9 replies to this topic

[MechTech Dragoon]

Lets try, one more time with feeling, to get some traction on a revamped revamp of our favorite heat throwing weapon. (until we get plasma, of course).
THE FLAMER!!!!
Weve all be raving about the visuals since you guys did it, but still, no change.
With the release of a new firestarter hero, maybe, just maybe, we can get the flame re-done.

Suggestions include....
*Bring back the old, or something similar, visuals. This is a must, we hate the flashlight. Everyone hates the flashlight.
*Increase the damage, decrease heat generated(marginally) and heat delivered(extremely), increase crit chance.
Put this weapon on par with machineguns.
Some rough values include
-Increasing the damage to that of the light machinegun(or close), and increase crit chances to the same(or more, dependent on damage numbers)
-Decrease heat generated by 25%(or so) and possibly remove the heat scale or, keep heat scale, and have damage increase at max, with double-triple heat generation. (with this, dont decrease heat gen base)
-Decrease heat delivered by 50-75%, a heat delivery weapon is good, but to increase its usefulness we need to find a happy medium between heat delivery, and damage. Currently were on the far end of heat delivery, with little love for the damage end of the scale.

Other possibilities include generating light smoke, or fires at the location if impact.
(smoke being visually obstructive, fire emitting light heat and being visually obstructive, both requiring decreases to either heat delivery, or damage or increase to heat generation based on above values)

Could also cause the weapon to generate its flame(beam) for a set duration similar to lasers with a long cooldown and long burn time. This would cause increase flamer skill cap in terms of keeping on target and heat generation.

Edited by XkrX Dragoon, 17 February 2018 - 06:30 AM.

[Lokor Kitsune]

I completely agree with the visual change, as I've been playing for two years now and as much as I appreciate what the weapon system brings to the table, it feels lackluster in the visual department, obscuring view even, for high mounts. As for the rework to it's actual performance, I'd say a change is necessary but I'd go with depreciated values from what XkrXDragoon here has suggested. I'd roughly halve the changes percentages. That would bolster it's overall effectiveness without taking away from it's mission objective.

Edited by Lokor Kitsune, 17 February 2018 - 07:16 AM.

[Nyte Kitsune]

Yes to both. In the Tabletop game, this was my weapon of choice on my Locust (4 Flamers and a Med Laser), I used this to great effect VS. Assault's, Sadly the Flamer is very underwhelming in MWo, it does hardly any damage, is more likely to overheat you instead of your target and has less range than a Heavy MG (In Tabletop it had the same range as a Small Laser). Properly done, BTW, PGI, you messed up, It is a good weapon, sure, very short range, and hot compared to a Small Laser, but you've made it about as effective as those troll build Piranah's I've seen in matches lately.... you know.. the 1 Flamer 11 light Tag ones... BTW people.. if you are doing this.. Please stop.. its not funny.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

I voted no for both and I'll explain.

No to the visual redesign due to currently flamers don't destroy FPS and the ability to see, as well as flamers are mech exhaust not napalm or some other fuel based flamer (those are vehicle flamers) as such a butane like torch for the effect is far more accurate. This also has the bonus of not crippling people who get hit or see a flamer being used like we currently have the issue of when mass missiles, ballistics, or machine guns are going off causing massive FPS drops due to all the particles. So no visual change there unless it stays in a manner that is non-blinding and non-FPS tanking manner, leave the utility to being heat and damage for this weapon (and yes it should have some damage utility).

No to the proposed damage as it is half of what it should be. Yes, half. LMG's are 1 damage on TT, Flamers are 2 damage just like MG's. So Flamers, just like MG's should instead of being a flat 2 damage, should be 2DPS by being .2. Currently flamers are .1 dps (supposedly, info pulled from smurfy) while LMG's are .07. Giving flamers a crit chance bonus is bad, in reality we need less things with crit chance. With this you have the ability to do a fair bit of damage in a small burst, and no ghost heat as they can only go for so long before "over heating" and self ghost heating. Possibly increase flamer damage up to .25 or .3 for a DPS of 2.5 or 3 while playing with heat to adjust the (damage*heat)/sec ratio until golden, and enemy mechs are a golden brown. This allows for also decreasing how long a flamer can run but make it so they do more damage faster and more heat faster to boot. Making them less of a joke weapon and instead able to cause armor to slag, sinks to get over loaded and the enemy to have to make the choice of override to fight or try to bug out. As it is now, you need a lot of flamers to do anything.

