133 replies to this topic

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Remember, they do not work weekends.

And I'm guessing some how they have Memorial Day off as well.

And these devs, unlike most I've known do not seem to pull overtime hours.

So I wouldn't expect much till tomorrow.

[LordBraxton]

I haven't been playing for like 2 months now because SRMs were such a crucial part of battlefield balance

with no SRMs

snipers rule

I got bored with my 4ppc builds after a few days of butt ******

[RG Notch]

Mister Blastman, on 27 May 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

Convergence is the problem and will always be the problem. Getting rid of it entirely would make this game exceedingly interesting having to re-align your shot for each and every weapon. Incredible things would happen to this game immediately!

But, I've made many threads on this in the past and PGI has never issued a response in any of them. They also refuse to answer any of these questions in ask the devs.

So what does that tell you? Oh well I guess it's like the hard point size people, months and months of the same yapping with nothing changing, or even being addressed by the team, but a hard point size as the answer to everything still pops up once a week like clockwork.
We are getting closer and closer to launch, nothing significant like convergence, hard point sizes, or any other massive system change is going to occur before then. Whether this is a good or bad idea I leave to others. I simply state, stop wasting your time. Nothing will change in a significant way, minus tweaks and minor changes here and there. We're simply too close to launch.
Seriously, look what they do the game when they make these minor changes and you think they can massively ovehaul basic systems before launch.

Edited by RG Notch, 27 May 2013 - 10:53 AM.

[jeffsw6]

MaddMaxx, on 27 May 2013 - 09:02 AM, said:

Let's have a Poll in which we will select the representative(s) maybe 2, from the Forums who will be the designated Spokesperson and be they who will hold said dialogue for all of us, as surely attempting to do so with 1-2 reps from PGI and 1500 Forum members is not going to work, or ever happen.

I will nominate MustrumRidcully to be put on the Poll ballet. Yah or Nay

Excellent idea. I suspect PGI will totally ignore us anyway, but I support this and your nomination of MustrumRidcully.

FupDup, on 27 May 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Yay.

And FupDup.

Actually, there is one problem with this plan. There are like 50+ posters who regularly make sense on weapon balance, and any one of us would do a better job than PGI Paul.

Know what they should do? Just apply damage, heat, etc. changes that we specify to the public test server. I realize they can't trivially modify the missile trajectory, and a (very) small number of other properties about weapon mechanics; but they can change the basic values so easily that, well, it's extremely obvious PGI Paul isn't really trying to balance the armaments or they'd be doing it already. Maybe there is a reason they aren't trying yet, but I can't imagine what that is.

[Sephlock]

MaddMaxx, on 27 May 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

Could you elaborate. They have been modified 4 different ways just last week. Damage, Flight, Splash, Spread. Which is the broken one and why? How many flights did you shoot before you shelved them? 5?

Anything that allows them to deal damage makes them broken, apparently.

Nicholas Carlyle, on 27 May 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

Remember, they do not work weekends.

And I'm guessing some how they have Memorial Day off as well.

And these devs, unlike most I've known do not seem to pull overtime hours.

So I wouldn't expect much till tomorrow.

Of course, there IS a solution....

[Victor Morson]

I really wish people would stop derailing the overall conversation with convergence/boating.

The thread is really focused on the individual guns, and if they work. I would be OK with changing convergence rates to make it happen slower and stuff myself, and think boating would resolve itself if they limited the number of high-end assaults that could get away with the best alphas so everyone didn't have them..

..but again, it's a conversation we should be having in one of the other dozens of threads dedicated to that.

My sole concern here is specifically individual guns that are currently worthless, forcing people to take the same 5 or so weapons. We can deal with people boating these weapons once they're fixed, but let's keep our message clear here and focus on the broken guns themselves first folks?

If we have any hope of maybe gaining a proper answer, we need to keep on-message.

jeffsw6, on 27 May 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

Know what they should do? Just apply damage, heat, etc. changes that we specify to the public test server. I realize they can't trivially modify the missile trajectory, and a (very) small number of other properties about weapon mechanics; but they can change the basic values so easily that, well, it's extremely obvious PGI Paul isn't really trying to balance the armaments or they'd be doing it already. Maybe there is a reason they aren't trying yet, but I can't imagine what that is.

