big guns into 1 location, that is my only concern boat builds are simply far to easy to use for the effectiveness they bring to the field. This has always been a problem in every MechWarrior game and ac20 isn't the only ballistic weapon that is effective when boated do you plan to simply run down the line and jack up heat on every individual weapon? cause regardless of how you go about it boating will always be easier and more efficient.