In short, keep the visual, or spruce it up a bit but keep the same style so no more old FPS killing mech blinding fuckfest. Increase by x2-x3 dps on the flamer, keep crit chance the same, possibly lower the over heat time (and time to 'cool off on the flamer'). This will make the flamer be able to be an energy machine gun without the FPS killing mechanic which needs to not be seen as a feature but as a bug.

[NARC BAIT]

your not getting to light fires any time soon .... that would require a new branch of code in the engine, that doesnt really achieve anything, other than add load to the already terribly optimized flow ....

as for visuals, do you really want the old ones back ? the ones that dont add up ? the ones that look like your spitting out little puffs of on fire chemical ? maybe thats fine on crimson straight, but how well would it work on HPG, with no atmosphere .... something something, fire needs oxygen to breathe .... and sure, that could be negated by using a chemical fire, which you would need ammo for ....

Im pretty sure the blowtorches we have now are the result of being the only plausible explanation, for heat generated from the on board fusion reactor ....

[MechTech Dragoon]

@Moonlight Grimoire
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with you on the fps killing. maybe tighter beams (old, and current ones are extremely wide) with a flashier flame jet. However, imo, blinding was a factor of strength for the flamers (as is suppressive auto cannon fire)
Currently flamers actually have a dps of 0.10, while light machineguns have a dps of 0.70 (this is due to rate of fire) even with 6 flamers and backup lasers, youll be lucky to clear 100 dmg in a match at current heat levels and damage.

@Narc Bait
Depends, currently weapons can cause interactions with some environments in game, which this would fall under. Having an interaction with the environment, creating a heat location, (which is used on a couple maps).

Not necessarily, i like the old ones allot, but i'd be happy with something similar to what we have but with a bit more flare. Currently the "cool factor" negates use of flamers for a few people, along with negligible damage.

Well, i mean, in logical terms its a plasma jet stream from the reactor (reactors in mechwarrior are plasma based fusion engines) which looks something like this.



A plasma flame jet stream, looks allot like well, regular fire lol.
As for hpg...a plasma jet stream would work in space, in fact, nasa is in the process of creating a plasma based propulsion system because of this fact. Aside from that, a flame generated from a source, would still be a stream of flame in space. It only needs energy from its source, being a plasma flame, it doesnt need oxygen.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

XkrX Dragoon, on 19 February 2018 - 06:50 AM, said:

@Moonlight Grimoire
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with you on the fps killing. maybe tighter beams (old, and current ones are extremely wide) with a flashier flame jet. However, imo, blinding was a factor of strength for the flamers (as is suppressive auto cannon fire)
Currently flamers actually have a dps of 0.10, while light machineguns have a dps of 0.70 (this is due to rate of fire) even with 6 flamers and backup lasers, youll be lucky to clear 100 dmg in a match at current heat levels and damage.

@Narc Bait
Depends, currently weapons can cause interactions with some environments in game, which this would fall under. Having an interaction with the environment, creating a heat location, (which is used on a couple maps).

Not necessarily, i like the old ones allot, but i'd be happy with something similar to what we have but with a bit more flare. Currently the "cool factor" negates use of flamers for a few people, along with negligible damage.

Well, i mean, in logical terms its a plasma jet stream from the reactor (reactors in mechwarrior are plasma based fusion engines) which looks something like this.



A plasma flame jet stream, looks allot like well, regular fire lol.
As for hpg...a plasma jet stream would work in space, in fact, nasa is in the process of creating a plasma based propulsion system because of this fact. Aside from that, a flame generated from a source, would still be a stream of flame in space. It only needs energy from its source, being a plasma flame, it doesnt need oxygen.

