170 replies to this topic

[The Lighthouse]

Linked Heat Penalty, or as community accurately portrayed as Ghost Heat, has to be removed from the game. From last several years, the only logical result is that GH not only failed to achieve its purpose, but also has brought malicious effects into the game that also affect player population.

From least important to the most important :

1) It really sucks the fun out of the game : Let's admit everyone likes laser vomit, and it is not just this game. It's been like Mechwarrior 2, 3 and 4. Suddenly putting previously non-existed restriction won't fly well to previous Mechwarrior players.

This argument is both the weakest and the strongest argument. It is quite weak because this is purely subjective (I mean, there are people who dislike laser vomit after all), yet it is also quite strong because there are people who keep say "Remove Ghost Heat or I won't spend dime/won't play". Now if the Ghost Heat's problem was only fun part, it would had been so much better.... but...


2) It really does not work because there are a lot of loopholes : With alpha strike is really better deal, people usually find ways to move around. Gauss + lasers are the best example of this, and mixing lasers with different kinds (i.e large lasers + normal lasers). So even after all of changes, We can still do 60+ alpha strike. I don't think there really need any further explanations here.

Now, I can hear "Well then CHANGE/FIX ghost heat to eliminate loopholes!". In theory it sounds good and logical, but the problem is that the ghost heat really affects far more than just amount of alpha strike. Let's look at what happens when PGI decides to change/fix ghost heat loopholes.


3) It really screws up balance : For this we need examples. Let's look at what happaned to UACs when Kodiaks were released. Kodiak KDK-3 was literally dominating. UAC Jam chance and duration really killed the ballistics, but before that there was some insane ghost heat changes on UAC10, because KDK-3's 4 x UAC10 was its main build and it was so powerful.

...Except, PGI also forgot there were other mechs that use UAC10s. Such as Direwolf, which just could not put internal heatsinks for energy and usually forced to take ballistics. KDK-3 players simply changed the build into 2 x UAC10 and 2 x UAC5, while the change harmed traditional dakka Direwolves and overall other ballistic mechs later on.

Same thing happened on recent Gauss + PPC changes. Sure, those jumping Night Gyr were problematic, but other mechs were strong but not as problematic as Night Gyr. Even KDK-3 with Gauss + PPCs were not as strong as pre-nerfed dakka build. None of other mechs had jumpjects to fully exploit PPFLD advantage.

Instead with added Ghost Heat change, the entire build was killed. It could be improved instead, like actually nerfing Night Gyrs, or just don't let mechs to fire Gauss rifles while in air, but instead we completely lost one of viable builds. Some variants got stronger while others got weaker.


3a) It really only favors mechs with a lot of hardpoints : Speaking of variants and chassis, Ghost Heat, in current state, heavily favors mechs with multiple hardpoints. Why?

Let's say there is an IS assault mech variant with just 4 energy hardpoints and other with 8 energy hardpoints. Max possible alpha strike for the 4 hardpoints variant is 40, while one with 8 energy hardpoints is theoretically 80, but pretty much none of the IS mechs actually afford 7 x 8 tons of LPL, so let's say 2 x LPL + 6 ML= 60.

Now, supposedly this should be balanced, like the mech with 40 alpha damage should have more heat-efficient with less face time. But in reality with Ghost heat, 4 x LPL mech does not enjoy heat-efficient nor less face time, only be crippled by exponentially heavier weights of large weapons.

Ah, I can hear voices again, like...

"Then link the large lasers to medium lasers!"
"Then increase the ghost heat penalty of heavy lasers, like 5!"

Then I shall remind you guys again the point 3; these changes will screw up other mechs. I mean sure, we can nerfs mechs with 8 energy hardpoints, but the problem is that mechs with less than 8 hardpoints usually have better quirks and better agility stat. You are not exactly nerfing top performers only. There are mechs with more than 8 energy hardpoints yet do underwhelming performance, and such changes will make those underpowered mechs even worse.

Also people will still find loopholes from the changes. Large lasers now linked with mediums? Then we are going to use large lasers + small lasers, etc etc.... Harder PGI tries to fix the loophole, what we are getting is even more blanket nerfs until the lasers become completely useless compared to other weapons.

