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[InnerSphereNews]

Upcoming Patch - 18 June 2019 @ 10AM – 1PM PDT

Patch Number: 1.4.211.0

Standalone Client Patch Size: 255 MB

Patch Files (Direct Download):


http://patcher.mwome...ndPatch_364.zip
http://patcher.mwome...ndPatch_365.zip

New 'Mech release: Dervish
You can check out the Countdown post for more details about the Dervish 'Mech as they are released!



Order them in the Store page here!






Bolt-On retrofits have been expanded to the following 'Mech chassis:

• Rifleman IIC
  

Faction Play Improvements

• Players can now change their Faction between matches (no longer restricted between conflict or phase)
  
• A Phase can now potentially have more than one game mode available at a time.
  
• When viewing the Faction Selection screen, players can now see the population balance between both prior to selecting a side.
  
• The beeping sound effect on the launch countdown timer has been removed. (This includes Solaris mode as well)
  
• IS Map Homeworld changes for Clan Diamond Shark, Clan Steel Viper and Clan Nova Cat.
  

• Nyserta is the homeworld of Clan Diamond Shark
  
• New Kent is the homeworld of Clan Steel Viper
  
• Irece is the homeworld of Clan Nova Cat
  

Ballistics:




LBX AC/2 (Both Clan and Inner Sphere)

• Spread Reduced to 0.325 (from 0.35)
  

LBX AC/5 (Both Clan and Inner Sphere)

• Spread Reduced to 0.62 (from 0.65)
  

LBX Design Notes: While the shotgun like properties of LBX will always see it's effectiveness increased at closer ranges, the 2 and 5 class weapons are designed to be the ranged specialists of the LBX line. So while the spread is the intended drawback to a weapon that provides boosted damage to critical components and internal structure, and runs at cooler heat levels by design, we wanted to tighten the spread up a bit to slightly increase the pellet clustering while working at longer ranges for these particular weapon types.




Missile:




ATMs (All launchers.)

• 3 Damage Range Zone reduced to 245 (from 270)
  
• 3 Dmg to 2 Dmg Liner Falloff Zone range reduced to 295 (from 320)
  
• Extended Range missile type bracket damage increased to 1.2 damage per missile (from 1.0)
  

ATM Design Notes: The core intent of the adaptation of the ATM weapon system in MWO is that it is a missile system designed to reward those that learn how to properly zone themselves from a target to maximize the various damage plateaus before the drop-offs. With the potent 3 damage per-missile zone being a "high risk / high reward" zone that rewards players who learn how to get close enough to hit the 3 damage plateau, but far enough that the opponent doesn't duck into your substantial minimum range. While initially challenging to players upon initial release of the weapon, as the years have gone on, players have adapted to using the weapon to a point where we feel the initially released range brackets does not give us the intended "high risk" that coincides with the +50% per missile damage increase reward. So we will be reducing both the "optimal" range that provides the full 3 damage and the falloff range from 3 damage to 2 damage by 25 meters to require a bit more necessity to zone your opponent to get the maximum damage payout. At this time we are fine with the potential 3 damage per missile damage output of these weapons, but we want this to be a reward that is a bit more challenging to get. While also really rewarding those more agile 'Mechs that learn how to zone their targets with the weapon system.



For the range bracket that constitutes the "ER Missile" type from the lore, We are boosting the damage by 20%. Because ATMs in MechWarrior Online are a composite of 3 different physical missile types from the lore, some attributes of the weapon have to be tuned to account for the other 2/3rds of the intended weapon properties. We feel that ATMs intended vulnerability to AMS, overall velocity, and lower arcs of fire, while appropriate for the other 2/3rds of the damage brackets, have left the bracket intended to represent the "ER Missile" weapon type a little short-changed. So we want to provide a bit of a raw damage boost to the weapon to account for the other drawbacks at firing at extreme ranges to give a bit more utility to the final range bracket for the weapon.






'Mech Changes
Banshee:



BNC-3E

• CT Armor Bonus increased to 15 (from 10)
  
• Mobility moderately increased
  

BNC-3M

• CT Armor Bonus increased to 15 (from 10)
  
• Mobility moderately increased
  

BNC-3S

• CT Armor Bonus increased to 25 (from 20)
  

BNC-LM

• CT Armor Bonus increased to 15 (from 10)
  
• Mobility Moderately increased.
  

