43 replies to this topic

[Muffintrumpet]

the higher levels of current play are all but completely dominated by the bursty weapon combinations, rarely does one see a form of sustain weapon featuring strongly; it’s most often Scouts, Infiltrators and Raiders w/ Tech as far as the radar can see
(when not playing on one of the many Skillfire maps that is - but we know Skillfires are already marked for change)
blunty, Hawken has a serious problem with the over-viability of the Burst type weapons
(that comment likely gives away my thoughts on the issue: Sustain doesn’t need buffing, Burst needs reining in a bit)

before one goes about tackling this problem I would advocate that it’s important to establish a broad philosophy on the nature of Burst and Sustain damage types
I’d prefer to see Burst weapons to be found markedly wanting when matched against Sustain weapons when there is no cover being utilized
this could be partly reflected in generally reduced DPS for all Burst weapons; if you can’t peek-a-boo then Burst should be the weaker damage option, not at least an equal as is currently the case with Flak, Mini-Flak, Bolt, EOC, etc

note also that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to land more than ~70% DPS with a Sustain weapon even in optimal conditions and yet landing 90%+ of Burst weapons’ full DPS is attainable with practice and patience
also note that the limited range characteristic attached to some of the mega-burst weapons is no compensation for the weaker Sustain weapon types when one accepts that 80% of all combat happens within optimal Burst range anyway

I don’t have a catch-all solution, I really don’t think that there is such a solution, but I’d start by looking at things like bringing down the DPS on some of the biggest Burst weapon types by reducing ROF

Edited by Muffintrumpet, December 21 2013 - 05:24 AM.

[Greenvalv]

I really don't think Sustain damage types will ever match Burst for one reason... dodge.  It's difficult, especially with A-type opponents, to keep your reticle trained on your target that keeps dodging, jumping, boosting around you whereas with burst you can wait for the pauses between their movements and then slam them.  This game just isn't designed to cater at all to Sustain damage types.

[Super_Pickle]

In every single game with fairly fast movement speed, burst is better than dps. I remember someone complaining on firefall that the huge splash burst weapon had half the dps of the standard sustain mid range weapon, and pretty much everyone agreed that it needed to be like that, and that the huge burst weapon was still going to be the main choice in higher level play.

Burst is simply better in pretty much every case. If you really have problems in huge open areas, pick a burst weapon with good range like the heat cannon and keep your distance. They can't possibly land all their shots at mid range, so you're totally safe to focus your fire and hit them for full damage at range. If they get close enough to start hitting you with a good chunk of dps, then get right up in their face and hover above them. Make it impossible to maintain line of sight. It's hard, but at the higher levels burst is always going to be the weapon of choice. It requires more skill, but has higher rewards, and that's pretty much what the higher skill level is all about.

I've made my prediction before, and I'll stick with it. There is no way to nerf the scout enough while still keeping it the same mech it currently is. Burst plus speed is always going to destroy the majority of other mechs. Health doesn't matter if you aren't getting hit, and the small fuel tank isn't that much of a problem if you play your cards right. The scout will always find a place on high level matches.

Sustain simply can't keep up with burst, even in the best cases.

Edited by Super_Pickle, December 13 2013 - 07:35 AM.

[Preternatural]

Burst every time.

Between fast dodge speed and sufficient cover, there is no room for sustain weapons in this game. Burst will win against sustained fire in 99% of cases.

[Sylhiri]

The funny thing about primary burst weapons is that the mechs they come on have secondary burst weapons as well.

[draco7891]

 Super_Pickle, on December 13 2013 - 07:34 AM, said:

There is no way to nerf the scout enough while still keeping it the same mech it currently is.

Sure there is: exchange the base heatsink values of the Scout (91%) with that of the Brawler (101%). They have identical weapon selection, so the comparison to how they will play is easy. Most everyone can tell you that the Brawler right now is an extremely hot mech that can't deal very well with more than 1 full-health opponent at a time without overheating.

