99 replies to this topic

[Skyfaller]

Xeven, on 30 November 2012 - 07:59 AM, said:

Making Guass fragile is wrong way to balance it. I agree dual Guass is a bit OP and 3 will be even more Op. Making it fragile/unreliable will essentialy mean people wont equip it. That is a bad way to balance weapons in a game.

....

Making it fragile, thus unreliable just means you have game content that wont be used and enjoyed.

Rethink before you ruin your own content and features.

It had been suggested since closed beta that the problem with the gauss is not its damage or range or zero heat...its the fact that it has a very short 'charge' up time before it fires.

Right now:

Click fire
1 second later it fires (like PPC and most autocannons)
3 second or so delay to re-fire.

How it should be:

Click fire
3 seconds later it fires.
1 second later its ready to refire.

In essence, you are 'flipping' the re-fire delay into becoming the weapon 'charge up' sequence to fire the gauss round.

That alone makes gauss highly ineffective at close range combat and requires a lot more skill for long range fire.

When this happens, gauss ammo rounds per ton can be increased with no problem.

There is no need to make the gauss rifle easier to pop... what it needs is its field effectiveness lowered through timing changes.

[Dzikun]

Gauss is not a brawling weapon... Its a sniper weapon. It means you should stay away from the face to face combat and most of the damage. Making it more fragile IS the perfect solution for it. It will make it harder to use as a brawling weapon and i think that is the whole point.

[Skyfaller]

No it doesnt make sense. The gauss at close range is even deadlier than at long range. It shouldnt but it is. Making it more fragile does nothing to reduce its close range lethality. Changing the firing sequence does.

Blow it by hitting it? Yes...youd have to strip the armor off first and then you can hit the gauss rifle. That requires both precise aiming and more damage than you can generally do in one alpha...to take ONE of the rifles out.

...and that will hardly happen before you're either dead or extremely hurt by the point blank gauss fire.

Heck, I LOVE it when non-light mechs get in my face when I have a gauss loadout. I let them give me their first shot while I aim and 1-shot their cockpit off.

Edited by Skyfaller, 30 November 2012 - 11:54 AM.

[Orzorn]

Dzikun, on 30 November 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

Gauss is not a brawling weapon... Its a sniper weapon. It means you should stay away from the face to face combat and most of the damage. Making it more fragile IS the perfect solution for it. It will make it harder to use as a brawling weapon and i think that is the whole point.

No, I agree with that (not that its a perfect solution, but that it helps some).

Perhaps a bit of an apology is in order for me. I recognize this thread is about Gauss, not Gauss-toting Catapults. Gauss is definitely too strong (as are Gaussapults). This particular nerf weakens Gauss, absolutely, which I guess is the point. It just doesn't weaken it for Gaussapults in a significant way.

Which is mainly why I suggested what I did on page 1 with hitboxes. Its something lots of Catapult players have mentioned before (they claim they get hit in the head/center torso too much), so why not use that to do both a buff and a nerf? The "nerf" aspect would pretty much affect K2's the most, as any other Catapult has very little reason to attack the side torsos (with maybe the exception of some sort of side torso laser/PPC boating C1).

Edited by Orzorn, 30 November 2012 - 11:59 AM.

[Kobold]

Dzikun, on 30 November 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

Gauss is not a brawling weapon

Gauss is an everything weapon.

Sure you could try to get inside its minimum range, but on anything that carried 2 or 3 of them, that mean you were probably going to take a 12-20 point kick from a heavy or assault, while STILL risking 30-45 points of damage from the guns (or at best you just encouraged them to shoot at your friends while they kicked you).

Also as an aside, try a CTF-4X Gaussaphract.

No one shoots your arms off. No one will shoot the arms off of a JM6-DG JagerGauss either. Can we finally put that silly argument about the K2s supposed advantage to bed now?

[Joseph Mallan]

Orzorn, on 30 November 2012 - 11:28 AM, said:

Yeah, that's why I said "It should have exploded for a long time now." To reclarify, I was saying "Yeah, its exploded for a long time already, the nerf isn't making it explode because that already happens."


