100 replies to this topic

[NextGame]

The other option was for people to stop whining about their mech getting killed, but that wasn't going to happen, was it?

There are myriad of other solutions/mechanics that could have been employed. PGI chose the most ham fisted & dumbing down approach that they could come up with.

[627]

FupDup, on 25 January 2016 - 08:24 PM, said:

I don't recall the community ever suggesting that certain weapon groups fired together would generate more heat than their listed mechlab values multiplied by the number of guns (e.g. 3 PPCs would normally generate exactly triple the heat of 1 PPC).

Actually people did this.

Way back in closed beta this came up from time to time with medium lasers, like if you fire more than X MLs that are in one location you get extra heat. That was a try to nerf the swayback afaik.

But that was never a good idea or something the vocal whateverity wanted.



By the way, alternatives would be soft penalties like blurring the sight or lowering speed/movement beyond a certain heat level.

And of course just plain heat for the weapons.
Look at ER-.PPCs, no one uses those and even if they are used, no one takes more than 2. Even without ghost heat they are too hot to even think about using 3 or 4.

There's no need for ghost heat if you balance this right. what is right is a subject to discuss, though.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

i'd like to see effects on the pilot, not only the mech.

Motion blur or red/black outs if the heat gets to high or stays high for too long.

(i also think that ghostheat isn't the worst idea to deal with boating spam)

[Mead]

feeWAIVER, on 25 January 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

ghost heat is fine. why are we complaining about it?

Because magic has no place in a stompy robot game

[MeiSooHaityu]

Mead, on 26 January 2016 - 05:09 AM, said:

Because magic has no place in a stompy robot game

Other than the usual Sci-Fi fantasy elements and maybe more specifically, getting ammo from the legs to the torso weapons or arms

[wanderer]

Quote

And really I was thinking about it because I wonder why they didn't just make your mech start to preform like crap as its heat climbs, things like reduced speed, turning ability, twist rate, Radar range, hud malfunctions... Stuff like that.

To give you an idea,the current heat system was the "we didn't have time to put a real system in yet, but this'll do while we're in beta."

They then altered it to remove ammo explosions at high heat levels.

And other than putting ghost heat in (a weapon change), it's never been touched since. From all I can tell, the heat coding is lostech to Paul and the devs, never mind actually putting in overheat effects past "101% = 'Mech randomly melts."

[wanderer]

Quote

Sized/size restricted hardpoints are a way to reduce boating and get rid of ghost heat.

Except that there's chassis that can legit pull off those boats even if you did this.

It'd simply mean X boat config goes to Y chassis and nobody else. You wouldn't remove the boats or the current need for ghost heat.

Having an actual overheat system would mitigate the need for ghost heat, because overheating would actually matter.

[AlexEss]

Mead, on 26 January 2016 - 05:09 AM, said:

Because magic has no place in a stompy robot game

So a Direwhale being able to walk over a beach and a swamp without being waist deep in muck... Ok
Magic teleporting ammo... Ok

A by these measure logical rising heat... NO that is fantasy.

Makes sense to.... Nobody.

Any way. We have ghost heat... just work around it or eat the negatives.

[pbiggz]

Actual heat scaling where running the bar high constantly would result in punishing drawbacks like distorted vision, lowered top speed, impaired aim, ammo explosions, or even pilot injury.

Firing convergence where firing many weapons in concert would cause all your weapons to wander slightly from the center, forcing them away from pinpoint accuracy unless you are firing limited weapons at a time. This gives value to link fire and allows for more diverse builds. For example. Firing 2 gauss and 2 ppcs at once on a direwolf would cause some bloom, but firing 2 gauss alone would not, firing 2 ppcs would not, etc.

These things are likely thoroughly beyond PGI's abilities to implement, but these are what should have been in the game, instead of ghost heat.

[MeiSooHaityu]

wanderer, on 26 January 2016 - 05:28 AM, said:

Except that there's chassis that can legit pull off those boats even if you did this.

Yup.

The Hunchback 4P laughs at hard point sizes. If harfpoint restrictions even could be added into the game, and ghost heat removed, it would be even more powerful when firing it's 9 MLasers.

There are other mechs too like the BlackJack or even mechs like the Thunderbolt or Grasshopper that would be running around with MPLasers.

It may stop some of the crazier builds, but it doesn't solve what people think it will. If anything, it would promote the heavier use of quirks to allow some now nerfed chassis to compensate and be competitive.

[Red Shrike]

pbiggz, on 26 January 2016 - 05:39 AM, said:

Actual heat scaling where running the bar high constantly would result in punishing drawbacks like distorted vision, lowered top speed, impaired aim, ammo explosions, or even pilot injury.

