81 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Pixel Hunter, on 16 March 2025 - 05:02 PM, said:

Honestly, I think HSL limits need to be tightened more, or we need some kind of limit for how many beam and auto cannon/ missiles weapons you can run of a specific kind. So, a reactor can't charge too many lasers fully and an ammo feed system can't keep up with too many of one specific weapon. So, if you have too many lasers you get a damage debuff if you fire them all at once and too many auto cannons/missiles you get a pre-fire jam chance.

This is just as bad as HSL, if not worse.

Lasers being punished even when they run a bracket build runs counter to what you want, and the ammo nonsense is worse given jam chance is waaaaay more punishing than damage. TL;DR people keep coming up with as bad if not worse ideas than ghost heat to counteract "problems" they have with the game.



The issue is more nuanced than anyone wants to admit and there is no silver bullet solution here nor is there a really good description of the problem. To some it's "high pinpoint alphas" to others it's "boating", and to some it's both but they all miss the forest for the trees when it comes to solving the "problem" or whether it even is a problem in the first place.

[1453 R]

That's the big thing a lot of people fail to realize.

For some people, the problem is "any alpha over [arbitrary number here] is Bad and needs to be killed, no matter how you get to that figure." For other people, it's "I hate any 'Mech configuration that relies on only a single weapon type, or too-similar arbitrary 'meta' weapon combos like AC/5+ AC/10."

One group wants really low alpha numbers and high time to kill, the other wants kitchen-soup loadouts. Those goals are not the same, neither is necessarily correct for the health of the game, and there's no way to achieve both goals at once that doesn't cause way more harm than good.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 17 March 2025 - 08:57 AM, said:

One group wants really low alpha numbers and high time to kill, the other wants kitchen-soup loadouts. Those goals are not the same, neither is necessarily correct for the health of the game, and there's no way to achieve both goals at once that doesn't cause way more harm than good.

Ironically all roads lead to the same place though: a complete redesign of the mechlab, mech tonnages included. A lot of the tabletop rules, weapons, etc was just the TT devs throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck that caused a lot of in-congruency with weapons, especially when you shift the game from focus around a single player controlling multiple units to a single unit with multiple other people.

TL;DR Mechwarrior really needs the customization of mechs to be redesigned completely.

[Mad Mech]

Here's some brainstorm ideas to possibly address the power creep, while breathing new life into MWO gameplay. I haven't thought these through completely, or how they might benefit/conflit with each other. It's just a brainstorm, so if something seems way off, be chill. :)


1) Adjust mech acceleration and deceleration rates
Mechs are multi-ton hunks of metal in motion. That means inertia. Lots of it. Even the lights. Yet some lights can repeatedly change direction 180 degrees faster than your eyes can track them. Combine that with ping delays, and light mechs become nearly invincible. Who needs armor when speed is the best defense.

Mechs should take at least some time to slow down, stop, and change direction. Even the fast ones. This could help re-balance the playing field in terms of assualt armor defense vs. light mech speed defense, as well as giving MASC some flavor. Acceleration / deceleration rates wouldn't have to be tweaked much; just enough to bring it back within reason. In fact, one could make the arguement that light mechs could be even faster than they are, as long as acceleration / deceleration rates were affected.

MASC could be a partial exception; activating MASC would increase a mech's acceleration rate beyond normal, but would only affect acceleration, not deceleration.

2) Limit team radar-sharing to only those mechs that have targeting computers installed in their mechs, where range detection and intel sharing range is dictated by the level of the targeting computer. Additionally, give light mechs quirk bonues to data link range.
Currently, if you see a mech, your whole team sees that mech on their radar. As nice as having group x-ray vision may be, it kinda dumbs down gameplay. Targeting computers could make themselves useful as a target sharing mechanic. It could give light mechs a much needed "scout" gameplay role option (instead of being just super-fast damage mosquitos). And combat mechs would then have to choose between fitting pure damage mods (but be in the dark) vs. forgoeing that extra weapon, ammo, and/or heatsink (but they'd be more informed).

This would also make missile lock-on more difficult, but also more rewarding when that scout/missile artilerly link is established. In theory you could buff missiles, since targets wouldn't always be semi-perma visible like they are now.

