100 replies to this topic

[R Valentine]

We don't need a shake, because that's just kind of a dumb fix. And I don't why every thinks "lasers" are OP. Lasers aren't OP. Only clan laser vomit is OP. IS laser vomit is almost non-existent since the LPL nerfs. The only good way to do it is either to A ) nerf cERML damage output or B ) readjust ghost heat. Currenlty, 4 cERML + 2HLL is 64 damage, which is way too high for just 6 weapons. The only way to cure that with ghost heat is to combine clan medium and large lasers into one bracket with a maximum of 5. But, the tricky part here is that large lasers also need a sub-bracket with a GH of 2, otherwise people will just triple up on HLL or cLPL. There's no reason the medium bracket for clans should even be 6. 6 cERML = 42 damage while 6 ERML = 30. Huh? How is that balanced? If large lasers was the same then 3 ERLL = 27 and 3 cERLL = 33. Well obviously that's not ok but then why is cERML being so much higher of a GH bracket ok? They couldn't even be philosophically consistent about it. If PGI could somehow code a sub bracket of large lasers 2 under a bracket of large + medium lasers of 5, we could balance lasers overnight, but that's a big if given PGI's coding abilities. Gauss vomit also needs to be addressed, but that's a different problem entirely and only 1 mech is the offender in that case. Almost no other clan mechs even use gauss rifles anymore since the gauss/PPC heat bracket sync.

Edited by Kiran Yagami, 07 February 2018 - 11:47 AM.

[MechaBattler]

The community hates anything that adds mild complexity to the game. And especially anything that is RNG. I'm pretty sure I saw a thread or two of people wanting to remove jam chance.

I wasn't here for the start of the beta, but I did catch the tail end. So I've been through the nerfing and buffing of all the things at some point or another. So for it to suddenly be unconscionable to nerf the current meta is really bugging me. But we'll see what they do since Russ promised a heads up on balance. Which I'm sure will be met with a round of "The end is nigh!" and the usual slurry of trash talk by the community.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

MechaBattler, on 07 February 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

The community hates anything that adds mild complexity to the game. And especially anything that is RNG. I'm pretty sure I saw a thread or two of people wanting to remove jam chance.

Adding RNG does not add complexity to the game.

[MechaBattler]

No, but people hate what they can't control. Especially in an FPS. I wish this was more sim than FPS. But sadly it's never gonna be more sim. : /

[Tiewolf]

Ok before you all get me wrong my idea is to UNNERF everything. No ghost heat, no weapon links etc.. Boat as many weapons as you like and keep it simple. But you have to find a universal mechanic to balance and it must beas easy as possible.

Every weapon needs aim or has a certain spread which is the same as aim for missiles. The problem with heat as a balancing factor is that not all weapon systems are effected the same. With cool shots and high alphas this system is not working.

That's why I propose to use aim to balance. If your alpha dmg is high then the worse is your aim. If your dmg is lower then amount x then your aim is perfect. So more dmg - more skill to aim needed till your shots are uncontrollable. You can apply this mechanic to every weapon system. The nice thing is that you can balance dmg directly and don't have to juggle with heat and weapon links which is very complicated and difficult. In short put do much alpha firepower in your mech till you can't hit anymore. Simple for the players and easy to balance for pgi without changing weapon values every two months.

[Black Ivan]

What about buffing other stuff to make other weapons viable again? And by the way reduce the crazy high alphas we have now

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Tiewolf, on 07 February 2018 - 12:46 PM, said:

Ok before you all get me wrong my idea is to UNNERF everything. No ghost heat, no weapon links etc.. Boat as many weapons as you like and keep it simple. But you have to find a universal mechanic to balance and it must beas easy as possible.

Every weapon needs aim or has a certain spread which is the same as aim for missiles. The problem with heat as a balancing factor is that not all weapon systems are effected the same. With cool shots and high alphas this system is not working.

That's why I propose to use aim to balance. If your alpha dmg is high then the worse is your aim. If your dmg is lower then amount x then your aim is perfect. So more dmg - more skill to aim needed till your shots are uncontrollable. You can apply this mechanic to every weapon system. The nice thing is that you can balance dmg directly and don't have to juggle with heat and weapon links which is very complicated and difficult. In short put do much alpha firepower in your mech till you can't hit anymore. Simple for the players and easy to balance for pgi without changing weapon values every two months.

You miss how removing aim for high alphas totally unbalances the game. Here's why:

Take into account high DPS builds for a moment. The highest DPS builds spit out about as much DPS as one half of an alpha from the highest laser build (~36 DPS, 78 damage per shot). Without the high accuracy of the high alpha build the new meta shifts over to missile boating and ballistic dps boating with some PPFLD thrown in as always, you just kill off lasers.

Lasers work because they spit out a stupidly high amount of damage for super high heat, then you just strap them onto a mech that can peek quickly and use cover and if you have accuracy and your opponent doesn't know how to spread damage well then you can win. Even in current situations players that know to spread damage can reliably defeat high alpha laser builds, under your situation where the laser builds automatically spread damage for going over a certain amount you remove the skill battle between a pilot's defensive ability to spread incoming damage and the attacker's ability to keep the beam focused on a specific component, then just replace it with the defender automatically winning with no input and the attacker unable to anything about it. Essentially you dumb down the game there.

