271 replies to this topic

[wanderer]

Quote

QQ harder and l2p, adept improvise and overcome. dont like the new flamers? to bad get gud.

At the moment, since you can dodge the heat limiters on flamers with chainfire...it's more like telling people to adapt to a lurmageddon-style bug in the system. It'll take time to spread, in part because flamergodmoding takes a little counter-intuitive play to do right. But spread it will.

That is not a gitgud. That is a "wow, did you ever screw up, how did this get past testing" situation.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I tweeted Russ about the destroyed Flamer multiplier decay. No reply... Probably didn't know what I was talking about, though.

[Thunder Child]

As someone who wanted to try out the "OP GODMODE FLAMERGEDDON" for myself, my extensive testing last night confirmed one very important fact.....


I am a terrible Light Pilot.
I was getting insta-gibbed the moment I started burninating someone.

[Sereglach]

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 10:50 AM, said:

I tweeted at Russ and he's watching the videos on the OP now. I hope he realizes this is a massive problem!

Hopefully he turns around and reads the rest of the thread. It is a serious exploit and it'll only get worse the longer it goes on. It's funny that he says he doesn't see it as exploit worthy, yet, and it'll take more convincing for him. That's, of course, before you drew his attention to this thread.

[Roadkill]

Averen, on 17 February 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

I do not think you know what I'm talking about. Even though you're posting in a thread about it. Which is kinda bewildering.

There's no exploit here, yet you keep saying exploit.

Exploit has a specific meaning, and it's not the way you keep using it.

The new flamer mechanic needs to be fixed because it's poorly designed and clearly wasn't tested by a professional game tester. But that doesn't make it an exploit.

[Sereglach]

Roadkill, on 17 February 2016 - 11:08 AM, said:

There's no exploit here, yet you keep saying exploit.

Exploit has a specific meaning, and it's not the way you keep using it.

The new flamer mechanic needs to be fixed because it's poorly designed and clearly wasn't tested by a professional game tester. But that doesn't make it an exploit.

Sadly, I have to disagree with you partly, here. While I agree, vehemently, that Flamers need to be fixed, it is an exploit. There's another example of an exploit that is still in the game and has been there for ages . . . it falls under the same kind of bad implementation and level of issues that we're facing, now.

You can still have a Dire Wolf hop on top of a locust and run around at nearly 170 kph, on top of the Locust, and fight from that position with all the agility of a Locust. It's due to PGI's poor state of collisions and collision damage. It's in the game, and it's an exploit. However, while PGI isn't acknowledging the Flamer exploit, yet, they do acknowledge the "mech stacking" exploit and will ban people for it.

The Flamer is in a similar situation. While the implementation is terrible and needs work, that implementation has created an exploit . . . a loophole in the programming . . . that people can utilize to game the system and exploit the weapon. They receive all of the weapon's benefits without any drawbacks. That, thusly, creates an exploit.

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 10:50 AM, said:

I tweeted at Russ and he's watching the videos on the OP now. I hope he realizes this is a massive problem!

Considering his current stance, mind pointing him to some later posts in the thread, like my first post on Page 4. Hopefully he takes it into consideration. It would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

EDIT: Russ said he's talking about Flamer changes to fix the problem. Please push some more reasonable numbers of damage and heat damage at him with no scaling mechanics.

Edited by Sereglach, 17 February 2016 - 11:23 AM.

[Roadkill]

Sereglach, on 17 February 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

The Flamer is in a similar situation. While the implementation is terrible and needs work, that implementation has created an exploit . . . a loophole in the programming . . . that people can utilize to game the system and exploit the weapon. They receive all of the weapon's benefits without any drawbacks. That, thusly, creates an exploit.

I get what you're saying, sort of, but I'll guess I'll agree to disagree.

You don't need a macro to do this. You don't even really need to chain fire. You just have to be smart enough to not hold down the trigger constantly and forever.

Fire for 4 seconds. Don't fire for 1 second. Repeat.
(Change the values as you see fit. Just don't go over 4 seconds.)

The exponential heat is there to discourage people from using the weapon for more than ~4.5 seconds at a time. So if you do exactly what that mechanic is designed to encourage, that's not an exploit. It's working as intended.