Firing convergence where firing many weapons in concert would cause all your weapons to wander slightly from the center, forcing them away from pinpoint accuracy unless you are firing limited weapons at a time. This gives value to link fire and allows for more diverse builds. For example. Firing 2 gauss and 2 ppcs at once on a direwolf would cause some bloom, but firing 2 gauss alone would not, firing 2 ppcs would not, etc.

These things are likely thoroughly beyond PGI's abilities to implement, but these are what should have been in the game, instead of ghost heat.

This. I like this.

And yes, I feel PGI isn't stubborn enough to at least try.

[pbiggz]

Red Shrike, on 26 January 2016 - 07:15 AM, said:

This. I like this.

And yes, I feel PGI isn't stubborn enough to at least try.

paul is. paul wont try because that would mean paul was wrong

[Red Shrike]

pbiggz, on 26 January 2016 - 07:28 AM, said:

paul is. paul wont try because that would mean paul was wrong

When was he ever right?

[pbiggz]

Red Shrike, on 26 January 2016 - 07:31 AM, said:

When was he ever right?

Its not whether he's right or wrong (he's wrong), its that if you tell him he's wrong, you'll have a bad time. Paul is right as long as paul says paul is right.

[CDLord HHGD]

Shameless self-plug.

[Metus regem]

FupDup, on 25 January 2016 - 08:00 PM, said:

The other option was to fire Paul.

I like that option.

I think a lot of us like that option....

[Amsro]

Coralld, on 25 January 2016 - 08:13 PM, said:

I do not know what other options they were looking at but what I do know is that Ghost Heat as it is called now was actually an idea from the community and was kind of popular at the time, also, there were accusations that PGI wasn't listening to the community and blah, blah, blah. So PGI decided to go with Ghost Heat as a way of killing two birds with one stone.

The community didn't come up with Ghost Heat, but some in the community jumped on the bandwagon once paul launched the idea.

There were at least 3 better options that dealt directly with the heat scale, solving issues that are still in the game to this day.

Instead of any sane idea, PGI went with ;

Firing a group of the same weapons gives a convoluted spike in heat.

Yet you can deal more damage with less heat with many other combinations of weapons. Ghost Heat released with the nerf of SRM's and balance has been convoluted ever since.

Ghost Heat = Band-Aid

This bandaid needs replacing and that should have come with the "Almighty Rebalance" before steam release.

To compound the issue they added clan mechs. Then quirks.

The layers of fail just pile on.

[Metus regem]

Amsro, on 26 January 2016 - 08:02 AM, said:

The community didn't come up with Ghost Heat, but some in the community jumped on the bandwagon once paul launched the idea.

There were at least 3 better options that dealt directly with the heat scale, solving issues that are still in the game to this day.

Instead of any sane idea, PGI went with ;

Firing a group of the same weapons gives a convoluted spike in heat.

Yet you can deal more damage with less heat with many other combinations of weapons. Ghost Heat released with the nerf of SRM's and balance has been convoluted ever since.

Ghost Heat = Band-Aid

This bandaid needs replacing and that should have come with the "Almighty Rebalance" before steam release.

To compound the issue they added clan mechs. Then quirks.

The layers of fail just pile on.

In many ways, they should dial it back to 3025, get everything working right with tech level 1, then move to Tech level 2, then Clans....

[Amsro]

Metus regem, on 26 January 2016 - 08:18 AM, said:

In many ways, they should dial it back to 3025, get everything working right with tech level 1, then move to Tech level 2, then Clans....

If they just got it working right with the 4 original mechs and THEN started expanding we might have been enjoying a much larger MWO community.

Instead they butchered balance and then added a new mech every month to get $$$ to attempt to fix their mistakes.

Ghost Heat removal and a proper heat scale would go a long way to a better balanced game.

[kapusta11]

Ghost heat is not bad as an idea though. The only drawback is that it works with weapon quantity instead of weapon quality, i.e.alpha strike damage modified by damage delivery mechanic.

Individual weapon nerfs or buffs affect all loadouts be it just a pair of weapons on a Medium mech that cause no problems or an array on Assault or Heavy which indeed may be imbalanced. GH however is top-down balancing tool.

If back in the days PGI set lower GH cap on cERML and cMPL and put medium and large lasers in the same penaly group laser vomit might not have been such an issue.

Also using heat as a penalty for mostly heat neutral ACs doesn't seem logical. We have screen shake, it should be possible to make weapons fire in small CoF if requirements are not met.

Edited by kapusta11, 26 January 2016 - 08:29 AM.