40 replies to this topic

[Greyboots]

Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I'm not suggesting anything stay, change or go away. I'm just really interested to see people's opinions on this one. this post also may seem negative but it isn't, sometimes you just need to point out the bad to make your point or ask the appropriate questions.

In essence, 5 PPC stalkers were the result of the mix of canon and non-canon game structure. But where did they come from?

Convergence is posisbly the single largest deviation from "canon". In the TT/RPG, it just wasn't easy to hit and everything you did made it harder. Even if you did hit, there was no guarantee of what location you would hit unless you made a called shot and made things harder for yourself.

Of course this isn't particularly "fun" for an FPS so it had to change but many of the complaints about weapons revolve around this deviation from canon and the way they chose to deal with it in MWO.

Optimal and extended ranges are, of course, to help simulate this effect. Instead of "missing" physically, you artificially "miss" by dealing reduced damage and so forth. There's also a whole host of other changes revolving around making convergence work like Laser beam durations and so forth.

The problem is that sometimes the areas where they refuse to deviate from canon, such as this weapon weighs X tons and takes X slots for example, are causing problems. Their refusal to deviate from certain areas of canon is the real issue.

ERPPCs weigh 7 tons and deal 10 damage a pop @ 810m range. 14 tons? That's an AC20 (ammo Vs heat sinks weight issues aside) that shoots 810m and an awful lot of mechs can mount a pair of PPCs. It's not exactly an astounding happening that these weapons became OP.

Why? Well, energy weapons in the TT/RPG games were essentially meant to be fired in two groups like Missiles and your other short-ranged defences. You were supposed to fire ONE group at long range and then a second set at short range unlike ACs which fire at all ranges. After all, 2 Medium Lasers beat the DPS of an ERPPC and are much cooler. Continuing to fire these weapons at shorter ranges was supposed to cripple you through heat and low damage compared to what even a couple Medium Lasers could spit out.

They took away laser pinpoint and a further deviation from canon happened. PPCs, although intended to be too hot, no longer had "short ranged replacements" that actually did better than their long ranged counterparts. Because pinpoint Vs non-pinpoint isn't really working. Now they are kind of too hot but there's no adequate replacement at short range.

Hindsight being 20/20 vision it's easy to backtrack and string together the sequence of events and this certainly isn't the full story, just enough to lay some groundwork.

So they've wandered further and further away from canon the further time has gone on. However, the areas they chose to stick to canon offer them only 2 ways to effect balance: DPS and HPS (or possibly shots per ton for ammo-using weapons).

This has resulted in Ghost Heat, a hidden and very arbitrary way to generate heat. I think most agree that, even if they think ghost heat is ok, it was hardly an "ideal" way to solve the problems they were facing. At the very least it's incredibly confusing for new players, something they've been struggling to avoid up to and including coding in 3rd person view to help them with mech movement and aiming.

Somehow I doubt it's inclusion was a very easy decision for the devs to make. So why did they do it this way?

I think we should question whether they've painted themselves into a corner. They had to physically reduce the viability of 5 PPC stalkers through an artificial construct when originally it was a tradeoff. If you did it, a medium mech with all medium lasers could speed in and tear you apart and there was very little you could do about it.

Convergance made a mockery of this because medium mechs can't stand up to that punishment, Laser beam durations made a mockery of it because if if you can close in they need one lucky shot and you take forever to open up the shell to get to the oyster. Because 5 PPCs doesn't weigh a lot leaving you HEAPS of weight for armour. They physically removed the controlling factors that prevented things like 5PPC stalkers from being viable.

Then comes the ego issue and it's one of perceived ego rather than a true belief of superiority. Devs often just can't "go back on changes" because to do so is taken as a sign by the public and they "go for the kill". It's not a weakness to go back on what you've done, it's an acceptance that you tried soemthing that didn't work and you want to go back to when the game was better. There's a slice of the community simply incapable of seing the latter instead of the former.

So what we now have is a game that isn't even really close to canon.

The STANDARD weapons of the TT/RPG were laser weapons. Especially Mechwarrior where you might be out there for extended periods and Ammo not only means stopping to reload but a significant cost.

ACs and Missile weapons were tradeoffs that gave you certain benefits in return for drawbacks. They were never "core" weapons but offshoots.