3) Spotting" a mech only shows the mech's last known position
(not constantly following the mech's movements in real time for a certain duration).

4) Cooling efficiency bellcurve
Instead of a linear cooling rate, use a bellcurve cooldown rate similar to energy capacitors in Eve Online. It works like this: A mech's cooling efficiency would be most effective between 25% and 75% heat, where heat dissapation becomes less effective as you approch 0 heat or 100% heat. For example, it may only take a few seconds to reduce heat from 65% to 35% (a difference of 30 heat) but would take longer to reduce heat from 95% to 85% (a difference of just 10 heat).

This could achive two important things:

a) Performing an "alpha strike" would be much more strategic, knowing that yes, you can fire everything at once, but at the expense of your cooldown efficiency. So unless you can kill that target with that one alpha strike, you'll be stuck at +75% heat for longer than you hoped for. You might be better off firing just a few weapons at a time to stay within that 25% to 75% heat efficiency zone.

b) "Boating" a mech would be less desireable, since alpha-striking every shot would no longer be feasable. Especially if combined with idea #5 below:

5) Laser focal ranges
Borrowing another idea from Eve Online, what if lasers had "focal ranges". For example, a long-range laser would do full damage at it's focal range of 900m, but with damage dropping off on either side of that 900m.

This means long-range lasers wouldn't do max damage at close range like they do now. So a mech with 8 laser hardpoints might be better off choosing a variety of short, medium, and long range laser focal ranges. This would make mechs more well-rounded and incure a natural penality for "boating" especially if combined with #4 above. Even better, some of those 2 laser, 2 ballistic, and 2 missile mechs that usually collect dust might become prime choices for well-rounded combat chassis.

6) Begin balistic damage falloff at range 0
Ballistics only achive maximum velocity inside the barrel. Once a bullet leaves the barrel, it is forever slowing down. Therefore it's maximum damage is at range 0 and then losing damage potential for every meter it travels. So Instead of a flat 0-500m full-damage then falloff, start the falloff at 0m. This is a bit more realistic, and also might be a nice counter-balance to #5 above (laser focal ranges).

7) Reverse ballistic effective ranges
It never made sense to me that small ballistics (AC2) were long range, but large ballsitics (AC20) were short range. Seems counter-intuitive.

8) ECM changes:
ECM is mech only, with advanced ECM creating a radius.
ECM hinders target lock-on, but not target sharing (see #2 above).

Edited by Mad Mech, 18 March 2025 - 06:26 PM.

[Just a Kobold]

Valdarion Silarius, on 01 March 2025 - 05:48 PM, said:

This might come off controversial, but I think there needs to be a universal buff to all back armor to any mechs that go 64.8 kmph and below in the heavy and assault category. At least 10 points to all heavies and 15 to all assaults would suffice imho.

Very controversial. The reward for getting a good flank, or managing to sneak up on that assault sniping from Zimbobwe shouldn't be having your first round of damage negated for free.
If you really feel like you need extra back armor, you can shift some to the rear. Most heavies and assaults already get bonus armor anyway, it's just automatically placed on the front for you. If you later find you're getting cored out too fast, or ending games with too much back armor you can start shifting it back to the front.
Most assaults are very good at protecting their rear from most lights, especially if they invest into the nodes for it. If you don't believe me, play the trial Javelin for 100 matches.

[Joshua Obrien]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 10 March 2025 - 10:31 AM, said:

Pinpoint isn't even doing the most damage in matches (not like ye olden days), the biggest damage dealer in QP are dakka mechs because unlike high alpha mechs, they have the enough upfront damage to be potent but have DPS to melt multiple opponents before getting too heat capped.

Pinpoint is a boogeyman unless you position well and understand where and when to peak, which is something you pick up with experience. it can definitely be unfun, but if it wasn't potent all you'd see is dakka. This is what makes this game a "tactical" game is that cover, positioning, and timing all matter. You can't just expect to make a bad peek and get away with just a scrape. In fact I'd say specifically the main PPFLD boogeyman weapons are actually the weakest they've been (Gauss/PPC combos specifically); lasers (which is pinpoint, but not considered front-loaded damage especially with beams/xpulse), mgs, and dakka + light ppcs are pretty much mainstays.

