339 replies to this topic

[Robovski]

Yeah, just because a target is in range doesn't mean it is a good target to pop off at. Fast moving at long range is not an easy hit, firing something that will build heat and burn ammo isn't exactly wise in that situation. You are really just telling everyone "I'm over here!" unless you have a real chance of hitting.

[AceTimberwolf]

LackofCertainty, on 06 June 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

Nah, the point is "Don't blow all your LRM ammo shooting at a near-max range jenner running at top speed. Of course most of his salvo's missed. He was dumping his LRM ammo onto one of the speediest/most manuverable mechs in the game instead of waiting for something slower to appear.

Medium lasers are, of course, going to do more damage per weight. They also have less than 1/2 the range of LRM's and lack indirect fire capability.


P.S.
Thanks for the info, Ace. Really exciting to hear some real reports about the game. Hopefully PGI decides to throw us a bone sooner or later too. Also, I'm curious to hear more about the DFA's you did. Did you say the camera switches out to third person so you can see it better?

Yea as of right now It switched to the Third Person View. You see ur mech standing back up after it hits the floor. I guess as of now so its not so jolting? But hilarity ensues when you jump on someone. Scenario: I was in a Catapult on the Snow Map and there are some snow covered buildings. I had gone thru my LRM ammo and just had my lasers. I followed a Crit Hunch around a bend and instead of going completely around I jumped over the building and landed on him. I got up faster so I jumped again and took him down again. Wait for everyone to get there quick to finish him off. I was pretty banged up by that time as well and died but we won anyways.

[Urulf]

Frostiken, on 06 June 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

Why would anyone play a light mech? So you can pew pew an Awesome with your SRM-2 and then get one-hit-killed in return?

Scouting is a great part of the game, and light mechs are designed for it, if u want to do pew pew, dont go face to face to a assault mech with a light mech, or you will get what u asked for.

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If you do x you deserve y is literally the bottom of the barrel as far as balance arguments go. I'm not going to amuse that with a real answer. MWLL's gameplay sucks buttholes half the time because everyone is hiding behind hills and nobody wants to be the first guy out because he's going to take missile, gauss, and laser spam right to the face. Usually the only proper response to these 'tactics' is to missile, gauss, and laser spam them back, which is, as another mentioned, a huge degradation in gameplay, and makes the game **** overall.

Do you REALLY think it will be different than that, seriously?
Just to give you a easy example: World of Tanks, their promotional vids allways shows loads of tanks running arround at the open shooting ones to others in a big general brawl, dinamicaly fluid combat.
But later on, when u really play it, every one RUNs to hide behind the first stone/ house/ brush in the first 30 secs of each match, just to ambush the enemy, not only by fear to artillery, but because team play usually is inexistent indepently of the tier bracket you play, and ppl is just afraid of repairs to go all out in a bunch and overwhelm the enemy.
If you think the entire community will just play "correctly" it wont be an issue, but i can asure you, ppl will be AFRAID of repairs, independly of the mech type they will play, and will be camping most of the time, if the economic part of the game is not balanced well enough (thing we completely ignore atm).

Im the first thinking that camping is just crap, and waiting 8 mins for the team to loose or win just because ppl (in your team or the enemy one) do stupid movements is absolutely craptastic. I usually play WoT with a fast med, trying to form a group with someone else in the same match with a similar tank, for flanking and picking up lone enemies, rather than sitting like a duck behind a rock waiting for someone else giving their nose out of their cover. Having premium mechs that Boost the C-bill ganancy just mean than normal mechs will get "just" enough money to repair after each match, with some savings at best with a "great" game, so the normal player will take a while (or farm endless hours) to get enough cash to buy a fancy new mech.

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Tabletop Battletech didn't have this problem whatsoever, because moving and firing were done separately, allowing you to break cover and move up close without getting instagibbed.

This isn't a combat turn based game, its a real time game, and seems you don't understand it, but you will find out soonish. You dont have a "break" for 10 secs between moving, thinking what are you going to shoot and actually shooting it.

