95 replies to this topic

[davoodoo]

Want to incentivize non boat builds??

Throw in 75% dmg increase with 50%(or scaling) heat increase for lasers for anything thats bigger than light.
You packed only 2 lpls?? ok then but theyll hit like ac20 and still overheat you.

Edited by davoodoo, 07 December 2016 - 12:51 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

davoodoo, on 07 December 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

Pretty counterproductive to have higher dissipation on mech which inherently generates less heat because you have less guns...

It breaks boat builds while giving no viable incentive to run less guns.

Or you just boat larger lasers...

[Lostdragon]

Boating is part of the game and we don't need some convoluted mechanic to curb it. If you boat one weapon you are specializing. If you are a specialist it means you are inherently weak in some way. That's the tradeoff and balance for being able to boat. Unless you want to revisit the pinpoint damage debate again, there is nothing that can or should be done about boating because any "fix" is going to be unintuitive and have unintended consequences.

I am sorry you guys keep getting killed by whatever boats are killing you, but instead of trying to come up with some crazy way to nerf what you don't like you should try expending that energy figuring out how to counter, avoid, or outplay whatever just killed you and is about to prompt the forum's 8 millionth antiboating thread.

[PhoenixFire55]

Andi Nagasia, on 07 December 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

Thoughts, Comments, Concerns?
Thanks,

Srsly. Why can't you just let people play the game with loadouts they want and do the same yourself? ...

[Paigan]

What do people have against boating?
It is the most efficient, reasonable and natural thing to do and EVERYONE does it in a combat situation.

Every elementary combat "unit" (medieval warrior, modern soldier, tank, etc.) has ONE primary weapon (sword/bow/axe/etc or assault rifle or main gun) and MAYBE some tiny secondary backup weapon (knife, etc.).
You get diversity by combining different types of units, but one unit in itself focusses, simplifies and optimizes for ONE weapon type.

It makes sense to combine weapons IF and only IF they complement each other very well (like Gauss and PPCs), but that's an exception.

Are you all so trapped in some romantic novel notions of having "1 LRM, 1 SRM, 1 AC and 1 PPC for every situation" that you are not able to see the most natural thing in the world?

Jesus x_x

[Duke Nedo]

Paigan, on 07 December 2016 - 01:06 PM, said:

What do people have against boating?

Now, I don't support this suggestion or any other strange mechanic to stop boating... but:

Boating is already the best way to go if you can due to weapon sync, ease to use and partly to modules, that's fine. The thing is that the new skill tree will further favor boating. There is absolutely no reason why we would need to reinforce boating.

[Lostdragon]

Duke Nedo, on 07 December 2016 - 01:27 PM, said:

Now, I don't support this suggestion or any other strange mechanic to stop boating... but:

Boating is already the best way to go if you can due to weapon sync, ease to use and partly to modules, that's fine. The thing is that the new skill tree will further favor boating. There is absolutely no reason why we would need to reinforce boating.

How will the new skill tree favor boating even more?

[process]

At least with respect to the skill tree, I think the solution is simple.

If you have one branch that improves a trait, give it a progressive cost increase.

-5% energy heat: 1 point
-5% energy heat: 3 point
-5% energy heat: 5 point

Compare those skill points against a slew of other, varied traits. Is that -15% energy heat better than...

-5% energy heat: 1 point
-5% ballistic cooldown: 1 point
+5% missile velocity: 1 point
+5% torso yaw: 1 point
+2.5% speed: 3 points
+5 LT armor: 2 points

[FupDup]

process, on 07 December 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:

Compare those skill points against a slew of other, varied traits. Is that -15% energy heat better than...

-5% energy heat: 1 point
-5% ballistic cooldown: 1 point
+5% missile velocity: 1 point
+5% torso yaw: 1 point
+2.5% speed: 3 points
+5 LT armor: 2 points

Actually, yes. 15% energy heat is definitely better than all of those random things combined. 5% quirks are pretty much useless.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Lostdragon, on 07 December 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

How will the new skill tree favor boating even more?

How will it not? This is what people here don't understand, the new skill tree has different trees for every weapon class (ie. lasers, PPCs, pulse lasers) People boating only a single weapon type only need to invest in that weapon class' tree, and the rest of the points can be spent in durability or mobility skills, which gives an unfair advantage to a variant that boats say 3LLs, as opposed to the same variant that has a PPC, a LPL and a few medium lasers. The mech with the mixed build would need to invest in 3 separate trees just to get the same efficiency bonuses that the boat build gets with one, and even then the boat build benefits from not having weapon sync issues. This is why it's instrumental that this sort of mechanic gets implemented, PGI even talked about potentially having this for quirks prior to the skill tree announcement.

