647 replies to this topic

[BlueSanta]

Monky, on 15 March 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

From what i've seen in live, non registering affects pretty much all weapons. lasers seem to be far deadlier chainfired compared to group fired (at least, more than 2 lasers need to be chained to get the actual damage). It's like the server isn't capable of parsing that many functions in that short an amount of time and making it add up right. The same might be occuring on any given weapon hit and it might just be lost somewhere due to a completely different bug.

I look 6 PPCs to my CT/head tonight from a Stalker and it didn't register (in a K2, no less). I saw the blast hit me and heard the sound, but not a scratch appeared. I wasn't moving laterally, just peaking over the ridge in Frozen City Night. The most ridiculous example I have to date.

[Aym]

Very good job OP! Bad internal testing small rodents at PGI. Also, WTF with the design that it did 2.5 damage to ALL components hit? What? How, can you POSSIBLY think that was a good design at any point for SRM/SSRMs? 2.5 damage TOTAL to all components hit was what most people would think of as a starting point for tuning it down further, sheesh.

[WardenWolf]

Haitchpeasauce, on 15 March 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

The oddest thing about MWO and BT is that something the size of an Atlas that weighs 100 tons will probably float on water.

I suppose that's why they're called boats!

You are right, they would float! For underwater work they would have weights attached (its canon).

[pesco]

AHAHAHAHA, and no-one thought that if you want a missile to do 2.5 damage and you want it spread out, you'd divide up those 2.5 damage instead of adding some more everywhere? What could possibly go wrong, right? Right. mD

Edited by pesco, 16 March 2013 - 08:18 AM.

[Nightcrept]

This is going to amount to the largest in game nerf any weapon system has ever had in the history of this game. Even more devastating then ECM was to lrms.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

pesco, on 16 March 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

AHAHAHAHA, and no-one thought that if you want a missile to do 2.5 damage and you want it spread out, you'd divide up those 2.5 damage instead of adding some more everywhere? What could possibly go wrong, right? Right. mD

This is how it should work and how it worked in CB and some time in OB untill any patch broke it...
Will you remove Rocket Launcher spread dmg from QuakeLive?
Or splash dmg of Archon in Starcraft?
No.
They should just adjust to be it actual splash what means divide that dmg between parts but no add dmg...

Edited by JudgeDeathCZ, 16 March 2013 - 05:08 PM.

[Joachim Viltry]

Shumabot, on 15 March 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

Just a reminder that the modern earth military would annihilate the clans. Battletech technology is awful.

Actually I recall someone ran the numbers, and determined that the protective qualities of battletech armor outstrip everything we have by enormous margins (protection per ton). Also some interesting data was brought up about various soarcebooks info that clarifies the 'tech issues'... since Tactical Ops introduced 'primitive' weapons and armor systems that are suspiciously close in stated weights and capabilities to current weapons systems, and stats them it provides a nifty metric.

"Range
1: Total Warfare Mentions that the "relatively low" ranges are due to game play purposes, and not truly indicative of the universe (even then they still like to use them in fluff...).
2: Tactical ops introduces the Line of sight rules which allows many weapons to have ranges out to the units line of sight (which on a flat plain would be roughly out to the horizon or some 15km distant)
3: Tactical ops also introduces "Rifle" cannons, primitive weapons introduced and developed in the centuries before the autocannon was introduced in 2250, and is smiler to weapons we would use today (the "light rifle cannon" even has a smiler weight to current tank guns). One can use these weapons in-game range to get an idea of how much the ranges have been reduced for game play (basically, by roughly a factor of six to 14, depending on which B-tech weapon you use and the what real life range you use (i.e. three to five kilometers is typical for real life tanks))."


http://forum.mechliv...ic,10125.0.html

[Sable Dove]

Just remove splash damage. Anything that splashes that much isn't going to deal any significant damage.

