196 replies to this topic

[Johnny Z]

Theory? I think MechWarrior online has it right for exciting game play and interesting and fun enough to play off and on for years. Which is saying a lot. I guess it gets help from the forums and promises of upcoming updates but that's besides the point.

So in theory Mechwarrior Online has it right.

Would the topics suggestion work to? I don't know.

The big energy draw change should only work to improve existing MechWarrior gameplay so that's all cool.

Like some have said the slightly slower(more sim like) gameplay of closed beta is something to think about as an improvement as well.

Edited by Johnny Z, 22 August 2016 - 07:08 AM.

[Hotthedd]

There are a dozen different balancing mechanisms already in place in the BattleTech/MechWarrior universe.

The ONE mechanism that PGI will not touch, and the one that would mitigate Alpha Striking, is the one that they will not touch due to the twitch/E-sport crowd: Instant perfect pinpoint convergence.

As is PGI's style, they tried one solution: delayed convergence. There were problems with that solution, namely since hits are calculated server side, it caused problems with hit registration due to variables in ping. Therefore, PGI scrapped it forever. Nevermind the multitude of workable solutions provided by many players, those players are no longer the intended market.

Instead, PGI has continually tried variations of heat penalties to discourage Alpha/Group fire boating. Unfortunately, it will never work. Primarily because it will almost always be more effective (and much easier) to land multiple shots on one component with a single click than it would be to have to aim and fire several shots. But another huge reason heat will not be a limiting factor to discourage Alpha/Group fire boating is PGI's binary heat scale. In MW:O, you are either shut down from overheating or you are not. There is no in-between. Your 'mech behaves exactly the same at 99% heat as it does at 0% heat. It is because of this that MW:O does not have truedubs.

Instituting a proper heat scale, and a mechanic that dealt with instant perfect convergence, would allow PGI to remove the bandaids that are barely holding the game together: Ghost heat, Energy Draw, doubled armor, increased ammo, many quirks, etc.

[PhoenixFire55]

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 07:14 AM, said:

The ONE mechanism that PGI will not touch, and the one that would mitigate Alpha Striking, is the one that they will not touch due to the twitch/E-sport crowd: Instant perfect pinpoint convergence.

I'm one of the e-sport crowd and I'm advocating for the removal of said thing since 2012.
Assumptions much?

They won't touch it coz they are too dumb to do it, not for some other reason.

[Hotthedd]

PhoenixFire55, on 22 August 2016 - 07:16 AM, said:

I'm one of the e-sport crowd and I'm advocating for the removal of said thing since 2012.
Assumptions much?

They won't touch it coz they are too dumb to do it, not for some other reason.

You are one, but unfortunately you are on an island in the E-sport community .

I cannot believe that with all of the suggestions that would work to deter Alpha/Group fire as the de facto play style, that PGI is not smart enough to try any of them. It has to be intentional.

[PhoenixFire55]

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 07:20 AM, said:

You are one, but unfortunately you are on an island in the E-sport community .

I cannot believe that with all of the suggestions that would work to deter Alpha/Group fire as the de facto play style, that PGI is not smart enough to try any of them. It has to be intentional.

LOL ... sadly PGI is exactly that ... "not smart enough" as you put it, although I'd call it differently.
Their track record speaks for themselves really, worthy of the description of epic fail in dictionary.

[Hotthedd]

PhoenixFire55, on 22 August 2016 - 07:26 AM, said:

LOL ... sadly PGI is exactly that ... "not smart enough" as you put it, although I'd call it differently.
Their track record speaks for themselves really, worthy of the description of epic fail in dictionary.

You may be right. I do believe that PGI's handling of 3PV back in the day is given as an example on how to exactly not deal with your customers.
But it is really hard to wrap my mind around the level of stupidity it would actually require for your analysis to be correct. I suppose it is one of my personality flaws...

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Alistair Winter, on 21 August 2016 - 11:37 PM, said:

• Radically increasing cooldown (A turn in TT was 10 seconds, right?)
  
• Bringing armour values back to normal instead of double
  
• Radically increasing heat values for most weapons except ballistics
  
• Radically reducing DPS for long range weapons, to create a stronger divide between long range and short range. A gauss rifle should not have anywhere near as short cooldown as an AC20, by this logic.

You don't need to increase cooldowns if you are increasing heat (and yes, you would need to do this on ballistics too) nor would you have to alter DPS. All you are doing is decreasing the number of weapons that can realistically be used at the same time making it much harder to specialize due to seriously diminishing returns while single weapons would be doubly effective compared to what they are now. The big problem would be ballistics because heat doesn't control them as well as it would need to with this (Dakka Mauler would be essentially be doing double the damage and double the heat).

Honestly I don't really think it would be a good change because balancing ballistics would be rough.

PhoenixFire55, on 22 August 2016 - 07:16 AM, said:

They won't touch it coz they are too dumb to do it, not for some other reason.

They won't touch it because it is still a heavily debated topic that might get whales to stop being whales.

[Hit the Deck]

Ibrandul Mike, on 22 August 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

Depending on the definition of boating some mechs would not be able to function anymore. The Black Knight for example has only energy hardpoints. Therefore if you define boating as taking weapons of one type (energy for example) it is by definition unable to do anything but boating. There is no chance for diversity.
...