That is the part that does most confuse me about this; making changes to simple things like gun range & damage should take all of a few minutes.

I've repeatedly said that they should try to get some of the better teams out to PGI's studios to have them play test all kinds of rebalances, because it's pretty obvious if they are balancing based on internal tester feedback, the internal testers aren't very good at it.

Keep in mind again, if I sound angry, it's only because this situation (With huge numbers of guns vastly UP, including all missiles) shouldn't have lasted more than a couple weeks. It's been months.

Strides were made to improve them, sure, but no thought at all was given to that hotfix. Literally I bet it came down to someone wanting to leave for the day, having to work some OT, and just turning splash damage to such a small radius that it won't hit (because they didn't want to take the system down), with absolutely no compensation for the loss of damage, and left it that way.

Edited by Victor Morson, 27 May 2013 - 04:18 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

Victor Morson, on 27 May 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

I really wish people would stop derailing the overall conversation with convergence/boating.

The thread is really focused on the individual guns, and if they work. I would be OK with changing convergence rates to make it happen slower and stuff myself, and think boating would resolve itself if they limited the number of high-end assaults that could get away with the best alphas so everyone didn't have them..

..but again, it's a conversation we should be having in one of the other dozens of threads dedicated to that.

My sole concern here is specifically individual guns that are currently worthless, forcing people to take the same 5 or so weapons. We can deal with people boating these weapons once they're fixed, but let's keep our message clear here and focus on the broken guns themselves first folks?

If we have any hope of maybe gaining a proper answer, we need to keep on-message.



That is the part that does most confuse me about this; making changes to simple things like gun range & damage should take all of a few minutes.

I've repeatedly said that they should try to get some of the better teams out to PGI's studios to have them play test all kinds of rebalances, because it's pretty obvious if they are balancing based on internal tester feedback, the internal testers aren't very good at it.

Keep in mind again, if I sound angry, it's only because this situation (With huge numbers of guns vastly UP, including all missiles) shouldn't have lasted more than a couple weeks. It's been months.

Strides were made to improve them, sure, but no thought at all was given to that hotfix. Literally I bet it came down to someone wanting to leave for the day, having to work some OT, and just turning splash damage to such a small radius that it won't hit (because they didn't want to take the system down), with absolutely no compensation for the loss of damage, and left it that way.

I actually remember them saying they frequently talk to certain competitive teams ... the reddit group among them? Cannot remember. In any case, if they are talking to high end competition team then either they are ignoring them, or those teams are not giving very good feedback, or they actually are not talking to anyone in particular.

I hope this public test server will allow them to test things faster without having to impact on the main server which I think is thier main worry. However i wonder just how quickly they will change and adjust things on that test server given thier record with balance changes overall ...

[Roland]

Quote

ECM: You guys are aware that giving a hard counter another hard counter has nerf'ed it out of usefulness almost entirely right? Are there plans to introduce softer counters?

Eh, I don't know about this.

ECM is still capable of hiding you from detection at ranges outside 150.

[Deathlike]

Asmudius Heng, on 27 May 2013 - 04:21 PM, said:

I actually remember them saying they frequently talk to certain competitive teams ... the reddit group among them? Cannot remember. In any case, if they are talking to high end competition team then either they are ignoring them, or those teams are not giving very good feedback, or they actually are not talking to anyone in particular.

This, I'd have to see to believe. I doubt this is even happening on any serious level.

[Inkarnus]

there wont be an answer my pov

[Asmudius Heng]

Deathlike, on 27 May 2013 - 04:57 PM, said:

This, I'd have to see to believe. I doubt this is even happening on any serious level.

I agree, it makes me a litle annoyed they said this as i cannot imagine any seriously competative team giving them advice such as the current game balance.

Unless those teams are doing an epic troll

[El Bandito]

ECM is still very good. Aside from that, there is not much I disagree with the OP.

