32 replies to this topic

[kapusta11]

Short TTK? Something tells me that no amount of TTK will be enough for the people who complain about short TTK. And even then, why not increase armor by say 50%?

Laser vomit? Haven't seen much of it on MWOWC replays.

Bad game balance, boating or whatever? The state of balance is the best since the release. Dakka, SRMs, Lasers, Gauss, PPCs, all viable under proper circumstances.



What is this fundamental issue of MWO?

Garbage game modes? Maybe

Some weapons being useless like LBX ACs, MGs, cERLLs, Machine Guns, IS SLs, MACHINE GUNS, LRMs and Streaks? Most definitely.

CW sucking ****? It has been since the release.

Stale gameplay? Then release some new tech.


PGI, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Have you learned nothing from the recent minimap changes?

Edited by kapusta11, 20 September 2016 - 09:34 AM.

[Davers]

It seems aimed at eliminating large mixed energy alpha strikes (3LL/6 ML for example), and not much else. It's just trying to close some GH loopholes.

Nothing to do with game modes, bad weapons, CW, gameplay, or anything else really.

[Gas Guzzler]

Davers, on 20 September 2016 - 06:43 AM, said:

It seems aimed at eliminating large mixed energy alpha strikes (3LL/6 ML for example), and not much else. It's just trying to close some GH loopholes.

Nothing to do with game modes, bad weapons, CW, gameplay, or anything else really.

It's limiting burst DPS as well not just large alphas. It's very annoying to play with. I don't really see why LL/ML combos are such a big deal. They are already not optimal so who cares? It's like complaining about a laser vomit Banshee 3M during the poptart era.

[Davers]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 September 2016 - 06:46 AM, said:

It's limiting burst DPS as well not just large alphas. It's very annoying to play with. I don't really see why LL/ML combos are such a big deal. They are already not optimal so who cares? It's like complaining about a laser vomit Banshee 3M during the poptart era.

So they lower alphas ans burst DPS to increase TTK, but in the process force players into more facetime which will lower TTK. Seems legit. Torso Twisting will be OP>

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Davers, on 20 September 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

So they lower alphas ans burst DPS to increase TTK

It doesn't increase TTK because it doesn't really touch dakka. The global cooldown nerf was the only change that actually affected TTK.

Davers, on 20 September 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

in the process force players into more facetime which will lower TTK.

More face time doesn't mean longer TTK, because it means more players are going to get caught face-staring. More face time = less time to twist damage away.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 September 2016 - 06:59 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

Looks like to me they're trying to remove ghost heat, increase ttk limit massive alpha and improve some equipment.

Davers, on 20 September 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

Torso Twisting will be OP>

Other than they're pushing people into 30 alpha pinpoint weapons so twisting will be less useful.

[Gas Guzzler]

Monkey Lover, on 20 September 2016 - 07:28 AM, said:

Other than they're pushing people into 30 alpha pinpoint weapons so twisting will be less useful.

Where does this myth come from that you can't twist away from PPFLD?

For IS pulse lasers if you wait until you are being shot, its too late to twist. You have to anticipate being shot for IS pulse lasers, just as you do for PPFLD. Clan ERMLs/LPLs you can get away with twisting as you get shot, but anticipating the shot helps a lot.

[Monkey Lover]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 September 2016 - 07:41 AM, said:

Where does this myth come from that you can't twist away from PPFLD?

For IS pulse lasers if you wait until you are being shot, its too late to twist. You have to anticipate being shot for IS pulse lasers, just as you do for PPFLD. Clan ERMLs/LPLs you can get away with twisting as you get shot, but anticipating the shot helps a lot.

Because its not a myth, You should be twisting during the battle not just when you see laser fire. You can spread mpl,lpl.

Clan er laser you can go get a drink come back and still twist away half the dmg

Edited by Monkey Lover, 20 September 2016 - 08:01 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Monkey Lover, on 20 September 2016 - 07:59 AM, said:

Because its not a myth, You should be twisting during the battle not just when you see laser fire. You can spread mpl,lpl.

Clan er laser you can go get a drink come back and still twist away half the dmg

If you can spread MPL, LPL, then you can spread PPFLD. When you see a Kodiak creeping out from behind cover, twist away and get to cover. Its remarkable! You just have to be paying attention.

[ScarecrowES]

ED has always been based on false premises that TTK is too high(it's not), that TTK has anything to do with alphas, and that alphas in MWO are exceptionally high to begin with. None of that passes a sniff test.

To combat these non-problems the devised a system with a foundation so shaky it took months to find workarounds to make it function and still didn't manage to survive with its preconceptions intact through the concept phase.

By the time we first got to test it, the integrity of several of its core concepts had already been bypassed. The rest of these core concepts fell by the time we hit PTS2. At this point, it's a system without any purpose. Based on our rationale for testing it, it's failed at everything PGI asked us to judge it on.

