1258 replies to this topic

[MauttyKoray]

Please first implement (preferably in the TEST CLIENT FIRST) the PPC/Gauss firing mechanic and gather data on that. Afterwards it can be determined if the PPCs projectile speed needs to be changing. Attempting to factor both of these values in at once could lead to poor results for both changes.

Also, even if the PPC projectile speed does change, I would very much recommend NOT decreasing by half. Please look into values between 85% and 70% first. Again, this is only AFTER implementing and gathering data on the firing mechanic.

I personally think this will bring some unique play to the PPC/Gauss rifles and prevent the boats we've had which changed from pure PPC/Gauss 'Alpha' boats to hybrids.

Edited by MauttyKoray, 02 August 2014 - 08:51 PM.

[SolCrusher]

Oh Paul's idea is crap and I'll never spend another dime on this game. I"M A SUCKER!!!!!

[Reno Blade]

JigglyMoobs, on 02 August 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

It doesn't break damage spreading. YOU are supposed to torso twist and maneuver to spread damage. Not some obtuse mechanic of the game.

... snip

You got some good points about twisting there, but I think most of what you said does only work for heavy and assault mechs.
Getting your 50 ton mech or below hit in one side torso with 40-50 damage can outright kill you and no twisting can help against a single volley.
NO amount of skill can save you from a one-shot. Ever tried to bring a Hunchback to the "meta" game?
If you compare that to Laser or Clan LRM/AC that all spread damage a LOT more if you twist while you get shot.
THAT is how you avoid and mitigate damage.
THAT is how you can use your skill to survive.


about the instant convergence you mentioned:
Did you talk about all arm weapons like the Direwolf, or were you also talking about torso + arm mounted weapons?
It sounds a bit like you don't use arm lock before shooting that convergencing alpha.
Ofc if you don't have armlock, your arm weapons aim faster with the faster reticule.

[Lightfoot]

stjobe, on 02 August 2014 - 03:38 PM, said:

It breaks the armour system, a system that was designed for spread damage.

Pin-point Accuracy, Instant Convergence, and Front-Loaded Damage is really the underlying problem as to why the devs have such a hard time balancing the weapons, and why we have our convoluted Ghost Heat system, Gauss Charge, and now suggestion 1 from the OP.

Sure, the naive and simplistic heat system also contributes (where's the escalating heat penalties, adding movement and accuracy penalties and risk of shutdown/ammo explosions as heat increases? Nowhere, that's where), but the main issue is, and always has been, the above Three Horsemen of the MWO Apocalypse:

Pin-Point Accuracy in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Instant Convergence and that some weapon have Front-Loaded Damage while most have not. FLD is simply better than spread damage, and instantly converged FLD with perfect accuracy is so much better than anything else it's actually amazing people still use weapons that aren't FLD. Twist to spread incoming damage? Impossible with FLD weapons, very effective against non-FLD weapons.

However, Front-Loaded Damage in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Instant Convergence. A 50-point Dual Gauss + Dual PPC alpha would hurt a hell of a lot less if it came as 15+15+10+10 damage hitting 2-4 locations instead of just one.

Instant Convergence is worst of the issues, and it cannot be solved with the current HSR implementation.

There is, however, an extremely simple solution that could be coded up and introduced in the next patch if PGI so desired: Disallow more than one weapon from firing at once by adding a short (or even very short) global cooldown on all weapons; 0.1-0.3 seconds would likely be enough to spread weapons fire enough to make it hit different sections on a moving target from a moving firer.

The "all weapons fire at once" alpha strike concept isn't even in BattleTech lore; it can't be a holy cow that must be preserved at all costs. Kill it, and you won't have a need for either of the systems in the OP, nor for Ghost Heat.

