47 replies to this topic

[Roadbeer]

1453 R, on 03 October 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

You're not getting it, Roadbeer.

You think it's as easy as "Just hit what you shoot at, stupid!", but here's the thing. They already know that. Nobody sets out deliberately intending to miss half their shots. Running out of ammo, and thus being down the use of your ammo-fed weapons for the rest of the fight, is supposed to be the penalty for being profligate with your expenditures, not "Running out of ammo and being unable to afford more, unlike the guys sitting on two hundred million C-bills who can do whatever the hell they want.."

The point is that R&R, or even just rearm as you propose, is a flat penalty that is utterly meaningless to the experienced, established players who already know how to break the system wide open anyways. It's a bar to entry more than a realistic penalty, and this game's entry bar is already unacceptably high.

And what you're not getting is that there is NO PENALTY for spamming ammo. Everyone cries about Lurmageddion and asks for nerfs, when the fundamental problem is that there is no reason not to vomit out 1800 rounds of LRM ammo. Ghost Heat does nothing to prevent it, in fact, the way it's set up, it actually encourages doing in with 6 LRM 5s over 2 LRM 15s. There is no downside to 6 AC/2 build other than super secret special GH that was put on it if you fire more than 2. It's arbitrary and makes no sense.

Oh, and speaking as one of the space rich, having half a billion Cbills, it WOULD actually deter me from wasting money on bad behavior. Those of us with super large amounts of spacey money, like to keep our large amounts of spacey money so we can buy cooler things than another ammo bin.

[Toadflakz]

Simple answer: No. We'd immediately be back to LRM and dakkadakka spam, even worse with Clan mechs and their ultra ACs. LRMs are already quite problematic due to the fact that even with everyone running AMS, it's not enough.

Can you imagine the Direwhale without heatscale? Even with jamming, it would be unbelievable. Hell, everything with ballistics would boat ACs again...

I also think that it forces people to not boat things. Which is only a good thing for gameplay.

I agree with someone who suggested that there should be hard limits on numbers of weapons fired at once. I.e. gauss =1, acs = 4, missiles = 2, ppcs=1, lasers per type = 2.... That kind of thing...

Edited by Toadflakz, 03 October 2014 - 12:21 PM.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

Roadbeer, on 03 October 2014 - 12:09 PM, said:

Actually, I avoided being specific for a reason. That way the merit of the idea is discussed, without resorting to debating the scenarios I might include in the topic
It's quite a simple topic, should rearm replace GH for the weapon systems that use ammo? and YOU explain your reason for/against it.

Repair and rearm as a game balance mechanism is based on the assumption: people can't afford to spam ammo. Its based on an unwritten belief: ammo cost constraints will overrule in-game, weapon spam, behavior.

That mindset doesn't take into account whales in $500 gold mechs who can afford to spam as much ammo as they like on an unlimited basis. Its a measure that could violate MWO's commitment to being Free2Play and cross the line towards becoming Pay2Win.

Repair and rearm is also something that would hurt new players who are trying to grind through basic techs and earn enough c-bills to purchase equipment, weapons and mechs. It would hurt new player retention and be another item on the laundry list of reasons why new players might quit the game.

Ghost heat is a better method of preventing AC and missile spam. It can only be overridden by coolshots and coolshots can only be used once per game. Rearm and Repair being substituted for ghost heat would allow a person to spam weapons 24/7 without heat penalties as opposed to the once per game that coolshot allows.

Numerically, coolshot is the better option for keeping heat abuse in check and ensuring MWO avoids crossing a line into pay2win territory. Its also better for new player retention and keeping the bar to entry for beginners within reasonable terms.

.

Edited by I Zeratul I, 03 October 2014 - 12:26 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Toadflakz, on 03 October 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Simple answer: No. We'd immediately be back to LRM and dakkadakka spam, even worse with Clan mechs and their ultra ACs. LRMs are already quite problematic due to the fact that even with everyone running AMS, it's not enough.

Can you imagine the Direwhale without heatscale? Even with jamming, it would be unbelievable. Hell, everything with ballistics would boat ACs again...

I also think that it forces people to not boat things. Which is only a good thing for gameplay.