Granted, the intent is screwballs, but this is clearly just the case of a bad design being used as intended. For it to be an exploit would require that it be used in a way that wasn't intended, and while I'm far from a White Knight I find the stretch required to reach "not being used as intended" in this case to be beyond even PGI.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

wanderer, on 17 February 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

At the moment, since you can dodge the heat limiters on flamers with chainfire...it's more like telling people to adapt to a lurmageddon-style bug in the system. It'll take time to spread, in part because flamergodmoding takes a little counter-intuitive play to do right. But spread it will.

That is not a gitgud. That is a "wow, did you ever screw up, how did this get past testing" situation.

some surprising mental gymnastics you got going on there, ever think that they work exactly as PGI intended?

they are part of the game, the game does not conform to what you think are, or are not "exploits"

my statement stands, get gud, l2p and if you need to start packing 2-4 flamers on every build and fight fire with fire.

Edited by Mellifluer, 17 February 2016 - 11:26 AM.

[pwnface]

Mellifluer, on 17 February 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:

some surprising mental gymnastics you got going on there, ever think that they work exactly as PGI intended?

they are part of the game, the game does not conform to what you think are, or are not "exploits"

my statement stands, get gud, l2p and if you need to start packing 2-4 flamers on every build and fight fire with fire.

You sir are r3tarded.

If using a flamer with a macro completely negates exponential heat generation why even have the exponential heat generation mechanic to begin with? Clearly they are not working the way they are supposed to but I'm doubtful PGI is willing to admit they even made a mistake.

Edited by pwnface, 17 February 2016 - 11:27 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Roadkill, on 17 February 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:

I get what you're saying, sort of, but I'll guess I'll agree to disagree.

You don't need a macro to do this. You don't even really need to chain fire. You just have to be smart enough to not hold down the trigger constantly and forever.

Fire for 4 seconds. Don't fire for 1 second. Repeat.
(Change the values as you see fit. Just don't go over 4 seconds.)

The exponential heat is there to discourage people from using the weapon for more than ~4.5 seconds at a time. So if you do exactly what that mechanic is designed to encourage, that's not an exploit. It's working as intended.

Granted, the intent is screwballs, but this is clearly just the case of a bad design being used as intended. For it to be an exploit would require that it be used in a way that wasn't intended, and while I'm far from a White Knight I find the stretch required to reach "not being used as intended" in this case to be beyond even PGI.

The Flamers "remember" how long they've been fired, for whatever duration.

So, doing as you say will still eventually bring it over 4.75s, multiple times.
Not sure what the cooldown is, but the result is evident after you've been tapping the Flamers for awhile.

[pwnface]

Mcgral18, on 17 February 2016 - 11:29 AM, said:

The Flamers "remember" how long they've been fired, for whatever duration.

So, doing as you say will still eventually bring it over 4.75s, multiple times.
Not sure what the cooldown is, but the result is evident after you've been tapping the Flamers for awhile.

This is precisely why pulsing for 0.1 duration and then cooling for 0.2 duration completely negates the heat generation. It seems this magic ratio of 1 to 2 works to keep your heat at 0, not sure the exact value of the "flamer memory" though without looking into the game files.

[Mcgral18]

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 11:32 AM, said:

This is precisely why pulsing for 0.1 duration and then cooling for 0.2 duration completely negates the heat generation. It seems this magic ratio of 1 to 2 works to keep your heat at 0, not sure the exact value of the "flamer memory" though without looking into the game files.

That info isn't Client side (like many important things).

I have heard that it's equal to firing time, and double the firing time certainly qualifies in that case.

[Deathlike]

It's related to firing time.

Think about why that is - if you attempt to "stunlock" a player with Flamers, you have to keep holding the trigger/fire button down as long as possible. That's why they did this sort of math. The problem simply is that macros automate this better than human reaction.

[pwnface]

If someone with macro software is willing to test some things we might have a stronger case to get this fixed.

We should try macros with:

0.5sec burn 0.5sec cooldown
0.5sec burn 1sec cooldown

I believe the original video was 0.1 burn 0.2 cooldown.

It's pretty clear from Russ' responses that he doesn't think there is an actual bug or problem with the way flamers are behaving, even after watching the videos posted in the original post. It's actually pretty disappointing.

[Scout Derek]

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

If someone with macro software is willing to test some things we might have a stronger case to get this fixed.