What do we have now? Ballistic weapons and LRM are ruling "casual" games and Pinpoint weapons (AC/PPC) are ruling competitive games. A complete turnaround that is completely non-canon.

Is this right or is this wrong? Well, that sort of depends. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn't.

Still, one has to wonder whether sticking to canon so heavily is really all that good of an idea anymore if Ghost HEat seemed like the best option on the table. The game only really looks like Battletech/Mechwarrior and since I can't see them wiping all the models and starting from scratch it always will.

In some respects further deviation at this point can't really hurt because the purists are already cheesed off AND it would open up a much greater range of ways to balance weapons and mechs rahter than messing around with heat. PPCs were clearly too good for their weight and criticals but the only real avenue they had was to bump the heat to slow the DPS.

If they were willing to deviate more from canon? They could have made them take 4 slots which doesn't interact well with Double Heat Sinks for example. Weigh an extra ton or two. Of course it would have been work because they would have had to restructure some of the mechs you can buy but at least there would have been more than one way to skin that particular cat than make them so hot you could roast a pig.

So. Is "canon" now hurting the game more than it's helping or is everything still OK?

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Alternatively you could say that it is the ways that they chose to deviate from canon that caused the problem.
Making ACs fire several shots in a burst and having PPCs fire a "stream" would make them DoT as well thus reducing the convergence effect for most.
They may even be able to get rid of Ghost heat.
Yes the game needs to be different from TT, but lore suggests how it can retain the flavour of BT.

[FupDup]

In a nutshell, PGI adheres to canon where it is terrible to do so and deviates where it is terrible to do so.

/thread.

Edited by FupDup, 02 December 2013 - 02:42 PM.

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

You know why they couldn't (and shouldn't) change the PPCs weight or criticals? Because that would also negatively impact people who use those weapons but don't boat them. You'd be "punishing" everybody just to wag your finger at munchkins.

No, Ghost Heat is a better option than that because Ghost Heat only affects the people it should affect, barring a few odd decisions (ie ERLL, LPL), and those odd decisions should be rectified.

Someone wanting to boat PPCs (which is largely non-canon) will now have to 'suffer' for it while someone who wants to use 1 PPC is left alone to do so.

And really, couching a ghost heat thread as "canon vs non-canon"? All of our problems come from the biggest part where they chose to deviate from canon: by not having Stock Only. Every problem comes from loadout customization on non-Omnis and oh boy I can't wait to see what horrific trainwreck Omnimechs will bring to the game.

[Minrou Teshuara]

My biggest non cannon gripe is the MASSIVE boost in DPS and effectiveness that the light autocannons got. AC-2s now kick out a bit over 19 times more damage per second than they did in the TT and have a shake effect with them which did not exist at all in the TT. When you combine that massive extra damage, with the pinpoint nature of the weapon it is bad enough, but when other weapons are not scaled in this way, this game no longer is related to MechWarrior, any more than the hero clix game was related to the real BattleTech.
I had very high hopes coming into this game, but after a month or so, it is really not very enjoyable. There is a massive grind, longish wait times, no real in-game social system, and game play that only is vaguely similar to the TT. I wish it all the luck, but I will be spending the majority of my gaming hours playing WoT again.

[Sybreed]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

You know why they couldn't (and shouldn't) change the PPCs weight or criticals? Because that would also negatively impact people who use those weapons but don't boat them. You'd be "punishing" everybody just to wag your finger at munchkins.

No, Ghost Heat is a better option than that because Ghost Heat only affects the people it should affect, barring a few odd decisions (ie ERLL, LPL), and those odd decisions should be rectified.

Someone wanting to boat PPCs (which is largely non-canon) will now have to 'suffer' for it while someone who wants to use 1 PPC is left alone to do so.

And really, couching a ghost heat thread as "canon vs non-canon"? All of our problems come from the biggest part where they chose to deviate from canon: by not having Stock Only. Every problem comes from loadout customization on non-Omnis and oh boy I can't wait to see what horrific trainwreck Omnimechs will bring to the game.

Omnimechs... you mean pretty much what we already have?

I think we have more than enough experience to speculate

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

Sybreed, on 02 December 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

Omnimechs... you mean pretty much what we already have?

