572 replies to this topic

[I Peed My Pants]

I gotta say this seems a bit ridiculous - particularly going from 6 to 4 with the ERML and in particular the MPL. Clans arn't IS. What happened to iterative changes? or does 5 not exist?
and HLL now only a 1 shot? I thought heat, cooldown, slots and burn time were the 'drawbacks' on this? Now IS can have a 30pt alpha with 3LPL, and a short burn time to boot, vs a 18pt alpha with 2x the burn time, and more cooldown?

And all of this, untested on those test servers that we all could have tested this out on?

not for the first time... WTF PGI?

I say this as someone who's more of a SRM fanboy in clans (And IS for that matter) too... so many borderline mechs are gonna be killed by this.

Clan is not IS. dont make 'em the same. the appeal of this game is the variability and customisation. Make clan more alphadogish and IS more brawlish if you have too... but dont do this. No point customising if you make everything perform the same.

Clan mediums: 28pt alpha
IS mediums: 30pt alpha

Clan LL's 18-24pt alpha
IS LL's: 27-30pt alpha

See the issue here? either incredibly similar, or (now) worse, with the added issue of heat, rate of fire, and burn times being worse than IS.

Laser vomit may be an issue in clans - but this seems to be a lazy, overbearing way to 'fix' it. The only thing that'd make this ok is desincing medium and small lasers, since everything else is so similar between clan and IS, why not that?

[I Peed My Pants]

Antares102, on 13 May 2018 - 12:25 AM, said:

Wow this is truely hilarious. The gravity of that statement is on Trump tweet levels.
Being good does not mean one knows balance...
No, quite the opposite Mr. Bullock. Being good means you have to sit down, analyse sh|t and self-reflect.
Without analysis and self-reflection you would have never become good in the focking first place.
And both actions are the basis to learn the imbalances and thus also knoow how to balance it.

The best proof is the following thread:
https://mwomercs.com...balance-update/
Tarogato and many others proposed many good changes to significantly improve balance.
But I bet Mr. Bullock you dont even know that this thread exists.

just quoting this because these changes look very good - some nerfs to clan laser vomit that actually make sense, some buffs to the near useless micro lasers, and some boosts to some of the more anemic IS weapons, none of which change the differences between clan and Is, but enhance them.

[Antares102]

Wishmast3r, on 13 May 2018 - 12:30 AM, said:

Meanwhile on Twitter ...

I feel we have to add another medal to the following list for this statement.
What about "Achievement of great balance"?

Edited by Antares102, 13 May 2018 - 02:08 AM.

[Daflibble]

Personally I'm feeling like structure and amour values should just be buffed to the point all these weapons are much slower to kill anybody. But you'll prob have a bunch whining about that too. I would like to see more torso twisting speed for assaults to allow increased survival time.

Keep up the generally good work PGI, but go slow with the changes to keep the noise levels down.

[Tordin]

Ok. Alot of changes seems to be good. Still..

Well yeah, restribiution of bonus armor and structure points seems nice on paper. But I swear it would be easier to just add another 10 to 20 points to all 100 tonners, to make em feel that they can take a beating.
Also, what about the Dire Wolf, should it stay this fragile?? It was known to be hard to bring down, kinda Atlas levels of hard.

I play both tech sides (staying IS, sweet clan salvage..) and the laser changes are utter WTF??

Let the Heavy large lasers be at three and the hml be at 5. They have enough drawbacks as it is.

However...

PGI its a middle ground. Find it and balance from there Take step by step. If that dosent work go up/ down a notch.

Energy Changes:
Clan ER Medium Laser

• Minimum Heat Penalty reduced to 5 - > 6 (from 7)
  

Clan Medium Pulse Laser

• Minimum Heat Penalty reduced to 5 -> 6 (from 7)

[Tarl Cabot]

LordLosh, on 12 May 2018 - 04:49 PM, said:

Okay I lied as I have an update. I have asked Paul to pull the nerds from the patch. Whether that goes beyond laser changes and MKII adjustments I’m not sure but at least two things.
Russ Bullock‏


In the end this is not a sign that I think the nerfs were a bad idea and we shouldn’t have them
Russ Bullock‏


At the least I feel these level of changes usually come with more fore warning, perhaps a PTS and a feedback loop.
Russ Bullock‏


So let’s call them tabled for now but we may open that process again so on some or all of these adjustments
Russ Bullock‏

Thank you to everyone who plays the game and posted. To the five or 6 of you that thought it was ok and fair you have Zero concepts of how the game works or is played.
GHOST HEAT NEVER HAS BEEN THE ANSWER AND NEVER WILL BE

I would imagine the change likely had to do more with a large amount of requests to cancel pre-orders in addition of the negative feedback.

