258 replies to this topic

[Navid A1]

Aaand, here are comparisons and damage output simulations.

Note: damage output simulation is done using continuous fire while avoiding overheating and Ghost heat. Please understand that you will not be doing 80 seconds of continuous fire in practice and the graphs are plotted up to 80 seconds for comparison only














Clan vs IS laser vomit comparison :

[Sir Immortal Shadow]

I'm expecting my Vindicator to take some hits, and I'm fine with that. Damn things a quirk beast. But then again I hope it's not too extreme because as a lower speed medium it kind of needs quirks to stay relevant.

Edited by Sir Immortal Shadow, 07 September 2018 - 09:01 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sir Immortal Shadow, on 07 September 2018 - 08:59 PM, said:

I'm expecting my Vindicator to take some hits, and I'm fine with that. Damn things a quirk beast. But then again I hope it's not too extreme because as a lower speed medium it kind of needs quirks to stay relevant.

****, I missed that part. Once again, nothing in the rest of the changes should change any of those balance issues since none of them fix some of the core discrepancies between IS and Clan tech (engines and heat sinks) and there are few quirked mechs that actually even need "tightening." I just......can't even

[Navid A1]

Quote

• Heatsinks:

• Heat Capacity reduced to 0.85 (from 0.13)

• Heat Capacity reduced to 0.85 (from 1.3)

FTFY

Edited by Navid A1, 07 September 2018 - 09:42 PM.

[Navid A1]

Shadowomega1, on 07 September 2018 - 07:42 PM, said:

Just going to copy over what I posted on the reddit thread.

Wow, just wow They didn't learn, they nearly had it right with 2.0 and those that can't manage their mechs heat complained and we got 2.1.

Wrong.

PGI nearly destroyed MWO in PTS 2.0, because of only 4 mechs.

People who complained saved it and we got PTS 2.1

[justcallme A S H]

Thanks for the numbers Navid. Highlights the swing and a miss that will be the next batch with heat changes.

How we have arrived from PTS 2.1 to this is I'm not entirely sure. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a logical standpoint..



Also I hope the PTS mobilty that was received well, cause it was great, finishes the job and huts all the mechs that were overlooked in the PTS. I say this as while the PTS mobility was good. A number of mechs that need buffs didn't get any... This is still requiring more work.

[Chris Lowrey]

Sereglach, on 07 September 2018 - 06:22 PM, said:

EDIT: P.S. "Role of Heat Within MWO" . . . I believe you mean vulnerable and not venerable. Mechs with high heat are vulnerable: i.e. open to exploitation and/or punishment, not venerable: i.e. wise sages, likely of advanced age, of great respect and moral character. Emphasis added to the mistakes:

'Doh! This is sometimes why I hate drafting huge wall of text announcements at the end of the work week. You always miss something trying to get everything prepped and ready for released. That one slipped by a number of us. Have corrected.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 07 September 2018 - 06:27 PM, said:

I don't understand this move.....no one asked for more dissipation but higher capacity from the last round of PTS and given how powerful dakka boats are in PUG queue, this makes them that much better (and they are already better than laser vomit for stomping PUG queue).

I want to touch on this a bit before I check out for the weekend. Ultimately, we can't rest on our laurels even if a change is well liked. For something as all-encompassing as the heatsink system, we cannot restrict our tuning of a global system just to curtail the use of certain weapons. What we where finding was that while it did hit laser weapons in a way that was acceptable, outside of lasers, and especially around "spike heat" weapons like PPC's and AC 20's still where not getting the threshold values that they needed to play into their role, even when multiple heatsinks on a 'Mech was taken in testing. This left these weapons in a precarious position of either having to settle with less weapons and more heatsinks, or really limit their exposure to only one or two shots before they where instantly heat capped, which was not playing out the way we where hoping.

Basically, remove lasers from the equation and examine the heat system and how it operates with every other weapon in the game. While there was defiantly value to be found in the additional DPS from higher, more streamlined dissipation, we where not getting the numbers we wanted out of the initial thresholds despite additional heatsink investment. When a system is as central to the core game experience as heat, we cannot end up focusing on just the narrow things we wanted to hit, but find a solution that worked across the greater weapon lineup as a whole.

In response to the Dakka comments. We recognize Dakka is strong and popular, but where we come in is asking is it simply too strong of an option at the baseline level? Or are the specific Dakka mechs simply quirked in a way that these changes pushes them over the edge? From what we have seen, while Dakka ballistics is popular, they tend to be most popular on 'Mechs that are specifically quirked to support it, sometimes substantially quirked. And not so much on 'Mechs with few if any quirks to support the playstyle. To this end, the heat system needs to support these kinds of playstyles as a viable base, without the presence of quirks, and quirks should only be there to provide additional flavor or make of for some kind of 'Mech deficiency. They should not be a barrier to entry to enjoy the playstyle. We believe that this tuning supports dakka ballistics better at a baseline level even with the absence of quirks. If it ends up swinging the dial too far to where we would have to examine the current quirk assignments we will. (Although we will not be touching anything in this regard for release unless there is a strong indication that we should.) But the aim is and has always been what works best at a baseline level.

