65 replies to this topic

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Yes im going there.

From the town hall we got the following.

• Russ recognizes Ghost Heat is why alot of players left
  
• He feels Ghost Heat solved problems, but did cut back on viable builds
  
• PGI are afraid of removing Ghost Heat as some players might like it

i do not think anyone likes ghost heat per se, just that they feel it has improved in their minds a certain aspect of play.


So if Ghost Heat were to be removed, how do we modify the underlying heat system to achieve a similar effect, whilst if possible giving single heat sinks a reason to exist (not really sure they can)

My own initial thoughts, having a fixed heat cap figure TT used 30 i think it was however, this would not work in MWO due to current weapon attributes being different so potentially a higher cap, and heat sinks added should not increase this hard cap.

If ideas can steer away from tabletop the better because MWO uses different stats for heat and recycle times (no 10 second recycle times) and if these were changed too much, there would be a whole lot more balancing to do on weapons.

Think of it as the easier the suggestion/implementation the more likely it would happen (one can dream!)

Edit : And if you think Ghost heat is fine as is, your included here why?

Edited by DV McKenna, 09 September 2014 - 11:05 AM.

[EvilCow]

Cap alpha strikes of pinpoint weapons to 30 points (or weapons fired within a 0.5 time window), any excess would be delayed after 0.5...1 second, probably the GH would no more be required.

It has been introduced to limit the alpha strike, just put a cap. This would also allow to undo the recent controversial changes to PPCs.

Edited by EvilCow, 09 September 2014 - 11:39 AM.

[Tombstoner]

Only one way.... global cool down on all weapons with 1 free alpha evry 5 minutes.
one shot every .5 seconds

Edited by Tombstoner, 09 September 2014 - 11:41 AM.

[Fut]

DV McKenna, on 09 September 2014 - 11:04 AM, said:

My own initial thoughts, having a fixed heat cap figure TT used 30 i think it was however, this would not work in MWO due to current weapon attributes being different so potentially a higher cap, and heat sinks added should not increase this hard cap.

This.
The Heat Cap should be fixed at a certain point - I'd say TT Values, but with the rates of fire being higher and all that it doesn't make sense. However, the heat should be capped. Additional HeatSinks should increase the dissipation of heat.

With this in place, there would be no arbitrary limits on what can be fired when, or how many of Weapon-X (no, not Logan) can be fired at the same time...etc. People could shoot what they wanted to, but if you link all those PPCs together, you're going to be sitting in an overheated Mech for quite some time.

MWO, in my opinion, should be more focused with Chain-Firing weapons (or groups of weapons), with Alpha Strikes being used for those few instances when all you need is one more big hit on your target (It won't matter that you overheat and shut down in those situations... well, at least not as much).

Bonus points if PGI implemented some actual Heat Penalties as well, like a fuzzy HUD at a certain Heat Level, slower movement, increased chance of Ammo Explosion, Pilot Passes out...etc.etc.

Edited by Fut, 09 September 2014 - 11:48 AM.

[Jacmac]

Honestly I think that the only way this gets balanced in a way that keeps PGI happy with the 'balance' is to create dedicated slots for heatsinks on all chassis. Heatsinks can no longer go into flexible slots. In this way, PGI can keep certain mech types functional for high heat without all of them being capable.

[Savage Wolf]

I figured you could introduce a new stat: Energy. It would describe how many weapons the reactor could serve at any given time. It would be greatly tied to the pin point damage of a weapon and so it's alpha potential.

Energy would recharge very quickly but have a cap. Firing Two PPCs simultaniously would use most of your energy, but would perhaps allow for a medium laser to fire with it, but not a third PPC. After a half second recharge, you could fire that again if you have two extra PPCs.

It would be much more intuitive and easy to work with for both new players and old. And it would also stop any potential linking of different weapons that don't normally share ghost heat. Like PPCs and Gauss.

Only flaw is that lore players would complain that there was no such thing in lore or TT. But they say that about ghost heat as well.

[Sybreed]

just go with a 30 heat threshold hard cap... 3 PPC fired = shutdown. Also, I haven'T played the game in a while, but jump jets should generate heat, so jump snipers are also affected.

[Savage Wolf]

Sybreed, on 09 September 2014 - 12:09 PM, said:

just go with a 30 heat threshold hard cap... 3 PPC fired = shutdown. Also, I haven'T played the game in a while, but jump jets should generate heat, so jump snipers are also affected.

