53 replies to this topic

[Jarl Dane]

Tarogato made a very good post on Reddit about the issues with Energy Draw. He'd like to post it here but he can't post on the forums for like 26 more days or something so I am posting it for him:

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.

Edit:

Seems a lot of people think I am measuring the energy draw system as it stands against the old ghost heat system. That is not the case, I am considering the future potential of the new system with any changes made necessary to achieve desired balance. What is on that PTS now is not the be-all-end-all, it's a first stage. I thought that much was obvious.

Where do I think we could go from here? An idea that seemed to come up again and again while I was talking to unitmates is... what if we had three power draw bars? One for energy, one for ballistic, one for missile. I think this could work - by not having the three classes of weapons treated homogeneously by the penalty system, we are suddenly encouraged to mix weapons to achieve optimal damage output. The reason I didn't include this idea in my post original is because I think it could be considered too sophisticated for the end user, and it's too similar to the pre-existing ghost heat system. That said... what do you think? Qualms aside, I think it could work.

Another thing is that we need to get away from linear heat penalties. Ghost heat has something more resembling exponential penalties, which is what prevents people from alpha-striking 4x PPCs or 6x ERLL. I feel that penalties incurred from exceeding energy draw some how need to mimic this exponential behaviour, otherwise we will have problems with PPC alpha boating, LPL alpha boating, and ERLL alpha boating. How to make the jump from linear to exponential in a way that makes sense to the player? I'm not sure. But I feel it's an important piece of the puzzle.

Edited by Mech The Dane, 20 August 2016 - 09:24 PM.

[davoodoo]

I have to say, i agree with that, expect on gauss but i dont want to argue about that.

Also i would like to add, seen quite a few ppl worried about viability of 3 uac10 night gyr, i guess we can safely assume itll work.

Edited by davoodoo, 20 August 2016 - 12:20 PM.

[Chados]

What I think is that the grognards and otaku out there need to take a deep breath and chill. The PTS has been up less than a week. The energy draw rates for everything are the same right now. They haven't balanced anything under the new rules yet. Does the system encourage LPL boating and the old gauss/PPC meta as currently set up? Yes. Yes, it does. But has it been tuned yet? No. No, it hasn't.

I don't claim to have anything like Tarogato's understanding of the game. He's a much better player than I ever will be, and that's fine. Nevertheless, I play too and Taro's post sounds a lot like "but we've always done it the other way! I'm used to it, so it's better. Because the new way hurts my playstyle" to me. I get that. It's a valid feeling. I felt the same way when Russ and Paul nerfed my beloved Catapult to the point I can't play it anymore and I had to shelve all of them. But others seem to be able to play SRM builds and the K2 fine and maybe that's what Russ wanted. I moved on and found new mechs that fit with my style of play, in the current environment, and maybe that's what Russ wanted too, on a larger scale. We adapt to change.

Taro is upset that stare-fests will override "skill" moves involving torso-twisting like a pair of windshield wipers in a tropical storm. Well, I don't think that's a bad thing. Inertia and momentum tell me that you shouldn't be able to do that with a torso weighing more than an Abrams tank. You ever see a dragline turn? Or a tank turret turn? It doesn't happen in an instant like we see in MWO. Because physics. Lowering the efficacy of twitchy skill-moves might introduce some more simulation-like characteristics into play and I don't think that's at all a bad thing. I also don't think that reducing the power of some of his cited builds is a bad thing either. I'd like to see autocannon over two get hammered the same way, honestly, because the Kodiak-3 still is too much of a buzz saw in my opinion. But that's just me and your mileage may vary. And whining about the Carebear is not the point of this response.

The point of this response is that PGI just started beta-testing this system. You all ever beta games before? To a certain extent we all are beta testers of this, because it's a perpetual work in progress. But I have play tested flight simulations including Falcon 4.0, Fly II, Flanker 2.0, the early versions of DCS, Tank T72 Balkans on Fire, and IL-2 Sturmovik in several iterations. I did it for many years. Which is why I typically don't run on PTS here, I'm not real interested in more beta testing. But I do follow the comments with a once-professional tester's eye and it bothers me when people make the kind of blanket "it sucks becuase it's not live-side ready" comments about an early beta build that Taro made here. And early beta builds always are a disaster that gets tuned better as time goes by and feedback from the play testers happens. And no, I'm not white knighting for PGI. I'm saying that throwing up your hands over a system that's a week into beta is a lot premature. PGI is making what appears to me to be a credible attempt to introduce a transparent, flexible fix to some longstanding balance problems. Let's work with the system, not against it. If there are elements of the current meta that the community wants to preserve, this is the place to put them.

