234 replies to this topic

[Cik]

holy christ what is this? why are all of the answers poorly researched or wrong? machine guns working as intended? wut? "we know you don't like third person, but we don't give a **** because we're forsaking our core playerbase to go chase casuals." well **** you, i don't care how nicely you state it, you're still basically spitting in my face. whatever.

[Asaru]

Rashhaverak, on 08 April 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

This answer makes me sad. Essentially this means that we will be able to play with four friends, or 12 friends, but nothing in between. That's terrible.

I agree I had really thought PGI would bring this back for CW. When the Phases of Matchmaking were first announced it seemed that Phase 3 was going to conclude with ELO and a return to the original system. However this appears now not to be the case. I would really like to see a Command Chair post explaining all of this in detail and the thoughts behind it. However I'm glad the this question was addressed after several tries.

Edited by Asaru, 09 April 2013 - 04:47 PM.

[Koniving]

FupDup, on 08 April 2013 - 04:51 PM, said:

See your quote below:
You just did a 180 degree spin on what you said before this.
The Sarna page you quoted above says nothing about Critical Hits. At all. All it talks about is r@ping infantry platoons and stripping Battlemech armor.

Re-read. I addressed that in an edit. The critical hits was to balance it because people feel the tabletop damage of 2.0, even though the MG DOES MORE in MWO, is too weak. Case in point, yourself? Of course there's the slight admission that Armor is doubled on all mechs, but that doesn't mean damage is doubled. At 0.9 to 1 ratio of LRMs (1.8 per missile for 2 times armor) they were "too strong." People cry the Gauss Rifle doing a 7.5 to 1 ratio of damage (15 damage to 2 times armor) is "too strong." At the moment, the MGs are at a "1.56 to 1" damage ratio. If you start firing inside someone's armor, you are dealing a "4.68 to 1" damage ratio. And that isn't enough?

Again, the issue is NOT the MGs. It's the ammo health. Notice how double heat sinks get destroyed all the time but the ammo explosion is once in every 300 matches?

It's like trying to cure a cold by blocking your ability to cough. It doesn't stop you from being sick, it just lets you stop coughing.

How is buffing an already overpowered MG going to fix it? That's like fixing ECM by giving it a 3,000 meter radius! How does that fix anything? It doesn't.

Fix the problem of ammo health. Cut it down to the standard 2 or 3. Or better, to 1.

Bam. MGs become the most powerful gun in the game. Everyone not using an MG will stop using ballistics altogether. And we didn't even have to buff the MG.

Edit: Note for above.
To clarify the math.
Those ratios are assuming that "Damage dealt to 1" ratio is where "damage dealt" or first number is how much damage is dealt compared to the "1" which is "standard armor values." In this case, "1" represents double armor as if it were the TT armor. So 15 damage of Gauss Rifle to 1 times (tabletop) armor would be 15:1. 15 damage of Gauss Rifle to 2 times (our current armor) is 15:2, or 7.5:1.

Tabletop damage is 2 for an MG in a turn.
Current damage for the MG is 3.12 within the "ten second" time of a turn.
But our armor is doubled. This was because killing mechs was too easy (even in closed beta you could kill an enemy with the MG doing its current damage in half the time, because of standard TT armor). Our armor got doubled.

But weapons doing less damage than TT, are still considered too strong. MGs? They're insanely powerful. The problem is their target has double armor. The counter? Strip the armor off, then you have firepower. Also the crit damage doesn't damage the mech itself, it damages the components. Meaning our intended target is ammo stores. But at 0.12 per triple crit, versus 1 ton of ammo at 10 HP (MORE THAN THE COCKPIT), something is very wrong.

Your problem is really and truly with the ammo health.

Stop taking Pepto Bismo. Pick up a real cure.

Edited by Koniving, 08 April 2013 - 05:25 PM.

[Deathlike]

There was a time that someone from PGI once said... that people know there's a problem, but they don't know exactly how to address it. Well, "we thought" having crit buffs would help, but since having it, we know that's clearly insufficient.

So, at this point, my 5K challenge still stands. WILL PGI STEP UP TO THE PLATE?

