198 replies to this topic

[Alistair Winter]

I'm trying to find out if there's any kind of consensus among MWO players in regards to how to improve gameplay balance. Many players complain about the fact that mechs with very high firepower and pinpoint accuracy dominate the game. According to these players, this has a number of unfortunate side effects, such as too low TTK, lack of diversity in builds and loadouts, and dominance of certain heavy / assault mechs.

In the thread "DO THE MAJORITY OF PLAYERS WANT TO GET RID OF CONVERGENCE?" I asked whether convergence was the problem. A lot of people were on the fence, but I did a quick tally of the people who were clearly in favour or against the idea, and it seemed to be fairly even. No huge consensus either way.Certainly not to convince PGI that the community is united behind this idea.

The only other popular answer to the above-mentioned problem is fixing the way heat works in MWO. So my question is: do you all want a major change to how heat works in MWO?

By fundamental changes, I'm not talking about a slight nerf here and there or changing the ghost heat values. The common suggestions include:

• Reducing heat treshold. Right now, you overheat at 38 heat points without basic skills. 45.6 heat points with double basic skills. Some people want to reduce the treshold to 30 or below, even for mastered mechs.
  
• Giving DHS and SHS different functions. For example, DHS would be restored to true dubs (double the effect of single heat sinks instead of 1.4x) with a lower heat treshold, while SHS would have a significantly larger treshold. You would choose SHS or DPS based on your build and playing style.
  
• Removing Ghost heat altogether. This isn't really a fix in itself, but many people see it as part of what's wrong with MWO's heat mechanic.
  
• Substantially bigger penalties for overheating. Far greater damage to internal components and far greater risks of cooking ammo, leading to internal explosions.
  
• Negative effects from running hot. For example, when your heat indicator surpasses 70% your mech might start to move slower, your torso twist may be reduced, your arm movement speed may be slower. Maybe your HUD starts to flicker and your radar picks up ghost signals. The idea is to make it difficult for people to constantly run hot and also to punish people who rely on repeated alpha strikes. Apparently, alpha strikes were not common in TT or BT novels (can someone confirm?)

If you have a strong opinion, I'd appreciate a clear YES or NO at the start of your post. It makes it easier to determine whether or not there is a consensus that the heat mechanism needs a major overhaul.

[Cion]

I'd like to test this for a week. It should not be hard to implement in a test environment. You would need a decent size population to see if it has the desired effects.

[nehebkau]

Yes, ghost heat sucks, yes heat system is kind of a kludge, designed to limit damage for longer play times -- and it does it poorly.

I've often thought a better mechanic was to have weapon recharge times slow down the more that you have boated. With some number-crunching you can maintain actual DPS of a weapon system but have higher recharge times.

How can I explain this? Lets assume that there are dedicated recharging circuits for each weapon type which are rated to provide a specific amount of energy at a specific rate to recharge specific weapons. Lets say that you add more ERLLs to the ERLL charging circuit, well the circut is now over-drawn and your recharge rate is going to increase.
So, 1 ERLLs provide 2 DPS (based on smurfy) and your recharge circuit is maxed for ERLLs. Add another and your recharge rate would have to increase (double) to account for it. Your DPS would still be 2 with the ERLLs but your alpha will now be 18 rather than 9 and your recharge would be 6.50. If you add 3 and your dps will still be 2 but your alpha would now be 21 and your recharge time would triple (9.75 seconds). These numbers are probably a little harsh but PGI could adjust the numbers to allow for say 2 or 3 or 4 of a specific weapon type before the recharge rate starts to increase. Doing this could also allow us to get rid of the gauss charge timer and all the stupid weapon syncing that we have.

This would FORCE most of us average players to stop building single-weapon alpha builds to have a maintain sustained DPS by including different weapon classes (large and small and medium lasers) as well as Ballistic and missile weapons.

Of course, having the single weapon builds will still be possible but you will be sacrificing your DPS for the 70 point alpha. For some this would be the play-style that they like but for the rest of us it would give a more 'mechwarrior' feel by having mechs usually carry a variety of weapons systems.

And heat-scaling effects are just more stupid piled on top of a stupid heat mechanic. The only way heat-scaling would work is if the entire heat-system across the entire game was completely reworked. I don't think people realize that we have gone so far away from the TT rules that constantly referring to them for guidance is like using the Bible as a guide to how someone should live in the 21st century. (Unless PGI wants to put dice-rolls into the game as part of the mechanic -- dice roll on ammo explosion, dice roll on shutdown etc.)

Edited by nehebkau, 21 January 2015 - 07:39 AM.

[- S T R I F E -]

In TT there were heat-scale effects:



Why did Paul have to go and invent a bunch of asinine bullcrap instead of just going with something like what's in BattleTech TT already?

A clever person would look at all the interesting negative effects a mech could suffer as heat increases (slower movement, failing/flickering HUD, slower weapon recycle time, ammo explosions, widening cone of fire effect that compromises accuracy, etc etc etc) and then put them on the heat effect scale to prevent the high-heat alpha meta we have now. We could then have true Double Heat Sinks, as well.

But perhaps being clever is too difficult for some...

Edited by Kuun, 21 January 2015 - 07:29 AM.

[Whitewolf95]

I think we definitely need some change to the system and the possible changes you propose would be a good starting point I think like a ~2 week test period on the PTR to see how viable it would be.

[Mcgral18]

Yes, I would like to test alternatives on the Test Server.

[nehebkau]

RG Notch, on 21 January 2015 - 07:38 AM, said:

[Redacted]

+1 thread hijack....
Let people spend their money for stupid things -- it pays for us to play -- and pays for the developers to rework the heat system.

