Robinson Crusher, on 20 September 2016 - 04:17 AM, said:
I wish the quoting here let me edit text like I can on other forums... and if there is a way to do that here, then someone feel free to let me know how... because I'd like to focus on the last three points you make (as the above analysis is pretty clear). Lovely, it seems to be refusing to include ScarecrowES post responding to my last post.
First let me say that I don't think the original designers of Battletech put this level of thought into the values they chose for weapons and heat. The numbers just don't produce the results in game that they describe in the BT fiction. In fiction people are going hot to tip the balance at some crisis point. In TT you never do, because the penalties are so prohibitive. Making some changes to the heat system would be necessary to make min-maxing gamers willing to take on the penalties. Not that I'm saying the changes PGI made are the right ones, mind you. I also dislike the thirty free heat and no effect on offensive potential environment. I'm just saying that a return to TT would put us back to a situation where no one ever alphas at all, and the alpha strike should have a place in the game since it is a part of the lore.
I agree with the second to last point, but damage and heat are of course related, since you are trading one to get the other. Since people are dying too fast for the game to have maximized enjoyment, some kind of damage choke point seems reasonable.
The final point is the crux of the matter as I see it. By decoupling heat from the build they are forcing a radical change in builds, so much so that people need to reconsider what 'mechs meet their play-styles. Here is the hidden head of the business decision and one that leads to long term bad things for a game. That is to say, the rules change which is designed to sell new hardware. Just like Quirk nerfs that force people out of their current mech, the ED system will produce a flurry of new mech choices and a stream of revenue. Yes, I think the Devs understand their game very well.
I wish all the devs could be forced to play Star Trek online, look at what happened to the best space sim once it adopted that kind of strategy, and take careful note of population levels even amongst Fans who are notorious for being radically committed to their IP.
I wanted to wait til I got home to address yours, since it would be easier to think out a decent reply.
In terms of the BT fiction and the game... I certainly don't think one has bearing on the other, haha. There is a LOT in the fiction that simply makes no sense. It's designed to entertain, not make a functional game.
One interesting dynamic though, when translating the turns of TT to real time like MWO is that, since you've lowered the cooldowns and basically upped the tempo, is that it's easier to push the heat system in MWO than it is in TT. A build that would be perfectly heat neutral in TT is not going to be in MWO (for the most part). Certainly in TT, if you built in enough sinks for your build, you could alpha every single turn. Even a 4xERPPC Warhawk, which is NOT heat neutral, could fire several alphas back-to-back, drop one PPC after a few volleys, and then get right back to a few more full alphas.
Not so easy in MWO. With the TT system in real time, you're looking at one alpha every 10 seconds or so if you want to stay out of penalties. Not bad. Reasonable, I'd say - 60 damage every 10 seconds is not too much, but since it's PPFLD that's a good burst... seems fair for an 85-ton mech. Or, it can chain or volley fire however needed, and be able to sustain that fight for quite awhile.
And this is kinda what we're going for. Typically, a player is going to build a mech with a heat management score around 1.2. This is going to translate to around 1 good alpha without penalties. And you should be able to do that again in no more than 10 seconds. Some maybe a little sooner for low-damage alphas. So throwing alphas down range will still absolutely be a thing. Throwing alphas down range one after the other will NOT be a thing, and I think that's the goal people are leaning toward. But of course, we can make adjustments to make this feel right in the hands of players.
To the next point... Damage and heat ARE related, but are not the same thing... remember that's the point I was trying to make. These are two parts of a trifecta... output (damage and range), heat, and investment (weight, crits, ammo, sinks). Damage is not the control number, heat is - and that's by design, both in TT and in MWO. I would point to how convoluted ED has had to get to try to eek out some level of "balance" using damage as a basis for the system.
Before the system was even set to test, the idea that we could use damage as a metric for output began to crack. After PTS1, that notion pretty much died. Every weapon thereafter ended up with a different draw value. As the community has known well pretty much forever, not all damage is created equal... damage is only half of output... range matters too, and the methodology of applying damage matters. No... heat is what these systems were designed to look at, and for very good reason.
I would add, to your last points... I don't tend to think much of PGI's development intelligence, but I can't lower my expectations so much that I'd believe they'd actually make such abstract changes with such wide-ranging negative effects specifically to set up a paradigm shift designed to bolster sales... and not expect it to tank their game. The proportion of games that fall apart after such changes is MUCH higher than games that get better.
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