[FupDup]

Koniving, on 08 April 2013 - 05:02 PM, said:

Re-read. I addressed that in an edit. The critical hits was to balance it because people feel the tabletop damage of 2.0, even though the MG DOES MORE in MWO, is too weak. Case in point, yourself? Of course there's the slight admission that Armor is doubled on all mechs, but that doesn't mean damage is doubled. At 0.9 to 1 ratio of LRMs (1.8 per missile for 2 times armor) they were "too strong." People cry the Gauss Rifle doing a 7.5 to 1 ratio of damage (15 damage to 2 times armor) is "too strong." At the moment, the MGs are at a "1.56 to 1" damage ratio. If you start firing inside someone's armor, you are dealing a "4.68 to 1" damage ratio. And that isn't enough?


How is buffing an already overpowered MG going to fix it? That's like fixing ECM by giving it a 3,000 meter radius! How does that fix anything? It doesn't.

It's not overpowered. Evidence: the low number of people that use them. Human nature dictates that a very large chunk of people will do whatever they can to improve their chances of winning, and in games with customization this means taking the strongest configurations they can. If MGs were so fearsome, you would see a lot more people using them. It's that simple. Humans are competitive by nature. It's why the 3L is one of the most popular lights, why Cataphracts poptart, why most Atlai are DDC, and so on.

Koniving, on 08 April 2013 - 05:02 PM, said:

MGs become the most powerful gun in the game. Everyone not using an MG will stop using ballistics altogether.

Hell would freeze over before that would happen. Let's pretend for this example that PGI tried out the ever-popular idea of ~0.12-0.16 damage per bullet and no crit-seeking ability whatsoever. That's 1.2-1.6 DPS for one of them, and if you're an MG Spider that makes 4.8-6.4 DPS. I know that the initial reaction to this might be along the lines of "But liek oh mah gawd, it's got no heat and continuous fire!"

Continuous fire is actually a downside most of the time because it means you have to keep yourself exposed while you apply damage to the enemy, and in the MG's case that damage barely even exists. No heat is also invalid because Small Lasers are pretty much heat-neutral with the basic engine DHS and even Medium Lasers can be sorta chainfired for a while before having to hold fire. And those are nothing compared to the worst parts of the MG: 90m range and 100m/s projectile speed (same as LRMs!). This means that your damage is going to be spread all over the place across multiple body parts and the terrain surrounding the target. The actual DPS would never be even close to 4.8/6.4 with such slow projectiles.


Bonus videos:

Edited by FupDup, 08 April 2013 - 05:22 PM.

[Koniving]

Thontor, on 08 April 2013 - 05:14 PM, said:

I'm a little disappointed my question didn't get answered this time. i was really hoping for a response to this one. The devs seem to not know what to do with LRMs.

To let you know, I like that question. In fact, Streaks could easily be rebalanced at the 2.5 damage by either slowing them down, or by limiting their turning speed from physics defying to something a bit more sensible.

It's easy to believe LRMs can too, but then AMS would need a tweak to adjust for that.

[Zaptruder]

Such an unfortunate direction that PGI has chosen to go with the match making of groups.

One would think that having Elo properly account for team work would allow for balance to be restored, allowing for a more natural grouping of friends and team players.

[Genewen]

Oh great, public stats. All those stupid "Your K/D is half of mine, so you suck, so everything you say is wrong." arguments are gonna be hella lot fun.
/sarcasm

Oh, and thanks for teaching me that it is a desirable state to have 50% happy customers and 50% unhappy ones. At least that is what I get out of answer #1. Until now I always thought it would be best if the ones happy with balancing were as close to 100% as possible.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Koniving, on 08 April 2013 - 05:02 PM, said:

How is buffing an already overpowered MG going to fix it?

[Deathlike]

Do we have a Jagermech edition of the MG video? That would be great.

[Mister Blastman]

Bah to 3rd person.

[Jetfire]

Koniving, on 08 April 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

Paint it back by... Clicking on the color below the paint you added. The dark yellow square. That restores "Default" paint.

Except that doesn't work as those colors don't seem to actually exist in the palette. I tried it and while I can try to change it back to default, it is completely unable to pull the color onto the mech and changes the founders yellow to whatever other color you had painted it. IE if I change it back after painting it green, the yellow default just makes the mech the same green color.

It is not actually possible to pull in the default after you make a change, even though it should be.

Edited by Jetfire, 08 April 2013 - 06:12 PM.

[Destoroyah]

I don't want to get down on the devs, but they are really starting to ask for it.

