819 replies to this topic

[Hotthedd]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 August 2016 - 09:33 AM, said:

It was a slight exaggeration, but related to your comment that "accurate group shots were not a thing in the BT universe". All the latin, I'm so impressed.. Anyways, the downside of ACs seems to be much less than the upside because AC loadouts on heavies and assaults easily outperform laser vomit, high alpha options, with the one exception of the ER PPC/Gauss Kodiak that still has its role. So saying that you are "okay" with AC loadouts being dominant means you are "okay" with worse weapon balance than we have now.. I hope you realize that is what that means.

No, it means that I'm okay with weapons being different. I disagree that lasers and missiles will go the way of the dinosaur.
Perhaps we shall find out.

[Kirkland Langue]

I just wish they'd get rid of perfect convergence. People talk about wanting a "cone". I've always thought that I'd want weapons to converge at their max range to the point where you aim.

I believe that's all we need to do to fix TTK.

[Gas Guzzler]

DjPush, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

Because I am tired of two years of zerg rush pew pew meta.

Well guess what! The pew pew meta is gone, rejoice and be glad. Load up on your autocannons/autocannons+PPCs in your Warhammer or UACs in your Kodiak-3 and you will be as meta as they come.

[Hotthedd]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 August 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:

Novels: Whether it was convenient for the plot determined whether or not it was a quick kill or a long drawn out dramatic slug fest. Charlie: Think of it as a chess game. Don't put yourself in a position where the enemy team can shoot you and your team can't shoot the enemy team.

Everybody is "Charlie" sometimes.
The point being that it is not always the player's bad positioning. The positioning can be sound, but if you are the one to be called for focusing, because of a well timed push by the OpFor, it usually means an early opportunity to spectate from your lance mate's cockpit.

[Gas Guzzler]

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:

No, it means that I'm okay with weapons being different. I disagree that lasers and missiles will go the way of the dinosaur.
Perhaps we shall find out.

With the fact that dakka is already edging out laser vomit builds, and laser vomit builds are going to get a swift kick to the teeth with energy draw, its pretty obvious that lasers will go the way of the dinosaur. SRMs might be okay depending on how their damage is factored in to the 30 damage cap, as there are rumors that spread weapons will count for less damage.

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:40 AM, said:

Everybody is "Charlie" sometimes.
The point being that it is not always the player's bad positioning. The positioning can be sound, but if you are the one to be called for focusing, because of a well timed push by the OpFor, it usually means an early opportunity to spectate from your lance mate's cockpit.

In that situation though, energy draw isn't going to make a difference, 30 damage times 5 is 150 damage..

[AnTi90d]

Kirkland Langue, on 10 August 2016 - 09:37 AM, said:

I just wish they'd get rid of perfect convergence. People talk about wanting a "cone". I've always thought that I'd want weapons to converge at their max range to the point where you aim.

I believe that's all we need to do to fix TTK.

If PGI wanted to, they could totally apply the existing spread-damage mechanic from C-ERPPCs to all weapons. That would increase TTK.. With that, they could also throw Ghost Heat MK1 out the window.

I'd rather see measures taken to prevent perfect-convergence.. but PGI can't figure out how to have that with HSR.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

I never advocated for removing alpha strikes, only that they should have an accuracy downside that makes group fire vs. chain fire an actual choice.

We have that currently, its called taking different weapons that behave similar to as though you were chain firing big weapons. Even still, your option to make that a "choice" is to nerf the alpha strike to the point that the whole choice is moot because you can no longer actually rely on them.

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

I would argue that the benefit of more damage to one location per shot would be a BIG advantage.

I don't think you got the point of that post, if you had a choice between 2 AC20 builds or 4 AC5 builds, the one that would win out (as it currently does) if you can't reliably sustain the 2 AC20 build is the 4 AC5 because it has less downsides and higher DPS.

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

We ARE in a one-dimensional balance situation. It is all about the alpha. (Or at least, the group fire)

So in your eyes, it doesn't matter whether it is a Spider with 2 MPLs or a Kodiak with 4 UAC10s, all should be punished for group fire regardless of the group damage output? Or is their context in that something like group firing 3 AC5s is acceptable but 4 UAC10s is not? If there is context, then guess what, we already have that, its called dakka and it is prevalent in the meta, even before the Dakka Kodiak came about (which was more alpha oriented).

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

You misunderstood my reply. I was saying that a 2ERPPC/1 GR setup would still fire both ERPPCs as one, or a 2GR/1ERPPC set up would still fire the 2 GR as one, given that the weapons were in 2 different groups.

So anything fired in groups is a blight upon mechwarrior, even if it is 2 MGs? It still won't change up the dynamics of what make a good build, just look at the 5 LPL Wubshee/Wubmaster. It still encourages me to stack similar weapons, but with a forced chainfire sort of system, I'm just going to gravitate towards big weapons and say screw anything small. Goodbye AC2s, MLs, SLs, MGs, SRMs, AC5s, LLs, Flamers, LBX.

