507 replies to this topic

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

The more I think about this, the more it seems that splash damage for missiles should just be removed entirely. It seems to cause no end of problems, and really it doesn't make all that much sense to begin with.

SRMs are shaped-charge warheads, designed for point-damage and armor-piercing capability (hence their higher damage value). LRMs are high explosive, which would lend itself to splash damage, but the way that battletech armor works would suggest to me that the missiles can only really damage said armor when they impact directly and the explosion is focused on what is essentially a single point. The extra concussive force, heat, etc., just sort of washes over the mech, doing only cosmetic damage. Hence LRMs do only half the damage per missile of SRMs.

Removing splash damage, then, would allow LRMs and SRMs to return to their full damage values (or more, like they were until the hot-fix), without LRMs and Streaks being CT-coring wonder weapons and standard SRMs becoming insta-gib shotguns.

As for the flight arcs, I hope they get hot-fixed sooner rather than later, but they really do need some ability to defeat cover or indirect fire becomes useless. They should presumably have a terminal angle of 45 degrees when fired with LOS, and if you bumped that up to, say, 70 degrees it might work out ok without being OP or making all cover useless.

After all, indirect fire already requires a spotter to work at all, and by rights ought to impose a penalty on missile clustering, so having it be useful against targets behind low or badly-shaped cover (not-so-steep hills and so on) would be a good thing. That kind of cover already protects the mech behind it by forcing the use of a spotter in the first place.

[Shumabot]

Victor Morson, on 21 May 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

I disagree with everything except 4. They are BARELY qualified to be usable weapons right now. I think they might even see serious 8 man use for once.

They don't need their splash or grouping changed, or even their arc changed. If anything they might need a buff yet. Don't screw them over PGI, for the love of God. It's nice having LRMs be "usable." I am ENTIRELY SICK of having LRMs go from good to trash every few months.

Do people even have weapons on their mechs in the elo you're in? The games own lead designer came out and said that a culmination of bugs are making LRMs vastly more powerful than they should be. Have you even played the game?

[Wintersdark]

lol!

Hopefully the hotfix will come soon. That said, it's not as bad as the good old Lurmpocalypse of... err, a few weeks back.

However, I dusted off my A1, filled it with BAP and Streaks, and was ravaged by LRM's which popped my CT-mounted BAP in short order, leaving me helpless against the ECM lights tearing around.

(I kid, I kid! While that's a true story, I was laughing all the while; I'm sure LRM's will be fine once the cover-countering trajectory and splash damage issue is finally corrected)

[N0MAD]

Well this is the 5th patch in a row I wont be patching,(that's nearly 3 months) thanks PGI. ALL my old MW2,3,4 friends are gone now so. I don't know..oh well.

[karoushi]

N0MAD, on 21 May 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Well this is the 5th patch in a row I wont be patching,(that's nearly 3 months) thanks PGI. ALL my old MW2,3,4 friends are gone now so. I don't know..oh well.

Ouch, that is 5 patches that will take a long time to install if you ever do decide to want to play again.

I'd patch just to get those out of the way and so that I wouldn't have to wait for hours on the day I did want to play, if I were you.

[armyof1]

Victor Morson, on 21 May 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

I disagree with everything except 4. They are BARELY qualified to be usable weapons right now. I think they might even see serious 8 man use for once.

They don't need their splash or grouping changed, or even their arc changed. If anything they might need a buff yet. Don't screw them over PGI, for the love of God. It's nice having LRMs be "usable." I am ENTIRELY SICK of having LRMs go from good to trash every few months.

[Kitane]

So there are two bugs with LRMs and both will be fixed very soon (and one of them will fix SSRMs as well)

Good

Even with current missiles the game is more enjoyable than poptarting hell we had before the patch. It finally feels like a mech combat again.

[Sable Dove]

Kitane, on 21 May 2013 - 05:14 PM, said:

So there are two bugs with LRMs and both will be fixed very soon (and one of them will fix SSRMs as well)

Good

Even with current missiles the game is more enjoyable than poptarting hell we had before the patch. It finally feels like a mech combat again.

"Soon" to PGI means about 4-6 months.

And no, it's nowhere near as fun. At least you could stay in cover from PPCs. As little skill as it is, you do actually have to aim PPCs yourself.

The only thing that's changed is now it takes a couple seconds after stepping out of cover to die, instead of it being instant.

[Thanatos676]

Just played a few matches against the LRM menace, did better then expected, won most rounds. The main thing is, like they said, CT is getting HAMMERED by the LRMs. Its not just a bit of extra damage to the CT, its pretty much all of the damage is going there. Fix soon please.

[gjnii]

I'm not an LRM pilot, I don't have or use tag, I didn't even have artemis loaded on my stalker (3h? maybe? you can tell how much I DON'T use it)

but I did have 2 lrm 20's and 2 lrm5's, and the tubes to launch them. It was sickeningly effective, without any of the added accessories. I just hung back and looked at one and only one thing... target inside 1000m? click. wait... click... wait. and then damage just started piling in... the damage isn't necessarily nuts, but it really does feel like I'm firing 50 ssrm from 800m away. my biggest regret was not having more ammo... I figured maybe it was just the map (canyon), but then I got river city night, and it was the same thing. chill by kappa. score kills/assists on anything that gets targetted.

