69 replies to this topic

[Monkey Lover]

I'm still at work so haven't played the pts yeslt but sounds like it's full of pinpoint dmg mechs right now. This is the worst setup for ttk. I wouldn't be surprised if ttk is decreasing.

The only way you're somewhat increasing ttk is to use lasers where you can twist and use all of your armor.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 19 August 2016 - 10:33 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Mavairo, on 19 August 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

Look you like drunken crack speed shooters. That's fine.. but I don't, and the devs said they wanted to lengthen TTK....this isn't doing that.

This is ridiculous, an absurd strawman. Put on your big boy pants.

I just said above that I can't even play games like Overwatch at all. I like *slower* games. I'd LIKE MWO to be a lot slower.

But they're not going to be able to noticably lengthen TTK in MWO without really substantial changes away from how Battletech works. And I just don't think they're willing to do it.


This system wasn't put in to lengthen TTK, it was to replace the horribly broken Ghost Heat with something that works more predictably and fairly.

Monkey Lover, on 19 August 2016 - 10:32 AM, said:

I'm still at work so haven't played the pts yeslt but sounds like it's full of pinpoint dmg mechs right now. This is the worst setup for ttk. I wouldn't be surprised if ttk is decreasing.

The only way you're somewhat increasing ttk is to use lasers where you can twist and use all of your armor.

Lots of pinpoint, but much lower alphas. Lasers do need to have their multiplier reduced to make them more attractive vs. pinpoint. I'd go to .85 draw per damage for lasers, personally, and have recommended as much in my review posted earlier.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Wintersdark, on 19 August 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:

This system wasn't put in to lengthen TTK, it was to replace the horribly broken Ghost Heat with something that works more predictably and fairly.

Well I think somewhere along the way Russ tried to use the higher TTK as a selling point, but no one who knows any better believed him.

[Davers]

Wintersdark, on 19 August 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:

This is ridiculous, an absurd strawman. Put on your big boy pants.

I just said above that I can't even play games like Overwatch at all. I like *slower* games. I'd LIKE MWO to be a lot slower.

But they're not going to be able to noticably lengthen TTK in MWO without really substantial changes away from how Battletech works. And I just don't think they're willing to do it.


This system wasn't put in to lengthen TTK, it was to replace the horribly broken Ghost Heat with something that works more predictably and fairly.



Lots of pinpoint, but much lower alphas. Lasers do need to have their multiplier reduced to make them more attractive vs. pinpoint. I'd go to .85 draw per damage for lasers, personally, and have recommended as much in my review posted earlier.

Pretty sure one of the stated goals on the Announcement page was increasing ttk.

[Gas Guzzler]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 19 August 2016 - 10:38 AM, said:

Well I think somewhere along the way Russ tried to use the higher TTK as a selling point, but no one who knows any better believed him.

Key phrase bolded.

[Wintersdark]

Davers, on 19 August 2016 - 10:46 AM, said:

Pretty sure one of the stated goals on the Announcement page was increasing ttk.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 19 August 2016 - 10:38 AM, said:

Well I think somewhere along the way Russ tried to use the higher TTK as a selling point, but no one who knows any better believed him.

Yeah, but that wasn't going to happen and that was clear from the start for anyone who understands how the game works.

It's not getting any worse either, though.


Look, I'm not saying I don't WANT longer TTK; I do. But this isn't, and was never going to, increase TTK overall.

We've all known that.

You could crank up the penalties, and it still won't increase TTK. People just move to more DPS and TTK stays right where it is.

Edited by Wintersdark, 19 August 2016 - 10:52 AM.

[Dee Eight]

Battlemech armor has always been ablative armor, either the armor fractures absorbing physical impacts/explosive impacts or it vapourizes under intense heat taking the energy away from the laser impact for example with it. Blazer Reactive and Glazed Reflective variations of ferro-fibrous armor simply optimize this ablation to a particular weapon class. Both offer the same protection points per ton as standard armor, but are bulkier than FF armor (16 crits for blazer, 17 for glazed). Blazer treat ballistic and energy weapons normally, but provide increased protection against missiles, mortars and artillery, but at the risk of a critical hit causing a cascade explosion that destroys half the remaining armor on that section. Glazed armor treats ballistics and missile types as normal, increased protection to lasers, but increases PPC damage 50%.

[Davers]

Wintersdark, on 19 August 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

Yeah, but that wasn't going to happen and that was clear from the start for anyone who understands how the game works.

It's not getting any worse either, though.


Look, I'm not saying I don't WANT longer TTK; I do. But this isn't, and was never going to, increase TTK overall.

We've all known that.