Actually the armor system challenges players to hit the sections they aim at. For that you need an accurate weapon, what MWO forum users call "FLD". The difference between FLD and DoT is that DoT weapons do higher damage over time and require less accuracy from the player, but more firing time which makes them more vulnerable while they are firing. So with DoT you use a tactic like "hit and fade" to compensate and trust your tactics to be superior. Both are equally valid weapon types in MechWarrior and are the main characteristics that differentiate the various weapon types. FLD is not bad, it's just the flip side of the coin, so to speak.

Pin Point is addressed by Heat Scale penalties and the mechs having two aiming reticles. Pin-Point aquisition time might be a viable mechanic, but would force players to lock their targets or the CPU load would be huge I am thinking. How do you lock an ECM target or one beyond 800 meters though?

I think the real problem with pin-point is that players do not move laterally under attack in MWO. I think this is a mouse steering artifact, since aiming with a mouse makes steering the mech hard to do smoothly. There is no fix for that except practice I guess.

So I use lateral deflection and I never get my mech cored, especially not by a Gauss PPC combo which have different travel times. Moving laterally forces one to miss or the shots to be taken seperately. That lateral moving creates/enables the game feature called Mech Piloting Skill. It's probably the most important simulation feature in MechWarrior. That there are alot of FLD weapons present, that the player has the power to deflect if fired as an alpha-strike, if they learn basic Mech-Piloting. Now maybe that needs to be in the training videos because I don't see anyone using it. Mostly. Most players jockey back and forth over a ridge and thus are big fat targets that die by cored center torsos.

If you move laterally you alter the accuracy values of FLD weapons to be similar to lasers and DoT weapons and break pin-point alphas of different weapons even at very short ranges. Mech Piloting Skill.

[pwnface]

Reno Blade, on 03 August 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

You got some good points about twisting there, but I think most of what you said does only work for heavy and assault mechs.
Getting your 50 ton mech or below hit in one side torso with 40-50 damage can outright kill you and no twisting can help against a single volley.
NO amount of skill can save you from a one-shot. Ever tried to bring a Hunchback to the "meta" game?
If you compare that to Laser or Clan LRM/AC that all spread damage a LOT more if you twist while you get shot.
THAT is how you avoid and mitigate damage.
THAT is how you can use your skill to survive.


about the instant convergence you mentioned:
Did you talk about all arm weapons like the Direwolf, or were you also talking about torso + arm mounted weapons?
It sounds a bit like you don't use arm lock before shooting that convergencing alpha.
Ofc if you don't have armlock, your arm weapons aim faster with the faster reticule.

Jiggly is talking about the fact that you need to lead shots at range in addition to different projectile speeds. If your crosshairs are aimed at terrain 100-200m behind your target it will converge on that point rather than the actual distance of your target. If your target is standing still or at a close distance where you can actually put your crosshairs on the enemy mech the convergence is much better. This has nothing to do with arm lock and really can't be adjusted for with player skill. If you are sniping moving mechs at 1000m on alpine with ppc/gauss against targets moving laterally from your position, it is possible to hit with all projectiles on a large target (dire wolf/atlas) but the damage will be spread all over the mech and not on a single component.

[Reno Blade]

The biggest advantage of such alphas comes at 400-600 meters where the small diference of 500m/s for PPC/Gauss projectiles does nearly nothing.
Moving lateral helps to dodge some shots, but it does not help to spread damage at such ranges per Alpha.
And considering this is a team game, you just need two people to actually shoot you with such alpha together to get crippled, or in case of medium mechs that are slower than 100kph, outright killed.
If you were shot by two players with Laser or even Gauss+Laser builds, you could spread a lot more damage because people can't keep the laser 100% on target and even less so 100% on one armor section for targets at that range moving lateral.

This gap will always be there if there is no change to most FLD weapons.
Clans got burst ACs and many people switched to PPC/Gauss just because it's harder to land all shots and it gives the target the ability to twist the damage.

[FDJustin]

Regarding PPC speeds: They're pretty easy to dodge at range right now.