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Campy gameplay is not good gameplay. Go play TSA in MWLL if you want that.

Like i said just on the other paragraph, I enterely discourage and disaprove a campy gameplay, but i have played enough games of this kind to know what it's going to happen, again if its not well balanced economically.

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Okay? I thought that was implicit when I said 'fire support'. You seem to have missed the part where some people here are butthurt that the Catapult required most of its ammo to bring down a heavily-armored medium. I'm saying that that's fine.

Nothing to dissagree here, still, what do you consider "heavily-armored"? Because a medium, even a hunchie, doesn't match what i think is armored enough to stand the beating of a LRM rain tbh. Another heavy, or an Assault mech, ok, but not a med or a light (if u can get a hit on a fast light mech, that is)

Edited by Urulf, 06 June 2012 - 11:03 AM.

[AceTimberwolf]

Ah i forgot! On the Snow level there are Caves! I had my Catapult at the time with the 4 Med Lasers but I thought that was really cool! Another Catapult was giving me the run around but I managed to get him limping . Kept hiding behind this rock inside the cave.

[Frostiken]

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its a real time game, and seems you don't understand it, but you will find out soonish

Don't be an ***hole.

Edited by Frostiken, 06 June 2012 - 10:52 AM.

[Namwons]

PirateNixon, on 06 June 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Welp... guess I'm not getting a Catapult for my founder's mech then...

yeah lol. i was thinking atlas cause of the expense...but reading that the hunchy can toe to toe, i might try my 6/9 swayback build as my founders

[Adridos]

Urulf, on 06 June 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

othing to dissagree here, still, what do you consider "heavily-armored"? Because a medium, even a hunchie, doesn't match what i think is armored enough to stand the beating of a LRM rain tbh. Another heavy, or an Assault mech, ok, but not a med or a light (if u can get a hit on a fast light mech, that is)

Yeah, so just let every LRM shred everything lighter than 60 tons.

I don't want to fight you, you're one of my own, but the general idea is to make the mechs balanced.

[Euphor Kell]

AceTimberwolf, on 06 June 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

Ah i forgot! On the Snow level there are Caves! I had my Catapult at the time with the 4 Med Lasers but I thought that was really cool! Another Catapult was giving me the run around but I managed to get him limping . Kept hiding behind this rock inside the cave.

ooohhhh... caves
wonder if its a step in the direction of indoor combat
(i suddenly begin to imagine that solaris cave match with the two riflemans from one of the books, can't remember which one now...)

[AceTimberwolf]

Yea Swayback was fun. I just couldn't handle the Heat especially from the Flamer. Wasn't sure about that small laser tho

[Urulf]

Radman, on 06 June 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

But damage in relation to what? By your own post you say 4 med laser hit but only do 1% damage? Seems to be LRM's are powered just fine. At best tweaking to amount of ammo or the doubling of armor needs to be tweaked. Also, I have absolutely no pity for a guy who shoots and misses. That's not the LRM's fault, it's the player's fault.

In relation to the % total of the mech 4% on a full blow of 30 LRMs hits (guess full hit) for a 1% puntual dmg from 4 meds lasers (2% later on when he could maintain the reticle on the target, and it was over the hunchie, even more "armored" than the jenner), seems low to me. even if the dmg is spread onto different sections like it is.
I agree that the tweaking of the ammo/armor percentages is my main concern, maybe im just hard in the way to express it. To me, it just seems at this stage than LRM are a bit underperforming, at least, taking in mind, they miss a lot for RNG (not player control), they can be even more nerfed in acuraccy by ECM sistems, and they are ammo dependant, when the armor of the target is just doubled to give more playability time (a thing that isnt bad at any point given). Guess they have to tweak the dmg / armor ratio a bit better to not make some weapons sistems just obsolete or just "pointless" to use, unless you are using a stock mech and you are so low on cash that u can't affort to change their loadout.

Edited by Urulf, 06 June 2012 - 11:22 AM.

[Gozer]

So I have a question for Ace to take to a demo dev guy if at all possible.