Jump jets do generate heat now.

[Ph30nix]

EvilCow, on 09 September 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Cap alpha strikes of pinpoint weapons to 30 points (or weapons fired within a 0.5 time window), any excess would be delayed after 0.5...1 second, probably the GH would no more be required.

It has been introduced to limit the alpha strike, just put a cap. This would also allow to undo the recent controversial changes to PPCs.

this is alittle bit worse than ghost heat to me and frankly the most dangerous alphas are only int he 30pnt range anyone, the larger ones have their damage spread out by burn times and dot damage

Savage Wolf, on 09 September 2014 - 11:56 AM, said:

I figured you could introduce a new stat: Energy. It would describe how many weapons the reactor could serve at any given time. It would be greatly tied to the pin point damage of a weapon and so it's alpha potential.

Energy would recharge very quickly but have a cap. Firing Two PPCs simultaniously would use most of your energy, but would perhaps allow for a medium laser to fire with it, but not a third PPC. After a half second recharge, you could fire that again if you have two extra PPCs.

It would be much more intuitive and easy to work with for both new players and old. And it would also stop any potential linking of different weapons that don't normally share ghost heat. Like PPCs and Gauss.

Only flaw is that lore players would complain that there was no such thing in lore or TT. But they say that about ghost heat as well.

we already have a system like this, its called heat this would just add even more complication to the game no thanks

Sybreed, on 09 September 2014 - 12:09 PM, said:

just go with a 30 heat threshold hard cap... 3 PPC fired = shutdown. Also, I haven'T played the game in a while, but jump jets should generate heat, so jump snipers are also affected.

adjusting the heat scale is a big thing but you can't go to a 30pnt heat cap with current game mechanics they would have to allow heat neutral builds just like in TT (which id be fine with)

also without changing heat system and just throwing the cap down to 30 you would HORRIBLY punish lighter mechs who cant carry as many DHS to cool faster while larger mechs would alpha less but the firepower difference would increase dramatically

Now personally i feel yes a complete overhaul of heat system is needed. but as for convergence

1 weapon fired shots go perfectly center
2 weapons fire shots go perfectly center
3 weapons fired and now each weapon fires to a point dependent on their location on mech.
so if you have 3 PPC's
1 Left arm 1 CT 1 right arm
fire 1 and they would all aim dead center
fire 2 still dead center
fire 3 and
the 1 in the left arm would aim a few pixels off of center to the left (a Left torso would aim alittle off center to left but not as many as left arm)
the CT one would still fire dead center
the Right arm one would aim a few pixels to the right (again RT would be to right as well but not as much)
so instead of all weapons hitting
-----X-----
they would hit
X----X----X

mind you the above is just a example in game at short ranges (brawling) you wouldn't see much of a difference
but increase range to the 400-500+ area and damage would be spread out alot.
this wouldn't require any complicated coding, just take the coding they use to figure calculate current convergence (which is instance) just whatever point it designates as the aim point set it so if 3+ weapons are fired (maybe some can be excluded or this only effects the pin point weapons) that it takes the weapon location and has it hit that point offset by X

Edited by Ph30nix, 09 September 2014 - 12:35 PM.

[Jacmac]

Savage Wolf, on 09 September 2014 - 11:56 AM, said:

Only flaw is that lore players would complain that there was no such thing in lore or TT. But they say that about ghost heat as well.

I'm not sure that deviating even further from canon is going to rally the players to the cause.

[LauLiao]

The 30 limit of TT heat wasn't really comparable. If you hit 30 heat in TT, then chances are your mech shut down, your ammo exploded, and your pilot took damage. That 30 point chart was of penalties for going over your real "heat cap" which was determined by the number of heat sinks you had.

[Roland]

I think the reality is that there are a multitude of potential solutions to the problem ghost heat was meant to solve, but the vast majority of players agree that Ghost Heat is perhaps the worst of all possible solutions.

It ends up being arbitrary feeling, and ultimately failed to address the real underlying issue, which is the way weapons convergence works in the game. It just caused people to change certain weapons combinations for certain other weapons combinations.... 4 PPC's became 2 PPC's and a Gauss... then they nerfed the Gauss, and it became Two PPC's and some AC's... then they nerfed the AC's (lol)...etc.

Weapons have consistently been nerfed to hell, entirely due to the fact that you can duct-tape a bunch of weapons together, fire them as a single weapon, and punch huge holes in a single location.

