20 replies to this topic

[Rhent]

The weapon design for MWO currently is the poorest of the entire Mechwarrior history. Why?

1. Extremely easy to do focused damage via alphas with little to no down side.
-Cover is extremely abundant, most mechs can sneak out and do two alphas at range and then slink back and hide while heat dissipates.
OR
-Use the single jump jet that all pop tarts have to pop up, do a single aimed shot on the descent and then rinse and repeat. The majority of your lift for JJ's come from the first JJ, at least 45%. So why spend the tonnage for more lift to pop tart?

2. Weapon damage is generally tied to the original TT values, however the firing rate is all over the place
-Compare an AC/10 that fires at 2.5 secs to a PPC that fires at 4 secs. Both weapons have the same heat as TT, same weapon weight as TT, however because the AC/10 is an AC it gets to fire 1.5 seconds faster than the PPC. The only difference that should exist between the PPC and AC/10 would be PPC's get a minimum range and the AC/10 fires at a shorter range. They were basically analogous weapon systems for damage, but now if you have the mounts AC/10's are a better investment than PPC's now for a medium range focus fire weapon.
-Energy weapons already have had a very heavy "ghost heat" penalty placed on them to slow down firing. So lets pile on another fire rate nerf as well. It makes perfect sense in Bizarro World.


3. Ghost Heat
-It is an extremely poorly documented mechanic in the tool tips, ie not documented anywhere in the game for a new player.
-It is a band aid to deal with highly focused pin point damage.
-Its easilly avoidable by adding AC's to 2 PPC's
-It was used primarily to deal with 4 PPC stalkers and 6 PPC stalkers. I'm fairly sure the developers could have come up with a better method to deal with focused ppc damage than ghost heat.

4. SRM's are useless
-Tonnage for tonnage, crit space for crit space placing a SRM in your mech gimps you significantly due to the massive spread the devs added to SRM's let alone the poor hit detection that the devs put on SRM's.
-You can be at 40M and have a light mech center mass while firing SRM's at the mech and 20% of the SRM's might register.

The sky isn't falling but me personally, with the basic game play issues the game is putting out, I have converted from a whale to a free to play player. I haven't bought anything since March of this year and when asked about the game from friends who left, I avoid the topic and instead talk about Civ V, Skyrim or Xcom.

Edited by Rhent, 10 December 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[OneEyed Jack]

DPS doesn't mean what you think it does.

[Rhent]

OneEyed Jack, on 10 December 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

DPS doesn't mean what you think it does.

I take it the sentence for the second point is the issue?

Quote

Weapon DPS is generally tied to the original TT values, however the firing rate is all over the place

I've updated DPS to damage.

Edited by Rhent, 10 December 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[Lord Ikka]

Well, dps isn't really applicable to MWO the same way it is in EVE or WoW. Due to the fact that MWO is a shooter and allows the target to twist and/or move behind cover, dps isn't the same as a constant rain of damage like in other games.

[Whatzituyah]

Rhent, on 10 December 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

The weapon design for MWO currently is the poorest of the entire Mechwarrior history. Why?

Looks like Minecraft. "Did'nt read the post at all"

[Sandpit]

Rhent, on 10 December 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

The weapon design for MWO currently is the poorest of the entire Mechwarrior history. Why?

1. Extremely easy to do focused damage via alphas with little to no down side.

3. Ghost Heat

I'm the only one that sees the irony here.......?

oh, and before I forget


I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

[OneEyed Jack]

Lord Ikka, on 10 December 2013 - 07:24 PM, said:

Well, dps isn't really applicable to MWO the same way it is in EVE or WoW. Due to the fact that MWO is a shooter and allows the target to twist and/or move behind cover, dps isn't the same as a constant rain of damage like in other games.

You are wrong. DPS is still applicable, because those factors have nothing to do with it. Twisting doesn't change the fact a higher DPS will have more effect than a lower DPS in a given period of time. Going behind cover doesn't change the amount of damage that can be applied in the time the target is not behind cover.

DPS is simply a way to gauge which option will do the most damage over a given period of time, expressed in it's damage over that time divided by the number of seconds.

[Rhent]

Sandpit, on 10 December 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

I'm the only one that sees the irony here.......?

oh, and before I forget


I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

Its the game balance forum, if you don't like reading game balance posts that state "Weapon Design", then don't click on them and get upset.

[Mystere]

Sandpit, on 10 December 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

Where is the baker when we really need cake now?

[FupDup]

Sandpit, on 10 December 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

I'm the only one that sees the irony here.......?

oh, and before I forget


I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

Item #3 can be circumvented by just changing your build to one that is unaffected by the system, and then proceeding to alpha strike relentlessly with that new configuration. So no, there really isn't any irony between points 1 and 3 of Rhent's original post.

Edited by FupDup, 10 December 2013 - 08:08 PM.

[Rhent]

FupDup, on 10 December 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

Item #3 can be circumvented by just changing your build to one that is unaffected by the system, and then proceeding to alpha strike relentlessly with that new configuration. So no, there really isn't any irony between points 1 and 3 of Rhent's original post.

