34 replies to this topic

[KAT Ayanami]

Hi,

I was wondering if one of the main reasons for boating could be the constant nerf of weapons. Most weapons are so bad now, that you need more than 1 or 2 to make an impact.

By experience, when I started playing (a couple of months into the game) I bought an Atlas D.

I used to run that atlas with a couple of Large Lasers, an AC20 and a LRM20 (with minor changes like 3 LRM5s instead for example or LPLs).

It was very fun to play with.

- Used the LRMs as I was aproaching or as the enemy made a "run for it".
- Used the LLs for medium combat or mechs with cover (poping in and out of cover).
- Used the AC20 the moment they were close enough to hit.


It was pretty fun and funtional. But now is not viable. And I think this is due to the constant weapon nerf.

Some examples.
- LRMs now are almost useless, so one single rack does nothing.
- Gauss is the same. Need more than one to work.
- Machine guns usually have to be 4.
- LBX10 is bad by itself, but one of them only is even worse.
- MLs and other small weapons are fine, as they cannot pack such a punch and are needed in high numbers to amount for something.


Wouldnt it be better if instead of constantly nerfing weapons to take them out of the meta, PGI should improve bad weapons to bring them up to meta?

For example, I would rather see better flamers and pulse lasers so they are chosen more by players, instead of removing ballistic from the game by creating a slow flying AC20s and slow charging Gauss.

I think PGI is sucking the life out of the game by worsening weapons (it become less fun).

I believe improving bad weapons to put them up to part would be better imho.

Ideas?
** Please, keep in mind that some weapons must be better than others. I am just talking about making them all competitive enough to bring to the battlefield. Instead of making them all bad enough that we end up hitting each other with baseball bats. **

[dario03]

People boat because its a easy way to have a effective build. No need to keep track of multiple weapons ammo, rof, range, projectile speed, heat, etc. Boating lets you easily keep track of all that because its all the same and thus easy to use (especially for concentrating fire to one spot during a alpha). Besides people have always boated. Its like the main reason we have ghost heat.

KAT Ayanami, on 14 February 2014 - 09:07 AM, said:

Wouldnt it be better if instead of constantly nerfing weapons to take them out of the meta, PGI should improve bad weapons to bring them up to meta?

No. nerfing powerful weapons and buffing weak weapons effectively do the same thing, which is balancing weapons. But buffing weak weapons decreases time to kill and the devs are trying to increase time to kill. And I'm all for that, since if I wanted to play a game of insta-kill I would just go play any other fps ever made. If you prefer don't think of weapon nerfs as nerfs to weapons but instead buffs to armor (but just against those weapons)

Edited by dario03, 14 February 2014 - 09:19 AM.

[Sephlock]

dario03, on 14 February 2014 - 09:17 AM, said:

People boat because its a easy way to have a effective build. No need to keep track of multiple weapons ammo, rof, range, projectile speed, heat, etc. Boating lets you easily keep track of all that because its all the same and thus easy to use (especially for concentrating fire to one spot during a alpha). Besides people have always boated. Its like the main reason we have ghost heat.



No. nerfing powerful weapons and buffing weak weapons effectively do the same thing, which is balancing weapons. But buffing weak weapons decreases time to kill and the devs are trying to increase time to kill. And I'm all for that, since if I wanted to play a game of insta-kill I would just go play any other fps ever made. If you prefer don't think of weapon nerfs as nerfs to weapons but instead buffs to armor (but just against those weapons)

Maybe if they stopped nerfing missiles...

[IcemanOmikron]

Exactly what dario03 said. To expand on that, while boating you don't have to worry about leading with an A/C while not leading with a laser while maintaining locks for lrms. Boating just reduces the number of variables you have to consider.

[Mcgral18]

Well, seeing as the AC60 is pretty powerful, perhaps we should bring it down a little.

Remember, ACs are rated on the damage they put out every 10 seconds.

