337 replies to this topic

[Wing 0]

InnerSphereNews, on 18 August 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

Gauss Rifles

• The Gauss charge mechanic has been removed.
• Gauss Cooldown has been increased to 6.71.
• Max Range has been reduced from 1980 to 1320.
• ‘Mechs are now restricted to equipping no more than 2 Gauss Rifles*. ‘Mechs with more than 2 Gauss Rifles already equipped will be considered Invalid, and will be unable to launch into matches.

*Current UI on this feature is not final.

With Energy Draw encompassing most all weapons, we felt it was time to remove the previous de-syncing Gauss Charge mechanic and allow the Energy Draw system to dictate what players wish to pair the weapons with. We have made adjustments to the Gauss Rifle to both account for the removal of the charge mechanic, as well as its role in the Energy Draw implementation in this PTS.

You know.. This is something I'm glad to see finally removed since this detail was what made a lot of players and professionals like myself and that I knew to just either leave this game for awhile or never come back after closed beta. But man PGI, you guys took 4 years. 4 F-ING Years to simply remove that ******** mechanic on the gauss.. Maybe will see a resurgence of old come back but who knows. I only hope that this ghost heat system don't become the death of this game.

Edited by Wing 0, 19 August 2016 - 09:54 AM.

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

How about this...

The closer to 100% heat you are, the more blurred (heat effect) you get. At 100% you should only see what's in front of you as a blur, everything else behind that should be absolute garbage. This will stop people riding high heat, getting to 50% will be concerning.

PPC's need to have a effect of messing up computer systems for a very brief time. This way the IS PPC will have a purpose, at the moment the clan PPC's are great.

As for guass, I really wish they made it; Fire 1 = low charge up time (almost nothing). Fire 2, long charge up time, Fire 3......, very long charge up time. This will make people really think about whether it's even worth using them in bulk. Single Guass'ers shouldn't be penalised for throwing in a massive explodable weapon. I love the weapon to bits but I always end up getting the thing blown off.

[Zeoraimer]

The Unstoppable Puggernaut, on 19 August 2016 - 10:00 AM, said:

How about this...

The closer to 100% heat you are, the more blurred (heat effect) you get. At 100% you should only see what's in front of you as a blur, everything else behind that should be absolute garbage. This will stop people riding high heat, getting to 50% will be concerning.

In addition to that, higher heat should induce more of, and higher severity of:
slow your mech's speed,
slow your mech's agility
reduce Jump Jet performance
scramble your mini-map
reduce sensor range
mess with your computer's ability to identify Friend or Foe,
obscure or give false readouts of your weapon loadout/ammo/cooldown status
slowdown weapon cooldowns / Jams ACs / fluctuate your laser beams (reduced damage)
desync arm lock (arms and torso aim in different directions, like your mech is hunched over or something)

Basically, at or near 100% heat, you cant see or do anything...

Edited by Zeoraimer, 19 August 2016 - 10:34 AM.

[xengk]

Krucilatoz, on 19 August 2016 - 06:44 AM, said:

why the energy generator limited at 30?

Would it be better if it defined by engine size, for example 375 engine (XL/Std) have 37.5,
kodiak XL400 has 40 energy draw ??

If those "energy" generated from engine, it will be more sense that bigger engine generate more energy/power

I imagine a stock engine(STD 60/energy limit 6) urbie melting from firing its AC20.

[Wintersdark]

April Showers, on 19 August 2016 - 09:02 AM, said:

Holy sh... one fatfingered accidential Alpha and you can hear the wailing of the NOVA-PRIME pilots.
accidential suicides galore ?

What? No, silly monkey.

In Ghost Heat, this is true. In Energy Draw, absolutely not. If you fire a little bit earlier, you take a heat spike but it's not all-or-nothing, it's scaled. Energy Draw is in virtually all cases way more lenient than ghost heat.

Reno Blade, on 19 August 2016 - 08:16 AM, said:

I have the feeling that the system would be pretty decent if we change the penalty multiplyer.
Instead of adding 0.5x of damage as heat, it should be at least 1.0x or even 2.0x to even notice the penalty.

Maybe even reduce the maximum Energy pool to 28 or 25, so the penalty kicks in earlier = no more 3x Large weapons ( 3x LP, 3x PPC, 2x Gauss).

There could be baseline differences in mech sizes, but better no quirks for the pool/replenish speed.
Maybe Lights = 20, Meds 24, Heavies 28 and Assaults 32 or something like this.

Changing the limit by 2 would have basically zero impact.

