54 replies to this topic

[Inkarnus]

Well i cant say for sure but it feels wrong to just core an enemy that easy and fast if he isnt in
an assaultmech and even then its enough to let him worry if he peeks out again
best examples to this these are ac20 yagers ppc gauss poptards and so on
if we would have had some sort of equalizer to this the game would
be in my eyes more strategical like the change of srm flight patterns
so you need to hug thet enemy too get max damage on 1 part

[Roadbeer]

Wow... imagine if they hadn't doubled armor.

No, it's fine, have you tried torso twist?

[Inkarnus]

-

Edited by Inkarnus, 27 April 2013 - 07:44 AM.

[Kiiyor]

ZING! However sarcastic....y, he has a point. Most of my kills when I'm running in alpha monsters are against enemies that are standing proud and majestic and returning fire while I plant fat ones into their chests. Twisting between shots is one damage reduction method, another is not getting shot at all. As in relocating.

[Inkarnus]

have you learned too aim? or to wait till he goes facing to you?
l2p isnt an answer to this

[Roadbeer]

So, by your logic, had armor not been doubled, a stock K2 or a single AC20 would be OP?

[80Bit]

The huge Alpha "problem" is less about the ability to fire huge Alphas than it is about the lack of counters.

Up until last month, there were two pretty effective counters to Poptarts and Alphaboat Assault mechs. LRMs and Medium/Light mechs.

LRMs helped counter the Alpha boat Assaults, which generally have very low speed and get tunnel vision on targets. I used to have great success with my LRM30 Trebuchet eating up PPC Stalkers and such. LRMS are of course junk now so that counter is mostly gone.

Medium and Light mechs were the other counter. Long range Alpha boats, even the poptarts, have limited speed and mobility, and often have torso mounted weapons, making them vulnerable to faster mechs that close in. But an unfortunate side effect of Host State Rewind is that light and medium mechs are no longer saved by speed and get decimated in short order now.


I think that after HSR is in for missile weapons, they are going to really need to do an overall balance pass on all weapons. They also need to get the artificial speed limit on lights fixed, because when people have the accuracy they have now, 150kph does not cut it anymore when a single Alpha takes you out.

[Rhent]

80Bit, on 27 April 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

The huge Alpha "problem" is less about the ability to fire huge Alphas than it is about the lack of counters.

Up until last month, there were two pretty effective counters to Poptarts and Alphaboat Assault mechs. LRMs and Medium/Light mechs.

LRMs helped counter the Alpha boat Assaults, which generally have very low speed and get tunnel vision on targets. I used to have great success with my LRM30 Trebuchet eating up PPC Stalkers and such. LRMS are of course junk now so that counter is mostly gone.

Medium and Light mechs were the other counter. Long range Alpha boats, even the poptarts, have limited speed and mobility, and often have torso mounted weapons, making them vulnerable to faster mechs that close in. But an unfortunate side effect of Host State Rewind is that light and medium mechs are no longer saved by speed and get decimated in short order now.


I think that after HSR is in for missile weapons, they are going to really need to do an overall balance pass on all weapons. They also need to get the artificial speed limit on lights fixed, because when people have the accuracy they have now, 150kph does not cut it anymore when a single Alpha takes you out.

The speed limit for lights is exactly where it needs to be. You need to learn how to:
-Serpentine
-Increase/Decrease speed
-Strafing runs
-Form light packs to pick off and destroys heavies/assaults

[Yokaiko]

A legendary founder that never drove a hunchback -4P

[80Bit]

Rhent, on 27 April 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

The speed limit for lights is exactly where it needs to be. You need to learn how to:
-Serpentine
-Increase/Decrease speed
-Strafing runs
-Form light packs to pick off and destroys heavies/assaults

I need to learn how to do something? I was referring to all the light mechs I have been killing lately.

Why is the speed limit where it "needs to be". It is only in place due to netcode issues, not for balance reasons.

[zztophat]

Rhent, on 27 April 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

The speed limit for lights is exactly where it needs to be. You need to learn how to:
-Serpentine
-Increase/Decrease speed
-Strafing runs
-Form light packs to pick off and destroys heavies/assaults

Very incorrect. I haven't played my light as of late out of fear that I would die as easily as I have been killing lights lately. Since the host state rewind lights literally cannot move fast enough to avoid my shooting them, before they gained a lot of survivability from the fact that half of the shots that were spot on missed anyway, now they all hit, especially at close range.

I haven't changed my dual guass jager since before the patch and before that patch getting circled by a light was a tense, dangerous encounter. Now it's suicide for the light mech.

Better light pilots have learned to adapt and are hitting and running or only engaging targets that are already distracted but the days of circle straffing an elephant are over, if you try that now you will eat whatever they are serving when you pass in front of them. That is unless the heavier mech pilot is terrible.

[AntiCitizenJuan]

The people defending the current metagame: The people boating PPCs

"Dont Nerf Me Bro"

[Fate 6]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Wow... imagine if they hadn't doubled armor.

No, it's fine, have you tried torso twist?

Yeah, imagine if they kept the armor the same and made clicking the mouse roll an imaginary die to determine if your weapon did damage.

