36 replies to this topic

[Cato Zilks]

Partly in response to the PGI stated goal of reducing alphas ( https://mwomercs.com...ha-damage-meta/ ) and partly from looking over the long history of recent tiny nerfs, I find myself thinking that we are being forced into something that we as a community rejected a few years ago. We are going to end up with the old energy draw system, just by having a really complex set of rules about what weapon combos can go together and which ones can't. As we shift to find new ways to work in max damage in minimal time, the will close it down. Thus, I think it is time to just embrace the end goal of PGI bring back the idea of having a "universal" damage limit after which there are penalties. Before I go further, let me say this clearly, I am not asking for Energy Draw to be implemented. I think it was a BAD idea. However, we are going to end up there by a thousand tiny changes as things are currently going. I want to send us down a different, less crappy path.

ED was/is/always-will-be bad
The worst parts of old ED is that it 1) kept a rigid limit for all classes, 2) punished all builds with heat (being overheated hurts TTK), and 3) would have caused so much facetanking that it really would not have increased TTK (which was the goal). To explain what I mean, all 5 of these builds would have had absurd heat spikes that likely would cause immediate shutdown.
http://mech.nav-alph...m/#kjjrJ3_KDK-3 (double tap on UACs makes 70 damage)
http://mech.nav-alph...m/#6Nv3wo_KDK-5
http://mech.nav-alph...m/#0zHu36_KDK-3
http://mech.nav-alph.../#Dj7Z26_HMN-PA
https://mwo.smurfy-n...daa951f4de802cd
Of course, a shutdown is lame and death by overheating is also lame. Furthermore, barely taking any weapons to avoid a stupid 30pt cap is also incredibly lame (and cripples mechs like the Direwolf. So instead, I think if we have a universal cap, its penalty should not be related to heat. It should focus on weapon performance. Most importantly the caps cannot be rigid and must be something any mech (especially larger ones) can work around.


Weapon performance penalties
This is simple, weapons powered by the fission engine (energy and gauss) will have their range reduced while combustion powered (missile, ac, and mg) are given spread. Both penalties are awarded in proportion to the degree to which they exceed the damage limit. This means that while you can fire a dual Gauss + dual er-ppc build in one alpha, the range would be severely limited (in turn cutting down on the damage at range). Likewise, a LRM 80 stalker can alpha, though it will just be shotgunning a blob of missiles in the general area of the target because the spread will be intense.

Weapon Caps are changeable
Ok, so PGI's energy draw plan was to have every mech get a 30 pt cap. Obviously, that is not a good plan. Whatever the cap is, it should scale up to some small degree corresponding to mech weight (maybe 1 point higher for each 10 tons). More importantly, targeting computers should have an added ability to increase the damage cap. I figure each computer should raise the cap by 2. So a mech with a lvl 8 computer could add 16 more points to their damage cap. Importantly, this can help bring back Gauss/PPC in a more limited way if players are willing to devote some tonnage to targeting computers, but still keeps 94 pt Gauss/vomit builds from being viable (except at very short range).

Upsides
1) It should increase TTK, which helps new players and meets PGI's goals. Alpha strikes will be less effective because they will spread damage and/or do less damage (because of range reduction). It will also decrease the number of overheats which are a plague on new players and should help increase TTK.
2) It gets rid of terrible burdens on certain weapon combos. Gauss/PPC is not penalized any more than AC20/SRM6s. This should make mechlabbing a bit easier for new people and allow for more builds to be viable. Dual AC20's can totally be a thing in this system and may even be preferable to dual heavy Gauss as the 10 pt difference in damage means several tons saved in investing in a targeting computer or a better optimal range.
3) it makes more sense than just adding more ghost heats all over the place. And this is the real key, we are going to be getting more and more limitations on weapon combos as we try to work around ghost heat and PGI tries to increase TTK. We can either end up with a terribly confusing system that creates a lot of stupid heat damage and makes the game no fun, or we can have a system that serves their purpose without destroying all of our fun.

[El Bandito]

Cato Zilks, on 12 June 2018 - 03:59 AM, said:

Weapon performance penalties
This is simple, weapons powered by the fission engine (energy and gauss) will have their range reduced while combustion powered (missile, ac, and mg) are given spread. Both penalties are awarded in proportion to the degree to which they exceed the damage limit. This means that while you can fire a dual Gauss + dual er-ppc build in one alpha, the range would be severely limited (in turn cutting down on the damage at range). Likewise, a LRM 80 stalker can alpha, though it will just be shotgunning a blob of missiles in the general area of the target because the spread will be intense.
range).

