35 replies to this topic

[XX Sulla XX]

Wonder if instead of limiting use of PPCs and Ghost heat we should just break with canon and add heat to the gauss? Then it would not pair as well with the PPCs. If you had to you could add the gauss to the same ghost heat pool as the PPCs. With all the energy involved with a gauss it does make sense that it would creat more heat. It really is just an efficiency question. Just say more of the energy gets wasted as heat.

We could also get rid of the charge mechanic maybe.

Then if Clan ERLLs are a problem just adjust duration and or heat.

Edited by XX Sulla XX, 02 August 2014 - 03:32 PM.

[Roland]

Every time you create a convoluted Nerf mechanism to avoid dealing with the fundamental issue of perfect weapons convergence, you will fail to achieve your goal.

As we have now seen a half dozen times, all that happens is that players who understand the game migrate to the next best option for combining weapons into the largest alpha strike possible.

When insanity pointed out that this was going to be the result, way back in closed beta, there was at least some understandability to why people might not grasp what he was saying.

But now? After we have seen it happen over and over again through the development of this game? If people still don't understand the fundamental problem we are dealing with, then it means they are too stupid to engage in the discussion.

Edited by Roland, 02 August 2014 - 03:34 PM.

[XX Sulla XX]

The key is at some point the amount of pin point damage is not a problem. Probably about 30 at range and about 40 short range with a slow enough rate of fire.

[Ryvucz]

That is pretty insane.

Paul might like it.

[Roland]

No, the real issue is weapons convergence.

All of the balance problems that have plagued this game since beta can be traced to that.

And it's resulted in tons of bad and poorly conceived ideas for trying to dance around the issue.

They nerfed the medium and small laser to try and deal with the problem of the hunchback 4p being able to turn 9 small lasers into one super laser.

They nerfed rooms of weapons with ghost heat, to try and prevent people from combining ppcs or ac20s into 40 pony super weapons.

They added a gauss charge to try to prevent people from using it as a replacement for the ppcs decreed by ghost heat.

They then nerfed the ac10 to try and prevent people from using it as a replacement for the gauss.

Then they nerfed the ac5 to try and prevent it being used as a replacement for the 10 (although it was actually already being used prior to the 10 Nerf).

If you look through mwo's development history, you see a long chain of changes and nerfs that are all misguided attempts to avoid making the single task fix, which is to stop instant and perfect weapons convergence.

[Ultimax]

There is no need for this IMO, Gauss is fine.

[XX Sulla XX]

I dont know the more I think about it the less I am concerned with convergence.

[Roland]

XX Sulla XX, on 02 August 2014 - 03:59 PM, said:

I dont know the more I think about it the less I am concerned with convergence.

And yet your whole idea is designed to prevent people from firing a Gauss with ppcs, which is only a problem because of prefect weapons convergence.

[Zerberus]

Roland, on 02 August 2014 - 03:33 PM, said:

But now? After we have seen it happen over and over again through the development of this game? If people still don't understand the fundamental problem we are dealing with, then it means they are too stupid to engage in the discussion.

Yes and no.

Many of us understand that instant PPC (not the weapon) is in fact the root cause.

But we also understand that removing it entirely with no other changes made (as regularly proposed) would give us the same borked hit registration back that we had in CB (for ex. leading targets by up to 20m with lasers, which is both unrealistic and unintuitive).

And that for that reason alone it is most likely here to stay, at least until someone comes up with a better solution that both disallows instant PPC AND keeps the current quality of hit registration or better. "Simply" removing PPC in and of itself is simply not a solution and would essentially throw parts of development (most notably those that have been most positively impacted in the last 6 months with better hit registration) back into the stone age.

Therefore it makes sense to accept that and try to design a system that can work within the limitations, instead of devising a theoretical ideal that can not work in practice because, as it curently stands, one of the most important parts of the equation can not be made to work as desired outside of a purely theoretical (and therefore unfeasible) situation.

Or, actively work on a solution to the actual underlying problem: That you cannot currently remove PPC without destroying overall hit registration as it stands. And present the developers with a well thought out and reasonably feasible plan on how exactly to code said solution into the game without breaking heaven, hell, limbo, Asgard and Hades in the process.

