181 replies to this topic

[DragonFire1170]

My two-cents on a heat system revamp is a system similar to Mechwarrior 3's heat system, and in an attempt to explain it in Table-Top style wording, this is what I have in suggestion.

Right now the game seems to run a 60-point heat system, perhaps lower it to a 45 point system with the following grades:

0-25: Blue/Green, no effects
25-30: Yellow, Heat klaxon sounds (an ACTUAL alarm, like back in MW3, instead of the little jingle we have now), computer chimes "Heat level critical," mech loses speed slightly, quiet sizzle
30-45: Red, computer sounds "Core meltdown imminent," mech slows considerably, HUD fizzles, you have five seconds to cool off to below 30 heat before you shutdown, not powering back on until you reach around 25 heat, loud sizzling, gradual damage over time to CT/Head after five seconds if overridden
45: Instant shutdown, risk of ammo explosion/critical hit, or just internal damage to the CT

To combat the smaller heat scale, DHS should be geared to the standard 2x efficiency compared to singles

EDIT: Re-worked the scale after remembering the appearance of the heat gauge from MW3

Edited by DragonFire1170, 15 July 2014 - 04:57 PM.

[NetherlightWolf]

Also attributing to the the abuse of meta big alphas. Consumable abuse. Now PGI, sadly, has created this issue. Coolant (Cool) Shots are stupidly cheap, easily accessable consumables that can be stacked. This allows mechs to spam alphas they have no business spamming.

Even in previous Mechwarrior games, assuming you even had it at all, you got one, key word here *one*, coolant flush that did not recharge. You had to be smart about using it because you use it at a bad time, and you're boned for the rest of your mission and it only served to help you avoid an untimely shutdown from heat, not spamming alphas. As I understand it, in TT, doing this would also damage your heat sinks making them even less effective.

Now I know this will become less an issue when the module fix is implemented, especially on other consumbales like artys and air strikes, which some of these bigger name clans have taken to the meta of just spamming artys/air strikes by have members of their team stack nothing but that in their module slots.

[Mercules]

Funkadelic Mayhem, on 15 July 2014 - 01:45 PM, said:

THIS... IS... NOT... TABLETOP...!

This...is....NOT... GENERIC SPACE COMBAT MECHA SHOOTER ARENA!!!

[SolasTau]

Noth, on 15 July 2014 - 03:14 PM, said:

So basically you'd add RNG shutdown (that would mostl likely result in your death) to a game that is trying to limit RNG that can result in your death (not saying they've eliminmated it all or will ever). Further with the real time heat dissipation you'd have mechs speeding up and slowing down constantly in such a way that it would likely hurt the over all gameplay (particularly if you lowered the heat capacity and speed up dissipation).

I'm not advocating it be like it is in table top where anything after just slightly less than half of max heat threshold has a chance to shut you down. I think that's silly. However, I don't see any reason there couldn't be a 'soft' threshold in addition to a 'hard' threshold. Maybe reserve "random" shutdowns for weapon strikes that exceed a certain amount of heat. That would be a fair, and easily understood means of obtaining the goal. Maybe just make it so that any firing of clustered weapons that spikes over 30 heat shuts down the 'mech, no questions asked. Then it wouldn't be 'random.'

For what it's worth though... I think it should be more random then that. There's a risk/reward tangent that this game does not have that's been present in other iterations of BattleTech. In fact, it's for that reason that while I'm not necessarily pro ammo explosion from heat, I'm not entirely against it either.

You want skill over RNG? Make Heat actually matter, instead of a mild inconvenience.

[Sandpit]

FupDup, on 15 July 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

I can only interpret the things that he actually says.

and I interpret it differently. High damage alphas are exactly what alpha strikes are. Once you get past light mechs, an alpha strike in any mech with any kind of decent damage loadout is going to have a high damage alpha strike. SO again, I interpret it differently

[Sadist Cain]

you're pissing up a waterfall here dude.

We have a playerbase that compares MWO to League of legends and counterstrike for gods sake. You think that the lot of twitching, caffeine amped, adhd generation kids playing this game could comprehend a complicated and innovative heat system?
Hell no, it must be hot or not, lest we upset all the young idiots.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Setting a universal heat cap using Maximum Tech's increase to 50 might a good start for MWO.