In both cases no matter what we do, with as big of a core change as this will be, there will always be things that swing too far in one direction or another. These changes where specifically targeted to support the widest amount of options from the current weapons roster,and not focus solely on any specific load-out. Global systems shared by all the weapons should not be used to target individual weapon styles or player behaviors. As that is a quick way to get unintended results in areas you where not looking at. We aimed to support the widest amount of options available through the changes to the heat system, if there are any individual outliers that appear due to this tuning, we will be sure to address them directly, and not attempt to work around them through other systems shared by nearly every system within the game.

[Chris Lowrey]

Vxheous, on 07 September 2018 - 06:26 PM, said:

Would you be able to add heat cap as a stat that shows for your mech, so we don't have to manually do the math?

I'll be sure to ask come Monday.

[Rydiak Randborir]

Quote

What we where finding was that while it did hit laser weapons in a way that was acceptable, outside of lasers, and especially around "spike heat" weapons like PPC's and AC 20's still where not getting the threshold values that they needed to play into their role, even when multiple heatsinks on a 'Mech was taken in testing.

So then lower the heat of AC20s and PPCs......

And your observations are completely contrary to everything I saw and experienced on PTS in regards to PPC builds. Nearly each game I was in had a quad PPC Awesome that did very well, and when I was playing a quad ERPPC Warhawk I thought it felt fantastic due to the higher heat-neutral DPS.

Quote

Overall, PTS 2.1 was hailed as game ready by a large amount of player feedback

And then you went and ignored virtually all the feedback and did what you wanted to anyways. Check my Hellbringer example and Deathstrike example on the first page. PTS2.1 sufficiently nerfed it, while you could easily make the argument that the October patch buffs it compared to live!

At this point I'm not sure who you're marketing the October Patch to. It certainly isn't the people who did all the mathwork to prove to others on the PTS forum that PTS2.1 was a great build, and it certainly isn't the droves of players who wanted a limit to clan laser vomit.

Edited by Rydiak, 07 September 2018 - 11:01 PM.

[Navid A1]

Chris.

I have some questions and I'm asking them in behalf of hundreds of MWO players (no exaggeration)

• What have you got against small pulse lasers (both clan and IS). Why are they removed from the game?

• Why a 5 damage c-spl was never tried?

• and why IS-SPL was nerf'd from its previously mediocre 4 damage?

Edited by Navid A1, 08 September 2018 - 12:07 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Chris Lowrey, on 07 September 2018 - 10:05 PM, said:

I want to touch on this a bit before I check out for the weekend. Ultimately, we can't rest on our laurels even if a change is well liked. For something as all-encompassing as the heatsink system, we cannot restrict our tuning of a global system just to curtail the use of certain weapons. What we where finding was that while it did hit laser weapons in a way that was acceptable, outside of lasers, and especially around "spike heat" weapons like PPC's and AC 20's still where not getting the threshold values that they needed to play into their role, even when multiple heatsinks on a 'Mech was taken in testing. This left these weapons in a precarious position of either having to settle with less weapons and more heatsinks, or really limit their exposure to only one or two shots before they where instantly heat capped, which was not playing out the way we where hoping.

Basically, remove lasers from the equation and examine the heat system and how it operates with every other weapon in the game. While there was defiantly value to be found in the additional DPS from higher, more streamlined dissipation, we where not getting the numbers we wanted out of the initial thresholds despite additional heatsink investment. When a system is as central to the core game experience as heat, we cannot end up focusing on just the narrow things we wanted to hit, but find a solution that worked across the greater weapon lineup as a whole.

So there is 2 solutions to that:

• Introduce heat spread like existed in MW4, such that the heat generated by a weapon was not all spike heat. Some weapons in MW4 only generated half their actual heat instantly at firing, and would generate the rest piecemeal over a given period of time (rarely longer than cooldown, if at all).
  
• Reduce the heat on those weapons since neither ERPPC is really problematic these days, especially after the Warhawk was over-nerfed.

That said, it still doesn't explain why we need even more dissipation than existed in PTS2.1 which are outrageous. A dissipation rate change ups the arms race for all mechs. It doesn't just help laser boats, it helps sustained DPS builds as well making it just increase the pace of firepower being traded which seems absurd when combined with a reduction of IS structure quirks, especially given how bad many IS builds still are.

