131 replies to this topic

[Sybreed]

Mister Blastman, on 22 March 2014 - 10:27 PM, said:

Hooked on reading failed for you?

I know clearly what he was talking about. He and I are in disagreement. He argues that it is BOTH hardpoints AND convergence that is breaking the game. I state that it isn't hardpoints but instead convergence.

I don't think hardpoints are the issue. His first post was multi-faceted. Or is that too complicated for you to comprehend?

Just go away. Thanks.

okay, so my question is: Do you think LRM boating is balanced?

And no I won't go away, so you better start dealing with it now.

[Iacov]

i absolutely support Bishop

lrms per se feel good

[Daekar]

I remember the posts about this back in closed beta, and I liked the idea back then. I would have supported it wholeheartedly, as I believe it really was the best solution for game balance. I would still love to see it implemented.

However, I also believe that ship has sailed. For better or for worse, I can't see PGI doing it - they have too much invested in the current system and players wouldn't accept it now even if they didn't. Perhaps they might try it as a last ditch effort to fix colossal balance issues, but I don't see that happening for a long time. I think we are going to have to accept that for now, the premier Mechwarrior game is going to suffer from the same pinpoint and boating issues as its predecessors.

At least 3-3-3-3 is coming. That might mean that medium mechs just become common cannon fodder, but we shall see. Hopefully the tonnage matching will be good enough that mechs fitting at the bottom of their weight brackets will be worth driving.

[Praehotec8]

EDIT: I was trying to quote Wintersdark, but apparently it did not work.

I can see the logic in this, (and at times have mixed feelings myself), but overall, I support loose hardpoint size restrictions for the reasons Bishop listed.

I think done properly (and loosely, such as only large and small hardpoints) it could allow significant customization while limiting the most egregious boating, and could promote the diversity of running different chassis and variants for different roles.

Mechs like the Jager would still be useful (not just as anti-air) running things like UAC5, AC5, AC2s, heck even AC10s, but would be prevented from being premier brawlers with dual AC20s.

Finally weapon groupings are a part of the simulator aspect of this game. People have cried for months and months that the game is too dumbed down and not simulator enough. The game certainly wouldn't be hurt by requiring people to think about what to fire, and when. It might even slow down the pace of damage, lengthening the average kill time, and certainly would help prevent perfect convergence as different groups would not be fired simultaneously.

Edited by Praehotec8, 23 March 2014 - 09:19 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 March 2014 - 10:52 PM, said:

convergence does not balance boating. It is sadly not as black and white as just being convergence. Convergence would not make certain chassis viable again. Sized hard points would, hence I state that it is a two fold disease.

I never liked the sized hardpoint limitation in Mechwarrior 4. It didn't work. The game was full of poptarts boating erllas, ppcs and light gauss.

In fact, what I'd like to see happen is completely remove hardpoint limitations and go back to Mechwarrior 2's freedom IF and only IF they were to remove convergence completely (except for arm weapons or a targeting computer installed) AND...

1. Overhaul the heat system completely to a 30 pt scale with all the Battletech penalties at whatever level.

2. Overhaul how heatsinks work so they are 1:1 with medium lasers--i.e. medium laser recycle time, whatever it is and base that as the 10 second "tick" so one single heatsink dissipates one point of heat in the time it takes a medium laser to cycle.

3. Increase cycle times for PPCs and Gauss as they are the "big" guns, making them less than adequate for brawling.

4. Fix SRMs.

LRMs aren't broken as I see it. Everything else is.

There is more I'm leaving out above but you get the idea. Fix the mechanics, don't balance the system with damage numbers/hardpoint sizes.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Having no hardpoints at all would really wreck the game. People would merely choose the "best" chassis (with regard to hitpoints etc) and fill it with the "best" weapon. You can only get a handle on balance and making more mechs viable by limiting customisation, not freeing it up.