I think we have more than enough experience to speculate

Oh god Omnimechs will be even worse. Hardpoints in MWO at least restrict us to certain locations (HBK-4G stuck with 1 location for ballistics, as example), but Omnis... yeah, no such thing. Trainwreck inevitable lol

[D04S02B04]

Having read around, I think the best balance suggestion so far is really to remove ghost heat and set max heat back to 30 then re-work heat and weapons. If that happens, ballistic weapons will become even more dominant and needs looking at first because they excel over all others as they are generally heat neutral.

In one fell swoop you remove the unpleasant mechanic of ghost heat while solving boating problems at the same time. Once that is done, you can even go and reduce armour back to original values.

[Greyboots]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

You know why they couldn't (and shouldn't) change the PPCs weight or criticals? Because that would also negatively impact people who use those weapons but don't boat them. You'd be "punishing" everybody just to wag your finger at munchkins.

I would personally say that this already happened. I use a Blackjack BJ-3 with 1 ERPPC and 3 medium lasers so it's not a "PPC boat". I sucessfully avoided the Ghost Heat issue BUT my mech is now a LOT less heat efficient than it used to be. I had to take off my AMS to put in more heat sinks to cope with it and I still can't keep up with the damage I used to do with it.

If they'd made the ERPPC weight +1.5 tons? Well, I'd have lost less overall. Sure, I'd still have lost my AMS but my damage would have remained the same. I'd actually have been in front if they'd upped the tonnage. Even more so if they'd increased the criticals because I could still fit everything else around it.

Ghost heat had nothing to do with how the changes effected this mech. If this was really the aim of the exercise, why did they jack the heat on ERPPCs rather than just making Ghost Heat on PPCs more savage? No, there had to be more to it than you think because this was the worst way to go about it if that was the only goal.

Reading between the lines is an excellent skill to have.

My point is that there's 2 sides to every argument and sometimes when you are sure you're generically right there's often a whole host of examples and "special case scenarios" that make it not as true as you thought.

Does your argument hold water in some cases? Sure it does making it a perfectly valid comment. It's just not a constant and reliable truth is all.

Edited by Greyboots, 02 December 2013 - 06:56 PM.

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

Greyboots, on 02 December 2013 - 06:39 PM, said:

I would personally say that this already happened. I use a Blackjack BJ-3 with 1 ERPPC and 3 medium lasers so it's not a "PPC boat". I sucessfully avoided the Ghost Heat issue BUT my mech is now a LOT less heat efficient than it used to be. I had to take off my AMS to put in more heat sinks to cope with it and I still can't keep up with the damage I used to do with it.

If they'd made the ERPPC weight +1.5 tons? Well, I'd have lost less overall. Sure, I'd still have lost my AMS but my damage would have remained the same. I'd actually have been in front if they'd upped the tonnage. Even more so if they'd increased the criticals because I could still fit everything else around it.

My point is that there's 2 sides to every argument and sometimes when you sure you're generically right there's often a whole host of examples and "special case scenarios" that make it not as true as you thought.

Does your argument hold water in some cases? Sure it does making it a perfectly valid comment. It's just not a constant and reliable truth is all.

I think its funny you mention your PPC heat issues, because I keep seeing "Ghost heat is unecessary since they increased PPC heat anyway", so I'd think that is your problem, not Ghost Heat, since you only have 1 PPC.

[Navy Sixes]

The deviations from canon that cause problems are bigger and more institutional than "this weapon does too much damage" or "that weapon produces ghost heat."

Having a "Cooter's garage" mechlab in which players can swap out whatever for whatever is a huge deviation from lore. As is the "showroom floor" mechlab, in which mechwarriors store their 40+ mechs ("Now, where did I park that Atlas?"). Mechs in the Inner Sphere were artifacts; noble families were formed around them and they were passed down through generations. The technology to build them was largely lost (with their precious production facilities automated and protected by the Aries Convention because they couldn't be rebuilt once destroyed).

Techs did what they could to keep them running, but no one who owned a mech would let anyone take it apart and "tinker around with a new build," because chances are they would only break it, and they didn't have a spare lying around. Only the most elite warriors of a given faction had one mech (and were stuck with more-or-less whatever loadout they inherited) let alone over 40.

