46 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

So I know the point of ghost heat originally, meant to stop alphas higher than 30 damage like the dreaded joke build of the 6 PPC and more realistic 4 PPC Stalkers of yore, but has grown into something more. So I'm just curious what everyone thinks ghost heat is meant to do. I'm just curious what ghost heat means to those still lurking in the brown sea.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 23 October 2023 - 10:57 AM.

[pbiggz]

There was a moral panic about hex ppc stalkers. Paul Inouye, whose only two ways of balancing are nerfing whatever kills him and nerfing whatever people were whining about, implemented ghost heat to make hex PPC stalkers verboten, even though the quad ppc stalker was clearly the actual viable build.

Its a cautionary tale in why hard data is needed to balance this game, not the opinions of "many" people who post. It is also one of many examples of paul's penchant for half-baked, poorly thought out, knee jerk reaction solutions to balance, which are antithetical to a profession that is meant to be thought out, measured, and analytical.

[ThreeStooges]

Ghost heat is worth nothing. The power creep allowed now just makes me go meh whenever I see some thing stupid such as the cptl-bb mrm warning about firing more than one mrm when I can mount 2-4 of them. you just max internals,over heat damage and cool shots. It pretty much nulifies ghost heat.

[Bud Crue]

To me, ghost heat has always been about making high alpha laser vomit and single weapon spam builds come with a steep, if not insurmountable, cost. Later it was a handy way to kill the dreaded ERPPC/Gauss jump snipers. Now? It seems like all it really does is give HSL quirks a reason to exist, and by extension, a tool to allow the cauldron to give some mechs a bit of niche character where applied. Ironically, it also keeps some old niche builds fairly sub-optimal/weak (e.g., 7-10 MPL (or even ML or ERML) spam builds that a plethora of heavies might be capable of running but really shouldn't because they lack the appropriate HSL quirk that mechs like the T-bolt 5SS or Mjolnir enjoy; thus pushing them into more ubiquitous laser vomit builds).

[Heavy Money]

Stopping even bigger alphas than we already have. Plenty of things are still restricted by ghost heat.

[pbiggz]

Bud Crue, on 23 October 2023 - 01:33 PM, said:

To me, ghost heat has always been about making high alpha laser vomit and single weapon spam builds come with a steep, if not insurmountable, cost. Later it was a handy way to kill the dreaded ERPPC/Gauss jump snipers. Now? It seems like all it really does is give HSL quirks a reason to exist, and by extension, a tool to allow the cauldron to give some mechs a bit of niche character where applied. Ironically, it also keeps some old niche builds fairly sub-optimal/weak (e.g., 7-10 MPL (or even ML or ERML) spam builds that a plethora of heavies might be capable of running but really shouldn't because they lack the appropriate HSL quirk that mechs like the T-bolt 5SS or Mjolnir enjoy; thus pushing them into more ubiquitous laser vomit builds).

Ghost heat didnt kill jump snipers. Paul nerfing jumpjets into hoverjets, making you get stuck on tiny pebbles, and adding the charge to gauss killed jump snipers.

You are mixing up your poorly thought out game-ruining nerfs

Heavy Money, on 23 October 2023 - 02:24 PM, said:

Stopping even bigger alphas than we already have. Plenty of things are still restricted by ghost heat.

Its used as a crutch now, where things like actual weapon balance and perhaps hardpoint deflation would have been the real solutions.

[The6thMessenger]

Prevents large Alpha by the looks of it, but it's realistically just to space out shots 0.5s in between. I think Ghost-Heat is good only in PPFLD applications.

Unfortunately, as I talked to the Cauldron discord, there's like an air of skill around it that they want to keep it. Such as say the HAG-PPC mix, while it's not synced like Gauss-PPC that made it cancerous, an application of GH that I agree on, HAGs are naturally spread to which I fail to see the point of PPC being linked to it, as it only really prevents one application of HAG-PPC and that is convergence at the start of the volley, but not in the middle or end of it.

pbiggz, on 23 October 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

Its used as a crutch now, where things like actual weapon balance and perhaps hardpoint deflation would have been the real solutions.

True. And with the introduction of Legendaries and new variants, it's like the Cauldron (or somebody is) is losing restraint.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 23 October 2023 - 03:56 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 03:57 PM, said:

To which I'd ask what skill?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IDK, ask them. Seems like they operate more on authority there, and by consensus second.

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 03:57 PM, said:

they used to eat the GH from 4 CAC10s too.

... what ghost heat?

IIRC that was like 0.96 heat with the multiplier so low. It technically hits GH, but it's just as token as the HAG spread in the incoming patch.

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 03:57 PM, said:

That is hands down the most idiotic thing I've heard come from the Cauldron. They really have no ******* idea what the lower tiers look like, do they? I ******* FIGURED OUT THAT 3 CERLL IS A NOTHING BURGER AND I'M NOT EVEN A GOOD PLAYER. WHAT ******* SKILL, CAULDRON? SKILL IS NOT A PART OF THIS EQUATION.