Oh yeah, we exactly had that similar situation with recent blanket nerf laser changes. Remember Executioner and Gargoyle? Gargoyle seemed too powerful to PGI's eyes (hahaha...) so PGI decided to nerf SPL. Now the problem was that it was not just Gargoyle got nerfed.

* Executioner got nerfed hard because it usually used same SPL build.
* It also super nerfed a lot of Clan lights which relied upon on SPL.

In the end only way for the Clan lights to be viable is machineguns because of the changes.


3b) It also really favors Clan mechs in general :

I mean of course, Clan mechs in general have more hardpoints than IS mechs, it is not rocket science.


3c) Ghost Heat balance change is bad blanket change : If you have noticed already, Ghost Heat is a blanket nerf/buff. It affects ALL mechs. I don't think I really have to explain again why blanket balance change is usually bad.

Don't get me wrong, the removal of Ghost Heat is also a blanket buff/nerfs (yes, it is also a nerf because mechs with multiple hardpoints will get comparably weaker compared to ones with less hardpoints.) However, removal itself further prevents PGI from screwing up balancing with GH changes, and brings positive changes such as better IS/Clan balance and build diversity. It is worth to endure the blanket change, especially it is for IS/Clan balance.


4) It is such yet another barrier to new players : "You sure Lighthouse? This is the most important problem? Not even balance?"


Yes.


Absolutely yes.


Look at the ****ing player population graph and dare to try ask me the question again.


It is ****ing big deal. We are losing players ever since 2016 passed. I mostly play this game at non-prime hours (US super early morning) and the waiting time has become unbearable. Right now I have to ride wave of match by looking at MWO stream (there is one guy who regularly streams MWO at early morning at US time). I wait til the match is finished, then hit search button to ride a wave of players who are trying to play the game at the same time.

We need new players, new sheep, new whales to get this game rolling otherwise one day our Russ and Paul have no choice but close the servers.

Just go to mechlab and look at it as if it is very first time looking at it. It is ****ing daunting. (By the way, screw ALL of you who keep recommending an IS mech as a starting mech. It is the worst possible advice to new players because you are basically forcing people to learn entire mechlab mechanics, which is the most frustrating and time-consuming work)

Do we really need yet another layer of learning?:

* Bugged an glitched that sometimes mechlab does not accurately report possible issues.
* Have to memories all of the possible combinations and violations.

Sometimes, an "answer" can be tricky. There is an 'accurate' answer, and there is a 'right' answer. Sometimes the accurate answer is not right answer, and vice versa.

However this question has an answer which is both accurate and right.

It's really "No we don't."


















"But..... BUT LASER VOMIT WILL BE UBER STRONG!" you will say.




Yeah, but so what really. Laser vomit was strong in MW2, MW3, and MW4. Even lore builds of mechs are laser vomits. Why suddenly are we trying to undone what has existed for more than 30 years? If you think about it, it's pure insanity at best, insulting franchise at worst.

If you really are concerned about super duper laser vomit, then make other builds, such as ever underpowered ballistic weapons, stronger. Or how about roll back the changes done on maps, which almost all of the cases made the map far worse and severely favors vomit builds?

Or give us some more maps that do not favor such crazy vomit build. Now think about it, we are supposed to have a new map at this October patch (or was it November?)



Bonus : Now speaking of ballistic weapons, UAC Jam mechanics has to be gone as well. If you have read my article til now, you may have gotten yourself a hint; yes, it really favors mechs with multiple hardpoints.

Except the problem is the severity is far stronger than Ghost Heat. In order to compromise jamming RNG, players have absolutely no choice but have to carry multiple UACs, which causes

1) Bigger and heavier UACs are far more weaker than lighter ones.
2) Mechs with less hardpoints are severely at the disadvantage compared to the mechs with multiple ballistic hardpoints.
3) And not-so-coincidently, a lot of IS mechs has just a single or couple of ballistic hardpoints, making ballistic builds non-starter compared to Clan mechs' situations.

UAC20, for both IS and Clan, is complete joke. UAC10 are now just way too hot, UAC5 is also almost way too hot. Really only usable UAC is now a lot of UAC2, with mechs that have UAC jam chance reduction. And just a small amount of mechs fulfill these requirements.

