32 replies to this topic

[ScarecrowES]

1453 R, on 20 September 2016 - 10:38 AM, said:

We're experimenting with "better mechanic" ideas right now.

That's the entire point.

Perhaps Scarecrow's dual-heatbar system would be better. Perhaps something else would be better yet. And who knows - maybe in the end you'll get your wish and we'll all be stuck with Ghost Heat until the end of time.

But while this is all on the PTS? The PTS is here for us to try and help Piranha figure out a way to exorcise Ghost Heat like the horrible dirty phantasm it is.

The proposed TT system is more fair and generally more tunable and less cheesy than GH or ED. It's a core system, slots right in. Doesn't need convoluted mechanics, and is easier to understand.

One thing that PGI and / or players are trying to address that it did not directly touch on is boating. Personally, I am not sure this NEEDS to be addressed. Some mechs MUST boat... they have no choice. However, we can discourage boating without outright punishing it via a progressive cooldown system.

Make each weapon have a slightly faster cooldown by default. Then, slightly increase the cooldown for every weapon of the same type you mount beyond that. All you so is reduce cooldowns... it spreads the damage out a little more without actually penalizing you or otherwise preventing you from putting out as much damage as you like. It reduces burst damage, but that's it. This also means that mixed builds are the best path to higher burst damage without actually messing with the balance of boating vs mixed. And you don't mess with intra weapon balance.

On top of that, turn the skill system on its head. Instead of giving a buff to heat cap and dissipation, remove a nerf. This way, the best a mech can every be is what the build allows. You will never find yourself outside the zone of crafted balance you've created. Far more fair across all mechs.

You put in these 3 changes, you've got a path to a perfectly fair and balanced heat system that rewards skill and adds an element of risk/reward and tactical choice.

[BearFlag]

1453 R, on 20 September 2016 - 08:31 AM, said:

A.) Get rid of Ghost Heat because Ghost Heat is e-cancer and needs to be purged from the game with fire.

Except that ED is Ghost Heat - just a different system of it. Both generate magic heat that would otherwise not be created. And both are effectively punitive systems. One penalizes boated weapons; the other penalizes crossing an alpha cap. Both are designed to punish players for doing something they can do with in the game.

If the goal is to increase TTK and reduce instakills, alphas are not the only problem. I think you're better off approaching the problems rather than trying "engineer" player behavior.

[ScarecrowES]

BearFlag, on 20 September 2016 - 06:32 PM, said:

Except that ED is Ghost Heat - just a different system of it. Both generate magic heat that would otherwise not be created. And both are effectively punitive systems. One penalizes boated weapons; the other penalizes crossing an alpha cap. Both are designed to punish players for doing something they can do with in the game.

If the goal is to increase TTK and reduce instakills, alphas are not the only problem. I think you're better off approaching the problems rather than trying "engineer" player behavior.

ED may once have been just "ghost heat with a meter" but it's a long way off that now.

Moreover, ED creates more problems than it attempts to address. The base methodology for how it sets a limit and then doles out punishment is horribly designed. It might almost be OK if you looked at damage dealt, found a penalty, tried to assess the amount of heat used in proportion to damage dealt, and then penalized this heat with more heat. At least then, the penalty would be proportional to the heat of the weapon, not damage done. Unfortunately, this is impossible to code.

And in the end, what is ED if not a way to "engineer the player" eh? As you say... doesn't address the problem and is trying to persuade players against doing what they want and what the game allows.

[Kuaron]

1453 R, on 20 September 2016 - 08:31 AM, said:

A.) Get rid of Ghost Heat because Ghost Heat is e-cancer and needs to be purged from the game with fire.

B.) Space out weapons fire, limiting instaburst damage that results in the instagib scenarios players are striving to avoid in MWO.

C.) Does not have ANYTHING TO BLOODY DO with convergence for the million and five reasons already given in a million and five other threads why convergence is a thing Piranha's not messing with.

There's your objectives. Now: what do we do to hit all three of those points?

I'd wish to add:

D) Addresses boating.

E) Makes at least a tiny bit of sense, i.e. has a credible interpretation of what it is supposed to represent fluff-wise.

Where is your ED now?
If you are serious about "better mechanics", let's start talking about good ones, in the first place.

FTR: I don't dislike the idea of a slowed down convergence (opposing condition C) but independently of this I can imagine so far two concepts that could work.
Both possible since the realisation of the second bar.

One is Scarecrow's "reserve bar" system he already described.
To put it short: Split the heat bar in two, penalize the second one and let it regenerate only when the first one is mostly done.
It penalizes using much heat at once but still allows variation.

The second idea is more straightforward, being my old suggestion:
Lower the heat cap even more (below 0.9 for HS, more like 0.5) and use the second bar for a heat-independent penalty system for cold weapons, with recoil or jam chance as effects.