Their first step should have been to link HLL with both laser weapon groupings, then consider dropping the GH threshold by 1 for the others instead of 2.

As for Ghost Heat itself, isn't a majority of the ghost heat amount approximately the same heat as if firing one additional weapon without the actual damage? Something to look at would be to review the extra heat being generated, something I do not believe has ever had any sort of adjustments across the board. Of course, there is the issue of not having a semi-functional Heat Scale, one that in MWO does nothing til the mech hits 100%+. Edit - my Heat Scale would have 2-3 soft thresholds for movement/agility reduction starting around 40% HS, 10%-30% movement reduction.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 13 May 2018 - 04:43 AM.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

I kinda got the feeling they overdid the nerf (6 to 4 etc) on purpose, as any nerf to clan laser GH would cause an uproar anyway. On monday they will "kindly" reduce the nerf to 6s to 5s and things will end up calmer than if they went from 6 to 5 in the first place.
Politics 101

Not that I mind the nerfs tbh.

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 13 May 2018 - 04:40 AM.

[Reno Blade]

I am actually looking forward to ALL the patch changes.
Yes, even the Clan Laser ghost heat nerfs.

-> It's a minor change with minor impact.

What minor, really? Yes.
All I see is 0.5s more facetime for something that very often dominate the whole game.
only 0.5s more chance to avoid your mech getting 1-shot in less than 1.5 seconds (now just barely in 2.0 sec).

There were already tons of builds that are affected by GH, but were still used.
If you take your 4x ERLL/PPC builds (e.g. Stalker/Warhawk) or your stock Nova Prime or stock HBK-4P... you already have to stagger now, and you will stagger with more builds after this patch.

You are all too focused on the one-shot pony that you forget the other weapon combos are still fun on their own.
Best that can happen is to spread the damage more (e.g. RAC, MRM, LRM, longer Lasers, clan Ultras...) to make the game more tactical and less one-shot like.

The lasers need to be limited, as they are the easiest weapon and leave the "targets" the least chance to react, even with long beams.
(similar as the PPCs had to be "nerfed" because of the fast projectile making it way too good for a long time and the cool Gauss synchronized too good for PPFLD)

So back to "minor impact"... you are still able to fire your x HLL + y ML, but not everything in one volley.
As hard as it sounds, you have to deal with the downsides of the powerful volley, as you have to on any other weapon.
Firing Ultras, missiles or even PPCs requires better aiming because of lead times, and spread, but lasers are pin point and require "only" facetime that is often much shorter than for the other weapons for the amount of damage delivered.


Why not nerf the weapons (damage/beam)?
Many people still cry about Small laser nerfs and the HLL beam duration was soooo much cried about before release because of the long duration that this will be just as hard to get accepted.
But the stronger point is:
The best about Ghost Heat is that the weapon itself do not need to get nerfed for the low-hardpoint builds, but only affect the "boats".

My recommendation stands since long:
more spread out damage over the board (be it Ghost heat, or much longer beam/volley/burst durations) is the right direction for a mech game where you want to survive multiple volleys.
I would keep aiming for longer burns/bursts and lower alpha potential overall.
But with a more limited GH (or Power Draw) the weapons can be "buffed" again.

Imagine all lasers would have a shared GH limit of 3 (before GH), so you could not build any high alpha laser boat, but would rather take 3 large weapons than mix.
all classes could be "buffed" to be more useful for this small group (max 3) so even ML could become better (e.g. less heat and beam).
Without Power Draw the GH is limited to a single weapon category, so you can still get most out of the mechs with mixed builds.

[Koniving]

Bonfor, on 12 May 2018 - 05:09 PM, said:

Ghost heat and all of these boating issues could have been prevented if PGI had gone with the same hardpoint size limitations that MW2 or MW4 had (forget which)...that could have allowed light & medium mechs to boat more smaller lasers, and yet allowed the heavy & assault mechs to boat fewer but larger ones.