[Deathlike]

Asmudius Heng, on 27 May 2013 - 07:46 PM, said:

I agree, it makes me a litle annoyed they said this as i cannot imagine any seriously competative team giving them advice such as the current game balance.

Unless those teams are doing an epic troll

No competitive team would suggest such ideas as BAP directly counter ECM, let alone keep the Seismic Wallhack that exists currently.

Edited by Deathlike, 27 May 2013 - 10:08 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Victor Morson, on 27 May 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

That is the part that does most confuse me about this; making changes to simple things like gun range & damage should take all of a few minutes.

Maybe the problem is, if all they take is a few minutes, we get stuff like "oh, let's buff the MG by 100 %, that should do allright", when most people that spend quite a few hours playing the game and analyzing the weapons and their advantages and flaws would go higher.

Making a change is probably a 5 minute task. But understanding what the change has to be takes more time.
The question might be - why do they take their time and still don't seem to get it right?

That's why I prefer a dialogue. Because it can speed up the process of "discovery" of the right values. I am not saying the community has the right values already, but at least we can make sure that the various arguments and observations are spelled out and can be considered. Understanding why, say, stjobe did not think that doubling MG damage would be sufficient can be helpful. But if they only listen to trends, all they hear is "Oh, MG damage is not enough", not "MG damage is not enough because the spread of the weapon itself limits the usefulness of that damage, and the MG requires constant aiming at the target, making it impossible to take defensive action without losing its damage potential. In addition, the enemy can react defensely and spread the damage even worse. Overall, this gives the weapon a considerably disadvantage that makes its theoretical DPS less comparable to other weapon that deal damage in form of short bursts, be it projectiles or beams."

Just the same thing if they hear only "PPC Stalkers are OP, nerf!" they might think th at lowering PPC damage or increasing its heat is all that is needed to be done, while the truth might be that the PPC Stalkers are "exploiting" their heat mechanics and its stats might be fine if the heat capacity wasn't so high and the heat dissipation so low. And just punishing it with more heat might just kill its utility all together, because then it would become useless for alpha strikes as well as sustained damage output.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 27 May 2013 - 10:31 PM.

[Kmieciu]

Victor Morson, on 26 May 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

There's a LOT of unrest in terms of the current balance. I am sincerely hoping that some statement will be made on the following:

MGs: Are these getting buffed again? At least, getting their crit chances restored/buffed to go with the damage & range? They did not need a nerf with the buff.

LRMs: Are you aware that the current LRMs are just shy of useless, dealing far too little damage and contending with super powered AMS?

Flamers: These transfer even less effective heat than before, are you aware they really aren't working in a worthwhile manner at all?

LBX/10: While I think the spread is good now, are there plans to improve the per-pellet damage to make the weapon more usable?

SRMs: Is there a huge damage buff coming again for SRMs? If they cannot get explosive damage back, are they going to get enough per-damage missile to be useful again?

ECM: You guys are aware that giving a hard counter another hard counter has nerf'ed it out of usefulness almost entirely right? Are there plans to introduce softer counters?

PULSE LASERS: These are almost never taken by competent players because the advantages are too minor. Are there any plans to reduce the discharge time to increase accuracy and return them to usefulness?

Air Strike / Artillery Strike: Will any attempt be made to make these competitive with the other modules and consumables, and function as anything more than a teleporting grenade with recycled 'mech weapon graphics at some point?

MGs and LBX/10: since their damage per tonne of ammo is pretty much on par with other ballistics (150-160), I think we need rate of fire increase - how about 20% more DPS?

SRMs: I actually like the new spread pattern, but without the splash we need 2.5 damage per missile back. But we could try 2.0 damage per missile first. And we need HSR. I would really like to see light mechs with SRM6s once again.

ECM: ECM is still definitely worth it's weight. Raven is still the best scout / spotter. Try using TAG in a Jenner. Every LRM boat packs BAP+advanced sensor range . You will be targeted from 1200 away and blasted with ERPPCs+Gauss by the whole enemy team. Finally we can take any light mech a have a chance against RVN-3Ls.

