Mizeur, on 11 March 2015 - 06:32 PM, said:
Talk about abstractions and everything else all you want. It's a red herring. The core interaction is that allowing bigger, more rapid alphas, sustained for a longer period of time led to low time to kill. Powercreep from the start. Doubling armor reinforced the need for big, rapid, sustained alphas.
Quirks have further reinforced that. Including the armor/IS ones.
QED.
Your argument was that the 10 second turn idea was not an abstraction, when it is, just like AC20s being an abstraction of a bunch of weapons. I read the second statement about the difference between Turn Based and Real Time wrong, I goofed on that one, at least my reasoning given that is, I do believe there is a fundamental difference between the two not just a practical one.
Weapon balance is part of the problem, alpha strikes power is about on par with MW4, but recycle faster and are hotter (heat caps are on par but heat efficiency was better in MW4) while mechs are overall less durable and less able to sustain DPS (thanks to side torso destruction causing arm loss).
Doubling armor did nothing to reinforce alphas, it just exacerbated the problem with rapid fire weapons in this game. Slight semantics difference, but still the problem is not convergence or anything, it is a simple product of rapid fire weapons just not being powerful enough; projectile velocity is part of the problem in this regard.
For example, MW4:HC was dominated in the latter stages by UAC5 boats. They had the same recycle time as the MWO AC5s, did 0.75 more damage than the MWO AC5s, and almost twice the heat. A Mad Dog C could mount 3 of them and run around 80kph. A Hellfire which was the same tonnage could deal a massive 55 point alpha every 10 seconds and the better hitboxes but went Dire Whale slow. Then there were the twin Streak LRM20 (6 sec recycle I believe) Mad Dogs that ran around 90kph and would consistently rain missiles on you at the edge of visual range. All of these examples are different in the way they deal damage and yet all were decently or exceedingly effective and all in an environment that had double armor and in an environment where the suggested boost was possible.
So if your argument is that we need slower firing large weapons, I would agree for the most part. I would also say max heat needs to come down and heat dissipation boosted. This is hardly an endemic because of core mechanics though, this is a problem of simple math, same with quirks, it is all about implementation.
Not arguing with you on power creep either, PGI has been really bad about that ever since DHS got added.
Edited by WM Quicksilver, 11 March 2015 - 07:44 PM.