56 replies to this topic

[Agent of Change]

CapperDeluxe, on 12 August 2014 - 10:02 AM, said:

That's not what most are "complaining" about when talking about "balance". Perfect imbalance is the key, and its not quite so perfect right now.

This is a dumb thread anyway, very hostile really. Hopefully makes its way to K-Town.

No no I think we are doing good, derailing the stupid original topic and replacing it with a discussion about viable heat scale changes.

[Apnu]

Agent of Change, on 12 August 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

It doesn't even have to be truly 'punishing' just enough of a visible and avoidable effect that one would prefer to not succumb to i tthat ignore it. I'm going to just report something I posted in another thread by way of an example i came up with.

[/size]

These are neat ideas. When I say "punishing" I mean something more than what we have now. Which will seem like a punishment to the power gamer crowd. But that's too bad for them.

[Lefty Lucy]

Apnu, on 12 August 2014 - 08:28 AM, said:

MechWarrior titles have always had a weak heat scale. On the TT it was punishing when you ran hot. This is one of the few things that should be taken from the TT.

As you go up the scale the mech should become sluggish, be harder to aim and hit things, and risk ammo explosions or internal damage. Then at the top, you should shut down. None of this riding the heat scale at 70%-90% w/out issue thing.

On the other hand one of the first things players do when they customize a mech for TT is make it heat-neutral, or damn near it.

If we had a TT heat scale, we'd also have a system where it was possible and easy to run triple PPC or 9 ML completely heat neutral.

[1453 R]

The problem I’ve always had with the TT heatscale is that it starts punishing players, and inflicting chances for completely random dice-roll ammo booms, as low as, I believe, 10% up on the heat bar.

‘Mechs in MWO hit 10% on their heat bars just by dropping in Mordor.

There needs to be a window of completely safe operation wherein a player can operate his energy weapons with a 100% certainty that firing one will not result in an ammo explosion…because that one time where you get a seriously unlucky roll and suffer a critical, game-ending ammo explosion after firing two medium lasers at the start of a match is going to stick with you forever, and probably make you hate this game even more than you already do.

Ammo explosions are no frogging joke, and the chances to trip one via overheat should be remote and something the player can mitigate. Any time you offer the RNG Gods a chance to decide the fate of a player, you need to offer ways to mitigate that chance. Enemy-triggered ammo explosions are mitigated by the presence of armor – once you get shot all the way down to internals, you can understand and accept that an enemy’s explosive round in your ammo bin could legitimately trigger an explosion.

The same intuitive logic needs to apply to self-triggered ammo explosions via overheat. There need to be three different zones to the heatscale bar – a ‘Green Zone’ bar wherein your ‘Mech is functioning within its design tolerances and will operate at 100% capacity. This bar needs to be at least half of the total heatscale, in order to give energy weapons any chance whatsoever. There should be a “Yellow Zone” wherein your ‘Mech is exceeding tolerances and will start to behave poorly (reduced speed, turning, HUD effects, what-have-you), but in which it has not yet hit critical levels and does not risk heatsink meltdowns or ammo explosions or any of the other game-ending effects of the TT heatscale. Only in the “Red Zone”, at the end of the heat scale (the last ten or fifteen percent, tops), are you in Dangerous territory and risking catastrophic failure.

That way, players are only hit with things like meltdowns or cook-offs when their vision is swimming, their ‘Mech is practically falling over drunk from heat, and it would be readily apparent that they pushed the machine too hard for too long. Without that natural progression and intuitive logic, the regular TT heatscale would be a fantastic reason to never run anything but Gauss Rifles ever again.

Edited by 1453 R, 12 August 2014 - 10:25 AM.

[Agent of Change]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

On the other hand one of the first things players do when they customize a mech for TT is make it heat-neutral, or damn near it.

If we had a TT heat scale, we'd also have a system where it was possible and easy to run triple PPC or 9 ML completely heat neutral.

It was also significantly unlikely to consistently focus all that firepower on one place of an enemy mech.

[Lefty Lucy]

1453 R, on 12 August 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

There needs to be a window of completely safe operation wherein a player can operate his energy weapons with a 100% certainty that firing one will not result in an ammo explosion…because that one time where you get a seriously unlucky roll and suffer a critical, game-ending ammo explosion after firing two medium lasers at the start of a match is going to stick with you forever, and probably make you hate this game even more than you already do.