What you're suggesting would make it very viable to react to PPC's at 500 meters. Normal PPC would take .66, and ER .58 seconds to arrive at target. Given the average reaction speeds of 200 to 300 ms, most people would have .36 - .46 seconds, and .28 - .38 seconds respectively, twist / move time.

http://www.humanbenc...ntime/index.php I scored 250ms.


If the idea is to just spread damage, lowering the PPC's speed by a few hundred meters per second would be enough. If the idea is to make it inaccurate, halving the speed will do that.

[pwnface]

Reno Blade, on 03 August 2014 - 05:33 AM, said:

The biggest advantage of such alphas comes at 400-600 meters where the small diference of 500m/s for PPC/Gauss projectiles does nearly nothing.
Moving lateral helps to dodge some shots, but it does not help to spread damage at such ranges per Alpha.
And considering this is a team game, you just need two people to actually shoot you with such alpha together to get crippled, or in case of medium mechs that are slower than 100kph, outright killed.
If you were shot by two players with Laser or even Gauss+Laser builds, you could spread a lot more damage because people can't keep the laser 100% on target and even less so 100% on one armor section for targets at that range moving lateral.

This gap will always be there if there is no change to most FLD weapons.
Clans got burst ACs and many people switched to PPC/Gauss just because it's harder to land all shots and it gives the target the ability to twist the damage.

Even at 600m the damage does spread on faster mechs moving laterally. Lasers have significantly higher DPS and heat efficiency compared to PPCs. So while it is easier to target singular components with ppc/gauss, it is easier to put more damage on a particular enemy quickly with lasers. This is called balance...

Edited by pwnface, 03 August 2014 - 12:37 PM.

[IIIuminaughty]

heimdelight, on 29 July 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

I'm really disliking any more weapon combo restrictions. It continues to remove customization from the game, in the same way Ghost Heat did. Weapons affected by Ghost Heat are literally not viable. These mechanics seem to make them go down the same road.

Please, do not lockdown any weapons. That is a terrible idea.

Slowing down the projectile speed is the obvious way to go. I'm not sure about 750m/s, maybe like 950m/s. Anything else is very short of overly nerfing the weapons being used against any loadouts, period.

This
The game is balanced enough with the weapons...and the alt/air strike solution u guys have is dumb also. stop ruining things. to much restrictions being made.

[Mike Getsome]

Once again devs don't know what they are doing. Introducing backass passive nonsense "rules" instead of making a balanced skill-based game with repair&rearm economy bound with weapons and equipment, what a joke...

All you need to do is make charging mechanic for PPCs and make convergence mechanic for Gauss (2 seconds to hold on target for weapon to fire at exact spot). Also make streaks wire-guided or laser-guided or make them semi-lock-on.

[purplewasabi]

I feel that these changes will only benefit owners of the clan packs. The PPC in particular is one of the main IS weaponry to go against the clan mechs. Its already fairly easy to close the gap with a ppc equipped mech, we've got mechs with specific roles to do that. Plus with lag spikes happening so frequently these days, we cannot rely on our lasers thus we really need the front loading damage.

The heat from the ppc is already a huge drawback, and mechs that usually equip twin ppc twin gauss are often handicapped by its speed - cue, the dire whale. One dimensional builds like that will always be handicapped in a certain way, players just have to find out what it is which is part of the learning curve in mwo. Instead of making changes to the weapons, I suggest PGI allows the gaming community to evolve naturally and come up with their own ideas/tactics to counter these issues (instead of simply making this game "easier").

Edited by purplewasabi, 03 August 2014 - 02:47 PM.

[JigglyMoobs]

Reno Blade, on 03 August 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

You got some good points about twisting there, but I think most of what you said does only work for heavy and assault mechs.
Getting your 50 ton mech or below hit in one side torso with 40-50 damage can outright kill you and no twisting can help against a single volley.

Reno, the only time this happens to you is if you run head on towards a Dire Whale. That's the only problem mech.