Balance the Scout by working around this philosophy (and also fix a great deal of the Brawlers issues at a stroke). The Scout is extremely fast and nimble, but can't sustain a fight for long and requires the user to carefully consider his shots (and make them count) while always having an exit plan available. The Brawler then would be a juggernaut with significant weapon staying power and a big hitpoint pool, but little ability to chase and easily outmaneuvered or flanked.

Scout's issues are not just speed + Burst. They're really more like speed + Burst + low heat + silly internals.

---

The best way to go about redressing the burst/sustain dichotomy as earlier suggested (and previously in myriad other threads)  is to reduce the ROF on burst weapons. One of the biggest issues is that Hawken's burst weapons right now have analogous DPS to their sustain counterparts, which coupled with their mechanics and the games movement philosophy makes them the default choice. There's no reason the Flak should be doing 105 DPS, or the uncharged HEAT 94 DPS, or the charged Bolt at 126 DPS (compared to the AR at 86 or Vulcan at 114 or even arguably MiniFlak at 115). This level of overlap lets burst mechs work in both realms at the same time, either corner-hugging or standing toe-to-toe, while sustain mechs only get the latter.

Give burst weapons an exploitable weakness like a slower ROF, and sustain weapons will come into their own.

Draco

[Sylhiri]

Reducing the RoF does nothing to burst weapons as the main style of play using burst weapons revolves around cover. The only thing reducing RoF will do is make burst mechs wait longer before firing, it wouldn't help sustain weapons at all.

Although I do agree burst needs to have minor DPS, it just won't help sustain weapons against burst.

[draco7891]

But ROF affects how fast you can duck out of cover to take a shot, and how long you have to remain in cover to avoid damage while you reload. The current ROF of burst weapons is so short that burst mechs can essentially duck in/out on their cooldowns and suffer little if any reduction in DPS while staying in cover. Reducing the ROF means not just fewer shots, but more time in cover, which sustain mechs can use for positioning and flanking.

Draco

[Sylhiri]

 draco7891, on December 13 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

But ROF affects how fast you can duck out of cover to take a shot, and how long you have to remain in cover to avoid damage while you reload. The current ROF of burst weapons is so short that burst mechs can essentially duck in/out on their cooldowns and suffer little if any reduction in DPS while staying in cover. Reducing the ROF means not just fewer shots, but more time in cover, which sustain mechs can use for positioning and flanking.

Any positioning and flanking still won't help sustain weapons as burst mechs can also re-position themselves, fancy thing Radar and sound is, if you've seen burst vs burst it's very much possible. Keeping themselves in cover is the point, sustain will usually take full burst damage while sustain weapons need to leave themselves vulnerable to deal their damage.

You would need to make the RoF on burst weapons very low to make it even with sustain weapons. That's not fun for anyone using said weapons and in a competitive environment including objective based modes, it would be better to use sustained over burst at that point. Hell, that would almost be like watching someone circle around cover waiting for their secondary to run off CD.

Edited by Sylhiri, December 13 2013 - 04:15 PM.

[Super_Pickle]

 Preternatural, on December 13 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

Burst every time.

Between fast dodge speed and sufficient cover, there is no room for sustain weapons in this game. Burst will win against sustained fire in 99% of cases.

I don't fully agree with this statement. Sustain doesn't always loose. However, it is at a substantial disadvantage, and that does need to change. The sad thing is, it's never going to change.

 Sylhiri, on December 13 2013 - 10:16 AM, said:

The funny thing about primary burst weapons is that the mechs they come on have secondary burst weapons as well.

Just a thought, but count how many secondaries have sustain damage_ Secondaries have always been long reloading hard hitting weapons. The only exceptions are the predator and the tech, and both of those mechs are not normal. All the other mechs have large burst weapons on their right arms.

 draco7891, on December 13 2013 - 10:51 AM, said:

Sure there is: exchange the base heatsink values of the Scout (91%) with that of the Brawler (101%). They have identical weapon selection, so the comparison to how they will play is easy. Most everyone can tell you that the Brawler right now is an extremely hot mech that can't deal very well with more than 1 full-health opponent at a time without overheating.