Here's a table that I was brainstorming to see how Original Effects might be set for MWO.

Spoiler

[NetherlightWolf]

Sadist Cain, on 15 July 2014 - 04:56 PM, said:

you're pissing up a waterfall here dude.

We have a playerbase that compares MWO to League of legends and counterstrike for gods sake. You think that the lot of twitching, caffeine amped, adhd generation kids playing this game could comprehend a complicated and innovative heat system?
Hell no, it must be hot or not, lest we upset all the young idiots.

While your post is a bit hostile, though does make a point. Might I offer the counterpoint of if we don't ever put them in that position, how will they learn?

[SolasTau]

@Praetor Knight: I like the work you put into that, but even as a Table Top player, I was on the side of that player base that was... less than enthused about Maximum Tech. I like the ideas you're presenting, however I feel strongly the game is already noob unfriendly, particularly on the information overload front.

@Sadist Cain: I could give up.. but that's really boring.

@Everyone: I think we all mostly agree the current system is too 'dumb.' That for it to work in even an arcadey FPS like PGI wants to make this game, it needs to be somewhat more complex. Something that would be easy to understand and could be explained in words simple enough for a CoD player to understand, but rules that are firm enough to be loopholed easily by people like LoL players. I think there's room between the binary of 'everything fine' and 'over heat shut down' to work some things in that would make sense, honor what everything BattleTech, including MechWarrior, is all about, and create actual skill valleys in the meta game outside of 'giant pin point alpha strike and hide.'

So I'll just throw this out here... at 70% heat or higher, the mech could start acting a little 'funny.' Max throttle reduced, torso twisting and arm aiming becomes sluggish, and make that it. Say a 33% reduction in all those speeds (for the movement and accuracy penalty combined). In the event of certain fire combinations that exceed X heat, give the mech a chance to shut down then and there. Yes, it's RNG... but I think that's a reasonable risk for spiking heat so high so fast.

So many people want games to basically be 'chess with guns.' That is, they want NO RANDOMNESS AT ALL so they can pretend about how skilled they are. And in a perfect universe, who's to say they couldn't be perfect? BattleTech is not a perfect universe. The games that portray that universe need to be at least a little bit gritty in the execution of the 31st century warfare state.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

SolasTau, on 15 July 2014 - 06:44 PM, said:

@Praetor Knight: I like the work you put into that, but even as a Table Top player, I was on the side of that player base that was... less than enthused about Maximum Tech. I like the ideas you're presenting, however I feel strongly the game is already noob unfriendly, particularly on the information overload front.

That's fair, the only reason I bring the 50 point scale up, is due to how our existing heat capacities work.

Though, right now Heat Capacity is all over the place with different builds. Take one build with 18 DHS, it has an MWO Heat Cap of 66.24 (55.2 without upgrades), another that sticks 21 DHS is at 71.28 (59.4 without upgrades), another with 10 DHS is at 52.8 (44 without upgrades) [The upgrades are Heat Containment and Cool Run in the Mech Tree]. So that's why I thought starting with that 50 point scale might be a good start for incorporating more heat effects into MWO.

So if a new player goes into MWO not understanding how heat works, they can already have a hard time. Plus they are going against players that are often running Elited mechs that get a 2x efficiency boost on their Basic Efficiencies.

So for me, simplifying the Heat Capacity can both reduce stacking multiple weapons to fire them together, and making the game more fair for new players in the process.

Quote

So I'll just throw this out here... at 70% heat or higher, the mech could start acting a little 'funny.' Max throttle reduced, torso twisting and arm aiming becomes sluggish, and make that it. Say a 33% reduction in all those speeds (for the movement and accuracy penalty combined).

Right, with MWO, arm and torso yaw and pitch speeds are currently tied to the Engine rating along with straight line speed, for example.

Since we also have Basic Efficiencies that can further modify those speeds, it would be nice if those speed values can then be dynamically modified by heat effects during a match.