Let's be honest: If we want more TTK, we have to nerf all weapons, more or less, compared to a non-GH non-ED system. The art is to do it in a way that encourages certain builds, play styles and decisions instead of just boating nerfed weapons.

The seconds suggestion can be, ofc, varied in one or another way to address certain goals.
E.g. one of Scarecrow's goals is to discourage "redlining", so an ideal heat level at which a skilled player has to operate after heating up the mech in an ongoing fight.
This can be implemented in the second suggestion by implementing a softcap at the top of the bar instead of a low hardcap (heat shutdown). Ofc. it will lack the delayed penalty cooldown his reserve bar gives, but it does the job of allowing risky alphastrikes for extreme situations, depending on it's design. And it leaves the second bar unused.

Andi has a thread making a similar approach, speaking of penalties like this:

Andi Nagasia, on 13 September 2016 - 04:56 PM, said:

that we have all that out of the way lets look at Penalties,
in this System i see only 3 Types that would work,
1) Speed,
2) Cycle,
3) HUD,

But, again, without a cold weapon adjustment.

A variation of the first (Scarecrow's) suggestion, on the other hand, would be a penalty to cold weapons, which is, in my eyes, necessary anyway. Because if one reduces the effectively available heat, one nerfs hot weapons more then cold ones and has to adjust the balance, even if Scarecrow writes long texts about the heat system having nothing to do with weapon balance, arguing for his special choice of definitions.
But since with his reserve bar approach the second bar is already in use, the nerf to cold weapons would have to happen via cooldowns. This taken into account, it would give us more freedom to what we want to do to hot weapons and how lethal we want the fight be in MWO, i.e. we could choose the TTK as we see it fit.

Both systems do make sense lore-wise (condition E).
Both systems do at least encourage mixing between hot and cold weapons (for not having to spend too much resources on HSs) because these two are penalized separately.
If one wants to address boating weapon-wise instead of just per weapon type, I think Scarecrows last suggestion with recursively increased cooldowns could be reasonable. They'd have to be proportional to the weapon's dmg in percent of additional cooldown to make medium-class lasers count as only a half large-class one.
Something like:
Additional CD = dmg/2 % CD.

Edited by Kuaron, 24 September 2016 - 08:06 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

Kuaron, on 24 September 2016 - 07:37 AM, said:

A variation of the first (Scarecrow's) suggestion, on the other hand, would be a penalty to cold weapons, which is, in my eyes, necessary anyway

I'm confused about your distinction with "cold weapons" here.

If one were to reduce heat cap willy-nilly, as PGI has done, it's absolutely a nerf on energy weapons. This has little to do with the actual nerf itself, and more to do with the fact that they only nerfed the part of the MWO heat cap that mechs earn through their build (sinks) and not the massive 30pts that PGI gives all mechs on top of that. So yes, doing it THIS way absolutely favors one type of weapon over another.

However, that's not what happens under the system I propose. We've left the part of heat cap that the build determines (which is part of built/heat/weapon balance) fully intact, and locked those bonus 30 points behind a penalty wall. This methodology is fair to both hot and cold weapons, as it lets both use the full cap they need and have earned through their builds.

Unlike the changes that have been made with heat cap and dissipation under ED, the proposed TT system doesn't interfere with weapon and build balance. It lets those systems handle what they're supposed to handle, and keeps squarely to the role it's suppose to play.

[BLOOD WOLF]

BearFlag, on 20 September 2016 - 06:32 PM, said:

Except that ED is Ghost Heat - just a different system of it. Both generate magic heat that would otherwise not be created. And both are effectively punitive systems. One penalizes boated weapons; the other penalizes crossing an alpha cap. Both are designed to punish players for doing something they can do with in the game.

If the goal is to increase TTK and reduce instakills, alphas are not the only problem. I think you're better off approaching the problems rather than trying "engineer" player behavior.

well that is why the PTS is changing different stats as well. maybe you didn't know that?

"engineer player behavior"----I don't even want to dive down that rabbit hole

[ScarecrowES]

BLOOD WOLF, on 24 September 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

"engineer player behavior"----I don't even want to dive down that rabbit hole

Such as with a system that employs arbitrary damage limits and enforced superfluous cooldowns in an attempt to reduce DoT by getting players to fire more slowly and in smaller-damage groups than the game otherwise allows them to do?

Or a system that arbitrarily decides certain weapon numbers shouldn't be fired together, so limits on numbers are imposed through a heat penalty system to get players to mount/use more diverse layouts instead of more optimized ideal ones?

Edited by ScarecrowES, 24 September 2016 - 12:55 PM.

[Kuaron]

@ Scarecrow:

I answered, concerning your system, in the appropriate thread.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__5409129

[Tarl Cabot]

GH/ED are attempts to curb high alphas unleashed in an environment that from the very beginning has been missing heatscale balancing factors, faster firing weapons (lower cooldowns) and instant weapon convergence from different body locations.