Balance the Scout by working around this philosophy (and also fix a great deal of the Brawlers issues at a stroke). The Scout is extremely fast and nimble, but can't sustain a fight for long and requires the user to carefully consider his shots (and make them count) while always having an exit plan available. The Brawler then would be a juggernaut with significant weapon staying power and a big hitpoint pool, but little ability to chase and easily outmaneuvered or flanked.

Scout's issues are not just speed + Burst. They're really more like speed + Burst + low heat + silly internals.

This funny thing is, I prefer the heat cannon, and I can deal with flak scouts just as well as I can in my raider. And man does the heat cannon generate a ton of heat. Increasing the heat gen isn't going to change the scout much. I mean, I can't remember the last time I overheated with the scout. I'm never in a position where I need to spam my weapons and push overheating limits, and if I do, staying out of damage for 6 seconds isn't very hard, since I'm used to staying behind cover for 4 seconds with the raider. Heat gen isn't going to change anything. I already deal with huge heat problems and I use the scout just fine. Next objection please.

Also, check the stats of the heat cannon. Will adding more heat change much_ It's already stupid fast at overheating. Adding more heat to the scout will probably result in a heat reduction for the heat cannon, making it slightly better than it was.

 draco7891, on December 13 2013 - 10:51 AM, said:

The best way to go about redressing the burst/sustain dichotomy as earlier suggested (and previously in myriad other threads)  is to reduce the ROF on burst weapons. One of the biggest issues is that Hawken's burst weapons right now have analogous DPS to their sustain counterparts, which coupled with their mechanics and the games movement philosophy makes them the default choice. There's no reason the Flak should be doing 105 DPS, or the uncharged HEAT 94 DPS, or the charged Bolt at 126 DPS (compared to the AR at 86 or Vulcan at 114 or even arguably MiniFlak at 115). This level of overlap lets burst mechs work in both realms at the same time, either corner-hugging or standing toe-to-toe, while sustain mechs only get the latter.

Give burst weapons an exploitable weakness like a slower ROF, and sustain weapons will come into their own.

Lets play the reload limbo game. How slow can you go_ I mainly play raider, and I work just fine with the stupidly huge 4 second cooldown on the secondary. That's my main punch weapon, and I am able to stick behind cover long enough to reload the weapon reliably. At four seconds, there's not much slower you can go. The latest patch changed the overheating cool down to 6-7 seconds because longer than that was just plain stupid, so lets say that four seconds is the max. Imagine the flak with a four second reload. Will that break the crazy awesomeness of burst_ Lets look at it logically. If the flak had its damage cut in half, it would do about 50 dps. That's literally lower than every other primary weapon in the game, comparable with secondary weapon dps. With a four second reload, that means that the flak would do 200 damage on a direct hit. Would that make the flak less powerful_ I think it would make it so broken that it wasn't even funny. Who cares about a four second reload when you're doing 200 damage_ Scouts would boost through areas hitting stuff with flak+tow and boost out. Deflectors plus fuel converters plus armor tuning means the scout will most likely survive most damage it will take if it plays smart. Hitting stuff for near 400 damage is enough to kill any A class if it is slightly damaged, and two shots will kill any B class. Reducing the rate of fire isn't going to help. It will make the problem worse, even with a huge stupidly large cut in overall dps. Even a simple slash of the rate of fire down to 1.5 seconds to reload isn't going to kill the flak.

If there's enough cover to keep from getting hit, burst weapons will always win out, even with a stupidly long cooldown, because sustain weapons simply can't do any damage when the enemy mech is behind cover. Even if you only manage to hide behind cover 30% of the time, once you factor in missed shots from a sustain weapon, the dps is looking really bad.

 draco7891, on December 13 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

But ROF affects how fast you can duck out of cover to take a shot, and how long you have to remain in cover to avoid damage while you reload. The current ROF of burst weapons is so short that burst mechs can essentially duck in/out on their cooldowns and suffer little if any reduction in DPS while staying in cover. Reducing the ROF means not just fewer shots, but more time in cover, which sustain mechs can use for positioning and flanking.