The balance situation is really miserable. And there is non-balance concerns, like...

1) Chance-based mechanics is really fading away from a lot of games, especially competitive games, almost certainly e-sports oriented games. Making MWO for esport is a pure joke at this point, but PGI, if you are still kind-of-semi-serious about it, you have to reduce mechanics that are heavily based on chance. There is a reason why Team Fortress 2 was never considered seriously among competitive players.

2) Finally, it is just un-fun mechanics, again. You firing weapons and suddenly it just jams randomly. And it seems this game does not seem to use pseudo-RNG coding to prevent RNG bricking.

Just like Ghost Heat, UAC Jam mechanics has to be gone too.

[N0ni]

I would argue that "It really sucks the fun out of the game" kinda filters in to all your points with the exception of loopholes, discovering a new min/max loophole in light of recent events is fun in its own way since you end up taking something you normally wouldn't. In reality, there shouldn't be a need for loopholes... if you need loopholes, that just goes to show the current system is broken and does not work.

UAC jam mechanics are fine in my opinion, you're taking a risk putting out better dps by double tapping... if there were no jam, why bother with standard ACs? This gives you the option of a guaranteed shot every single time, or double tapping while rolling a dice. The more options the better and makes for less stale gameplay.

[Bombast]

I admittedly just skimmed this, and the jest of what I got was 'It'll be completely overpowered, but who cares.'

And that's a pretty bad attitude to have.

Personally, I'd remove jams form UACs (Or make them extremely rare) from the game, but give them absurd cooldowns. Just stupidly long. Make them zoom and boom weapons rather than DPS weapons. Let RACs, LB-Xs, and ACs be the 'stand and deliver' autocannons.

As for Ghost Heat, yes, it doesn't seem to be perfect. I'd go for diminshing returns on boated weapons, either in addition to, or instead of, Ghost Heat. Make it so every weapon of a type over a certain threshold reduces the effectiveness of each weapon in that group. That diminishing return could take the form of cooldown, damage, range, or yes, even heat generation.

Of course, for that to work, the UI has to reflect it. A lot better than the game indicates Ghost Heat at the moment.

Edited by Bombast, 25 October 2017 - 08:44 PM.

[JediPanther]

Lets go back to all guass not having a charge up too. That was a great time for guass and mechs specifically sold and quirked for guass would be great again. No one used any other ac because no charge guass was 15 ppfd with no heat. Make hbk-gi great again.

[FupDup]

I'm just afraid that, without Spooky Heat, PGI would be more inclined to make individual weapons drastically weaker based off of the maximum apex crazy builds. Well, they're kind of already doing that, but it would get all the more drastic.

One example in MWO's history was the famous PPC nerf. PGI set up a big thread and asked us whether we would rather have a PPC velocity nerf, or Ghost Heat linkage with Gauss. Most people went for the former, and thus we got PPCs with 850 m/s velocity...making them absolutely and positively useless for quite a while until finally given multiple velocity bumps over time.

TL;DR: The situation is a choice between getting punched in the gut or getting kicked in the balls. Both suck, but one sucks a lot more than the other. For all of the derpiness of Spooky Heat, at least the individual weapons get to remain somewhat effective within a certain limit.

Edited by FupDup, 25 October 2017 - 09:07 PM.

[chucklesMuch]

Blue lasers... nothing but blue lasers... rekting face at 1000+meters...

[TLBFestus]

Just triple the damn armor points on every mech and leave it at that. Or reduce all damage by 2/3s, whatever.

At least that way this game won't be CoD for wobots anymore and we can trundle around shooting at each other for a longer period of time.

[The Lighthouse]

N0ni, on 25 October 2017 - 08:38 PM, said:

I would argue that "It really sucks the fun out of the game" kinda filters in to all your points with the exception of loopholes, discovering a new min/max loophole in light of recent events is fun in its own way since you end up taking something you normally wouldn't. In reality, there shouldn't be a need for loopholes... if you need loopholes, that just goes to show the current system is broken and does not work.

UAC jam mechanics are fine in my opinion, you're taking a risk putting out better dps by double tapping... if there were no jam, why bother with standard ACs? This gives you the option of a guaranteed shot every single time, or double tapping while rolling a dice. The more options the better and makes for less stale gameplay.

