269 replies to this topic

[Lanessar]

I nudged this with "Ask the Devs #24", directly referencing this thread. Personally, I feel a rebalance of the heat system is needed to make everything work. Not necessarily these numbers, or following table top values, but at least a re-work so that heavy energy weapons see more use, and Gauss, while powerful, aren't the "go-to" weapon in a ballistic slot.

[SteelPaladin]

Lanessar, on 08 November 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

I nudged this with "Ask the Devs #24", directly referencing this thread. Personally, I feel a rebalance of the heat system is needed to make everything work. Not necessarily these numbers, or following table top values, but at least a re-work so that heavy energy weapons see more use, and Gauss, while powerful, aren't the "go-to" weapon in a ballistic slot.

The effort is appreciated, but I don't have much hope. They specifically cull those questions to the softball ones, then answer them w/noncommittal nonspecifics like "balance is always ongoing; next question." Until they for some reason have a change of heart and actually decide to address this discussion which has been going on for months, they will continue to completely ignore it no matter how many neon signs are set up pointing to it.

[Protection]

The problem with totally redesigning the heat system at this point (or redesigning every weapon with respect to it) - I doubt the devs are ready to implement such a drastic change, and even if they did, it would still require hundreds of man hours to retweak and prevent massively overpowered designs from emerging.

I understand your arguments, and I agree with them to an extent, but at this point, can't we just throw away all the tabletop numbers and start tweaking weapons and their attributes to make them more viable, rather than worrying about the archaic rules of a 1980's board game.

Make it so that PPCs do extra spash damage as well (10 to the locaion hit, and 5 to each adjacent location), ER range is unlimited, and Large Pulse deal 50% more damage. Slow Gauss rate of fire and boost Autocannons one last time, and suddenly weapons are starting to fall in line.

And as for heat - I have a compromise: http://mwomercs.com/...lps-trial-mechs (that will even save trial mechs).

[MCXL]

Protection, I think that changing the system is much more manageable than continually doing waves of weapon changes.

Though if I am honest, both will have to change over time.

[Targetloc]

Tabletop values are fundamentally unbalanced. It's why they created BV. But even the loose, "somewhat" balance of level one tech is completely lost with pinpoint accuracy. Compare the damage per ton of the large laser to the medium laser.

Then do it again, but then this time multiply by the average chance to hit a target 8 hexes away.

MWO is fundamentally, mathematically less balanced than TT, which was unbalanced on a mech to mech basis to start. They need to actually look at the damn math and start balancing the weapons against eachother, which means radically different recycle times for different weapons if they are intent on keeping damage and heat close to canon values and tonnage and crits are set in stone.

[MCXL]

Targetloc, on 08 November 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

Tabletop values are fundamentally unbalanced. It's why they created BV.

This is an interesting, but I think somewhat flawed assertion. BV isn't meant to calculate imbalance, as much as show the real value of a mech, beyond damage stats.

Balance is a relative term. The only real way to balance is to give everything the exact same power level, which is pretty... Stale.

Relevant Extra Creditz Link GOGOGOGOGOGOGO

[Allekatrase]

I'm sorry, your posts are utter rubbish because you keep using the verb effect when you actually mean affect.




Really, though, excellent work. I love the posts.

Edited by Allekatrase, 08 November 2012 - 02:33 PM.

[Indoorsman]

MCXL, on 08 November 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

This is an interesting, but I think somewhat flawed assertion. BV isn't meant to calculate imbalance, as much as show the real value of a mech, beyond damage stats.

It may not have been MEANT to calculate imbalance, but it does. It balances opponents based on what you have equipped. If you have imbalanced weapons equipped, your opponent needs to either equip more/less weapons(depending if your imbalanced weps were OP or UP) or needs to also be using imbalanced weapons.

[Asatruer]

Having the same aiming accuracy on all non-guided weapons increases the potency of all weapons equally. The damage drop-off due to range helps somewhat with trying to make MLs less good as LLs when firing at more distant targets. How close this damage drop-off is to the average damage reduction by less hits over a hundred shots would be an interesting comparison.

The ballistic qualities of a shot seem to have more effect on how well weapons are balanced compared to eachother, example AC20 vs Gauss at 270m. The Gauss still seems to perform better due to being easier to score consistent hits.

Another thing to evaluate is the effect of convergence on damage to one location of boating a lot of smaller weapons compared to fewer big weapons, such as the 6 MLs rather than 1 AC/20 of the HBK variants. We can all agree that convergence causing a balance issue, but finding a way to quantify it would be good.