BNC-SR

• CT Armor Bonus increased to 15 (from 10)
  
• Heat quirk increased to -10% (from -5%)
  
• Mobility moderately increased.
  

Banshee Design notes: Non-3S Banshees are designed to be on the high-end of mobility for a 95 ton 'Mech. At this point, we feel they could use a slight boost in this department as well as a small increase to their CT Armor Bonus to compensate for their fairly large CT hitboxes.




Atlas:



All Variants:

• Moderate increases in Mobility
  

Atlas Design notes: While raw HP points through generous Structure and Armor bonus' are the core pillar of the Altas' flavor, we feel that they could use a slight bit more agility to further define them against the more weapon oriented 100 tonners like the Annihilator and the Fafnir. With the Boars Head, in particular, has among the highest mobility of any 100 ton 'Mech.






Kodiak:



KDK-1:

• Base Torso Yaw Angle increased to 70 (from 60)
  
• Moderate increase in mobility
  

KDK-2

• Base Torso Yaw Angle increased to 70 (from 60)
  
• Moderate increase in mobility
  

KDK-4

• Base Torso Yaw Angle increased to 70 (from 60)
  
• Missile Velocity 10% quirk added.
  
• Missile Spread -10% quirk added.
  
• LRM Sperad -5% quirk added.
  

KDK-5

• Base Torso Yaw Angle increased to 70 (from 60)
  
• Moderate increase in mobility
  

KDK-SB

• Base Torso Yaw Angle increased to 70 (from 60)
  
• Slight increase to most mobility attributes.
  

Kodiak Design notes: While the Kodiak may have been known for its speed in the fiction, the reality is that most players customize away from its 400 engine in order to maximize on its large amount of hardpoints, most with tight clustering, and higher mounts in the case of torso hardpoints. In the past, this has forced our hand at balancing the entirety of the KDK line around its offensive payload potential especially accounting for it's potential to boat large amounts of heatsinks and in the case of some individual variants, store most to the entirety of its payload in tightly clustered high mounted torso locations.



With the change to the heating system in addition to the reduction in frontloaded clan laser damage, certain Kodiak variants have slowly moved away from the central performance curve as the general meta itself has shifted away from high damage burst alpha and more towards sustained DPS. This has allowed us to take a second look at the non-ballistic centered variants and make some adjustments to better the line based on the current state of the game meta and not so much the state it was in when the initial adjustments to the KDK were made.

Read the Quirk Documentation here!

• Creating a group in Faction Play screen no longer uses Quick Play 'Mechs by default.
  
• Fixed multiple bugs related to Unit Rank Management for assignable rank privileges, such as:
  

• No assigned privilege is now necessary to view "last online time" of other players.
  
• 'Assign Ranks' now works properly when given the privilege to do so.
  
• 'Kick Member' privilege becomes removed immediately when the privileged rank is removed from user.
  

• Fixed a bug where double clicking the Drop Deck selection would cause the Drop Deck name to grow in size.
  
• Fixed a bug where the text in the Mission tab on the Conflicts Panel was scrolled to the bottom by default.
  

Patch Files (Direct Download)



To make the patching process easier for players with limited download caps, we'll be providing direct download links for the patch file(s) that comprise this patch. This will allow you to download the patch file(s) elsewhere, for manual injection into the MWO patcher through a Patch Cache folder.
Aside from allowing you to download the patch file(s) elsewhere, on another connection, there are no additional benefits to performing the patch this way; the patching process itself will be the same.
This direct patch download process will only work for players running the standalone client. It does not apply to players running MWO through Steam.



Patch File(s): To be provided on patch day



How to use these patch files
• Download the above file(s)
• For sake of ease we recommend creating a dedicated folder for the patch file(s), such as 'MWO Patch Cache'
• You do not need to unzip or unpack the patch file(s)
• Launch the MWO Portal
• Select the three horizontal lines in the top left of the Portal Window
• Choose the 'Specify Patch File Cache' option
• In the field that appears, paste or enter the location in which you saved the patch file(s) and hit OK
• For example, C:\Users\\Documents\MWO Patch Cache
• Click the blue Patch button
• The launcher will now check the Patch Cache folder you defined. If it locates the required patch files, it will unpack and use those files to apply the patch.
• Once the patch is complete, launch the game

[Domenoth]

InnerSphereNews, on 14 June 2019 - 04:26 PM, said:

Faction Play Improvements

• Players can now change their Faction between matches (no longer restricted between conflict or phase)
  
• A Phase can now potentially have more than one game mode available at a time.
  