There is a reason why I explicitly said "the least to the most important."

If you want people to bother with standard ACs, then you can buff/tweak them in a way that differentiate with UAC, such as..

1) Reduce tonnage.
2) Reduce crit space requirement.

And in lesser extent.

1) Reduce heat.
2) Increase projectile speed.

By the way, anyone who played TT can tell you even in TT ballistic numbers are incredibly bad. HBS also had to drastically buffed the ballistics because of that.

Bombast, on 25 October 2017 - 08:42 PM, said:

I admittedly just skimmed this, and the jest of what I got was 'It'll be completely overpowered, but who cares.'

And that's a pretty bad attitude to have.

Personally, I'd remove jams form UACs (Or make them extremely rare) from the game, but give them absurd cooldowns. Just stupidly long. Make them zoom and boom weapons rather than DPS weapons. Let RACs, LB-Xs, and ACs be the 'stand and deliver' autocannons.

As for Ghost Heat, yes, it doesn't seem to be perfect. I'd go for diminshing returns on boated weapons, either in addition to, or instead of, Ghost Heat. Make it so every weapon of a type over a certain threshold reduces the effectiveness of each weapon in that group. That diminishing return could take the form of cooldown, damage, range, or yes, even heat generation.

Of course, for that to work, the UI has to reflect it. A lot better than the game indicates Ghost Heat at the moment.

Yeah, I am sorry man, but you REALLY gotta read entire article.

FupDup, on 25 October 2017 - 09:06 PM, said:

I'm just afraid that, without Spooky Heat, PGI would be more inclined to make individual weapons drastically weaker based off of the maximum apex crazy builds. Well, they're kind of already doing that, but it would get all the more drastic.

One example in MWO's history was the famous PPC nerf. PGI set up a big thread and asked us whether we would rather have a PPC velocity nerf, or Ghost Heat linkage with Gauss. Most people went for the former, and thus we got PPCs with 850 m/s velocity...making them absolutely and positively useless for quite a while until finally given multiple velocity bumps over time.

TL;DR: The situation is a choice between getting punched in the gut or getting kicked in the balls. Both suck, but one sucks a lot more than the other. For all of the derpiness of Spooky Heat, at least the individual weapons get to remain somewhat effective within a certain limit.

Yes, PGI's being incapable of balancing stuffs is main concern, and actually removal of ghost heat somewhat relieve this concern as well. It removes one of the PGI's tools to do stupid blanket nerf/buffs. Limiting their ways to apply blanket changes so the chance fo ruin the balance further is reduced. As I wrote in original post:

From original post said:

Don't get me wrong, the removal of Ghost Heat is also a blanket buff/nerfs (yes, it is also a nerf because mechs with multiple hardpoints will get comparably weaker compared to ones with less hardpoints.) However, removal itself further prevents PGI from screwing up balancing with GH changes, and brings positive changes such as better IS/Clan balance and build diversity. It is worth to endure the blanket change, especially it is for IS/Clan balance.

Edited by The Lighthouse, 25 October 2017 - 09:50 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Good god

The Lighthouse, on 25 October 2017 - 08:21 PM, said:

Linked Heat Penalty, or as community accurately portrayed as Ghost Heat, has to be removed from the game. From last several years, the only logical result is that GH not only failed to achieve its purpose, but also has brought malicious effects into the game that also affect player population.

From least important to the most important :

1) It really sucks the fun out of the game

HELL NO.

What sucks the fun out of the game is any mech lighter than a Direwolf being one shot, or having every scrap of armour removed in one volley.

This would make pretty much every mech class but assaults obsolete - pretty much as they were in MW3 and 4.

[Tarogato]

The Lighthouse, on 25 October 2017 - 08:21 PM, said:

Linked Heat Penalty, or as community accurately portrayed as Ghost Heat...

[...]


1) It really sucks the fun out of the game : Let's admit everyone likes laser vomit, and it is not just this game. It's been like Mechwarrior 2, 3 and 4. Suddenly putting previously non-existed restriction won't fly well to previous Mechwarrior players.