I have a much more long winded and equally without any real statistical analysis ramble on this subject over here

[Targetloc]

MCXL, on 08 November 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

This is an interesting, but I think somewhat flawed assertion. BV isn't meant to calculate imbalance, as much as show the real value of a mech, beyond damage stats.

Balance is a relative term. The only real way to balance is to give everything the exact same power level, which is pretty... Stale.

Relevant Extra Creditz Link GOGOGOGOGOGOGO

It's a great video, but everyone always seems to forget the most important part. http://youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w?t=3m33s

"The most important caveat of perfect imbalance: Perfect imbalance isn't haphazard. Game elements aren't wildly out of scope with one another. Rather, there are carefully crafted imbalances built into the system. It's the difference between broken and out of balance. In most of these cases the designers will have a mathematical formula for what a reasonably balanced version of the game would look like..."

[MCXL]

Indoorsman, I just think you and I are thinking about balance in different contexts is all. I'm not saying your wrong, but just taking a pretty different approach to game design.

Also on a side note Xypherous (one of my favorite game designers on League of Legends) posted this earlier today. (I made some slight cuts, feel free to click through though,)

http://na.leagueofle...183088#31183088

X to the ypherous said:

... we're always testing things...

Testing / Iteration is the lifeblood of design. You don't get better by not testing stuff out and locking things before they're done and if you think you've figured it all out - that just means you have no idea what your players are capable of. One day of player testing can outweigh hundreds of our internal tests...

Edited by MCXL, 08 November 2012 - 02:57 PM.

[Targetloc]

Asatruer, on 08 November 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

Having the same aiming accuracy on all non-guided weapons increases the potency of all weapons equally. The damage drop-off due to range helps somewhat with trying to make MLs less good as LLs when firing at more distant targets. How close this damage drop-off is to the average damage reduction by less hits over a hundred shots would be an interesting comparison.

I'd argue it's not an equal increase (which is part of why ER weapons are huge under-performers in MWO).

Average damage shooting a running Hunchback at 210 meters in TT with 4 gunnery:

Medium laser: 0.83
Large Laser: 3.33
ER Large Laser: 5.77


50% more heat makes sense on ER weapons in the board game because there are range brackets where they hit 50% more often than the standard version, which can lead to you doing 30-50% more damage over a few rounds.


Average damage shooting a running Hunchback at 210 meters in MWO if you're 80% accurate:

Medium laser: 4
Large Laser: 6.4
ER Large Laser: 6.4


Or let's try to get Large Laser the same as a base of comparison which means you have 41.66% accuracy.

Medium laser: 2 (vs 0.83 in TT)
Large Laser: 3.33
ER Large: 3.33 (vs 5.77 in TT)


The balance implications are pretty significant.

edit- pizza pizza

Edited by Targetloc, 08 November 2012 - 03:20 PM.

[MCXL]

Targetloc, on 08 November 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

"In most of these cases the designers will have a mathematical formula for what a reasonably balanced version of the game would look like..."

MCXL, on 04 November 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

Section Seven:The Question?

(WHATS IN THE MECH?!?!?!?)

"What is the goal for mech combat in this game, BEYOND, the balance between the different weight classes, and why?"

The question I pose in Chapter One, and that I keep coming back to is exactly what EC is talking about.

What is the model that the devs want us to be playing in? If this is truly the game in a 'pretty much balanced state' then why is that assertion being made. What about the model the gameplay fits into currently is matching or not meeting expectation?

I think that what it boils down to is that when explaining the design choices in MWO, there has been very little talk of the 'why' in the changes. This is one area that League excels in because the designers will directly say why changes are being made, and what the goal is for the change.

Some examples:
http://na.leagueofle...76#post31193376
http://na.leagueofle...65#post31193565
http://na.leagueofle...d.php?t=2777657
http://na.leagueofle...25#post31188125

PGI is doing a pretty good job of talking, but I think a lot of the communication is either selective, superfluous, or non game related (thats ok as well).

Again, I like PGI, I am here for the long haul, etc etc. Just noting some areas that I would say could use improvement. I know that Riot games has always been pretty open, and sometimes it has hurt them, but overall I think that the community on the League of Legends forums respects the devs decisions a lot more when there is an open, 2 way dialog about them, rather than just, 'we listen to reasonable non emotional feedback.'

Oh man, another tangent, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.

Targetloc, on 08 November 2012 - 03:12 PM, said:

Laser Laser: 3.33
ER Laser Laser: 5.77

Thinking about this?????
EDIT:

Targetloc, on 08 November 2012 - 03:12 PM, said:

edit- pizza pizza

This is my new favorite thing that has happened on the forums. Thank you.

Edited by MCXL, 08 November 2012 - 03:30 PM.