On the other side of the coin, afaik, other games did not address going excessively over the heatcap, just shutdown, as those games were meant primarily to be a single player campaign with multi-player access. The boardgames allowed a player to consider his actions, calculate his heat, etc before firing each weapon (BT) while Solaris was the extreme side of it. Still, the heatscale had rolls for ammo explosions, shutdown rolls, speed reduction, targeting difficulties and pilot conscious rolls at the end round.

One other item about heat generation, engine crits. 1st engine crit added +5 heat, 2nd engine crit generated a total +10 heat per turn.

The damage to mech after exceeding shutdown was not added until players were using mechs that could severely abuse the system, primarily the Stalker firing 6ERPPC, iirc. The mech damage was added the same time Ghost Heat was added.

Ammo explosions were in early beta but were removed, of course everyone was running SHS and there were only 4? or so non-heat efficient mechs? Ammo explosions should be added back in but not at TT levels, even if it is only set at one threshold instead of the 3 from the boardgames, likely right before 100% heat cap or exceeding 10% heatcap.

Movement/piloting modifiers - that could be accomplished with 3-4 thresholds using the same method that Clan mechs w/cXL with one destroyed torso, where its movement/agility has a 20% penalty.

For the GH vs ED, GH has workarounds to avoid excessive heat but heatscale balancing factors are still missing. If they were already part of the game, would we be having this conversation, or would the ED be a more milder form to remove the current GH workarounds?

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 24 September 2016 - 02:23 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Tarl Cabot, on 24 September 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

GH/ED are attempts to curb high alphas unleashed in an environment that from the very beginning has been missing heatscale balancing factors, faster firing weapons (lower cooldowns) and instant weapon convergence from different body locations.

On the other side of the coin, afaik, other games did not address going excessively over the heatcap, just shutdown, as those games were meant primarily to be a single player campaign with multi-player access. The boardgames allowed a player to consider his actions, calculate his heat, etc before firing each weapon (BT) while Solaris was the extreme side of it. Still, the heatscale had rolls for ammo explosions, shutdown rolls, speed reduction, targeting difficulties and pilot conscious rolls at the end round.

One other item about heat generation, engine crits. 1st engine crit added +5 heat, 2nd engine crit generated a total +10 heat per turn.

The damage to mech after exceeding shutdown was not added until players were using mechs that could severely abuse the system, primarily the Stalker firing 6ERPPC, iirc. The mech damage was added the same time Ghost Heat was added.

Ammo explosions were in early beta but were removed, of course everyone was running SHS and there were only 4? or so non-heat efficient mechs? Ammo explosions should be added back in but not at TT levels, even if it is only set at one threshold instead of the 3 from the boardgames, likely right before 100% heat cap or exceeding 10% heatcap.

Movement/piloting modifiers - that could be accomplished with 3-4 thresholds using the same method that Clan mechs w/cXL with one destroyed torso, where its movement/agility has a 20% penalty.

For the GH vs ED, GH has workarounds to avoid excessive heat but heatscale balancing factors are still missing. If they were already part of the game, would we be having this conversation, or would the ED be a more milder form to remove the current GH workarounds?

Ed I believe is just a measure to counter the ineffectiveness of GH and the workarounds for high alpha's with no penalty. My best example is my 80 alpha atlas which completely circumvents GH but would be penalized under ED

But #SAVE MY HIGH ALPHA

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 24 September 2016 - 02:39 PM.

[Kael Posavatz]

Energy Draw was supposed to address short comings with ghost heat.

Notably:
1) confusing and poorly explained game mechanic that acted as a wall to new players
2) Remove the ability for players to mount various weapon packages that acted as work around of Ghost Heat

Ghost Heat itself had the primary objective of limiting high-Alpha One-Shot-Kill systems (6xPPC Stalkers come forcibly to mind)

As it stands, Objective 1 has been largely discarded. Objective 2 remains and is more or less functional, but that was true of the first PTS server. The issue is that the game experience was otherwise...not very good.

Subsequent test servers have attempted to preserve Objective 2 at the expense of Objective 1 while attempting to bring the game back into the playability that currently exists on the live servers.

[BearFlag]

BLOOD WOLF, on 24 September 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

well that is why the PTS is changing different stats as well. maybe you didn't know that?

Yeah, knew. Problem is that by doing so you abandon a simple ED system (if indeed it is simple). By changing core weapons and heat parameters, you're using a different system and a different approach. It is an approach, I might add, that can address multiple problems without an ED system at all. With all parameters fair game the raison d'etre for ED is gone.

[ScarecrowES]

BearFlag, on 24 September 2016 - 05:29 PM, said:

Yeah, knew. Problem is that by doing so you abandon a simple ED system (if indeed it is simple). By changing core weapons and heat parameters, you're using a different system and a different approach. It is an approach, I might add, that can address multiple problems without an ED system at all. With all parameters fair game the raison d'etre for ED is gone.

Put otherwise... if we're actually going to bother to address the real underlying problems, why would we need a band-aid at all?