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This was posted by Tarogato on reddit.
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I'm going to start by saying that I don't think energy draw accomplishes any of the goals set out by the developer. If this mechanic were introduced to MWO, I would most likely quit playing the game because I won't enjoy it as much anymore. The present day ghost heat on the live server is a much better system and fosters a much more enjoyable and diverse meta. I'm happy with the current sitation on live and I'm happy with the current TTK. While I think it would be nice for ghost heat to be more transparent to new players, I don't think it's such a huge problem that it merits a completely new mechanic to replace it, one which is flawed at the fundamental level. Let's talk about why I think that is.
First,
light mechs are pretty much unaffected. Okay.
a few medium mechs are pretty severely affected because they skirt awkwardly around the 30 damage cap. NVA, SHD, SCR, HBK, and HBK-IIC are first to come to mind.
heavies fair pretty well because they can effectively distribute their alpha into two 30-damage half-alphas.
a few assaults are completely boned, like the Atlas, Gargoyle, Executioner, the gauss-vomit DWF, yet the BNC and BLR can reasonably alpha 5 LPL now? Wat.
In general, lasers and brawling seem to get the short end of the stick, while PPFLD alphas gets buffed slightly. Not to the point of hexa-PPC Stalkerpocalypse, but... it's a noticeable shift. Mind you, PPFLD is already rising in popularity on the live servers as is. It's really quite balanced with laser boating and brawling, and I don't see the need to upset this balance by making such drastic alterations to the heat system at this time.
With the need for the four different weight classes to have different energy caps (otherwise lights would be somewhat overpowered) and possibly even different chassis quirked for different caps (like the NVA and GAR), the whole system becomes much more sophisticated than it looks on the surface. Basically... it's the epitome of the community term "ghost heat" because it's not clear to the end user that 30 or whatever arbitrary number of pseudo-damage is the energy cap and it's not clear to the end user how much energy their weapons will draw. Sure, you might know that SRMs draw 75% of their damage as energy, but now you have this convoluted mess of multiply 8.6 * 5 * 0.75 to figure out that 5x SRM4 pulls 32.25 energy, which is 2.25 excess energy, which is 1.125 ghost heat, which is ... okay so I've got 10 trudubs, so that's 20 heat capacity plus 1.5 * 5 poordubs so my full capacity is 25.75 and 1.125 ghost heat means I'll be seeing around +4% extra that I actually see in game on my heat meter. Holy crap that's a lot of math that isn't explained to the player! That's a problem. That's why I'm still calling this system 'ghost heat' - these calculations are unclear to the player. Even if the mechlab gave you more information, I stil don't think it's enough.
Another problem is that this system encourages boating. Literally the opposite of the designers' intentions. A key example: a Maddog or Timberwolf with 4x SRM6+A + 5x cSPL. On the live client, the ghost heat system encourages me to mix different weapon systems, like lasers + srms, because they don't share heat penalties. However, the energy draw system means that I can't fire SRMs and lasers together. In fact, after firing my SRMs, I have to wait so long for the energy to replenish, that by the time I've fired my SPLs, my SRMs are almost ready to fire again. That's a problem because that means now that my brawler must stare at its target and facetank in much the same manner that an AC/2 facetime build would. You don't have time to torso twist without taking a huge chunk out of your DPS. I see this as a problem, especially considering that under the energy draw system I can boat 5x SRM4+A and alpha strike for days with barely any heat penalty at all - the system encouraged me to boat SRMs instead of mixing different types of weapons. The same goes for combinations of ballistic and missiles, like LB and SRMs which is something you would do on Shadowhawks, clan heavies, or something like the Atlas which now must fire its SRMs and AC20 seperately, waiting long enough in between to avoid heat penalty, thus and giving it less time to torso twist between shots if it wants to maintain its respectable DPS (or alpha-striking, incurring a massive heat penalty, and losing almost all of its sustained DPS, which in turn defeats its purpose as a brawler). This is literally promoting stare-fests and taking skillful torso-twisting out of the game for brawlers. That's a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge problem, in my opinion, and a fundamental issue with the system as a whole.
The penalties for high-alpha builds are now less, because they are linear. You can now alpha 5x LPL quite reasonably on the IS side. Running 6x ERLL or PPC boating is also more forgiving. I think the result of these changes - the buffing of long range high-alpha builds, would result in a more passive and alpha-centric playstyle. One of the problems is that brawlers are punished so hard (except for AC/40, which got an incredible buff under this system.) Everything seems to be exactly the opposite of what this system intended to accomplish, making it seem to me like an outright failure.
At this point, I would conclude that the ghost heat system on the live server is miles better for gameplay than the new energy draw system. This new system is not ready - in fact, I'm not even sure what could be done to salvage it. The old ghost heat system encourages you to mix different types of weapons, which is what is good about it. The new draw system encourages you to boat multiple copies the same type of weapon and this is an issue at the fundamental design level. How do you even fix this? I might start by making it so that weapon classes are not linked together - firing SRMs + ballistics together shouldn't incur a penalty, firing LRMs and lasers together shouldn't either. I feel like if I were to redesign this system to the point where I was actually happy with it, the system I would wind up with in the end would basically be the same heatscale system we see on the live servers today - because that's what works and promotes build diversity while punishing excessive boating. If you don't want people alpha-striking ML and LPL together, just create a linked heatscale penalty group for it! Maybe the old ghost heat system makes less sense from the logical or lore standpoint, but in my opinion it is better for gameplay and that is what matters most.
Musings on the specific weapon changes...
Personally, I prefered the gauss charge mechanic. It really helped make the weapon system feel unique, like it rewarded skill even though it wasn't all that hard to use. I would rather have the charge system back, with the limit on charging two gauss simulataneously. I don't like that triple- and quad-gauss builds are literally removed from the game as a universal rule - they aren't even a problem on the live server. It's literally just a fun build that is incredibly risky to run and way outclassed by gauss+PPC combinations. So why does it need to be nuked completley out of the game? Please don't do this.
AC/5 now feels like complete ***. Except maybe on the Mauler, or one or two uberquirked mechs. But generally speaking, AC/5 is now ***. Good luck running it on your Dragons and Wolverines, let alone any mech that isn't super-uber-quirked for it.
I don't like the changes to cLPL. I feel like its damage should have been reduced, not its maxrange. Why in the devil does the IS LPL have its TT damage +1 of 10, while the cLPL gets TT damage +3 of 13? Give the cLPL its range back and make it deal 11 damage instead of 13. Having certain weapons have their maxrange as 2.0x optimal while other certain weapons have their maxrange as 1.5x optimal... is just confusing and convoluted. No, God. No God please no.
Edited by Gyrok, 20 August 2016 - 11:40 AM.