I'd still fire 3 PPC's with a 28 cap. You'd take 1 extra heat. Who cares? This isn't like Ghost Heat where breaking the penalty point suddenly incurs a huge heat spike.

[Kmieciu]

April Showers, on 19 August 2016 - 09:02 AM, said:

Holy sh... one fatfingered accidential Alpha and you can hear the wailing of the NOVA-PRIME pilots.
accidential suicides galore ?

Incorrect.
Under the current "ghost heat" a Nova Prime (12ERML 18 DHS) generates a 106,9 heat penalty.
With "energy draw" system - only 27 penalty.

You know what that means? On frozen city you can alpha strike 12 ERML and only shut down for 3 seconds (and take 1 % damage).

In order to auto-suicide you would need to produce an alpha strike of 150 damage: you would need to fire 22 ERML at once.

Edited by Kmieciu, 19 August 2016 - 11:06 AM.

[Sonny Black]

[Zordicron]

My initial thoughts:

Mechs with lots of hardpoints: Will be able to mount one or two big weapons for longer range, boat a bunch of little ones for brawling punch. Acceptable.
mechs with few hardpoints: Rather then be a total waste, they will now have some disadvantage removed because the draw system is basically dmg based anyway. Can't mount 4 UAC5's, only 2? Well, the gap is closed down a bit. Acceptable.
Mechs that are very light, with limited hardpoints: Get screwed over. Global cooldown nerf means the weapons they had, which were already below the new power draw threshold, will just fire slower. Gap increased for them. Only solution is mega quirks. Not really acceptable.

Oversight: Current numbers posted means a particular few mechs will see EXTREME benefit from ghost heat removal, on loadouts deemed acceptable even during ghost heat. Mostly, smaller laser mega boats. Not good. I fully expect a ham fisted "per weapon adjustment" pass that will make some weapons really bad for pairing with others just for the sake of hurting boat performance. This oversight will be the focus of the raging nerd rants for the most part(with associated PGI bashing)

Goosewaffle charge removal: peek a boo snipers will return in droves, and combined with the overall reduction in alpha ability from brawlers, IMO this is going a bit too far a swing. This new system is basically an overall dmg nerf, and the goose change is a significant buff when we were already limited to 2 (effective) goosewaffles to begin with. It is a long cooldown, most will say. Still not as long as previous MW titles however. If 8 second rifles were meta in MW4, because of travel speed and aiming ease, I just see that same meta repeating with this change. it is important to note I do not want the charge mechanic, however without something pretty extreme to counter a pair of rifles doing supersonic insta dmg on a single spot, they are going to return in droves. Also, 4 v 4 matchplay is not going to show how a properly team supported twin goose Jager will perform, as said Jager will only have 3 support team mates to help in close combat for PTS.

Other notes:
Double click a single UAC20 is now 5 extra heat, automatically.
AC40 Jagers will have no ghost heat, the n00b t00b returns!
IMO, clans are going to end up with A LOT of free hardpoints and podspace as many of the UAC and some of the lasers will hit that threshold with only a couple weapons. Will have to see if this adjustment is a flat dmg nerf, or a backdoor buff that allows for even-handed dmg output vs IS with additional DHS/equipment capacity for clans vs IS

An interesting change to the game. Will have to see if they can iron it out.


I have NO IDEA why this is somehow better than the traditional heat scale system from Battletech for decades now, and would like to hear Russ explain why. I can only sumise that creating a new bar that triggers an old mechanic(sorta ghost heat with additional heat) was faster then making a bunch of new mechanics for a tradition heat scale penalty system. or perhaps they simply do not have the knowledge of the game engine to even attempt the new mechanics in the first place. Or, Russ and Paul are just stubborn as **** and refuse to admit they have had the heat scale wrong from day one. Eh, prolly the latter.

[Vandax]

Seriously, PGI, you created a game based on Battletech. Then you decide to nerf the double heatsinks, so that they do much less heat dissipation than expected. Then you add something about a heat spike, if you fire multiple weapons of the same class.

Get over yourselves, stop overthinking the game. It has been a balanced game since it was on paper. Everything was based on heat, if you over-heated you stood a chance of shutting down, or suffering penalties progressively for the accumulated heat beyond the shut-down mark.

You wouldn't have to overthink this energy thing if you kept to the original rules. This isn't Battletech, or even Mechwarrior...it's PGI's version of a robot battle simulator. The game was already balanced... you could even go back and review how they did it with Mechwarrior2, 3, or 4... You don't need to re-invent the wheel here, this isn't anything new. You have clear examples of Mechwarrior games to help guide you, and they worked GREAT.