MW2 didn't have them (Mercs might have, I haven't played it). MW4 had them.

In general the issue is multi-fold.

One, lack of size limitations is a starter.

Two, the grouping system completely ignores the "TIC" system of every other Mechwarrior game, which became part of (or originated from) the Solaris VII game as a way of governing "closer to real time" gameplay in 2.5 second time slices. Either weapons are fired individually or from 3 preassigned groups tied together and calibrated to a specific range.

Three, The "invention" of a dynamic maximum heat threshold that is 30 + heatsinks.. In tabletop as in all mechwarrior games, the heat system was a Set max threshold and heatsinks only governed cooling speed. (Yes you can fire more than 30 heat worth in 10 seconds, but as Solaris VII shows, it doesn't work in 2.5 seconds because you can't cool enough.) Samples to do the math with. Below in the spoiler is 4 Clan ER PPCs and 3 IS large lasers, how they can be fired across 10 seconds but when you reduce the time to fire them within 2.5 seconds it doesn't work as well, but after 7.5 more seconds of cooling it matches exactly, as well as why its a "chance to shut down" in between.

In MW 2 the limit was 40, in MW3 it was 30, but up to 40 if you have the expansion Pirate's Moon installed. In MW4 the limit is 60.

In MWO the limit is dynamic with the minimum being 42 (10 SHS) and for 10 DHS between 46 (Urbanmech 60 engine with 8 external DHS) to 50 (10 DHS 250 engine) for minimums. Some example maxes without skill tree or quirks include 28 DHS IS for 77 max heat (that's the most you can have and still have a weapon), compared to 40 DHS Clan for the Clans for 95 max heat....and still have a weapon.

With the skill tree it does go up a fair bit if you take heat containment... but not nearly as bad as the old skill tree where the same two builds would get you 90 threshold for the IS (with that's even with 1.4 DHS btw!) and 110.4 for Clans.

Even then, where in past games it was crippling to be shut down and to recover, here it's a slap on the wrist as you can hit the power button, start back up and poof you're going again.

Plus larger lasers have reduced heat while smaller lasers have increased heat..
Is it any wonder that ghost heat became an undesired necessity?

Spoiler

Koniving, on 14 April 2018 - 02:12 PM, said:

That's why a lot of Solaris's rules are different.

Though actually a lot of it has to do with a change in time scale, instead of 10 second time slices as shown above, they are 2.5 second time slices.

As such you're not allowed to fire all your weapons in a turn, a thing emphasized by the 4 times heat. They did this INSTEAD of reducing maximum heat down by a division of 4 (30 to 7.5). This keeps them from having to divide the heatsinks by 4 which would have been a royal pain. Plus some weapons, which are still "summarized" like AC/20s, would basically make walking and firing the AC/20 enough heat to shut down by if they did a divide by 4 like they did with the time slice, so they times by four instead to get the same result without the issues.

Still, this means 3 large lasers which would be 80% out of 100% (24 out of 30) in Battletech before cooling, would be 96 out of 120 or 80% out of 100%. But only 2.5 seconds worth of cooling against it instead of 10 seconds, so the end result of 10 DHS would be 76 out of 120 or 63.33% heat where in tabletop it would have been 4 out of 30 or 13.33% left.

If you take that 96 out of 120 and instead cool 4 turns worth of 20, you'd get 16 out of 120, or 13.33% left over heat.

So effectively the weapon heat didn't change at all, but it did.
All to make it so that you can't alpha strike.

Quote

Keep in mind that as with Battletech, Solaris and so on, the chances to shut down are attempts to "CATCH" the pilot that's firing his weapons sloppy. It isn't saying you're firing all the weapons at once, but if you fire them too close together you build up heat faster than you're cooling in the 10 second time slice. As such, you overheat and shut down.

A breakdown of a Warhawk firing 4 ER PPCs shows it can be done, but if you fire them too close together, or even two at once, you hit 30 heat and shut down. That's what the "Chance" of shutting down is trying to catch, with if you shut down at this level of heat (such as 14 out of 30 or 48.667%), it isn't saying you shut down at 48.667% heat but you got damn close or pass 100% heat, and that's just where you are after the shutdown... because you fired too quickly, too close together, you came close to a "True Alpha Strike", something Solaris VII of old went far out of its way to say "You never alpha strike unless it's really desperate."