What you just said means the AC/20 is more fragile than the Gauss, due to the nature of rolling for crits.

And it is, both in TT and in current gameplay. Gauss is still better than its competition in that aspect. Besides that, you're STILL misplaced because the current HP implementation still has smaller crit weapons being harder to hit, and thus, being stronger.

The gauss was not more or less fragile than any other weapon of the same number of critical slots by any means of the word in either the TT or the current implementation of MWO. It is dangerous when destroyed, but it was actually easier to destroy its other ballistic brethren in both the TT and the current implementation.

That is why you're wrong for going off on that path of argument.

It was just as easy to destroy cause it was usually the only item in said location (arm) or the largest in the location (statistically prominent). I can play this argument all day. The Gauss was a Glass Hammer for decades. So was an AC20 once crits started flying.

And whats easier to hit an ant or an elephant? Seriously a medium laser in with a Gauss will obviously be less likely to be hit as it takes up less space. Your argument is lacking weight. Small Laser, Medium Laser, GAUSS RIFLE(BOOM!), AC20! Point made in script. The bigger the font the easier to hit.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 30 November 2012 - 12:12 PM.

[Monky]

I support the fragility -and- giving it a fire delay of at least 1 second. Make it make a 'charging' sound that is audible within 90 meters of the mech too.

[MustrumRidcully]

sounds like it will likely end up being an overnerf to me.

Gauss Rifle exploding - quite acceptable, just like ammo explosions are the drawbacks of missiles and auto-cannons, Gauss Rifle explosions is the drawback of the Gauss. It's all fine and dandy with me. And it was actually already supposed to be in already, but didn't work.

Lowering its hit points? First wait what your bugfix is doing to the game. And it's not a rule that comes from lore at all. The Gauss Rifle was as likely to be destroyed by a critical hit as any other weapon or piece of equipment with its crit slots.

Furthermore... the Gauss Rifle is a potent weapon, but giving the current rate of fires of the different ballistics, actually not the best. AC/5, Ultra AC/5 and AC/2 can compete. (Well, the Ultra AC/5 may have competed for 2 hours, then it got hotfixed with a new jam rate that seems to imply that double-shooting it will yield you a lower rate of fire than firing it normally. Awesome. Not.)

The real way to balance the Gauss Rifle is to make its energy competitors - Large Lasers, PPCs, ER Lage Lasers and ER PPCs better. Or if you really believe the Gauss Rifle being "generally available" like LLs, PPCs and so on would make the game be too fast paced, lower the Gauss Rifles rate of fire.

This balance patch will yield one of two likely results:
1) The change turns out to be marginal and practice, and nothing changes.
2) The risk of blowing up your Gauss Rifle is too high and people will explore the alternate options. No need to stay with the Cata anymore if we can have the Quad AC/5 Cataphract, for example.

Oh, and a corollary effect may be that the new Cataphract Hero mech they have announced won't sell like hot cakes, because people are no longer interested in trying a Triple Gauss Rifle build.

Personally, without wanting to insult the Systems Guy of PGI responsible for this move, I think it's a terrible way to balance weapons. Effects like explosiveness or EMP effects should not be primary balancing methods. Focus on the more objective metrics first, get those in line - damage per shot, rate of fire, DPS, heat and ammo cost to run the weapons. Afterwards, you can add the quirks to add some flavor and to balance out slight imbalances. But you haven't gone through the first step of balancing the weapons yet, and if you don't start doing it soon, you will just end up with a bloated weapon system full of quirky weapons that never really feel good or are fun to use and are no longer balanceable.

Compared to other MMOs, Battletech/Mechwarrior weapon mechanics and balancing is simple. Other MMOs have to balance area effects against single target effects, buffs and debuffs, crowd control effects. MW:O has almost nothing of that. And yet the fundamentals are still not done. And without wanting to be the arrogant armchair designer*, a weekend with Excel and your itemstats.xml, and I believe significant improvements could be made to the entire weapon balance, and after one sprint, we'd have new telemetry and feedback that would tell us where we went wrong and give us hints how to refine the balance models.