Edited by GM Patience, 13 February 2015 - 01:08 PM.

[Hotthedd]

YES, (mostly)

Ghost heat is there ONLY because of the broken Alpha strike problem, and even though it kind of sucks, removing it without fixing that problem will only make that part worse.

[cleghorn6]

No.

It's not perfect but it mostly works. No matter what the system is, people will learn to game it and break it. I'm sure they'd like to put more heat effects in as per the TT heat tables but 1) there are better things I'd like dev time to be spent on and 2) it would be utterly incomprehensible to new players/people who aren't TT grognards. Reworking the entire heat system would be 6 months work if all they did was change the heat mechanic, no rebalancing at all.

Are high damage PP alphas really that big of a deal? Sure, if you're on the pointy end of one but if you're consistently being taken out by dual-PPC dual-Gauss Dire Whales, you should maybe look at your problem with positioning before you try to re-work a core game mechanic to solve your problem for you.

[Wolfwood592]

I would love a serious overhaul to the heat thresh hold.

I am sure this post will become flooded by the players who don't wish for heat to actually requiring being actively monitored.

[Alistair Winter]

I do think PGI's business model is worthy of discussion. The whole F2P vs P2W aspect needs to be examined.

But please don't do it in this thread. Thanks.

[Athalus]

I'm rather interested in seeing this tried out on the test server, it seems like it would fix some issues. It most certainly sounds like a better and more intuitive solution then ghost heat. However, without ghost heat this system would affect energy boats a lot more then other mechs...

[Hotthedd]

No, it doesn't work. I agree that it appeals to the Hawken crowd, but that does not mean it is a good system.

It is not always a matter of positioning, BTW. If someone is 1000m away, and under cover of ECM, how would one know if their positioning were bad until AFTER they'd been cored?

[Koniks]

I'm in favor of a solution that reduces the use and effectiveness of alpha strikes without introducing more RNG mechanics.

[Metus regem]

As someone whom normally runs hot, here in MWO, but almost never runs hot in TT, as I do the math to count for running, and firing the bulk of my kit to stay heat netural, 'cept in do or die moments. I would totaly be on board for testing, and if we can get rid of the pin point targeting that we have now, it could make for a more tactical feel to the game.

[Jetfire]

YES

I think that we could have a much more robust game with longer TTK by making the heat system more sensible and deep. Basically what you suggest.

[cleghorn6]

Hotthedd, on 21 January 2015 - 08:06 AM, said:

No, it doesn't work. I agree that it appeals to the Hawken crowd, but that does not mean it is a good system.

It is not always a matter of positioning, BTW. If someone is 1000m away, and under cover of ECM, how would one know if their positioning were bad until AFTER they'd been cored?

How often does that happen to you? If you're getting consistently sniped at 1000m, your positioning is bad. Pro Tip: don't stand still in the open. Or at least, don't stand still in the place you just got sniped.

The system is in place and working now. None of the alternatives I've seen manage to solve all the problems of the current system, without introducing new ones. This might only be the least bad heat system but at least it's the least bad heat system.

[meteorol]

You will never reach the "majority of players" by using the forum.

[HlynkaCG]

The heat cap is actually substantially higher than 36 atm, closer to 60.

I'v posted these elsewhere but here are my thoughts...

• Set the maximum heat cap at engine size / 10 plus 1 point for each heat-sink installed outside the engine.
  
• Each heatsink would dissipate 0.25 points of heat per second.
  
• Doubles would dissipate 0.5 points of heat per second while adding only half a point to the mech's max heat.
  
• Engines would produce additional heat equal to throttle setting * engine size / 100 points per second. This makes a 250 engine with with the minimum 10 SHS heat neutral, with smaller engines being more heat efficicient and larger ones less so.

What I think these changes would mean...

• Comparably lower heat caps coupled with movement heat means that few mechs will be able to pull off big-alpha strikes without shutting down or otherwise remaining stationary.
  
• Comparably faster heat dissipation further encourages chain-firing over alpha strikes, reducing the wider emphasis on PP/FLD.
  
• Many stock builds will have substantially higher heat capacities than their "optimized" brethren (looking at you AWS-8Q ) putting them on a slightly more even footing for that early grind.
  
• The choice to run DHS, becomes less clear-cut as having a higher max heat level will help some builds more than the increased dissipation of DHS will.
  
• You can still run and gun but there is now a sound tactical reason to move at less than 100% throttle or use a smaller engine as doing so improves cooling efficiency.

Specific values are subject to tweaking and discussion of course but that should be enough to give you a general idea.


ETA:
Regarding the pin point damage issue...

Under my system very few mechs would be able to fire a big alpha without shutting down. That in itself is a major balancing factor as it makes the high alpha builds much more vulnerable to DPS builds and things like airstrikes.

The mechs like the Awesome are actually a outliers in this regard, but consider the price it pays for that 30 point "spamable" alpha. 21 tons of guns (PPC x 3) plus 18 tons of heat-sinks, is a lot of weight for an 80 ton mech. A mech that dedicates nearly half it's weight to it's primary weapon system SHOULD be able to dish out some serious hurt.

Edited by HlynkaCG, 21 January 2015 - 08:38 AM.

[IronLichRich]

No, not like has been suggested. DHS having a lower heat cap than SHS makes no sense. As to a lower heat threshold, remember that in TT the "hard" cap is the amount of heat you can sink+30. Yes, you can take penalties, but auto shutdown is at heat 30. For all the people crying for heat closer to tt, remember that it won't necessarily reduce alpha strikes.