You could crank up the penalties, and it still won't increase TTK. People just move to more DPS and TTK stays right where it is.

Maybe make dakka riskier with more than a 10% chance of ammo explosion on a crit.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Wintersdark, on 19 August 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

You could crank up the penalties, and it still won't increase TTK. People just move to more DPS and TTK stays right where it is.

Exactly, which is where the recycle time increase came into play, which honestly was something we have needed since day one of closed beta, though honestly I would've been ok with a 25% increase so PPCs and AC20s had a 5 second recycle, similar to the MW4 days.

Davers, on 19 August 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

Maybe make dakka riskier with more than a 10% chance of ammo explosion on a crit.

Good builds hide the ammo so that this wouldn't be a huge issue since the critical areas had their ammo used by the time it was exposed, it would make CASE more useful for sure, but you could work around that. Ammo explosions are not good balancing mechanics, can we please stop trying to make them that way?

[Davers]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 19 August 2016 - 10:55 AM, said:

Exactly, which is where the recycle time increase came into play, which honestly was something we have needed since day one of closed beta, though honestly I would've been ok with a 25% increase so PPCs and AC20s had a 5 second recycle, similar to the MW4 days.


Good builds hide the ammo so that this wouldn't be a huge issue since the critical areas had their ammo used by the time it was exposed, it would make CASE more useful for sure, but you could work around that. Ammo explosions are not good balancing mechanics, can we please stop trying to make them that way?

It's in the game already, don't get mad at me that it's pretty useless mechanic.

[Pz_DC]

TTK is fine when you play IS-vs-IS or CL-vs-CL match. Other way - CL tech makes TTK too short for any IS mech. That's the problem.

P.S. I'm up for even lower TTK then it is now but with more reasonable drawback of miss a shoot - for example 1 shoot = 1 kill but if you missed this shoot yours mech will be unable to fire for 10 sec.

P.P.S. how you can talk about TTK when its so huge difference between mechs - compare DRG and MDD damage potential! Its like 50-60% difference!.. MDD can have loadouts that will destroy DRGs side torso with 2 hits while DRG cant.

Edited by MGA121285, 19 August 2016 - 11:11 AM.

[XX Sulla XX]

Mavairo, on 19 August 2016 - 09:21 AM, said:

I had hopes, but was skeptical.
I did one match, and found it to be nearly identical to when I quit playing. Round a corner, get nearly insta gibbed.
Enemy team pushes, dead.

I think the power draw is way too generous, and the armor mechanics...well they're still non existent and this is the problem with MWO. Armor isn't HP, and it should never have been implemented as such.

Well this game is not really a twitch game like CS. But it is a multi player real time shooter game where positioning and builds and aiming etc are going to matter a lot. Its never going to be like table top.

[Wintersdark]

Davers, on 19 August 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

Maybe make dakka riskier with more than a 10% chance of ammo explosion on a crit.

Why? That doesn't help anything, if anything maybe it decreases TTK by having very slightly more ammo explosions (ammo already having a 10% chance to explode when destroyed).

Davers, on 19 August 2016 - 11:03 AM, said:

It's in the game already, don't get mad at me that it's pretty useless mechanic.

Then why suggest more of it?

[Wintersdark]

MGA121285, on 19 August 2016 - 11:08 AM, said:

TTK is fine when you play IS-vs-IS or CL-vs-CL match. Other way - CL tech makes TTK too short for any IS mech. That's the problem.

P.S. I'm up for even lower TTK then it is now but with more reasonable drawback of miss a shoot - for example 1 shoot = 1 kill but if you missed this shoot yours mech will be unable to fire for 10 sec.

P.P.S. how you can talk about TTK when its so huge difference between mechs - compare DRG and MDD damage potential! Its like 50-60% difference!.. MDD can have loadouts that will destroy DRGs side torso with 2 hits while DRG cant.

The Energy Draw system is much better for the IS, as compared to the Clan side. Clan ERPPC's get shafted pretty hard, being 13.5 draw for 10 damage where you want it, 2.5 beside, and *maybe* 2.5 to another segment. Meanwhile, you can run 3 PPC's for 30 PPFLD and zero penalty, and take it to 4 PPC's if you've got heat reduction quirks to use it practically, as the energy draw penalty is only 5 heat at that point.

Likewise with lasers, you can fire 4 Large or ER Large lasers effortlessly.

IS weapons fit within the limits much better. Clan's LPL and ERLL are 13 and 11 damage, so firing even 3 triggers extra heat, while just 2 cLPL's gets you very close to the cap, but also leaves you without enough to really fit anything else in.