What kind of flanking happens around a large square wall in four seconds_ Nothing that will put the sustain weapon at any sort of advantage. Plus, trying to flank a scout is kinda silly. It's never going to give a large advantage.

[HugeGuts]

If burst damage is king because of corner peeking, then the solution is simple - Remove dodging. Hawken isn't a skill shooter anyway. Between the turn rate cap, uneven turn rate cap, uneven hit boxes, uneven movement options, dodge cool down, limited dodging, locked weapon selection, and map design, Hawken is physically incapable of being a skill shooter.

Edited by HugeGuts, December 13 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[Angels]

Sustained fire is only good in open areas suchs as baazar, partially in frontline and eco.. Effective range is mostly in mid where most burst weapons fall off is starting to hurt.
Burst is the cqc king, dont engage against burst mechs in cqc unless you are a vanguard or perhaps assault/crt.
When using burst you can't use it as a burst weapon. If they do peekabo on you, when you suspect them to pop up, fire before so they walk in your burst fire and do not ever let the burst get away, if they do... be very careful or they can burst kill you when you chase them around corners.

As for how to improve this:
As I see it.. I don't see any solution but to:
A: remove or severly nerf burst (which I would not suggest)
B: somehow give burst fuel or severe heat punishments (perhaps after using a burst wep, for 1.5 second after firing burst weapon, fuel consumption is increased by XX% or X wep increases dash fuel consumption by ...%) since walk out->burst->dash to safety is what kills sustained fire.
C: the common knowledge: buff sustained fire damage and accuracy.

[Muffintrumpet]

reducing the ROF on corner-hugging Burst weapons does almost nothing to their corner-hugging capacity but does hand the open ground back to the Sustain weapon choices, which is necessary because presently the high Burst weapons are undeniably at least as good, often better, than Sustain in all areas of play that matter
it should be that case that the Flak Scout needs its speed to move from cover to cover and thusly avoid being caught out in the open by a Sustain-type mech, not as it is now whereby if a Flak Scout gets caught out in the open by just such a mech the Scout is still facing at equal, often better, odds
put that same Sustain-type mech in a corner-hugging situation against the Scout and the outcome is rarely a surprise
Sustain-type mechs have almost nowhere that they can call ideal operating terrain in this game and that is mostly, but not entirely, owing to the extremely high DPS that most Burst weapons have here

map design will also play a large part in how these weapons work but having ‘burst map A’ and ‘sustain map B’ is not the way to do that
(Wreckage could not be more ‘burst map A’, for example)

reduce high Burst ROF
_don’t_ buff Sustain damage

Edited by Muffintrumpet, December 16 2013 - 05:25 AM.

[Aptest]

right now, the balance between sustained DPS weapons and intermittent burst (1-2 shots per second) weapons is heavily weighed in favor of burst weapons.

This is not a question of skill: it is a question of the raw numbers not sufficiently high on sustained damage weapons to compensate the user for the higher risk and less options involving using sustained damage weapons.

For a sustained damage weapon to be equivalent in power to an intermittent burst weapon, it needs to have a DPS number of approx 150% of the equiv weapon. This means the SMG needs to out-DPS the flak and miniflak by 50%. The vulcan needs to out-DPS it's equivalent by a full 100% to compensate for it's activation time.

explanation:

When you have a weapon that fires in intermittent bursts, you:
1. spend more time in cover and therefore take less damage.
2. need less time with target in reticle and therefore
2.1 lose less of your own damage to yourself dodging
2.2 have more movement options and lose less damage from using movement options (I.E. foreward boositng between shots)
2.3 are less affected by your opponent dodging since you don't lose a lot of damage in the timespan where you are re-training your weapon on your target after a dodge.

Because of those issues if the DPS numbers on an intermittent burst weapon and a sustained damage weapon are the same, the intermittent burst user (a) takes less damage in the same timespan ( deals more damage in the same timespan.