[process]

The numbers can be tweaked. Maybe it's more like -7.5% heat for 8 points versus the rest of those.

[Lostdragon]

Gentleman Reaper, on 07 December 2016 - 01:57 PM, said:

How will it not? This is what people here don't understand, the new skill tree has different trees for every weapon class (ie. lasers, PPCs, pulse lasers) People boating only a single weapon type only need to invest in that weapon class' tree, and the rest of the points can be spent in durability or mobility skills, which gives an unfair advantage to a variant that boats say 3LLs, as opposed to the same variant that has a PPC, a LPL and a few medium lasers. The mech with the mixed build would need to invest in 3 separate trees just to get the same efficiency bonuses that the boat build gets with one, and even then the boat build benefits from not having weapon sync issues. This is why it's instrumental that this sort of mechanic gets implemented, PGI even talked about potentially having this for quirks prior to the skill tree announcement.

That is literally no different than how it works with modules now. If you are boating one primary weapon you can take range and CD modules, if you have two or more weapon types you have to make choices on which modules to take. If you are boating one weapon you may be able to take advantage of stacking quirks and modules or in the future skills for it that make it strong but you can never fully compensate for the weaker mechanics that popularly boated weapons have like short range, long CD, long burn duration, high heat, spread, etc.

[cazidin]

I respectfully disagree. Most of the ideas I've seen to combat boating introduce new and worse problems, even your proposal would simply make someone bring either fewer of X heavy weapon or several smaller of Y weapon, depending on how it was distributed.

[Sylow]

Big Tin Man, on 07 December 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

I posted this in another thread, but it is very possible to promote mixed loadouts with:

Jack of all Trades skill points.

If your mech had at least 1 energy weapon, 1 ballistic weapon, and 1 missile, you receive 15, 20, 25, 30% cooldown, heat reduction, whatever for ALL weapons. Maybe heavies and assaults require 2 of each. You'd have to tailor it to the mech's hardpoints.

Make the bonus big enough and it can happen.

I very much would appreciate that, and actually for all mechs. For versatility it would really be preferable if there would be no weapon specific trees, but rather have general ones.

[FireStoat]

The largest obstacle for rewarding players for not boating would be Battlemech variants that come with a single range of weapon hardpoints. The wolfhound comes to mind, as would the Oxide or other Cicadas, etc.

[Guile Votoms]

The problem with boating is excessive alphastrike damage combined with short cooldowns which results in very low time-to-kill or ridiculous **** like people stunlocking you with clan lrm5s (the only kind of lrm where complaints are actually justified).

They should just remove ghost heat but increase weapon heat and overheat damage, remove the maximum heat treshold buff from double heatsinks, increase weapon cooldowns to up to twice the current amount and lower the extra tonnage from endo steel and ferro armour.

Edited by Guile Votoms, 07 December 2016 - 03:22 PM.

[Druarc]

Don't see why you couldn't have specialised trees, example 1 for each weight class, then differ styles of mechs, front line, support, recon. And maybe all heros get a special tree making the MC cost worth it.

[East Indy]

Another reason why the skill tree design can't work — it introduces a problem that can't be solved without introducing related problems. A few 'Mechs are meant to boat.

It's really this simple: some 'Mechs are better than others, and because meaningful variety is the basis of this game's strength and monetization, lesser 'Mechs need bonuses and variants need distinction. That's what quirks are for. All other bonuses should be applied post-quirk.

The system we have now is conceptually sound, and just needs tuning (making quirks less eclectic) and upgrading (skill trees have a few obsolete categories). As another player aptly said, PGI's game design devs need to focus on improving existing work instead of chasing intellectually interesting projects.

[somedood]

Lostdragon, on 07 December 2016 - 02:21 PM, said:

That is literally no different than how it works with modules now. If you are boating one primary weapon you can take range and CD modules, if you have two or more weapon types you have to make choices on which modules to take. If you are boating one weapon you may be able to take advantage of stacking quirks and modules or in the future skills for it that make it strong but you can never fully compensate for the weaker mechanics that popularly boated weapons have like short range, long CD, long burn duration, high heat, spread, etc.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

We have limited weapons modules and boating lets you focus on just that weapon with the two (or more) available weapons module slots. Boating lets you play off the weakness of the boaters loadout already. Why try to force it so that ineffective loadouts are more effective anyway?

I'm sure they can just make specializing have diminishing returns so that the deeper you get into a tree the nodes start to cost more. The more you specialize your energy heat reduction the less able to are to add durability or movement based quirks so you start to become a glass cannon.

[Khobai]

the skill tree does incentivize boating way too much

its going to be a huge problem because it obsoletes like half the mechs in the game right off the bat