This argument is both the weakest and the strongest argument. It is quite weak because this is purely subjective (I mean, there are people who dislike laser vomit after all), yet it is also quite strong because there are people who keep say "Remove Ghost Heat or I won't spend dime/won't play". Now if the Ghost Heat's problem was only fun part, it would had been so much better.... but...

Agreed, subjective, so I'm not gonna touch this. =]

The Lighthouse, on 25 October 2017 - 08:21 PM, said:

2) It really does not work because there are a lot of loopholes : With alpha strike is really better deal, people usually find ways to move around. Gauss + lasers are the best example of this, and mixing lasers with different kinds (i.e large lasers + normal lasers). So even after all of changes, We can still do 60+ alpha strike. I don't think there really need any further explanations here.

Now, I can hear "Well then CHANGE/FIX ghost heat to eliminate loopholes!". In theory it sounds good and logical, but the problem is that the ghost heat really affects far more than just amount of alpha strike. Let's look at what happens when PGI decides to change/fix ghost heat loopholes.

Building around the loopholes results in weaker builds though, so yes it's doing it's job.

The most obvious examples that defeat your argument are the brawling laser builds. A particular example, the Nova with 12 cERSL - without ghost heat, this mech can put out three alphas within 13 seconds, each alpha dealing 60 damage with a 1.1 duration, and still outputting 5.6 sustained DPS once it reaches heat cap. The Nova or Gargoyle with 12 cSPL can put out 48 damage in 0.6 seconds, three times also, with a sustained DPS of 5.3. That kind of burst damage and short duration alpha is absolutely monstrous - these mechs would be completely unfair, hardly no other mechs could compete with them at their range. It would be the definition of imbalanced. So how do you address that? You can't just leave it like that... because you now have a couple of mechs that are overpowered in their role, probably so much that they can outperform other roles as well (who needs to take alphavomit or dakka when you can just rush the enemy with 60-alpha DPS Novas?)

So you either need to nerf the Nova, which could make every other build on the Nova unplayable, or you need to nerf the weapons that makes the Nova overpowered, which means that mechs that can't boat twelve of them will be underpowered.


A slightly less obvious example, the one you used, is that boating weapons is just better than mixing weapons. Smurfy is broken right now, so I can't use omnis, but I'll use the HBK-IIC-A as an example, because it has similar hardpoints to every laservomiting clan mech in the game.



The highest mid-range DPS you can get with reasonable alpha is running just 6x cERML. But if you could fire 8x cERML, then you would get 33% more alpha damage, 33% more burst DPS, only at a cost of 4% sustained DPS. Also, that's 56 alpha, which is only 3 points less than one of the most common mixed vomit builds (2cLPL + 5cERML), but it has 9% more sustained DPS.

Also, compare 1cLPL + 7cERML against 2cLPL + 6cERML. If you could fire 7 cERML, you could drop only 5 points of alpha damage to get 7% more sustained DPS, or use 1cHLL + 7cERML to go both more alpha AND more sustained DPS. (sorry, that one's not in screenshot) And that's ignoring that a lot of Clan mechs do have the option to run 9cERML for 63 alpha and 4.22 sustained DPS, with just about the same burst DPS as the 2cLPL + 6 cERML. That's insane! It would outrageously overpowered, so you would have to nerf the cERML to bring it down to parity with the other weapons. As a result, the mechs that don't have 8 or 9 energy harpoints can't use cERML, because cERML in smaller numbers (like on the ACH, IFR, VPR, ACW, ADR, JR7-IIC, SHC) would not be strong enough to be worth taking at all. So now the only mechs that can take certain weapons, are the ones with LOTS of hardpoints. How do you fix that? We just introduced a new balance issue that is completely different from the old one, so in effect, we got no

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3) It really screws up balance : For this we need examples. Let's look at what happaned to UACs when Kodiaks were released. Kodiak KDK-3 was literally dominating. UAC Jam chance and duration really killed the ballistics, but before that there was some insane ghost heat changes on UAC10, because KDK-3's 4 x UAC10 was its main build and it was so powerful.

...Except, PGI also forgot there were other mechs that use UAC10s. Such as Direwolf, which just could not put internal heatsinks for energy and usually forced to take ballistics. KDK-3 players simply changed the build into 2 x UAC10 and 2 x UAC5, while the change harmed traditional dakka Direwolves and overall other ballistic mechs later on.

