23 replies to this topic

[fat4eyes]

TL/DR: Lasers reduce mobility (torso and arm speed + maybe turn speed) while burning and for a short time afterwards. The more powerful the lasers, the greater the mobility reduction.

My biggest issue with lasers isn't with damage and alphas, but with their mechanics. Keeping a laser on a single component for the whole burn duration, while it requires skill, is not as interesting as what is required with other weapons. My suggestion is for lasers to slow down the mech's agility (both torso and arm speed) while they are burning plus a short time afterwards (the idea is to make it harder to torso twist after a big laser alpha).

The more lasers you are firing, the greater the mobility reduction. So firing 3 medium pulse lasers: hardly any reduction. Firing 2 Heavy Larges + 6 ER Mediums: your torso and arm mobility is reduced A LOT. The idea is the mobility reduction per laser is dependent on the laser's intended role: pulse lasers/smaller lasers have a smaller mobility reduction, while the large long-burning lasers have a greater mobility reduction. This would further differentiate the different laser types, and most important of all, make different lasers feel different to fire.

The goal is to make lasers as interesting to fire (and involve as many interesting decisions) as the other weapon types. With long/medium range projectile weapons, you have to deal with leading the target and (if you have hardpoints that are not clustered together) dealing with convergence issues at longer ranges. With SRM (and other brawling weapons), you have to have all the skills required for brawling: heat management, damage management (both in staying healthy before the brawl and surviving during the brawl itself) and aim. Even tracking weapons have interesting decisions (will your missiles have the correct arc to hit the enemy? will you be able to keep lock long enough? is it worth staring at the target long enough to get and hold the lock?). With lasers, it's just keep the circle on the target while managing heat. Having the mobility reductions on laser burn brings interesting decisions: do I do a big alpha and risk missing with most of the burn and not being able to twist away return fire, or do I fire in smaller groups so I can track the target faster and twist away later?

As to the effects to players at different skill levels: this may actually help lower-skilled players steady their aim as the laser completes its burn. What I've noticed in tier 4/5 matches is that players tend to swing wide with their lasers as they are burning, causing it to miss a lot. With the mobility slowdown, it will allow lower skill players to more easily fine tune their laser aim during the burn. With the low target deflection speeds in low tier matches, being able to track fast moving targets is less important than steadiness of aim. Also, lower skill players don't torso twist as much, so I don't think they'll notice the mobility reduction after the burn.

Higher skill players already have good aim, but they also have to deal with much higher deflection speeds and quicker reaction times (i.e. faster moving, faster reacting enemies). Tracking becomes more important than steadiness of aim as they deal with fast moving brawling lights and quick-reacting torso twists. They'd have to decide between doing a full alpha and risk being unable to track their target component and not being able to torso twist afterwards, or to split their fire to give them better tracking and better agility to twist away return fire.

Will it be enough to break up big laser alphas? I'm not sure, but it does introduce a weakness to the big alpha that perhaps provides enough of a disadvantage for it to be countered in a different way. Will it be too much of a nerf on lasers? Again not sure, but I believe there's enough leeway in the amount of agility reduction + the extra time after the laser burn to be able to dial in values that feel good. I don't think it will change long range laser fights too much, but will become more evident at closer ranges. And more importantly, it will make lasers feel completely different from the other weapon types while making them (IMO) more interesting.

It's potentially a big change and it may be late in the game's lifecycle for it, but that's my little suggestion on how to make lasers more interesting.

[El Bandito]

That sounds less fun for the players than simply globally increasing laser duration.

[Khobai]

mech agility has already been nerfed way too much. gameplay has become boring and static as is.

if anything mechs need more agility so gameplay is more dynamic.

I would rather just see clan large and medium lasers get linked for ghost heat so the most you can fire is 2 larges and 4 mediums at the same time.

Also CERMLs should be reduced to 6 damage instead of 7 damage.

That reduces the maximum possible CERML/CHLL alpha from 78 to 60.


Also its part of the lore that CHLLs interfere with the firing mech's sensors. So firing CHLLs should make your HUD go haywire. PPCs should also cause the same haywire effect when you get hit by them. Overheating should probably make your hud go haywire too, there needs to be some kindve penalty for riding your heat high, but it shouldnt be an agility or speed penalty.

Edited by Khobai, 13 February 2018 - 01:24 AM.

[Mole]

And nerf my light 'mechs even more? No thank you, sir.

[Kubernetes]

No nerfing.

Resize most lights-heavies to make them 20% smaller.

Restore agility and a lower-curved engine-sync.