Another great idea, would be to fix the problems.... the glitches... the features... the hacks... the cheats... the dropped connections...

Fix the problems before you even consider modifying PGI-warrior again. I'm outta here, I don't play nearly as much as I once did, but this takes the cake.

[Fobhopper]

Wing 0, on 19 August 2016 - 09:53 AM, said:

[/b][/b][/b][/b][/b][/b]

You know.. This is something I'm glad to see finally removed since this detail was what made a lot of players and professionals like myself and that I knew to just either leave this game for awhile or never come back after closed beta. But man PGI, you guys took 4 years. 4 F-ING Years to simply remove that ******** mechanic on the gauss.. Maybe will see a resurgence of old come back but who knows. I only hope that this ghost heat system don't become the death of this game.

You do know why the 'charger' mechanic was added to gauss right? because clanners were stacking 2 gauss rifles with 4 PPC's and a couple jump jets, pop tart over a ridge and pretty much instantly kill mechs. While the Heavy Metal and one or two other mechs on the IS were notorious for this, when the first clan wave hit and you had warhawks and direwolves stacking gauss with pulse/ppc and doing so much instant, front loaded damage that it was literally making people quit the game. Thats why the ghost heat and gauss delay was introduced to stop that kind of gameplay because it was pretty common to see 2-4 mechs on a team with the poptart build every match. which is where this animation comes from:

playing on our favorite frozen mountain meant certain death when trying to charge hamburger hill if you couldnt go faster than 100kph.

[Kill Dozer]

Vandax, on 19 August 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

Seriously, PGI, you created a game based on Battletech. Then you decide to nerf the double heatsinks, so that they do much less heat dissipation than expected. Then you add something about a heat spike, if you fire multiple weapons of the same class.

Get over yourselves, stop overthinking the game. It has been a balanced game since it was on paper. Everything was based on heat, if you over-heated you stood a chance of shutting down, or suffering penalties progressively for the accumulated heat beyond the shut-down mark.

You wouldn't have to overthink this energy thing if you kept to the original rules. This isn't Battletech, or even Mechwarrior...it's PGI's version of a robot battle simulator. The game was already balanced... you could even go back and review how they did it with Mechwarrior2, 3, or 4... You don't need to re-invent the wheel here, this isn't anything new. You have clear examples of Mechwarrior games to help guide you, and they worked GREAT.

Another great idea, would be to fix the problems.... the glitches... the features... the hacks... the cheats... the dropped connections...

Fix the problems before you even consider modifying PGI-warrior again. I'm outta here, I don't play nearly as much as I once did, but this takes the cake.

You just echoed the comments of many that have experience with the previous MW titles. They all had their shortcomings but each were solid games in their own right. PGI have always marketed MWO as a a Mechwarrior game, a team oriented tactical combat sim. The reality is that its an arcade shooter focused towards the casual pick up gamer with deep pockets.

They have over complicated many things that should have been an easy and simple fix, many times creating what I call "a solution in search of a problem". Ghost heat and this current thing for example are designed to solve the "problem" of boating energy weapons and high point alpha's. Here's the kicker, many mech chassis, are designed in lore, are role specific and are designed to "boat" certain weapon types. Trying to nerf those chasis is an exercise in futility, you end up rendering them almost useless and no one plays them.

The typical PGI strategy is "buff the latest mech pack, hype it for sales and then sledge hammer nerf the mechs a month after they go for CBills.

Meh, this has been talked over before and in the end it won't make any difference what the customers think.

[Volt Corsair]

Getting some Armored Core up in here. Will enjoy the added mechanic.

[VitriolicViolet]

If anything when i tested it it makes most of my mechs way more heat effeicient, then again in ghost heat all my mechs were fairly cool and i use a lot of chainfire.

my Heavy Metal seems to be doing quite well on the PTS.

Also a lot of you seem to judge the system without trying it making your opinion nothing but anecdotal thus useless.
even my Black Knights were still ok but once again i use at least 3 weapon groups on most of my mechs and chainfire.

I reccomend using Caustic Valley to test them on worst case scenario and all that.

[Dawnstealer]

I really wish the heat system just did this:


You go a little hot, you start moving slower.

You go hotter, you move slower and you, the actual pilot, start to "gray out" and get tunnel or blurred vision.

You go hotter, you might get an ammo explosion (not as big a worry, given the laser vomit, but still).

You might randomly shut down.

You might black out from the heat.

Your mech might wobble like a drunken sailor.

Then your mech could just blow up or shut down.

Incremental, immersive...why was this never implemented?