Same thing happened on recent Gauss + PPC changes. Sure, those jumping Night Gyr were problematic, but other mechs were strong but not as problematic as Night Gyr. Even KDK-3 with Gauss + PPCs were not as strong as pre-nerfed dakka build. None of other mechs had jumpjects to fully exploit PPFLD advantage.

Instead with added Ghost Heat change, the entire build was killed. It could be improved instead, like actually nerfing Night Gyrs, or just don't let mechs to fire Gauss rifles while in air, but instead we completely lost one of viable builds. Some variants got stronger while others got weaker.

This is literally unavoidable. You're going to have mechs with high hardpoints in good locations, it's just a matter of fact. Those mechs will outperform other mechs by a very wide margin because of this. There is no system conceivable that could possibly fix this, every solution will be a compromise that will hurt some innocent mechs and offend innocent people.

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3a) It really only favors mechs with a lot of hardpoints : Speaking of variants and chassis, Ghost Heat, in current state, heavily favors mechs with multiple hardpoints. Why?

Let's say there is an IS assault mech variant with just 4 energy hardpoints and other with 8 energy hardpoints. Max possible alpha strike for the 4 hardpoints variant is 40, while one with 8 energy hardpoints is theoretically 80, but pretty much none of the IS mechs actually afford 7 x 8 tons of LPL, so let's say 2 x LPL + 6 ML= 60.

Now, supposedly this should be balanced, like the mech with 40 alpha damage should have more heat-efficient with less face time. But in reality with Ghost heat, 4 x LPL mech does not enjoy heat-efficient nor less face time, only be crippled by exponentially heavier weights of large weapons.

Ah, I can hear voices again, like...

"Then link the large lasers to medium lasers!"
"Then increase the ghost heat penalty of heavy lasers, like 5!"

Then I shall remind you guys again the point 3; these changes will screw up other mechs. I mean sure, we can nerfs mechs with 8 energy hardpoints, but the problem is that mechs with less than 8 hardpoints usually have better quirks and better agility stat. You are not exactly nerfing top performers only. There are mechs with more than 8 energy hardpoints yet do underwhelming performance, and such changes will make those underpowered mechs even worse.

I did already address this above - removing ghost heat would make mechs with more hardpoints even better and more flexible than they are now, it would be unhealthy for balance, it would buff the mechs that are already good while doing nothing for the mechs that are not good.

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Also people will still find loopholes from the changes. Large lasers now linked with mediums? Then we are going to use large lasers + small lasers, etc etc.... Harder PGI tries to fix the loophole, what we are getting is even more blanket nerfs until the lasers become completely useless compared to other weapons.

Actually, larges+smalls is bracket building, which is just less effective in general. You have your larges which cost more heat and have a longer duration, which makes them inefficient at close range, and you have your smalls which can't be used at all beyond a certain range, which means if you want engage at a range where you can use all of your weapons, you can only engage at close range, and you have some weapons equipped that are bad at that. If you engage at longer ranges, you will flat out lose against opponents who specialise entirely in that range.

Similar to the SRM+LBX loophole. LBX costs a lot of tonnage, so what you gain in alpha damage by circumventing the ghost heat system, you have to pay pack in heatsinks or engine size because the LBX weighs more for the same amount of damage. The exact same applies to using gauss to add alpha to laservomit builds, and thus circumventing ghost heat. Gauss is bother harder to syncrhonise with lasers, and it costs a lot of tonnage so you're giving something up in return for that extra 15 point of alpha.

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Oh yeah, we exactly had that similar situation with recent blanket nerf laser changes. Remember Executioner and Gargoyle? Gargoyle seemed too powerful to PGI's eyes (hahaha...) so PGI decided to nerf SPL. Now the problem was that it was not just Gargoyle got nerfed.

* Executioner got nerfed hard because it usually used same SPL build.
* It also super nerfed a lot of Clan lights which relied upon on SPL.

In the end only way for the Clan lights to be viable is machineguns because of the changes.