[Beo Vulf]

Xeven, on 30 November 2012 - 07:59 AM, said:

Making Guass fragile is wrong way to balance it. I agree dual Guass is a bit OP and 3 will be even more Op. Making it fragile/unreliable will essentialy mean people wont equip it. That is a bad way to balance weapons in a game.

Just like your UAC 5 Nurf you made is so it is less fun to use by making it Jam 25% of the time so they are now just shelf items taking up memory on most of our computers. Why not just get rid of them instead?

Making sutff unreliable is a very bad idea for a game. You want people to enjoy the game so they will play it? Your taking away options when you change something to the point people no longer want to equip it.

Find another way to balance Gauss and the UAC's for that matter. YOU WANT PEOPLE to enjoy the features in the game not have them just be pixels on the screen.

You could increase Gauss firing delay or make it run hotter, or when two or more are fired at same time have them malfunction? Perhaps Group firing more than one at a time causes them to collide when fired and turns the round sinto fragments like LBX. I duno but making it so I wont want to equip it is a bad bad thing IMO>

Making it fragile, thus unreliable just means you have game content that wont be used and enjoyed.

Rethink before you ruin your own content and features.

Wow so making something work like cannon for a change is now bad.

[Orzorn]

Joseph Mallan, on 30 November 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

It was just as easy to destroy cause it was usually the only item in said location (arm) or the largest in the location (statistically prominent). I can play this argument all day. The Gauss was a Glass Hammer for decades. So was an AC20 once crits started flying.

And whats easier to hit an ant or an elephant? Seriously a medium laser in with a Gauss will obviously be less likely to be hit as it takes up less space. Your argument is lacking weight. Small Laser, Medium Laser, GAUSS RIFLE(BOOM!), AC20! Point made in script. The bigger the font the easier to hit.

As long as you recognize that the Gauss was actually less fragile than its bigger constituents, that's all I ask.

To point is, to act like the Gauss was fragile in exception to everything else is a fallacy. For one to act as though making the Gauss have less HP than an AC/20 has some TT foundation is malarkey. There was never a TT foundation for the Gauss to be easier to destroy than any larger-crit weapons than itself.

[Starmage21]

Orzorn, on 30 November 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

As long as you recognize that the Gauss was actually less fragile than its bigger constituents, that's all I ask.

To point is, to act like the Gauss was fragile in exception to everything else is a fallacy. For one to act as though making the Gauss have less HP than an AC/20 has some TT foundation is malarkey. There was never a TT foundation for the Gauss to be easier to destroy than any larger-crit weapons than itself.

Thats because any weapon would cease functioning on being crit once. The difference of the gauss rifle is that it would EXPLODE

[Orzorn]

Starmage21, on 30 November 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Thats because any weapon would cease functioning on being crit once. The difference of the gauss rifle is that it would EXPLODE

That doesn't factor into fragility though, which was the question at hand.

Remember that fragility is how easy it is to destroy an object, not what happens after its destroyed.

[Sulf]

I actually run 2 UAC/5s on my cataphract. It's still quite good. Once in a while you get a couple bad jams, but you should be fighting with your team anyway, so you'd be able to pull back and unjam for 3-5 seconds.

Edited by Brickyard, 30 November 2012 - 01:25 PM.

[Starmage21]

Orzorn, on 30 November 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

That doesn't factor into fragility though, which was the question at hand.

Remember that fragility is how easy it is to destroy an object, not what happens after its destroyed.

ok, disregard the exploding for a second:
On the tabletop, ANY weapon would immediately cease functioning after receiving a single crit.

WHY is the tabletop relevant at all? The devs originally stated that it was their intent to stay as close to the table-top as possible.

The fragility of the gauss rifle SHOULD be no more or less than any other weapon aside from the fact that there are a lot more chances to hurt it, because of the number of crits it takes up.
Hitting any one of those 7(?) crit slots that the gauss rifle occupies would mean a 20pt ammo explosion on the tabletop.

[Orzorn]

Starmage21, on 30 November 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

ok, disregard the exploding for a second:
On the tabletop, ANY weapon would immediately cease functioning after receiving a single crit.

