102 replies to this topic

[DivineEvil]

Superscope, on 01 February 2016 - 01:33 AM, said:

I thought the root of all balance problems was the lack of a good heat scale.

ie. Solid consequences for heating up.

Or just a much lower heat capacity. You know, because that's exactly the parameter that was specifically made to limit the alpha-strike. Not the Heat Scale, not the overnerfed heatsinks, not the weapon heat tax. Heat Capacity.

I wonder why people keep bothering about complex crap they want to add, when the problem is nothing but few basic, fundamental values are being invalid, obvious for everyone.

Edited by DivineEvil, 01 February 2016 - 02:07 AM.

[kapusta11]

DivineEvil, on 01 February 2016 - 02:03 AM, said:

Or just a much lower heat capacity. You know, because that's exactly the parameter that was specifically made to limit the alpha-strike. Not the Heat Scale, not the overnerfed heatsinks, not the weapon heat tax. Heat Capacity.

I wonder why people keep bothering about complex crap they want to add, when the problem is nothing but few basic, fundamental values are being invalid, obvious for everyone.

So that's why PGI set a hard cap on how many Gauss rifles can be charged at a time, it's because heat capacity is too high!

[LordKnightFandragon]

Problem with MWO is the ability to sustain high damage output for eternity. Its like we all run around with inifinite ammo, with the fire button stuck on fire........

Its basically like this



Skip to about 1 minute in...

[Greyhart]

The heat cap is part of the issue and the pin point fire is another. You could i think address the issue through either method but a combination of both might be easier to take.

after all we all see the little circle for the arm weapons and know that actually it is the pixel in the middle of that circle is where things would hit. Is it really that bad an idea that the weapons hit anywhere within that circle rather than just at the exact centre?

then things like targeting computers could reduce the size of the circle. so a top computer might have everything fire at that centre pixel. So if you really do have those mad skills (because I don't) you can use them better with a top range targeting computer and give us mere mortals a bit more tonnage and space on you but spread that damage more.

[Knightshadowsong]

The problem with Balance in this game is Meta Mech's. Laser vomit, 6 PPC Stalker, Guass/PPC sniper's. All these 'meta' mech's made for a simple way to win, are the problem. And there the reason PGI has put Ghost heat in, or the charge to Guass Rifles. The simple fact is that it is Not PGI that had Balancing issues. It's the Meta "I MUST WIN" gamers who make the problem. And PGI cant just say 'stop using meta mech's and quit b(tching, (well they could but too many people would have Exploding head syndrome.)

[Ratpoison]

Sized hardpoints are the surest way to make a lot of people bored who normally like to experiment with unconventional builds. The build customization of this game is one of its biggest draws; you dumb that down for no reason, a lot of people including myself will get bored and leave for good. It's an arbitrary restriction that serves no constructive purpose to either balance or gameplay.

The meta is always in the weapons. Throwing huge restrictions on mechs will only slightly alter which handful of mechs are the best at boating it, while making a large number of them useless. Don't support this mislead idea.

[Greyhart]

I would also be in favour of hard points (or components) getting quirks rather than the whole mech.

Then it would be possible to limit the boating of one type of weapon to get the advantage of -x% laser duration. If only the left arm got that bonus then you can only fit so many in that part. This is in the omni mech construction so should not be too hard on the IS mechs either.

[Raggedyman]

brroleg, on 31 January 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

Look at mechlab in Mechwarrior 4
[[snip]]
So what im saying. This game will never ever will be balanced until hardpoints will have size, so you could not mount huge weapons in hardpoint where there should be small weapon instead.

If they are going to have hardpoints then they might at least go all the way and have the MW4 system, which IMO worked quite well and made each mech a lot more distinct.

[CDLord HHGD]

Solutions:
A Real Heatscale with Real Consequences
Simple and sensical Sized Hardpoints

[Khobai]

Quote

I thought the root of all balance problems was the lack of a good heat scale.

ie. Solid consequences for heating up.

You realize theres an entire subset of weapons that generate virtually no heat right?

An overly punitive heatscale will just reign in ballistics as the new dominant meta.

A lax heatscale gives players options, options is what the game needs, it doesnt need to be ballisticwarrior online.

BUT lasers absolutely need to be nerfed. Their max range needs to be reeled in. And this whole 1000m laser BS meta needs to get squashed.

[chewie]

Looking at the ops comments about MW4s sized weapons hard points, he clearly hasn't played MW2:mercs or MW3 where you could fit anything anywhere provided there was space and weight available.