Take a look at the Jump Jet thrust out of a mech, that is the same kind of plasma that a flamer uses vented from a mech, but, instead used for thrust instead of launched out to heat and melt mechs armor. A thinner JJ flame like thing that is translucent is fine, but I still feel blinding is eh, but so long as it doesn't destroy FPS I can live with it because I can still retaliate. If only we had active polarizing cockpits. But yeah, Flamer DPS up to 2 would be fine given they have a fall off on how long they can run given heat and the heat bar filling up, of course I really do not support a 1:1 change of increasing DPS and heat bar as a trade for this new version (so a 20x DPS and 20x more aggressive heat bar, maybe 1.5x). This allows for far more damage but you have to do it more carefully which is in my book more fun. It isn't a shut down and smash the enemy, it is flame the enemy and use the heat dumped on them to allow a light to run away, or on a heavier mech to dish out more DPS with cool weapons while a laser mech has to slow fire weapons, and it gives a DPS boost. Seriously 2 DPS is about right for flamers, the real question is, how long is the flamer heat bar until overheat currently, and how much damage would that allow at 2DPS and would that be acceptable.

[MechanicalWraith]

I voted no to the visual change for two reasons: Firstly, I disliked the lazy glowing-splatter-spam we had before purely from a realism point of view, it was just plain stupid to throw plasma 100m without any attempt to focus the stream into a weapon (like trying to crack a safe with a campfire rather than a blowtorch). Secondly, as others have pointed out - the old particles were not only blinding, but murdered the FPS with 100+ factor overdraw on much of the screen - trying to fight with 4 FPS is worse than being shutdown.

As for the mechanics, I'd love to see one simple change, namely the removal of any and all non-linear heat-scaling. Moving on I'm happy with just about any balance of heat to damage as long as the heat generation and delivery are kept balanced.

[Guffrus]

Why not add an option to restore the old visual from the perspective of the mech firing the flamer but keep the current graphic for everyone else?

Only thing that bothers me about flamers currently is the mental load required to know when the weapon is ready to refire without penalty.

If i am using a laser i can just press the fire button and if it doesnt work it hasnt reloaded yet, simples. But with a flamer i have to actually look at the gauge and see if it has cooled down and if i fire it for even a microsecond the cooldown refresh process is interupted for a very long time. Its just extremely difficult to use efficiently, it would be nice to keep the current system because i understand why it works the way that it does but for it to be easier to use efficiently, perhaps the controls for it could work differently with a sort of partial lockout when overheated, so:

you press and hold the fire button the bar fills up and when it reaches the end it shuts off but if you then pump the button it will keep firing (continuously, not in bursts) so you can still over cook it in exchange for a penalty if you want to but you know its overheating from the feedback on the controls rather than having to look at the gauge.

It might not sound like much, but I really find it to be a problem, the cognitive load on using flamers is huge.

With a regular laser I am cycling the weapons frequently enough that I get a feel for how long the cooldown is, so I can refire the weapons pretty much as soon as they come off cooldown just from the clock in my head, intuitively. Flamers arent like that at all, I dont have an internal clock for flamers, the duration is long the cooldown is long, they are backup weapons and I know that if i refire them before they have cooled down properly that I am eating a massive penalty so for all these reasons and probably a half a dozen other reasons i havent thought to mention flamers are orders of magnetude harder to use efficiently than other weapons and i dont think it needs to be that bad. ppcs for example have a destinctive reload sound effect which makes cycling them efficiently easier. Flamers need something like that, something audible or in the controls or both of these types of feedback to make it easier for the user to know if they are firing them with a penalty or not or if the cooldown has started and ended etc.

Guffrus

[KursedVixen]

A flamer revamp of the heat delivered would be nice and maybe a special quirk for the adder since it comes standard with that head mounted flamer (Which is less of an issue now since it can be removed ,but still there are few viable options to replace a 0.5 ton energy weapon.....