• When viewing the Faction Selection screen, players can now see the population balance between both prior to selecting a side.

I applaud all of these changes. I know you didn't want to have to go this far (selecting faction between matches) but it's just the nature of our current FP pop.

[QueenBlade]

Hey Paul, what about that Comp queue that always started up in June?

[Steel Raven]

I see you are still afraid to give the KDK 3 a buff.

[Shanrak]

If you are going to lower optimal by that much how about also lowering the minimum range on ATMs? Let them scale down to 0 like lrms.

Steel Raven, on 14 June 2019 - 04:42 PM, said:

I see you are still afraid to give the KDK 3 a buff.

Seriously. The 3 is so sluggish.

Edited by Shanrak, 14 June 2019 - 04:46 PM.

[QueenBlade]

What are you talking about Shanrak?

LRMs don't scale down to 0. Its either 180-900m for 1 damage or 0-179, 900+m for nothing. There is no scaling.

(edit max range from 1k to 900)

Oh, I got ya. Clan LRMs damage scales from 1 to 0 under 180m. I apologize.

Edited by QueenBlade, 14 June 2019 - 04:50 PM.

[denAirwalkerrr]

Oh look another 2.5 mechs got buffed by 5%. I definetly gonna go and buy SB now after this patch. Thanks Chris!

Like seriously this **** isn't funny anymore. You promissed looking into a lot of things and now you buff some random stuff by mere percents just so we can't yell anymore about nerfs. Well guess what. Game is still as unfun as year ago and you have done absolutely nothing to change that so far. Only remarkable thing was huge pop drop after 3 consecutive LRM buffs after which any adequate employer would at least have some concern about competence of said preson in his job. But naah... Here's *slight* buff to another pieces of crap nobody used/uses/will be using with this patch whatsoever next to other 500-600 mechs.

Edited by denAirwalkerrr, 14 June 2019 - 05:57 PM.

[Tarogato]

Nice changes, Chris. But with the exception of the ATMs, all your changes need to be like... significantly bigger. And vastly more numerous.

Do you even have usage numbers for mechs and weapons in the top 20% of players who vaguely know their way around the game? Month after month, ignoring useless mechs and mediocre weapons that desperately need buffs.

[-Ramrod-]

PGI....you don't get credit for cleaning up your own mess so I'm not going to say "good job!" about the faction play "fixes".

[FRAGTAST1C]

Wait, if you picked, let's say, Marik as a Loyalist, can you change to another IS Faction or go with Clan as a Loyalist for the next match?

[Nightbird]

Only the KDK3 was a problem, and the Spirit Bear needs a lot more agility to brawl. Need pre-engine desync values.

[BROARL]

thankyou for atlas stuff.

[ImperialKnight]

If you ever need to wonder why MWO is failing, this update is a classic example. Take a weapon that already has high skill cap to use properly, and make it worse. Because of what? Were people actually complaining about ATMs?

You take things that are fun, and take the fun away.

Do you know how small the zone for 3 dmg ATM is? It's 120m - 270m, that's a bloody 150m zone. If you're lucky, you get ONE volley before a light or medium or fast heavy underruns you. Have your game designers actually tried to zone people in that bracket in a firefight? And then you reduce it even further?

And what's the point of increasing the LONG range damage? ATMs are NOT supposed to be used at long range, that's the purpose of LRMs. The whole point of ATMs are that they are devastating lockon SRMs with a dead zone penalty. That's the core of the weapon.

The last weapon that received similar treatment that comes to mind were the Clan SPLas nerfs. Was it deadly when you got into optimal range? Yes, absolutely. I ever 1v3 using SPLas at knife fight range and come out alive. But you know what? It was FUN. You literally had to risk everything to get into that knife fight range to be actually useful. But then it was nerfed to near uselessness.

MWO's game designers don't understand their own game and what makes it fun. Good luck digging MWO's grave even deeper.

[cougurt]

ImperialKnight, on 14 June 2019 - 06:56 PM, said:

ATMs

ImperialKnight, on 14 June 2019 - 06:56 PM, said:

high skill cap

xd

[Battlemaster56]

No RFL-IIC fix to it CT, disappointing.