That is essentially the single source of most weapons balance issues in this game, as it has been in prior mechwarrior titles, because it (and pilot skill) is the part that is fundamentally different from the tabletop rules upon which the original Battletech weapons balance was based.

[miliardo]

Or maybe they should ditch all custom configuration and make everybody go with original stock configurations

[Cyborne Elemental]

Generally speaking, it does seem to solve some problems.
In place of a convergence system, it keeps TTK in a 1v1 scenario fair.

There are some exceptions I would like to see tweaked, such as Large Lasers (IS) having a cap of 3 instead of two, and just maybe desyncing clan Med/Small lasers from being grouped towards ghost heat.

Removal of staggerfire Ghostheat on the AC-2 absolutely needs to be gotten rid of.

And some exceptions I would like to see added such as UAC-5 being adjusted better.

Otherwise, it does what it is intended to do.

Mixed loadouts instead of boating still wins the ghost heat minigame.

Edited by Mister D, 09 September 2014 - 12:50 PM.

[Savage Wolf]

Ph30nix, on 09 September 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

we already have a system like this, its called heat this would just add even more complication to the game no thanks

No, heat solves something entirely different. If heat did what I wanted Energy to solve, we wouldn't have this debate, there would be no ghost heat.
Heat is mostly there to set a cap on DPS over time, not alpha damage which it by no means as the hexaPPC Stalker proved.

Jacmac, on 09 September 2014 - 12:34 PM, said:

I'm not sure that deviating even further from canon is going to rally the players to the cause.

Nothing that is part of lore will fix this. Something non-lore needs to do it. Also we are talking more about TT game mechanics than actual lore.

Roland, on 09 September 2014 - 12:40 PM, said:

I think the reality is that there are a multitude of potential solutions to the problem ghost heat was meant to solve, but the vast majority of players agree that Ghost Heat is perhaps the worst of all possible solutions.

It ends up being arbitrary feeling, and ultimately failed to address the real underlying issue, which is the way weapons convergence works in the game. It just caused people to change certain weapons combinations for certain other weapons combinations.... 4 PPC's became 2 PPC's and a Gauss... then they nerfed the Gauss, and it became Two PPC's and some AC's... then they nerfed the AC's (lol)...etc.

Weapons have consistently been nerfed to hell, entirely due to the fact that you can duct-tape a bunch of weapons together, fire them as a single weapon, and punch huge holes in a single location.

That is essentially the single source of most weapons balance issues in this game, as it has been in prior mechwarrior titles, because it (and pilot skill) is the part that is fundamentally different from the tabletop rules upon which the original Battletech weapons balance was based.

There are definately worse solutions than ghost heat, but it is complex and it's not bulletproof.

And that's why I propose a system that simply sets a cap on the amount of alpha damage independant upon which weapons are used.

miliardo, on 09 September 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:

Or maybe they should ditch all custom configuration and make everybody go with original stock configurations

Then people would simply use the stock mech that came closest to the MWO meta. Stock mechs are by no means balanced for MWO.

Edited by Savage Wolf, 09 September 2014 - 12:50 PM.

[Lily from animove]

EvilCow, on 09 September 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Cap alpha strikes of pinpoint weapons to 30 points (or weapons fired within a 0.5 time window), any excess would be delayed after 0.5...1 second, probably the GH would no more be required.

It has been introduced to limit the alpha strike, just put a cap. This would also allow to undo the recent controversial changes to PPCs.

this,

atm the game is not designed correctly. Cool weapons should be restricted by ammunition. But wiht the low amount of opponents and the human superior aim compared to TT dice rolls, ammo is hardly an issue in MWO.and so Energyweapons are not the first choice if you can slap on some hard hitting heat ignoring AC's

Ph30nix, on 09 September 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

this is alittle bit worse than ghost heat to me and frankly the most dangerous alphas are only int he 30pnt range anyone, the larger ones have their damage spread out by burn times and dot damage

we already have a system like this, its called heat this would just add even more complication to the game no thanks

adjusting the heat scale is a big thing but you can't go to a 30pnt heat cap with current game mechanics they would have to allow heat neutral builds just like in TT (which id be fine with)

also without changing heat system and just throwing the cap down to 30 you would HORRIBLY punish lighter mechs who cant carry as many DHS to cool faster while larger mechs would alpha less but the firepower difference would increase dramatically

