100 replies to this topic

[Jables McBarty]

I like these concepts. I haven't dug too deeply into the rabbit hole of heat scale suggestions, but I think limiting penalties to over 70% heat would be good, then possibly additional penalties for super-high spikes--say at 125% heat (this is arbitrary--whatever is balanced) you permanently melt a heat sink so your scale for the rest of the match is changed. So even if you can deal with the screenshake/blur/reduced movement, you need to think about more permanent issues. I suppose there's the damage, so maybe the HS meltdown is redundant? Idk.

[Voivode]

As someone who has played since the open beta days, I've made my peace with ghost heat. Was it the best option available? Probably not. But it was something, and I'm glad they did something. The era of 6xPPC Stalkers everywhere really sucked the fun out of the game. In my time playing that was hands down the least fun I've had in this game.

I think there are some good ideas posted here but each has problems. I like the thought of high heat causing your aim to get RNGesused to hell. However, that wouldn't have effected all the problem weapons. If anyone remembers the twin AC20 Jagermech builds before ghost heat, those guys could pop off like 6 double shots of AC20 before overheating. That's the kind of outlier that can wreck game balance.

Using ammo explosions from heat would only reinforce the current laser vomit builds being the go to tactic. If you made ammo explosions a more prevalent game mechanic then I think you have to make lasers less efficient so each weapon type has it's advantages (ammo weapons do damage in a more efficient way, lasers don't have ammo to explode) and disadvantages (ammo go boom inside your mech, lasers are inefficient in dealing damage).

I think they chose ghost heat because it allowed them the greatest latitude in balancing the game, it's a single mechanic they can use across the board rather than having to use a myriad of different mechanics to limit the ability of outlying builds to control the game.

[Mechteric]

Voivode, on 26 January 2016 - 08:54 AM, said:

As someone who has played since the open beta days, I've made my peace with ghost heat. Was it the best option available? Probably not. But it was something, and I'm glad they did something. The era of 6xPPC Stalkers everywhere really sucked the fun out of the game. In my time playing that was hands down the least fun I've had in this game.
...
I think they chose ghost heat because it allowed them the greatest latitude in balancing the game, it's a single mechanic they can use across the board rather than having to use a myriad of different mechanics to limit the ability of outlying builds to control the game.

They chose ghost heat because at the time the only penalty for overheating was shutting down. Which at the time being overheat and shutdown did not deal any damage to your mech, the damage only occurred if you overrode shutdown and went over 100%.

But basically ever since they made it so your mech takes damage even if you shutdown because you were too much over 100% has pretty much rendered ghost heat more of a nuisance than anything.


I'm also in the camp of those who think the heat system itself should be changed to lower the capacity but have more dissipation. Also it would be nice if they had more visual effects for being overheat, like steam in the cockpit or something.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 26 January 2016 - 09:00 AM.

[Lightfoot]

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.

No Ghost heat is all PGI. What the community was suggesting was a heat penalty when more then one weapon is fired. That is from Battle Tech and it is also in the current game along with Ghost Heat, but it is fairly minor, 1 to 2 points of heat per additional weapon fired. What is wrong with Ghost Heat is that it hits energy weapons too hard and ballistic weapons almost not at all when it should just be a flat penalty so as to not ruin Battle Tech balancing. And firing 6xPPCs should just blow the mech up. Problem solved.

[wanderer]

Quote

heat penalty when more than one weapon is fired. That is from Battle Tech

Source please, because last I checked no such thing existed. TT has overheat effects, but there's nothing that has to do with mass-firing your guns = extra heat penalty.

[JC Daxion]

To me ghost heat needs to work with total of weapons fired, and damage together.. a 60-80 point shot should invoke much ghost heat.. Spread that damage around, for lots less.. I'd also slow the dissipation rates a bit, so if you did high alpha, it would take a good long while to cool..

I liked that idea about higher heat, giving a stall or reducing cool down speed.


I don't mind ghost heat as a principle at all, there are just to many weapon combos that can get around it

[Alan Davion]

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....

