15 replies to this topic

[Snazzy Dragon]

Without charge, they feel like proper sniper weapons. With the massive decrease in cooldown, anything within 300 meters with lots of mid or short range weapons are easily able to beat double gauss mechs.

If anything, though, the delay should be cooldown increased, by perhaps a second or so.

Edited by Snazzy Dragon, 19 August 2016 - 06:12 PM.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Without charge up they are now snap fire weapons and have almost no risk. While yes it is fun to have one gauss rifle on my mech and snap fire it, there is zero risk for it now, with ignorable heat and near hit scan speed with 15 points of damage to one component you have no risk tied to this weapon. Other Ballistics and projectiles have long travel time or require long face time to do significant damage, GR has none of those things and it's trade off is the GR explodes IF it gets hit with a critical hit. That is not enough of a trade off in MWO. A shorter charge up would be fine with the long cooldown, just so you have to take a moment to actually aim and expose yourself to set up the shot so there is some risk to it.

[Snazzy Dragon]

The solution to the snap aim problem is to remove perfect weapon convergence and make pinpoint shots much harder. Crazy, I know. This will make them extremely ineffective at super extreme ranges at nailing the same component over and over.

Edited by Snazzy Dragon, 19 August 2016 - 06:22 PM.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Snazzy Dragon, on 19 August 2016 - 06:19 PM, said:

The solution to the snap aim problem is to remove perfect weapon convergence and make pinpoint shots much harder. Crazy, I know. This will make them extremely ineffective at super extreme ranges at nailing the same component over and over.

That would be the preferred way to do it, give arms normal convergence as we have it now, after all they are arms, that should be their job, have torso weapons though need the paper doll read out of an enemy mech to converge on the distance said mech is at. Maybe make arm weapons where there is more than one weapon on the arm need this as well. Of course that doesn't fix it for all mechs, but, it makes it a bit more realistic and intuitive. Plus mechs that have limited hard points don't have many other options and generally those hardpoints are in the arms so that works out.

[Snazzy Dragon]

So you agree that the problem isn't the gauss rifle, but weapon convergence being perfect for ALL mechs.

The gauss rifle is only a symptom of a fundamentally flawed way of aiming, as are every other direct fire weapon.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Snazzy Dragon, on 19 August 2016 - 06:30 PM, said:

So you agree that the problem isn't the gauss rifle, but weapon convergence being perfect for ALL mechs.

The gauss rifle is only a symptom of a fundamentally flawed way of aiming, as are every other direct fire weapon.

Yes, nerfing gauss is more just dealing with the fact that convergence is perfect, and a band-aid until PGI can figure out a way to give some form of convergence which they are a bit reluctant to do. The only other way to do this is to make it so when you don't have a paper doll for a mech you do partial damage (what was fondly called Laser Lock in the last PTS for infowarfare) which makes people very upset.

[Lightfoot]

I think Gauss Rifles are recycling a bit too slowly, if you only carry one for sure too slowly. If you look for actual balance and not a nerf to Gauss you would set the recycle to 6 seconds flat.

So far on the PTS I see just a bunch of short range brawls so long range is not working right. Tactic seems to be close to sub 300 meters and swarm with SRMs and small pulse lasers backed by a few long range. If players carry long range they are adaptable to short range like large pulse lasers. No AC2's ever. That sort of thing.

[X a v i e r]

Lightfoot, on 19 August 2016 - 08:28 PM, said:

Tactic seems to be close to sub 300 meters and swarm with SRMs and small pulse lasers

This.

PGI seems to want to "encourage" everyone to use *RMs. All this does is make the Oxide obnoxiously OP again.

I am fine with the Gauss as it is in PTS. I came from the MW4 days where Light Gauss was 6 seconds and regular Gauss even longer. Bring supporting weapons; everything doesn't need to be boatable. My HBR works just fine with 1 Gauss and 4 ERML.

The comp meta is not boating anyway (unless it's SRM Oxides or ERSL Novas...

Edited by X a v i e r, 19 August 2016 - 09:55 PM.

[X a v i e r]

I will say that as of this time, the "energy" mechanic is nothing more than a distracting graphic over Ghost Heat. The idea is the same, it's just based on different criteria. Used to be, you shot more than X of a weapon at once, you get ghost heat. Now, you shoot more than 30 damage at a time, you get ghost heat.

Unless the recharge time increases significantly, or follows a non-linear curve, the damage mechanic is pointless.

[Hit the Deck]

Regarding the (non) perfect convergence, I initially thought that we should re-try to introduce it (it was there at the beginning of MWO) because the whole original rules/system was built on top of it. But as time passes, I don't think that it would look and feel good in an FPS BT game, from ballistic CoF to how the aiming system which supports non convergence (ala Elite: Dangerous for example) could be implemented. I'd love to be proven otherwise though.

[Snazzy Dragon]

Hit the Deck, on 19 August 2016 - 10:09 PM, said:

Regarding the (non) perfect convergence, I initially thought that we should re-try to introduce it (it was there at the beginning of MWO) because the whole original rules/system was built on top of it. But as time passes, I don't think that it would look and feel good in an FPS BT game, from ballistic CoF to how the aiming system which supports non convergence (ala Elite: Dangerous for example) could be implemented. I'd love to be proven otherwise though.

The game will never deviate from "stuff the highest alpha possible onto the best mech possible" as long as perfect convergence aims those high alphas in one spot for you.

[Mordent Hex]

I really don't think they want to do all that coding just to deal with this issue.

[Hit the Deck]

Snazzy Dragon, on 19 August 2016 - 10:19 PM, said:

The game will never deviate from "stuff the highest alpha possible onto the best mech possible" as long as perfect convergence aims those high alphas in one spot for you.

It's not just alpha really, but synergetic weapon combo. People who believe in this system need to propose one which would look and feel good for the gameplay. There were some effort in the past.

BTW this energy draw mechanics which is currently in testing system was proposed by Homeless Bill and others. It took 2 years for it to be realised.

[The6thMessenger]

I would add a more visible projectile to balance it out.

[Tarl Cabot]

What is funny is that I keep playing it like I am having to charge it up....ugghh...

[Lunatic_Asylum]

Let us hope that PGI adds the mechanics back. This removal of the interesting usage is abysmal and less sensible than adding map voting.