I think reduced range and increased spread will add unnecessary info on top of cap limit people have to memorize, especially since the effect is dynamic, and depends on the alpha numbers. To that effect, I personally proposed forced chain-fire as alternative penalty for going over the cap limit. Since the FCF effect is automatic, only new info people have to memorize is the cap limit itself. Simple.

[Cloves]

El Bandito, on 12 June 2018 - 04:11 AM, said:

I think reduced range and increased spread will add unnecessary info on top of cap limit people have to memorize, especially since the effect is dynamic, and depends on the alpha numbers. To that effect, I personally proposed forced chain-fire as alternative penalty for going over the cap limit. Since the FCF effect is automatic, only new info people have to memorize is the cap limit itself. Simple.

I do like the simplicity of FCF.

[LordNothing]

i never liked ghost heat because of the arbitraty nature of gh groups. i didnt like energy draw because i felt that it overthought the problem. gh is the right idea in principal, but wrong in execution. energy draw on the other hand just doesnt feel like it belongs in a battletech based game at all.

the real solution is algorithm driven ghost heat. you integrate heat output over time (mechwarrior 2's dh/dt gauge) and map that to a heat penalty multiplier, either linearly or on a curve. you are still free to alpha or cycle to your hearts content (though pay the consequences), you dont get locked out of firing (the most annoying feature of energy draw) and its a pretty low hanging fruit option.

this fixes the major problem where you can stack a huge alpha without triggering gh at all. a loophole that every meta player (self included) exploits. the way around this is to compute penalty every tick. so penalties gained in one tick affect subsequent ticks. and since lasers fire over multiple ticks, this closes up the alpha loophole. a large alpha also gives you a gh penalty that will stick around a long time after the alpha has completed. you actually have to wait for the dh/dt gauge to drop to sane levels if you want a chance at a penalty free shot.

it has other benefits too, like giving burst fire autocannons an advantage over single shot. generally its better to dump the heat in multiple ticks than all at once like ppfld weapons would do. lasers do this, but when used in sane numbers they would still gain the advantage, only large alphas cook you. mrms, clan lrms, cacs, racs, and larger burst fire uacs would all benefit. its not going to hurt ppfld weapons much since most have long enoug cds not to notice, though it would make them somewhat difficult to pair with other high alpha weapons. incidentally you could really buff the ppc with this system and not worry about people boating them without exploding.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 June 2018 - 08:58 AM.

[Abaddun]

What about a system like ED, but rather then capping damage, have operate in a similar fashion to heat override, with a flat damage dealt to the internals of the CT relative to the amount of damage fired in excess of the cap. It's still a terrible system thinking about it, but it will go some way to curb excessive alphas.

Overall I like the idea of forced chain fire, that might actually work, but I am uncertain as to how it will be implemented.

[Cato Zilks]

El Bandito, on 12 June 2018 - 04:11 AM, said:

I think reduced range and increased spread will add unnecessary info on top of cap limit people have to memorize, especially since the effect is dynamic, and depends on the alpha numbers. To that effect, I personally proposed forced chain-fire as alternative penalty for going over the cap limit. Since the FCF effect is automatic, only new info people have to memorize is the cap limit itself. Simple.

So, I don't think forced chain fire is actually going to help that much with TTK because, in theory, some one who takes a bad peak as now just going to take a longer peak. In order for them to get their full shots off, they now have to wait a half second to fire the second group, during which time their enemies also fire twice. We want people to fire and twist, not facetank while they cycle through a bunch of weapons. Also, on those case where someone does pull back after firing a full alpha, but ducks back into cover, they again cant really torso twist as they duck because they are still firing a bunch of lasers and dont want to shoot any allies. This very normal grasshopper build: http://mech.nav-alph.../#PH794X_GHR-5H would now be locked into a 2.5 second firing pattern by auto fcf (1.1 + .5 + .9 = 2.5). That is a lot of time, way to much time if you only were going for a quick poke.

Also, I am not sure my system is going require that much more brainpower. Right now, my IS-LL doesn't tell me how much damage it is doing at 625m. Its just over a third of the way down the damage reduction trajectory. So in my system, you fire a major laser alpha, the system would flash the adjusted range a few times. If you want to know how much it is going to reduce your range by before you are in a match, do the math or test it in training grounds. We already do this with new builds to see how bad heat is and how punishing ghost heat is on certain maps. For example, I know from testing that my battlemaster can fire 5 ERLL on a cold map without over heating (just barely). It has proven useful for annoying PPC poptarts. That is not data that is readily available to me now, except through testing or maths. I am not requiring anything new, just changing what we test for.