Fun, eh?

(Another fun fact:
Overriding in the fluff does NOT override shutdown. There is no way to override a shutdown. Either you shut down, or the reactor fries [it doesn't go nuclear but effectively containment breaches, you get a puff of radioactive smoke and you're dead]. The common practice of the IS "overriding" refers to overriding the weapons lockout that occurs at 80% of threshold.

Edited by Koniving, 13 May 2018 - 06:39 AM.

[GweNTLeR]

Koniving, on 13 May 2018 - 06:36 AM, said:

(Another fun fact:
Overriding in the fluff does NOT override shutdown. There is no way to override a shutdown. Either you shut down, or the reactor fries [it doesn't go nuclear but effectively containment breaches, you get a puff of radioactive smoke and you're dead]. The common practice of the IS "overriding" refers to overriding the weapons lockout that occurs at 80% of threshold.

I'd rather have it implemented this way, since MWO basically allows high laser vomit mechs to suicide in an attempt to kill a mech (a suicidal kill is often the result, which sucks).

[Koniving]

GweNTLeR, on 13 May 2018 - 08:48 AM, said:

I'd rather have it implemented this way, since MWO basically allows high laser vomit mechs to suicide in an attempt to kill a mech (a suicidal kill is often the result, which sucks).

Do you mean have the override unlock safety which is preventing the use of weapons at 80%, and shutting down be unavoidable once reached?

I think it would do something about some of the strategies used up to and including the high laser vomit. The work around they would need to do is to separate and potentially chain fire when they get too hot in order to keep firing without shutting down. We used to have to do this in 2012 before override prevented shutdowns (January 2013).

There was actually a situation where you could potentially explode after passing 100% with ammunition... but this was because PGI had it so that equipment took damage when you hit over 80% instead of the mech when you hit over 100%.

Edited by Koniving, 13 May 2018 - 09:01 AM.

[MechaBattler]

Antares102, on 13 May 2018 - 12:25 AM, said:

Wow this is truely hilarious. The gravity of that statement is on Trump tweet levels.
Being good does not mean one knows balance...
No, quite the opposite Mr. Bullock. Being good means you have to sit down, analyse sh|t and self-reflect.
Without analysis and self-reflection you would have never become good in the focking first place.
And both actions are the basis to learn the imbalances and thus also knoow how to balance it.

The best proof is the following thread:
https://mwomercs.com...balance-update/
Tarogato and many others proposed many good changes to significantly improve balance.
But I bet Mr. Bullock you dont even know that this thread exists.

Being able to aim and running the latest meta build doesn't make anyone good at balancing the game. They should listen to as diverse a sampling of people as possible. But ultimately they have to come to a subjective conclusion from the stats say.

Russ is entitled to a day off same as anyone else. People gotta attack every little thing. Even the way he says things. Just stahp.

Edited by MechaBattler, 13 May 2018 - 09:47 AM.

[Natural Predator]

Reno Blade, on 13 May 2018 - 04:40 AM, said:

I am actually looking forward to ALL the patch changes.
Yes, even the Clan Laser ghost heat nerfs.

-> It's a minor change with minor impact.

What minor, really? Yes.
All I see is 0.5s more facetime for something that very often dominate the whole game.
only 0.5s more chance to avoid your mech getting 1-shot in less than 1.5 seconds (now just barely in 2.0 sec).

There were already tons of builds that are affected by GH, but were still used.
If you take your 4x ERLL/PPC builds (e.g. Stalker/Warhawk) or your stock Nova Prime or stock HBK-4P... you already have to stagger now, and you will stagger with more builds after this patch.

You are all too focused on the one-shot pony that you forget the other weapon combos are still fun on their own.
Best that can happen is to spread the damage more (e.g. RAC, MRM, LRM, longer Lasers, clan Ultras...) to make the game more tactical and less one-shot like.