Which is exactly how the TT heat scale *actually* works. All mechs can fire up to their heat capacity for "free" every turn. It's only after you exceed the heat capacity that you touch the scale.

[Kjudoon]

Duck Hunt, on 12 August 2014 - 07:53 AM, said:

What do you people want?
Every weapon to be exactly the same?

pretty soon every weapon system will be 'balanced' and this game is going to be very boring.

Stop complaining and just learn to play the game.

They want all weapons to be 100m lasers that do 1 damage with maps being an empty plain surrounded by a pretty painting, dropped facing each other in a straight line at 110m from each other and button mash after waddling at 40kph in 300 ton mechs.

Edited by Kjudoon, 12 August 2014 - 10:27 AM.

[Revis Volek]

A whining thread about not whining....

Oh the IRONY!

[Caleb Brightmore]

BOWMANGR, on 12 August 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

The game will also be boring if people start playing the game with the same 3 op mechs with the same 3 op weapon configurations all the time because some other people want the balancing to stop. Just saying....

And what about the other 9 on your team?
With the new matchmaking your scenario is completely impossible.

In other words dont worry about it because it cant happen.

[Lefty Lucy]

Kjudoon, on 12 August 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

They want all weapons to be 100m lasers that do 1 damage with maps being an empty plain surrounded by a pretty painting, dropped facing each other in a straight line at 110m from each other and button mash after waddling at 40kph in 300 ton mechs.

Ridiculous hyperbole doesn't add anything to the discussion. Stating that certain things are out of balance doesn't mean that you want everything to be the same. Even more so if you have some math and statistics (as some players provide) to back up your claims.

DarthRevis, on 12 August 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

A whining thread about not whining....

Oh the IRONY!

Yep. People around here have a hard time with the very simple concept:

Feedback you disagree with is not "whining."

[Agent of Change]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

Ridiculous hyperbole doesn't add anything to the discussion. Stating that certain things are out of balance doesn't mean that you want everything to be the same. Even more so if you have some math and statistics (as some players provide) to back up your claims.



Yep. People around here have a hard time with the very simple concept:

Feedback you disagree with is not "whining."

I just feel like there is general disconnect around people and the meaning of "Game balance theory" which leads to a lot of I'm going to call it sub optimal posting.

[Kjudoon]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

Ridiculous hyperbole doesn't add anything to the discussion. Stating that certain things are out of balance doesn't mean that you want everything to be the same. Even more so if you have some math and statistics (as some players provide) to back up your claims.

This thread is K-Town bound. May as well board early, and is pretty much the destination most LRMHator brawltards want to take the game. I want robust games for all three weapon systems, not bland uniformity.

[Xanezz]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

On the other hand one of the first things players do when they customize a mech for TT is make it heat-neutral, or damn near it.

If we had a TT heat scale, we'd also have a system where it was possible and easy to run triple PPC or 9 ML completely heat neutral.

It's less about the heat scale as it is about adjusting and changing the existing one. As mentioned before, adding more visual feedback/hinderances like he UI including crosshair distorting when you're over a certain heat threshold.

All I would like to see is the MW3 heat model to be tried for this game. Segmenting the heat scale into actual color codes at certain percentages, and applying according warnings and failure rates along that scale.

The 100% scale currently in the game is too simplified. It's either you're fine or you're shutting down/taking damage. Color coding potential failures by overheating the mech across a more diversive list of effects (ammo explosions, sluggish movement, UI distortions, sparks in the cockpit or something like that) isn't hard to grast even for complete battletech/mechwarrior newbies.

- If you cant see **** and your cockpit's on fire, you done goofed.

[1453 R]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:26 AM, said:

Which is exactly how the TT heat scale *actually* works. All mechs can fire up to their heat capacity for "free" every turn. It's only after you exceed the heat capacity that you touch the scale.

