13 replies to this topic

[MechTech Dragoon]

So, PTS 2.0 was great, 2.1 was a little too far in the higher heat cap, but thats my opinion, perhaps 44 would be a good number ;p.
But anyways, I had some brainstorming on the go for follow up balance decisions to help with this change, as well as a couple mechanic changes in some base things we take advantage of in mwo.


Heat Changes--------------------------------------------------------
So, the first, is some things with the heat bar, and overheat system itself. Set a MAX heat level, after overheat, approximately double whatever the maximum heat level is. (So if 2.0 goes through, max heat would be 40 before skills, and maximum heat after overheat would be 80, 2.1, 50 and 100, you get the drift.) and make it clear visually on the heat bar, where the overheat is, through a small yellow bar dashed into the side of the heat bar.

Secondly, restructure overheat damage. Cause every X number of points over your mechs maximum heat threshold to do X damage (always counted as a critical) to a random component every second, before dealing any damage to structure. (Currently, damage is dealt just to structure, as far as i am aware anyway). This will give pilots clear knowledge of how far they can go over their heat cap, what it will do to their mech, and how vulnerable their mech is to overheat damage. With this change, youll lose all your components, before your mech spontaneously combusts, instead of just randomly blowing up. You'll also know how much damage you are being dealt at any given time.
(Ammo carrying and gauss mechs being more vulnerable, due to ammo explosions, a decent tradeoff given energy based mechs are a little weaker in 2.0 and 2.1).

Thirdly, tying in to this change, as well as the max heat threshold change, change the override shutdown button from a toggle setting, to a skill based "OH ****" button.
How do we do this? Well, currently as you know, you press override, and if you would go over your 100% heat threshold you wont shut down, but you'll take damage. Simple, easy peasy.

But...what if, your shutdown override button could only be used say...every 20-30 seconds(with a visual indicator for its cooldown), and only lasted between 5 and 10? (with the above change, you know specifically how far over your heat cap you actually are.) This change, would require people to tactfully use their override, at the right moments as to not waste it, instead of just putting override on at the start of a game.

Weapon changes--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Alright, now lets look at some weapon changes of weapons which would be a problem
(one of which currently is anyway, both are in sollaris) if 2.0 or 2.1 when't through...

Clan and IS Gauss...Heavy Gauss, and LBX weapons.

Lets just start with all of the gauss on the table as a baseline...
We've got one of a few options to balancing them out with hotter weapons if either pts when't through (not suggesting all of them, its a one or the other type deal).

First, increase charge up times, simple enough, doesn't quite do it though as its still large amounts of pinpoint at virtually no heat cost.

Secondly, add more heat to gauss weapons, this could be done one of two ways. The first, is just to increase the amount of heat generated on shot. The second, which could couple with the increase charge up time option, is to cause gauss to generate heat every second while being charged. This would make more sense from a lore junky perspective, as the coils would in all reality generate heat load on the engine.

And now to the last, recoil effects have been floating around for heavy gauss and clan gauss, neither seem to actually do the trick, as they are easily worked around and the recoil doesn't really do much if you are firing both rifles at once. Recoil works in most fps games for rapid fire weapons, not so much here.
So, lets take a more classic shooter stance on these sniper rifle like weapons.
Reticule shake while charging a gauss rifle. Coils are charging, puts pressure on your mech, simple explanation enough. And its a function used with most long range rifles in shooters like Halo, CoD...i could be here forever listing them. So long as the reticule shake follows a generally set swerving path, highly skilled players will be able to land their shots, but it will be difficult from longer ranges, especially when taking fire. Reticule shake in random patterns wouldn't work here, as its not overcome-able by high-skill.

Just touching on heavy gauss by itself, limit firing to one at a time.


To touch on LBX, we either increase spread, or increase heat. I would rather an increase in spread personally, since low heat is supposed to be a strength of the lbx, and it wouldn't effect the weapon much in the ranges you should be at with it, but that's just me.

Baseline functionality changes---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Idea here came up just out of the blue, but ill throw it out there. The function enemy spotted.
I haven't seen it brought up, however, it generates a large issue for lights, mediums, and any hit and run or flanking mech. Now i'm not saying remove it, it should be there, what i am saying is tweak it.

Currently, enemy spotted tracks a target on the map a decent distance after using the callout, kind of weird having positional data on an enemies movement when they leave line of site huh?

So, lets tweak it! Instead of tracking the movements of an enemy, simply just have it ping on the map the exact last location where the enemy was. Same type of ping used for "Help!" But red instead ;p.
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Alright thats it! Thanks for reading guys, let me know what you think in the comments below.

[Y E O N N E]

Halo doesn't have any recoil for long-range, high-damage weapons at all and never has. Nor does CoD, which instead has movement penalties and the ability to hold your breath to temporarily steady the shot.

Unless you are going to provide a steadying mechanic, then the swaying will not work. It will either be weak enough that it doesn't matter or strong enough that it becomes too risky for the reward and almost nobody takes it instead of more lasers or conventional ACs. There really is no in-between, "just right" setting for this because it's less a function of player skill and more a function of the finite game mechanics. You can have godlike aim with it, but it will be faster to scan damage onto a target with any other weapon.

Also not going to support single HGauss unless it receives some compensatory buffs, to range perhaps.

