179 replies to this topic

[Trauglodyte]

The only issue to that, Roland, is that the heat dissipation stayed the same while the heat build up was increased due to faster firing rates. I imagine that is why PGI is so reluctant to adding heat penalties when their current system is the reason why we have such high heat capacities. I'd still love to see some level of penalties, even if they weren't majorly game breaking. Just something to prevent people from cool down spamming would be a start in the right direction. Then again, if we do that, it would force people to go back to cooling camping waiting to alpha when they're at acceptable levels which would lower TTK but would just lead to players hiding until they're able to do what they want. That isn't much different than poptarting.

[Bishop Steiner]

Trauglodyte, on 06 January 2014 - 06:05 PM, said:

The only issue to that, Roland, is that the heat dissipation stayed the same while the heat build up was increased due to faster firing rates. I imagine that is why PGI is so reluctant to adding heat penalties when their current system is the reason why we have such high heat capacities. I'd still love to see some level of penalties, even if they weren't majorly game breaking. Just something to prevent people from cool down spamming would be a start in the right direction. Then again, if we do that, it would force people to go back to cooling camping waiting to alpha when they're at acceptable levels which would lower TTK but would just lead to players hiding until they're able to do what they want. That isn't much different than poptarting.

back in early closed beta I remember things would go wonky with high heat. I was surprised (but actually in retrospect like it) that my Awesome 8R SRM boat exploded on Caustic, when I never hit shut down. But I DID run 90% on the heat scale nonstop, which should be dangerous, and was.

The only reason the heat worked as Roland stated in TT is simply because it was turn based, and thus at the end of said period you simply checked off the waste heat. It was a simplification meant to speed up play (not that it really worked... btech is still glacial). If one fired their 3 ppcs over 10 seconds (a battletech turn) one ends the 10 seconds without waste heat. The difference is we have the option to front load our heat burden or not. IDK, i simply call it heat management. I was able to run a AWS8Q with SHS in CB, (of course no ghost heat then), as long as I was careful. Not sure why with DHS that somehow becomes a problem. The concept is the same, people want to be able to free fire their weapons more, yet complain about the insta damage. The only way to minimize that insta damage is to minimize alphas, which can only be done by lowering thresholds and or increasing heat penalties for riding high heat.

[Roland]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 06:16 PM, said:

back in early closed beta I remember things would go wonky with high heat. I was surprised (but actually in retrospect like it) that my Awesome 8R SRM boat exploded on Caustic, when I never hit shut down. But I DID run 90% on the heat scale nonstop, which should be dangerous, and was.

The only reason the heat worked as Roland stated in TT is simply because it was turn based, and thus at the end of said period you simply checked off the waste heat. It was a simplification meant to speed up play (not that it really worked... btech is still glacial). If one fired their 3 ppcs over 10 seconds (a battletech turn) one ends the 10 seconds without waste heat.

Exactly.

In MWO, since it's not a turn based simulation, you need to apply those heat effects over time.

A side effect of this is that you must then increase the heat cap, or else you will end up slamming into it and shutting down, even though the mech will dissipate that heat and start back up in 10 seconds.

to take the example of the 3 PPC's... you fire them, and generate 30 heat. In Battletech, that would shut you down immediately (and probably kill you), as you just hit the heat cap. However, in 10 seconds, it'd all be dissipated by the 15 DHS mech.

The effect in BT is that even though you fired 30 heat's worth of weapons, you never felt the effects of any of that heat at all. Effectively, the system was "simulating" a significantly HIGHER heat cap, more like 50-60, and determining effects based on that.

Quote

The difference is we have the option to front load our heat burden or not. IDK, i simply call it heat management. I was able to run a AWS8Q with SHS in CB, (of course no ghost heat then), as long as I was careful. Not sure why with DHS that somehow becomes a problem.

Honestly, the heat issues that most folks cite really aren't that big a problem at all.... Lots of folks have consistently said that energy weapons were "too hot", but I can't really buy those arguments myself because everyone and their mother ran super hot PPC boats as soon as hit detection on them was fixed.