You're right, the only real way to fix this is to add sized hardpoints in the game. But people will ***** and moan about it so it wont happen. We'll keep our massive damage and high alphas and binary lights.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Joshua Obrien, on 23 March 2025 - 12:03 PM, said:

You're right, the only real way to fix this is to add sized hardpoints in the game. But people will ***** and moan about it so it wont happen. We'll keep our massive damage and high alphas and binary lights.

If you think sized hardpoints are about removing massive damage or high alphas, then I'm just going to stop you right here and right now, that's not the point of them. They can definitely be used to control what loadouts some mechs are capable of similar to what locked internal/armor crits do for Omnimechs which in turn can help distinguish mechs from each other, BUT it's not to hardcore limit firepower. There's already a mechanic for that, it's called heat. There's a reason firepower has increased over the years as heat sinks have undergone significant changes (DHS getting added and the heat sink normalization of 2018 that boosted damage volume of heat intensive builds).

Sized hardpoints also won't happen because that would require engineering effort and a migration and well, the last migration (skill maze introduction) did NOT go over well.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 23 March 2025 - 12:17 PM.

[Joshua Obrien]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 23 March 2025 - 12:16 PM, said:

If you think sized hardpoints are about removing massive damage or high alphas, then I'm just going to stop you right here and right now, that's not the point of them. They can definitely be used to control what loadouts some mechs are capable of similar to what locked internal/armor crits do for Omnimechs which in turn can help distinguish mechs from each other, BUT it's not to hardcore limit firepower. There's already a mechanic for that, it's called heat. There's a reason firepower has increased over the years as heat sinks have undergone significant changes (DHS getting added and the heat sink normalization of 2018 that boosted damage volume of heat intensive builds).

Sized hardpoints also won't happen because that would require engineering effort and a migration and well, the last migration (skill maze introduction) did NOT go over well.

If I had it my way, the way some of us wanted when the game launched, would have been a very very limited mechlab with variants being locked, so that way more variants would see play instead of "How many of X can I boat on said chassis"

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Joshua Obrien, on 23 March 2025 - 12:47 PM, said:

If I had it my way, the way some of us wanted when the game launched, would have been a very very limited mechlab with variants being locked, so that way more variants would see play instead of "How many of X can I boat on said chassis"

And you would of ended up with a game like MW5 Mercs where everyone hated how limited mechs were or where mechs were just absolute garbage.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 23 March 2025 - 02:08 PM.

[GreyNovember]

Joshua Obrien, on 23 March 2025 - 12:47 PM, said:

If I had it my way, the way some of us wanted when the game launched, would have been a very very limited mechlab with variants being locked, so that way more variants would see play instead of "How many of X can I boat on said chassis"

You say "More variants would see play" As if "This one is absolute Garbage, don't ever use it" would not be the prevailing sentiment.

Man's asking for bad mechs to be FORCED onto you.

[Equuleus]

The word redundancy comes to mind. How many mechs does a mech game need, if you cannot build it for specific purpose or condition rather than a vegas crap shoot idea of game joining?

I have 93 mechs now and all of them, I build for one reason, a basic role idea of how to average the best score with it no matter what conditions it is thrown into.

You claim the game is a 12 vs 12 and then remove strategy for a lot of the variants and builds by forcing them to play in the worst possible map situation and conditions and also with the maps actually removing parts of the game and making the strategy of a build useless.

Is that a 12 vs 12 or 12 vs 9 with 3 ******** mechs that the map choice has removed a strategy or made useless targets that have lost half their strategy points.

No battle sim on earth is going to stick people in useless metal cans to get shot at.
Here is an example

I have a commando build, just for a strategy role idea that spends c-bills like richie rich on uavs and air strikes.
If you stick it on the right map it has a lot of team use, if you put it on bear claw, you removed half of its strategy idea as the artillery and air have been removed from the game. So now only the uavs are usable.

That is not a battle sim, as I would not drive that, in that situation.

I do realize you have monetization to address, but why do I want to spend real money on any mechs if you are going to make them strategy useless in the game? Furthermore, you want me to spend real money on a mech and then later you decide to change the product.

You all need to ask yourselves some questions like

Would you buy the product you sell??