WHY is the tabletop relevant at all? The devs originally stated that it was their intent to stay as close to the table-top as possible.

That's what I've been saying! It isn't relevant, and anyone trying to justify the Gauss fragility nerf using the TT is wrong. That's it.

Quote

The fragility of the gauss rifle SHOULD be no more or less than any other weapon aside from the fact that there are a lot more chances to hurt it, because of the number of crits it takes up.
Hitting any one of those 7(?) crit slots that the gauss rifle occupies would mean a 20pt ammo explosion on the tabletop.

Yes.

[Dr Killinger]

I think it's an interesting way to balance it rather than flat out nerfing it. Battle value is a good alternative, though.

The thing with battle value, is when a player is out in the field, and suddenly gets one-shotted by some ungodly boat, knowing a gauss' battle value is going to do nothing to let him know why the mech he bumped into could have killed him ten times over.

And about the UAC5... it's still a great weapon that is a risk to use rashly. You see them everywhere, and a dual UAC5 Cataphract will still core an Atlas in seconds, given the chance.

[Smeghead87]

The simple fact is, what the dev's are trying to do is make weapons behave differently and be useful for different situations without just changing the standard heat/damage/cooldown stats. They are trying something new. Maybe it will work, maybe it will be patched out later, maybe it will be hotfixed at the first available opportunity, they won't know till they get it out there and try it.

You are not playing a released game, you are all beta testers. Remember that.

[Orzorn]

Smeghead87, on 30 November 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

The simple fact is, what the dev's are trying to do is make weapons behave differently and be useful for different situations without just changing the standard heat/damage/cooldown stats. They are trying something new. Maybe it will work, maybe it will be patched out later, maybe it will be hotfixed at the first available opportunity, they won't know till they get it out there and try it.

You are not playing a released game, you are all beta testers. Remember that.

Its nice to theorycraft before a change comes out so that if an issue pops up around the change, you can usually compare it to your previous ideas and then come up with an answer faster.

I have no doubt Gauss will be destroyed much faster after the change, I mean, even a small laser could destroy it in a single 1x crit. However, the largest abuser of Gauss, the Catapult K2? I don't believe this change will impact them in the least.

Edited by Orzorn, 30 November 2012 - 01:40 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Orzorn, on 30 November 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

Its nice to theorycraft before a chance comes out so that if an issue pops up around the change, you can usually compare it to your previous ideas and then come up with an answer faster.

I have no doubt Gauss will be destroyed much faster after the change, I mean, even a small laser could destroy it in a single 1x crit. However, the largest abuser of Gauss, the Catapult K2? I don't believe this change will impact them in the least.

Pretty much.

I doubt it will really matter, though. The Gaussapult has been around so long that the issue of its strengths, weaknesses, counters, and anti-counters have all been thoroughly beaten to death.

It's just not a scary mech any more.

The biggest change, in my opinion, is going to be in Atlas, Centurion, and Hunchback weapon loadouts. The Atlas can no longer afford to run around with fulltime Gauss if it's just going to blow off their side torsos. This should encourage a shift back to the AC/20 and twin AC/5s in the short-range Assault bracket.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 30 November 2012 - 01:31 PM.

[Smeghead87]

Orzorn, on 30 November 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

I have no doubt Gauss will be destroyed much faster after the change, I mean, even a small laser could destroy it in a single 1x crit. However, the largest abuser of Gauss, the Catapult K2? I don't believe this change will impact them in the least.

If I understand how ammo explosions work (and therefore gauss rifle explosions) unless you have a case equipped in the affected area, the explosion deals damage to areas around it. This means an ammo explosion in the left arm hits the left torso as well, and an ammo explosion in the left torso hits the centre torso.

So with gausspults having a gauss each side of their engine, as long as you are hitting centre of mass and not arms or legs, they should go down a bit quicker. Its basically like having an XL engine in. Any torso hit could be fatal.

Unless I'm misunderstanding how ammo explosions work, in which case I'll shut up.

Do gausspults use XL engines anyway? I've never piloted one.