Exactly – but most of the threads I’ve seen wherein folks beg for the TT heatscale forget that a ‘Mech only gets in trouble when it retains heat after a turn, not when it immediately generates that heat. In a real-time environment like MWO, that tabletop heat capacity is best simulated by a ‘Green’ portion of the heat bar wherein nothing happens to you. I’ve honestly, legitimately seen people insist that heat penalties should start at ten or fifteen or twenty percent of a ‘Mech’s total heat capacity, including chances for ammo explosions, and I just kind of want to shake them until they start seeing sense.

Because seriously. There should be an option for running things other than Gauss rifles without risking ammunition explosion every time you pull the trigger.

EDIT: as for the 'balance' discussions...I totally get that people want the game to be balanced, and even that the options within them should be different-but-equal. What I disagree with is that the people who want the game to be 'balanced' agree and accept that different-but-equal is a thing. I will save the usual Clan rant for a different thread...but I really haven't forgotten that most IS-purist players don't want the Clans 'balanced', they want them gone, and if the 'Mechs can't be completely removed from the game, they'll settle for hammered into worthless dust.

Edited by 1453 R, 12 August 2014 - 10:54 AM.

[Xanezz]

1453 R, on 12 August 2014 - 10:50 AM, said:

I will save the usual Clan rant for a different thread...but I really haven't forgotten that most IS-purist players don't want the Clans 'balanced', they want them gone, and if the 'Mechs can't be completely removed from the game, they'll settle for hammered into worthless dust.

I like how this probably is consensus across the inner sphere in general, lore wise. You know them invading and stuff?
"Jokes"

But yeah, just wait until IS loyalists get the chance to try out clan mechs for cbills. I'd like to see some of them change heart entirely. The other side is always sunnier if you haven't been there yet.

[Apnu]

Lefty Lucy, on 12 August 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

On the other hand one of the first things players do when they customize a mech for TT is make it heat-neutral, or damn near it.

If we had a TT heat scale, we'd also have a system where it was possible and easy to run triple PPC or 9 ML completely heat neutral.

I have no problem with that, both of those things you mentioned are on canon stock mechs, the AWS-8Q and HBK-4P (well 8 ML on the HBK-4P).

But your point then assumes we're using full TT heat rules, which we aren't given that DHS outside of the engine are gimped compared to the internal ones. Plus PGI has fudged the heat numbers on more than a few mechs as well as their damage values.

So we have nothing like the TT in terms of heat and damage. We can't because this is not a turn based game.

But, like I said, I would have no problem with those builds. Boating is a fact of life in BattleTech, MechWarrior and video games inspired from their PnP roots. It will always be with us, there will always be power gamers exploiting any game system. It doesn't matter what rules we come up with.

[Fut]

1453 R, on 12 August 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

The problem I’ve always had with the TT heatscale is that it starts punishing players, and inflicting chances for completely random dice-roll ammo booms, as low as, I believe, 10% up on the heat bar.

‘Mechs in MWO hit 10% on their heat bars just by dropping in Mordor.

That's why MWO should use a modified HeatScale...
I'd even be happy if the heat penalties only started at 50%, it'd be better than the "99% Heat and no problems Heatscale" that we currently have.

[Davegt27]

I had five disco's a few matches ago if we stopped all the crying about every little thing maybe they could fine tune the game and fix a lot of issues

Another idea is to rename this section and call it door 13

[Lily from animove]

Duck Hunt, on 12 August 2014 - 07:53 AM, said:

What do you people want?
Every weapon to be exactly the same?

pretty soon every weapon system will be 'balanced' and this game is going to be very boring.

Stop complaining and just learn to play the game.

balance maybe? there is still highly visible imbalance, and in my opinion someone should nerf that AC15 with its ridiculous imbalanced stats amongst the ballistic weapons. All the recent nerfs were also because of it, but no one seriously touched that weapon. All other weapons around it were nerfed.

Edited by Lily from animove, 12 August 2014 - 11:14 AM.

[Lefty Lucy]

Apnu, on 12 August 2014 - 11:04 AM, said:

I have no problem with that, both of those things you mentioned are on canon stock mechs, the AWS-8Q and HBK-4P (well 8 ML on the HBK-4P).

I didn't imply that it's something that people *should* have a problem with, merely that the heat systems are very different, so a TT-style heat scale isn't necessarily appropriate for MWO.