133 replies to this topic

[Saltychipmunk]

Trauglodyte, on 23 March 2016 - 03:50 PM, said:

I swear, I can't wait to get this. I'm probably going to be widely disappointed by it but, anything that comes into the game that shuts down the plethora of people that run 3+ Large Laser builds or the 3x3 Large Pulse/Medium Laser vomit is going to make me happy. Even if it is bad, as long as it semi-punishes people for doing this is a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind, hate, or despise energy builds. I've been playing Awesomes and Cicadas since Beta. What I mind and what is really bad for the game, in general, is the lack of a system that prevents people from taking the biggest weapon possible and just spewing it all over the place without any drawback. The lack of heat penalties, to-date, is why people do this. Here is to hoping we finally get some semblance of it.

all the stupid things PGI has been doing to 'fix' energy weapons and alpha strike game play is kind of reason a ton of the old beta players stopped playing the game.

Here is the deal as a player and minor fan of mechwarrior when i put in the effort to make a certain set up heat neutral, i expect that set up to be heat neutral. it should not be impossible to have 4 - 5 -6 large lazers up provided you dedicate your entire build too supporting 4 - 5 -6 large lazers.

it is not like that kind of setup has zero draw backs. it usually means making concessions in the form of speed / or space / or using more dangerous internals (xl engines vs standard engines) shaving off some armor to free up a few more tons of space.

etc.. the downside too all that is ALREADY THERE. it was always there. this whole crap with making things unnecessarily complicated or difficult to use to prevent a certain meta was and still is stupid.

[Jikil]

Right now Ghost heat pretty much dictates all the builds. Combining the 2- 3 Large Pulse Lasers with a varying amount of medium lasers is how all the builds are. The gauss nerf solidified it even more.

The most efficient way to play is to pop out of cover, blow your load and retreat behind cover before the enemy can finish their return fire.

The speed at which you can accomplish this as well as total damage you get from it are what dictate how good certain mechs are.

The BL-6-KNT and the BNC-3M are the perfect examples of ghost heat circumventing alpha strikes. And even in competition games we see this is the case as pin point firing can reduce an enemy brawler mech into dust in seconds.

The new ghost heat replacement is going to have to address this in some way. Or else its going to be more of the same with slightly different weapon combinations.

[Widowmaker1981]

Jikil, on 24 March 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

The most efficient way to play is to pop out of cover, blow your load and retreat behind cover before the enemy can finish their return fire.

Do you think that will ever change? The size of the 'load' may change, and the mechs/weapons used to blow it, but that basic playstyle will not, because no health regen, no respawn means you need to not take damage if you wish to do well, which means using cover.

[VorpalAnvil]

Widowmaker1981, on 24 March 2016 - 07:01 AM, said:

Do you think that will ever change? The size of the 'load' may change, and the mechs/weapons used to blow it, but that basic playstyle will not, because no health regen, no respawn means you need to not take damage if you wish to do well, which means using cover.

But only meta tryhards and evil haxxxors use cover, positioning and situational awareness. Real mechwarriors wander around open spaces waiting for other real mechwarriors to slowly approach them from their 12 oclock and only open fire when both sides have signed the "Declaration of Hostilities Pact".

[LordMelvin]

VorpalAnvil, on 24 March 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

But only meta tryhards and evil haxxxors use cover, positioning and situational awareness. Real mechwarriors wander around open spaces waiting for other real mechwarriors to slowly approach them from their 12 oclock and only open fire when both sides have signed the "Declaration of Hostilities Pact".

That's because everyone wants to be the guy standing on the front cover of the BattleTech rulebook striding across the battlefield like a metal god but no one wants to be the guy he had to walk through to get there.

Spoiler

[DivineEvil]

Widowmaker1981, on 24 March 2016 - 07:01 AM, said:

Do you think that will ever change? The size of the 'load' may change, and the mechs/weapons used to blow it, but that basic playstyle will not, because no health regen, no respawn means you need to not take damage if you wish to do well, which means using cover.

You should recognize, that at some point in time, the game actually changed to that basic playstyle. When did it happened? When Clans came by, with their severely overpowered laser weapons, and many IS mechs that followed also featured inflated Energy hardpoints, which were incapable to match the Clans raw firepower, but followed the thrend nonetheless.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

You know, a lot of this would be solved by harsher heat penalties and simply making aiming harder during actions often used to do this - ex. having to stabilize before that massive alpha would be pinpoint, and then having to deal with heated up mechs acting sluggish

There are more ways to approach this problem than 'only' playing with the ability to fire like ghost heat and power draw uses.
Both of these systems want to solve a complex issue with a partial solution.