What little good that has come out of the PTS is in showing us what many of us have said all along... the core heat system needs to be fixed. The amount of heat cap that players can readily use is too much. PGI's direction in looking at this issue has been completely backward and haphazard, but at least we're finally getting down to the nuts and bolts as to WHY these problems happen.

And in that regard, I'm excited. Long ago PGI solved the issues surrounding a heat penalty system, and now ED gives us a dual-heat bar mechanic. These are all we need to put the TT system in - and the hallmarks of that system... lower effective cap, better dissipation, real penalties for overuse... are all endpoints on the direction the PTS is headed anyway.

Let's just skip right to the end, shall we?

[Monkey Lover]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 September 2016 - 08:02 AM, said:

If you can spread MPL, LPL, then you can spread PPFLD. When you see a Kodiak creeping out from behind cover, twist away and get to cover. Its remarkable! You just have to be paying attention.

Tell that to legged medium and light mechs. People are going to pp weapons for a reason. how many 3 large laser mechs do you see ?

Edited by Monkey Lover, 20 September 2016 - 08:20 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Monkey Lover, on 20 September 2016 - 08:18 AM, said:

Tell that to legged medium and light mechs. People are going to pp weapons for a reason. how many 3 large laser mechs do you see ?

That's because quirks have gone down. Its almost like there is this perfect point where lasers and ppfld have a nice tradeoff but are neither inferior or superior.

[1453 R]

ED is fixing the problem of Ghost Heat being an awful horrible system that never should've been implemented in the first place.

It's trying to space out weapons fire (i.e. that thing three out of four bassholes in this game are always constantly screaming at them to do) without doing dumb schitte with convergence (i.e. that thing Russ has told us to stop demanding he do because it breaks his game and also it's a horrible idea in general so stop it). There are a very finite number of ways to accomplish this objective. ED is the method Piranha chose to try.

What would you suggest as an option that accomplishes those three objectives? To recap:

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?

[Monkey Lover]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 September 2016 - 08:27 AM, said:

That's because quirks have gone down. Its almost like there is this perfect point where lasers and ppfld have a nice tradeoff but are neither inferior or superior.

Its hard for me to tell with these 4v4 matches. Dps is going to matter so much more with this compared to focus fired pp on a 12 man team. Thats not even counting i almost never see lights and medium mechs. Its mostly an assault test

[Gas Guzzler]

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

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

This is a bad design goal. Instaburst damage is what makes hot weapons like lasers attractive over cool DPS weapons like ACs. Take that away, and the game becomes more one-dimensional. I don't want instagibs all over the place, and you will find a great deal of disagreement over how often those instagibs actually occur. Its almost like some people are instagibbed more often than others.

Monkey Lover, on 20 September 2016 - 08:44 AM, said:

Its hard for me to tell with these 4v4 matches. Dps is going to matter so much more with this compared to focus fired pp on a 12 man team. Thats not even counting i almost never see lights and medium mechs. Its mostly an assault test

Yeah, 12v12 is going to be a different atmosphere for sure.

[1453 R]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 September 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

This is a bad design goal. Instaburst damage is what makes hot weapons like lasers attractive over cool DPS weapons like ACs. Take that away, and the game becomes more one-dimensional. I don't want instagibs all over the place, and you will find a great deal of disagreement over how often those instagibs actually occur. Its almost like some people are instagibbed more often than others.

Then you need to argue that a lot harder than people have been because the forum as a general whole is obsessed with spacing out weapons fire and ensuring that lasers in particular are unable to be fired in groups of any significant size. People are still twitchy over the Evil Cheating Baby-Eating Laser Vomit Meta and the large number of 'Mechs of that era that could saw off shoulders with one good shot.

They want the instagibs gone. It doesn't matter how infrequent they may or may not be; any time someone posts a "Y DID I GET 1-SHOTED" thread in the forums, it rekindles the general MWO public's seething nerdrage over the fact that instagibs are possible in the first place.

This is Piranha trying to do what everyone keeps demanding they do and listen to their playerbase. The playerbase as a whole wants 'Mechs to take enormous amounts of damage over the course of an entire match by, basically, disabling the ability for anyone to fire any amount of threatening damage in one click.

Yes, that means they're too stupid to realize that a number of weapons systems will be poo in such a system. I can't really recall a time when the abject, inarguable stupidity of the overal MWO playerbase has been in doubt. nevertheless, people asked what problem ED was meant to address?

It's meant to address the stupid general populace's desire to do dumb schitte and live through it because of extremely, extremely false impressions TT players have given of the TT game and 'Mechs' overall durability therein. Without messing with convergence, and whilst getting rid of the Ghost Heat system we've all wanted gone since before it went in.

[kapusta11]

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

ED is fixing the problem of Ghost Heat being an awful horrible system that never should've been implemented in the first place.