Finally, we do actually want high alphas in the game. When two forces collide into a close range brawl, we want damage to be put out quickly, even if not precisely. We want to reward players for good torso twisting and spreading of damage, but we also want mechs to fall quickly at that range, else brawls turn into massive traffic jams. FCF means that mechs will have to choose between doing damage and torso twisting. This heavy Gauss Mauler http://mech.nav-alph.../#1uSxqr_MAL-2P would take a full 3.4 seconds to shoot in FCF meaning that when they finished firing each HGR, the MLs would only be 1 second away from ready to fire again (.9 + .5 + .75 + .5 + .75 = 3.4). So not only does FCF encourage face tanking, it draws out brawling engagements in negative ways.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

What I don't understand is why PGI hates high alphas so much. They seem to totally disregard the actual viability of some high alpha/high DPS builds and how long duration and face time leads to taking extreme amounts of return fire (which is doubly bad on the fragile clanners) and also gives the enemy lots of time to spread incoming damage to the point where you would have been better off just using lower damage and more precise and efficient alpha strikes to begin with.

If PGI continues on its current path then I predict a full force return of the old PPFLD meta.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

I have solved the balance problem once and for all.

Witness my genius:

just make EVERY weapon do 5dmg, 5 heat.

EVERY weapon weighs 1 ton

Every weapon takes up 1 crit slot

Every weapon has a max range of 1000m, optimal of 500m

Every weapon has the some duration and cooldown time

Every node in the skill tree benefits every weapon equally

Every mech has the same movement profile

Every mech has the same armor

Every mech has the same hit boxes

Start there, and we are well on our way to having a balanced game!

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Boogie138, on 12 June 2018 - 03:46 PM, said:

I have solved the balance problem once and for all.

Witness my genius:

just make EVERY weapon do 5dmg, 5 heat.

EVERY weapon weighs 1 ton

Every weapon takes up 1 crit slot

Every weapon has a max range of 1000m, optimal of 500m

Every weapon has the some duration and cooldown time

Every node in the skill tree benefits every weapon equally

Every mech has the same movement profile

Every mech has the same armor

Every mech has the same hit boxes

Start there, and we are well on our way to having a balanced game!

Its funny how this is sort of the end goal for some. They don't seem to understand that in asymetric balance not every mech should be equally good in everything, there should be roles that each mech is good in.

PGI was on the right track years ago with the quirk system boosting certain mechs to be really good with one weapon in particular, then they spread it out to general purpose quirks that only served to make mechs less diverse and make the mech that used to be the best at this one thing in particular no longer the best at anything. Which itself is very ironic considering PGI had swapped over to general purpose quirks to "expand build diversity" of the chassis but only really lead to that chassis' extinction and lower build diversity per match.

[SilentFenris]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 12 June 2018 - 03:59 PM, said:

Its funny how this is sort of the end goal for some. They don't seem to understand that in asymetric balance not every mech should be equally good in everything, there should be roles that each mech is good in.

PGI was on the right track years ago with the quirk system boosting certain mechs to be really good with one weapon in particular, then they spread it out to general purpose quirks that only served to make mechs less diverse and make the mech that used to be the best at this one thing in particular no longer the best at anything. Which itself is very ironic considering PGI had swapped over to general purpose quirks to "expand build diversity" of the chassis but only really lead to that chassis' extinction and lower build diversity per match.

Please no! If I see a return of Commando/Battlemasters with 50% energy range quirks or Thunderbolts with 50% cooldown on ER PPCs and Medium Pulse I think that would be the end for me.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

SilentFenris, on 12 June 2018 - 04:07 PM, said:

Please no! If I see a return of Commando/Battlemasters with 50% energy range quirks or Thunderbolts with 50% cooldown on ER PPCs and Medium Pulse I think that would be the end for me.

Well, I can't say that I didn't find that to be the most fun I ever had in MWO. Though it would have been far better if all sides and all mechs had similar levels of things they were good at so it was balanced and so there would be hundreds of viable playstyles.

[SilentFenris]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 12 June 2018 - 04:47 PM, said:

Well, I can't say that I didn't find that to be the most fun I ever had in MWO. Though it would have been far better if all sides and all mechs had similar levels of things they were good at so it was balanced and so there would be hundreds of viable playstyles.

CW Phase 1 was fun. Having Quirks change like the sandwich of the day at the local deli was not.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

SilentFenris, on 12 June 2018 - 05:22 PM, said:

CW Phase 1 was fun. Having Quirks change like the sandwich of the day at the local deli was not.

Never said they should change constantly, just that they should have big quirks for each mech to be good at something in particular then those quirks should be locked in, if a mech is found to be too powerful or too weak then some minor adjustments to bring it back up or down would be in order, but not huge changes that make it useless or totally change up the purpose of the mech.