If the lasers aren't doing at least double the damage in one beam as the DPS builds do in one second, then they're just going to be obliterated. If you're capped to 50 damage max with the lasers you're just going to peek up, fire your longer than a second laser, and lose more armor than you took. Heck, a guy just running dual HGauss is going to hit you for the same except pinpoint and frontloaded while your damage can be easily spread over multiple hitboxes even if it isn't autospreading.

So basically no one would use lasers anymore at a high skill level, as you entirely remove the ability for people to exercise their aiming skills through lasers, so instead people would either opt to swap to missiles which already spread damage but have way higher amounts of raw damage output for less heat and then just peek with those, or they'd move onto ballistics which have lower alphas but far higher DPS. Laser builds would be useless since you could just push on them (you can do this now, but you actually have to spread damage a little) without even worrying then just DPS them down without them being able to defend themselves effectively.

Not to mention that by also getting rid of ghost heat to replace with a damage spreading on high alpha sort of thing, you totally unleash the DPS builds that are really scary and under 50 damage per shot.


Also coolshots work better for DPS builds than laser builds. With how much more damage efficient ballistics are, you get a lot more damage out of 18 points of heat from those than you do out of lasers. Coolshots are just more commonly used with laser builds rather than DPS builds because the laser builds have to rely on them more heavily whenever they are getting pushed while ballistic builds often have enough sustain to go through a couple people before needing to cool off.

[process]

Tiewolf, on 07 February 2018 - 12:46 PM, said:

Ok before you all get me wrong my idea is to UNNERF everything. No ghost heat, no weapon links etc.. Boat as many weapons as you like and keep it simple. But you have to find a universal mechanic to balance and it must beas easy as possible.

Every weapon needs aim or has a certain spread which is the same as aim for missiles. The problem with heat as a balancing factor is that not all weapon systems are effected the same. With cool shots and high alphas this system is not working.

That's why I propose to use aim to balance. If your alpha dmg is high then the worse is your aim. If your dmg is lower then amount x then your aim is perfect. So more dmg - more skill to aim needed till your shots are uncontrollable. You can apply this mechanic to every weapon system. The nice thing is that you can balance dmg directly and don't have to juggle with heat and weapon links which is very complicated and difficult. In short put do much alpha firepower in your mech till you can't hit anymore. Simple for the players and easy to balance for pgi without changing weapon values every two months.

Not all weapons are affected the same because heat is only one trade-off. SRMs deal high damage for low tonnage and heat because they're range-limited and scatter. Ballistics pay for their damage in tonnage, size, and ammo, less so heat.

MWO's energy boating issues are directly a result of having a large heat cap. The simplest solution is the lower the heat cap.

[Khobai]

the first thing they need to do is update ghost heat on lasers

because its utter stupidity that CERML and ISERML have the same ghost heat limit of 6

CERML can do 42 damage while ISERML can only do 30 damage before ghost heat kicks in

they should normalize ghost heat limits for all lasers at 42 damage.


the second thing they need to do is look at adding ghost heat linkage for medium and large lasers and increasing the ghost heat limits on non-heavy large lasers so they can be used as independent primary weapons in their own right.

Quote

If you're capped to 50 damage max with the lasers you're just going to peek up, fire your longer than a second laser, and lose more armor thanyou took.

HGR needs to be fixed too though. 50 PPFLD shouldnt be allowed from any combination of weapons, however gimmicky it might be. At the very least HGR needs a ghost heat limit of 1. Firing two at the same time should spike your heat just like it does with dual AC20. Heavy gauss should also have significantly longer range and no reticle shake.

But this topic is specifically about fixing lasers so we cant really cover how to fix every other weapon.

Quote

MWO's energy boating issues are directly a result of having a large heat cap. The simplest solution is the lower the heat cap.

lowering the heat cap just forces everyone to use dual gauss.

instead of laser vomit everyone will use dual gauss/laser instead and the alphastrikes will be just as big

lower heat cap would fix nothing and would only hurt the game by forcing dual gauss on everyone. or hurt the game by having to nerf gauss so badly that no one will ever use it again.

the best solution is to fix ghost heat so it doesnt have as many abusive loopholes.

Edited by Khobai, 07 February 2018 - 04:51 PM.

[Clydewinder]

Tiewolf, on 07 February 2018 - 02:44 AM, said:

Lasers are so good because they are hitscan+high alpha+pinpoint with no convergence issues+low time on target to damage done.

There downside is heat, but most of the time you can cool down in cover protected by your teammates. So there is no real disadvantage and that's why other weapon systems can't compete even if they get buffed.

My proposal is that the reticule starts to shake if the alpha is higher then x. So the damage gets spread if the alpha is too high. The lasers can do high alphas but you lose pinpoint+hitscan for dmg. If it works maybe then we can get rid of ghost heat entirely.

P.s.: while we are at shaking reticules, plz
unnerf the jumpjets and add the reticule shake to all mechs that fall to an extend that jump sniping is possible but difficult.

the fix? double the heat on all weapons across the board

[Brain Cancer]

You want to fix lasers?