LB-X OP and needs nerfs? Not even a little bit. First time in the history of the game where LB-X are sought rather than mocked, and not even all of them, and you still want to whack it?

Agree that the spotting mechanic is too powerful, especially in Solaris.

[justcallme A S H]

Spotting was removed from Solaris Yeonne

As for the OP, meh to it all. Do not want any of it.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 26 August 2018 - 02:45 PM.

[Navid A1]

Honestly I don't like any of the mentioned ideas.

Specifically the heat system, the notion that LBX needs nerfs and increased gauss charge time


I want PTS 2.1 to go live

Edited by Navid A1, 26 August 2018 - 02:49 PM.

[Rydiak Randborir]

Yea OP, that's gonna be a hard "No" from me.

[Shanrak]

I have to agree with the other posters, but I'll try to give some feedback as to why I disagree with your suggestions.

1. Heat, too complicated for the overheat mechanic, this game is hard enough to pick up for beginners as is. Frankly I like battletech's overheat mechanic better. Override is effectively on all the time, you take the usual structural damage while overheating, as your heat goes higher and higher you have a greater chance to force an automatic shutdown. Making people remember to press override at the beginning of every match is kind of pointless and eliminates one more thing someone has to remember.

2. I wish people would leave gauss alone. It already has enough draw backs, namely the explosiveness, high weight cost/slots, charge up, etc. It is, and always will be always supposed to be a high risk high reward skill based weapon.

3. LB10X is the only useful lbx gun right now, lb5x is useless and needs buffing, lb2 & 20 are very niche weapons and maybe needs buffing as well. Definitely not in need of any nerfs.

4. This is the only one I sort of agree on. Yes enemy spotted following the target for a few seconds makes no sense, changing it to make it something like their last spotted location with a lead/cone for the direction they were headed towards would make more sense.

[Cozened Indigo]

Yeah don't agree with these proposals either for the simple reason that I think we need to bring other weapons/mechs/styles up, rather than nerf others down. PTS changes are a great step un the right direction - buff slightly upwards to improve the dynamic nature of the game.

[MechTech Dragoon]

Thanks for the feedback folks
The reasoning for the lbx/gauss changes is only due to the pts, which during testing i found, and others found, that gauss/lbx spam would prove an issue. (More so with 2.0 than 2.1, I've still seen gauss concerns on 2.1 forum, but not as much LBX concerns.).

And allot of people complain about heavy gauss on a regular basis, specifically dual heavy gauss.

Overheat system sounds complicated, but it was meant to provide more clarity, not less.
Override was meant to add a skill cap to well, overriding.

I preferred 2.0 to 2.1 personally, but it seems there's allot of back and forth, we will probably end up with at-least a third pts yet.

[Y E O N N E]

Dual Heavy Gauss is a major issue in Faction Play game modes where Clans have no choice but to rush into CQC, but at the same time it's also the only thing the IS has that can compare to the decently sustainable 80-point alphas you can get out of Clan Assaults. It's a little bit apples and oranges, because the DHG builds will only do a max of ~65 damage at the ~450 m optimum range for the Clan 80-points and because DHG builds are excruciatingly slow, but on the net the performance potential is comparable despite the different niches.

As far as both Gauss and HGauss being an problem, the issue is that they aren't really impacted by the heat cap changes at all, and are actually buffed since they add so much damage for so little heat. But...whether or not that is an issue is a personal preference. If Gauss not generating enough heat for their damage is an issue, then solve it by increasing their heat. Easy, done. You could even use that as a useful differentiator between isGauss and cGauss, making the one cooler than the other on account of the 3 extra tons it costs.

[Shanrak]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 August 2018 - 04:33 PM, said:

As far as both Gauss and HGauss being an problem, the issue is that they aren't really impacted by the heat cap changes at all, and are actually buffed since they add so much damage for so little heat.

The increased dissipation, which also does not impact gauss weapons, was meant to offset the hard heat cap. So its already not benefiting in any way either, so what's the problem?

[MechTech Dragoon]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 August 2018 - 04:33 PM, said:

Dual Heavy Gauss is a major issue in Faction Play game modes where Clans have no choice but to rush into CQC, but at the
"snip, for smaller text walls lol"

I agree, its also a quickplay offender. And Is will have less of a problem in fp IF the changes on pts go through, this is all based around the Pts.

Gauss having more heat due to the pts changes was one of the solutions mentioned in the OP.

[A Headless Chicken]

I don't think you got the memo last time, so I'll repeat it here:

Stop adding mechanics to fix problems that you think exist but actually do not.

[Y E O N N E]

Shanrak, on 26 August 2018 - 04:48 PM, said:

The increased dissipation, which also does not impact gauss weapons, was meant to offset the hard heat cap. So its already not benefiting in any way either, so what's the problem?

The hard heat cap is meant to curb alpha size via heat; you can't curb damage that doesn't require heat to be generated.

XkrX Dragoon, on 26 August 2018 - 05:02 PM, said:

I agree, its also a quickplay offender. And Is will have less of a problem in fp IF the changes on pts go through, this is all based around the Pts.

Gauss having more heat due to the pts changes was one of the solutions mentioned in the OP.

This PTS will do nothing to curb the Clan advantage in trading, and very little to curb the IS advantage in brawling.

This is a problem.

[denAirwalkerrr]

Asking PGI to implement/change game mechanics in 2k18.