There should be consistent expectations for when the heat level increases, triggering a heat effect, no question about that.

Edited by Praetor Knight, 15 July 2014 - 07:30 PM.

[Sandpit]

Strypewolf, on 15 July 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

While your post is a bit hostile, though does make a point. Might I offer the counterpoint of if we don't ever put them in that position, how will they learn?

That's part of the problem some have though. They don't want to learn. They want to come to the forums and QQ about nerfing and/or removing stuff. (don't believe me? check out this link)
http://mwomercs.com/...-here-is-wrong/

so then we get the game watered down and watered down and watered down. So instead of them learning we get a game that keeps coming closer and closer to appeasing the "cod twitch" crowd.

I welcome any and all players. It means a bigger community. Instead of coming to the game and wanting something with a more complex system, they come to a game wanting it to come down to their "level"

right or wrong, that's where a lot of the hostility and animosity comes from.

With the clans we're getting more new players (judging by the post counts I've been seeing lately) who can't understand some of the anger and disappointment that many who have been playing for 2 years now have. That's understandable, especially with the old forums being archived, but at the same time the whole "shut up, I love the game!" doesn't help and simply isn't valid.

[Sybreed]

hats off to SolasTau for pointing out the huge issue that is the heat system in MWO. Yes, heat is completely borked and no, you can't just add heat penalties and call it a day. Heat dissipates so fast in MWO, having penalties wouldn't even matter.

They would need to go back to the bases of TT and think of a heat system that would be akin to TT but would fit a FPS game. Unfortunately, TT uses 10 seconds turn. You can't fire your weapons more than once every 10 seconds. In MWO, weapons don't even have the same cooldowns. So, it becomes very hard to have a unified heat system that respects TT's philosophy if the premise of "you can only fire a particular weapon once every 10 seconds" isn't respected by the different weapon cooldowns.

Logically, if we go by TT standards, a mech with 2 PPCs and 10 SHS can fire 1 PPC all the time without overheating if said mech is immobile. Fire 2 PPCs, and you start accumulating heat fast. How can we translate such a system in MWO?

Would it be acceptable that if you respect your heat capacity, your heat level never builds up? In such a scenario, how do you figure out how heat is managed if you go over your limit?

Let's say we use a 5 seconds "check" (instead of 10 for gameplay purposes). You fire 1 PPC, your heatsinks manage it without any issue. Heat doesn't build-up. After 5 seconds, you fire 2 PPCs. Now, your heat just reached 10 and for the next 5 seconds, you're eligible to receive penalties associated with overheating. But, what happens if you chain fire and fire your 2nd PPC 2.5 seconds after the first? Do you still get to 10 heat penalty?

That's the kind of system I've been thinking about when I want to implement heat penalties, but many issues arise because it's difficult to translate from TT to MWO. Still, I think the current system needs a complete rework.

[Mazzyplz]

SolasTau, on 15 July 2014 - 01:17 PM, said:

So... I'm new to MWO. I've been playing two weeks... and largely I have no real issues with the game outside of things that I remember being radically different from BattleTech. I used to run BattleTech games, so there's some differences between TT and MWO that kinda' grind my gears, but I always try to keep in mind that hey, this is an FPS, it's GOING to be different. So that said...

Let's talk about Alpha Strikes.

I was reading that the dev team thinks Alpha Strikes are a problem-that the prevalence of builds in meta that focus on doing the biggest Alpha they can is something that bothers the devs. This may be outdated info or whatever have you, but I was reading it just the other day. This got me thinking about how the board game deals with this issue, and in so thinking about that, I also got to thinking about the differences between MWO Heat and BattleTech Heat.

Most MechWarrior players I've ever talked to don't KNOW that the Heat system in BattleTech is BRUTAL. If you're mad that your mech shuts down at "max" heat, you may not want to read this link, 'cuz that's PANSY MODE for BattleTech. http://d20battletech.wikidot.com/heat

Important: I know BattleTech's heat system is designed for a TURN BASED STRATEGY game and would NOT be good for an FPS. But I *believe* that sticking a little closer to that table would vastly improve the "balance" of the game. If nothing else, it would make shake up the meta very hard and max damage alphas would probably disappear...or be made of Gauss Rifles exclusively.