[Mister Blastman]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 23 March 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

Having no hardpoints at all would really wreck the game. People would merely choose the "best" chassis (with regard to hitpoints etc) and fill it with the "best" weapon. You can only get a handle on balance and making more mechs viable by limiting customisation, not freeing it up.

Not at all. I was notorious for running a 65-ton Hellbringer in Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries online and massacred everyone in the community. Those there remember it well.

[wanderer]

Morashtak, on 22 March 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

Ammo would have to be placed in the same or adjacent area, no legs.

This isn't even true in tabletop. We already can't build Urbanmechs thanks to PGI's hosed construction system, let's not break more 'Mechs shall we?

Bad enough that leg-mounted weaponry is apparently impossible for PGI to figure out- which BTW means that there's some designs that'll never see daylight. Or ghost heat exists. Or massively increasing ROF while making DHS below-performance AND rendering SHS beyond mediocre straight into "useless, even on 3025 builds".

You really want to pull it off, you make hardpoints have critical space limits as well. And you'll kill some builds entirely doing it, mind you.

Hardpoints determine how many weapons can go into a space. What the 'Mech had stock in that location is how many crit spaces those hardpoints can take up in total, regardless of how many weapons are there.

Voila. You'll never see a Boomjager again- there's only 5 crits between the AC/2 and AC/5. At best, the UAC/5 + AC/2 version will get an LB-10X in. No more sniper Ravens with more than a single ER LL or ER PPC Commandos.

Life would be a lot more boring interesting that way, you betcha.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mister Blastman, on 23 March 2014 - 10:45 AM, said:

I never liked the sized hardpoint limitation in Mechwarrior 4. It didn't work. The game was full of poptarts boating erllas, ppcs and light gauss.

In fact, what I'd like to see happen is completely remove hardpoint limitations and go back to Mechwarrior 2's freedom IF and only IF they were to remove convergence completely (except for arm weapons or a targeting computer installed) AND...

1. Overhaul the heat system completely to a 30 pt scale with all the Battletech penalties at whatever level.

2. Overhaul how heatsinks work so they are 1:1 with medium lasers--i.e. medium laser recycle time, whatever it is and base that as the 10 second "tick" so one single heatsink dissipates one point of heat in the time it takes a medium laser to cycle.

3. Increase cycle times for PPCs and Gauss as they are the "big" guns, making them less than adequate for brawling.

4. Fix SRMs.

LRMs aren't broken as I see it. Everything else is.

There is more I'm leaving out above but you get the idea. Fix the mechanics, don't balance the system with damage numbers/hardpoint sizes.

Dude, you know which multiplayer was the epitome of broken?

MW3. Zero hardpoints, unlimited customization. It was a matter of literally picking the best hitboxes, then loading whatever was the meta. Which meant essentially ZERO diversity. Did mw4 have poptarting? Sure did. Don't try to pretend that MW2 and MW3 were better. Also, Hellbringer had some of the best hitboxes in MW2, which is why I always used it. CAn't say I remember you, particularly. (Sorry. It WAS a long freaking time ago)

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 23 March 2014 - 04:52 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Bishop Steiner, on 23 March 2014 - 04:50 PM, said:

Dude, you know which multiplayer was the epitome of broken? MW3.

Quite right, MW 3 was broken indeed. It wasn't due to no weapon hardpoints, though. It was broken for a couple of reasons:
1. Zipper Interactive somehow managed to make the netcode WORSE than it was in Mechwarrior 2. Don't ask me how. They did.

2. Instant hit lasers + convergence.

Number two above is the biggest reason Mechwarrior 3 was a disaster online. You hardly ever saw people use anything but lasers and LRMs. PPCs + Gauss inherited your velocity making them extremely risky to use online as they were truly hard to aim. I've made a video of it and will gladly re-post it if you want to see it. Likewise, most autocannons were also risky to use. Sure, they fired multiple rounds, but they too inherited velocity. The only autocannon that WAS used was the Ultra AC 20 and it wasn't for the damage... it was used because it could knock people down with brutal effectiveness. Once they were down, you could destroy them easily.