That's what they should have done from the start. Get all the IS mechs from 3025 to 3049 into the game, get them all properly balanced, which really wouldn't have taken all that long given the limited weapons and stuff.

Then come 3050 when the Clans start rolling in, they could have been balanced much easier given the larger selection of IS mechs versus a much smaller Clan selection of mechs. At that point you start balancing tech wise. ERLL, Streak 2s, Artemis, DHS.

The game needs just a complete restart at this point with the addition of "Stock Only" rules to crush the stupid laser meta, and reduce the heat cap by half. What is the heat cap right now? 100? Drop it to 50.

[TLBFestus]

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).

I remember suggesting the very thing, but in my defense I thought it was going to be a very severe heat penalty that would basically stop anyone from using more than 2 identical weapons.

My bad.

[Amsro]

Voivode, on 26 January 2016 - 08:54 AM, said:

As someone who has played since the open beta days, I've made my peace with ghost heat. Was it the best option available? Probably not. But it was something, and I'm glad they did something. The era of 6xPPC Stalkers everywhere really sucked the fun out of the game. In my time playing that was hands down the least fun I've had in this game.

I think there are some good ideas posted here but each has problems. I like the thought of high heat causing your aim to get RNGesused to hell. However, that wouldn't have effected all the problem weapons. If anyone remembers the twin AC20 Jagermech builds before ghost heat, those guys could pop off like 6 double shots of AC20 before overheating. That's the kind of outlier that can wreck game balance.

Using ammo explosions from heat would only reinforce the current laser vomit builds being the go to tactic. If you made ammo explosions a more prevalent game mechanic then I think you have to make lasers less efficient so each weapon type has it's advantages (ammo weapons do damage in a more efficient way, lasers don't have ammo to explode) and disadvantages (ammo go boom inside your mech, lasers are inefficient in dealing damage).

I think they chose ghost heat because it allowed them the greatest latitude in balancing the game, it's a single mechanic they can use across the board rather than having to use a myriad of different mechanics to limit the ability of outlying builds to control the game.

The Beef has a Direstar that can one shot anyone. Is it op? nope. Does it suck to be killed in this way? yep.

But after his second alpha he's toast. It is a comical build at best, the VERY same as the 6 PPC stalker.

If you take the heat scale down, you wouldn't even be able to shoot 6 PPC without instadying.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Ghost Heat is bad.

[Khobai]

The 6 PPC Stalker was always a joke. It was the 4 PPC Stalker that caused all the problems and forced them to implement ghost heat. But then Gauss/x2 PPC and x2 AC5/x2 PPC builds started appearing which circumvented ghost heat entirely so they just ended up nerfing PPCs into the ground anyway.

But even the oldschool 4 PPC Stalker is a joke compared to the current laser vomit meta. 2 CLPL and 4-5 CERLL builds can do 50-60 damage alphas, often putting most of the damage in the same location, while entirely circumventing ghost heat.

Ghost heat could definitely limit those builds if they linked CERML and CLPL in the same ghost heat group. But it still doesnt change the fact no one likes Ghost heat because its completely dumb mechanic.

Edited by Khobai, 26 January 2016 - 11:27 AM.

[Metus regem]

Khobai, on 26 January 2016 - 11:19 AM, said:

The 6 PPC Stalker was always a joke.

It was the 4 PPC Stalker that caused all the problems and forced them to implement ghost heat.

But even the 4 PPC Stalker is a joke compared to the current laser vomit meta. 2 CLPL and 4-5 CERLL builds can do 50-60 damage alphas.

Likely both the quad and hex PPC stalkers killed Paul repeatedly, that in a fit of rage he developed Ghost heat to try and correct the issues that were first put into the game when they tripled the rate of fire on most weapons....

[Bobzilla]

cSand, on 25 January 2016 - 09:00 PM, said:

You know, I'm sure I've said this before

but calling out staff personally, is about as unclassy as it gets.

I love you guys, but I guarantee if you actually met Paul, you would not have the sack to tell him to his face he should be fired. You would wither like a peen after a day in the Atlantic ocean and be like "hi" smile and wave

It's like that mean girls movie, but on a e-forum.