MW4 prevented this.

MWO has combined the two, meaning you can now for anything anywhere provided you have the weight free, the space free, AND it's of the right type.

Now a proper heat scale sounds all well and good, but is it going to change what is really causing the balance problem? Not likely.

The real problem is the player base.
How can you balance weapons if you cram in so many, and lots of people do the same, then pgi look at the performance stats and listen to the complaints and decide that a weapon is not balanced right.

If you want to run 4 er large and you overheat after 1 alpha, it's not the weapon that's unbalanced, it's the build.
Don't change the weapon based on metrics, change the build based on what you've observed.

And as for CoF, it's bad enough in WoT when you have the cross hairs on the centre of the target at 500mtrs and then just as you pull the trigger RNGesus decides your shot is gonna go wide and high, but still within your CoF, and misses or bounces because of a slope or hardened armour point.

No thanks. We can do without that.
Though it would show up the cheaters that much quicker based on how accurate they are....

Edited by chewie, 01 February 2016 - 05:48 AM.

[CDLord HHGD]

Khobai, on 01 February 2016 - 05:25 AM, said:

You realize theres an entire subset of weapons that generate virtually no heat right?

An overly punitive heatscale will just reign in ballistics as the new dominant meta.

A lax heatscale gives players options, options is what the game needs, it doesnt need to be ballisticwarrior online.

BUT lasers absolutely need to be nerfed. Their max range needs to be reeled in. And this whole 1000m laser BS meta needs to get squashed.

I agree with most of this. However, I do not see ballistics being any more than they are now. In mounting ballistics, you pay a heavy price in tonnage and size (except AC2). Those people used to their fast, maneuverable, laser vomit builds will not find the same satisfaction in ballistic meta. 4x AC2 banshees, 4xAC5 Jagers, 2xAC20 Maulers and King Crabs.... They are still around. Dual Gauss Dires and Cats, yup.

[Khobai]

Quote

owever, I do not see ballistics being any more than they are now. In mounting ballistics, you pay a heavy price in tonnage and size

Ballistics will definitely be used more. Because youll be adding heat penalties for spiking heat. It will become in everyones interest not to spike heat to circumvent the heat penalties.

The one thing you can ALWAYS count on is that players will try to break a system. They did it with ghost heat. And theyll do it with heat penalties.

Edited by Khobai, 01 February 2016 - 05:54 AM.

[Nightshade24]

Homeskilit, on 31 January 2016 - 11:27 AM, said:

This would be a way better solution than Ghost Heat and it should not replace weapon balance, it should complement it.

brroleg, on 31 January 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

Look at mechlab in Mechwarrior 4



You can see, there is small ballistic and small energy hardpoint in right torso, so you can put there only some small energy and some small ballistic weapon. On left torso there is big missile hardpoint. So in Mechwarrior 4 this mech could not mount PPC or Gauss or even ER Laser. And this is how this mech is balanced. Its speed, its armor, its small size, all of this is balanced with being not able to mount big guns like PPC or Gauss or ER Laser

Now, what will happen when PGI will bring this mech into MWO. It will be able to mount gauss rifle in right torso and ER lasers in each arm. All of this while being small fast and with medium armor. This thing will be OP as hell. So PGI will throw some ridiculous negative quirks on it making it complete garbage, or even nerf gauss and ppc cause this mech will make those weapons OP being able to mount them.

When hellspawn is added: min hardpoints will be...
7D: 3 energy (1 ct), 2 missile [possibly buff, 4 missile, 3 energy]
8E: 5 energy (extra in arms), 2 missile

Neither can mount gauss. If it does PPC's it'll be a single one unless it has a weird engine, no ECM, no jumpjets, no BAP, and bare minimal heatsinks.
You may know by now this isn't an overpowered mech... and the only mech that has ballance problem potential that is between 20 to 100 tons as well as in timeline and are not quads are the Kraken (14 ballistic hardpoints stock, stock build 10 UAC 2's and 4 mg's) and the Firemoth/ Flea (20 tonners with MASC). Neither are weapon specific besides the kraken but it's mroe of the topic of it's lack of weapon hardpoint viarity and it's extreme more than weapon sizes. (also splitting it into many 'small weapons' will suck a lot, forces people to rather UAC 2 boat, UAC 5 boat, or MG boat... and 6 guass wouldn't be OP due to the current mechanics... more waste of space)

I personally do not think size hardpoints would fix things. Maybe size quirks (ie "large ballistics +10% range", "Small lasers +5% reload", etc.)