[TKSax]

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 12:25 PM, said:

What I think is that the grognards and otaku out there need to take a deep breath and chill. The PTS has been up less than a week. The energy draw rates for everything are the same right now. They haven't balanced anything under the new rules yet. Does the system encourage LPL boating and the old gauss/PPC meta as currently set up? Yes. Yes, it does. But has it been tuned yet? No. No, it hasn't.

So you are saying we should not give feedback? That is the whole point this is well thought out feedback, and exactly what PGI needs, so know he does not need to chill out and you to drop the name calling on valid feedback.

[zudukai]

Quote

i totally agree on all of your points, and having my hands on the PTS clearly paint exactly what you have written here.


this system is not only more restrictive to diversity, it completely removes a playstyle that competed against long range play.

i do hope the next installation of PwD has some significant "re-evaluations"

bump!

[Chados]

TKSax, on 20 August 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

So you are saying we should not give feedback? That is the whole point this is well thought out feedback, and exactly what PGI needs, so know he does not need to chill out and you to drop the name calling on valid feedback.

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

Yeah, it's my opinion that Taro needs to chill out and quit acting like an otaku on Week One of a beta test. There, I said it again.

[Alistair Winter]

This is gonna seem like some kind of spiel since I'm from the same unit as Dane and Tarogato, but just for the record, I sadly rarely have the time to talk with those guys, since we're on opposite sides of the world. So me responding here isn't some Isengrim Illuminati conspiracy.

With that being said, I really haven't experimented enough with the Energy draw system to comment with authority, and I'm the furthest thing from a comp player (except for my jedi reflexes), so I can't really comment on what the comp crowd would do with this sort of system or how it would affect their matches.

However... I do agree with the basic premise of Taro's message, which is that Energy draw removes incentive for mixed builds and reduces punishment for boating. I think this is a conclusion that we can arrive at basically a priori (which is fancy university talk for "without any required real world experience"). If you treat all kinds of damage (whether done by lasers, ballistics or missiles) as homogenous and you remove boating alpha strike penalties, then there's no inherent reason to combine weapons, beyond the limited synergy that comes from the base stats (e.g. combining a PPC and a gauss rifle works because one doesn't produce heat, regardless of whether you have Ghost Heat or Energy Draw)

Logically, I don't think there's any solution that rewards mixed builds unless PGI radically reduces heat for certain weapon types, such as ballistics, in which case you can combine ballistics and energy weapons and not worry too much about the Energy draw penalty, because the heat will be so low anyway. So if energy weapons have higher DPS, you'd be willing to accept the Energy draw penalty every time you alpha, because you won't overheat anyway. But this is a really ugly solution, because it means everyone will basically get penalized all the time. And you'll hear that "BOINK" warning sound every time you shoot, because you get the penalty all the time.

Like Taro said in another thread (and again, I call things as I see them, I'm not some Isengrim fanboy here), comp teams are actually using more diverse and mixed builds on the live server than ever. And as someone who pugs 99% of the time, I can add that the same is true for the solo queue. So what is the real purpose here?

• Lowering TTK. I think this can done by universal nerfs to cooldown and/or heat, just to slow the pace of the game, if desired. In other words, there are other ways to do this, besides Energy draw.
  
• Preventing AlphaStrikeWarrior Online. It's quite possible that people will always try to change their builds in order to alpha strike as much as possible. So no matter how much you raise or lower the bar for alpha strike heat penalties, people are still going to try to alpha strike. Or at least run 2 groups of weapons (e.g. 3+3 large lasers) and just fire one after the other, which isn't much more depth at all.

I applauded Russ for trying to figure out a way to stop the constant alpha strikes, but I'm not really sure if it's possible. To be honest, the best solution I have ever seen goes back to 2012, and I know PGI hates it. This is the best solution I've seen:

• Punish people for operating at high heat levels over long periods of time. But instead of only relying on overheating and powering down, look at how overheating worked in tabletop.
  
• Create different penalties for running hot. Reduce speed, reduce torso twist, reduce arm movement, create flickering HUD and radar, make the whole mech more sluggish.
  
• The advantage of having gradually increasing penalties is that the player isn't just trying to balance a knife's edge and creating macros in order to fire 5+5 cSPLs with the perfect timing to avoid Energy draw or Ghost heat penalties. It's not just a binary situation of operating at 100% capacity or 0% capacity (e.g. managing heat properly or overheating). It becomes a constant judgement call of how much information, speed and agility you're willing to sacrifice in order to maximize firepower.
  
• Basically brawlers would be at a disadvantage due to the loss of speed and agility, snipers would be at a disadvantage due to the flickering, unreliable HUD (when your crosshair is flickering on and off or even moving around, and you lose the ability to detect enemy mechs or see paper dolls, it's kind of hard to keep sniping with maximum efficiency).

