148 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

... Live, Who are you calling a Welp?

[NRP]

I can't help but feel ECM has become a crutch for whiners to lean upon. I can see how it's problematic for people who use lock on missiles, but other than that I really don't get all the angst. In fact, with all the LRM spam going on now, it could be argued that ECM doesn't do enough.

[Vrekgar]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 12 March 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

Many, LRM noobs really hate ECM eh?

What if they normalized ECM and put LRMs back to 1 dmg where they belong. I bet that wouldn't make you guys happy either.

The only thing that will make LRM noobs happy is making LRMs OP so that they can still be bad at the game and ******* faces like the better players currently do.

Good player = Make whatever mechanics in the game work.
Bad player = Complain about how the mechanics are broken.

Technically they Doubled armor values. LRM's are the closest to true damage in this game. Theres just the problem where they dont match up at ALL to how they work on TT. They are currently working like Long range Streaks with a funky flight arc.

This is due probably to the fact that they are making a game for real time play as opposed to turn based play.

[Sears]

Judging by the ECM announcement, or announcement of an announcement in the command chair looks like ECM in it's current form is unlikely to stay that way.

I still think streaks need to change as well as ECM.

[Noobzorz]

Command chair is promised for ECM.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Vrekgar, on 12 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

Technically they Doubled armor values. LRM's are the closest to true damage in this game. Theres just the problem where they dont match up at ALL to how they work on TT. They are currently working like Long range Streaks with a funky flight arc.

This is due probably to the fact that they are making a game for real time play as opposed to turn based play.

They increased the ROF of all the weapons too. LRMs got the ROF boost and a massive damage boost and are by far do the most damage per ton in the game.

There is nothing wrong with not following TT values as this is not a turn based game.

[topgun505]

Indeed. I used to be all about the 8-man competitive play. Now? I'm mostly sticking to 4-man's or just pugging. You can only play so many games and see the same D-DC, Splatcat, 3D poptarts, and 3L builds before it just gets tiresome. It doesn't matter if you have 5000 mechs available if only 5 specific build are good enough for competitive play. No variety = boring = a dead game (eventually). I do have hope the tweaks to ECM will help, but we'll see. My main fear is, if they take this long to fix balance issues like this then what will it be like when clan tech is brought in? Potential nightmare

Yoseful Mallad, on 12 March 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

My game play has dropped off a lot the past month or so. In fact most of my unit is now playing other online game as most of them have gotten board with this game and or disgusted with all the easy button cheese builds and how competitive play means everyone HAS to run the cheese builds to compete. If that's competitive play, I understand why most stay away from it lol.

[Tie Ma]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 12 March 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

Good player = Make whatever mechanics in the game work.
Bad player = Complain about how the mechanics are broken.

I think we have seen from the tornmaents that:

Good Player = Knows what mechanic is OP. Makes whatever mechanics work in the game by abusing it.
Bad Player = has no clue what mechanic is good/bad. has never been on both sides of the fence on the mechanic. and denys that it is OP.

[Noobzorz]

Sayyid, on 12 March 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Who taught you to write?

I underlined every issue in that ONE post. I thought the Queen had a better education system than that.

Should someone tell him?

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Noobzorz, on 12 March 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

Command chair is promised for ECM.

It's all because of Livewyr i'm sure.

[Lyrik]

Another paperwarrior with too much time

Go home with your "balance".
a)PGI wants ECM into the game, so they lowered the costs.
b)of course ECM is a must have in the mechs use it. It's their sole purpose.

If imbeciles like you would work at Blizzard then StarCraft would have been another Command&Conquer clone.

[Eric darkstar Marr]

Look ECM can be countered if you are not prepared it is not the ECM pilot for carrying the equipment nor is it you teams fault for not have PPC, TAG, ECM.


If you feel so wholeheartedly about ECMs you would make sure you, yourself have a form of counter.

I run a LRM70 TAG STK3F I have for a very very long time now (guess that makes me a hipster [expletive deleted]) with quad MLs for pesky lights to hurt them a little while my team assists in handling them.

I only ever get slaughtered if we sync drop and the other 4 man is against us they hunt me down with extreme prejudice. I mean really ECM is a non- issue with the counters available. Now yes it is over powered for what it is but a smart person/team will always be prepared.

Also I still love those Atlai pilots that are just roaming in the open because they have there L33T huehuehue ECM bubble and then BOOM dead D-DC 2 full salvos at 500m tagged they drop fast. Lights can out run about half of the missiles if not more. Basically it comes down to smart play and having LoS and team work.