[Renzor the Red]

InnerSphereNews, on 14 June 2019 - 04:26 PM, said:

Upcoming Patch - 18 June 2019 @ 10AM – 1PM PDT

Hey, guys, I want to point out the Save/Load Build bug that gets the game stuck and requires restart. I mentioned it the first time a few weeks ago, sent an email to support about it (I actually caught it on video, too), but haven't seen any responses. I've had to restart the game a handful of times because of it. Details here:

https://mwomercs.com...oad-build-menu/

Anyone else experiencing this? It'd be good to hear back from you about this, PGI.

[General Solo]

Steel Raven, on 14 June 2019 - 04:42 PM, said:

I see you are still afraid to give the KDK 3 a buff.

Nightbird, on 14 June 2019 - 06:50 PM, said:

Only the KDK3 was a problem, and the Spirit Bear needs a lot more agility to brawl. Need pre-engine desync values.

KDK3. Its still a good mech, faster than any IS 100 tonner fielding Quad LBx10 or Quad UAC10's.
Also not many mechs can do Quad Gauss
It has its strengths...Does it need a buff... otherwise Power creep all day long

Now Spirit Bear I can agree with. Buff the masc some at the least IMO, if you dont want a general mobility increase, making it not too ez , higher skill needed etc.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 14 June 2019 - 08:09 PM.

[TechChris]

ImperialKnight, on 14 June 2019 - 06:56 PM, said:

If you ever need to wonder why MWO is failing, this update is a classic example. Take a weapon that already has high skill cap to use properly, and make it worse. Because of what? Were people actually complaining about ATMs?

You take things that are fun, and take the fun away.

Naw......nobody wonders. They spent most of last year year and good part this one intentionally patching the fun out, and pop plummeted accordingly. I mean.....let's be honest, it was pretty obvious last year, and they all but come out and said it this year that MWO is just a waiting room/advertisement for MW5 the game they "really" wanted to make. Just do what most us learned to do a long time ago. Get any preorders ya got left refunded and enjoy what you can of the game for free for it goes under or take a break/quit. It's that simple. We all know nothings gonna change this "ships" heading.

Even says right in the patch notes "While initially challenging to players upon initial release of the weapon, as the years have gone on, players have adapted to using the weapon" which is PGI speak for "We're pretty sure we got our money outta any mechs that'll use this, so we dont care about it anymore. (albeit to be honest I expected this after Whammy IIC came out for cbills, but I'm guessing that thing had such poor sales they've already given up on it) standard issue stuff......."The Cycle" must be adhered too.

ImperialKnight, on 14 June 2019 - 06:56 PM, said:

ATMs

ImperialKnight, on 14 June 2019 - 06:56 PM, said:

high skill cap

cougurt, on 14 June 2019 - 07:06 PM, said:

xd

LOL......agreed. Still Much Higher then Lasers/Gauss/Lotta other stuff/Etc......but not what I'd call "high skill cap".

Edited by TechChris, 14 June 2019 - 11:06 PM.

[G a i s u t o]

Will the FP Leaderboards work again?

[Sereglach]

Well, at least there are some balance changes . . . I'll give you that. Some of the numbers seem so small, though, that it doesn't even seem like it'll make a notable difference. Seriously . . . 0.025 LBX2 and 0.03 LBX5 spread? Isn't that based on optimal range, so a 0.025 LBX2 spread difference at ~800 meters? That seems beyond negligible. However, if the spread is based on the radius from the center of the reticle, then a 0.025 radius actually equates to a 0.05 difference in maximum spread. That's still not a large change by any stretch, but it might actually feel semi-noticeable. Clarification would be appreciated.

The ATM change also feels like needless punishment for players that have actually learned how to make ATMs a competitive and viable choice on the field. They're not outperforming laser vomit or PPFLD by any stretch. You've said it yourself that it's taken years for the players to adapt to the weapon system; and their "best" performance still has the serious drawback of minimum range. Maybe if you said that they were starting to threaten overall game balance in a bad way, then it might be worth looking into.

Also, you know I need to mention it. Chris, you said after LRMs were addressed that Flamers were on the table. When will we be hearing about that, please? Facets of the community are starting to catch on to the level of abuse available to the current weapon system designs and the flaws present.

Here's hoping that balance picks up the pace, because there's still so much work that the game needs and so many things that are still sitting in limbo (jump jets, command console, Flamers, etc.).