The cSPL was nerfed because it was overpowered and absolutely deserved a nerf. The ACH was too strong, the KFX was too strong, the NVA was too strong, the SCR was too strong, the GAR was too strong, the LBK was too strong... and instead of PGI nerfing the cSPL properly, they nuked it out of existence. This has absolutely no bearing on the topic of ghost heat - it's just an example of a weapon that dealt 6 damage that deserved to deal 5 damage, but PGI made it deal 4 damage instead. It was an overreaction, and nothing more.

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3b) It also really favors Clan mechs in general :

I mean of course, Clan mechs in general have more hardpoints than IS mechs, it is not rocket science.

Like I said, lack of ghost heat benefits mechs with more hardpoints even *more*.

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3c) Ghost Heat balance change is bad blanket change : If you have noticed already, Ghost Heat is a blanket nerf/buff. It affects ALL mechs. I don't think I really have to explain again why blanket balance change is usually bad.

Actually, no, ghost heat does not apply a universal "blanket" nerf. It doesn't affect mechs with low numbers of hardpoints, such as the ADR, IFR, SHC, and pretty much the majority of IS mechs. It only affects the mechs that have enough hardpoints to run overpowered loadouts and alphastrike them. Ghost heat forces these builds to either stagger their fire by 0.5s (which in practice has a lot more influence than it sounds like it does), or they have to adopt less efficient builds to circumvent the system altogether. Either way, the system is reducing the prevalence of frequent high-alpha damage in the game, and I think that's a good thing, it allows mechs with fewer hardpoints to compete with the mechs that have more hardpoints, and for the mechs that still fall behind or pull ahead, the quirk system is there to adjust them directly.

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"But..... BUT LASER VOMIT WILL BE UBER STRONG!" you will say.




Yeah, but so what really. Laser vomit was strong in MW2, MW3, and MW4. Even lore builds of mechs are laser vomits. Why suddenly are we trying to undone what has existed for more than 30 years? If you think about it, it's pure insanity at best, insulting franchise at worst.

If you really are concerned about super duper laser vomit, then make other builds, such as ever underpowered ballistic weapons, stronger.

I don't think that allowing everything to deal significantly more damage than presently possible is a good idea. We've finally, just finally... seen a wane in TTK complaints in this game, but there are still people who want the TTK to be longer. Eradicating ghost heat and balancing around the new strongest meta would result in mechs dying considerably more suddenly than they do now, and that would discourage a very significant amount of players from playing the game.

Edited by Tarogato, 25 October 2017 - 10:02 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

Right now heat scaling is not fair for the IS, not even close.

[SeventhSL]

Holy wall of text Batman. Haven't read all of it but...,

1. I played in a time before ghost heat. Ghost heat is much better.

2. If we had an accuracy mechanic to trade off against alpha size then we could get rid of ghost heat.

[Gas Guzzler]

chucklesMuch, on 25 October 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

Blue lasers... nothing but blue lasers... rekting face at 1000+meters...

Impossible. We have been told countless times that the green and yellow lasers are the OP ones.

[kapusta11]

Ghost heat allows both 5 LPL Battlemasters and 3 LPL mediums to be viable, well, not so much after the LPL nerf. If there were no GH LPLs would have to be balanced around 5 LPL Battlemaster which means more duration, more heat, less range etc. Lighter mechs such as 3 LPL mediums would have no edge over the heavier ones like they do now (shorter duration due to no 0.5 sec wait time in between 3+2 LPL volleys).

Edited by kapusta11, 25 October 2017 - 10:48 PM.

[YueFei]

Tarogato, on 25 October 2017 - 09:57 PM, said:

This is literally unavoidable. You're going to have mechs with high hardpoints in good locations, it's just a matter of fact. Those mechs will outperform other mechs by a very wide margin because of this. There is no system conceivable that could possibly fix this, every solution will be a compromise that will hurt some innocent mechs and offend innocent people.

With regards to balancing between mechs with great hardpoint locations and those with crappy ones, you could conceivably balance them with agility/armor quirks for the mechs with crappy hardpoint locations which require greater exposure.

You can quirk for extra agility for accel/decel on the mechs with bad hardpoint locations to make their exposure time roughly equivalent to the mech with great hardpoint locations. And you can quirk the mechs with bad hardpoint locations for extra armor/structure to make up for the fact that they present larger targets when exposing.