Homeskilit, on 31 January 2016 - 11:27 AM, said:

This would be a way better solution than Ghost Heat and it should not replace weapon balance, it should complement it.

You think it's a good idea to make a King crab able to run 12 machine guns on a kingcrab with 4 SRM 4's and a few medium lasers would be a good idea? that's brokeny borked in many ways. Sure you can get out of it's range relatively easily but that could be said with the traditional SRM / med las/ Ac 20 crab...

[Johnny Z]

brroleg, on 31 January 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

Look at mechlab in Mechwarrior 4



You can see, there is small ballistic and small energy hardpoint in right torso, so you can put there only some small energy and some small ballistic weapon. On left torso there is big missile hardpoint. So in Mechwarrior 4 this mech could not mount PPC or Gauss or even ER Laser. And this is how this mech is balanced. Its speed, its armor, its small size, all of this is balanced with being not able to mount big guns like PPC or Gauss or ER Laser

Now, what will happen when PGI will bring this mech into MWO. It will be able to mount gauss rifle in right torso and ER lasers in each arm. All of this while being small fast and with medium armor. This thing will be OP as hell. So PGI will throw some ridiculous negative quirks on it making it complete garbage, or even nerf gauss and ppc cause this mech will make those weapons OP being able to mount them.

So what im saying. This game will never ever will be balanced until hardpoints will have size, so you could not mount huge weapons in hardpoint where there should be small weapon instead.

I always like the idea of sized hard points. Mostly because sim reasons and that building a sim will solve a lot of problems naturally.

How ever balance is so close at the moment aside from very few issues. Tough call for a player.

It doesn't seem to make any sense making a big change with so many other features and items being worked on. The mech rescaling being one of these that sort of falls into the sized hard point category even if it isn't half as huge a work load from appearances.

Edited by Johnny Z, 01 February 2016 - 06:17 AM.

[brroleg]

Greyhart, on 01 February 2016 - 04:43 AM, said:

The heat cap is part of the issue and the pin point fire is another.

I suggested solution to fix pin point fire not in the boring way of nerfs, but in the way of adding new interesting gameplay mechanic https://mwomercs.com...into-ap-and-he/

But no one got interested. Oh well.

[smokefield]

tl;dr

op proposals has a weak point - it will reduce the number of usefull mechs and loads. people will gravitate towards the mechs that allows them to use the weapons they want...meaning we will see more of heavy/assaults and less of the others. also it will prevent us to see funny builds like boomcada or ac20 raven or whatever. this game needs more diversity not less....in all aspects.

[Triordinant]

The root of all balance problems in MWO is having two tech bases (Clan and IS). Even the makers of the original BattleTech game admitted they screwed up when they made Clans a playable option. If PGI stuck with their original 3015 timeline almost all our balance problems would not exist.

[Ratpoison]

I'd also like to point out that there are a large number of MechWarrior fans who dislike MW4 entirely because of the sized hardpoint system that gutted the creativity of the previous two games.

[chewie]

smokefield, on 01 February 2016 - 06:33 AM, said:

tl;dr

op proposals has a weak point - it will reduce the number of usefull mechs and loads. people will gravitate towards the mechs that allows them to use the weapons they want...meaning we will see more of heavy/assaults and less of the others. also it will prevent us to see funny builds like boomcada or ac20 raven or whatever. this game needs more diversity not less....in all aspects.

With people picking 1 chassis, adding the weapons they want, and playing only that chassis, the other variants of that type are redundant anyway.

Why bother with a black knight if a Warhammer 6d fits the bill better. Or why bother with a Raven without ecm that can mount er large and be a sniper, when an ecm version is way better.

Truthfully, how many people use all the variants they now own.

I now I don't. Once it's mastered, what's the point.
The only time you field more than 1 of any mech is for CW. Where you then have a build that mimics another is just as good on a second chassis so you field multiple without changing play style.

I know I do with my HBRs. They're all built the same so they all play the same.
2 er large (1 head 1 side torso, high mount for peaking with minimal mech showing) and 1 UAC10 for dakka (opposite sound torso, high mount for minimal mech shown on peak and shoot).

Mechlab has done away with variants.
Player use of mechlab has created balance issues.

Edited by chewie, 01 February 2016 - 07:12 AM.