[GreyNovember]

Equuleus, on 24 March 2025 - 08:41 AM, said:

Would you buy the product you sell??

Presumably this is because you have very different people making these proposals.

The ones that believe the source material is the best material and you should just follow it 1:1 and everything will be fine have some overlap with people who are insistent that severely limiting what you can do for customization in a Mechwarrior game is going to have pushback.

In reality most people are here because the basics of "Run around and shoot people in robots" is fine.

The outliers are vocal, but so is a child when they don't get what they want.

[Equuleus]

Perhaps you should concentrate on a cohesive game that does not twist its own logic into pretzels?

[1453 R]

Joshua Obrien, on 23 March 2025 - 12:47 PM, said:

If I had it my way, the way some of us wanted when the game launched, would have been a very very limited mechlab with variants being locked, so that way more variants would see play instead of "How many of X can I boat on said chassis"

Congratulations: you have created a 'MechWarrior game where two thirds of all 'Mechs are dog poo and will never not be dog poo.

The thing all the Sized Hardpoints/Limited or No MechLab people never seem to realize is that changing 'Mech construction rules does not change what makes a 'Mech good. It merely states that whatever 'Mechs were arbitrarily invented forty years ago with configurations that just-so-happen to coincidentally line up with what makes a 'Mech good become crushingly dominant over 'Mechs that can no longer adjust their loadouts to get closer to 'Good'.

A Shadow Hawk limited to a single AC/5, a single SRM-2, a single LRM-5, and a single medium laser is a 'Mech that will never be good. Ever. There is no version of MWO where a stock, unmodified Shadow Hawk is useful. To say nothing of the problem that occurs when some 'Mechs can have double heat sinks but others are locked to single heat sinks.

All else being equal, getting your firepower out faster (higher alpha number) is always better than getting it out slower. Getting your firepower focused on a smaller area (PPFLD versus spread/burntime weapons) is always better than more spread-out damage. The current state of the game has arisen because other factors were used to counterbalance the fact that doing more focused damage more quickly is the fundamental way you win a 'Mech fight.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Now to be fair, I definitely think sized hardpoints have a place in a mechwarrior game, including MWO, but that's more for differentiation of mechs without needing to hamfist some quirk to try an incentivize certain loadouts. It works well for example in MW5:Clans for helping differentiate omnipods a bit better than quirks do (since quirks you have to be careful of omnipod quirks stacking). It should be just another tool in the balancing toolkit (hardpoint inflation also becomes two dimensional rather than one dimensional). Using it to try to counteract alphas or stuff like that though is a recipe for failure.

[1453 R]

Sized hardpoints are not, by themselves, a terrible idea. MW4 used sized hardpoints and it had one of the better 'Mech Labs I remember (though admittedly that might be the rose-colored glasses, it's been forever and a week since I've run the game). Sized hardpoints can allow smaller numbers of larger weapons to actually compete with mass boating because Big Guns can be balanced more aggressively compared to smaller ones.

I actually found myself enjoying MW5's 'Mech Lab, and found it to be a great fit for that game. You felt the fact that you were basically doing field refits, not factory-level custom jobs, and it did make a larger number of 'Mech variants more unique and viable. Buuuut....it also made it quite apparent that some 'Mechs were simply built different than others, and by 'different' I mean just strictly better. Nor would that style of 'Mech Lab work remotely as well in a PvP game. The Solaris DLC introducing a bunch of variants that were basically MWO-style factory rebuilds purpose-built for the arena made it agonizingly clear that what made a 'Good 'Mech' hadn't really changed.

I've always thought that it'd be interesting for the 'Mech Lab to reflect a 'Mech's natural identity more than it does, but you cannot then introduce five hundred 'Mechs and 'Mech variants that are all basically useless because everything from the SuccWars era was assembled by people who had no idea how the game worked and MWO is a fundamentally different game anyways. Things like armor/max armor totals being based on the stock armor rather than just tonnage, adapting the tabletop 'Quirks" system as 'Special Equipment' for 'Mechs with noteworthy such gear, or the like...but that'd take far more time and attention than this game will ever get again. Bleh. Ah well.

[Void Angel]

Wow, I could have made bingo cards for this thread, too!