Under the system I mentioned in my post(s), a Black Knight pilot wants to carry two or more groups of different purpose energy weapons, say 3x PPC and 5x ML (I just made that up, don't know the exact hardpoints). The PPCs for hard hitting medium range engagements and the MLs for short range work. You can boat just PPCs if you want to chain fire them, but bringing too much of samey weapons should serve no purpose (because of the low heat cap).

Ballistics are treated rather differently because they have less effect on the hypothetical low heat cap. This requires more thought because they function differently to lasers, i.e. the smaller they go, the more are they intended for longer range. Gauss is a different animal entirely (and the cause of many balancing headache because we can't simply use Battle Value).

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

I will always boat weapons because I am old... And only use a two button mouse. (And if I can limit that to only having to left click, then I am in my happy place).

I am sorry but my fingers dont fly across the keyboard like a piano player... I dont want to shoot weapons with my keyboard... I am not joking here. I want to limit the complexity of where my fingers must go, so my carpel tunnel doesnt flair up.

[Felbombling]

There are a ton of ways to limit boating and alpha striking. PGI just has it in their mindset that heat neutral Mechs are bad for the game. Here are a few ideas to limit alpha strikes and promote mixed builds...

• Take away the ability to alpha strike altogether. Every weapon group is permanently set to chain fire weapons at about .5 intervals. The actual chain-fire mechanic could be set for firing after the last weapon finished.
  
• A proper heat scale with penalties for getting hot and shutting down. The Mechs don't need to constantly stay in the warning zone to make the game exciting. The game will get exciting as Mech performance starts to suffer through damage and loss of heat efficiency. Mechs that start to heat up should lose mobility, accuracy, expose itself to internal ammunition explosions or MechWarrior fatigue / loss of consciousness.
  
• Heatsinks that cycle every ten seconds and a lower heat pool would accomplish the above. TTK too short? Raise the heatsink cycle to fifteen or twenty seconds. Pretty simple tuning device... it almost seems like the game designers decades ago thought of everything!
  
• Make the general weapon table crappy... long reloads, poor heat efficiency, poor damage values. Then give Mechs that come stock with those weapons much better performance with them... signature hard-points that make those crappy weapons functional on the Mech in question. The Mech starts out with 2x LRM 15 and 4x Medium Lasers? OK. That Mech can equip either LRM 15 or LRM 20 in the hard-points with optimal efficiency. The energy hard-points can equip either Medium Lasers or Medium Pulse Lasers with optimal efficiency. Tune as necessary to achieve balance chassis to chassis. Let the weight savings from mounting an XL engine go towards more ammo, heat sinks, equipment like AMS / active probe, etc. Allow us to add weapons or upgrade weapons, sure, but those additional weapons outside the scope of the original layout should suffer a bit for not being part of the original load-out. That would eliminate to some degree players slapping Gauss Rifles into machine gun hard-points, as an example.
  
• Stop giving the players all these tools that they use to min-max their Mechs in the Mech Lab. PGI observes that TTK is too short in their estimation, yet we're still allowed to strip one arm entirely of armour to stuff an extra heat-sink or weapon. We're allowed to shoe-horn in any engine we desire, as an afterthought, after we've designed the perfect weapon build. How about only allowing three to four different engine ratings, XL or standard, per chassis? That still allows for eight engine types, and the design process would be harder in the Mech Lab... thus more challenge to come up with something good.
  
• With some of the above changes, more emphasis would be put into heat-sinks. That should translate into more ammo per ton, but only because armour values have been doubled. If a Mech design got away with two tons of AC/20 ammunition in TT, it should be able to get away with two tons in MW: O.

I still don't know what we're doing with power draw, unless PGI is hell-bent on ignoring the potential of a heat based penalty system, as the game intended to begin with. They're trying to shoehorn something on top of something else, and it just makes it more complicated for a new player, not less.

Edited by StaggerCheck, 22 August 2016 - 07:39 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 August 2016 - 07:33 AM, said:

They won't touch it because it is still a heavily debated topic that might get whales to stop being whales.

Thats a weak argument tbh, whales buy mechpacks beacuse "ooo .. shiny", not because of convergence or no convergence.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

PhoenixFire55, on 22 August 2016 - 07:39 AM, said:

Thats a weak argument tbh, whales buy mechpacks beacuse "ooo .. shiny", not because of convergence or no convergence.

Except whales will stop supporting a game just like some did after the 3rd person and consumable debates.

I am a whale and taking away convergence would basically make me stop giving them money because it is a stupid change.

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 August 2016 - 07:33 AM, said:

They won't touch it because it is still a heavily debated topic that might get whales to stop being whales.

Have you considered the possibility that it could bring many former whales back? Quite possibly more than would stop being whales?
And why would players leave just because the skill required to be the best would be higher?
Most of the whales that have left have done so because the game has moved away from BattleTech, not vice versa.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 07:46 AM, said:

And why would players leave just because the skill required to be the best would be higher?