In all fairness, we get limited info as to why he chooses what, so after a quick convo, it'd either be 'oh i see' or 'holy crap you really do need to be fired'.

[Josef Koba]

I've found that most of the people who are loudest/most aggressive in an online setting typically don't have the brass to act that sort of way in real life. And we veterans are supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard or some such thing, not get into confrontations for the sake of confrontation (though we all know that's not true). But I digress...

I would like very much to see a more imaginative mechanic for the heat issue. Ghost heat isn't the best answer, as most of us seem to agree, but we've been playing under it's rules for a very long time. I would prefer seeing something more in keeping with the flavor of table top. Granted, it isn't entirely possible given that TT is a turn based game and MWO is not (obviously), so the idea of firing weapons and dissipating heat during a turn is not going to work. But, I think it would be real swell to see different penalties, like you have in TT, for going over your heat capacity. I echo the sentiment about RNGeesus - I don't want to see outright deaths/mech explosions/etc - but having penalties to movement (both in speed and agility (arms/torso)), degraded sensors and HUD, slower rate of fire, diminished heat dissipation, or something similar at different thresholds would be very interesting from my perspective. If I'm cranking the heat up by blasting out ERPPC fire, I would expect my mech's performance to suffer up to the point of a shutdown. While ammo explosions do appeal to me, I also think that would be a poor choice for the reasons that have been mentioned (some builds don't use ammo at all, but run high heat; some builds use ammo but run at lower heat).

So agility penalties, or some other performance penalties, would be fantastic. We all know that right now, a pilot can fire everything he has until he shuts down. For me, this is a big deal, but for most pilots I spectate, they don't seem that concerned. In fact, I see a boat load of overheat-to-suicides anymore. I'd rather a more nuanced approach to that, too. And I think an RNG would be okay here. Instead of damage to internals depending on how high you go above your heat scale, I'd like to see potential damage to your systems each time you overheat. Maybe the first time you lose some internal structure, but maybe you blow out a laser or an AC. You don't necessarily die right away, but you're definitely gimped. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a better crit system? This way maybe you lose an engine slot and suffer from lower max speed, more heat, worse dissipation, etc. Maybe you blow an actuator and have to drag your leg around - not as bad as outright losing the leg maybe, but bad enough to be noticeable. In fairness, however, I can probably count the number of times I've overheated in 6,000 matches on my hands and feet, so perhaps some of this is already implemented in some way. But I sure would like to see a more nuanced approach. We can do better.

[oldradagast]

The answer: Cone of Fire

Why it works:
- No need for ghost heat since it becomes impossible to guarantee absurd amounts of pixel perfect damage at any range. This kills the long range insta-kill alpha meta
- It makes sense and fits with Lore, where mechs were not perfectly accurate with their weapons
- The game engine can already handle it since we see an extreme case of cone of fire when using jump jets, MASC, or machine guns
- It increases design space since the cone of fire can be varied in size, thus changing accuracy based on many things, such as: number of weapons fired, type of weapon, modules, skills, heat, etc.

The sad reality: Unfortunately, PGI is committed to the ghost heat "solution," and too many "skillz" players would throw a fit if they couldn't laser vomit or dual Gauss some shmuck to death at a 1km out with a few shots - because point-click-kill is real skill. So, we're left with a silly, nonsensical system, over-nerfed weapons, and others that are still boated all over the place... and we still have pixel-perfect damage and mechs being drilled through in a few, perfectly placed shots in a manner completely unlike anything in Battletech's lore.

Edited by oldradagast, 26 January 2016 - 04:44 PM.

[Zordicron]

Well, cone of fire would work, but I gave up that dream a looooong time ago when they put the convergence on the back burner and never looked back. Anything is possible, I mean look some newer guy came in and hella fixed HSR code, so they could maybe figure it out.

Anyway, once I gave up on any convergence stuff, I suggested this: (note, not original thread but the one I kept bookmarked now because I got sick of retyping it)

http://mwomercs.com/...zed-hardpoints/

That would have allowed PGI to both create a system to prevent basic spam boats, and also tailor things specifically for problem children as they cropped up through minor, easy to make adjustments. Nothing has ever come out of it, Russ once a long while back made some chatter about looking into a sized hardpoint-ish system, but that is history also.