Yeah 2 PPC + 2 UAC/5's is just as good as the old 4 PPC stalker. Once more people start playing that build, we'll be right back to where we were before ghost heat removed them. As it stands now, I'm running a 2 PPC + 3 LL stalker as pop out and snipe. It pulls 500 regularly in a fight. Just use the abundant cover to cool off before popping out to do 2 quick alpha strikes. Wonderful game mechanics that MWO put out.

[Kunae]

Sandpit, on 10 December 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

I'm the only one that sees the irony here.......?

There's no irony.

"Ghost heat" is like squirting pig-excrement into a sucking chest-wound, to stop the bleeding. Yes, it did stop the bleeding,... mostly, but it has many worse ramifications on the game than were caused by the bleeding. It was, and is, the wrong approach to addressing the core issue.

[Kunae]

Rhent, on 10 December 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

3. Ghost Heat
-It was used primarily to deal with 4 PPC stalkers and 6 PPC stalkers. I'm fairly sure the developers could have come up with a better method to deal with focused ppc damage than ghost heat.

This is somewhat incorrect. Ghost heat was put in to deal with 3x PPC/ERPPC + gauss highlanders. Stalkers were secondary.

They did finally come up with a "better method", and it involved returning PPC/ERPPC heat back to canon levels. But, incomprehensibly, they kept the idiotic "ghost heat" mechanic in-place, rather than removing it as they should have, after that correction.

[Rhent]

The main thing that gets me in the short sightedness of weapon design is limits. For some reason the designers screwed it up.

Think about this:
Energy weapons have:
-high base heat
-slow refire rate
-require additional heat sinks to use
-ghost heat penalty

AC weapons have:
-low base heat
-high refire rate
-do not require additional heat sinks to use
-no ghost heat penalty

You would think that with energy weapons being limited by their own heat, that energy weapons would be given a higher rate of fire AND that AC's with their low to minimal heat generation would have their limiter be a slower rate of fire.

NOPE not in Piranha echo chamber land.

[Kunae]

Rhent, on 11 December 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

The main thing that gets me in the short sightedness of weapon design is limits. For some reason the designers screwed it up.

Think about this:
Energy weapons have:
-high base heat
-slow refire rate
-require additional heat sinks to use
-ghost heat penalty

AC weapons have:
-low base heat
-high refire rate
-do not require additional heat sinks to use
-no ghost heat penalty

You would think that with energy weapons being limited by their own heat, that energy weapons would be given a higher rate of fire AND that AC's with their low to minimal heat generation would have their limiter be a slower rate of fire.

NOPE not in Piranha echo chamber land.

You left off weight as a balancing factor, and some AC's have ghost-heat.

[Rhent]

Kunae, on 11 December 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

You left off weight as a balancing factor, and some AC's have ghost-heat.

Weight doesn't matter. I'd rather run a 2 AC/10 1 UAC/5 mech over an equivalent mech with 2 PPC's and 1 AC/10 any day of the week. Why? The ability to fire the all AC mech continuously and never over heat while doing a minimum of 25 focused damage a shot and the ability to sneak in an extra 15 between shots before jamming.

You are simply better of using AC's due to significantly faster rate of fire and no heat issues. At the very least, energy weapons should have their rate of fire greatly decreased.

[Khobai]

Quote

Ghost heat was put in to deal with 3x PPC/ERPPC + gauss highlanders.

1) ghost heat did not stop PPC/gauss highlanders. The increase in heat on PPCs and the chargeup on gauss is what stopped them.

2) PPC/AC20 highlanders still do the same pinpoint damage. So ghost heat has done nothing at all to fix pinpoint damage. Its just changed the nature of how its dealt.

[Kunae]

Khobai, on 11 December 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

1) ghost heat did not stop PPC/gauss highlanders. The increase in heat on PPCs and the chargeup on gauss is what stopped them.

2) PPC/AC20 highlanders still do the same pinpoint damage. So ghost heat has done nothing at all to fix pinpoint damage. Its just changed the nature of how its dealt.

Oh, absolutely, but that was their justification for the change. As with most other things that they do, their "innovative" and "creative" "solutions" don't address the actual problem, and just make things worse, in general.

[Koniving]

Sandpit, on 10 December 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

Track my posts more often.

There's been some ideas exchanged. This was a recent thing I put out there in regards to autocannons.

Of course it is partially not possible with MWO's server system due to hit detection issues and requires some improvement or slower rate of fire standards.

Another idea is to have the rate of fire slightly increased but DPS reduced.

An example using the AC/2. Change the DPS to 2. The firing rate would be 0.5 seconds apart, and each shot deals 1 damage. This means every second it deals 2 damage (twice as much as the MG does currently). In turn, the AC/5 would deal 5 damage every 2 seconds with its rounds split, and so on as we go up.

Thoughts? Preferences between the linked idea and raised ROF yet reduced DPS idea?

Edited by Koniving, 11 December 2013 - 01:55 PM.

[Blurry]

Whatzituyah, on 10 December 2013 - 07:26 PM, said:

Looks like Minecraft. "Did'nt read the post at all"

great educated posts like this need to be stickied everywhere.
a lot of the game looks like minecraft so why do you play?

Along with the nerve posts - we need more people.
Well when the spine is gone where to the nerves connect?

How about some real communication from the developers about the things that keep being brought up time and time again? you know maybe but it rest? If there wasnt issues do yo think they people would be like this?
Na just let it rage on the forum until there is no one left to care.