[NocturnalBeast]

Streaks really only work well if you have them on an ECM equipped mech, or are on a team with more than one ECM mech, otherwise you will get to fire and hit more often with standard SRM2s.

[Wintersdark]

Teralitha, on 15 March 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

Hard as it may be, it must be done to save the game from losing even more players. Like a bandaid... just rip it off. Itll feel better after its over...

No thanks. You don't rip it off.

Imagine if they pushed it into this Tuesday's patch. It's the weekend now, they're not at the office. So, they cram the change into Tuesday's patch Monday morning, but inadvertently break it. They don't know, because they don't have time to test.

The patch rolls out to us, and the game is entirely broken. Not unbalanced, but non-functional. They're down for a good chunk of the day rolling the patch back, and we lose everything in it.

Or, potentially worse. It has some horrendous bug introduced - missiles suddenly do no damage under some circumstances, or too much, or whatever else.

Any number of things can go wrong. A single day to test isn't enough time to be sure it's safe for production.

No, I'd FAR rather they leave things as they are (and have been) since Open Beta started, and include it in the next patch so they've got plenty of time to be sure it's not game destroying. Things aren't utterly broken now, anyways - we'll just live with the status quo a bit longer.

[Ryvucz]

After the in-depth and well put together original post, all that remains...

I hate streaks.

[Wintersdark]

Shumabot, on 15 March 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

Given the obvious lack of forsight and the sheer fact that this has been occuring for many months and no one at PGI noticed until the userbase told them it was happening (despite anecdotal evidence that SRMs were wildly overpowered) I think that burger flipping analogy might still stand.

This plainly shows that they do no metric tracking what so ever for balance. That fact is horrifying. It means that they fundamentally don't care about this games balance enough even track if their own mechanics are functioning.

Or, that they DO track metrics, but perhaps they weren't looking in the right place? Or perhaps their tool for tracking was bugged?

There's any number of ways that could have been missed. People have complained about missiles forever, and they've been tweaked all over the place, so it's easy to fail to notice something small like that (particularly when it's impact is kind of random).

God knows, I long thought SRM's were fairly overpowered - and I suspect PGI did too - but didn't know precisely why. I just thought their damage was too high, but clearly that wasn't the case. Well, it kind of was, but not because of the per-hit damage.

[Amaris the Usurper]

Remember that the nominal 2.5 damage/missile that we see for SRMs is just a parameter that feeds into the splash damage calculation, which, after tuning, is now producing 3-ish damage per missile on average (if the stats are to be believed) for Streaks. But we have seen that the damage per missile is being produced in a bizarre way--it is often much less or much greater than average, depending on circumstances that are difficult for the player to control or even understand.

Now that we are switching to a different mechanic--each missile dealing its indicated damage to the location it strikes--the damage numbers may need to be adjusted upward (or downward, for all I know) to ensure that SRMs remain viable, and this would require many hours of testing.

In other words, there may be a reason it needs to take two weeks.

Edited by Amaris the Usurper, 16 March 2013 - 10:30 PM.

[Rat of the Legion Vega]

The fact that both Streaks and SRMs are totally, irrevocably broken beyond belief in terms of the amount of damage they do compared to their size and weight isn't some new finding: it's a no-brainer fact of life for ANYONE who has played the game for the last 6 months. I and many others been screaming about Streaks since September and they only now "discover" this issue.

Just look at the dominant cheese mechs in every single weight class: Raven 3L (Streaks); Centurion A (SRMs); Catapult A (SRMs/Streaks); Atlas and Stalker (SRMS/Streaks).

Every one of those mechs is powerful because it has exploited the short range missile imbalance. It's not rocket science for PGI to have done a bit of digging to find out WHY those builds are used the most. Instead some player on the forum has to do their work for them, as usual.

It's frankly shameful that this issue has even been allowed to persist this long in game development without getting fixed. Especially since they show they have a debug which could have identified this months and months ago.

