30 replies to this topic

[PaintedWolf]

Haitchpeasauce, on 18 March 2013 - 04:23 PM, said:

I have no idea where you get any of your wildly generalising and unfounded statements from.

Sir, I have been tracking discussion about missiles and I've seen no overwhelming sentiment that they wish missiles removed entirely. Rather, many of them are dedicated LRM users and SRM users that support PGI making steps to resolve something they admitted was an unintended result, and these users agree that the damage values are not reasonable or fair.

So what if damage is going to see a nerf. LRMs will continue to play an area denying effect on the game, they will still dish out the pain to the foolish mech in the open. SRM6 will still deal gauss rifle damage on a full hit. I totally support the idea of LRM support fire, and SRM/SSRM blanket damage weaponry, and myself continue to use them, but as it stands the game is NOT balanced around them. A pair of SRM6 should NOT blow all the components off a Commando and kill it. Sure it's satisfying and I've LOL'd when it happened, but given the COM armour that this is not supposed to happen.

Perhaps it's comforting to believe that those who hold a view contrary to yours are inferior, since they are now "elitists", based on the assumption these elitists claim that LRM users rely solely upon their guided weaponry to fight, and would otherwise be unable to hit their target.

What an absurd claim on your part.

Actually I've seen a lot of complaints to the effect that "X Boat doesn't require Skill"---well, isn't being smart enough to use a good design part of being skilled? Isn't Mech Design there for a reason, because creativity is a skill? Or does skill only apply to sniping/circle strafing? It really doesn't matter, Nightcrept's point is legit. Most complaints about LRMs is they "require no skillz", which is kinda ridiculous.

Now if LRMs/SRMs are doing unintended splash damage that is one thing, but a lot of the QQ seems to be over the fact that players think they should be allowed to pigeonhole somebody else's Mech i.e. outlaw SRM Boating, or Laser Boating, or LRM Boating, etc. Always for "the good of the game" of course.

[Haitchpeasauce]

I'm saying that there are no elitists making such a silly claim.

I agree, LRMs require skill - positioning, timing, coordination, and a continual lock in the face of incoming fire.

I'm saying that people who use LRMs also use other weaponry too. It's not as if a person only has a splatcat and an LRM stalker in their stables. If a pilot is even mildly successful they require to use all their weapons and work well with their team.

There are fools and trolls out there, true, but the best supporters of the removal of splash damage are people with balanced views based on evidence and experience with multiple mechs and weapons systems.

So it's just fallacy to say that the people supporting the removal of splash damage are anti-missile elitists who claim that LRMs are entirely zero skill.

This is just a straw man to make the case that this nerf is unjustified and the work of a vocal minority.

[PaintedWolf]

Haitchpeasauce, on 18 March 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

I'm saying that there are no elitists making such a silly claim.

Wait, how do you know that there are "no elitists" anywhere making such a claim? Your last argument that it was a hasty generalization was half-way defensible, but claiming there are none at all is pretty far fetched.

Anyways a lot of the complaints remind me of that Merlin guy from Amish Mafia "Levi treats his community like %^$#! And it's time for me to take over!" "For the Good of the Community!" "When I was born God told me to take over for the Good of the Community!"

Yes, all these complaints, always for the good of the game as a whole, for the "good of the community!", no selfish desires, dishonest claims, exaggerations or short-term thinking present at all.

Edited by PaintedWolf, 18 March 2013 - 04:55 PM.

[aniviron]

In a competitive game, I can see LRMs being worthless. Even in pubs, 50% accuracy with LRMs is very good. They do need a serious rework in terms of damage balance, however. On some mechs, the subsector grouping means the damage is high, but not absurd. On some mechs, it's just dumb. There is no way that you're telling me LRMs are balanced when it takes two 2xLRM15 shots to remove an entire torso and arm and core my CT with damage to spare on the other components in an awesome with maxed armor. Something is going wrong there. Right now it's like we have people shooting rapid-fire Arrow IV, and it's not fun. It's true that LRMs are sometimes easy to dodge, and on River or Frozen City I can make an opponent waste hundreds of missiles. But come Alpine and Caustic, well, if I dropped on a team without ECM (or more commonly, the ECM runs off to get killed alone) then there's really not much I can do about it.

[PaintedWolf]

aniviron, on 18 March 2013 - 04:54 PM, said:

In a competitive game, I can see LRMs being worthless. Even in pubs, 50% accuracy with LRMs is very good. They do need a serious rework in terms of damage balance, however. On some mechs, the subsector grouping means the damage is high, but not absurd. On some mechs, it's just dumb. There is no way that you're telling me LRMs are balanced when it takes two 2xLRM15 shots to remove an entire torso and arm and core my CT with damage to spare on the other components in an awesome with maxed armor. Something is going wrong there. Right now it's like we have people shooting rapid-fire Arrow IV, and it's not fun. It's true that LRMs are sometimes easy to dodge, and on River or Frozen City I can make an opponent waste hundreds of missiles. But come Alpine and Caustic, well, if I dropped on a team without ECM (or more commonly, the ECM runs off to get killed alone) then there's really not much I can do about it.