If you are running laterally, you're getting hit by maybe half of his alpha. I've run the PPC gauss combo since forever. You cannot hit a mech running sideways at >400 m from you with all of your shots if you alpha your weapons. It's impossible because the Gauss and PPCs move at different speeds and they are not converged when you lead. You hit with 1 - 2 out of your 3 projectiles if you are in a timberwolf, and same if you are in a Dire Wolf. A lot of people actually don't even notice those shots much or don't associate them with the Twolf or Dwolf because getting hit with that is no big deal.

The only time you get nailed by converged shots is if you run at a more head-on angle or stop, in which case IF the guy's connection is good you'll get a full alpha. That's MEMORABLE, for sure, so people start associating every shot out of those mechs with that bad experience. In reality, they took a lot more shots at you. You just don't remember.

Quote

NO amount of skill can save you from a one-shot. Ever tried to bring a Hunchback to the "meta" game?

That's just a bad mech right now. Poor hunchies. Poor Jman5.

But, I've taken the trial Black Jack into the meta game on 12 mans (because I don't own a medium at the moment) and I've done perfectly fine. It was actually a lot of fun. Same with the trial Shadowhawk. Both are a lot of fun and no, have not gotten one shot yet.

Quote

If you compare that to Laser or Clan LRM/AC that all spread damage a LOT more if you twist while you get shot.
THAT is how you avoid and mitigate damage.
THAT is how you can use your skill to survive.

It's easier to do that vs DOT, but it's also very doable vs meta. What you need to do is to develop a set of moves designed to make yourself hard to hit. When I run the mediums I move criss crossed and I don't use stop and peak tactics that one would use with heavy mechs. I maintain forward momentum and start making figure 8 patterns in place to hit enemy mechs as I move laterally.

If you are peaking over a hill, you do not run up to the hill and look, you run parallel to the ridge and turn to look left or right as you crest, thus keeping your forward momentum.

I've seen guys take SRM Shadowhawks and do 1000 damage in the current meta so yeah, it's totally possible to do it, you just have to know how.

Quote

about the instant convergence you mentioned:
Did you talk about all arm weapons like the Direwolf, or were you also talking about torso + arm mounted weapons?
It sounds a bit like you don't use arm lock before shooting that convergencing alpha.
Ofc if you don't have armlock, your arm weapons aim faster with the faster reticule.

Arm locking can make your weapons converge better, but you have convergence problems either way.

1. Network and HSR issues. This happens to a LOT of people and basically means that your weapons are not converging unless you dwell your reticule for a while before you shoot. There's an effective convergence time, it's not instant, and it's due to technical issues with the server and the network latencies. Most people don't realize this because it takes them too long to aim their weapon, but if you are like me and you can aim your weapons in a fraction of a second after playing FPS for 10 years you notice that you don't actually have the right convergence if you fire as quickly as you can aim. Now, a few people don't have this problem and they are especially dangerous.

2. Terrain and distance. This applies when people are far away or there are terrain clipping issues. In this case the cursor is large compared to your target and the convergence can actually be on a piece of terrain behind your target. It happens a lot and is part of the reason why you don't get Direwolfs coring you from 800 m away.

3. Intrinsic. This happens any time you have to lead a moving enemy mech. In that case the shots are converging at what ever terrain is behind your reticule. It is NOT converging on the mech.

4. Differential flight times. This happens because the Gauss and the PPC move at very different speeds. If you are beyond 400 m and moving, they almost never hit the same component even if they both hit your mech at all.

There are so many different convergence issues in this game and they affect a great number of shots. IF there really was perfect convergence, you'll be shocked at how quickly you get killed by a good mech pilot.

If they actually nerf out the PPC/Gauss combo, people will switch to ER-LLs and half of these issues disappear. Now you might _think_ you can spread damage from the lasers, but when 3 people are focus firing you? Forget it. Your legs will go in seconds from guys shooting at you from 1000 m away (ie, just beyond LRM range) and it will happen game after game because the meta has shifted from PPC/Gauss to ER-LL.