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

That is not what I said at all. Bad positioning will still lead to the same outcome.

No it won't because suddenly I can withstand more firepower, making pushing much easier. You want mechs to be tougher and withstand more fire, guess what, that has direct implications on what strats/tactics are viable and it generally means range is less effective because removing firepower from the equation on a push is very important in whether or not you survive the push once they get within range. This is why you will see matches where a push occurs and they win despite one or two mechs dying with 0-100 damage.

[Mad Dog Morgan]

At least Alpha Limit will go through 2 major PTS sessions prior to any implementation.

[Satan n stuff]

Hotthedd, on 10 August 2016 - 07:28 AM, said:

I love the "players' aim" argument, LMAO!

You DO realize that it is more difficult to hit a single component with multiple shots of a weapon that it is to point-n-click every weapon at once, and be guaranteed to hit precisely on the reticle, right? Therefore, players with better aim would be the ones to benefit from fewer alphas being used.

I don't think you get what I was saying there, random elements are usually put in place so players with little actual skill can occasionally get a kill and skilled players have to put in more effort than they otherwise would. Players with good aim have it much harder because the randomness sets a hard limit on how accurate you can be while it barely affects players who can only aim in the general direction of the enemy to begin with. It's purely a way to stop games from being dominated by skilled players so they don't scare away all the newbies.
Since we don't have bad players going against good players if the matchmaker is working correctly there's no point in having such a system in MWO, in other words your example is completely irrelevant.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

with coolshots, you can wreck people with good alphas. If we didn't have coolshots, things would be okay and players couldn't pull much of the silliness off without cooking their mechs off.

[Kirkland Langue]

Vaskadar, on 10 August 2016 - 09:53 AM, said:

At least Alpha Limit will go through 2 major PTS sessions prior to any implementation.

Pointless. they might as well push it live as soon as they have something coded.

The only result of doing a playtest first will be for people to criticize PGI's playtest process when the system, inevitably, fails to please the audience. Might as well skip the playtest since not many people are going to believe it was conducted anyways.

Edited by Kirkland Langue, 10 August 2016 - 09:58 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Kirkland Langue, on 10 August 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

Pointless. they might as well push it live as soon as they have something coded.

The only result of doing a playtest first will be for people to criticize PGI's playtest process when the system, inevitably, fails to please the audience. Might as well skip the playtest since not many people are going to believe it was conducted anyways.

Well they scrapped the info-damage thing based on the PTS, so there is hope. Who knows, maybe they will read some of the feedback and recognize that lasers need to do more damage to be viable. But... I doubt it.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 10 August 2016 - 10:01 AM.

[Jerry Beard]

Hate to say it and I will get grief but power draw will beat ghost heat I am pretty sure. Alphas were always a last resort and never used as the first option. I mean really guys is it gonna hurt you to have to put 5 more mins into a game to win? Sheesh you make it sound like it is going to ruin the game where if you look at it being able to wreck another mech in les than a minute ruins it. The game should be about the fight and a good fight. You wanna know who's the best level the playing field and then fight it out. I am sure even AC's will see some kind of hit as they are AUTO cannons and the Loading system uses power, and while it may not be like lasers it should be inline with how it is now. Load times should be affected. Making the fights last longer is a good thing. I have sat and watched how the get Gud crowd and the like running laser vomit and all the meta have pretty much driven away a lot of folks and then we sit and wonder why the game is the way it is. There is nothing that hard about point and shoot for 60DPS pinpoint damage all it takes is a bit of practice. Hell I am not the best player by far and I can wreck with builds like that but I don't use them because I like the fight. If you want skill less kill fests go back to COD or BF4 for god's sake. This is supposed to be a thinking man's game to a degree.

[dervishx5]

Seems pretty presumptuous on the part of some to think that power/energy/PGI/Paul Draw is going to raise the TTK at all.

The tryhards are going to find a way to break it in a few hours/minutes and then everyone will emulate them.

If PaulDraw causes any significant increase in the lifespan of mechs then I'll build a new computer, reinstall the game, and buy all the last 6-7 mechpacks I skipped.

Edited by dervishx5, 10 August 2016 - 10:45 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Jerry Beard, on 10 August 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:

Hate to say it and I will get grief but power draw will beat ghost heat I am pretty sure. Alphas were always a last resort and never used as the first option. I mean really guys is it gonna hurt you to have to put 5 more mins into a game to win? Sheesh you make it sound like it is going to ruin the game where if you look at it being able to wreck another mech in les than a minute ruins it. The game should be about the fight and a good fight. You wanna know who's the best level the playing field and then fight it out. I am sure even AC's will see some kind of hit as they are AUTO cannons and the Loading system uses power, and while it may not be like lasers it should be inline with how it is now. Load times should be affected. Making the fights last longer is a good thing. I have sat and watched how the get Gud crowd and the like running laser vomit and all the meta have pretty much driven away a lot of folks and then we sit and wonder why the game is the way it is. There is nothing that hard about point and shoot for 60DPS pinpoint damage all it takes is a bit of practice. Hell I am not the best player by far and I can wreck with builds like that but I don't use them because I like the fight. If you want skill less kill fests go back to COD or BF4 for god's sake. This is supposed to be a thinking man's game to a degree.

