42 replies to this topic

[Dethl0k]

guess everyone will be using gauss now...

[Hexenhammer]

I don't get it. I don't see how giving us 1.4 heat sinks, then raising heat from lasers balances the game. Or raising the cost of lasers makes the game more fun. Or how making gauss rifles so fragile they break before internal hits are scored, or engine limitations makes for a more enjoyable game.

[Onyx Rain]

I'm not in the gauss is OP crowd, though I admit it is one of the best if not the best weapons overall...I just don't think it is so good that I'm willing to consider it OP.

Having said that though, I am basically in agreement with everyone saying that this is going to hurt the diversity of weapons we see people using, and we are just going to end up with more gauss/LRM spam.

Energy weapons were finally moving in a good direction, becoming truly good alternatives and many of us were expecting DHS to really bring them into their own and solidify that group of weapons as viable choices.

Nerfing pulse/small lasers...coupled with the Pre-Nerf 1.4 dhs "fix"...Is a huge backwards step in game balance.

When your "fix" results in a system that is pretty much functionally equivalent to the "broken system"...and then you "fix" many energy weapons which many thought ran to hot already by making them run hotter...in a game where most seem to think one of the biggest problems is heat being to harsh to begin with.... You've triple screwed yourself and the game.

If they are going to do this 1.4 dhs "fix", and pulse/small laser "fix"... Then they just need to cut heat across the board, or give us all a much higher heat limit before overheating. Huge backwards step devs. I think you were trying to play it safe devs...and I can understand why, but you've made it all worse then it was in the first place.

Don't nerf pulse/small lasers....don't start at 1.4 dhs...start with 1.6 dhs at least....and/or decrease heat across the entire game.

Edited by Onyx Rain, 02 November 2012 - 06:55 PM.

[Karr285]

what I dont understand is,
They say having double heat sink working at a 0.2 HPS rate (so basically 2 heat per 10 second TT value) will make weapons (that for the most part use TT heat values from the 10 second values) that in this game fire 3x faster somehow = no heat issues.... this is some pretty wacky math and logic going on here,

I wonder since they broke them the 1s time if somebody didnt screw up again making the engine heat sinks act 2.0 and the Extra Doubles work as x4.0 cause they wouldn't make the same mistake twice right?

Edited by Karr285, 02 November 2012 - 07:00 PM.

[Arcturious]

Vlad Ward, on 02 November 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

Medium and Large standard lasers won't have their heat adjusted.

I thought they were but went and checked and you're right -

Quote

This affects Small, Medium, Large Pulse Laser, and Small Lasers. They will now produce more heat when fired and work as originally intended.

I had originally read that as standard lasers, large pulse lasers. So yes, this will only effect Pulse lasers which is not as bad as I had feared.

Pulse lasers though I still stand by my original comment which is that they are already broken. If you break something further it won't change the fact that hardly anyone uses them as it is. It just cements the popular opinion.

I'm just relieved that standard lasers aren't being touched, that would be a disaster lol.

I'll edit my original to take out the normal laser bit to stop any future confusion.

[xRaeder]

This is why small scale PvP is folly.

See, WoT, WoW, SWTOR, ALL had balance issues because it is small scale PvP.

Nerf this one week, nerf that another week. As soon as you change a variable the entire equation changes. It's a never ending cycle.

The devs are too blind to see that otherwise they would have made BF3 w/ Mechs instead of an arena deathmatch CounterStrike/WoT clone.

See... if you increase the number of players in a battle you normalize each individual's contribution thus decreasing the need to nerf this and nerf that.

How many times have you seen DICE of Crazy Rat (WW2OL) make a major balance change? Hardly any at all. And the changes they make are over long periods of time, like a balance patch every couple months. It's because it is a large scale battle.

Give us server browsers ASAP, 3rd party ranked servers, and 32v32s, or I'm leaving as soon as PS2 comes out. That is all.

Edited by xRaeder, 02 November 2012 - 07:37 PM.

[Psikez]

Arcturious, on 02 November 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

snip

AND small lasers.

[Max Steelwolf]

Hell, Pulse lasers are fine as is. There is no need for more frigen heat, and the double heat sinks better stay as is due to the fact that they take up 3 slots a peice, and when you try to add the other upgrades (like the usless FF armour) you already lose another 14 slots which makes it harder to equip alot DHS. And what I learned about the the ER weapons, most are clan weapos so we wont be seeing them till the clans are introduced into the game and they dont have the right values since in the other games (like in MW3 and 4), they also did more damage with a heat cost. So like most of you say, their gonna have to do something better instead of nerfing or rebalancing, cause all its gonna do is make alot of ppl quit playing for good, thus adding this game to the ever growing game flop list which is already has growen too frigen big this year.

[Thirdrail]

I agree that none of the weapons are overpowered. Some do seem a little under powered. I would include pulse lasers on that list. They certainly don't need any kind of nerfing.

The best thing you could do for all direct fire weapons is fix the netcode so they don't all have to pierce a lag shield just to get to their target.