[El Bandito]

Cato Zilks, on 12 June 2018 - 01:29 PM, said:

FCF means that mechs will have to choose between doing damage and torso twisting.

And that's absolutely fine. Damage, or survival, people should make their choice accordingly. Just no absurd amount of alphas that can be gamed at close range.

[Savage Wolf]

I like the fact that you go to great lengths to distance yourself from Energy Draw and then go on to describe Energy Draw but slightly different than the implementation that PGI made. It's still Energy Draw because it's still a universal cap on alpha based on damage.

Not that that is bad, no, because Energy Draw is a good idea. And you are innovating on it. Good. Because it's all we really need, a good way to do it.

Personally I always just imagined Energy Draw would make you unable to fire a weapon if you didn't have the energy to. Of course the energy rapidly recharges, but you are not penalized for mashing the button and going over, you just have to wait.

And once we find it, we probably need someone else than PGI to implement it or it will just end like the first one, or Skill trees. PGI seem to have a talent for taking good ideas and make a bad attempt and then just leave it.

[Savage Wolf]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 12 June 2018 - 03:59 PM, said:

Its funny how this is sort of the end goal for some. They don't seem to understand that in asymetric balance not every mech should be equally good in everything, there should be roles that each mech is good in.

That's a great idea, now we just need something else for mechs to do other than deal damage. Something that won't make the lore purists pissed. Yeah... not going to happen. Then you can't have asymmetry I'm afraid.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Savage Wolf, on 13 June 2018 - 10:09 AM, said:

That's a great idea, now we just need something else for mechs to do other than deal damage. Something that won't make the lore purists pissed. Yeah... not going to happen. Then you can't have asymmetry I'm afraid.

All I imply is things that would be based around dealing damage, absorbing more damage, or having more mobility. I don't see how asymetrical balance requires roles other than dealing damage. There are VERY many ways to deal damage and many games follow rules for what a faction is generally good at. For example you'll have one team that is highly mobile, another team that is really tanky, and another that deals high DPS, so the mobile team can go and flank stuff easily, the tanky team can absorb a lot of fire, and the high DPS team can dish out a lot of punishment, in the end they all end up being about the same in effectiveness.

With all the weapon types in the game we could just have things like some mechs being great at precise damage, others great at high DPS, others good at high alpha but not very precise, others with loads of sustain, then have that for short, med, and long ranges. Then we also can add in durability and bonus mobility on various mechs to further the combinations even more.

[Kalimaster]

Can't we just find ways of Making Mechs Better instead of going NERF BALL on Everything.

[Savage Wolf]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 13 June 2018 - 10:57 AM, said:

All I imply is things that would be based around dealing damage, absorbing more damage, or having more mobility. I don't see how asymetrical balance requires roles other than dealing damage. There are VERY many ways to deal damage and many games follow rules for what a faction is generally good at. For example you'll have one team that is highly mobile, another team that is really tanky, and another that deals high DPS, so the mobile team can go and flank stuff easily, the tanky team can absorb a lot of fire, and the high DPS team can dish out a lot of punishment, in the end they all end up being about the same in effectiveness.

With all the weapon types in the game we could just have things like some mechs being great at precise damage, others great at high DPS, others good at high alpha but not very precise, others with loads of sustain, then have that for short, med, and long ranges. Then we also can add in durability and bonus mobility on various mechs to further the combinations even more.

That's still all one role. Different roles need to be able to do things the others cannot. Like a tank cannot be the healer and vice versa. But in MWO there is only dealing damage. So every mech has to be equally good at doing that, no matter they do it. Tankiness in MWO is even just another factor in dealing damage, meaning how long can you keep being able to deal damage without being dead from enemy fire.

So in the end it needs to be symetric. All mechs equally good at dealing damage. Otherwise, one is simply better than the other.

So in reality Quirks are there to create symmetry, to achieve this goal.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Savage Wolf, on 13 June 2018 - 12:17 PM, said:

That's still all one role. Different roles need to be able to do things the others cannot. Like a tank cannot be the healer and vice versa. But in MWO there is only dealing damage. So every mech has to be equally good at doing that, no matter they do it. Tankiness in MWO is even just another factor in dealing damage, meaning how long can you keep being able to deal damage without being dead from enemy fire.

So in the end it needs to be symetric. All mechs equally good at dealing damage. Otherwise, one is simply better than the other.

So in reality Quirks are there to create symmetry, to achieve this goal.

You're really missing the whole concept here. Damaging enemies isn't a role, its a goal, there are many roles that perform this job such as brawlers, hit and run, skirmishers, overwatch, support, flankers, harassers, etc. All the mechs can be equally good at killing but they kill in different ways, opening up a large variety of play styles.