Can you ask if they've doubled the Armor/internals for the press/testing or if this is what they want to keep?

Don't forget E3 is a PRESS/industry event and many times demos have larger ammo/health/armor levels to let the people "play it for longer" to get a "better feel" of the game in the limited amount of time they have. I recall the Space Marine demo at last years E3 was like that.

Other than that if you go back do try a light, I want to hear your impressions of the little buggers.

[DaZur]

Radman, on 06 June 2012 - 09:54 AM, said:

In my opinion what most of us want is balanced game play so that no single weapon system is by default superior to all others and therefore gamers only take mechs with very specific load outs otherwise you can't win. Why is that difficult to understand?

No disrespect intended... But this thought process is just ridiculous to me. How should weapons be balanced? A pistol is more powerful than a sling-shot, a rifle is more powerful than and pistol, a rocket launcher is more powerful than a rifle, a cannon is more powerful than a rocket launcher... etc..etc.. ad nauseam. Ya don't bring a knife to a gun fight expecting the knife to do equal damage as a gun do ya?

Point is, if all weapons have parity, we might as well run around with spit-balls because what's the point in arming one self with a particular weapon if there is not some inherent advantage and disadvantage outside of visual representation?

How one uses a weapon in parallel to proper and necessary tactics, allows one to overcome a particular weapons advantages and overcome adversity...

Edited by DaZur, 06 June 2012 - 11:15 AM.

[AceTimberwolf]

Gozer, on 06 June 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

So I have a question for Ace to take to a demo dev guy if at all possible.

Can you ask if they've doubled the Armor/internals for the press/testing or if this is what they want to keep?

Don't forget E3 is a PRESS/industry event and many times demos have larger ammo/health/armor levels to let the people "play it for longer" to get a "better feel" of the game in the limited amount of time they have. I recall the Space Marine demo at last years E3 was like that.

Other than that if you go back do try a light, I want to hear your impressions of the little buggers.

Well the demo they showed was the Closed Beta. I didn't feel like the messed around with "health" you could easily die right at the beginning if you were dumb about it.

DaZur, on 06 June 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

No disrespect intended... But this thought process is just ridiculous to me. How should weapons be balanced? A pistol is more powerful than a sling-shot, a rifle is more powerful than and pistol, a rocket launcher is more powerful than a rifle, a cannon is more powerful than a rocket launcher... etc..etc.. ad nauseam. Ya don't bring a knife to a gun fight expecting the knife to do equal damage as a gun do ya?

Point is, if all weapons have parity, we might as well run around with spit-balls because what's the point in arming one self with a particular weapon if there is not some inherent advantage and versus disadvantage outside of visual representation?

How one uses a weapon in parallel to proper and necessary tactics, allows one to overcome a particular weapons advantages and overcome adversity...

A well placed Slingshot could kill someone... Food for thought?

BTW my day starts at 1 so I'll be back later tonight. I might pop into the razer booth today for more but most likely tomorrow

Edited by AceTimberwolf, 06 June 2012 - 11:12 AM.

[Drei]

Very excited to get some info. Makes me want to start up MW4 Mercs and start brushing up on the skills

[DaZur]

AceTimberwolf, on 06 June 2012 - 11:08 AM, said:

A well placed Slingshot could kill someone... Food for thought?

Actually, this partially demonstrates my point. Even a low-powered weapon used correctly can have devastating results!

David & Goliath anyone?

Edited by DaZur, 06 June 2012 - 11:14 AM.

[FactorlanP]

Something that doesn't seem to be getting any consideration in this LRM discussion is, if there is some sort of skill tree that players will spend XP points to improve their pilot skills... Doesn't it stand to reason that what may seem like minimal damage being done by LRMs may simply be a result of the guy playing the game is playing as a brand new mech pilot who is not getting any bonuses from experience/training?

Perhaps after specializing in LRMs on the skill tree, a higher number of missiles hit the target at a given range causing those damages numbers to go up... If that is how the game is being designed, then it is important for the Devs to balance those damage numbers on the HIGH/Fully Trained up end of the equation first.