[Harrels Badgerton]

Pulse lasers need a boost to damage if they're going to be viable. The whole idea is that they do more damage than regular but with other negatives as a trade off - but even in the TT it's only 1 more damage! That is totally negligible. I think the high heat is great - slows down the pace and makes it less of a shooter and more of a mech battle game. Pulse lasers seem so useless (other than the negligible damage increase) because of the way shooting and accuracy work in MWO. The problem with balancing it is in the TT (Never played it, so forgive me if I'm off) everything was done with dice rolls. Missiles could miss, shots could miss, you could be in the perfect position to deliver a devastating alpha and it could all blow up in your face. Now lasers are as accurate as our mouse hands, AC and Guass are as accurate as slow lasers, and LRMs don't miss at all unless you can trick them into it.
I think a little randomness would help with projectiles and missiles a lot. Lasers would still be accurate but have their heat. DHS would help with that a lot (maybe too much - it seems like SHS would be totally useless if DHS worked properly). Without Tag or Narc LRMS could spiral a lot, maybe land on-target in an area about twenty meters wide - Mech would still be hit but missiles would hit all around it too. For Guass and AC I can't think of anything except slightly wobbly flight or slightly random trajectory when shot (Cone of Fire basically). That makes it a lot more frustrating to use those weapons but maybe they need to be.

[Pesht]

Honestly it kinda boggles the mind that they would just knee jerk squash a bug without even considering that the bug is irrelevant, the game balance has been a certain way because of that bug and to just fix it with no attempt to maintain that current balance for a weapon that is in a good state................... doesn't surprise me one bit from these guys to be honest.

[Lycan]

Harrels Badgerton, on 02 November 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

Pulse lasers need a boost to damage if they're going to be viable. The whole idea is that they do more damage than regular but with other negatives as a trade off - but even in the TT it's only 1 more damage!

That's not the only thing. They also, in TT speak, gave you a -2 to Hit (So it brought your To-Hit roll down and made it easier to hit with Pulse weapons).

It was the little carrot to make them viable as they were a bit heavier, ran hotter and had shorter ranges than their normal cousins. The +1 damage wouldn't have really been worth it otherwise, IMO.

Edited by Lycan, 03 November 2012 - 12:02 AM.

[Tarman]

Usually I'm in the IDC ITS BETA ITS IN THE WORKS mentality, but that operates on the assumption that stuff eventually gets made better over time, not worse. This latest batch of dev announcements made me say "wait, wat?" There's no Beta excuse for this, it's just poorly-hashed-out ideas and rushed implementation. I can't tell if this is top-down pressure or if they just dropped the ball, but either way some of the next patch is looking like a band-aid on a bullet wound. IDK the caliber yet, it could be just a .22 if they're lucky. But looks like right now they've got way more than a full plate of issues to deal with.

I hope they get their crap together. SOOOO much of this stuff (not just PL heat issues) should have been handled before the game got let into the wild. The matcher issue feeds into the new player issue feeds into the trial mech issue and so on- a lot of the dustups in the community are people cranking about different aspects of problems that wouldn't even exist if other related parts of the game were done properly. Now they're having to chase after all the problems at once in public, all the while creating a lacklustre-to-junky impression. I wish them luck, but mostly because I want to play Mechwarrior. Unfinished game I can deal with (I played Minecraft before punkins man!), but don't break even more of the game on a functional and conceptual level because you left out a decimal place six months ago. Try making more of your equipment function usefully instead of being just a long list of pointless tonnage.

Mostly I'm disappointed because I had to agree with things Vassago Rain said. I think that's one of the signs of the apocalypse. >_____>

[Digital Ninja]

Hexenhammer, on 02 November 2012 - 04:02 PM, said:

ER lasers ARE dead. When is the last time anyone's put an ER laser on their mech?

In my case never.

[StonedVet]

nooo my 6 small pulse cicada is gonna need more heatsinks ... crap

[Adrienne Vorton]

they are hot enough, if you use them for a mech that is not explicitly a HS boat ... and a HS boat will always be a HS boat

i for my part downgraded from pulse to normal lasers often enough on several builds, because they were plain too hot... (talking bout Cat here, not 9-laser-mechs^^)

to me, all lasers feel okay...

PGI should focus on other issues and not repair stuff that is not broken...

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 03 November 2012 - 03:08 AM.

[Jack Corban]

I believe PGI has but one Mission at the moment. And that is to **** up Energybuilds in total. Sure go ahead reduce DOUBLE Heatsinks efficency to 1.4 and increase all energy based weapons Heat output. Why don't you go ahead and increase the tonnage on every Energy weapon while your at it. Make a small laser go for 50 Tons and make it produce 25 heat a cycle.

Then go ahead and make every Engine have 1 heatsink and increase the Tonnage on additional Heatsinks 10 tons each.

Or in short go ahead and **** this game up some more...

[Vassago Rain]

Digital Ninja, on 03 November 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

In my case never.

I use ERs when I want to be hip. It's never, ever been worth it.

[Khan Warlock Kell]

If anything Large pulse need a slight heat decrease, Medium left as is, and small need a very very small increase. We all know DHS are not working as intended, so why not adjust the heat sinks to where you intend them to be for now. see how that affects game play and weapon balance and then gradually tweak them up a bit. Most experienced players i have talked too seem to agree that DHS will probably end up with 1.7 or 1.8 Heat effiencey. Once your happy that the heatsinks are functioning as you want. Then adjust Heat on laser weapons. If you do both right now your actually going to make the job of balancing weapons harder for yourselves.

Right now We see lots of Gauss, Lrm's Streaks, Srm's, Medium lasers and small lasers But the sight of Medium and large pulse and PPC's actually isnt that common. Hardly anybody uses ERPPC's or ERLarge lasers just because they are way to hot to use. I dont want to get into a situation where nobody uses lasers because even with doble heat sinks they run too hot to be usable.

If you want to use a balancing factor for costs against Missile and ballastic weapons, just say that laser focusing crystals need to be replaced after each battle. If they are nor replaced make the laser wander slightly, and each time they are not repaired increase the wander.

[AlexEss]

Seeing as i have not tested the new heat values i have no opinion on the subject.

Will return after the heat have been modified.

Edited by AlexEss, 03 November 2012 - 03:31 AM.