The devs need to wake up and realize most players WANT (and most those that currently disagree will change their minds) Machine Guns to BE ACTUAL WEAPONS and not some gimmick. I mean is it really so hard to actual take 1 month and allow MGs to do real damage like being able to do 4 damage in the time a Small laser can fire and recharge too much to ask and remove the improved crit seek. I used 4 damage as a sample cause I believe the fact you got to stay on target the whole time/the inevitable spreading/ and high chance to miss with rounds as you keep on target are enough to bring its actual damage to about 3 and the extra weight for ammo and risk of explosions are enough drawbacks for no heat. This is BETA and isn't the point of BETA to test things and see what works. Then you could let the community give you feedback if they think the change is bad or for the better.
I don't know what they are using for testing but I have yet to kill a atlas with a 6 medium laser jenner in 3 secs(non headshot as it's the same result for all mechs) normally it takes a little over 3 volleys to destroy a motionless atlas from the back. If you can't kill a atlas with 6 medium lasers in their said preposed time a weapon system near the damage of a small laser certainly won't.

It seems to me PGI is stubbornly holding on to features a noticeable portion of the community don't like and are afraid to try new things that might be better then what they PRECEIVE as good. I unperstand some features are not easily included but tweaking a few values come on.

Edited by Destoroyah, 08 April 2013 - 06:57 PM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

PropagandaWar, on 08 April 2013 - 04:42 PM, said:

Then why fear 3rd person? I don't like it and I still don't care if its in or out. Never bothered me in the other games.

You obviously never played Mechwarrior 4 with mixed view modes.

It got to the point where the only way to be competitive was to run in 3rd person view... because you gained more FOV, you could see over/around terrain you normally couldn't from the cockpit, and you were literally forced into a position where you HAD to run 3rd person to play even remotely well.

The thing is, once something comes out that gives even a slight advantage, the competitive players will use it like no tomorrow.

If there is even a SLIGHT increase in your gameplay by playing 3rd person over first person, the competitive players will use it. And if you think the Jump Sniping problem is an issue now [as many do] you haven't seen what happens when you mix 3rd person into the equation.

Those of you who are "not worried" about 3rd person and other preposed fixes, seem to think that PGI can implement these things without screwing it up... which frankly as the game sits almost a year into beta... they've yet to implement a single feature that hasn't been broken in some way, shape or fashion.

[Koniving]

FupDup, on 08 April 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

It's not overpowered. Evidence: the low number of people that use them. Human nature dictates that a very large chunk of people will do whatever they can to improve their chances of winning, and in games with customization this means taking the strongest configurations they can. If MGs were so fearsome, you would see a lot more people using them. It's that simple. Humans are competitive by nature. It's why the 3L is one of the most popular lights, why Cataphracts poptart, why most Atlai are DDC, and so on.

People are scared to use them. I use them all the time. It's like people are scared to use the Ravens 2x and 4x because they can't be used like a Raven 3-L. That's not what they were made for. The Ravens 2x and 4x fill very different roles, and in fighting within those roles I've had matches where I come out with over 800 damage dealt and several kills. Does that mean that everyone thinks it's good? No. That means that I tried it and found it to be good. Doesn't make everyone use them.

FupDup, on 08 April 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

Hell would freeze over before that would happen.

Without fixing the underlying CAUSE instead of curing the symptom? Of course not.

FupDup, on 08 April 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

Let's pretend for this example that PGI tried out the ever-popular idea of ~0.12-0.16 damage per bullet and no crit-seeking ability whatsoever.

Let's go with your lower end.
7.8 bullets in a second, so let's round it down to make this feel as weak as possible. 7 bullets in a second.
Mkay. Your solution would give you .12 per bullet. That's 0.84 in a second. That would give you... 8.4 damage in a turn. Tabletop is 2. Current is 3.12. Doesn't sound like much still, eh? 1 ton of ammo will allow you to deal 240 damage if every hit works.

A small laser, which generates heat, does 10 damage in that time (going by the DPS of 10 seconds). Now pack 4 of them. Your 4 MGs only need 1 ton of ammo to last half the match. That's 3 tons. The small lasers still have .5 each. That's 2 tons. He also has to have heat sinks beyond the standard 10. So let's say the 10 heat sinks are free. 0

He deals 120 damage in ten seconds assuming he doesn't shut down.

You'd deal 33.6 in 10 seconds with the 4 MGs. No shutting down.


Now compare heat. Small laser generates 2 heat every time it is fired. At 4 small lasers that's 8 heat. In that ten second window, you generate 80 heat (with no heat sinks)

Those 4 MGs, even with no heat sinks, you generate 0 heat. You can fire indefinitely. So while that 4 small laser mech shuts down, you'll fire more... and more.. and more... With 4 tons of ammo you could kill 8 players easily. How does that make it fair to the people who have to carry
7 * 2 + 14 + ammo to have 2 ER PPCs and an AC-20 and shut down every so often to make up for the damage you'd do?
Let's go back to it.