Now, I'm not crying IS OP here, but you do need to actually test this before dredging up issues you have from Live.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Davers, on 19 August 2016 - 11:03 AM, said:

It's in the game already, don't get mad at me that it's pretty useless mechanic.

It may be in the game, but it generally isn't that relevant of a mechanic, which is great imo, the more irrelevant it is the better off the game is.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 19 August 2016 - 01:07 PM.

[invernomuto]

Mavairo, on 19 August 2016 - 09:21 AM, said:

Armor isn't HP, and it should never have been implemented as such.

Armor ***IS*** HP in BT universe. Realistical? Of course not. Everyone knows that an armor does not "decrease" in it's value if the hit does not penetrate. However, having a realistic armor mechanic would lead to a game that it is neither battletech nor mechwarrior. Also, in terms of realism, I really doubt that battles in 3051 will done by brawling big stompy robot...

[justcallme A S H]

Wintersdark, on 19 August 2016 - 09:43 AM, said:

It's largely the same, though it's hard to tell in 4v4 battles.

Cooldowns where all nerfed, so weapons cycle slower = less damage done over time = theoretically longer TTK. Alphas... Well, we were moving away from big alphas anyways, so that hasn't really changed much either, but there's few big alphas.

Typically around 30-40 points, slightly higher with spread builds.

Well given you can Alpha 5 LPL without shutdown now, do you honestly think TTK has not reduced? Is that moving away from big alphas? It's moving towards them, in a BIG way.


Because 2 mechs, 2 x LPL Alpha, that is essentially enough to kill the majority of mechs. Everyone keeps talking about "But it's lower DPS".

Problem is DPS means nothing if a mech is dead in 1 second from 2 direct Alpha's before he even knows where it can from.

If it doesn't get addressed, massively, there will be big issues - the biggest being the community drop.
This system from all reports is going to be incredibly hard for new/casual players to get their heads around, further alienating players.

I can't think of anything worse right now.

[Steve Pryde]

Gas Guzzler, on 19 August 2016 - 09:28 AM, said:

and raise armor values again.

Just no. We already have double armor+internal strucure buffs. Just adjust the dmg values of the weapons to the cds and its fine. A ppc shouldn't do 10 dmg with a 4-5 sec. cd. In table top all weapons have a "cd" of 10 sec. If you translate it correctly to MWO a ppc would only do 4-5 dmg if you adjust it right.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

R31Nismoid, on 19 August 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Well given you can Alpha 5 LPL without shutdown now, do you honestly think TTK has not reduced? Is that moving away from big alphas? It's moving towards them, in a BIG way.

It depends on how often you can alpha with LPL consecutively, which considering you are going from 35 heat when you volley fired them in the live client to alphaing them at 45 heat, it will put a dent in sustained damage without really changing all that much in how they function since you can volley fire them pretty fast in the client right now. 10 extra heat is nothing to scoff at. Then again it does off how brutal the LPL can be, in that it has a really powerful weapon for a while and with the cLPL nerf, it is probably only fair this get nerfed a bit (the 1 damage nerf was really minor considering the power draw limit).

R31Nismoid, on 19 August 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Problem is DPS means nothing if a mech is dead in 1 second from 2 direct Alpha's before he even knows where it can from.

If that were the case you would see more alphas in live client now, but you see a lot of dakka currently, and this really hasn't changed much.

Steve Pryde, on 19 August 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

If you translate it correctly to MWO a ppc would only do 4-5 dmg if you adjust it right.

Only if you halve armor values too. Double DPS but double armor seems like a fine trade-off to me.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 19 August 2016 - 01:39 PM.

[Wintersdark]

R31Nismoid, on 19 August 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Well given you can Alpha 5 LPL without shutdown now, do you honestly think TTK has not reduced? Is that moving away from big alphas? It's moving towards them, in a BIG way.


Because 2 mechs, 2 x LPL Alpha, that is essentially enough to kill the majority of mechs. Everyone keeps talking about "But it's lower DPS".

Problem is DPS means nothing if a mech is dead in 1 second from 2 direct Alpha's before he even knows where it can from.

If it doesn't get addressed, massively, there will be big issues - the biggest being the community drop.
This system from all reports is going to be incredibly hard for new/casual players to get their heads around, further alienating players.

I can't think of anything worse right now.

What? You can alpha 5 LPL on live right now for 55 damage / 56 heat, without counting any quirks. I don't remember the PTS LPL stats, but if you fired the current 5 LPL alpha in PTS you'd have 55 damage and 35+12.5=47.5 heat.

It's not as steep a penalty as live, but it's still substantial. I don't see a lot of people hammering guys with 5 LPL on live, do you?