The upgrades available to anyone with a fist full of c-bills is likewise a huge deviation from lore. In canon, mechwarriors didn't have to choose between an XL engine or a standard, a Gauss rifle or an AC 20, double or standard heatsinks, because XL engines, Gauss rifles, and double heat sinks weren't available to any but the most elite, no matter how much money they were willing to spend. Black market Star-League tech? That's like saying you're looking around for a black market Eiffel Tower or US Constitution.

In lore, assault-class mechs are incredibly rare and only committed in a desicive manner. To lose an assault mech on the battlefield meant more than potentially losing the field. It was a tremendous investment of a faction's blood and treasure lost, one that wasn't easily replaced. Losing any mech meant much more in lore, for that matter. Being one of the "Dispossessed" sucked. In contrast, anyone who wants an assault in MWO can have one, and mechwarriors have no incentive to drive them with caution; they'll be brand-new for the next fight.

"Ghost heat" wouldn't be a problem if everyone wasn't driving around in the biggest mechs available and able to shoehorn in as many of the biggest weapons available. I know this isn't what the OP wants to hear; by the looks of their post, they wanted to focus on the little fixes PGI implemented to many's dissatisfaction. That's fine, lord knows you can throw a rock and hit a thread devoted to complaining about them (do me a favor and throw it hard).

But to cite canon in relation to "ghost heat" is pretty self-serving and myopic. The above mentioned huge and unreconcilable deviations from canon are why many are allowed to field the mechs that required PGI's actions to begin with. I think it's a little late to cry for authenticity now.

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

Oh god Omnimechs will be even worse. Hardpoints in MWO at least restrict us to certain locations (HBK-4G stuck with 1 location for ballistics, as example), but Omnis... yeah, no such thing. Trainwreck inevitable lol

Meh. They'll pack whatever FOTM sniper weapon they can in the highest mounts possible, and they'll pack whatever light-killer FOTM weapon they can in the articulated arms. In regard to omnimechs, I think it's very possible that the Almighty Meta will work against Clan-tech. An omnimech's greatest strength is in it's potential variety. Ironically, chasing the meta will turn every omnimech into more-or-less the same thing, a copy of a copy of a copy. Once you've figured out how to whup-up on one poptart build, for example, you'll have figured out how to whup-up on them all.

I can't wait to swim around in all the forum tears that will flood this place when we find out that PGI has no intention of giving clan-mechs all the ridiculously OP mechanics they got in canon.

Edited to expand on the possibility that omnimechs in MWO will not be much to fear.

Edited by Tycho von Gagern, 02 December 2013 - 10:42 PM.

[Greyboots]

D04S02B04, on 02 December 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

In one fell swoop you remove the unpleasant mechanic of ghost heat while solving boating problems at the same time. Once that is done, you can even go and reduce armour back to original values.

In my experience Ghost Heat isn't such a huge issue. the only mech I have that has to deal with Ghost Heat is one of my LRM boats. It's 75 tons running 3 LRM 10's and double heat sinks and the ghost heat is neither here nor there. I chainfire well over half the time anyway for more reliable torso hits. It's actually lighter and cooler for me to move to 2 LRM 15's (because of Artemis as well as ghost heat). But the effect of ghost heat is so negligible that it doesn't really matter.

Heck, I'd still run lots of PPCs if they hadn't jacked the heat as well as added ghost heat. Now though I have very few mechs that mount them at all (the Blackjack in my post above and an AC10/ERPPC Orion). I never boated them but I did used to run them in pairs.

Fire both till your heat gets to the top then chainfire so you can use just one at a time and ride the heat limit, Now? As I mentioned I get to the top of the heat too quick and when I get there my fire rate is too slow on the single.

Ghost heat REALLY isn't such a big deal. It was the PPC heat increases that did all the work on 5 PPC stalkers.

[Greyboots]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

I think its funny you mention your PPC heat issues, because I keep seeing "Ghost heat is unecessary since they increased PPC heat anyway", so I'd think that is your problem, not Ghost Heat, since you only have 1 PPC.

My whole point was that I have PPC heat issues even though I'm not boating them. The point being that "you can't change weight or criticals because that will negatively effect people who don't boat" isn't as true as it seems because it's already happened.