Players could feel this imbalance without any kind of debug, and some have been exploiting it beyond belief. My personal most hated mech at the moment is the Cent A, even more than the Splatcat - there's a particular premade Kurita group that always runs 3-4 Centurion A light hunters and they just ruin Conquest mode for everyone else any time they're on.

Just as shamefully, a whole gang of players (especially during the Streak cat reign of terror) have defended streak missiles as being "balanced" on this forum. I feel like going back through those old Streak Cat threads and writing down names to add to my personal ignore list from here on out when it comes to game balance. A lot of people just have no clue because they haven't played the game enough, or they're cheese mech abusers with a private agenda to make sure things stay broken.

Get rid of splash damage and never bring it back. It's bloody stupid game design with the way the armor system works.

P.S. This is the first long winded rant I've posted in quite a while - but the Streak/SRM issue has been a personal bugbear of mine for a LONG time. Instead of feeling vindicated I just kind of feel disgusted with PGI.
.

Edited by Rat of the Legion Vega, 17 March 2013 - 04:55 AM.

[Chemie]

Paul Inouye, on 15 March 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

Just an update. We will be removing splash damage until further tuning can be done that takes into account the new Mechs and their respective hit boxes. The splash damage will be removed in the April 2nd patch.

but won't this break balance? I mean, you balanced the game based on this, right? So now lasers will rule until your fix this...you know that, right?

[Tolkien]

I've piloted the Craven 3L pretty much since ECM came in to try to highlight the broken *** combo of ECM+streaks. When I did pilot my atlas DDC, the triple SRM6 was the real punch, not the AC20.

Thanks to the OP, we are now seeing exactly why these imbalances we've all felt for months are the way they are.

Kudos.

To the devs, while this is a glaring issue, do listen to those cautioning you about pulling splash damage over night without rebalancing weapons. These jarring "game changers" are not a way to build confidence in those who are already in. Frankly it makes it look like you don't have a clue what you're doing.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

ok they will remove splash...and we will w8 for right implementation like we are w8ing for collisions?
Or for netcode fixes?
It will a be a looooooong w8ing .

[Wintersdark]

Chemie, on 17 March 2013 - 04:59 AM, said:

but won't this break balance? I mean, you balanced the game based on this, right? So now lasers will rule until your fix this...you know that, right?

It wasn't balanced. SRM's were clearly superior to lasers previously.


With this nerf, an SRM6 is still going to do 15 damage, compared to the heavier Large Lasers' 9.

Previously, a mechs Brawling strength was determined entirely by how many SRM6's it could mount. That'll still be a factor but not so important.

JudgeDeathCZ, on 17 March 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

ok they will remove splash...and we will w8 for right implementation like we are w8ing for collisions?
Or for netcode fixes?
It will a be a looooooong w8ing .

meh, who cares? Personally I'm happier without splash damage. Makes them essentially armor piercing warheads, which is quite reasonable.

[Zyllos]

I am still not sure why splash was even introduced in the first place, unless that was PGI's way to balance them with lasers (DoT) and ballistics (travel time).

But beyond that, they should only be dealing their damage directly to the location they hit.

Either way...

[TexAce]

Did you guys ninja nerf something yesterday?
I'm piloting a 8R with 4x SRM6, 1LL, 1LPL, 1 ML and since yesterday my SRMs dont do damage at all.

Yesterday 3 full salvos to a spider...nothing....

Today 3 full salvos to a Raven....NOTHING!

And these are just 2 examples...all my damage was done with the lasers.

Crosshair was always red and I'm a pretty good shot with SRMs, since I got like 120.000XP on the 8R with this setup...
Sometimes I get them full on on really slow targets like stalkers and it doesnt even register it.
Something is really borked right now.

Another match: Right now, against a raven, 3 salvos...again nothing. I had 83 damage on the scoreboard and considering all my lasers I was shooting too and the 3 full SRM salvos I did spot on this can't be right any way.

Edited by TexAss, 17 March 2013 - 08:39 AM.