Basically what I'm saying is stop trolling the forums.

Oh, and torso twist doesn't work on some things (DRAGON Y U DO DIS TO ME)

Edited by Fate 6, 27 April 2013 - 11:15 PM.

[Iacov]

40+ pinpoint damage out of nowhere from above 1000m is kinda hilarious and no fun
if they come up close, a 40+ alpha is quite okay...that's what target info is for

[danger uxo]

From a game design perspective BattleMechs are not meant to sustain 40+ points of damage from a single strike (even with double armor); the ability to pinpoint damage like that onto a specific hit location breaks the balance inherent in the 'Mech's armor spread which is related to the damage location mechanic in the game MWO is based on, BattleTech. In order to return the canon resilience 'Mechs have in the BattleTech universe PGI needs find some way to take into account the balance inherent in the hit location mechanic or find an alternate means of simulating it so that you can't simply down an assault mech in two to three alpha strikes to the CT.

And no, Roadbeer, no matter how much you want it to be, torso twisting is not the answer; that's not to say that twisting isn't a valid tactic to spread damage, it absolutely is. However under the current pinpoint accuracy driven metagame it generally only provides minor benefit when facing a pinpoint alpha build. Also, had armor not been doubled a stock K2 or mech mounting an AC 20 would not be OP provided the canon method of applying damage to a target been used in MWO; i.e. the MechWarrior designates the target, selects the weapons to fire and chooses when to engage and the BattleMech's targeting and tracking (T&T) computer attempts to align all the weapons selected to fire on the target (which is the whole enemy BattleMech, not one specific point). The weapons fire strikes the target based on how well the BattleMech was able to get the weapons on target (or how 'solid' a lock the 'Mech has achieved if you will). In BattleTech game terms this is represented by the hit location charts which use the probability spread of 2d6 to determine damage to a particular hit location based on the likelihood of the BattleMech's T&T computer aligning to that location. How simulating that damage spread could be implemented in MWO is something that I think should be looked at, especially considering, as I pointed out above, BattleMech design (from a game design perspective) is based on the damage spread mechanic and is broken by the current pinpoint aiming/damage convergence system being used.

[DeadlyNerd]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Wow... imagine if they hadn't doubled armor.

No, it's fine, have you tried torso twist?

So by your logic, when someone's about to shoot you with 3x .50cal with pinpoint accuarcy, turn your shoulder and everything'll be alright.
You lost a shoulder but you sure showed them how you know how 2 torso twist.

[Roadbeer]

DeadlyNerd, on 28 April 2013 - 05:12 AM, said:

So by your logic, when someone's about to shoot you with 3x .50cal with pinpoint accuarcy, turn your shoulder and everything'll be alright.
You lost a shoulder but you sure showed them how you know how 2 torso twist.

3x .50cal isn't going to do much to my heavily armored 65 ton walking tank that doesn't feel pain and whose systems are somewhat isolated where loosing the ability to move my arm doesn't cause all my hydraulics to spill out. I fail to see the relevance.

Oh, you mean in real life... witty of you.

[MustrumRidcully]

The game has definitely much more pinpoint damage then 40 in 3.5 seconds. It has 40 damage in 0 seconds.

You don't need a full recycle time before you take your first shot. And that's an elementary critical aspect of the current meta - a 6 PPC Stalker doesn't deal much more damage in 10 seconds then he does in 5*seconds... The trick is ensuring that you can split your combat engagements in neat 5 second packets and have some cooling time in between.

*) Number mostly arbitrary

[Rofl]

There's been some speculation that with HSR, torso twisting may not be helpful, as if you twist on your screen to block a shot, but you haven't twisted yet according to the attacker, it will still hit you in the CT.

[Fooooo]

Rofl, on 28 April 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

There's been some speculation that with HSR, torso twisting may not be helpful, as if you twist on your screen to block a shot, but you haven't twisted yet according to the attacker, it will still hit you in the CT.

This should be true.

However I cant wrap my head around it for some reason.

If you have a higher ping, say 250+, you would have to twist your torso pre-emptively, say .5 - 2 seconds before you really would, meaning if you are firing at the time you lose dmg etc. At least on lasers.

This is where it gets confusing.......

If you have a lower ping , your movement updates would be slightly ahead of a higher ping player afaik, meaning if a high ping player comes out of a torso twist to fire, the lower ping guy has to wait longer or thinks the other player waited to turn longer etc. However that should work both ways.....I think....

IE Both mechs twisted to face head on, running parallel.

Both Fire.

Low ping and high ping twists, then twists back.

On the low ping players screen the higher ping guy would still be coming out of his twist by the time he had finished, so he has to wait a second to get a CT shot.

However the higher ping guy has already turned on his screen and probably see's the low ping guy twisting back, its just delayed a little because of the server etc. (it should generally only be a fairly small margin really so not much of an effect)

So they should see the same thing.........I think.


Yeah, its just confusing.


About the OP,

Probably is, but atm it still feels "ok" to me. Some changes a little after missiles get HSR is probably best way forward I think.

Edited by Fooooo, 28 April 2013 - 09:08 AM.