Some weapons could certainly use a buff, but massed frontloaded will almost always be better if you can fit it. And PGI doesn't intend to change it.

As such, making SRMs, pulse lasers and the LB10x viable might change things up. Or completely ruin TTK, but it's worth a try.

[SI The Joker]

Define boating, exactly.

If a config has 5 missle locations and 2 energy... if I load up with LRMs... am I boating... or using the config the way it was 'intended'?

On the flip... if I'm in an SP... Am I boating if I load up on MLAS because otherwise... I'm not carrying anything but AMS.

So please... define boating.

Edited by SI The Joker, 14 February 2014 - 09:27 AM.

[East Indy]

You're asking for the egg to lay the chicken.

BattleTech's tabletop design controlled pace through weighted-but-random hit locations. The challenge in any shooter/sim of the game has been player-controlled precision targeting, since 'Mechs can be disabled after losing small but specific portions to damage. Furthermore, some players dislike the blow-by-blow speed of combat and the considerably longer time-to-kill it entails, since surprise and luck matter less, and make every effort to concentrate firepower for faster kills. A lack of limiting factors in MWO (sized hardpoints, recoil, imperfect convergence, has elevated this playstyle to the most effective.

If you really want parity in weapons, unless you simply want one-hit-kills no matter the armament, the answer is for high-alpha to be further curtailed.

[MustrumRidcully]

dario03, on 14 February 2014 - 09:17 AM, said:

People boat because its a easy way to have a effective build. No need to keep track of multiple weapons ammo, rof, range, projectile speed, heat, etc. Boating lets you easily keep track of all that because its all the same and thus easy to use (especially for concentrating fire to one spot during a alpha). Besides people have always boated. Its like the main reason we have ghost heat.

That's why I argue for changes to convergence and group fire and to standardize weapon recycle rates, and projectile speeds. Not make them all the same, but have a few "compatible" classes.

Say, weapons either recycle after 1.25 seconds, 2.5 seconds or 5 seconds. Adjust weapon damage and heat values accordingly to compensate if a weapon would suddenly be much slower than now, for example.
Weapon projectiles would either be hitscan (Laser), fast (PPC, Gauss), medium (Auto-Cannons) or slow (missiles).

But PGI will never implement such changes because just tweaking a few minor values to adjust weapons like Machine Guns or the heat on PPCs took them months. An actual reconception of weapon values with balance and "compatbility" in mind is completely out of scope of what they are willing to do.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Boating to an extent is fine.


The fact LRMs, Pulse Lasers, SRMs, mGuns, and streaks NEED to be boated to be effective is more tell tale that there are weapons that are severely underpowered or near non-functional (flamer, narc, etc.)

Buffing these "so bad they stink" weapon systems would simply make the game more interesting and diverse. A single weapon should be able to hold its on a mech config, and not need to be boated (LRMs, mostly)

[Daggett]

As said before the power of the weapons have not much to do with the reason while people boat them.

The most important reason is convenience.
Boating allows you to use less weapon-groups and although i own a gaming mouse with additional buttons all my builds only two groups triggered by the left and right mouse buttons because i'm lazy.
And as dario said you don't have to keep track on different recycle times, ammo and such.

Especially the linking of recycle times is what make boating interesting for lazy players like me.
And it comes with the additional side-effect that all boated weapons impact the target at the same time which allows for more/better moments of opportunity which is the second big reason why players boat.

PGI tried to reduce the problem of synchroneous recycle times by implementing ghost heat.
The problem with this mechanic however is that it punishes the players who are boating for convinience.
In some mechs those are now forced to use additional weapon groups and get used to different recycle times.

I guess thats a big reason why so many players don't like ghost heat and would rather like a system which removes the powerful effects of boating while retaining the convenience effects..

Edited by Daggett, 14 February 2014 - 09:41 AM.

[Artgathan]

There's many reasons for boating, both on the game side and on the human user side.

