43 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

why would I look up lore when I dont care about lore?

what I care about is the game being balanced.

and I am fine with ignoring lore 100% to achieve that

lore is why the game isnt balanced now. because PGI tried to keep clan tech superior while somehow expecting clans and IS to be balanced, lol. As far as im concerned adhering to lore only causes problems.

Edited by Khobai, 16 October 2017 - 06:57 AM.

[Verilligo]

Paigan, on 16 October 2017 - 06:54 AM, said:

http://www.sarna.net...rge_Pulse_Laser
"Pulse lasers differ from traditional laser weaponry, in that instead of firing one powerful beam, they maintain laser beams fired off in quick succession."

Again: Life is not as simple as you think it is or want it to be. If you want to argue what pulse lasers are according to lore, it helps to LOOK UP FIRST what you are talking about. Not just talk about some half-true crippled statement.
(Are you a politician? )

Also again: I find the idea of one single PPFLD "pulse" pretty good. I just say it would break lore. Maybe the break would be small enough to be acceptable. Would be nice.

I think the general idea, Paigan, is not to get too attached to the numbers assigned to weapons in lore and a lot of the more technical details and instead try to respect the spirit of it. A lot of the details of that lore are actually self-contradictory or otherwise honestly... dumb. For example, the lore states that pulse lasers offer an increased rate of fire. Lore does not include any values for rate of fire. Because everything fires at the same "rate," once every 10s or so it is said. But the general idea is... pulse lasers are rapid fire lasers wherein each pulse deals less damage than a long duration laser. Except that's not true, because the lore then goes on to say that they do more damage because they give the vaporized armor enough time to clear a site. Instead they're just shorter ranged and heavier.

Okay. So according to physics, this both does and doesn't make sense. Technically they're right, by pulsing the laser you can create deep, small holes in metal by pulsing the laser so as to not waste heat into the bulk of the material. But the keyword there is "small." You'd have to drill the exact same spot with a pulse laser to work deeper into the armor, rather than anywhere along a wider cut line from a standard laser.

Now we already know we can't bring real world physics into Battletech, it doesn't work. But we can reinterpret the meaning of "more damage" to mean "more DPS" rather than "more burst." In that case, the comparison to a laser-based machine gun is fairly apt and would allow for more manipulation of the weapon to differentiate it from its standard cousins. You poke with standards, you engage with pulses, and for pinpoint burst you deal with PPCs. It doesn't disrespect the lore, it just twists its intention to a different end goal. There's literally zero reason to be attached to the minutia that X weapon weighs Y tons at Z slots according to the TRO, other than to provide a baseline for balancing ideas.

[Kin3ticX]

Khobai, on 16 October 2017 - 06:55 AM, said:

why would I look up lore when I dont care about lore?

what I care about is the game being balanced.

and I am fine with ignoring lore 100% to achieve that

lore is why the game isnt balanced now. because PGI tried to keep clan tech superior while somehow expecting clans and IS to be balanced, lol. As far as im concerned adhering to lore only causes problems.

If I had my way Sarna and the TRO would have been thrown out almost entirely and things would be spiritual successors rather than copypasta from the TRO.

[dwwolf]

Personally I dont like nerfs, but lets be realistic here, from a game design and functionality standpoint medium lasers were THE gold standard heat, weight, damage, range and slotwise. For 1 ton of weight they are unrivalled in efficiency. In MWO even moreso than in the boardgame since you apply all damage in one spot 99% of the time, BT board had the location rolls after all.

This change does increase the (relative) value of pulse lasers for the weight and heat investment that you are forced to take.
Something that I felt pulse lasers had been lacking in for a loooong time.

I would not be against applying a more pulsed nature of damage dealing for pulse lasers over all. Could we get a more pulsy/strobe like laser effect as the icing on the cake?

As a small thought exercise:
Keep total duration the same (cooloff plus duration)
SPL : apply damage in 2 pulses so 50% dmg in half the duration then followed by 50% of current cooldown for 50%of the heat.
MPL : apply damage in 3 pulses so 1/3 dmg 1/3 dur etc etc.
LPL : apply damage in 3 or 4 pulses.

We could think about slighty reducing duration but keeping DPS the same.
This would differentiate pulse lasers a bit more from their regular brethren.

Edited by dwwolf, 16 October 2017 - 10:05 AM.

[The Lighthouse]

Paigan, on 16 October 2017 - 05:04 AM, said:

If you happily throw every lore detail over board as soon as it seems inconvienient, you're basically creating a completely new game in a new universe. You'd probably also get into legal trouble pretty fast. having revoked the license to use all the original Mech designs, etc.

If you want Battetech Mechs, you have to stay at least roughly inside the Battletech universe.

Yes, which previous all Mechwarrior games did. Brutally, only things that Mechwarrior video games had borrowed from TT/Lore are names. Entire weapons mechanics and stuffs are completely alien if we compare Mechwarrior games and TT/Lore.

Because, any competent game developers would see TRO of Battletech, and would probably say themselves "'Holy ****ing ****!! These rules are incredibly bad for a video game. Let's just make everything from scratch."