So how do we get there? ...I'm not sure. I don't KNOW exactly how they translated a BattleTech turn to model heat and heat dissipation in real time. My best guess is they doubled the Max heat a 'mech could sustain at any one time (so 60 instead of 30 Heat) and then applied a linear amount of heat cooled per heat sink per "time period" that I also do not know. That "time period" is very key to this discussion. They may have painstakingly adapted a variant of the rules and it's just obtuse on the surface... but I more strongly suspect they took the concept and applied their own internal reasoning to it as that would be appropriate for an entirely different game.

Anyhow. I'm just responding to what I was reading. I don't know how current it all is, I'm late to this party, on and on. And if this has been talked about prior to me chiming in, well... it's till a good idea. So there. ;p

shutting down means dying more often than not because of the big alphas in game;
shut down get hit by big alpha

so fixing the heat penalty of shutting down (instant death) to be more punishing to alpha players is a non problem

the thing solves itself

[Biaxialrain]

How about lowering heat across the board and reducing ghost heat by say 10-15%.

Heat does nothing but unfairly punish those who use energy weapons, some have to, Stalkers..............etc....

Ballistic builds get a pass, and a bigger pass depending on the map.

Edited by Biaxialrain, 15 July 2014 - 08:04 PM.

[Mcgral18]

Biaxialrain, on 15 July 2014 - 07:50 PM, said:

How about lowering heat across the board and reducing ghost heat by say 10-15%.

How would that change a thing?

You'd just be firing a heck of a lot more.

[Sandslice]

Koniving, on 15 July 2014 - 03:27 PM, said:

There actually were no alpha strikes in tabletop, it's a complete and physical impossibility.
All shots are fired one at a time, across 10 seconds, with no weapon fired at the same time.

Actually, it's an abstraction, and if I can demonstrate how alpha strikes could sometimes occur:

Take a Fire Moth that runs the full 20 hexes, ending 18 hexes away from an Awesome that attacks with all three PPCs. Realistically, the PPCs had to be fired (by tabletop rules) within the last half-second of the turn, as the Fire Moth was only in range within that last half-second. That's an alpha strike, and the heat scale still goes up 30, down 28, 2 kept --- all basically instantly.

Perhaps a better comparison can be made if we use Solaris VII rules - same metric speeds and ranges, but the turns are 2.5 seconds.

[Sandpit]

Sandslice, on 15 July 2014 - 08:01 PM, said:

if you only knew the flack you're going to catch for that screenname and people getting you confused for me lol

[Karamarka]

MWO would benefit from a rank structure or system from SC2 or CS:GO so i don't know what that guy is talking about.



But back on topic, Direwolf 1 shotting everyone is pretty legit... for pugs

[SolasTau]

@Sybreed: As I said, I know I'm late to this party. I was on the fence about an all PvP game, but I decided to take it in stride and have the fun I could with it. It's...not bad. I've read some interesting things about the state of MWO's community in wake of several "design choices" that the dev's went back on. Some of them I think the community has overreacted to, others I think are completely valid. Regardless, I'm very new in here, so trying to find meaningful discourse amidst such troubled territory (as it were) is tricky.

The summation of my points is that the table top game had a very methodically researched and executed system. This game has tried to interpret that, both from the original source and from the other MechWarrior titles. The 'updates' to those concepts are obtuse, poorly documented, and poorly explained. The KISS rule has been broken many times in the pursuit of balance tweaks and repairs.

Once again, I know it's not table top. I do not expect the game to conform precisely to those rules by any stretch. But a reasonable expectation would be that anyone taking up the mantle would be willing to study what worked in different incarnations of the product and why it worked, why it was done. PGI presents the 'Alpha Strike Problem' as both an issue in balance AND flavor. It's honestly not a difficult problem to fix-they have to make decisions that would be good for the game *as a game.*

...the question is will they.

[jaxjace]

Heat should not be attacked to fix alphas lets throw that out the window right now, ghost heat is bad enough, that alone in case none of the devs noticed is what broke 65 percent of pre clan mechs.