I think we are operating with too little info really... But the speculation is fun though!

[AceTimberwolf]

Russ did talk about implementing the Skill trees would affect the playing field dynamically. I wish i could have seen some of that but has yet to be implemented.

[Urulf]

Adridos, on 06 June 2012 - 10:56 AM, said:

Yeah, so just let every LRM shred everything lighter than 60 tons. I don't want to fight you, you're one of my own, but the general idea is to make the mechs balanced.

I don't want to mean that LRMs should shred appart anything below 60 tons, if i did, i'm sorry. The point i want to hold there is, how many armor does have the hunchie compared to a heavy or an assault mech designed for the same function (brawler)? and compared to any other type of mech in his bracket ?
I guess a heavy or assault with (hypotetically talking here) the double or more armor than a hunchie will just get hurt (2%-4% total dmg?) by 2x15 LRMs (slow moving targets, and bigger, guess more hits), so why it would have to stand "more" just because its a brawler, more if its med (so "less" armored than his bigger counterparts)?

I recognice we just lack the amount of info necesary to see if this is actually balanced or not, giving the high variety of mech configurations we have, both fast and slow, big and small, armored or not, and the lack of acurate info we have so far.
Atm we are just speculating at best, and teorycrafting as much as we can with what we have, but supporting the idea of "x weapon should do crap dmg, because ppl will just camp/whatever" is a bit sidelined, while the camping can be allways done with any other kind of weapons (gauss/LL anyone) that hurts even more.
If ppl dont agree that the support mechs need some love, they will just be inexistent in the game (reminder: the catapult was selected for being ingame in the polls the devs used to catter the fan base at the forums to select mechs). If they overdo it, we will see LRMs campfests, but that is what devs and beta /tweaking are for, i guess ^^

[LackofCertainty]

DaZur, on 06 June 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

No disrespect intended... But this thought process is just ridiculous to me. How should weapons be balanced? A pistol is more powerful than a sling-shot, a rifle is more powerful than and pistol, a rocket launcher is more powerful than a rifle, a cannon is more powerful than a rocket launcher... etc..etc.. ad nauseam. Ya don't bring a knife to a gun fight expecting the knife to do equal damage as a gun do ya?

Your example here perfectly demonstrates what we want, actually.

Pistols are "weaker" than rifles, but they are still used today, because they're significantly lighter than rifles. A rocket launcher is "more powerful" than a rifle, but it has a much lower rate of rife, and it's ammo is quite heavy. etc etc etc.

That is the balance we are talking about. Every weapon doesn't need to be the same, it just needs to be viable compared to other weapons.

Here's a real world comparison and then a MW comparison:
Sniper rifles have significantly longer range than assault rifles, but generally have lower rates of fire.
LRM's have significantly longer range than Medium Lasers, but are limited by ammo and weight.

Every weapon needs to have it's place or you end up with everyone running Mech X because Weapon X is strictly better than all others. This is the doom and gloom exaggerated scenario, obviously, but the core idea is based in truth. If one weapon is noticably superior to another weapon in every way, then people will gravitate to that weapon.

P.S.
Honestly, I don't think we need to worry about it. It sounds like the weapons are all performing pretty well already, and with a few tweaks they'll have the balance nailed.

Edited by LackofCertainty, 06 June 2012 - 11:24 AM.

[Odanan]

DaZur, on 06 June 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

RE: Perceived deficit in the Cat's LRM and the Dragon...

Thanks for the personal insight and overview!

That said, and no offense intended but I take the commentary regarding your impression of some things with a grain of salt... The dragon really is a paper dragon, it's dafult loadout is pretty paltry and it vise is it's speed-to-class ratio. Also, I'm actually happy to hear that missiles are not instant death from above, allowing a rush tactics to actually counter what otherwise would be a frustrating death-at-distance scenario as in past MW iterations...

Good stuff. Thanks!

I'm sorry but the Dragon was always a ****** mech. The Grand Dragon (Dragon with PPC) however...