I don't want to name people from the start, but IIRC it's just Brauer, so cool your jets bro. That is what I got when I argued for delinking PPCs with HAGs and link them with ERMLs instead -- and got laughed out of the room.

Also for the lower tier -- they don't even care about QP. Pointed out that LRMs are hard to use in QP, and they were like "it's balanced in comp", and who am I to argue with that? No ****.

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 03:57 PM, said:

With all due respect "it could be worse" ignores "it could be BETTER".

Eh well, the "better" part, with what I have seen, is largely power-creep as the Cauldron seems to try to make everything interesting -- and was rightfully rolling back.

Not the hardpoint inflation tho, the Legendaries are getting crazy.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 23 October 2023 - 06:15 PM.

[Heavy Money]

pbiggz, on 23 October 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

Its used as a crutch now, where things like actual weapon balance and perhaps hardpoint deflation would have been the real solutions.

You're not wrong, but there also isn't an easy solution. There has to be some sort of mechanic to stop people from boating tons of the same weapons. In MW5 we have hardpoint sizes, but that still doesn't always stop it. Its easy to ballpark better solutions, but the devil is in the details (and of course, the current situation is stable even if not ideal. So nobody will risk a huge change.)

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 03:57 PM, said:

With all due respect "it could be worse" ignores "it could be BETTER".

Haha you're not wrong either! But also, can you a name a weapon or weapon combo that could have the GH limit changed or removed without it just contributing to higher alphas? I can't In theory I'd like to see ghost heat gotten rid of and replaced with a better system, but there's just no way to do it incrementally, and the game can't really do it as a huge change all at once.

And on the subject of delinking cERPPCs and HAGs, iirc the larger issue that HAGs are part of the Gauss group, and they can't create a new weapon group at all (maybe FrostByte can now, not sure.) And if they could, how does the game benefit from HAGs+cERPPCs getting improved? Its already strong. Do we need more clan long range dominance?

The thing I really want to see get stronger is mixed loadouts. There's so many indirect penalties to playing mixes of weapons, such as desynced velos, lockons, etc. But I don't see how that could be improved either without some other funky system like buffing you the more different weapon types you have.

Edited by Heavy Money, 23 October 2023 - 06:45 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Heavy Money, on 23 October 2023 - 06:13 PM, said:

And on the subject of delinking cERPPCs and HAGs, iirc the larger issue that HAGs are part of the Gauss group, and they can't create a new weapon group at all (maybe FrostByte can now, not sure.)

Well, technically it could be just linked with CERML instead, since it is the common mix with HAGs. They said that HAGs are optimal at CERML range, funnily enough they are near-zeroing out the spread so it'll be pushed out of that CERML range.

Heavy Money, on 23 October 2023 - 06:13 PM, said:

And if they could, how does the game benefit from HAGs+cERPPCs getting improved? Its already strong. Do we need more clan long range dominance?

A fair point, but it ain't Goose-PPC that which we all dreaded. It is also something that is kind of already possible given the enough time to space out the shot that is still within the HAG stream. It only really prevents one application, and that is CERPPC at the start of the volley.

[Heavy Money]

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 06:38 PM, said:

I actually don't understand why AC20s have a HSL of 2 at this point. Especially CAC20s.

Oh, that's a good one. I forgot about that since I forgot AC20's exist

I think for IS AC20's, its to reduce the efficiency of big PPFLD brawl (except on the KGC, which still isn't good even with it.) I don't think it'd matter much if they got rid of that one though. But also AC20's just need to be more appealing in general. It annoys me that Snubs and SRMs are both in a good place, but the AC20 is mostly a secondary weapon to combo with snubs and struggles to be the primary weapon it should be.

[The6thMessenger]

the check engine light, on 23 October 2023 - 06:38 PM, said:

I actually don't understand why AC20s have a HSL of 2 at this point. Especially CAC20s.

Doing 40 PPFLD is a scary prospect, and eating excess heat for it is kinda fair. That being said, AC20 pretty much as itself is kinda meh, and it takes a lot of quirks such as say the ol-reliable 4G to make it an acceptable primary. But the issue here is that, it is liable to be a powerful build as secondary, say snppc + AC20, in that case it makes much more sense to buff builds that specifically gravitates to single AC20 without SNPPC instead of inavertently buffing every SNPPC-AC20 builds.

As for the CAC20, I think the GH is warranted to the few that could boat 3 to 4 at them. But I'd rather a more lenient heat mutliplier, but then the CUAC10s actually, and I **** you the **** out not, syncs rather well -- both 3 projectile count, both at 1100 projectile speed.

[Bud Crue]

pbiggz, on 23 October 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

Ghost heat didnt kill jump snipers. Paul nerfing jumpjets into hoverjets, making you get stuck on tiny pebbles, and adding the charge to gauss killed jump snipers.