This is a nuanced problem, no one solution will work, and some of the suggested solutions are... "solutions," if you catch my drift. I'll just share a few thoughts, since I'm late to the party:

• Anything that makes the game's balancing system substantially more complex leaves more room for emergent combinations that may break balance, and limitations that feel added-on (like HSL) aren't going to enhance player experience.
  
• The overall problem does boil down to "low Time To Kill," but the reasons for it are complex; you've got the expansion of match sizes (more punishment for mistakes,) hardppoint bloat, and a general process of balancing the weapons by bringing underperformers up more often than overperformers were toned down, and the expanded variety of weapons providing more opportunities for firepower and sidestepping the HSL... and probably more that I'm not remembering off the top of my head.
  
• The best solution isn't likely to be any one solution, but a blending of options. However, I think the focus shouldn't be simply reducing time to kill; we should reduce the pace of combat, thereby increasing time to kill and improving the feel of piloting a gigantic war machine. Leave the HSL system in place, but slow things down so that combat can become more technical. Many weapons (and thus builds) lack long enough cooldowns for many 'mechs to torso twist while continuing to fight - twisting has become part of escape and evasion when you're caught under fire, rather than being a bread-and-butter tactic.

My favored strategy would be to nerf weapons overall, primarily through increasing cooldowns a bit, reducing quirks where practical. In short, slowing down combat (not too much) so that your building-sized war machine feels durable should improve the game's feel - and give less experienced pilots more feedback to improve. Stuff like hardpoint sizing would be nifty, too, but I'm not sure that's even on the table right now.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Void Angel, on 24 March 2025 - 10:43 PM, said:

Many weapons (and thus builds) lack long enough cooldowns for many 'mechs to torso twist while continuing to fight - twisting has become part of escape and evasion when you're caught under fire, rather than being a bread-and-butter tactic.

There's been a bit of a consensus among some in comp circles that dakka is the highest form of "skill expression" (I'm growing to hate this term), but I'm slowly starting to think that stare weapons like x-pulse, MGs, RACs, and some other dakka are actually not good for the game because they themselves don't encourage users to twist in between shots. I don't think it's just longer cooldowns like we had in MW4 (cERPPC had 8s, PPCs had 6s, Gauss had 7-8s, etc, etc), but shorter bursts of damage from face stare weapons (which they'll need compensation for).

[Lincoln Cross]

IMO, I think the problem lies with the fact that they introduce all these different weapons into the game (which is a good thing), but didn't introduce the equipment that counters them. For instance, reflective armor. Want to tone down laser vomit, bring in reflective armor as it's counter. The same with the one that counters ballistic weapons. This will force people to make sacrifices of what they want to guard against. Another example. Some people hate stealth. Why not introduce the bloodhound active probe? That way if someone wants to counter stealth mechs without having to rely on a PPC type weapon, they can spend the tonnage and crit slots for it. Battletech enabled checks and balances for the game. Why not implement them into MWO.

Now I get it that this is an online PVP shooter and certain allowances need to be made to account for the differences between a table top strategic sim and an online FPS. But some of those equipment can help to balance the game like it does in the board game.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Lincoln Cross, on 25 March 2025 - 07:49 AM, said:

IMO, I think the problem lies with the fact that they introduce all these different weapons into the game (which is a good thing), but didn't introduce the equipment that counters them. For instance, reflective armor. Want to tone down laser vomit, bring in reflective armor as it's counter. The same with the one that counters ballistic weapons.

These aren't really counters, they just become build taxes. It's the exact same thing that happened in MW4. With how powerful ERLL laser spam was, reflective armor practically became the thing to run over anything else, stripping armor everywhere but your CT just to maximize CT health.

Lincoln Cross, on 25 March 2025 - 07:49 AM, said:

Why not introduce the bloodhound active probe? That way if someone wants to counter stealth mechs without having to rely on a PPC type weapon, they can spend the tonnage and crit slots for it. Battletech enabled checks and balances for the game. Why not implement them into MWO.

Battletech didn't introduce "checks and balances", it introduced an arms race. It's not just bloodhound, they also added Angel ECM which goes further than Guardian ECM, or VSS compared to Stealth, etc, etc. It's a game of hard counters with no good counterplay, you just invalidate other's equipment with your build tax.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 25 March 2025 - 08:20 AM.