[JigglyMoobs]

Reno Blade, on 03 August 2014 - 05:33 AM, said:

The biggest advantage of such alphas comes at 400-600 meters where the small diference of 500m/s for PPC/Gauss projectiles does nearly nothing.
Moving lateral helps to dodge some shots, but it does not help to spread damage at such ranges per Alpha.
And considering this is a team game, you just need two people to actually shoot you with such alpha together to get crippled, or in case of medium mechs that are slower than 100kph, outright killed.

Even with 2 people shooting it'd be difficult to kill you outright. Think about it. If they manage to hit a single component on you with 20 pts on each alpha, it would still take multiple alphas to crit components. It would take a good 10 to 15 seconds to do serious damage to you. If they've managed to catch you so that 2 people can alpha you repeatedly on that type of time scale, then you've definitely screwed up.

Quote

If you were shot by two players with Laser or even Gauss+Laser builds, you could spread a lot more damage because people can't keep the laser 100% on target and even less so 100% on one armor section for targets at that range moving lateral.

How are you going to spread damage if they are shooting your legs? Take the situation above. If 2 such people Alphaed you just once with 4x clan er-LLs each, one of your legs would be gone - and you are dead because you're effectively immobilized. That's the difference. Dead in 10 seconds from anyone out to 1000m vs. armor a little red or one component stripped in 15s from someone within 500m.

And the legs are just one example. If you are in a hunch back, no matter which way you turn they will be able to track your hunch if they are on the right side. You'd have to make a 180 degree turn before you can spread damage if they are good.

It doesn't happen often right now because people haven't been running into teams built around er-LLs. Well, they are starting to happen, and you are going to find out exactly how annoying it is to play against.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 03 August 2014 - 02:50 PM.

[The Bad Charlie]

I support the Energy Draw mechanic. http://www.qqmercs.com/?p=3987. It improves on the Ghost Heat concept, makes it easier to figure out by newcomers, and ties all weapons and equipment (ECM, JJ, C-TC) together and gets rid of high alphas, be them in an instant or in a 2 second window alike.

I'd like the PPC to be FAST. I like Alphas. I like my pinpoint IS ballistic weapons. With this, you avoid introducing hidden and obscure mechanics into the game, and have another way to buff underdogs (AWS: more Energy Cap, voila) apart from the Quirks system which i think is more or less on the right path.

[Mad Dog Morgan]

Seriously, it's better to go for simple changes. Adding recoil to the Gauss Rifle, but not the PPC, and changing its velocity would be much better.

[wanderer]

Mike Getsome, on 03 August 2014 - 02:21 PM, said:

Once again devs don't know what they are doing. Introducing backass passive nonsense "rules" instead of making a balanced skill-based game with repair&rearm economy bound with weapons and equipment, what a joke...

Repair and rearm does jack and diddly for gear balance- it just means the F2P rabble get to use cruddier gear than the pay-to-play types. It doesn't belong anywhere on what a player can bring to the field- only in community warfare, where it can be used to throttle the rate of fresh units being brought to the field and actually have meaningful shifts in control.

I'll agree on the whole backassward situation, though hey. This is why it's happening.



One shot kills on lights. Anything a Dire Wolf can line up a shot to the torso? BAM, 60 points and that light is a dead donut.

Quote

All you need to do is make charging mechanic for PPCs and make convergence mechanic for Gauss (2 seconds to hold on target for weapon to fire at exact spot). Also make streaks wire-guided or laser-guided or make them semi-lock-on.

Convergence is fail for MWO, as the devs have said repeatedly. Anything with the words "lets alter convergence" in any form is basically out.