[Joe Mallad]

Agent of Change, on 12 March 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

This is as good a place as any to repeat this. I too have been on both sides of the ecm debate but for me it one thing make the problem crystal clear, it's a problem of choice.

Take ECM as an entity, think about what it provides right now. Think about (honestly) if you took an ECM capable mech is there any reason not to take ECM as a reasonable person. If you saw a teammate with an ECM capable mech and they hadn't mounted ECM what would you think of them? If ECM was available on every chassis is there a reason not to put it on every mech. Given the advantages ECm provides and it's complete and utter lack of downside it becomes a no brainer a non-choice, a given. THAT right there is the epitome of **** poor design when it comes to a "customizeable" game, "you can build any mech you want as long as it looks like this if you want to win."

For any kind of balance especially asymetrical balance there has to be a compelling reason to both take something and to NOT take it. Other wise there is no choice regardless of the reason and it is not balanced to the things around it.

There are many other reasons ECM has issues but the big one is that there is no reason not to take because of how much it provides.

heres an idea. What if when ECM is in Disrupt mode, it needs to draw on most of you're mech's power to be able to disrupt as much as it does , that means in Disrupt mode... You have next to no weapon functionality yourself? If you want to Disrupt everyone else, you can not use your weapon systems because power needed for your weapons is being used to run Disrupt mode. Now when you go into counter mode to counter another ECM, you can then use your weapons but guess what? You are now open to attack from other weapons because your Disrupt bubble is down.

And while in Disrupt mode, you can still spot for your team, sneak around under your cloak bubble and run for base caps, sneak up on the enemy. But if you want to use your weapons, you have to switch to Counter mode which again... Drops your bubble.

Edited by Yoseful Mallad, 12 March 2013 - 06:23 AM.

[Sifright]

Noobzorz, on 12 March 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

Should someone tell him?

Hahaha, I didn't even consider that part of his post. Too funny.

[Vrekgar]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 12 March 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

They increased the ROF of all the weapons too. LRMs got the ROF boost and a massive damage boost and are by far do the most damage per ton in the game.

There is nothing wrong with not following TT values as this is not a turn based game.

True.

[Sifright]

Eric darkstar Marr, on 12 March 2013 - 06:14 AM, said:

Look ECM can be countered if you are not prepared it is not the ECM pilot for carrying the equipment nor is it you teams fault for not have PPC, TAG, ECM.


If you feel so wholeheartedly about ECMs you would make sure you, yourself have a form of counter.

I run a LRM70 TAG STK3F I have for a very very long time now (guess that makes me a hipster [expletive deleted]) with quad MLs for pesky lights to hurt them a little while my team assists in handling them.

I only ever get slaughtered if we sync drop and the other 4 man is against us they hunt me down with extreme prejudice. I mean really ECM is a non- issue with the counters available. Now yes it is over powered for what it is but a smart person/team will always be prepared.

Also I still love those Atlai pilots that are just roaming in the open because they have there L33T huehuehue ECM bubble and then BOOM dead D-DC 2 full salvos at 500m tagged they drop fast. Lights can out run about half of the missiles if not more. Basically it comes down to smart play and having LoS and team work.

I heard the existence of soft counters to a hard counter makes the hard counter not over powered (I loled)

Presumably you would be cool with soft counters for lazers like a laser absorbing smoke screen?

[MrPenguin]

Moriquendi86, on 12 March 2013 - 05:48 AM, said:

Any numbers to back this claim?

No, he doesn't. Why bother asking?

[Arete]

Can't remember who it was, but there was someone who kept statistics for how much impact ECMs per team had on the outcome on a match. It was less than I had anticipated (think it was 55% win rate for the team with more ECMs), so it would need a nerf from a balancing point of view.

The real problem is, as stated so many times, that it's simply too good for it's weight. Period. Compared to any other support item, it's godlike.


I do beleive that balancing will be easier for PGI now that ELO is in though. Games should be balanced based on how the top tier players (preferably teams) play, not on everyone else. And now, PGI can easily get statistics from top tier games and see what equipment and mechs actually dominate in that tier, thereby making it easier to balance. I don't think it's a coincidence that Elo matchmaking came first, then they started looking into ECM for real.

[Yankee77]

Tie Ma, on 12 March 2013 - 05:40 AM, said:

they said it was working as intended because some poeple liked it and some people didn't. but theres ahuge logic hole there.

Most people don't like it and a few people do.

To be fair, even if the split was more even, it would still show that ECM was a problem. Having a game system that irritates half the player base is NOT a good thing. Ideally you'd want a system that pleases everyone.

That said, there is a nice new ECM feedback thread near the top of this forum. Give your feedback.

[Aym]

Add me on B.net, I'll be playing a lot of SC2 now