On the human side, consider that humans aren't very good at keeping track of a lot of things simultaneously (hence why tanks use multiple member crews). It's just easier (mentally) to keep track of 1 or 2 different weapons than the 3/4 that many stock mechs use, especially in the chaotic MWO environment (at least in TT you had time to consider what you'd be shooting at).

Also, if you're playing with a mouse its generally easier to only use 1/2 weapons (since a standard mouse has 2 buttons). I personally find using 3 weapons alright (I can easily hit "3" with my WASD keys), but if I try using 4 I start getting messed up (IE: I'll hit "4" and then put my fingers over the ESDF keys instead of WASD).

[Voivode]

I've argued for changes to AC fire that turns ACs into a stream of rounds rather than a single frontloaded round. Something like 2 or 4 shots, each representing half or quarter of the total damage, fired over 0.25 to 0.4 seconds. That would allow ACs to be a combination of pinpoint damage and spread DPS. Laser and Missiles would be pure spread DPS, and PPC/Gauss would be pure pinpoint.

[NextGame]

boating good weapons is more fun than boating bad weapons.

[oldradagast]

I think 90% of boating comes down the real-world complexities of aiming various weapon systems in a real-time game vs. rolling dice for however many weapon systems you want (each possibly on a different target.)

Take the Atlas-D stock configuration, for example: It's a mess of weapon groups: You have 4 medium lasers, with 2 in the torso (and in table-top, I think they are rear mounted), an AC20 in the torso, an LRM 20, and an SRM 6 in the torso.

That's all fine and good for tabletop since you can put each weapon on a different target and roll to hit, but in a game with real-time action and aiming, it's a dysfunctional nightmare that would need at least 4 different weapon groups. So, people strip out the less useful ones - for example, they either go all LRM's or all SRM's, but they don't mix them - and hence boating was born.

I think that single-component damage - putting all that boated firepower on 1 mech location - is a real problem, while boating is just natural adaption to a system that requires weapon groups and real time aiming. Most people realistically aren't going to use more than 3 weapon groups, despite how many stock mechs really need 3+ groups to run right.

[IronChance]

I love the old "instead of nerfing let's just make everything better" song.

Because "just making everything better" is a thing you can do. It's an actual thing. And it's really easy.

[xMEPHISTOx]

Quote

Could Boating Be Due To Bad Weapons?

No.

[Khobai]

Theres nothing wrong with boating. Boating has always been a part of battletech and mechwarrior. Punishing boating with ghost heat made absolutely no sense.

The problem was never mechs carrying 4 PPCs. The problem was the fact all 4 PPCs were allowed to hit the same location. A mech with 4 PPCs would be perfectly balanced if the damage spread out across multiple hit locations (i.e. giving PPCs splash damage).

[Asmudius Heng]

If weapons were all 'Good' they would still be boated.

Boating makes weapons exponentially more efficient.

Some weapons do need to be better in general but that has nothing to do with boating.

Boating causes PGI to make poor decisions because they cannot implement a system that breaks the pinpoint daamge boating provides (for direct fire anyway) or the mass damage (LRMs before they were nerfed)

Without solving the convergeance issue PGI looks at other ways to patch up a broken system.

There are other ways to use the current system with different weapons mechanics to offset some of that boating problem but it would require some significant reworking to the game they are not prepared for.

Basically boating needs to have serious negatives that can be exploited by the enemy, or have some sort of system of diminishing returns.

The heat system, ammo, minimum ranges etc are all suppose to do that but they end up punishing mixed loadout players more than boaters.

So no - it is not just the weapons ... it is a large number of factors in a very complex system.

[Praslek2]

cSand you are trolling.

[Sandpit]

I can't speak for others but when I boat, it's for a few different reasons. I generally boat weapons not because they're bad but because it's a weapon that works well boated. I also run mixed loadouts with the same weapons. I also boat when I'm wanting ro fit into a more specialized role and/or style.