TL;DR - PGI can try to experiment with different energy draw for different weapons (e.g. PPCs vs cERLLs), and they can mess around with different energy draw capacities for different weight classes (e.g. give assault mechs 40 instead of 30 energy cap), but ultimately I don't think it will change the fact that removing ghost heat is the equivalent to removing incentive for mixed builds.

[Domenoth]

TKSax, on 20 August 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

So you are saying we should not give feedback? That is the whole point this is well thought out feedback, and exactly what PGI needs, so know he does not need to chill out and you to drop the name calling on valid feedback.

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 01:00 PM, said:

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

Yeah, it's my opinion that Taro needs to chill out and quit acting like an otaku on Week One of a beta test. There, I said it again.

In Chados defense, Taro does basically say, "This will not work. Go back to the old way." Not, "I'm concerned about <x>. Change <x> and maybe you've got something that will work." That does come off extremely "chicken-little" 2 or 3 days into an experimental "start conservatively with numbers and see what happens" test.

Edit:
Now if this post came out after round three of PTS tweaks and was phrased "X has remained a problem throughout this PTS, it looks like it simply cannot be solved. We need to go back to Ghost Heat." I'd be okay with it because that's literally what Russ said would happen. If Energy Draw isn't better than Ghost Heat by the end of testing, Russ says it won't go live.

Edit 2:

Alistair Winter, on 20 August 2016 - 01:18 PM, said:

TL;DR - PGI can try to experiment with different energy draw for different weapons (e.g. PPCs vs cERLLs), and they can mess around with different energy draw capacities for different weight classes (e.g. give assault mechs 40 instead of 30 energy cap), but ultimately I don't think it will change the fact that removing ghost heat is the equivalent to removing incentive for mixed builds.

This works for me. You identify several possible solutions and tack on an additional "I doubt it will work".

Edited by Domenoth, 20 August 2016 - 01:33 PM.

[Alienized]

lets not forget the ac/uac boats and streakdogs etc etc.
a new heat system has to punish all sorts of boating while favouring mixed loadouts without ignoring the PPFLD loadouts.
in my book, it has to be a mix of power draw as it is meant to work AND the ghost heat mechanic we currently have.

[Alistair Winter]

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 01:00 PM, said:

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

I am not a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations. But it seems to me that if some features require tweaking and some features require abandoning. It's not a given that any feature can have any kind of effect if you tweak it.

To give an extreme example, imagine if we're giving every mech in the game unlimited hardpoints, to promote diversity. Of course, you can still end up with more diversity by adding additional layers of balancing (like increasing quirks substantially), but it doesn't change the fact that unlimited hardpoints to every mech in the game is essentially killing diversity, not promoting diversity.

Domenoth, on 20 August 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

In Chados defense, Taro does basically say, "This will not work. Go back to the old way." Not, "I'm concerned about <x>. Change <x> and maybe you've got something that will work." That does come off extremely "chicken-little" 2 or 3 days into an experimental "start conservatively with numbers and see what happens" test.

Sometimes the experienced players are able to see things almost immediately. You know all the problems we're trying to fix with Faction play right now? The Invasion game mode, the predictable gameplay, the chokepoint warfare, the bad map design? Experienced players pointed that stuff out after 2-3 days in CW Phase 1, if you remember. Now, 3 years later, PGI is trying to solve those issues. Back then, a lot of people were saying "Give it time, we just need some o-gens, heavily armed dropships and stuff like that" and arguing that people didn't know how the FP meta would change over time with various tweaks to stop zerg rushing.

[Gas Guzzler]

Well his feedback is based on the concept of linking all weapons together.. It that concept is re-thought, I think his feedback would also be re-thought. It definitely seems from testing that without making certain things super lopsided they can't really do anything to encourage mixing weapons.

[TKSax]

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 01:00 PM, said:

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

Yeah, it's my opinion that Taro needs to chill out and quit acting like an otaku on Week One of a beta test. There, I said it again.

There is tons of feedback in there before he gets to the part about he does not think it will work, and instead of countering that with feedback on why you think the current system will work eventually you would rather attack the message. An since you admittedly are not playing on the PTS why are you even here.

Oh and I was beta tester for 8+ years with Activision, even got my names is credits of same games. There were plenty of times that I and several other people wrote similar responses to Taros's about gameplay or a system, yes even 1 week into testing of a game.

Edited by TKSax, 20 August 2016 - 01:39 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 01:00 PM, said:

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

Yeah, it's my opinion that Taro needs to chill out and quit acting like an otaku on Week One of a beta test. There, I said it again.

If you haven't even played the PTS then your opinion doesn't carry a lot of weight...

[davoodoo]

There were ppl who said for months now that 30 dmg ghost heat 2.0 wont work, now they simply went and confirmed that its even worse than they thought it will be...