We should try macros with:

0.5sec burn 0.5sec cooldown
0.5sec burn 1sec cooldown

I believe the original video was 0.1 burn 0.2 cooldown.

It's pretty clear from Russ' responses that he doesn't think there is an actual bug or problem with the way flamers are behaving, even after watching the videos posted in the original post. It's actually pretty disappointing.

Well, you DO have to get close with them....

And if you're a light.... chances are you may stumble upon a Streak Boat and die instantly from a alpha of SSRMs...

I think the reason why Russ doesn't see anything wrong is because of their range and how close you'd have to be to use them effectively.... plus I doubt everyone really wants to use flammers, many like sniping or lurming or anything else than using Flammers or getting close...

But that's what I think, it's an opinion, and not entirely fact either.

Controversial, they say, and this is one of them. Some say don't fix what's not broken, but a lot see differently.

[pwnface]

Scout Derek, on 17 February 2016 - 11:46 AM, said:

Well, you DO have to get close with them....

And if you're a light.... chances are you may stumble upon a Streak Boat and die instantly from a alpha of SSRMs...

I think the reason why Russ doesn't see anything wrong is because of their range and how close you'd have to be to use them effectively.... plus I doubt everyone really wants to use flammers, many like sniping or lurming or anything else than using Flammers or getting close...

But that's what I think, it's an opinion, and not entirely fact either.

Controversial, they say, and this is one of them. Some say don't fix what's not broken, but a lot see differently.

Being able to keep an enemy mech at 90% heat while keeping myself at 0% heat is a BUG regardless of what Russ is willing to admit. Players should not be able to circumvent exponential heat generation by artificially altering their firing pattern. If PGI intended flamers to be used as a heat neutral weapon then exponential heat generation wouldn't even exist as a mechanic.

This is simply a case of Russ standing by PGI's mistakes and not wanting to admit something is broken. Whether or not the flamer is "OP" or even "useful" is actually irrelevant, this is clearly a bug and an instance where something is not working as intended.

[sycocys]

Seems like a good reason for PGI to change their stance on macro's being acceptable.

[Deathlike]

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 11:54 AM, said:

Being able to keep an enemy mech at 90% heat while keeping myself at 0% heat is a BUG regardless of what Russ is willing to admit. Players should not be able to circumvent exponential heat generation by artificially altering their firing pattern. If PGI intended flamers to be used as a heat neutral weapon then exponential heat generation wouldn't even exist as a mechanic.

This is simply a case of Russ standing by PGI's mistakes and not wanting to admit something is broken. Whether or not the flamer is "OP" or even "useful" is actually irrelevant, this is clearly a bug and an instance where something is not working as intended.

Well, the other possible explanation is that Russ hasn't played with them or attempted to break the game with them.

[pwnface]

Deathlike, on 17 February 2016 - 11:55 AM, said:

Well, the other possible explanation is that Russ hasn't played with them or attempted to break the game with them.

He's seen the videos in the original post of this thread.
He doesn't think it's a problem.
Minimum viable product.
Incompetence.

sycocys, on 17 February 2016 - 11:55 AM, said:

Seems like a good reason for PGI to change their stance on macro's being acceptable.

I can emulate the behavior by basically spam clicking my mouse button. It's not really a macro problem, it's a flamer exponential heat generation problem.

[Scout Derek]

pwnface, on 17 February 2016 - 11:54 AM, said:

Being able to keep an enemy mech at 90% heat while keeping myself at 0% heat is a BUG regardless of what Russ is willing to admit. Players should not be able to circumvent exponential heat generation by artificially altering their firing pattern. If PGI intended flamers to be used as a heat neutral weapon then exponential heat generation wouldn't even exist as a mechanic.

This is simply a case of Russ standing by PGI's mistakes and not wanting to admit something is broken. Whether or not the flamer is "OP" or even "useful" is actually irrelevant, this is clearly a bug and an instance where something is not working as intended.

Like I said, opinion, not going to dive deep into this conversation, but I think this statement's enough:

PGI decides how to make their game. Of course they'll listen to the player base at some points, but only to a extent where they see widespread on their servers on the use of flammers. Per say, for example, Arctic Cheetah. They didn't fix them until later results proved the player base right on the unbalancing.

A good test would be to record the use of flamers in-game, to truly see how effective they are in groups, or as a lone wolf while playing.