How would you have daka/lurmageddon if it's hitting people in the pocket to do that?
Sure, as others have said, it wouldn't matter to the super rich, but that would be for a very short time until their accounts dipped below a comfortable level.

[1453 R]

Roadbeer, on 03 October 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

And what you're not getting is that there is NO PENALTY for spamming ammo. Everyone cries about Lurmageddion and asks for nerfs, when the fundamental problem is that there is no reason not to vomit out 1800 rounds of LRM ammo. Ghost Heat does nothing to prevent it, in fact, the way it's set up, it actually encourages doing in with 6 LRM 5s over 2 LRM 15s. There is no downside to 6 AC/2 build other than super secret special GH that was put on it if you fire more than 2. It's arbitrary and makes no sense.

Oh, and speaking as one of the space rich, having half a billion Cbills, it WOULD actually deter me from wasting money on bad behavior. Those of us with super large amounts of spacey money, like to keep our large amounts of spacey money so we can buy cooler things than another ammo bin.

It might deter you from bad behavior, but it would effectively completely bar anything but energy weapons from a rookie player's loadout. When half or more of the winnings of a new guy with no premium time, who's lucky if he can push 80k a match, goes into restocking his ammo bins, you can better believe that if he bothers to stay at all, he's going to be switching over to a pure energy build. Regardless of whether he wants to play one or not.

Besides, this doesn't actually discourage high alpha builds at all. Matter of fact, rearm encourages putting down enemies with as few shots as possible and would actively reward (or at least punish significantly less) those players who bring dual AC/20 or dual Gauss or whatever builds and use them to core people out. Missiles would disappear from the face of Creation given how inefficient they are in terms of ammo expended/kills generated, as would most light autocannons. You wouldn't solve anything, you'd make new players' lives significantly more miserable than they already are, and you'd sharply discourage the use of what most folks consider one of the Inner Sphere's biggest current advantages against the Clans.

NO, dude. R&R went away for a large number of good reasons, and the counter-arguments of "But it's more IMMERSIVE to have to pay for your stuff!" do not hold water. Rearm is not a replacement for Ghost Heat. A power budget, or a flash-heatscale of the sort Homeless Bill's proposed a few times now is a replacement for Ghost Heat. Rearm is a tax on people dumb enough to use munitions-based weapons instead of rearm-free lasers.

[Bilbo]

A simpler solution would be to make the ammo more likely to explode. You might think twice about taking 6 tons of AC ammo if you were constantly getting blown apart by it.

[Toadflakz]

Roadbeer, on 03 October 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

And what you're not getting is that there is NO PENALTY for spamming ammo. Everyone cries about Lurmageddion and asks for nerfs, when the fundamental problem is that there is no reason not to vomit out 1800 rounds of LRM ammo. Ghost Heat does nothing to prevent it, in fact, the way it's set up, it actually encourages doing in with 6 LRM 5s over 2 LRM 15s. There is no downside to 6 AC/2 build other than super secret special GH that was put on it if you fire more than 2. It's arbitrary and makes no sense.

Oh, and speaking as one of the space rich, having half a billion Cbills, it WOULD actually deter me from wasting money on bad behavior. Those of us with super large amounts of spacey money, like to keep our large amounts of spacey money so we can buy cooler things than another ammo bin.

Hard ammo limits instead? Maybe 1 or 2 tons per used hard-point depending on type?

Roadbeer, on 03 October 2014 - 12:21 PM, said:

How would you have daka/lurmageddon if it's hitting people in the pocket to do that?
Sure, as others have said, it wouldn't matter to the super rich, but that would be for a very short time until their accounts dipped below a comfortable level.

It hits inexperienced/bad players disproportionately hard. It's the same reason why it was turned off initially...

[Eddrick]

I Zeratul I, on 03 October 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

Ghost heat is a good system.

Why would anyone want to get rid of it?

It doesn't do much to fix what it was intended to fix. It doesn't even do much to fix the root cause of the problem. There are better solutions then Ghost Heat.

Balistics and Missiles are barely effected by Ghost Heat and have little reason to be effected by it to begin with. If they need to be nurfed after having Ghost Heat removed from them. There are other ways to do that.