Make mechs harder to hit and more able to twist off lasers.

[sycocys]

Not a good idea.

[aardappelianen]

No nerfs to agility pls, i've said before but what i really think would help is increasing burn time on all lasers one way or the other
The method i suggested was to have burn time scale with the amount of lasers being fired so that laser boats would have to remain on target longer, and that the target would have more time to responde by twisting or firing back

Edited by aardappelianen, 13 February 2018 - 08:20 AM.

[Scyther]

I'm generally open to new ideas to help balance game play, but I honestly can't see any way in which this would improve things.

[AdrenaHawk]

What MWO actually needs are simplifications of rules, not the addition of more complex ones.

[BEST EGG]

fat4eyes, on 13 February 2018 - 12:13 AM, said:

As to the effects to players at different skill levels: this may actually help lower-skilled players steady their aim as the laser completes its burn. What I've noticed in tier 4/5 matches is that players tend to swing wide with their lasers as they are burning, causing it to miss a lot. With the mobility slowdown, it will allow lower skill players to more easily fine tune their laser aim during the burn.

Or, PGI could not set the default mouse sensitivity to lunatic, *******-fueled rave levels. Anything above 0.15 and I can't aim lasers either, heavens knows how they thought 0.8 was a good idea.

[process]

I wish PGI would cap laser duration at 1.25 seconds and decrease damage and/or adjust heat as needed. It's simply not fun to stare down your opponent for that long. Plus, the high potential damage actually comes to fruition against less agile and experienced targets, further exacerbating the laser vomit issue. The last thing we need is another layer of mechanics in an attempt to curb it.

[dario03]

Khobai, on 13 February 2018 - 01:05 AM, said:

mech agility has already been nerfed way too much. gameplay has become boring and static as is.

if anything mechs need more agility so gameplay is more dynamic.

I would rather just see clan large and medium lasers get linked for ghost heat so the most you can fire is 2 larges and 4 mediums at the same time.

Also CERMLs should be reduced to 6 damage instead of 7 damage.

That reduces the maximum possible CERML/CHLL alpha from 78 to 60.


Also its part of the lore that CHLLs interfere with the firing mech's sensors. So firing CHLLs should make your HUD go haywire. PPCs should also cause the same haywire effect when you get hit by them. Overheating should probably make your hud go haywire too, there needs to be some kindve penalty for riding your heat high, but it shouldnt be an agility or speed penalty.

I still don't understand how we went from CSPL doing 6dmg to 4dmg, but CERML remained 7dmg.

[Y E O N N E]

dario03, on 13 February 2018 - 07:17 AM, said:

I still don't understand how we went from CSPL doing 6dmg to 4dmg, but CERML remained 7dmg.

You are talking about the same group of people that just declared 8x IS ER/MedLas being able to fire without ghost heat would be OP while we have 'Mechs that fire 7-8x cMPL straight through the ghost heat as their normal mode of operation for way more damage, even when 6x cMPL or cERML already deal more damage than 8x IS Meds would.

And, to compound, this is the same group of people that said a Spider with 6x MGs would be OP, nerfed the quirks on the 4x MGs that the Spider already had, and then proceeded to release not one, not two, but three 'Mechs with more than eight of the things.

Consistency is not their strong suit. Neither is being right.

[Damnedtroll]

Just speed decrease with heat...

[process]

Damnedtroll, on 13 February 2018 - 07:40 AM, said:

Just speed decrease with heat...

Literally hurts every build and play style more than laser turrets.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Doesn't seem too interesting to me.

[Almond Brown]

Quote

"Consistency is not their strong suit. Neither is being right."

OMG! You just described this Forum in a nutshell... Well done good sir.

[mogs01gt]

This suggest is fairly close to how it was in Lore. When firing multiple weapons, it would heat up the mech forcing the pilot to reduce the speed of the mech. This is how the game should have original been designed.

Edited by mogs01gt, 13 February 2018 - 10:52 AM.

[FupDup]

El Bandito, on 13 February 2018 - 12:48 AM, said:

That sounds less fun for the players than simply globally increasing laser duration.

Any global nerf to lasers would be stupid because lasers are not globally overpowered as a whole. There are zero overpowered IS lasers and only a few overpowered Clan ones.

[mogs01gt]

FupDup, on 13 February 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

Any global nerf to lasers would be stupid because lasers are not globally overpowered as a whole. There are zero overpowered IS lasers and only a few overpowered Clan ones.

The problem is alpha's do not have a high enough penalty. Forcing balance load outs would be welcomed.