What's going to hurt us in the asinine divergence from balance. Laser vomit has already been surpassed by other loadouts but you have not realized this for some reason.

AC5s when used in groups do not produce an alpha big enough for energy draw to take effect, but the DPS remains unaffected, so when you take the alpha builds and nerf them, it is obvious that the non alpha DPS builds will reign supreme, making balance worse than it is now.

Read the complaints in this thread. Its not about "taking an extra 5 minutes per match", and really energy draw isn't going to change a thing regarding match times. People will die just as fast, if not faster in some cases.

Opponents of Energy Draw are consistently simplified to essentially "I want a 60 damage easy kill button", but that is not the concern at all. READ what they have to say. Its about balance.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Jerry Beard, on 10 August 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:

This is supposed to be a thinking man's game to a degree.

If you think this game is all about twitch skills then I don't think you have any real say on the matter because you are misinformed on what makes good players actually good (hint: it's positioning). Also keep in mind some of the more recent meta mechs have alphas lower than 35 (Dakkahammer, Dakka Mauler, PPC/AC5 Hammer, 2 ERPPC Hunchie IIC, ERPPC/Gauss Timby).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 10 August 2016 - 10:49 AM.

[Kuaron]

Razorfish, on 09 August 2016 - 05:30 PM, said:

To be honest I would prefer the non-pin point approach that has been suggested several times. Your biggest attack hits the location you where aiming at and the rest of the attacks scatter to other hit locations randomly (so you could hit the same location with more than one). This is more like table top and I would be all for it. But that’s not going to happen so…

I will take anything that puts limit on the huge alpha strikes.

Why not just let the weapons converge much slower? The mechanic is already in the game, so this would be very easy to do.

[1453 R]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 August 2016 - 10:45 AM, said:

What's going to hurt us in the asinine divergence from balance. Laser vomit has already been surpassed by other loadouts but you have not realized this for some reason.

AC5s when used in groups do not produce an alpha big enough for energy draw to take effect, but the DPS remains unaffected, so when you take the alpha builds and nerf them, it is obvious that the non alpha DPS builds will reign supreme, making balance worse than it is now.

Read the complaints in this thread. Its not about "taking an extra 5 minutes per match", and really energy draw isn't going to change a thing regarding match times. People will die just as fast, if not faster in some cases.

Opponents of Energy Draw are consistently simplified to essentially "I want a 60 damage easy kill button", but that is not the concern at all. READ what they have to say. Its about balance.

Here's my question, Gas.

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, WHY, WHY.....is Ghost Heat any blasted better?

Everybody hated Ghost Heat. A lot of people, I'd argue most people, still do. It's just been around long enough that we've all forgotten how putrid and awful a system it is and how badly we want it out of our game.

I'm almost certain I've said the exact same thing before, honestly. Yes yes, 'devil we know', but first of all: how do you know the particulars of how Power Draw will work? Perhaps autocannons will have a lower ** value but longer ** decay, so they can burst for a while but have to disengage for longer, while lasers/energy spikes ** values quickly but also resets to equilibrium faster. Perhaps AC/5s will have a higher than expected ** value to try and control excessive DPS. Perhaps energy weapons as a whole will get a revision once Power Draw is in because Piranha will now have a much more flexible and easy-to-tune tool for keeping them in line, and thus the million and three nerfs energy has suffered will no longer be as necessary.

Seriously. Perhaps we should at least catch an idea of how the framework of the system will work, rather than assuming based on assumptions based on Twitter snippets explicitly called out as 'not final'?

[Gas Guzzler]

The game with all of its aggregate bandaids is actually in a decent state of weapons balance with the exception of machine guns, LRMs, AC2s, and the IS AC10.

Energy Draw takes away lasers advantage (high damage per ton) without affecting DPS oriented loadouts.

It's been stated that Energy Draw is all about alpha damage, so I'm pretty sure that an AC5 counts 5 damage towards the 30 damage (likely initial value) just the same as a Medium laser would (Russ actually confirmed this the other day). The proclaimed goal has always been to stop the "frequent, high damage alphas" not to stop DPS. There is no evidence to support the Idea that PGI will bring measures to limit DPS weapons so far. I find it unlikely that they will do so, as that doesn't limit large alphas. MAYBE they will but I think that is wishful thinking, as they have never once addressed limiting DPS.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 10 August 2016 - 11:29 AM.

[FupDup]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 August 2016 - 11:28 AM, said:

The game with all of its aggregate bandaids is actually in a decent state of weapons balance with the exception of machine guns, LRMs, AC2s, and the IS AC10.

IS Small Laser?