So they threw away every lore details as much as possible. So those previous Mechwarrior games were great video games, but none can be called as great Battletech games. Battletech rules were used as exceptions rather than foundations on previous games.

As far as I concerned, as the development progresses, even HBS's Battetech game begins to keep losing these lore/TT details (despite the fact that it is turn-based game!) It is no secret that they pretty much wrote the entire ballistic weapon stat from scratch, just like the developers of first Mech Commander also did alter ballistic weapon rules.


The main reason why Mechwarrior Online is massively suffering from balance and gameplay design problem is that PGI is using Battletech rules as foundations rather than exceptions, doing completely opposite from what previous Mechwarrrior game developers did.

Oh, and it is not that PGI actually has actually adhering to rules anyway. Do you know this whole "hardpoints" actually does not exist in TT games at all? The whole concept of having hardpoints was started from Mechwarrior 4. When it was revealed pretty much everyone hated it.

Well, that was 17 years ago, now with very few people even remember it. I guess PGI does not even realize hardpoints is actually not a part of Battletech from the first place. Actually, entirely throwing the concept of hardpoints would save a lot of underforming IS mechs, but you would have to endure laservomit apocalypse.

dwwolf, on 16 October 2017 - 09:53 AM, said:

This change does increase the (relative) value of pulse lasers for the weight and heat investment that you are forced to take.
Something that I felt pulse lasers had been lacking in for a loooong time.

This is simply false because PGI also nerfed pulse lasers among with normal lasers, so we are back to square one except we are forced to take alpha-damage oriented builds even more.

[dwwolf]

Kin3ticX, on 16 October 2017 - 07:58 AM, said:

If I had my way Sarna and the TRO would have been thrown out almost entirely and things would be spiritual successors rather than copypasta from the TRO.

The balance is bad because tech levels are imbalanced in stock BT board as well.
3025 is as good as BT gets balance wise.
War of 3039 with no or very limited DHS implementation would be next.
Clan invasion = pure imbalance.

Furthermore basic BT weapon values vs armor levels are balanced for a random hit location system.
Since we dont have even semi random hits ( aka dispersion or real life ) MWO is very hard to balance. Armorlevel and weapon firerate are still at roughly similar compared to BT board. With perhaps a slight advantage for weapons.

Ideally we would have an acceptable normal dispersion radius ( similar for all Direct Fire weapons) linked to weapon max optimal range. This would happily tie into actuator damage, heatlevel penalties,special movement like jumpjets. And weapon rules like -2tH for pulse lasers.

But all the CS:go addicts would throw a hissy fit ofcourse.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

dwwolf, on 16 October 2017 - 11:15 AM, said:

3025 is as good as BT gets balance wise.

That balance isn't even that good either. ML/PPC spam is still one of the best things to do in that era.

[dwwolf]

The Lighthouse, on 16 October 2017 - 11:04 AM, said:

Yes, which previous all Mechwarrior games did. Brutally, only things that Mechwarrior video games had borrowed from TT/Lore are names. Entire weapons mechanics and stuffs are completely alien if we compare Mechwarrior games and TT/Lore.

Because, any competent game developers would see TRO of Battletech, and would probably say themselves "'Holy ****ing ****!! These rules are incredibly bad for a video game. Let's just make everything from scratch."

So they threw away every lore details as much as possible. So those previous Mechwarrior games were great video games, but none can be called as great Battletech games. Battletech rules were used as exceptions rather than foundations on previous games.

As far as I concerned, as the development progresses, even HBS's Battetech game begins to keep losing these lore/TT details (despite the fact that it is turn-based game!) It is no secret that they pretty much wrote the entire ballistic weapon stat from scratch, just like the developers of first Mech Commander also did alter ballistic weapon rules.


The main reason why Mechwarrior Online is massively suffering from balance and gameplay design problem is that PGI is using Battletech rules as foundations rather than exceptions, doing completely opposite from what previous Mechwarrrior game developers did.

Oh, and it is not that PGI actually has actually adhering to rules anyway. Do you know this whole "hardpoints" actually does not exist in TT games at all? The whole concept of having hardpoints was started from Mechwarrior 4. When it was revealed pretty much everyone hated it.

Well, that was 17 years ago, now with very few people even remember it. I guess PGI does not even realize hardpoints is actually not a part of Battletech from the first place. Actually, entirely throwing the concept of hardpoints would save a lot of underforming IS mechs, but you would have to endure laservomit apocalypse.



This is simply false because PGI also nerfed pulse lasers among with normal lasers, so we are back to square one except we are forced to take alpha-damage oriented builds even more.

You will note that pulse lasers were NOT nerfed as HARD as the normal or ER lasers.
Their relative value would then still be up compared to normal or ER lasers.
They still are very efficient on a weight basis compared to bigger weapons.

Edited by dwwolf, 16 October 2017 - 11:25 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

dwwolf, on 16 October 2017 - 11:15 AM, said:

But all the CS:go addicts would throw a hissy fit ofcourse.