But he lasers... the lasers needed no leading. They surgically concentrated all their damage in one small point. This lead to a patch upping their heat, making small lasers rule everything (except Ultras).

Mechwarrior 2 had convergence, too--but... the lasers had a travel time. This allowed them to spread out. It dramatically increased the time to kill due to weapons spread. Mechwarrior 3 removed the spread. If you were good enough, you could destroy people in two or three alphas from your decked out shadow cat using nothing but small lasers. People died in seconds. Well, except for striders--which could abuse the lag to no end.

If the convergence didn't exist in Mechwarrior 3 like it did... we probably would have seen a completely different experience online. Weapons would have spread out. The heat system in Mechwarrior 3 WORKED! It worked great! It does a great job penalizing 2-3 PPC + Gauss boats. Try it if you don't believe me. I have recently. The heat system is really nice in it.

The convergence destroyed everything. It has gone on to destroy every Mechwarrior experience since and it does it mainly with the instant-hit weapons.

Lasers were top dog on MW 3 due to this. In Mechwarrior 4 they once again reared their ugly head as erllas and dominated (and likewise PPCs + Light Gauss).

And now, in Mechwarrior Online... what dominates? Not lasers. No, they don't instant hit and deal instant damage... What dominates here is PPCs, Gauss and Ballistics. Not because of lack of hardpoint limitations, but because of convergence and a broken heat system.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mister Blastman, on 23 March 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

Quite right, MW 3 was broken indeed. It wasn't due to no weapon hardpoints, though. It was broken for a couple of reasons:
1. Zipper Interactive somehow managed to make the netcode WORSE than it was in Mechwarrior 2. Don't ask me how. They did.

2. Instant hit lasers + convergence.

Number two above is the biggest reason Mechwarrior 3 was a disaster online. You hardly ever saw people use anything but lasers and LRMs. PPCs + Gauss inherited your velocity making them extremely risky to use online as they were truly hard to aim. I've made a video of it and will gladly re-post it if you want to see it. Likewise, most autocannons were also risky to use. Sure, they fired multiple rounds, but they too inherited velocity. The only autocannon that WAS used was the Ultra AC 20 and it wasn't for the damage... it was used because it could knock people down with brutal effectiveness. Once they were down, you could destroy them easily.

But he lasers... the lasers needed no leading. They surgically concentrated all their damage in one small point. This lead to a patch upping their heat, making small lasers rule everything (except Ultras).

Mechwarrior 2 had convergence, too--but... the lasers had a travel time. This allowed them to spread out. It dramatically increased the time to kill due to weapons spread. Mechwarrior 3 removed the spread. If you were good enough, you could destroy people in two or three alphas from your decked out shadow cat using nothing but small lasers. People died in seconds. Well, except for striders--which could abuse the lag to no end.

If the convergence didn't exist in Mechwarrior 3 like it did... we probably would have seen a completely different experience online. Weapons would have spread out. The heat system in Mechwarrior 3 WORKED! It worked great! It does a great job penalizing 2-3 PPC + Gauss boats. Try it if you don't believe me. I have recently. The heat system is really nice in it.

The convergence destroyed everything. It has gone on to destroy every Mechwarrior experience since and it does it mainly with the instant-hit weapons.

Lasers were top dog on MW 3 due to this. In Mechwarrior 4 they once again reared their ugly head as erllas and dominated (and likewise PPCs + Light Gauss).

And now, in Mechwarrior Online... what dominates? Not lasers. No, they don't instant hit and deal instant damage... What dominates here is PPCs, Gauss and Ballistics. Not because of lack of hardpoint limitations, but because of convergence and a broken heat system.