[Widowmaker1981]

DivineEvil, on 24 March 2016 - 07:44 AM, said:

You should recognize, that at some point in time, the game actually changed to that basic playstyle. When did it happened? When Clans came by, with their severely overpowered laser weapons, and many IS mechs that followed also featured inflated Energy hardpoints, which were incapable to match the Clans raw firepower, but followed the thrend nonetheless.

I played before Clans, and as far as i remember, high mounts and cover were the way to play then, too. It may have been AC5s and PPCs instead of lasers, but it was still cover based gameplay.

[Koniving]

no one, on 23 March 2016 - 04:38 PM, said:

Oh no. PGI had an 'idea' on how to 'balance' the heat system without modifying dissipation or capacity, didn't they?

Exactly.

Problem I see is they didn't modify capacity.
Wee.

[DivineEvil]

Koniving, on 24 March 2016 - 07:49 AM, said:

Exactly.

Problem I see is they didn't modify capacity.
Wee.

Yeah... and they modified dissipation, which already was inferior considering the increased cooldown rates and durability levels. For any above-average intelligent person, a complete nonsense.

Widowmaker1981, on 24 March 2016 - 07:47 AM, said:

I played before Clans, and as far as i remember, high mounts and cover were the way to play then, too. It may have been AC5s and PPCs instead of lasers, but it was still cover based gameplay.

Not really. It was not dependant on cover. There were never a situation where you'd reach that cover and strike at the perpetrator, only to being blown into oblivion by an alpha or two. It would actually turn into a proper brawl, with a sniper being in clear disadvantage. Before the super-effective jump-sniping, the meta was solely on efficient Atlas brawling with second-line fire support.

Edited by DivineEvil, 24 March 2016 - 07:58 AM.

[Podex]

I'll still run my LPFlamers and ERFlamers, overheating everywhere I go. Ballistics suck.

[sycocys]

The system that Russ proposed is just ghost heat with all weapons in the same group.

The ~30 damage limit..... Alright well what do you do with 8 E point lights now that they won't have to manage heat/cd's? Think Firestarters and Cheetahs were broken before did you, with this they will be able to actually match output with assaults and exceed it because their CD's will be unaffected. Same for the majority of the mediums.

And the opposite end of the spectrum - there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of people using 6 LPL builds for half second bursts with longer CD as the penalty which is only helpful because it builds in a system to force them to cool off longer.

There's a reason why the TT game had power draw and heat systems that covered all components you were using. At the same time its pretty easy to see why PGI's 1 gauge replacement with no penalties doesn't work well at all. This is one of those situations where they actually need to implement a somewhat complex solution because the problem is complex and involves a lot of moving parts. Trying to bury it all under one simple system has proven quite well to not work very well.

[SplashDown]

Someting tells me that once this system is implemented..the jagermech will be the most played mech of all

P.S can we get a clan version of the jagermech plz?

[DivineEvil]

sycocys, on 24 March 2016 - 08:05 AM, said:

The system that Russ proposed is just ghost heat with all weapons in the same group.

As long as the penalties are properly weighted, perfectly fine with me.

Quote

The ~30 damage limit..... Alright well what do you do with 8 E point lights now that they won't have to manage heat/cd's? Think Firestarters and Cheetahs were broken before did you, with this they will be able to actually match output with assaults and exceed it because their CD's will be unaffected. Same for the majority of the mediums.

What heat/cd management problem 8xE Lights have right now? I don't see any.

Quote

And the opposite end of the spectrum - there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of people using 6 LPL builds for half second bursts with longer CD as the penalty which is only helpful because it builds in a system to force them to cool off longer.

First, there's weight of that weapon array. Second, there's limited range. Third, this build can atm circumvent the Ghost Heat with a 0.5s macro dividing the bursts, with no penalty and barely any difference in efficiency.

Quote

There's a reason why the TT game had power draw and heat systems that covered all components you were using. At the same time its pretty easy to see why PGI's 1 gauge replacement with no penalties doesn't work well at all. This is one of those situations where they actually need to implement a somewhat complex solution because the problem is complex and involves a lot of moving parts. Trying to bury it all under one simple system has proven quite well to not work very well.

How can you see how something work before its even implemented?

And actually no, the solution were and still is simple beyond common sense, because problem is also very simple.