Actually, if you do the math on it, based on human reaction time, if you were to quirk a mech's agility for accel/decel + turn rate + torso twist rate to be high enough, you can make it very very difficult to accurately react to that mech's movements on reflex to ensure you always hit the same hit location. E.g.: if each of your hitboxes are ~2 meters wide, and we consider peak FPS player reflex at 150 milliseconds, you'll want ~90 meters/sec^2 of accel/decel to throw off a shot that's perfectly aimed at the center of one of those hitboxes. Or, some combination of turn rate + torso twist rate, combined with acceleration/deceleration, that achieves the same thing.

So, a mech with great hardpoint locations can be awesome at trading, peeking over hills, but the mech with bad hardpoint locations, if piloted well, can spread incoming fire better.

Tweak those agility and armor/structure quirks as needed until the mechs are balanced. They'll play very differently in terms of play style, but there's no inherent reason why one has to be superior to the other in all circumstances just solely because one mech is blessed with fantastic hardpoint placement and the other mech wasn't.

[Jun Watarase]

Ghost heat is too forgiving as it is. When almost every competitive build is "boat lasers, just wait 0.5s to fire the second group", you know its not doing enough.

Ghost heat should be at the point where people stop and think "hmm, maybe i should use more than one type of weapon".

All the current "loopholes" to avoid ghost heat all have drawbacks but the main one (0.5s extra face time) is not large enough given the huge advantages of laser vomit.

You can do 6x lasers + gauss, but you are losing the main advantage of gauss (PPFLD).

You can do 6x lasers + UACs but laser vomit has roughly the same alpha + time to cool so why bother leading targets? Burst fire UACs spread damage anyway.

If you linked large/med lasers for ghost heat and increased the ghost heat wait time to 1 second, you might actually encourage people to run something other than laser vomit, because an extra 1 second face time is pretty significant.

Nerfing individual weapons always runs into the problem of making non-boating builds even worse, the solution is to nerf the ability to boat weapons effectively.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 25 October 2017 - 11:13 PM.

[Vellron2005]

@ The Lighthouse OP:

Hahahahaha, nice troll post..

All I can say to that is:

Edited by Vellron2005, 26 October 2017 - 12:20 AM.

[Relishcakes]

Bombast, on 25 October 2017 - 08:42 PM, said:

I admittedly just skimmed this, and the jest of what I got was 'It'll be completely overpowered, but who cares.'

And that's a pretty bad attitude to have.

Personally, I'd remove jams form UACs (Or make them extremely rare) from the game, but give them absurd cooldowns. Just stupidly long. Make them zoom and boom weapons rather than DPS weapons. Let RACs, LB-Xs, and ACs be the 'stand and deliver' autocannons.

As for Ghost Heat, yes, it doesn't seem to be perfect. I'd go for diminshing returns on boated weapons, either in addition to, or instead of, Ghost Heat. Make it so every weapon of a type over a certain threshold reduces the effectiveness of each weapon in that group. That diminishing return could take the form of cooldown, damage, range, or yes, even heat generation.

Of course, for that to work, the UI has to reflect it. A lot better than the game indicates Ghost Heat at the moment.

Personally if it were going to be a diminishing return I would put it as the more you have over the limitation causing a longer cooldown. because your reactor is trying to get them all ready at once but can only do so effectively with X number of them. or however you want to justify it. Hell I'd go so far as to add different teirs. after doubling the number that causes the limitation you can only chain fire them 2 at a time or something. I didnt really think that last bit through but im sure you get the point.

[InvictusLee]

Kiiyor, on 25 October 2017 - 09:55 PM, said:

What sucks the fun out of the game is any mech lighter than a Direwolf being one shot, or having every scrap of armour removed in one volley.

Bro that happens already.
My MCII can get stripped neigh instantly from 800 meters away by Battle-Masters and Super-Novas.
The guy may over heat but I get to deal with being cherry red for the rest of the match after only 30 seconds on the ground.

Ghost Heat does not prevent this at all.

[Curccu]

The Lighthouse, on 25 October 2017 - 09:48 PM, said:

Yeah, I am sorry man, but you REALLY gotta read entire article.

It's too frikkin' LOOOOOOoooooooOOOONG.