Navid A1, on 20 November 2023 - 02:28 PM, said:
Regarding Time to kill, yes. It's been an ongoing discussion for a few months, and you'll begin to see changes trickling in with some weapon and equipment changes that try to make high alphas more punishing.
Frost_Byte, on 20 November 2023 - 04:08 PM, said:
Starting in December we plan on slowing time to kill. The first is probably a clan double heatsink nerf. But most of cauldron is aware of time to kill quickening to the point of becoming a problem. We just wanted to avoid radical changes to the meta until Champion Series is over.
Hello there, '
Navid A1' & '
Frost_Byte'... I may be using a computer (
which handles MWO at the moment thankfully, even with minor difficulties) that simply is unable to handle Discord at all. But it does happen that I hold within my mind an alternate solution for Overall Time-To-Kill & Mech Survivability to propose which involves Buffs being applied upon things, instead of those Nerfs which make people justifiably angry. It's only drawback is that the entire set from "Parts 1, 2, & 3" ultimately requires being implemented together, instead of piece by piece... But you can trial the whole "Part 1" below to see some of the effects. Or heck, you could start with "Parts 2 & 3" to throw a swift boost for those I.S. folks in there before you do the other. I know, you're probably wondering how I could see this, even though I'm only a single person. I suppose that boiling it down to "attracting more people with honey, as opposed to what you get with vinegar" in the most simplistic sense is how it came to manifest. Just have a look below, and I think you'll find something with reasoning included that is very much worth implementing, even if it requires some effort to do such.
Part 1 — Increase literally ALL of the Mech's amounts for Baseline Structure & Armor 
Yes, really... BOOST Mech Baseline Structure & Armor to at least 3x TT amounts... but likely 4x will really be necessary to properly overcome this hill. Obviously, calculations for Standard/Light-Ferro/Full-Ferro/Stealth Armors will have to be given downward re-curves to maintain proper Tonnage values per each Armor Type & Amount too.
The long and short, one of the reasons Time-To-Kill has become so insanely short is because of not having enough Overall Mech Health when someone finds something far stronger metaphorically breathing down their throat. While there are probably various Nerfs which could be applied to all kinds of other stuff, the problem then becomes that things like Player Skill and Teamwork simply can not be nerfed down. That ugly thing we know of as a MatchMaker is taking the breaks off constantly, and making stomps out of too many matches. So you're literally ALWAYS going to have situations where someone pokes their head around a corner and suddenly finds 4+ Enemy Mechs gunning them down. Unfortunately, that means the ONLY good way to give an unlucky player some chance for surviving is making it so they have enough Overall Mech Health for pulling back out before they're dead.
Yes, I am very much aware this would take considerable work to implement "Part 1" straight off the bat. You'll have to go through the entire listing of Mechs and bump all their limits up, plus I shall reiterate that you have to rework the Tonnage Math downward for Armor in all its' forms, based on where you push the new Baselines up to. It should just be a matter of decreasing how much Tonnage that every point of Armor is worth in order to increase Mech Health there. (
Cost for each Armor bit will likely need to be turned down as well, perhaps? I finally just got another look at the MWO Full Equipment JSON, and I'm very glad the basic part of these adjustments should not require an engineer to complete, with every bit of this being handled via easily-edited files in the game data structure. It would have sucked if all the Math were hard-coded into the executable.) But, it gives considerable room to leave various Weaponry & Equipment items capable, and bring other stuff up that is currently not. Things like Heavy & Assault Mechs will end up finally feeling durable, Mediums will feel less hollow, and the various Lights will not be left in a state where some minor Balance-related tweaking afterward could totally send them to either uselessness or overpowering.
Part 2 — Give a nice Buff to the I.S. DHS... Never do the Nerf against the Clan DHS... 
Again, Yes, really... I.S. DHS should be Buffed to a Cooling Rate of 0.25/sec (
up from 0.22/sec) along with Heat Capacity increased to 0.65/DHS (
up from 0.5/DHS) as well.