Chris Lowrey, on 07 September 2018 - 10:05 PM, said:

Or are the specific Dakka mechs simply quirked in a way that these changes pushes them over the edge? From what we have seen, while Dakka ballistics is popular, they tend to be most popular on 'Mechs that are specifically quirked to support it, sometimes substantially quirked.

What? The top dakka mech (MCII- currently has zero quirks, and probably the 2 mechs behind it again, have zero quirks (DWF, KDK-3). The Dragon is probably the most quirked mech for dakka currently. The Annihilator has quirks but those aren't really specific to dakka and to be fair, those make up for the fact it has a horrible profile and is IS. The HBK-IIC with 4 UAC2s has always been a solid performer as well, with zero quirks.
The main dakka mech that ever had significant quirks that made it what it was was the MX-90 back when the penta-AC5 build got something like 25% velocity/range (the old DGN-1N was a bit more gimmicky during that time). Outside of that, mechs that have been top dakka builds have rarely had significant quirks.

Chris Lowrey, on 07 September 2018 - 10:05 PM, said:

To this end, the heat system needs to support these kinds of playstyles as a viable base, without the presence of quirks, and quirks should only be there to provide additional flavor or make of for some kind of 'Mech deficiency.

If a specific weapon type is not doing good, changing a global system to accommodate if you don't know why it isn't doing well makes zero sense, hell, even if you know why, it doesn't make sense.

Chris Lowrey, on 07 September 2018 - 10:05 PM, said:

In both cases no matter what we do, with as big of a core change as this will be, there will always be things that swing too far in one direction or another. These changes where specifically targeted to support the widest amount of options from the current weapons roster,and not focus solely on any specific load-out. Global systems shared by all the weapons should not be used to target individual weapon styles or player behaviors.

The bolded line right here I find at odds with the ENTIRE PURPOSE of the PTS in the first place. So then what is the end result of the PTS because it still seems to be about curbing laser alphas (but doing it in a minor way) but also has a SIGNIFICANT unintended consequence of increasing the firepower arms race by giving significant buffs to dissipation rates of the heavier mechs. Ironically that's what lights really need since they tend to take forever to actually cool down but instead all this change does is give them a very minor buff of heat capacity. It only extends the gap in firepower between lights (which are generally strapped to bother with extra heat sinks) and heavier mechs.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 07 September 2018 - 11:05 PM.

[Horseman]

Vxheous, on 07 September 2018 - 06:26 PM, said:

Would you be able to add heat cap as a stat that shows for your mech, so we don't have to manually do the math?

Chris Lowrey, on 07 September 2018 - 10:12 PM, said:

I'll be sure to ask come Monday.

A thousand times this. Please show us the heat dissipation and heat capacity in the mechlab (both including the Skill Tree / quirk effects), perhaps as a tooltip for the heat management value.

Edited by Horseman, 07 September 2018 - 11:05 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

Rydiak, on 07 September 2018 - 10:13 PM, said:

So then lower the heat of AC20s and PPCs......

And your observations are completely contrary to everything I saw and experienced on PTS in regards to PPC builds. Nearly each game I was in had a quad PPC Awesome that did very well, and when I was playing a quad ERPPC Warhawk I thought it felt fantastic due to the higher heat-neutral DPS.

Yeah, the only consistent critique of 2.1 that I recall was that "low heat" IS mechs that lack space and weight for more than 10 DHS were hit a bit harder than expected. But that required a slight change to weapon heat or a tiny buff to the IS DHS dissipation rate (which is fine given that it is 50% larger).

This "final" product is ********.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 07 September 2018 - 11:17 PM.

[ForceUser]

Navid A1, on 07 September 2018 - 08:47 PM, said:

--graphs--

Please excuse the snipping but I just wanted to mention that these graphs look eerily similar to graphs I've seen people use when comparing weapons in The Division (and other games I'm sure)

The observation I want to make regarding them is that the weapons in The Division that was considered the strongest for PvP were the ones that had higher bursts at the start of the graphs despite trailing off at the later parts of the graph.

Basically for a lot of those graphs the Live line, while trailing off the longer it went on, tended to be higher than the proposed changes lines at the start. From what I know of why this was advantageous in The Division, that would translate to similar advantages in MWO (aka, the enemy robbit you're shooting at dies before you) in a 1v1 situation.

On the other hand, when it came to PVE content, the weapons with higher values towards the end of the graph performed better since it was all about the ability to deal with multiple enemies.

Basically what I interpret from your graphs is that the changes will slightly nerf burst while buffing and encouraging bigger brawls due to higher sustains.

Just though that this POV would be interesting.

Edited by ForceUser, 07 September 2018 - 11:28 PM.

[HenktheTank]

Why exactly are the Clan Medium Pulse and the Er medium laser getting nerfed without a bufff to compensate?