The fact that you couldn't run a BT "heat neutral" config and fire it as soon as things recycled never translated into that config being "too hot" but tons of folks were absolutely convinced it was.... Although I gotta say such statements were always silly. If I could run 15 DHS, and fire 3 PPC's constantly and never generate heat? That would be ridiculously broken.

[Roland]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

I honestly feel they would not hurt things. I feel it would open up options, because right now, 90% of JJ use is either quick terrain scaling, or poptarting. The one thing I do know is the current poptart meta is once again dominating, even if the weapons used had to change. But I could be wrong. I do know that even with the poptart meta in MW4 multiplayer, I was able to use those JJs to do crazy things and short circuit the poptarters more often than not. But I will admit that the MW4 jjs might have been too maneuverable, since we are going for hte driving a tank feel in MWO.

Eh, I'm not sure what you're talking about here dude. MW4's JJ's were effectively identical to MWO's (although more powerful). There was no directionality to MW4's JJ's.

The last mechwarrior title to have directional JJ's was MW3, I believe... I know MW2 had them. But MW4's JJ's only went straight up.

[Bishop Steiner]

Roland, on 06 January 2014 - 06:28 PM, said:

Eh, I'm not sure what you're talking about here dude. MW4's JJ's were effectively identical to MWO's (although more powerful). There was no directionality to MW4's JJ's.

The last mechwarrior title to have directional JJ's was MW3, I believe... I know MW2 had them. But MW4's JJ's only went straight up.

or forward, or backwards. Moving backwards than jumping allowed for a backwards jump. Unless I'm getting my decades old titles twisted again

And MekTek even added fully directional sustainable JJs. Ugh.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 06 January 2014 - 08:12 PM.

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 08:12 PM, said:

or forward, or backwards. Moving backwards than jumping allowed for a backwards jump. Unless I'm getting my decades old titles twisted again

And MekTek even added fully directional sustainable JJs. Ugh.

Well, MekTek was planning to add them, but never got to it (or any other MP4 feature) because one of the main devs had a stroke and a house fire.

Edited by FupDup, 06 January 2014 - 08:14 PM.

[Sug]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

Add in the ammo requirement...

Ammo is almost a non issue. They buffed shots per ton and it almost never explodes. I've run out of ammo 4 times in two years.

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

...and the part were you need some degree of skill to track and hit unlike Lasers

The problem is once you develop that skill ballistics completely outclass lasers.

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

(after all you miss with an ac20, you got a long wait to try again).

ac20 vs a med laser cooldown is 4 sec vs 3. That 1 sec isn't hurting anyone.

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

Plus, burst fire just makes it deal damage like the lasers, which is specifically what PGI is trying to avoid, by making each weapon class deal damage uniquely. I like that.

I like that too but the differences have turned beams into noob weapons. Yeah you'll have a higher hit% with beams but most people typically do less than maximum damage because of range and then spread that damage over multiple sections.

Ballistics need longer cds/less ammo and beams need their duration and cds reduced to bring them closer to ballistics.

Edited by Sug, 06 January 2014 - 08:44 PM.

[FupDup]

Sug, on 06 January 2014 - 08:43 PM, said:

ac20 vs a med laser cooldown is 4 sec vs 3. That 1 sec isn't hurting anyone.

Actually, the Medium Laser's duration counts against its cooldown time. This means that it actually takes a total of 4 seconds to recharge after you click the mouse, which is on-par with PPCs and the AC/20.

[Roland]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 January 2014 - 08:12 PM, said:

or forward, or backwards. Moving backwards than jumping allowed for a backwards jump.

Well, you can do this in MWO, you realize.

[StaIker]

Roland, on 06 January 2014 - 01:38 PM, said:

I think that one thing that must be noted here is that there really isn't any such thing as a "meta build". For any given configuration of a game, certain builds will be most effective. This is just the nature of any game. Part of what you seem to be describing is more aptly described as a "flavor of the month" build.

These are builds which happen to be effective in the given meta environment of the game, and thus become popular.

The difference I'm talking about here is subtle, but important.... Certain aspects of the fundamental game mechanics will favor certain types of builds, and certain types of tactics. This meta environment isn't something which you can change. It is what it is, based on how the game is made.