You really dont need much, go into testing grounds with few setups and youll quickly see whats broken.

And if this is unadjusted version of this system then i ask what pgi was doing for all that time?? it doesnt take months to add gauge to ui, pgi could already test at least most popular setups.

Edited by davoodoo, 20 August 2016 - 01:44 PM.

[kapusta11]

Chados, on 20 August 2016 - 01:00 PM, said:

That isn't feedback. It's "I want it not to change." You think his position is valid. I don't. I used to be a professional beta tester for combat flight simulations, and I was a journalist on the subject as well, and I have a clue about how to beta test a simulation product. My opinion is that this isn't how you tune a brand new product for release, by whining "it won't work!" You don't like my views? Too bad.

Yeah, it's my opinion that Taro needs to chill out and quit acting like an otaku on Week One of a beta test. There, I said it again.

At least Tarogato used arguments to prove his point. You're just calling everyone who doesn't like this new system an otaku whiner.

An no, "it's just a beta test" argument doesn't cut it. If PGI want to replace what we have right now with something it must be an upgrade.

Edited by kapusta11, 20 August 2016 - 01:48 PM.

[Chados]

Domenoth, on 20 August 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

In Chados defense, Taro does basically say, &quot;This will not work. Go back to the old way.&quot; Not, &quot;I'm concerned about &lt;x&gt;. Change &lt;x&gt; and maybe you've got something that will work.&quot; That does come off extremely &quot;chicken-little&quot; 2 or 3 days into an experimental &quot;start conservatively with numbers and see what happens&quot; test.

Edit:
Now if this post came out after round three of PTS tweaks and was phrased &quot;X has remained a problem throughout this PTS, it looks like it simply cannot be solved. We need to go back to Ghost Heat.&quot; I'd be okay with it because that's literally what Russ said would happen. If Energy Draw isn't better than Ghost Heat by the end of testing, Russ says it won't go live.

Edit 2:

This works for me. You identify several possible solutions and tack on an additional &quot;I doubt it will work&quot;.

Exactly. Thank you.

[davoodoo]

Alistair Winter, on 20 August 2016 - 01:18 PM, said:

• Preventing AlphaStrikeWarrior Online. It's quite possible that people will always try to change their builds in order to alpha strike as much as possible. So no matter how much you raise or lower the bar for alpha strike heat penalties, people are still going to try to alpha strike. Or at least run 2 groups of weapons (e.g. 3+3 large lasers) and just fire one after the other, which isn't much more depth at all.

You cant stop alphas, you can lower them but unless you hard enforce firing 1 weapon at a time ppl will opt for as high alphas as possible and tbh theyll still prefer slow high damage weapons.



1)When you clear cover and aim at enemy you need to put as much dmg as you can before you need to fall back which favors alpha, same thing can be said about twisting.
2)If your team mates and you focus target huge alpha will be more beneficial than chainfiring many weapons, possibly killing target outright without really giving him chance to escape
3)its too easy to hit a target and lets be honest here, only time when your aim drops is when light is circling close to you, why would you chainfire if you can be sure than this single blob of nonsense hits enemy anyway.

Instead of thinking how to stop alphas you should think on how to make alphas less devastating.
And i repeat it like mantra, 10 dmg lb10x doesnt do anything, 10 dmg ac10 leaves a 10 dmg hole.

Edited by davoodoo, 20 August 2016 - 02:07 PM.

[MechaBattler]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 August 2016 - 01:32 PM, said:

Well his feedback is based on the concept of linking all weapons together.. It that concept is re-thought, I think his feedback would also be re-thought. It definitely seems from testing that without making certain things super lopsided they can't really do anything to encourage mixing weapons.

Wouldn't simply applying Ghost Heat to the new system fix that a bit? Except it would be Ghost Energy. So mixing weapons would be the least penalized.

[Gas Guzzler]

MechaBattler, on 20 August 2016 - 02:08 PM, said:

Wouldn't simply applying Ghost Heat to the new system fix that a bit? Except it would be Ghost Energy. So mixing weapons would be the least penalized.

Technically it would fix the boating issue, but would also be complex and convoluted, more so than the current ghost heat, which I thought we were trying to avoid.

We also can't assume that that wouldn't have its own set of balancing issues.

[X T R E M E]

Keep calm and think, other than the faulty weapon balance, the other big issue is the non diffrentiation among all the weight classes. One good advise imho is to utilize the mech weight as limit for the energy status bar, example 25 ton 25 energy status bar cap, 75 ton 75 energy status bar cap, to obtain a substantial difference between a 75 ton heavy and a 100 ton assault, check these PTS videos for better understanding, thx

https://www.youtube....75LL7hFQ/videos