[MoonfireSpam]

Roadbeer, on 03 October 2014 - 12:21 PM, said:

How would you have daka/lurmageddon if it's hitting people in the pocket to do that?
Sure, as others have said, it wouldn't matter to the super rich, but that would be for a very short time until their accounts dipped below a comfortable level.

Balancing a game via peoples bank accounts (Space Dollars or Real Moneys) is not my idea of better.

You either make the tax trivial enough people can drop most games with prime gear, or so severe that people end up dropping in gimp loadout or drop real dollars (i.e. more P2Wish).

[Scratx]

merz, on 03 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

vade retro, troll.

He's not, and please keep the thread civil.

Mind, I strongly disagree with him on this matter, but that's life.

Only I agree with Me and Myself on 100% of all subjects.

[Mothykins]

You cannot balance Weapons via in-game Budget when people can buy In game currency.

Yes, I like the concept of R&R as an immersion thing, and seeing it in a campaign mode in CW would be great. By all means, go for that, that's interesting.

I play pretty much Laser Builds (other than my Locust) so It wouldn't even hit me that bad, but I still dislike it because it comes down to "he with the most money wins" and encourages those without currency to do things like, oh, Outfit a locust with a single small Laser and run "assist" suicide games. Just tag the other team and rake in Cbills. I don't want to be that guy or be on the same team as that guy.

That is not good balance. Balancing by Wallets is never good.

I can see adding an Reload system if you want to boost earnings and then award folks for doing better still, but this severely punishes light players on both teams (Overall low survivability, quite a few SRM builds) and decimates the losing team, as well as encouraging Laserspam-ERLL-tag whack-a-mole play and discouraging brawling, unless you're wealthy. This is Bad.

I've talked about this plenty. I've seen a thread like this every week for the past month. Usually two, three folks come in, defend R&R vigorously against a crowd of other folk. Generally they have rather poor reasoning, generally boiling down to "Learn to play and you'll like it." This is no different.

We need to retain players, not lose them. Yes, Ghost heat is dumb. No argument. My six AC-2 Jager weeps (Not that your wallet warrior plan fixes this, TBH...) and my PPC Jester feels the pain. But The current earnings already discourage players. We don't need to make this worse. Suggest an actual fix to this, not a money based quick fix patch that makes the game P2W.

Edited by Cavale, 03 October 2014 - 01:01 PM.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

Eddrick, on 03 October 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

#1. It doesn't do much to fix what it was intended to fix. It doesn't even do much to fix the root cause of the problem. There are better solutions then Ghost Heat.

#2. Balistics and Missiles are barely effected by Ghost Heat and have little reason to be effected by it to begin with. If they need to be nurfed after having Ghost Heat removed from them. There are other ways to do that.

.

#1. ??? How does ghost heat fail? Saying: "ghost heat fails" is too vague and unspecific for me to know what you're talking about.

#2. AC-2's are affected by ghost heat. Mount twin AC-2's on a blackjack, you'll definitely notice the impact ghost heat has. AC-20's are affected by ghost heat. Run a direwolf with dual CAC-20 or dual CUAC-20. You'll notice the impact of ghost heat very quickly even with near to 20 DHS.

Missiles are also noticeably affected by ghost heat. LRM boats who try to alpha LRM's are noticeably affected. I overheat a lot with boating LRM's. SRM boats are also affected. If you've ever seen a maddog boating srm-6's shut down from heat. That shows the effect ghost heat has on curbing srm alpha spam.

Try to be more specific, plz. Its tough to know what you're referring to.

Edited by I Zeratul I, 03 October 2014 - 01:08 PM.

[LauLiao]

All I can say is I remember when I first started playing, and I was leveling Atlases, I often would have to run 2-3 matches in a stripped down light in order to be able to afford to drop in a game with an Atlas. People complain about the "grind" now earning C-Bills and XP. Going back to R&R is definitely not the answer.

[Eddrick]

I Zeratul I, on 03 October 2014 - 01:04 PM, said:

.

#1. ??? How does ghost heat fail? Saying: "ghost heat fails" is too vague and unspecific for me to know what you're talking about.

#2. AC-2's are affected by ghost heat. Mount twin AC-2's on a blackjack, you'll definitely notice the impact ghost heat has. AC-20's are affected by ghost heat. Run a direwolf with dual CAC-20 or dual CUAC-20. You'll notice the impact of ghost heat very quickly even with near to 20 DHS.