While I agree with many of your points on the weapons and convergence, the hardpoints, or lack thereof did directly contribute to the broken metas of MW2 and 3 (and yes, 2 was less broken, but then, snap firing, and such like todays twitch shooters was impossible back then, lol). Because literally any mech could carry any loadout, people stopped using anything but what had the best mix of tonnage, hitboxes and speed (until potarting took over, in which case, speed was taken from the equation) But why would I use a big fat easy to hit Daishi, when the hitboxes and profile on the Annihilator was so much better? (of course, with KneeCapWarrior3, that too became a non factor, which is where the whole poptart thing took over, again. God what a boring way to play a game)

So instead of either, now I loaded up er lasers on a SuperNova, used JJs, better hitboxes and the broken weapon convergence, and voila. Mind you, I didn't stay too god awful long in the MW3 multiplayer ranks with any degree of regularity, because it got boring fast, so TBH; I don't know what the final flavor of the month chassis boiled down to, but the point is, in both MW2 and 3, you saw very few chassis in competitive play. Because there was no need to pick and choose, thanks to unlimited customization.

[Mister Blastman]

Bishop Steiner, on 23 March 2014 - 06:27 PM, said:

I don't know what the final flavor of the month chassis boiled down to, but the point is, in both MW2 and 3, you saw very few chassis in competitive play. Because there was no need to pick and choose, thanks to unlimited customization.

Well I think what we have here in MWO is a middle ground. Finally the 'mechs have a spirit, a heart. Certain mechs do certain things due to the PGI restrictions of weapons. I like 'mechs being different.

I don't think further restricting the weapons will help--aka a nerf. We've done nothing but nerf. It is time to change the mechanics how I see it.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mister Blastman, on 23 March 2014 - 06:53 PM, said:

Well I think what we have here in MWO is a middle ground. Finally the 'mechs have a spirit, a heart. Certain mechs do certain things due to the PGI restrictions of weapons. I like 'mechs being different.

I don't think further restricting the weapons will help--aka a nerf. We've done nothing but nerf. It is time to change the mechanics how I see it.

Well, we agree on one thing, and disagree on the other, *shrugs* but ain't thinking either of us will ever get our wishes.

[1453 R]

The sized hardpoints thing has been talked about and talked about, and I can still never see it being a good thing.

Sized hardpoints effectively destroys a player's ability to customize his machine in any meaningful way, short the requisite structural upgrades and maybe an engine bump. What you have on the stock machine is pretty much all you're ever going to have because there's no realistic way to change the weapons out unless, for some bizarre reason, all of your hardpoints are 'large' types. All right, sure, you can change standard beams to pulse beams and vice versa, and a dumb Victor pilot could downgrade his autocannon in order to get the tonnage to...oh, wait. He wouldn't actually be able to upgrade the rest of his weaponry for it, because his energy hardpoints don't accept anything bigger than medium lasers, and his missile hardpoints don't accept anything bigger than the SRM launcher's he's already got. What you get on the 'Mech stock? That's all you'd get.

Certainly the customization system has its ills, but let's not forget that some perfectly legitimate Cool Builds are also available because we're not limited to stock armaments, and some chassis that would be complete garbage are perfectly viable because we can fix their problems. The duaLarge RVN-3L is a really interesting use of a chassis that's fallen off almost completely with the introduction of Newer Better Boats. I've seen some intriguing mixed ballistic loads on JagerMechs recently, and have been having some fun with the large laser-equipped Combat Cat as well.

Sized hardpoints brings the Awesome back to the table as Da Best Assault Beam Boat. Let's see what else it does...:

-completely destroys every single light 'Mech currently in the game that doesn't have FS9 in its designation. Some folks already think the Firestarter has killed every other light 'mech out there - do you really want to restrict every light 'mech we have to medium lasers and below when most of them are lucky to hit half the medium laser count the Firestarter gets?

-Eliminates the large laser as an even semi-competitive option. 2xLL builds on lights, and 4xLL builds on larger 'Mechs, currently have interesting niches as medium-range direct fire skirmishers, able to deal significantly more damage than people figure because of the weapon's interesting balance of weight to range to damage. There is not a single chassis in the entirety of MWO that could mount more than two large lasers at absolute best with sized hardpoints, and the one single 'mech capable of it - the Awesome - never would because it would be too busy boating PPCs. You'd never even see large lasers anymore, because any hardpoint big enough to mount a large laser would also be big enough for a PPC, and why would you ever use large lasers over PPCs if you were restricted to the same count of each?