Have you tried equipping AMS and sticking together as a group?

[El Death Smurf]

PaintedWolf, on 18 March 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

Holy crap you're still going. So we got a list piling up of things you don't like on this game/claims you make. So far we got:

1- Double Armor

2- Weapon Convergence

3- SRMs

4- Heat Mechanics

5- "Ravens are for brawling, not scouting"

In the words of my Capellan Allies, that is some out-of-the-box, blue sky thinking!

Oh yeah and boats and LRMs. Am I missing anything?

I just got my tonsils removed, so i have spent less time playing and more time in bed scanning the forums, and holy crap, you nailed it. in 5-6 points we have all the unsubstantiated complaining being thrown around the forums.
1) removal of x2 armor would make for SHORT games, as well as missles being even more deadly than they are now

2) removal of wepon convergance would, again, put direct fire wepons on par with missles in terms of accuracy, and would make missles, again, the king of the battle field. If i can't aim at my enemy, why try to aim at my enemy? 1and 2 are closely related.

3) SRMs and all their vague and yet specific comlaints. yes that ar edoing to much damage DUE TO SPLASH. we all know this, drop it. once that has been fixed, they will be fixed. enough already!

4) Heat mechanics. i'll admit, things could be more interesting here, but i see people arguing for a more punihsing heat bar AND pleading for true DHS in the same post. WTH? I say, if we dont see mechs shutting down in the heat of battle, this isn't Mechwarrior. Slower movement in all respects of the mech (twist, top speed, etc...) could be cool.

5) Ravens. specifically the 3L. not a brawler? then what are those SRM6 and 2 med Lasers for? even the original electronic doodads make the 3L a 270m or less fighter. the only thing that is long range or scoutish about it is BAP. I do agree that it shouldnt be able to go toe to toe 1v1 with heavies or assaults, but then again that could be said of all lights. and yet they do with little problem. i'm just glad mediums and light have a place on the battle field (for the reccord the smallest mech i own in a Trebuchet.) Then again, which of our current lights isn't desingned to be a brawler by virtue of it's lasers, machine guns, and SRMs?

aaaaaand 6) LRMs. alot of work has gone into balancing these guys, and the forums are full of pure, unfiltered, stupidity in their respect. I agree they need some work still, the last patch was a bit much of a buff, but frankly, either admit you made a stupid mistake when they kill you only using LRMs, or that they require skill to use. Their flight time is more than forgiving. their more often than not, relyance on teamwork for efffectivness is spot on in many regards, their damage spread is usually pretty forgiving, since doing 1000-1200 damage to kill 5 mechs is a little excessive, you have to admit.

and the hidden #7 off this almost all encompasing list is 7) Boating. and i'm tired about reading about this one almost as much as your are tired of reading my post, if you even got this far. it's funny that the boating complaints revolve around the points made above. Boating, SRMs, LRMs, PPCs (heat and wepon convergence), and so on. If you want your multi ton war machine to do 1 thing, and 1 thing only, have at you. SOme chose to make this gamble and live/kill/ die with their decission. I fyou dont want to, you dont have to.

whatever. im done.

[Skyfaller]

Victor Morson, on 18 March 2013 - 07:04 AM, said:

I have to really work to sell the idea of a fast moving medium with LRMs as the only viable option in a serious game for LRMs, because at least it can withdraw to the lines when Ravens jam it. I won't even mention that at least a quarter of your ammo, minimum, is likely to go into the sides of walls or the dirt because of lock loss or, again, the poor indirect arc.

You poor thing. Here, let me share with you my murderous Stalker LRM mech setup:

Stalker 5S (yes, theres a reason to this madness)
Dual AMS. Two tons AMS ammo (and this is it)
4X LRM15
Artemis
XL 310 engine (65kph)
Double Heatsinks - 12
5 medium lasers
1 TAG
Endo Structure
remaining slots & tonnage fill with LRM ammo. 900 missiles.

Heat efficiency: 1 (once mastered)
Avg dmg per map: 800
Avg kills per map: 3 (full kills not just hitting brawlers while brawling).

Now go forth Grasshopper and be awesome.

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Now I hear they're reducing LRM damage even more. Seriously? If not for the high damage outputs, in particular in the "high risk" zone of under 750m (for the full TAG+Artemis effect), they would be entirely the most worthless weapon in the game.

I wouldnt fire an LRM at 750m. I fire them under 500m. Also, they are not reducing the damage, they are removing splash which was causing all missiles to do a lot more damage than they shouldve been .Will this affect my murder LRM stalker? Yeah sure.. but then again, i will still be nailing people with quad LRM15s and 5 med lasers. Thats a powerful punch.

Quote

Again, LRMs are already in the trash pile for almost every major unit playing this game. They are a BARELY justifiable niche weapon as they stand. If anything, they need buffs against ECM and to be left entirely alone in every other way; if not for the close range jamming, or limited range of TAG, I would still endorse these on heavier 'mechs. But as it stands I can't. And if you go through with a huge damage reduction, even worse, I will even have to give up on them as a fast moving platform.