Edited by DivineEvil, 24 March 2016 - 08:22 AM.

[Koniving]

DivineEvil, on 24 March 2016 - 07:54 AM, said:

Not really. It was not dependant on cover. There were never a situation where you'd reach that cover and strike at the perpetrator, only to being blown into oblivion by an alpha or two. It would actually turn into a proper brawl, with a sniper being in clear disadvantage. Before the super-effective jump-sniping, the meta was solely on efficient Atlas brawling with second-line fire support.

Before pilot skill trees really ****** things up... it was exactly this.
Enjoy this brawl between two Battlemechs.

Widowmaker1981, on 24 March 2016 - 07:47 AM, said:

I played before Clans, and as far as i remember, high mounts and cover were the way to play then, too. It may have been AC5s and PPCs instead of lasers, but it was still cover based gameplay.

There was a time, early 2013 and before then, when cover was 'part' of gameplay but it wasn't a pop-and-squat shooter.

Only the stupid would alpha strike.
After double heatsinks:


Note lack of Alpha among...well everything?
At the same time, we had DELAYED CONVERGENCE... which was an anti-pinpoint mechanic which could cause some or ALL of your firepower to be lost... as well as other things (lack of lag compensation), so chain firing was literally superior to alpha strikes.
Edit:

Found a non Atlas version of combat from right after alpha strikes and HSR-- I highly encourage watching this.

It's around the same time as above, but is after people got used to the lag compensation and instant convergence. Note at first, it was still heavy brawling because at the time pilot skill trees did not have terribly high percentages and people haven't quite yet learned that they won't be ******* EXPLODING when they overheat to 102%, unlike before February 2013. In the months to follow this, people began pushing the heat system more and more until you see what's in my next post.

Edited by Koniving, 24 March 2016 - 09:24 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

DivineEvil, on 24 March 2016 - 07:54 AM, said:

Not really. It was not dependant on cover. There were never a situation where you'd reach that cover and strike at the perpetrator, only to being blown into oblivion by an alpha or two.

Do you not remember the poptart era before Clans, or did you just block that out of your mind? Or the short era of 4 PPC Stalkers before that? That playstyle is exactly why ghost heat was introduced in the first place.

Jikil, on 24 March 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

The BL-6-KNT and the BNC-3M are the perfect examples of ghost heat circumventing alpha strikes.

I want to correct this, the typical BNC-3M build actually does not circumvent ghost heat, as the typical build is 5 LPLs.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 24 March 2016 - 08:37 AM.

[Cy Mitchell]

I personally have no problem with Alpha strikes as long as they cannot be stacked one upon the other with no detrimental effects to the person using them. I am hopeful that there will be a system that causes degraded Mech function when abusing Alphas.

Such detrimental effects could include one or any combination of:

Slowed movement speed
slow torso twist
degraded sensors and targeting
increased weapon cooldown
weapon system damage
extended Mech shutdown
etc.

Any of these consequences would make the "one targeting-one button-one shot" Mechs take more skill and more thought to operate.

[Widowmaker1981]

Koniving, on 24 March 2016 - 08:24 AM, said:

Before pilot skill trees really ****** things up... it was exactly this.
Enjoy this brawl between two Battlemechs.

Only the stupid would alpha strike.
After double heatsinks:


Note lack of Alpha among...well everything?
At the same time, we had DELAYED CONVERGENCE... which was an anti-pinpoint mechanic which could cause some or ALL of your firepower to be lost... as well as other things (lack of lag compensation), so chain firing was literally superior to alpha strikes.

Non Atlas in the same month as above.

Ain't nobody fightin' in cover. It's all out brawling in the open because RAWR it's a slug fest!

Im going to be honest.. I understand why my gaming guild dumped this game before I ever played it now. To me, that game looks awful - we simply want entirely different games.

[Podex]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 March 2016 - 08:35 AM, said:

Do you not remember the poptart era before Clans, or did you just block that out of your mind? Or the short era of 4 PPC Stalkers before that? That playstyle is exactly why ghost heat was introduced in the first place.

Those were dark days. That was by and far the most evil meta to ever show in this game. That one hill in Frozen City where the poptarters usually stood gives me goosebumps.

[Dashia]

TexAce, on 24 March 2016 - 02:42 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure I could even make that work.

VTR-9B

There is seriously no IS mech under 80 tons that can pack such a loadout thoug (2E, 3B, 2M)

i love it im building this and you all will be sorry.