-Ruins light autocannons' viability as customization options. Currently, one can downgrade/eliminate an autocannon on an AC-centric design (ie. Victor) in order to switch the 'Mech's role up and use that tonnage elsewhere. With a sized hardpoint system, there would be virtually nothing to use that spare tonnage on. You'd run the biggest bloody gun that slot could mount because if you didn't, you'd have no way of improving your firepower via other methods to make up for the loss. With the bare exception of the Centurion, which is about the only AC chassis I can think of at the moment that can successfully run a non-autocannon armament in a sized-hardpoint system.

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. And even if we did get sized hardpoints, it wouldn't solve anything, it would just change which 'Mechs were Good or Bad according to the tryhards at the top. And in the meantime, the interesting sub-variants that the rest of us run down here in Puglandia would get the chop with no compensation.

A good example: my Thunderbolts are, despite all odds, currently some of my favorite chassis. The 5SS runs quad large lasers exceptionally well, while the 5S(P) has an interesting mix of high-mount direct-fire energy and LRM launchers that constitutes the only time I've successfully run LRMs with a backup armament.

If we went sized hardpoints? I'd curse and moan and cry a little and never touch my Thunderbolts again, because the stock hardpoint sizes/weapons distribution/armaments on those things are horrific. Every time I looked at them (and a good half of my other currently-useable 'Mechs), I'd remember what they once were, and then throw another dart at the Lyran insignia on the wall with 'Bishop Steiner' scrawled under it in blood.

[Bishop Steiner]

lolz. Melodrama much?

FS9 is possibly the worst light mech in the game against OTHER light mechs. No ECM, no SSRMs. And thunderbolts have horrible hardpoints now. Espècially since they do nothing that the Catapult and Jager can't do better, do to unlimited hardpoints.

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 23 March 2014 - 07:42 PM, said:

lolz. Melodrama much?

FS9 is possibly the worst light mech in the game against OTHER light mechs. No ECM, no SSRMs. And thunderbolts have horrible hardpoints now. Espècially since they do nothing that the Catapult and Jager can't do better, do to unlimited hardpoints.

To be fair, the Thunderbolt has waaaay better hitboxes than the Catapult and arguably the Jagermech 'cause you can use your arms as shields and protect your torso easier.

[No Guts No Glory]

To be fair, both the Catapult and Jag have to expose less of their mech to fire their main weapons.

The ground has the best hitbox of all.

[1453 R]

Lolz all you want, Bishie. I'm simply pointing out that sized hardpoints do a whole lot more damage than good. Everyone champions 'bringing back the AWESOME!' as the best case of what sized hardpoints do. Anyone ever think of the 'mechs that are currently viable/useful/comeptitive that would die as hard as the Awesome does now if they were limited to their stock armaments?

[FupDup]

No Guts No Glory, on 23 March 2014 - 07:46 PM, said:

To be fair, both the Catapult and Jag have to expose less of their mech to fire their main weapons.

The ground has the best hitbox of all.

The Thud 5SE has 2 pretty high mounted energy hardpoints in the right torso. :\

Also, I like to peek around corners more often than I peek over ridges.

[Daekar]

1453 R, on 23 March 2014 - 07:32 PM, said:

A lot of pretty persuasive stuff

This is the kind of post that can cause a man to reconsider his position, thank you for taking the time to write it. And while it was a bit over the top, I did actually lol at the dart target with Bishop's name in blood (sorry Bishop, I love you man). I'm not sure I agree with everything you said (particularly about large lasers) but I can see where you're coming from.

Since you seem to have a compelling reason to dislike the sized hard point system, what would you suggest to deal with boating issues and their impact on balance? Do you think 3-3-3-3 will render this a moot point?