It's trying to space out weapons fire (i.e. that thing three out of four bassholes in this game are always constantly screaming at them to do) without doing dumb schitte with convergence (i.e. that thing Russ has told us to stop demanding he do because it breaks his game and also it's a horrible idea in general so stop it). There are a very finite number of ways to accomplish this objective. ED is the method Piranha chose to try.

What would you suggest as an option that accomplishes those three objectives? To recap:

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?

A) Ghost heat does its job, it adds diminishing returns for some heavy and assault mechs so that ligter ones have at least some reason to exist and it "has nothing to do with convergence or CoF or whatever", exactly what you want.

B.) Battlemasters already fire in groups, SRM + cSPL "Splat" builds too. Even Gauss + ERPPC Kodiaks when they fire at moving targets. I'm fine with everything else.

C) See A.

Edited by kapusta11, 20 September 2016 - 09:00 AM.

[1453 R]

kapusta11, on 20 September 2016 - 08:59 AM, said:

A) Ghost heat does its job, it adds diminishing returns for some heavy and assault mechs so that ligter ones have at least some reason to exist and it "has nothing to do with convergence or CoF or whatever", exactly what you want.

Ghost Heat means that a 'Mech which fires eight medium lasers at one time generates twice as much heat as a 'Mech which fires six medium and two large lasers instead. The second 'Mech deals more damage at better range for less heat than the first 'Mech. Conversely, a 'Mech which fires three(four) large lasers at once also generates significantly more heat than the 6M/2L configuration, for significantly less overall damage. Unless, of course, you fire all your stuff in 0.51s intervals, at which point GHost Heat doesn't exist for you. Fire it at 0.49s intervals though, and THE FIRES OF THE INFERNO CONSUME YOU.

Ghost Heat is putrid. It does not contribute to gameplay, it is not interesting to play around in the 'MechLab, it is obtuse and difficult for new players to grasp, its system of penalties makes no sense, it does not make for any kind of tactical, in-match decision-making, and even on those small handful of builds capable of breaching Ghost Heat limits, it is literally a difference of 0.02s on whether your weapons fire is A.O.K. or whether YOU EXPLODE NOW FOREVER.

Why everyone is so fond of this system now is beyond me. Ghost Heat has needed to go since before it went in. Whether Energy Draw is a valid replacement or not I can't say, not with my inability to find PTS matches during those times when my arms let me play MWO, but anyone who says "Ghost Heat does its job" is pretty much invalidating their own opinion the moment they say it.

The only thing Ghost Heat accomplishes is showing everyone what bad design looks like.

[kapusta11]

1453 R, on 20 September 2016 - 09:41 AM, said:

Ghost Heat means that a 'Mech which fires eight medium lasers at one time generates twice as much heat as a 'Mech which fires six medium and two large lasers instead. The second 'Mech deals more damage at better range for less heat than the first 'Mech. Conversely, a 'Mech which fires three(four) large lasers at once also generates significantly more heat than the 6M/2L configuration, for significantly less overall damage. Unless, of course, you fire all your stuff in 0.51s intervals, at which point GHost Heat doesn't exist for you. Fire it at 0.49s intervals though, and THE FIRES OF THE INFERNO CONSUME YOU.

Ghost Heat is putrid. It does not contribute to gameplay, it is not interesting to play around in the 'MechLab, it is obtuse and difficult for new players to grasp, its system of penalties makes no sense, it does not make for any kind of tactical, in-match decision-making, and even on those small handful of builds capable of breaching Ghost Heat limits, it is literally a difference of 0.02s on whether your weapons fire is A.O.K. or whether YOU EXPLODE NOW FOREVER.

Why everyone is so fond of this system now is beyond me. Ghost Heat has needed to go since before it went in. Whether Energy Draw is a valid replacement or not I can't say, not with my inability to find PTS matches during those times when my arms let me play MWO, but anyone who says "Ghost Heat does its job" is pretty much invalidating their own opinion the moment they say it.

The only thing Ghost Heat accomplishes is showing everyone what bad design looks like.

TT had random hit allocation, MWO doesn't so you need either some form of convergence or CoF mechanic and pretty much forget about pinpoint accuracy OR a mechanic like GH or ED, otherwise people will pick a heavy or assault and put as many copies of what is considered to be the best weapon as possible and dominate any other mech on the field and mechs like lights and mediums will be obsolete because they can't boat as many of said weapons.

GH lets you keep pinpoint accuracy and it stops you from firing 4x UAC10s for example, without nerfing the weapon itself so that mechs that use 2 UAC10s are not penalized. Though I would cap it at 3 instead of 2. 5x LPL \ 6x (ER)LL Battlemaster is a great mech DESPITE GH penalty but how would you balance it without GH? Nerf LPLs and LLs? What about 3 LPL Mediums? Are they OP too? The gap between those mechs will remain to be the same if you go nerfing route.

I agree, it's not perfect, but I'm yet to see a better mechanic that will work well with TT strategy game rules.

[1453 R]

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.