[Stitchedup]

what i love about this game apart from playing it, is the sheer amount of work people put in to the maths of it, the graphs, the builds, DPS vs alphas. Long live MWO

Edited by Stitchedup, 07 September 2018 - 11:30 PM.

[Marmon Rzohr]

I find these changes are a miss. A BIG MISS.

The PTS 2.1 worked so well because the heat cap was so firmly fixed. Allowing builds to increase the the heat cap to ~60 by mounting DHS while at the same time giving DHS a very large buff to dissipation rate ( 33% !!) results in overall better performance of laser vomit builds - especially Clan ones which get the best of both the extra dissipation and the increased heat cap due to being able to mount significantly more DHS.

Please revert the changes to the ones implemented on PTS 2.1 and consider either buffing the IS heat cap or DHS dissipation rates or both. The PTS changes were very well done. This flat out spoils them.


Also why not roll out all of the agility buffs from the PTS ? They hardly made any mechs OP or massively better. And these changes are badly needed. There is no reason to drag them out for months ! If any mechs turn out to be too good it will show though gameplay very quickly - but I very much doubt that any mech will turn out that way.


Finally the HLL needs buffs to secondary stats to compensate for the nerf in damage.

Appogee, on 07 September 2018 - 06:18 PM, said:

Inb4 Clanner QQ.

Why ? This is literally a buff.

[JENNER llC]

Mr Lowrey.

Please consider with the quirk revisions giving the Jenners (IS & Clan) armor quirks for their arms.

Yes the armor point readjustment did help increase survivability slightly for the CT & ST but now unfortunately it is just too easy to become disarmed with everything else intact, particularly with the JennerIICs considerably larger arm hitboxes.

Its not bad at all on the Stalkers or even Cicada etc but really noticeable on the Jenners to the point of being detrimental.

example: very often you run in to the strange situation of being intact with half or no weapons simply from random spread fire via enemy weapons because the armor is so low at max, instead of people actually targeting the arms

[Dago Red]

Well this is massively disappointing on basically every level.


Heat changes:
You did nothing to even out the Clan vs I.S. difference in ability to boat DHS which just makes Clan mechs capable of even higher DPS on top of their higher base alpha's and range.

And according to the people who've done the math in the chase for not over nerfing laser and gauss vomit you're just giving it a DPS buff while barely perceptibly effecting it's burst potential.

And encouraging mediums to go even slower so they can be obliterated more easily by larger mechs is just bizarre. You say it's to avoid confusion on mechanics but then you change it in a way that pushes peopel who don't know better towards an even bigger trap.

Unless you have one hell of a heatsink soft cap planned this does nothing to prevent mechs who have the weight to boat extra DHS from leaving those who don't in the dust.

PTS 2.0 with heat decreases on a few targeted weapons and a good relook over of flamers would have been good. PTS 2.1 with the same caveats would have been acceptable. What you're pushing here actively make things worse.

Weapons:
Same as always nerfs that effect mechs who can't the use the heavier stacked loadouts while only shaving a few points of damage off the super alpha builds. Hurts mediums and lights which are rarely complained about firepower wise while the big guys will just keep doing what they do.

It's a pretty light nerf so I can't get too upset about it but eyes are being rolled.

Mobility:

I tend to agree that the biggest assaults and heavies don't need to go back to being ballerina's but 95+ tonners move like their foot is in a bear trap and maybe a middle ground could be found there.

Though name checking the engine desync and then looking at the heat changes I have to ask why are you guys consistently and slowly try to push ever advantage for people who choose to sacrifice firepower for engine size out into the cold?


Normally I don't wade into these conversations but for once I foolishly got my hopes up over a series of PTS that looked legitimately promising and like a huge change to the games overall paradigm and every bit of good it could have done has been wasted even after overwhelming positive feedback.

At this point you might as well just link Clan large and mediums lasers into the same ghost heat group and call it a day instead of screwing with everything.

[denAirwalkerrr]

Dago Red, on 08 September 2018 - 12:47 AM, said:

Heat changes:
You did nothing to even out the Clan vs I.S. difference in ability to boat DHS which just makes Clan mechs capable of even higher DPS on top of their higher base alpha's and range.

And according to the people who've done the math in the chase for not over nerfing laser and gauss vomit you're just giving it a DPS buff while barely perceptibly effecting it's burst potential.

Please consider recalibrating your analising functions and look at these graphs again:

Dago Red, on 08 September 2018 - 12:47 AM, said:

Weapons:
Same as always nerfs that effect mechs who can't the use the heavier stacked loadouts while only shaving a few points of damage off the super alpha builds. Hurts mediums and lights which are rarely complained about firepower wise while the big guys will just keep doing what they do.

It's a pretty light nerf so I can't get too upset about it but eyes are being rolled.

Edited by denAirwalkerrr, 08 September 2018 - 01:33 AM.