To compensate for the higher risk of using it, the sustained damage gun needs to have SUBSTANTIALLY more DPS than an equivalent intermittent burst weapon. The LOWER the fire rate of a weapon, the LOWER it's DPS should be.

in numbers:

the DPS of SMG needs to be around 150
the DPS of vulcan needs to be around 200 (vulcan merits a damage buff in addition because of the activation time)
Hawkins and reaper need to be 100-120.

[Sylhiri]

 Aptest, on December 16 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Stuff

Ah, so you want the Alpha Vulcan effect.

[Aptest]

 Sylhiri, on December 16 2013 - 03:43 PM, said:

 Aptest, on December 16 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Stuff

Ah, so you want the Alpha Vulcan effect.

I don't have any problem with the vulcan or SMG cutting down anything that stays in their field of fire. These weapons should feel awesome, whereas now they feel like a poor man's substitute to the flak cannon, or, heaven's forbid, the repeater.

Or, you can say that I have enough confidence in my capacity to quantify the extra "risk" or running sustained damage over intermittent burst weapons to actually post numbers.

To be honest with you I've played a couple of matches today and idk if it's lag shield or problem with hit registration dut to high ping or whatever, but I've been using the smg and assault rifle and i didn't feel they were doing anything useful.

So maybe its that. Or maybe these guns needs some extra oomph in them.

Edited by Aptest, December 16 2013 - 04:03 PM.

[Xacius]

 Aptest, on December 16 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

To compensate for the higher risk of using it, the sustained damage gun needs to have SUBSTANTIALLY more DPS than an equivalent intermittent burst weapon. The LOWER the fire rate of a weapon, the LOWER it's DPS should be.

in numbers:

the DPS of SMG needs to be around 150
the DPS of vulcan needs to be around 200 (vulcan merits a damage buff in addition because of the activation time)
Hawkins and reaper need to be 100-120.

While I agree with your analysis about the burst vs. sustained, I disagree with your solutions.  

The answer is not to buff sustained damage.  Instead, burst DPS needs to be reduced, thereby increasing the viability of sustained fire weapons.  If burst ROF is reduced, but the damage is untouched, it could effectively be brought in line with sustained.  

Could some sustained fire weapons still use a buff or rework_  Sure.  But if you buff sustained to deal 200 dps, TTK will drop and the game will feel like COD/Halo.  We ran into this problem in the first HAB, where sustained fire weapons had a dps bug (imagine an AR dealing as much damage as the current Vulcan with pin-point accuracy).  It was bad.  

Honestly, I think that burst needs to be toned down significantly.  It's been out of line for way too long.  In conjunction with this, buff the speeds of the game so that burst is still viable against sustained (making peekaboo more accessible).

Edited by Xacius, December 16 2013 - 08:07 PM.

[Sylhiri]

I still don't agree with the thought that reducing RoF of burst weapons will bring it in line of sustain weapons. While I agree that some burst weapons need a RoF nerf, nerfing all burst weapons RoF down to the point where it is in line with sustain would not solve the problem. The biggest factor in a burst vs sustain fight is cover, a solution is going to be more complex then a RoF nerf.

[Krellus]

burst should fear sustained in the open, which currently isnt the case. nerf burst across the board a little, see how that goes. maps like wreckage (all cc) arent helping either.

[Aptest]

 Xacius, on December 16 2013 - 08:06 PM, said:

Honestly, I think that burst needs to be toned down significantly.  It's been out of line for way too long.  In conjunction with this, buff the speeds of the game so that burst is still viable against sustained (making peekaboo more accessible).

1. Here is why I think damage numbers should overall go UP rather than down:

I was playing yesterday and shooting my main weapon fealt completely unsatisfactory. I felt like I was not dealing any kind of noticeable damage at all.

this can result from lag shield (how much is that a factor in this game_), poor aim on my part (a problem), bullet registration issues with high ping players (again, how much is this a problem_) or main guns - specificallly SMG, AR, vulcan - not doing enough.

The numbers I am suggesting are very far from bringing TTK down to cod levels. COD has a TTK of < 1 sec. what im talking about is bringing TT to around 3-5 seconds on the B mechs, 2-3 seconds on the A mechs and 5-7 seconds on C classes.