Read what I quot... oh, wait...

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

You know why they couldn't (and shouldn't) change the PPCs weight or criticals? Because that would also negatively impact people who use those weapons but don't boat them. You'd be "punishing" everybody just to wag your finger at munchkins.

.

You actually wrote it.... /facepalm

Edited by Greyboots, 02 December 2013 - 07:14 PM.

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

Yes, and you agreed with me, when you said you'd still have lost your AMS if they increased the weight by 1.5 tons. Except that change would affect everybody. Every player that wanted to use 1 PPC would then have to give up 1.5tons of something. The problem isn't any Ghost Heat issue obviously since it doesn't affect your build, but the increase of heat on PPCs does. This demonstrates why increasing tonnage/criticals hurts more players than Ghost Heat does. Which is the only point I was, and am, making.

So I'm not sure what your facepalm is about.

[Joseph Mallan]

Greyboots, on 02 December 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

My whole point was that I have PPC heat issues even though I'm not boating them. The point being that "you can't change weight or criticals because that will effect people who don't boat" isn't as true as it seems..

Read what I quot... oh, wait...

.

You actually wrote it.... /facepalm

You have heat issues with a PPC because of the MW:O cyclic rate vs the heat efficiency screw up! What everyone misses is a BattleTech Turn is 10 seconds for both sides to do battle so 5 seconds per side, be it one 'Mech or or one battalion of 'Mechs. That includes the heat sinks venting. So we should be able to fire a PPC and during the recharge cycle heat vents. Setting it to work this way if you fire as soon as your weapon recharges you build a bit of heat, but not the insane rate it is now. A Awesome has been able to fire 3 PPCs on a 3/2 cyclic for 30 years. Now doing so shuts down the 'Mech in a matter of seconds. Stupid!

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

Joseph Mallan, on 02 December 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

You have heat issues with a PPC because of the MW:O cyclic rate vs the heat efficiency screw up! What everyone misses is a BattleTech Turn is 10 seconds for both sides to do battle so 5 seconds per side, be it one 'Mech or or one battalion of 'Mechs. That includes the heat sinks venting. So we should be able to fire a PPC and during the recharge cycle heat vents. Setting it to work this way if you fire as soon as your weapon recharges you build a bit of heat, but not the insane rate it is now. A Awesome has been able to fire 3 PPCs on a 3/2 cyclic for 30 years. Now doing so shuts down the 'Mech in a matter of seconds. Stupid!

And if we got more accurate heat tied to more accurate times (once per 10 seconds, ja?), there'd be rage in the other direction.

[Joseph Mallan]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

And if we got more accurate heat tied to more accurate times (once per 10 seconds, ja?), there'd be rage in the other direction.

Once per 5 seconds with most to all heat vented, not 10 seconds. I could care less about the rage I am all for more destruction faster. *Shrug* I like seeing my opponents burn.

[Sug]

FupDup, on 02 December 2013 - 02:42 PM, said:

In a nutshell, PGI adheres to canon where it is terrible to do so and deviates where it is terrible to do so.

/thread.

Yes.

[Fabe]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

Oh god Omnimechs will be even worse. Hardpoints in MWO at least restrict us to certain locations (HBK-4G stuck with 1 location for ballistics, as example), but Omnis... yeah, no such thing. Trainwreck inevitable lol

Maybe they can avoid any potential problems by putting weight restrictions on locations. For example you can put what ever weapon you want on a arm but only up to 5 tons. That is how omni mechs work in tabletop.

Edited by Fabe, 02 December 2013 - 08:06 PM.

[FupDup]

About Omnimechs...people are forgetting that standard Battlemechs like the ones we already have never had hardpoints, either. Hardpoints are an invention of Microsoft's from MW4 and carried over to MWO. In canon, you can put anything, anywhere, as long as you had the tonnage and critical slots to accommodate it (and perhaps you might need a refit kit and technicians).

Basically, the argument of Omnimechs = no hardpoints doesn't have much weight when we consider that our current Battlemechs themselves are much different than TT.


With all of that being said, Paul's project update post earlier today said that they are still trying to figure out how Clan mechs will be customized, so clearly they have multiple ideas on the matter rather than having a pre-set determination to follow TT with them.