Now personally i feel yes a complete overhaul of heat system is needed. but as for convergence

1 weapon fired shots go perfectly center
2 weapons fire shots go perfectly center
3 weapons fired and now each weapon fires to a point dependent on their location on mech.
so if you have 3 PPC's
1 Left arm 1 CT 1 right arm
fire 1 and they would all aim dead center
fire 2 still dead center
fire 3 and
the 1 in the left arm would aim a few pixels off of center to the left (a Left torso would aim alittle off center to left but not as many as left arm)
the CT one would still fire dead center
the Right arm one would aim a few pixels to the right (again RT would be to right as well but not as much)
so instead of all weapons hitting
-----X-----
they would hit
X----X----X

mind you the above is just a example in game at short ranges (brawling) you wouldn't see much of a difference
but increase range to the 400-500+ area and damage would be spread out alot.
this wouldn't require any complicated coding, just take the coding they use to figure calculate current convergence (which is instance) just whatever point it designates as the aim point set it so if 3+ weapons are fired (maybe some can be excluded or this only effects the pin point weapons) that it takes the weapon location and has it hit that point offset by X

I would not choose the number of wepaons, because then you equalise 2 Small lasers with 2 gauss. Which is not really much balanced.

[Ph30nix]

Lily from animove, on 09 September 2014 - 12:53 PM, said:

this,

atm the game is not designed correctly. Cool weapons should be restricted by ammunition. But wiht the low amount of opponents and the human superior aim compared to TT dice rolls, ammo is hardly an issue in MWO.and so Energyweapons are not the first choice if you can slap on some hard hitting heat ignoring AC's



I would not choose the number of wepaons, because then you equalise 2 Small lasers with 2 gauss. Which is not really much balanced.

well its the start of an idea, its open for change and discussion
maybe just have it based on the # of FLD weapons,
or they could exclude certain weapons from the total (smalls, LRM's and such)

[CrushLibs]

I have a question

I run a build with 3 UAC-5s = 3 heat + 2 UAC-10s = 6 heat

According to Smurfy I can go 1min 22 secs before overheating yet I can get my mech to shutdown in 15-20 secs or less.

Granted double firing increases heat but it seems I am getting ghost heat when none is indicated.

A DW with 3 extra DHS with a heat value of 1.9 should not overheat that fast.

Please fix this problem.

[Zyllos]

It seems some here do not see that ghost heat was an attempt to reduce the amount of damage at a single moment for most weapons (Gauss Rifle gets around this, thus for the reason why you can't charge more than 2 at a time).

But the overall problem is a mismatch between MWO using the TT's Armor System (sectional armor locations) and MWO allowing weapons to all hit a single point when firing them together.

There is no combination of heat, cooldowns, damage, ect that can fix this problem as the Armor System is expecting damage to be spread on a target when firing.

This problem has existed for MUCH longer than MWO has been around. MW3 and MW4 had the exact same problems and we are seeing the exact same issues in MWO.

The only fix for this problem is to introduce some weapon spreading mechanic that makes sense for all sides to alleviate this issue.

Edited by Zyllos, 09 September 2014 - 01:02 PM.

[Gyrok]

Fut, on 09 September 2014 - 11:46 AM, said:

This.
The Heat Cap should be fixed at a certain point - I'd say TT Values, but with the rates of fire being higher and all that it doesn't make sense. However, the heat should be capped. Additional HeatSinks should increase the dissipation of heat.

With this in place, there would be no arbitrary limits on what can be fired when, or how many of Weapon-X (no, not Logan) can be fired at the same time...etc. People could shoot what they wanted to, but if you link all those PPCs together, you're going to be sitting in an overheated Mech for quite some time.

MWO, in my opinion, should be more focused with Chain-Firing weapons (or groups of weapons), with Alpha Strikes being used for those few instances when all you need is one more big hit on your target (It won't matter that you overheat and shut down in those situations... well, at least not as much).

Bonus points if PGI implemented some actual Heat Penalties as well, like a fuzzy HUD at a certain Heat Level, slower movement, increased chance of Ammo Explosion, Pilot Passes out...etc.etc.

We have roughly 2x the fire rate of TT, to keep that in line, I would say to make it a hard cap at 50 for DHS and make it 60 for SHS. Make DHS true DHS, and to make SHS viable, they have the slightly higher heat cap.

Thoughts?