TL, DR: I for my part have no viable solution , nor do I have any ideas that I feelö could reasonably contribute to one outside of the gist of this post. That being that simply wanting a solution to A does not make the reappearing problem B magically disappear, nor will constant regurgitation of teh same endless discussion that has been going on ever since the systems were implemented. The only thing that will help is active , constructive though on how to solve Problem B which the implementation of solution A WILL create, because without it solution a is forever destined for Inbox T.

[Roland]

Convergence doesn't have anything to do with hit registration.

[Ultimax]

Roland, on 02 August 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

And yet your whole idea is designed to prevent people from firing a Gauss with ppcs, which is only a problem because of prefect weapons convergence.

I have to agree here.


PPCs (family) have the worst heat to damage ratios of any energy weapon, and overall the worst tonnage to damage ratios.

The gauss has DPS only slightly better than an AC 5, which weighs nearly half what it weighs.

The problem is not their damage outputs, damage per volley, or rate of fire.

[Prezimonto]

Roland, on 02 August 2014 - 03:42 PM, said:

No, the real issue is weapons convergence.

All of the balance problems that have plagued this game since beta can be traced to that.

And it's resulted in tons of bad and poorly conceived ideas for trying to dance around the issue.

They nerfed the medium and small laser to try and deal with the problem of the hunchback 4p being able to turn 9 small lasers into one super laser.

They nerfed rooms of weapons with ghost heat, to try and prevent people from combining ppcs or ac20s into 40 pony super weapons.

They added a gauss charge to try to prevent people from using it as a replacement for the ppcs decreed by ghost heat.

They then nerfed the ac10 to try and prevent people from using it as a replacement for the gauss.

Then they nerfed the ac5 to try and prevent it being used as a replacement for the 10 (although it was actually already being used prior to the 10 Nerf).

If you look through mwo's development history, you see a long chain of changes and nerfs that are all misguided attempts to avoid making the single task fix, which is to stop instant and perfect weapons convergence.

Convergence and pin point damage are linked. Until you fix one or the other nothing changes. You could tackle the problem from either direction though.

Pin point damage is the problem, because we have convergence. Limiting alpha strikes limits pin point damage and fixes the problem.

Giving weapons spread (random or non-random) lowers pin-point alpha strike damage (just not overall alpha strike damage) and fixes the problem.

Either works, because either addressing the linked issue we have of perfect convergence with pin-point front loaded damage weapons.

I still think Homeless Bill or Doc Bach's ideas that were floated during the run up to Ghost Heat are the best thought out solutions.

I do think a very simple, slight, cone of fire while on the move AND while acquiring targeting information would solve our issues. Even if you can get perfect convergence, if it takes several seconds, you can't twitch shoot people for painful damage. You have to expose yourself return fire to obtain convergence. It would also give an advantage to mechs with Command Console and C3 and/or Targeting computers again by lowering the time to get target information (and convergence).

[Ace Selin]

OP we could just get rid of every weapon in the game and simply leave PPCs, that way all weapons will be alike and share the Ghost Heat mechanic. This is youre idea.


How about leave Gauss alone so its actually different.

[MajorLeeHung]

Roland, on 02 August 2014 - 03:33 PM, said:

Every time you create a convoluted Nerf mechanism to avoid dealing with the fundamental issue of perfect weapons convergence, you will fail to achieve your goal.

As we have now seen a half dozen times, all that happens is that players who understand the game migrate to the next best option for combining weapons into the largest alpha strike possible.

When insanity pointed out that this was going to be the result, way back in closed beta, there was at least some understandability to why people might not grasp what he was saying.

But now? After we have seen it happen over and over again through the development of this game? If people still don't understand the fundamental problem we are dealing with, then it means they are too stupid to engage in the discussion.

Yep. Please stop calling for weapon nerfs. Start calling for a fix to the 100% instant pinpoint alpha damage. ffs already...

[Tezcatli]

Roland, on 02 August 2014 - 03:33 PM, said:

Every time you create a convoluted Nerf mechanism to avoid dealing with the fundamental issue of perfect weapons convergence, you will fail to achieve your goal.