[Noesis]

TheMagician, on 21 May 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

First, I don't know why PGI's 'testing' still is not capturing, and the devs are not addressing issues that are obvious in 2 minutes of play.

Second, waiting that long is too long. This is a hotfix issue, otherwise you are risking losing even more of your dedicated player-base.

Erm, the explanation is that they are aware and the update simply missing this patch window. As a result how can you be certain QA testing haven't spotted this?

Classic miss representation and scare mongering, especially when overall the LRM improvements are helping the meta, and likely without the observer issue already known to be addressed a helpful introduction to overall game play.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

gjnii, on 21 May 2013 - 05:31 PM, said:

I'm not an LRM pilot, I don't have or use tag, I didn't even have artemis loaded on my stalker (3h? maybe? you can tell how much I DON'T use it)

but I did have 2 lrm 20's and 2 lrm5's, and the tubes to launch them. It was sickeningly effective, without any of the added accessories. I just hung back and looked at one and only one thing... target inside 1000m? click. wait... click... wait. and then damage just started piling in... the damage isn't necessarily nuts, but it really does feel like I'm firing 50 ssrm from 800m away. my biggest regret was not having more ammo... I figured maybe it was just the map (canyon), but then I got river city night, and it was the same thing. chill by kappa. score kills/assists on anything that gets targetted.

Yeah it's not a damage thing. I'm still not breaking 500 damage often. It's just where it's all going.

Though...after playing a few games...it's really not as bad as I first thought.

Contrary to what some people are saying, they do not go over every single piece of terrain that isn't huge. They still get stopped quite a bit.

Holding a good lock is still as big a pain as it has been.

And it really comes down too...if people are stupid and wander around in the open for 30 seconds, they are going to die.

But that will happen with any weapon.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I've alsp noticed, the battles are not as mundane as PPC Sniping/Ridge Humping/Poptarting. A lot more movement and adjusting as people try to avoid hits.

I think half the problem is people were so ready to get away from the PPC meta, that they jumped on the LRM train. I think we'd be having a ton of complaining even without the splash/trajectory issues.

Because A] no one carries AMS, B] people forgot how to play against LRM's (this is why I always did ok even before todays patch), and C] People are lazy

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 21 May 2013 - 05:53 PM.

[NemesisXIII]

This is just not cool. I came to play mechWARRIOR.. where it takes skill to play... not BORKEDwarrior where anyone can play and everything is nerfed every few patched because WHINERwarriors took over the forums.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Noesis, on 21 May 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

Erm, the explanation is that they are aware and the update simply missing this patch window. As a result how can you be certain QA testing haven't spotted this?

Classic miss representation and scare mongering, especially when overall the LRM improvements are helping the meta, and likely without the observer issue already known to be addressed a helpful introduction to overall game play.

Top tip: If your QA team did catch this, and said don't do this it's seriously borked!...you don't do it, you remove that aspect.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

NemesisXIII, on 21 May 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

This is just not cool. I came to play mechWARRIOR.. where it takes skill to play... not BORKEDwarrior where anyone can play and everything is nerfed every few patched because WHINERwarriors took over the forums.

Calm it down, this is no different than anything else. We just have a different meta ruling the day. One of these days I hope they will luck into a mostly balanced game.

Sure there will always be one thing that's a bit stronger. But it's not the end of the world.

[Vassago Rain]

We've been here already. Three times.

Why do you keep doing this? Either admit you want trenching, or do it right for once.

[Zphyr]

So you missed by a day. About a serious problem that will severely affect the game experience of the entire playerbase. Tell us (or me), how many "a day" did you... hum, miss already? A few times is understandable. The unexpected does happen from time to time, but constantly? How long have you been tweaking and failing on balancing the missiles, knowing that what you put online's a bad bad thing? The missiles were doing fine then you broke it. Then broke it further and further. Finally managed to get it to a good level but soon broke it again! This is just the missiles, not even the tons of other issues that plague MWO. I really want to believe that you are giving your 110%, however it's getting more and more difficult to feel it (or even see it) as time goes by. I know things are easier said than done, and your latest tale of hunting down the HUD corruption was quite a read... but really? Missiles? Can you stop hyper-nerfing it and hyper-buffing it all the time? How about something in the middle? How about testing it as a whole before sending the catastrophe to the frustrating masses? If you knew that unless you get the whole "package" delivered together things will go very wrong, why did you not hold it for a while? Unfixed can sometimes be better than overfixed. Although I did like the faster missile lock... overall it's still a mess.

[RiceyFighter]

Vassago Rain, on 21 May 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

We've been here already. Three times.

Why do you keep doing this? Either admit you want trenching, or do it right for once.

[Gandorf IRL]

Thank you Paul for the quick update and the detail on the problem.

After about 15 games tonight I must say this is the first patch that has made me want to stop playing the game. Being killed by an unseen opponent on the other side of the map while hugging a building is not fun. The combination of the flight path, increased speed, upgraded damage etc is simply too much. Use of cover, whilst effective against snipers etc, is no defense against the super-lrms.

Please revert these changes as soon as possible or I really feel you will lose a lot of players, I would hate to see that happening as this was shaping up to be a great game. The comments on the forum and in game chat reflect the level of frustration and disappointment with this change.

This is the first issue I have ever felt strongly enough to comment on in these forums. Hope you can fix this soon and make the game fun again.