You are mixing up your poorly thought out game-ruining nerfs

No, I get that original jump sniping "plauge" was killed and how, I was explicitly referring to the era of the Jump sniping NightGyrs and their ilk running Gauss/ERPPC that everyone and their mother was whinging about late 2016 early 2017, which they addressed by adding Gauss to the PPC HSL family.

[RickySpanish]

Seriously? Is this a serious post, or an attempt to fit in with the usual level of discourse here? Remember when Binary Lasers had the wrong ghost heat limit? Everyone lost their minds. I'd say ghost heat still plays an important role in keeping alphas in check.

[MrTBSC]

hmmm let´s see Dual ER PPC+ Dual Gauss 50 dmg PPFLD, deleting components from the edge of the map?


you can still do 60+ dmg alpha combos with IS but such alphas have severe downsides dual MRM 30 + any energy and/or ballistic addition ... MRM have a hard limited range and immidiate spread

unfortunately for some reason PGI/Cauldron seems to be ok to one more time decrease HAG spread that already is more accurate and has more range than MRMs (atleast HAG 30 gets an heat increase) .. so you can do 80+ dmg long range alphas with clan ER larges or 100+ mid range alphas with Heavy Large Lasers ...
for IS to be able to be anywhere close to that you´d need MRMs and binary cannons and still are hard limited on the MRMs

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RickySpanish, on 24 October 2023 - 06:07 AM, said:

Seriously? Is this a serious post, or an attempt to fit in with the usual level of discourse here? Remember when Binary Lasers had the wrong ghost heat limit? Everyone lost their minds. I'd say ghost heat still plays an important role in keeping alphas in check.

Yes, this is a serious post. I'm just curious what everyone thinks the point is because IMO it means things to different people but is also used for different things.

For example RACs and other rapid fire weapons (x-pulse) have ghost heat, and unlike burst oriented weapons they don't have a 0.5s gap they can use.

Then there is the comparison issue, 6 cERML+2 cHLL/cLPL is allowed, but 3 cHLL or 3 cLPL aren't allowed by themselves? I know why, the system is just goofy because it is purely based on weapon counts rather than each one contributing a certain amount to that limit (if you allowed 3 cHLL, then the builds would just move to 3 cHLL + 6 cERML or something silly like that). You have some weapons that have an ghost heat that just hits incredibly hard once you pass the limit while some that have a more gradual ghost heat (which is really what everything should have, cUAC10s I'm looking at you). Then you have weapons that are explicitly designed to get around it because by themselves they are subpar which is just goofy IMO. LBX comes to mind here (which back in MW4 was one of the best brawling weapons even for mediums despite its weight).

TBH, I still think just adding heat to Gauss would've helped deal with Gauss/Vomit and Gauss/ERPPC builds from way back when i played comp without even needing to add ghost heat as Gauss has been central to several problematic builds over the years and often it just comes down to it having pretty much zero heat providing free DPS on top of mixing well with builds that deal a lot of upfront damage for cheap investment (aka energy weapons).

The clans dropping and power creeping the game significantly really didn't help the game much.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 24 October 2023 - 10:10 AM.

[Curccu]

Kinda pointless because some combos can avoid or trigger just slight ghostheat and do insane alphas, lets try one season without All alphas would get bigger not just selected assault/heavy builds.

Why is THIS OK to alpha but these are not:
tns-4p Oh scary 40 dmg alpha, hot as f even without ghost heat.
crd-6t Even without ghost heat this loses on DPS and sustained dps to stone rhino BADLY
nva-prime Stock build, shoot it and burn to cinder...
ghr-5n alpha this, burn... oh scary bit under 40 alpha

Edited by Curccu, 24 October 2023 - 10:45 AM.

[LordNothing]

to confuse new players and to give experienced players an advantage over them of course.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 24 October 2023 - 10:56 AM, said:

to confuse new players and to give experienced players an advantage over them of course.

I won't say that was the intent, but a result of just a game that hides an pretty important mechanic of the game. There is no visual/audio cue when you trigger ghost heat or when you are safe to fire without triggering it either. I mean you have to look to a 3rd party site just to see the groups and penalties and even then, it's not obvious when you mix different weapons of the same group what happens exactly or what the penalties are or how HSL quirks impact the penalties if you push past it.

Ghost heat has been used as a soft limit rather than say Gauss charge-up limits which are a hard limit, though some of the heat penalties might as well be hard limits.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 24 October 2023 - 11:58 AM.

[w0qj]

The Awesome was the first mech to fire three (3) ERPPC.
I remember that I was in awe (pun intended!) beholding the Awesome mech in the very early days of HPG!

Clan UAC10 was HSL limited from firing 4x UAC10 on KDK-3 which was deemed OP.
KDK-3 itself was also deemed OP; the infamous engine desync was designed with KDK-3 in mind.

The point is, if there are no HSL limits, most folks would just load up on 100% ballistic weapons.
Enemy would die before their laser vomit reaches its heat threshold limit.

Abolishing HSL limits would kill playstyle variety, no?

Edited by w0qj, 24 October 2023 - 02:26 PM.