[DevlinCognito]

The core problem stems from PGI not listening from the start. Instead of cutting the heat scale to something lower, and increasing the amount of heat dissapated massively we have huge pinpoint alphas. To try and stem this PGI doubled the armour. Gamers being gamers, they look for a way around it which leads to bigger Alphas. PGI then introduce Ghost Heat. Gamers work a way round it, so we have Energy Draw, a system that increases the heat in the heat scale which is scaled by how far over a set amount of heat you go ...

This is just the PTS. For the love of god could we please just try to cut the heat scale while increasing the heat dissapation on the PTS? Give it a try. The worst thing that happens is you prove it doesnt work without extra mechanics that NEW PLAYERS will struggle to get their head round. Having a bar that effects a bar that effects how much you can fire is not intuitive to new guys, sure, experienced players have had to get their head around PGI mechanics, but will any new players coming in (lol)?

[Gentleman Reaper]

DevlinCognito, on 19 August 2016 - 02:23 PM, said:

The core problem stems from PGI not listening from the start. Instead of cutting the heat scale to something lower, and increasing the amount of heat dissapated massively we have huge pinpoint alphas. To try and stem this PGI doubled the armour. Gamers being gamers, they look for a way around it which leads to bigger Alphas. PGI then introduce Ghost Heat. Gamers work a way round it, so we have Energy Draw, a system that increases the heat in the heat scale which is scaled by how far over a set amount of heat you go ...

This is just the PTS. For the love of god could we please just try to cut the heat scale while increasing the heat dissapation on the PTS? Give it a try. The worst thing that happens is you prove it doesnt work without extra mechanics that NEW PLAYERS will struggle to get their head round. Having a bar that effects a bar that effects how much you can fire is not intuitive to new guys, sure, experienced players have had to get their head around PGI mechanics, but will any new players coming in (lol)?

A lower heat cap and higher dissipation would simply not work. You'd get what happening now (ac5/ppc) only multiplied because people can more consistently fire alphas rather than firing off a few alphas and having to wait a while. The second issue is with mechs with lots of hardpoints like the Prime variants of the Nova and Warhawk, as they would never get the chance to chain-fire all their weapons within their cooldowns before the first weapon can fire again. Power draw CAN work if they set proper energy values for each individual weapon, and increase the extra heat for exceeding the limit, Russ has said that they would be changing things based off current feedback.

[ShadowMaw]

InnerSphereNews, on 18 August 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

Gauss Rifles

• The Gauss charge mechanic has been removed.

This^

Glad you are removing the potatoe gun from the game and giving us our gauss rifles back. I will start using these again and may spend some money on the game.

[Tiantara]

- We all forgot about easy destructive components like heatsinks. In the middle of combat many mech loosing not only weapon, but theirs coolers systems. Only one that thing make a really tweaky making changes in weapon, instead of adding quirks to mech or change whole heat-system (not mentioning some advice to chain it with engine power what really ridiculous move).

The main base of game was and still now 4 corner mechanic. Armor, speed, heat efficient, firepower.
Pilots of small mech build them around fast-jetlike-engines, use light armor, light structure in cost of free hardpoint and add as much weapon as they can on free hardpoints. Medium balanced between speed, armor and firepower. Some of the now hot even with not so big alpha. Yeah - I mean IS medium. Which with XL engine vs clan weapon become running bombs. heavy and assault always mentioned to be mix-build. For provide longrange support and mid-short brawling. You can make them slower and powerful but place slower, less-weight engine.

Make energy pool chained with engine capacity make some of mech "invalid" or unplayable. Or worse, make all slow except Clan Mech with fixed engines what bring here dis-balance , 'cose IS mech to take same energy pool. speed and maneuver as their enemy - would be forced to have less weapon and... for what need pool if you have no weapon?

Best choice to review some of models in each class and take max possible alpha with heatmanagement = 1.
That number of firepower cut in half and get possible energy pool.
So what we got than.
Light mech - energy pool = 25-20 (20-35t)
Medium mech - 20-25 (40-55t)
Heavy mech - 25-30 (60-75t)
Assault mech - 30-35(80-100t)
That force to split alpha in two, use more grouped weapons or chainfire, leave some time to maneuver and pilot skill using.
But in same time take a little revision to calculating energy.
Like:
1 point per missile (missile weapon) (15 = 15 energy points, 2 = 2 energy points)
damage x 0.5 per shoot (ballistic weapon) (AC2 = 1 energy point, AC20 = 10 energy point.)
damage = energy point (energy weapon) (ERLL laser 9 DMG = 9 energy points)

Why so? Because ballistic\missile users already punished by risk of ammo explosion. C.a.s.e. not always help. Also ammo runs off really quickly (that why not so many trial mech with ballistic weapon, new player can loose all weapons in first few min of battle and become empty. Bad impression). There need balance - laser - ballistic.
I even think about mechanic when weapons have their own heat measurement which fills as fast as frequently you use them right after cooldown. (like that - cooldown takes time, in green status you can fire as always. In red - weapon unaccessible. In yellow - you can fire it again but get heat penalty) Now nearly same I see here but more global - for all weapon you have on mech.