Loaded that question a bit didn't you? It wouldn't take more skill, it would just make bad mechs even worse, because the Vindi needed to be nerfed harder apparently.

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 07:46 AM, said:

Have you considered the possibility that it could bring many former whales back? Quite possibly more than would stop being whales?

While this is true, I doubt it will bring back many simply because this more to appeal to a crowd that has more demands than simply convergence and that group tends to be smaller than the potential userbase/whales.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 22 August 2016 - 07:50 AM.

[POOTYTANGASAUR]

The way to increase TTK correctly isn't nerfing RoF. An ac20 fired every 10 seconds still can kill a light in 3 shots. Making us shoot that slow is just annoying, makes the weapon and mech handling garbage. Also nerfing RoF rewards peak trade builds which PGI is trying to eradicate anyway. But nerfing weapon damage is how to actually meaningfully increase TTK. Ac20 that deals 12-15 damage fired every 4-5 seconds (whatever current cooldown is) will actually account for less one shots and killing a mech will take 25-40% longer.

However TTK in the current state of the game is fine. Everyone who calls it CoD speed or DOOM or some **** is being dense.
Rarely do "alpha builds" or "boats" result in oneshots if ever now. As long as you 1v1 or 2-3v1 you will survive at least 15 seconds. But when you go out in the open vs half their team you either get wrecked because youre too slow to run or you barely survive because you were fast enough. Which is good, being punished for being stupid or making stupid plays, is good.

The current state of the game rewards aim and rewards both peak trading and dps builds. If played correctly a ballistic mauler, dire, blackwidow, jager, whatever can deal just as much damage as the meta vomit or ppc/erppc gauss builds, if not more. Srm brawling is effective, yet you are restricted which is good. Cannot run across a 500m gap to wreck some sniper build as he can punish you.

Any major changes to the way this game plays are just going to lose player base. I don't think it is in the best interest of the game to try such major changes, as shortening the life span of the game doesn't help anyone even if it makes the game "better", which it really wouldn't be better, just a totally different game.

Edited by POOTYTANGASAUR, 22 August 2016 - 07:51 AM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

So what about mechs whose default configuration IS as a boat?

[Mystere]

Cathy, on 22 August 2016 - 02:53 AM, said:

People that wanted a more drawn out game, more like the real franchise, were basically told your clueless, this is Mechwarrior not Battletech table top, if you want something more like it, F off and play it. or megamek.

Well, the detractors are all about to get their wish as early as next year. I sure hope they're prepared for the ghost town that could be MWO if and when it does happen.

People should really be careful what they wish for ... and vengeance is really sweet and is indeed best served cold.

Edited by Mystere, 22 August 2016 - 08:00 AM.

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 August 2016 - 07:49 AM, said:

Loaded that question a bit didn't you? It wouldn't take more skill, it would just make bad mechs even worse, because the Vindi needed to be nerfed harder apparently.

I disagree. It would require more skill, because consistently hitting one component with multiple clicks is harder than hitting a component with one click. There is no other way to slice it.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 August 2016 - 07:49 AM, said:

While this is true, I doubt it will bring back many simply because this more to appeal to a crowd that has more demands than simply convergence and that group tends to be smaller than the potential userbase/whales.

I firmly believe that the number of whales that MW:O has lost due to its failure to live up to the IP, and simplification of mechanics is much higher than the number of whales that MW:O has attracted by trying to copy games that have major studios already behind them.

[BigJim]

Very interesting post AW; I'm going to respond quickly and then go back & read other's comments on the discussion but I'll say this right off the bat - I did always from day one feel the cooldowns between weapons were far too similar, I would have liked to have seen more radical differences between than 1 sec here, or .25 secs there, with maybe a .75 difference in burntime or whatever.

I'm fairly sure that this simple change *could* do much to kill boating (of any weapon type) as a thing, and possibly to change the reality that in most cases, an alpha-based play style is simply the most efficient combat style; but I'm not going to try & say if it would overall be a positive or negative thing for game enjoyment without a lot more thought on the matter - but if someone put a gun to my head (even if it had a 10-sec cooldown!) and forced me to take a position I think I have to agree that creative (and fearless) manipulation of cooldowns and heat-gen *could* have the effect you desire...

Edited by BigJim, 22 August 2016 - 08:08 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 08:00 AM, said:

I disagree. It would require more skill, because consistently hitting one component with multiple clicks is harder than hitting a component with one click.

The assumption you are making is that all mechs would have to make multiple clicks, as I was under the impression this was about instant convergence (which means mechs with clustered hardpoints get much better)? If that is the case, then I wouldn't have to make multiple clicks if I just pick the right mech (like a Hellbringer, or a Hunchback for example).

Hotthedd, on 22 August 2016 - 08:00 AM, said:

I firmly believe that the number of whales that MW:O has lost due to its failure to live up to the IP

Initially sure, it lost a lot of the founder crowd due to this, but I don't think the TT purist whales are as important, especially since the game has failed to copy the right things from other games (*cough*minimap*cough*). The reason TT purists shouldn't be considered as important is because they simply would prefer the game in such a way that would not attract new users, and for a PvP only game, playerbase size and growth are essential.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 22 August 2016 - 08:08 AM.