[Targetloc]

MCXL, on 08 November 2012 - 03:17 PM, said:

Thinking about this?????

I wasn't, but now I'm hungry...


But back to the math... medium lasers were always seen as the gold standard of weapons in TT, but without a cone of fire or other accuracy gimmick, they become twice as powerful at the most common engagement range in MWO. And that's before considering their fire rate.


Small lasers and medium lasers should actually have one of the LONGEST recharge times if they're going to use TT heat, damage and tonnage values, otherwise their DPS/ton compared to other weapons goes through the roof.

That plus pin-point convergence is why PGI can't afford to increase heat dissipation relative to the new fire rates, which is screwing up all the weapons, not to mention DHS.

Pin-point convergence would be fine if they picked a recycle rate that gave medium lasers a similar damage per ton as the AC20, but as the stats currently stand, 4 medium lasers blow an AC20 out of the water in terms of efficiency... except for the obscene heat keeping them in check.

Except that now you have a range of potential effectiveness for a medium laser where it might do anywhere between 0.125 and 1.25 DPS depending how many HS you want to assign to it, and the game's high heat capacity means they can frontload obscene amounts of damage per ton.

If they gave them a 10 second recycle time, or made them do 2.5 damage for 1.5 heat at 4 seconds then you could say "okay, 3-4 heatsinks and they're maxed, and the burst DPS is relatively sane compared to the sustaind DPS. Now let's calculate what people are going to build from there."

[Allekatrase]

Targetloc, on 08 November 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

I wasn't, but now I'm hungry...


But back to the math...

This is what I'm seeing as well. I think the solution is to tone down medium/small lasers, as they tend to be outliers on most of the weapon charts, rather than keeping heat broken for the large energy weapons. I would probably rather it be toned down in damage as the refire rate seems to fit better in the sustained short/medium range role they fill. Also, if the damage was lowered somewhat on these then I feel the fear that some people have of heat neutrality for small/medium laser boats would be unfounded. Sure, you'd be able to be heat neutral and boat them, but your damage still wouldn't be all that amazing.

Edited by Allekatrase, 08 November 2012 - 03:50 PM.

[TigrisMorte]

Slanski, on 05 November 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

A very thought out and constructive post MCXL.

The confusion stems from the incomplete quantitative adaptation of board game values. All TT weapon damage values should read:

Mech heat dissipation=(10HS + installed HS)/10seconds

M...

TL;DR:

Stop implementing TT per shot damage values and their per shot heat and start implementing TT DPS values and heat per second values!

The Devs have developed a nice game, but if we continue to damage control and tweak from a base that lacks a denominator, we will end up with weapon loadouts and mechs that will be unrecognizable by canon and the fanbase. You incentivize competative players to build bastardized builds around very few weapon systems that have an off DPS/ton (Heat/s)/ton advantage.

Math it is not hard you just have to actually apply it. Instead they tossed 40+ years of research with, "it ain't table top!" like there is any difference in math just because this is a moving in time sim as opposed to simulated moving in time sim.

[MCXL]

Ok guys, my next post in this thread will be the next chapter. I promise.

[Allekatrase]

So... you've given up on the thread then

[MCXL]

Allekatrase, on 08 November 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

So... you've given up on the thread then

Chapter Four: Players, Progression, Power

Section Fourteen: Conclusion

So, after all that, you can clearly see why I am the greetest.











(seriously post coming real soon)

[Asmudius Heng]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 November 2012 - 09:53 AM, said:

The way they did it was just wrong. They should look into heat capacity and limit that, not heat dissipation.

A low heat capacity means you cannot just alpha strike without risk. But coupled with a high dissipation,you can still fire your weapons at a high ROF - you just need to learn how to time your shots so you don't overheat firing too many weapons at once, and you still manage to land shots that are precise enough to be deadly.

But they unfortuantely don't evne have a heat scale that support this. They just have "No Heat Penalty" to "Shutdown, Ammo Explosion, OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOUR MECH!". With more steps in between there would be meaningful trade-offs and risks along the way, and the smart mechwarrior would know how to "ride the heat scale", while the inexperienced one will just stack so many heat sinks that he doesn't get any damage but also no heat problem.

Another thing MW4 did right.

Penalties at high heat such as slower mechs and hug flicker etc

Alphas pushed high heat but you could dissipate to fire again when your weapon recycled if you had enough heat sinks

Heat management was interesting and you did have trade offs to consider

It wasn't perfect but what you are advocating was in the last iteration of this game and worked despite so much player hate from some people about it.

It had flaws very much but it felt more right when balancing your heat choices

Good post, keep up the good work, in total agreement with you.