Has nothing to do with CS:GO addicts and everything to do with what feels good in actually playing. To be accurate at range you would have to stand still, which makes control strats pretty much the only way to do range, with anything movement based essentially being forced into a push because you can no longer be accurate at max speed.

In the end, it would make things even more shallow and overall just not feel as good to play.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 16 October 2017 - 11:25 AM.

[dwwolf]

Nope to be accurate at range you would still have aim just as much as you do now. You just arent guaranteed to hit the same pixel as you do now.
Movement in itself would not change how accurate one is.

Every bleeding game that features tanks ( which probably is MWOs closest analogy ) manages to do just fine with dispersion.
Most combat in MWO is small dashes to cover combined with a small stop to fire. Still not seeing a problem. Note that I made no mention of the dispersion circle changing because of movement or stopping.

[Koniving]

Lower thresholds. O.o; Oh we're talking laser DPS not ghost-heat-workaround-alpha-strikes of 100+ damage that only the Clans can do.

Nevermind then, carry on.

[Koniving]

dwwolf, on 16 October 2017 - 11:57 AM, said:

Nope to be accurate at range you would still have aim just as much as you do now. You just arent guaranteed to hit the same pixel as you do now.
Movement in itself would not change how accurate one is.

Every bleeding game that features tanks ( which probably is MWOs closest analogy ) manages to do just fine with dispersion.
Most combat in MWO is small dashes to cover combined with a small stop to fire. Still not seeing a problem. Note that I made no mention of the dispersion circle changing because of movement or stopping.

This may disagree with the first statement. Keep in mind I'm disagreeing to the statement itself. I do agree that magical cone of fires are terrible ideas. The very tank games you mention have a much better system as mentioned down below. MWO already has something 'similar', shown in the video but it doesn't affect you in first person when it should. It is ALSO in Mechwarrior 5 Mercs' demo. But it isn't in MWO's first person.


Also it features the same thing that tank games do... crosshairs that line with the barrels, that move when the barrel moves... even if that move is caused by angle changes in the tank due to terrain, suspension systems or other movement.

[dwwolf]

Errr no that video only shows freelook combined with unlocked arms. I use that as well. Arm weapons do have a benefit in wider firing arcs.

And an arbitrary aiming pip movement due to mech gait. Any platform wirh weapon stabilisation should have a number of different functions on how to handle that. They still have dispersion IRL even if stabilised. Most popular tank games have no stabilisation and do have dispersion.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Energy weapon patch update!

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

If lore puts every weapon equally at a 10 second cooldown (because of TT mechanics), it should/must be adjustest for a real time game and dependant values (damage, heat) with it.
But the underlying "spirit" of the universe should be maintained, otherwise it's not that universe anymore.

Lore doesn't. The basic TT rules do, but Solaris-level (2.5 sec/turn) ones clearly have weapons with different ROF.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Koniving, on 16 October 2017 - 12:00 PM, said:

Oh we're talking laser DPS not ghost-heat-workaround-alpha-strikes of 100+ damage that only the Clans can do.

And so, it takes single hero mech doing 94 'alpha' made of gauss (with charge-up) and lasers (with burn-times), and people start dramaqueening like its every single clan mech doing 100+ damage alphastrikes.

[Koniving]

dwwolf, on 16 October 2017 - 12:39 PM, said:

Errr no that video only shows freelook combined with unlocked arms. I use that as well. Arm weapons do have a benefit in wider firing arcs.

And an arbitrary aiming pip movement due to mech gait. Any platform wirh weapon stabilisation should have a number of different functions on how to handle that. They still have dispersion IRL even if stabilised. Most popular tank games have no stabilisation and do have dispersion.

The video doeant contain free look in third person. The third person is what you need to watch.

Fire a laser in first person while walking.
Straight line.
Fire a laser in third while walking.
Bouncing. Jagged. Line.

The amount of bounce and jag in the line is proportional to the amount that the march bounces and jags.

Watch. Third. Person.

[Revis Volek]

Nema Nabojiv, on 16 October 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

And so, it takes single hero mech doing 94 'alpha' made of gauss (with charge-up) and lasers (with burn-times), and people start dramaqueening like its every single clan mech doing 100+ damage alphastrikes.

2 hvy large is 34 dmg

and in a few er meds and you at 60 with decent heat. Enough to do two alphas (my SCR has 64pt alpha) which is over 120 dmg. Its not JUST a single mech right now.

[SFC174]

Jay Leon Hart, on 16 October 2017 - 01:10 PM, said:

Energy weapon patch update!

Still not going in the right direction IMO (by still nerfing cooldown), but making changes of smaller magnitude and across a smaller range of weapons is the correct way to make balance passes. Make the change, get some feedback/data and then adjust again if needed.

Glad that they are at least paying attention to the complaints at some level.

[R Valentine]

Nerf durations or damage. CD nerfs amount to nothing on laser boats. Oh no, they have to wait just as long as they did before because heat was their limiting factor, not cool down. So what? Only IS boats use lasers as DPS, and those need the DPS to compete with high clan alphas, but alphas still win the majority of the time. Your solution is to nerf the underperformers and not even touch the high performers. Asinine.