Edited by Tiantara, 19 August 2016 - 05:02 PM.

[Leggin Ho]

Fobhopper, on 19 August 2016 - 12:21 PM, said:

You do know why the 'charger' mechanic was added to gauss right? because clanners were stacking 2 gauss rifles with 4 PPC's and a couple jump jets, pop tart over a ridge and pretty much instantly kill mechs. While the Heavy Metal and one or two other mechs on the IS were notorious for this, when the first clan wave hit and you had warhawks and direwolves stacking gauss with pulse/ppc and doing so much instant, front loaded damage that it was literally making people quit the game. Thats why the ghost heat and gauss delay was introduced to stop that kind of gameplay because it was pretty common to see 2-4 mechs on a team with the poptart build every match. which is where this animation comes from:

playing on our favorite frozen mountain meant certain death when trying to charge hamburger hill if you couldnt go faster than 100kph.

WOW, please let me know what clan mech can mout 2 Gauss, 4PPC and still have room for JJ's and any ammo or HS, I'd really love to have that build. Post the Smurfy link for me, I need that one, I mean I'm building mechs wrong to have never stumbled onto that powerhouse. I remember seeing 1/2 of that mech, it was the Cataphrak 3d with 1 gauss and 2 PPC's, but if you have one of those Clan mechs loaded that way share the wealth.

[Wintersdark]

Vandax, on 19 August 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

Seriously, PGI, you created a game based on Battletech. Then you decide to nerf the double heatsinks, so that they do much less heat dissipation than expected. Then you add something about a heat spike, if you fire multiple weapons of the same class.

Sir, if you're going to make such comments, be sure to understand what you're talking about first.

Once your mech is Elited, double heat sinks are effectively shedding heat at 2.0 per DHS. This is because all DHS gain bonuses from your pilot skills, including the in engine heat sinks which are at 2.0 base. So, those first 10 shed more than 2.0, and those outside end up shedding just shy of 2.0. The end result is that all practical mech builds dissipate heat as if they had 2.0 DHS. The 1.5 dissipation is required for the pilot skills to work.

We have true double heat sinks in practice right now.

Quote

Get over yourselves, stop overthinking the game. It has been a balanced game since it was on paper. Everything was based on heat, if you over-heated you stood a chance of shutting down, or suffering penalties progressively for the accumulated heat beyond the shut-down mark.

Except in battletech, you don't have garaunteed perfect convergence. Each weapon fires separately over a 10 second window. There's no alpha strike as per Mechwarrior games, and you don't land all your damage where you point the crosshairs. Straight Battletech rules don't work in an online FPS/ArcadeSim style PvP game.

Quote

You wouldn't have to overthink this energy thing if you kept to the original rules. This isn't Battletech, or even Mechwarrior...it's PGI's version of a robot battle simulator. The game was already balanced... you could even go back and review how they did it with Mechwarrior2, 3, or 4... You don't need to re-invent the wheel here, this isn't anything new. You have clear examples of Mechwarrior games to help guide you, and they worked GREAT.

Mechwarrior 2, 3 and 4 where not balanced. Their multiplayer was very broken, grossly so in comparison to MWO now - this because their multiplayer was an afterthought, not the game itself.

I suspect you either didn't play those prior MW games, or have a severe case of rose colored glasses going on about how "balanced" they were.

Quote

Another great idea, would be to fix the problems.... the glitches... the features... the hacks... the cheats... the dropped connections...

Fix the problems before you even consider modifying PGI-warrior again. I'm outta here, I don't play nearly as much as I once did, but this takes the cake.

... Energy Draw is fixing some hacky problems - it's replacing Ghost Heat, and doing so in a way that continues to prevent what Ghost Heat was first implemented to prevent without the collateral damage and opaque hard to understand systems.

"This takes the cake"? Its a flat improvement to a broken system. It's not perfect by any means, but it's probably the best system PGI has [i]ever publicly tested.

Edited by Wintersdark, 19 August 2016 - 05:36 PM.