Missiles are also noticeably affected by ghost heat. LRM boats who try to alpha LRM's are noticeably affected. SRM boats are also affected. If you've ever seen a maddog boating srm-6's shut down from heat. That shows the effect ghost heat has on curbing srm alpha spam.

Try to be more specific, plz. Its tough to know what you're referring to.

#1 Instant Pinpoint Convergance is the root of the problem. High Damage Alpha Strike is just a symptom. If an Alpha Strike were to spread its damage all over. It wouldn't make much differance if it was chain fired or not.

#2 Missiles, UACs, lower class ACs, and Clan ACs have a natural spread. So, there is no reason for them to be effected by Ghost Heat at all. Because, the damage of Missiles naturaly spreads and lower class ACs/UACs/Clan ACs have a very high chance to spread damage simlar to lasers. You can't pump a lot of damage into one location on someone withUACs, lower class ACs, or Clan ACs, unless they are not moving/twisting much.

[kapusta11]

I Zeratul I, on 03 October 2014 - 01:04 PM, said:

.

#1. ??? How does ghost heat fail? Saying: "ghost heat fails" is too vague and unspecific for me to know what you're talking about.

#2. AC-2's are affected by ghost heat. Mount twin AC-2's on a blackjack, you'll definitely notice the impact ghost heat has. AC-20's are affected by ghost heat. Run a direwolf with dual CAC-20 or dual CUAC-20. You'll notice the impact of ghost heat very quickly even with near to 20 DHS.

Missiles are also noticeably affected by ghost heat. LRM boats who try to alpha LRM's are noticeably affected. I overheat a lot with boating LRM's. SRM boats are also affected. If you've ever seen a maddog boating srm-6's shut down from heat. That shows the effect ghost heat has on curbing srm alpha spam.

Try to be more specific, plz. Its tough to know what you're referring to.

There are two separate issues, instant convergence (which I personally don't see as an issue) and broken heat system that allows huge alphas in the first place. Ghost heat fails at former because it affects energy weapons only, and it fails at latter because it makes pure energy assaults and heavies even less viable.

[Tezcatli]

Rearm cost isn't going to improve the play style of others. And isn't going to address the issues that Ghost Heat addresses.

I do think that it should be part of CW though. They should bring back rearm for that. And make repair actually lock your mech out based on the amount of damage it's taken. It would make things interesting.

[Chronojam]

Bilbo, on 03 October 2014 - 11:26 AM, said:

I like rearm costs but it doesn't address the issue GH penalties are there to address(High damage Alphas).

Neither does Ghost heat, and we got Ghost Heat anyhow!

[1453 R]

Chronojam, on 03 October 2014 - 01:43 PM, said:

Neither does Ghost heat, and we got Ghost Heat anyhow!

So...how does replacing the devil we know help us, exactly?

I want Ghost Heat out as much as anyone else, but substituting rearm for half of Ghost Heat doesn't do jack-monkey squat except make ballistics a horrible idea for anyone but the 1%-ers.

[Bilbo]

Chronojam, on 03 October 2014 - 01:43 PM, said:

Neither does Ghost heat, and we got Ghost Heat anyhow!

My experience in game says otherwise. Of course, definitions of high-damage vary.

[Chronojam]

1453 R, on 03 October 2014 - 02:01 PM, said:

So...how does replacing the devil we know help us, exactly?

I want Ghost Heat out as much as anyone else, but substituting rearm for half of Ghost Heat doesn't do jack-monkey squat except make ballistics a horrible idea for anyone but the 1%-ers.

Funny you should describe it as the "devil we know," when the specific details of Ghost Heat are only available via a third-party website that has datamined the game's files.

Do you really know about how Ghost Heat makes launching 50 missiles cooler than launching 40 missiles, or how it makes "boating" 8 medium pulse lasers cooler than "boating" 8 medium lasers?

Re-introducing rearm/refit is an interesting idea that's more or less tangentially related to Ghost Heat itself. There's no reason why I should take twice as much heat to launch 60 missiles as 40, or where launching 50 should be substantially cooler than either of those, regardless of whether or not I pay for the reloads.