PPCs simply need to be a short stream of damage vs. a single 10-point punch in the gut- Gauss are already limited to a 30-point combo thanks to the charging limitation, and it's having guns that can combine with it to push easily past the one-shot-kill range of roughly 50 damage pinpoint alphas that break things. Streaks aren't even an issue at this point, between huge reload times for Clan Streaks and the nerf for all Streaks to 2 damage/missile. Why is that even part of the question?

PPCs to streaming and arcing damage, ALL standard/Ultra AC's to burst fire (with IS having shorter bursts), and the Gauss can stay as they are- fragile/explosive, charge mechanism, long recharge, heavy and without other weapons to produce Death Star-like alpha blasts that can now obliterate anything under 45 tons in a single shot. They can be the sniper weapon of the game without becoming the obliteration weapon of choice- and if you REALLY want to be nasty, go ahead and put in the 60m min range from TT as damage reduction ala Clan LRMs for Gauss rifles.

[FDJustin]

The Bad Charlie, on 03 August 2014 - 02:47 PM, said:

I support the Energy Draw mechanic. http://www.qqmercs.com/?p=3987. It improves on the Ghost Heat concept, makes it easier to figure out by newcomers, and ties all weapons and equipment (ECM, JJ, C-TC) together and gets rid of high alphas, be them in an instant or in a 2 second window alike.

What's proposed in that post makes quite a lot of sense. It would be a very strong, non-arbitrary balancing mechanic.It's a very radical change though, and could take a couple months to get right, while the proposed changes would take ten minutes to code.

The proposed fixes would be cheaper... But a more global balance would be a significantly better experience.

[Zfailboat]

Its really not that hard. 1. add heat to Gauss rifles - say 10 points - nothing that's to bad for people playing 1 or 2 of them with non giant alpha builds. 2. Reclassify weapons into Classes for purposes of heat. EG Class "A" gauss, PPC's AC20's LRM 20's. Class "b" Large lasers ac 10's lrm 15's etc etc. 3. Adjust ghost heat to affected by Class - rather than weapon. EG' Heat penalty for firing 3 class A weapons simultaneously 20 points - 4 class A weapons 50 points etc etc. Problem fixed - ghost heat problem made a bucket load clearer - all around slight reduction to DPS for all classes - improved length of fights in game = win.

[Lagster]

Just pair PPC and Gauss on the ghost heat table. Any more hidden systems/restrictions is just a bad idea.

Like so many have said, slowing down PPCs makes them useless at long range and will just bring back the PPC/AC20 combo.

To be honest, unless PGI has solid data that PPC/Gauss outperforms every other combo for the majority of players in all elo brackets, then it doesn't need tinkering. Personally my best games are in a clan laserboat timberwolf, consistently outperforms my PPC-toting mechs.

Edited by Lagster, 04 August 2014 - 12:04 AM.

[n r g]

My only concern is that you are attempting to slow down the PPC velocity to make it easier for brawling mechs to "close the gap" but in my opinion, it isn't that difficult as it stands.

Now, if you compare a brand new gamer or MechWarrior novice, yes, they are going to get demolished by a team of "snipers" if they attempt to "brawl". Sadly, this is the 90% of the community you are basing your opinions off of.

A skilled player will be able to close the gap effectively in this game regardless, and while you guys blindly affect ppc/guass, you do NOT even realize the monster you are creating(ed)/unleashing soon with large lasers, specifically clan large lasers.

There are so many variables when it comes to FPS games or any game for that matter, and skill is a big factor. Currently, they are only ~3 competition teams in MechWarrior Online that contain players that are even knowledgeable in FPS games. You can't just listen to the complaints of a majority of casual players, especially while most complaints are completely due to inexperience.

Actually, you can. It's fine. But in the process, you will kill the game for any potential competition and essentially follow in the footsteps of IW and Call of Duty and EA with Battlefield. If that's what you want, so be it. I'm sure you guys are happy as long as you make some big sales and catch as much $$$ as you can from these casuals that just want to run in their dire wolf and ram into a mech to fire lbx at 100m.