PULSE LASERS: just cut the beam duration in half already

Air Strike / Artillery Strike: needs more damage

Edited by Kmieciu, 27 May 2013 - 11:40 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Kmieciu, on 27 May 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

MGs and LBX/10: since their damage per tonne of ammo is pretty much on par with other ballistics (150-160), I think we need rate of fire increase - how about 20% more DPS?

DPS increase for MG and LBX/10 and a range increase for the AC/10 perhaps (540m?).

The problem with the MG, however, is that it already suffers a DPS loss due to ping. AC/2 and MG fire fast enough that a high ping can lower the number of shots you can actually fire vs. the maximum amount you should be able to fire.

Quote

SRMs: I actually like the new spread pattern, but without the splash we need 2.5 damage per missile back. But we could try 2.0 damage per missile first. And we need HSR. I would really like to see light mechs with SRM6s once again.

2.0 is probably the minimum it needs to deliver, yes. And HSR is a must, of course.

Quote

ECM: ECM is still definitely worth it's weight. Raven is still the best scout / spotter. Try using TAG in a Jenner. Every LRM boat packs BAP+advanced sensor range . You will be targeted from 1200 away and blasted with ERPPCs+Gauss by the whole enemy team. Finally we can take any light mech a have a chance against RVN-3Ls.

ECM is still dumb, being the all or nothing thingy it is, but yeah, they shifted the balance for lights with the BAP change.

Quote

PULSE LASERS: just cut the beam duration in half already

That would certainly help a lot.

Quote

Air Strike / Artillery Strike: needs more damage

And more differentiation. I still want Artillery Strikes to drop continous damage over an extended time frame so it can act as area denial. It doesn't have to be silly amounts of damage ,just enough to convince some that it's better to leave the area. (It doesn't even have to convince all - sometimes you gotta take the damage.)

[Victor Morson]

MustrumRidcully, on 27 May 2013 - 10:30 PM, said:

Maybe the problem is, if all they take is a few minutes, we get stuff like "oh, let's buff the MG by 100 %, that should do allright", when most people that spend quite a few hours playing the game and analyzing the weapons and their advantages and flaws would go higher.

Making a change is probably a 5 minute task. But understanding what the change has to be takes more time.
The question might be - why do they take their time and still don't seem to get it right?

While you are totally right on a lot, the thing that gets me is why they aren't making smaller adjustments frequently. I don't want them to make wild super buffs but a few percent here and there ever other week would sort this stuff out pretty quick, I think.

[Asmudius Heng]

Victor Morson, on 28 May 2013 - 02:07 AM, said:

While you are totally right on a lot, the thing that gets me is why they aren't making smaller adjustments frequently. I don't want them to make wild super buffs but a few percent here and there ever other week would sort this stuff out pretty quick, I think.

I am hoping this is what the public test server will be for.

However there has been no real communication on how that will be run and feed abck into the main build so ... who knows

[Victor Morson]

Asmudius Heng, on 28 May 2013 - 02:12 AM, said:

I am hoping this is what the public test server will be for.

However there has been no real communication on how that will be run and feed abck into the main build so ... who knows

Have they offered a time table for it? A test server is something I've been hoping for!

[Mawai]

CancR, on 26 May 2013 - 10:29 PM, said:

Moreso then the customer, we are the shareholders We are the stockholders, the people trying to fund this game while they get the game off the ground. They damn sure own answers.

Unless you own stock in PGI or IGP you are neither a shareholder or stockholder. You are a customer. If their product appeals to you you pay for it and if it doesn't you do not. I paid for it with a founders pack and I don't regret it for a second. I have already received value for my money in terms of enjoyable game play.

The fan base is a stakeholder in the sense that they want to see the mechwarrior franchise reborn ... many folks have their own ideas about what this should look like ... and if those ideas do not match those from PGI then there is conflict, outrage and disappointment in some cases.

Finally, there are balance issues in the game. LRM/SRM/SSRM swing back and forth from overpowered to underpowered and back again. However, before they can properly balance the weapons they have to have resolved any remaining lag issues and implemented host state rewind for all weapons. Until they have the back end in place for weapon resolution across all weapon systems ... can they be balanced? Or will any attempt at balancing just need to be redone as new improvements come along?