You deal 33.6 damage with no risk of shutting down.

Testing in a Jenner with a 1.67 heat efficiency with ten double heatsinks, the Jenner can fire 15 times before shutting down on Forest Colony Snow. That's 180 before he shuts down with small lasers. And when he shuts down he's dead. 15 shots.

That's when he'd stop firing and die. You'd deal 240 until you stopped firing due to running out of ammo. You didn't have to spend 1,500,000 cbills to get those double heat sinks. How's that fair? Know how much damage an AC-20 gets per ton of ammo? 120. You get 240. DOUBLE the damage per ton there, but he had to spend 14 tons just to have the weapon. How is that fair? For your 3 tons you get to deal up to 240 damage. But the AC-20 Raven can only deal 120 damage for 15 tons? 15 tons!

Default MG. 0.04 damage per shot. 0.312 damage per second. 3.12 damage per ten seconds. 80 damage per ton of ammo. Your 3 tons (2 for 4 MGs + 1 ton of ammo) balances out fairly well compared to the guy who gets 120 per ton on the AC-20.

Now, here's the thing. Your method? It'd take you at 8.4 damage per ten seconds... 30 seconds to deal 25.2 damage to one target. We're going the head of any mech with one MG mind you. You have to get to the 27 mark to kill.

While you do that.
I'll take our current rig, remove the armor first, enable crits on the engine, and get my kill by shooting into a mech's belly faster than you can going straight for the head. Mine's also more practical while running. At 0.04 (the lowest) crit damage per bullet it'd take me 75 bullets to destroy your engine.


It'll take you 234 bullets to kill the Atlas by going for the eye. Although fact of the matter is .12 * 78 bullets in 10 seconds is actually 9.36, so you'd deal even more damage. So in your favor we'll go to 28.08 damage in 30 seconds, at 234 bullets. It'll take a bit less to kill, so you're doing more damage than our calculations earlier. More!

The issue is the current way to kill a mech efficiently with MGs, destroying ammo, only gets a 10% chance of exploding... and has 10 health which is more than engines have. Which currently takes 250 bullets to blow up one ammo crate with 100% hits, and no special crit bonuses. (Ironically that comes out to about the same as the shots you need to make your kill.)

So that same scenario. You going for the eye with your damage, and me going against ammo in say a leg this time on a mech that has two legs...

I could blow up a guy's leg, and have the damage go to his center torso (which is what happens) on a high load mech, and kill the Atlas due to the transferring damage going to his engine (it's happened before when going to the torso to kill him after detonating ammo in his chest as a chain reaction from blowing up ammo in the leg) with 75 bullets with NO crit bonuses after stripping armor and going for a leg (if the ammo had 3 health like an engine), to your 234 bullets to the impossible target of the eye of an Atlas.

The current system wins with my fix. With yours, well, it'd be stronger all the time, but ultimately weaker than the potential of the current system with my fix.

Did you know 1 ton of AMS exploding deals about 1 damage per bullet remaining according to table top? Say I shot a full ton of AMS ammo with 75 bullets (no crits, so maximum necessary bullets)... and did my damage + 1,000 due to the AMS ammo explosion?

That's 1,003 damage, completely annihilating one opponent, by shooting 75 bullets with the current system and my fix.

Compared to your 234 bullets to deal 28 damage.

As I said it's currently overpowered with its potential.

With max crits, it'd take 25 bullets to potentially deal 1,003 damage with detonating an AMS.

The problem isn't the gun. And right now the current MWO gun is more powerful in potential than your proposed one. You'd make the weapon stronger at all times, but essentially weaker in potential.

I like the current one better as it's quite a bit stronger in potential. You just need to look beyond your band-aid fix.

Why not solve the real problem? Lower the ammo health to something manageable, and enable engine crits. 234 shots to an impossible eyeball versus my 75 shots to an exposed limb... I'd take just 75 shots and a little bit of skill any day over 234 and impossible need for an aimbot.

Edited by Koniving, 08 April 2013 - 06:49 PM.

[Genewen]

Destoroyah, on 08 April 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

The devs need to wake up and realize most players WANT (and most those that don't currently disagree will change their minds) Machine Guns to BE ACTUAL WEAPONS and not some gimmick.