The lasers need to be limited, as they are the easiest weapon and leave the "targets" the least chance to react, even with long beams.
(similar as the PPCs had to be "nerfed" because of the fast projectile making it way too good for a long time and the cool Gauss synchronized too good for PPFLD)

So back to "minor impact"... you are still able to fire your x HLL + y ML, but not everything in one volley.
As hard as it sounds, you have to deal with the downsides of the powerful volley, as you have to on any other weapon.
Firing Ultras, missiles or even PPCs requires better aiming because of lead times, and spread, but lasers are pin point and require "only" facetime that is often much shorter than for the other weapons for the amount of damage delivered.


Why not nerf the weapons (damage/beam)?
Many people still cry about Small laser nerfs and the HLL beam duration was soooo much cried about before release because of the long duration that this will be just as hard to get accepted.
But the stronger point is:
The best about Ghost Heat is that the weapon itself do not need to get nerfed for the low-hardpoint builds, but only affect the "boats".

My recommendation stands since long:
more spread out damage over the board (be it Ghost heat, or much longer beam/volley/burst durations) is the right direction for a mech game where you want to survive multiple volleys.
I would keep aiming for longer burns/bursts and lower alpha potential overall.
But with a more limited GH (or Power Draw) the weapons can be "buffed" again.

Imagine all lasers would have a shared GH limit of 3 (before GH), so you could not build any high alpha laser boat, but would rather take 3 large weapons than mix.
all classes could be "buffed" to be more useful for this small group (max 3) so even ML could become better (e.g. less heat and beam).
Without Power Draw the GH is limited to a single weapon category, so you can still get most out of the mechs with mixed builds.

That is without a doubt the dumbest thing I’ve ever read about balance. Quick question, do you play faction warfare where is vs clan balance actually matters?

[Holy Jackson]

I just hope that pgi recognizes that changing a weapon's heat or cooldown or damage, or a mechs base armor values is one thing, but changing ghost heat literally invalidates builds. It's a bad solution.

[Trenchbird]

Holy Jackson, on 13 May 2018 - 09:52 AM, said:

I just hope that pgi recognizes that changing a weapon's heat or cooldown or damage, or a mechs base armor values is one thing, but changing ghost heat literally invalidates builds. It's a bad solution.

So you're saying that invalidating a quad Ultra AC/20 Dire Wolf via EXTREME GHOST HEAT is a bad solution?

[Natural Predator]

Catten Hart, on 13 May 2018 - 10:09 AM, said:

So you're saying that invalidating a quad Ultra AC/20 Dire Wolf via EXTREME GHOST HEAT is a bad solution?

No that’s not what he’s saying. His saying you tweak in small doses you don’t completely **** on half the mechs. Use some nuance would you please?

[Natural Predator]

MechaBattler, on 13 May 2018 - 09:39 AM, said:

Being able to aim and running the latest meta build doesn't make anyone good at balancing the game. They should listen to as diverse a sampling of people as possible. But ultimately they have to come to a subjective conclusion from the stats say.

Russ is entitled to a day off same as anyone else. People gotta attack every little thing. Even the way he says things. Just stahp.

Not to burst your bubble but being able to build effective mechs that maximize the value does mean you understand the mechanics of the game. Yes, you can use suboptimal builds/mech to play this game. Being able to build a mech to its maximum potential is a sign that you understand the mechanics of balance.

[MechaBattler]

Ragnar Baron Leiningen, on 13 May 2018 - 10:20 AM, said:

Not to burst your bubble but being able to build effective mechs that maximize the value does mean you understand the mechanics of the game. Yes, you can use suboptimal builds/mech to play this game. Being able to build a mech to its maximum potential is a sign that you understand the mechanics of balance.

Not if you're just copying someone else. Doesn't take a genius to just copy someone who's doing well.

[Natural Predator]

MechaBattler, on 13 May 2018 - 10:32 AM, said:

Not if you're just copying someone else. Doesn't take a genius to just copy someone who's doing well.

Yes copying builds helps make you aware of what’s good and what’s not. It’s called learning from the examples of others.

[MechaBattler]

Ragnar Baron Leiningen, on 13 May 2018 - 10:43 AM, said:

Yes copying builds helps make you aware of what’s good and what’s not. It’s called learning from the examples of others.

Yeah, but that doesn't make you anymore capable of making balance decisions as the next guy. Especially as you develop a bias for favoring that specific build.