As we have now seen a half dozen times, all that happens is that players who understand the game migrate to the next best option for combining weapons into the largest alpha strike possible.

When insanity pointed out that this was going to be the result, way back in closed beta, there was at least some understandability to why people might not grasp what he was saying.

But now? After we have seen it happen over and over again through the development of this game? If people still don't understand the fundamental problem we are dealing with, then it means they are too stupid to engage in the discussion.

He makes a good point. But people don't want random in their "FPS". Which in my opinion. We should stop calling it that. It should be a mech game first and foremost.

Homelessbill's idea seemed like it could work. And it wouldn't rely on hit registration or anything like that. It's based solely on the type of weapons your firing and how many all at once. But then I don't know programming. I don't know how hard it would be to implement a bloom effect after weapons are fired.

[Roland]

Tezcatli, on 02 August 2014 - 06:43 PM, said:

He makes a good point. But people don't want random in their "FPS".

There is nothing about fixing the convergence system which requires randomization of shots.

[Jeb]

I dont think heat is the fix everyone thinks it is... its a bandaid to a broken system without a proper battletech heatscale... And weapon convergence is part of the issue sure... but I also don't think that is the heart of the issue although I know many people do...

MWO took the weapon stats from a TT game, that had 10 second turns (meaning 10 second weapon cooldowns if you translate that directly) and ignored the fact that random hit locations were a key balance point to those weapons...

So we took what many people feel was a balanced table top set of rules, and took away key balance points (random hit locations, 10 second cool-downs, and a heat-scale with penalties which I mention next)


Next we have the heat scale... the heat scale was to prevent all alpha strikes all the time... (or even to slow the use of the BFGs)
You could do a few shots in a row with the big guns, but if you kept generating more heat then your mech could get rid of in a turn (10 seconds), you had things like movement modifiers, hit modifiers, chance to shutdown, ammo explosions etc... all things that made you preform worse and worse if you didn't check your heat...


How can those weapon stats be balanced in MWO without the random hit locations, long cool-downs, and heat scale penalties?

I don't see how they can... yet people don't want the weapons stats changed...

(I also do feel that instant convergence needs fixing too, but I don't know what to do with that... but I think that is only part of the solution of a bigger problem.)

Edited by Jeb, 02 August 2014 - 09:02 PM.

[Ultimax]

Prezimonto, on 02 August 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

Pin point damage is the problem, because we have convergence. Limiting alpha strikes limits pin point damage and fixes the problem.

Giving weapons spread (random or non-random) lowers pin-point alpha strike damage (just not overall alpha strike damage) and fixes the problem.

Either works, because either addressing the linked issue we have of perfect convergence with pin-point front loaded damage weapons.

1 Gauss hitting a single point is not a problem.

It's a 12 to 15 ton weapon. The end result needs to justify that weight, or it will go unused.

[xeromynd]

Here's a radical suggestion:

What if PPCs were the weapon with the charge. Not Gauss rifles.

[Jeb]

charge time was a bandaid and it doesn't solve anything... it just makes it a bit harder to aim as you have to lead for the charge time... if you get used to dealing with that, it's no different then dealing with projectile travel time... and you can fire your other weapons when the charge is done, so your still firing massive amounts of damage into the same "aimed" location...

If your good at it, and the enemy has damage to their Left ST, you can punch 25 dmg into their ST with a PPC/Gauss... 30 with duel gauss... or more depending on the builds...

As I say in my other post... in TT the balance to that was that your PPC / Gauss would hit random locations, maybe the ST, maybe not... and probably not the same locations... so in MWO your taking 25 dmg to a single location, maybe one already with very little armor left... In TT you have a small chance to hit one of your shots on the ST that is already dmged, and an even smaller chance to hit both there... so your probably taking 15 dmg to a random location and 10 dmg to another random location... Not as big a deal...

Weapon stats are being used from TT without all the balance factors TT had... which is the root cause of the issues IMO...


(it's also not just a PPC or Gauss issue... 12x C-ERSL for example can land 48 dmg into the same location... any weapon can cause the problem if you can load enough of them onto a mech and fire them without overheating)

Edited by Jeb, 02 August 2014 - 10:13 PM.