TAG negates ECM. If ECM is close enough to prevent your locks then its already inside your minimum range so..whats the problem again?

Fast moving LRM platform? Hmm trebuchets are pretty darn good at what they do. Thing is, every trebuchet I meet gets frustrated when his LRMs get shot down in flight by my AMS and I return the favor tenfold.

Quote

Long story short: Good units don't use LRMs much because LRMs are currently awful weapons if you have even a moderate grasp of the game. The last thing they need is a nerf based around the inexperienced cries of those that don't understand how they work.

Long story short you don't know how to use LRMs.

There are only two things I would really ask the devs to tweak to make LRMs more functional and balanced:

1- Increase AMS range to twice the current amount. Its a counter to LRM but currently not very good because 1 AMS only counters a single LRM5 worth.

2- Fix the Y-movement collision detection issues. Currently the LRMs will simply not do damage to a mech moving down a steep slope or a high speed fall (falling after burning their thruster fuel going up).

[Nightcrept]

Haitchpeasauce, on 18 March 2013 - 04:23 PM, said:

I have no idea where you get any of your wildly generalising and unfounded statements from.

Sir, I have been tracking discussion about missiles and I've seen no overwhelming sentiment that they wish missiles removed entirely. Rather, many of them are dedicated LRM users and SRM users that support PGI making steps to resolve something they admitted was an unintended result, and these users agree that the damage values are not reasonable or fair.

So what if damage is going to see a nerf. LRMs will continue to play an area denying effect on the game, they will still dish out the pain to the foolish mech in the open. SRM6 will still deal gauss rifle damage on a full hit. I totally support the idea of LRM support fire, and SRM/SSRM blanket damage weaponry, and myself continue to use them, but as it stands the game is NOT balanced around them. A pair of SRM6 should NOT blow all the components off a Commando and kill it. Sure it's satisfying and I've LOL'd when it happened, but given the COM armour that this is not supposed to happen.

Perhaps it's comforting to believe that those who hold a view contrary to yours are inferior, since they are now "elitists", based on the assumption these elitists claim that LRM users rely solely upon their guided weaponry to fight, and would otherwise be unable to hit their target.

What an absurd claim on your part.

Actually my comments are based off of a lot of debating over the last year or so with payers who do indeed claim that missiles take no skill to use and payers should learn to aim. You hear L2p missiles shouldn't be able to kill players they should be for support only.
And what happened back when pgi actually did lower the damage on lrm's?
No one used them. You saw more lrm boats after the ecm patch then you did after they caved and lowered lrms.
Lrm's are useless at this level of damage much less a lower value.

And the missile haters loved it. Absolutely danced with delight on the forums.
And when polls and in game stats showed that lrms had become unused and the devs upped the damage the missile haters screamed and have continued to scream ever since.

They are generally the same people who love ecm and think it requires no nerf. The zerg rushers.

Just go read some of the forum threads. You see a lot of posts saying "i hate lrms anything that gets rid of them is great, L2P and use weapons that require you to aim". Etc.

And many of the players throwing sudden fits are the same ones or are attached to groups whose members have openly stated they hate missiles.

Not all but a lot of the criers.

[Nightcrept]

Edit:
A simple search comes up with a ton of lrm = No skill threads and L2p posts.

http://mwomercs.com/...skill-vs-skill/

http://mwomercs.com/...-skill-anymore/

http://mwomercs.com/...kill-lrm-sissy/

Fact is there are a fair number of players who out right hate indirect and area effect (shotgun) weapons. They want direct fire line of sight CoD zerg Rushing warfare.

And anything that gets the game closer to that is Good to them.

[Haitchpeasauce]

ERPPC to the head at 800m and 6 medium lasers to the back are the only true skill.
OK just kidding!

LRMs have a role in the game and are great weapons. It's not small feat to be in the right position and time shots without wasting ammo, and I hate em when they catch me in the open ... but who likes dying anyway?

The damage is too high because of a bug/oversight/design flaw/whatever but by no means remove them from the game... I'm not convinced that the game has naturally balanced around this inflated damage value. It's more like the players have adapted (read: coped) with the imbalances, but that doesn't qualify the current state of missiles and ECM to be well designed, or that reducing the damage will be a crippling blow.

We'll have to wait and see, and agree to disagree here about whether the the nerf/fix will be for the better. But my view is that removing the splash damage won't marginalise missiles into oblivion, it will just relieve some of the boating happening right now. LRMs will still deny area and keep people's heads down, SSRMs will continue to be the staple of Ravens, SRM mechs will still brawl.

Edited by Haitchpeasauce, 18 March 2013 - 07:51 PM.

[Haitchpeasauce]

I would disregard those emotional whine threads LOL. They don't really weigh into serious discussion about balance mechanics of the game or tactical warfare.

Given that Artemis + TAG now add a significant amount of missile accuracy in the right situation, we're now in a difference place today than to the early days of Open Beta (I'm not a Founder, but I've heard of the whacky things LRMs during CB). Without splash, we'll still see more missiles hit the target than before and do good damage.

If anything, this will cause the lazier LRM boats out there to really focus on lines of sight and team coordination to deal their damage.