I'm sure this part simply sounds too radical... And yet, the I.S. DHS is 50% larger in terms of Critical Slots taken up within an I.S. Mech's space, which royally limits how many I.S. DHS that people can fit within their I.S. Mechs at any given time. I was literally left with the question of why people had not thought of Boosting I.S. DHS back into parity instead. A kind boost like this will help bring the I.S. DHS into reasonable parity with the Clan DHS during battles. And yes, my mind is completely aware of how this may help Time-To-Kill in speeding up, but implementing the above "Part 1" along with this will more than take care of that issue. Players should not be left with Mechs which end up unusable too much of the time, and doing a Nerf on the Clan DHS would unfortunately cause exactly that problem against too many Clan Mechs and the designs equipped on them. If you want to avoid making people angry, and would like to see enjoyment all around, then the only good direction is a Buff to what this item is capable of while avoiding tampering with the Clan DHS values. Is it really necessary beyond "a remark about not running Clans into the ground, and avoiding making I.S. into complete overlords" in summary for me to say more?
Part 3 — Increase the Cool Shot Strength to (sort of) like something from "MechWarrior 3"... 
Still no jokes here... Do the stuff noted by "Parts 1 & 2" before altering this item, and then subsequently bump up Cool Shot duration to 10 seconds (
even from Nov. 2023's new value of 7 seconds) at a rate of 3 per second (
even from Nov. 2023's new value of 2 per second)
I'm already seeing what will happen after November 2023's Patch before it even hits. Various forms of imbalance will show out of the woodwork which only this entire list of items can repair, and I'm going to call it in advance. Those incoming changes to Cool Shot function will only help people who can either duck constantly and wait out the cooling period, or those who can maintain constant DPS without real worry about their Heat boiling over too easily. The problem is, while you'll reach the goal of utterly punishing High Alphas throughout the game, it's going to completely destroy many options between the short & extreme range brackets, or render them extremely sub-standard until a better direction is picked. With that occurring however, it will result in what I've heard to be an effect like "Call Of Duty" or "Halo" in gameplay styles, instead of making more styles viable. You'll probably find with your Cool Shot changes alone that Clan DHS simply will not even need touching, and I will admit that, but it's going to render many Mech designs equally as crazy dust collectors. MWO most certainly doesn't need that, which is amongst the reasons for which I'm typing this post, same as is making some room for forgiving mistakes made by players on the battlefields.
That's why the above "Part 2" and this "Part 3" go together. This pair, when combined with the "Part 1" recommendation, allow a considerable increase in survival for ALL of the Mech Lineup which currently exists. It even makes ALL Future Mech Additions very viable, and that is most certainly something MWO could use which everyone wants & needs going forward. Only making a subset viable would end up in too many players simply being fed up with MWO and leaving, and I aim to avoid that (
continued...?) exodus happening. Player retention requires those same players to be happy with the game's state, because if their stuff is not usable then they will not stick around.
So... I've spoken my piece on fixing Overall Time-To-Kill & Mech Survivability in general, and
previously mentioned such thinking in the "Ngng Pod Cast With Bear Claw" thread (https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/285747-ngng-pod-cast-with-bear-claw/page__view__findpost__p__6515527) in order to provide another viewpoint on how MWO can be made better. I've even modified such thoughts to adapt for present & incoming MWO changes. Please pass this along to the rest of "The Cauldron" for discussion so that they can get a good look over this as well? I will mention again that I am unable to walk over onto Discord myself, primarily because this computer which I'm using is.far too old for such operations. (
There are additional reasons, but communicating them would be an MWO "Code Of Conduct" Violation which I prefer avoiding!) One thing which I can point out however is this... If you wish to see an influx of people, with more sticking around, then the game has to feel fun like how it was back in December 2015 when the Steam Release first happened... A time when the game population was at an all-time high, but also allowed separate queues for Groups & Solos to exist. It needs restoring, along with the addition of options, both for Solos to do an Opt-In for the Group Queue gameplay, along with the ability of 2-Man Groups (
1-Group-per-Team in any Match under such a future change) to still be capable of Opt-In to the Solo Queue as well. Doing ALL 3 Parts along with getting the population to restore Queue Separation will most definitely & ultimately save MWO from dying!
~D. V. "
My only intent here is improving MWO and the survival of ALL Mechs within this environment." Devnull
(
p.s.: By the way... There was more which I wanted to say, and other changes which I think & feel would help MWO become far better than it is now. But, with the Incoming MWO Game Patch @ 10 AM PST being so close, it seemed better to not push my luck on how close I was for when this post went up. More will probably come in the future if I can manage to remember posting it... Stay tuned!)
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