I created a ruckus after one of the town halls about cutting heat scale and upping dissipation more recently(relative to those first bits) but Russ/Paul appear to feel a MW3 style cap with dissipation where people are basically forced out of alpha strikes by threat of shutdown is a giant NO for MWO, so we got some very minor adjustments to cap and dissipation in a following patch instead. People are always "it would just let players alpha more often with more dissipation", but they clearly can;t grasp what a fixed heat cap of, oh, say 30 would do to laser alphas. Part of my suggestion on heat scale was to allow SHS to raise the cap, but not DHS. Both gives a reason to possibly use SHS(like a certain Awesome loadout) and prevent people from tweaking their heat cap to suit their alpha loadout while still enjoying the extra DHS dissipation.


Most of those things garner some support, but also some hate depending on if you ask an old time-y Mechwarrior player or someone satisfied with the state of things in MWO. From what I gather, Russ/Paul are mostly the latter, but begrudginly throw us a bone once in a while because they still like our money.

Anyway, lots of forum nostalgia lately!! Must be the new year and people thinking about change.

[Trauglodyte]

Quote

So, they had to scrap delayed convergence in favor of keeping the HSR system in effect.

YET, we ironically still have an efficiency that involves convergence but does nothing because there is no convergence. I'm personally happy that we don't have it because it would make the game harder for people who can't aim worth a damn which is, sadly, pretty much all of us. Seriously, can you imagine if they made LASERS hard t use?

[Tarl Cabot]

Adjust heatsinks, SHS or DHS, so they only add a portion to the heatcap.

If a form of Ghost Heat is needed - remove the big hit, adjust the multiplier and affect when more than 1 weapon is fired, thus removing current weapon synergy. Example for Clans, GR+6ERML would have 7 weapon multiplier. IS, 3ERLL+6ML, 9 weapon multiplier.

Example Medium Laser 4 heat each. Fire 2ML = 2*4*multiplier = 9heat (this is an example)

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 26 January 2016 - 07:07 PM.

[Davers]

Lightfoot, on 25 January 2016 - 07:59 PM, said:

6 PPC Stalkers = Ghost Heat. Was the way of it.

Ever since the first 130kph 9 spl Hunchbacks appeared there was talk of increased heat on alpha strikes, especially on masses of light weight weapons. This eventually became ghost heat.

[Trauglodyte]

For all of the complaining, Ghost Heat accomplished what it was designed to do. The unfortunate thing is that the heat reduction system is still kind of hosing the game up a lot. The TT hard liners, like myself to a point, wanted a hard 30 heat max but created a system where the game mimicked the TT's 10s combat phase. The sad part is that, here we are 3+ (is it 3?) years beyond release and weapon spamming is still a major issue. While Ghost Heat helped to curb boating, we still don't have anything that prevents stupid weapon us or bad heat management. Quite frankly, Overheating isn't really that much of a drawback and there are now 3 cool to cold maps that just make spamming that much more rampant.

[Amsro]

Trauglodyte, on 26 January 2016 - 07:35 PM, said:

For all of the complaining, Ghost Heat accomplished what it was designed to do. The unfortunate thing is that the heat reduction system is still kind of hosing the game up a lot. The TT hard liners, like myself to a point, wanted a hard 30 heat max but created a system where the game mimicked the TT's 10s combat phase. The sad part is that, here we are 3+ (is it 3?) years beyond release and weapon spamming is still a major issue. While Ghost Heat helped to curb boating, we still don't have anything that prevents stupid weapon us or bad heat management. Quite frankly, Overheating isn't really that much of a drawback and there are now 3 cool to cold maps that just make spamming that much more rampant.

The sad truth is ghost heat has done nothing of note since inception. At least not in a positive manner.

Instead it is the heat/damage changes of the "boated" weapons that made the difference.

Balancing the weapons (which is still not complete 3 years later) was always the answer. Ghost Heat just punished a few builds/mechs that weren't that great to begin with. IMO.