What can be changed is how you personally deal with that meta-environment. Certainly there may be multiple different options for making an effective build (assuming the game is well designed). Different tactics can potentially leverage different builds, and the result can potentially be equally effective.

However, there are certain things which must be considered in this regard:

• An organized team must be able to function coherently. That means that there must be some unified perspective in terms of tactics and strategy. This will, in turn, mean that a drop commander will have specific requirements for a given pilot. Now, back when we played competitively, there was a high degree of trust between our DC's and our pilots, so these requirements basically came down to a description of capabilities, and the specifics of the mech loadout were left up to the pilot... because everyone had competently developed mechs which could effectively fulfill the role they were required. But it must be accepted that if you are playing in an organized group, you can't just do whatever you want. Hopefully, what you want to do is in line with what the drop commander needs you to do... but no competent team is going to play in a serious match where they just say, "Hay guyz! Just do whatever feels right!" That's not organized play.
  
• The reason that certain builds become common is that they are in fact effective in the current meta environment. Likewise, certain builds are just trash. A good build won't make a bad pilot great, and a bad build won't make a great pilot bad.. but for any given pilot, no matter what his skills, certain aspects of the game's design will impose restrictions on the effectiveness of any particular mech design.

So, what we can then gather from this is that you you need to be able to effectively fill some particular role, and the better the team the more demanding they will be on how well you fulfill that role. You can't do whatever you want, and you can't take substandard configurations for a given role just because you think they are neat-o.

For instance, if you are being tasked with long range fire support, then you can't bring a bunch of short range weapons. Why? Because the drop commander is going to be leading the team in a particular way, and trying to force a particular fight. If the team is specifically trying to position itself for a long range engagement, and you can only operate at short range, then you are a detriment to the lance (assuming you are specifically being tasked as a close range support mech designed to hang back until needed).

Likewise, for any given role, certain builds are simply better than others. Now, even in its fairly unbalanced state, there tend to be multiple options for a given role, but there are also builds which are clearly bad. To demonstrate the point, we can look at a build decision which really has no subjective component; double heat sinks. In essentially every single case, if you are running single heat sinks your mech is straight up inferior compared to one running double heat sinks. There is no tradeoff component. It's just BAD.

There are various weapons in the game, and configurations of those weapons, which really do fall into the same category. They are simply BAD builds. An issue with this, once you get to that level of complexity, is that you start to get into evaluations which may have (or are at least perceived to have) more of a subjective component. The problem is, a lot of the time the idea that it's subjective stems entirely from ignorance on the part of the observer. They THINK that a given build is effective, but it's not, and can be effectively proven as such. Various weapons and builds fall into this category, and folks run them because they don't really understand the game to the degree where they can see how inferior those builds are. Often, they are misguided by focusing on incorrect metrics, or not really fully considering what is going on. For instance, an LBX 10 will result in high damage numbers... but it's mathematically an inferior weapon. You can clearly prove that it is going to be less effective at the only thing that matters, which is killing mechs. But many users continue to use them, because "they do well with them", failing to really do a full comparative analysis of those builds against other alternatives. We've even seen folks post videos that they believed showed them using LBX effectively, which actually clearly showed the inherent ineffectiveness of those weapons. They simply weren't noticing the right things.. For instance, they were killing targets in the video, but it was taking FOREVER to do so. To the extent that almost any alternative build would have killed the target sooner, and really the only reason they didn't die to the target was because the target was incompetent and running an even worse build.

So, the long and short of it is that no matter how hard you wish for a build to be effective, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. There is an actual science to building mechs, and as a result some builds will be good and some will be bad.

This is a really fantastic post and it deserves to be quoted just for the opportunity of reading it again.

If you want to play at the peak of competition then you need to fully understand what Roland is saying here, and why it is correct.

[Commandelicious]

The line mentioning "communist regime" made me not reading this.

For the sake of argument and discussion and all this civilized {Scrap}: I don't play 12 mans because of the wall of meta builds I'm up against.