I disagree. MGs should be deleted. They are weapons against infantry and non-armored targets and have no role to play in a game that only involves heavily armored mechs. Them being efficient against such would be stupid.

[PropagandaWar]

Jade Kitsune, on 08 April 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

You obviously never played Mechwarrior 4 with mixed view modes.

It got to the point where the only way to be competitive was to run in 3rd person view... because you gained more FOV, you could see over/around terrain you normally couldn't from the cockpit, and you were literally forced into a position where you HAD to run 3rd person to play even remotely well.

The thing is, once something comes out that gives even a slight advantage, the competitive players will use it like no tomorrow.

If there is even a SLIGHT increase in your gameplay by playing 3rd person over first person, the competitive players will use it. And if you think the Jump Sniping problem is an issue now [as many do] you haven't seen what happens when you mix 3rd person into the equation.

Those of you who are "not worried" about 3rd person and other preposed fixes, seem to think that PGI can implement these things without screwing it up... which frankly as the game sits almost a year into beta... they've yet to implement a single feature that hasn't been broken in some way, shape or fashion.

I did but back then I guess I gave a rats *** about them. I thought 3rd person sucked and was useless. However if we have the option not to play against them it don't bother me.

[Critical Fumble]

Ok, so I take it that the regional server plan involves partnering with local companies to avoid complications associated with international business. Part of that deal would appear to be a portion of the cashshop income from players tied to that region. The limitations on international play will still be disappointing, it may be worth looking for other ways to do it.

Polarized opinions are really not what you want, by the way. There's a fair chance that a number of the loud voices don't truly understand the factors involved - those who get killed by it and don't understand how to defeat it shout one way, while people who don't understand how to juice the most out of the system and therefore don't see a marked improvement shout the other way. That's a failure of player training, or just a system that is too obtuse and needs simplification. There's also the situation where there are obvious counters, but they reduce or kill the fun for some people who then detract from it. Most everyone would like an ideal system - because is something fun to play with as well as against; whereas polarization indicates that it is either not fun to play with or not fun to play against.

As far as MGs go, fine - but let us mount small lasers on ballistic points. I'd almost guarantee that three variants will see the light of day again.

[KableGuy]

BL00D RAVEN, on 08 April 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

What 6MG spider?
it has 4 ballistichardpoints
How would it be any different that a 6SL jenner?

A 6sl laser jenner generates heat.
MGs do not , i think that was the point he was trying to make here.
That being said, I agree that MGs are in every way conceivable completely useless.

[Koniving]

Jetfire, on 08 April 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

Except that doesn't work as those colors don't seem to actually exist in the palette. I tried it and while I can try to change it back to default, it is completely unable to pull the color onto the mech and changes the founders yellow to whatever other color you had painted it. IE if I change it back after painting it green, the yellow default just makes the mech the same green color.

It is not actually possible to pull in the default after you make a change, even though it should be.

Sigh.

Picture of your problem. OH NO MY STRIPE IS PINK! HOW DO I GET IT BACK!? Note save is grayed out. This has been saved.


Now. This is your SOLUTION. See the double square where there's pink and the OLD COLOR sitting there? It comes up every time just like it's green on every other mech. Watch this! We click that "behind" square!



Now I can save it with my default color restored.

Can I educate anyone else while I'm at it? Getting through the MG crowd doesn't seem to work. They still think curing the common cold can be done by using a cough suppressant, or fixing a seemingly weak gun by making it wimpier than it is so that they can use it all the time and feel good instead of keeping it strong and fixing the real issue... I don't know. I guess I can pick up a laser pointer and entertain them.

Look, look at that. It's a red dot! It's a red dot! Go get it!

My solution on that MG issue, would make the MG useful, the flamers useful, would make the LB-10's useful. The make it always do 0.12 to 0.16 solution? It'd keep a seemingly weak gun really weak. It won't change much other than being unfair to others...but it'd still be uber weak. My way fixes the ammo problem and keeps Bryan's wish the MG as a crit damage dealer, not only that but the potential of the MG to kill using Bryan's way with my fix to ammo health in 75 bullets is a lot more satisfying than the best case scenario for the .12 to .16 damage method of 234 bullets minimum for a kill.

That other way may as well be "Why not fix ECM by cutting its radius in half!" How does screwing with ECM's radius fix the ECM problems? It doesn't. You remove the fact that it works like stealth armor without buying and installing stealth armor.

Fix the cause, not the symptom.

Edited by Koniving, 08 April 2013 - 07:08 PM.