Reflective armor. Canon, in-production at this point of the MWO timeline, and halves laser damage. That's all it takes.

The amount of defensive tech for anything save missiles is pathetic.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Brain Cancer, on 07 February 2018 - 05:03 PM, said:

You want to fix lasers?

Reflective armor. Canon, in-production at this point of the MWO timeline, and halves laser damage. That's all it takes.

The amount of defensive tech for anything save missiles is pathetic.

Oh man, If we add in reactive and reflective armor, I'm just going to absolutely love piloting my Annihilators, things just cracking.

[Khobai]

the problem with reflective armor is that omnimechs cant use it

so you just make omnimechs utter crap then

you would either have to unlock the locked equipment on omnimechs or do reflective armor through the skill tree by adding reflective coating as a new skill in the survivability skill tree

Edited by Khobai, 07 February 2018 - 06:57 PM.

[Kubernetes]

Forget all that. Instead of nerfing lasers let's un-nerf everything else. Bring back gauss/PPC. Bring back lower jam duration on UACs, tighten SRM and MRM spread. That's right, make the battlefield more deadly, not less.

[adamts01]

Curccu, on 07 February 2018 - 03:00 AM, said:

cone would make that alpha useless because you cannot hit target.

Exactly. It would nerf laser-boats, which need a nerf, and not hurt small mechs that can't boat. Not only that, but smaller pinpoint alphas is a small buff to mechs with unfortunate hitboxes and lower mounted weapons, as more face-time would be inevitable. This change would greatly lessen the performance disparity between chassis and variants, plus promote more well rounded builds, as all those stacked weapons in one range bracket are less beneficial if they can't all be used at once. And in the end, you can still build for precision if that's your jam, it just won't be the be all end all tactic.

[Gas Guzzler]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 03:03 AM, said:

Yeah, lets nerf the last thing that works some more.

LMAO

******* perfect. Thank you.

Kubernetes, on 07 February 2018 - 09:55 PM, said:

Forget all that. Instead of nerfing lasers let's un-nerf everything else. Bring back gauss/PPC. Bring back lower jam duration on UACs, tighten SRM and MRM spread. That's right, make the battlefield more deadly, not less.

Dilly dilly!

[Curccu]

adamts01, on 07 February 2018 - 10:10 PM, said:

Exactly. It would nerf laser-boats, which need a nerf, and not hurt small mechs that can't boat. Not only that, but smaller pinpoint alphas is a small buff to mechs with unfortunate hitboxes and lower mounted weapons, as more face-time would be inevitable. This change would greatly lessen the performance disparity between chassis and variants, plus promote more well rounded builds, as all those stacked weapons in one range bracket are less beneficial if they can't all be used at once. And in the end, you can still build for precision if that's your jam, it just won't be the be all end all tactic.

and like I said in my other post this change would also enable other higher PPC, ERLL, LPL, MPL and so on alphas, with way better burn time as clan vomit has now or FLD, so I'm not so sure it would increase TTL really.

[sycocys]

Heat capacity and generation has never been an adequate balancing drawback for lasers or ppcs over the other weapons much less each other.

The only way you are going to see a step towards making a balance with them is to implement limits on the range zones they can do damage. Whether it's canon or not, or whether or not you'd consider that a nerf or not - its the only mechanic that is actually going to offer up an effective method towards creating a balance with the energy weaponry.

This is especially true because people are so dead set against any translations of the mechanics that were intended to create balances for energy weapons from the TT version.

[Y E O N N E]

sycocys, on 07 February 2018 - 10:45 PM, said:

This is especially true because people are so dead set against any translations of the mechanics that were intended to create balances for energy weapons from the TT version.

Considering PPCs and lasers were the meta there, too, I'd say it didn't even work in TT.

Roll again.

[adamts01]

Curccu, on 07 February 2018 - 10:39 PM, said:

and like I said in my other post this change would also enable other higher PPC, ERLL, LPL, MPL and so on alphas, with way better burn time as clan vomit has now or FLD, so I'm not so sure it would increase TTL really.

Big alphas aren't a problem, Big pinpoint alphas are. Big pinpoint damage is why this game has so many balance problems, why we have a timid poking meta where high mounts are vastly superior, why assaults don't push, why we have so many insane armor/structure quirks, why a single AC20 is a joke, and why boating is the be all end all tactic. Smaller alphas or introducing spread to large alphas would up face time, bring brawling back, and I'd argue promote a much more fun meta than peeking out from behind rocks every few seconds just to go back in to hiding.

Kubernetes, on 07 February 2018 - 09:55 PM, said:

Forget all that. Instead of nerfing lasers let's un-nerf everything else. Bring back gauss/PPC. Bring back lower jam duration on UACs, tighten SRM and MRM spread. That's right, make the battlefield more deadly, not less.

I don't know about you, but I find this cowering meta pretty pathetic and boring. Upping lethality will just cement whack-a-mech, and be the final nail for lights and many mediums, as anything short of a heavy would be easily 1-shot from across the map.