[LordMethoz]

It's ok for group leaders to create a doctrine thats makes them effective. Afterall that is exactly what real militaries do. All armies in the world develop thier doctrine then they buy or invent the weapons they need to make that doctrine work. Commanders or Drop Leaders in this case need to know the capabilities of thier subourdinates in order to command them effectively.

Experimentation and testing is also very very important, otherwise all drops will eventually have the same builds with the same doctrine. Then matches will only be decided based on use of terrain and individual player skill.

However you can also be very effective by giving your subordinates a role or mission and your intent then let them figure out how best accomplish that mission. Meta build's weaknesses are going eventually always be found and exploited. Having differences between pilots can add a surprise effect and capabilities to the group.

There are pros and cons to both sides of the argument.

[Charons Little Helper]

LordMethoz, on 07 March 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

It's ok for group leaders to create a doctrine thats makes them effective. Afterall that is exactly what real militaries do. All armies in the world develop thier doctrine then they buy or invent the weapons they need to make that doctrine work. Commanders or Drop Leaders in this case need to know the capabilities of thier subourdinates in order to command them effectively.

Experimentation and testing is also very very important, otherwise all drops will eventually have the same builds with the same doctrine. Then matches will only be decided based on use of terrain and individual player skill.

However you can also be very effective by giving your subordinates a role or mission and your intent then let them figure out how best accomplish that mission. Meta build's weaknesses are going eventually always be found and exploited. Having differences between pilots can add a surprise effect and capabilities to the group.

There are pros and cons to both sides of the argument.

He resurrected the thread! He's a witch!!

[Lord Perversor]

Charons Little Helper, on 07 March 2014 - 02:43 PM, said:

He resurrected the thread! He's a witch!!

http://youtu.be/sglyFwTjfDU

Edited by Lord Perversor, 07 March 2014 - 03:14 PM.

[Mad Strike]

Commandelicious, on 19 January 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

The line mentioning "communist regime" made me not reading this.

For the sake of argument and discussion and all this civilized {Scrap}: I don't play 12 mans because of the wall of meta builds I'm up against.

Agreed

[E_Crow]

Yeah! I love your use of communist regime.


If you are still looking for a group the Aces Wild is pretty relaxed about builds in 12-mans, at least in my company.

[xXBagheeraXx]

I consider myself a semi decent pilot, and cannot stand meta builds....I don't even use ppcs that much anymore, trying to poptart with my Jester's wonky arm convergence issues has pretty much burned me out on that weapon. I find it boring anyway.

Gimme a few medium lasers and an ac20, ill give that atlas a good working over....

[Phelantau]

I only found MWO around last October, but I don't really worry about meta builds. I like playing the different mechs so I don't have a specific mech that I play all the time. While this may mean that I am not as skilled at the controls because I jump around so much I really enjoy the varied gameplay. This goes for worrying about keeping up to date with the latest meta builds as well. I run different mechs with most all of the different weapons except gauss rifles, I just suck at keeping up with the firing mechanics when I am in the middle of a fight. I might not break 800 points all the time but I am consistently at the top of my teams damage scorers when I play well. I would rather have fun playing how I want, and even if my dps isn't maxed out I can still hurt you if I play right.

P.S. this doesn't mean I don't keep up with changes in game mechanics it simply means that I adapt my play style and loadouts to allow me to play how I want while still being able to contribute to my team.

Edited by Phelantau, 22 March 2014 - 11:23 AM.

[Garegaupa]

Personally, I have no ambition of becoming a top league player, I play strictly for fun. And fun, for me, is to try different 'Mechs, weapon systems and configurations. Sure, I'm probably using some builds that are sub-optimal to some degree or other, but I'm still having loads of fun!

For me, if I'm going to have to focus on absolutely having to kill X enemy 'Mechs per game, doing at least Y points of damage per game and so forth, it will become a chore instead of a fun pastime. By all means, I play to win, and I do my best to help my team, but I'm far too easy-going to feel compelled to play only "the best" builds.

Edited by Garegaupa, 24 March 2014 - 10:53 AM.

[Blue Hymn]

Current Meta builds be damned.
I go with old-style meta; 3erppcs and a small laser on my Awesome.
After all, someone needs to keep up the tradition, even if I'm the only one doing it.