133 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

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.

With LRMs at least, I figure the reason is because the system for LRMs itself is broken and fixing that will have all kinds of side effects you don't know beforehand.

With MGs or LBX... I got nothing.

[Asmudius Heng]

Victor Morson, on 28 May 2013 - 02:27 AM, said:

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

Not yet - worth chucking into an Ask the devs or prompting them on an NGNG podcast if you get involved in those. I would, but have a screaming 3 month old i cannot work around lol.

The details are very sketchy and the only official thing i can find is this:

http://www.reddit.co...lbzne?context=3

[Thorqemada]

I dont know if ist already mentioned but in one of the latest NGNG Podcasts PGI said that they feel the overall DPS is to high.
Obviously they need to make HSR work for all weapons well b4 they can do a real balancing pass.

[zorak ramone]

There aren't enough likes for this post. OP hits just about all the high points. A few things I'll add:

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

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?

This is something that needs to be done. However, its worth noting that even if you tighted spread to make it an AC10 .. it would still need a damage boost. The AC10 and LBX10 both need damage boosts. However, there seems to be hesitation on the part of the devs to change AC damage values. There is no good reason for this hesitation, especially when so much more has changed from CBT.

Quote

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?


....

My primary concern, I will admit, is LRMs and SRMs. Are you planning to fix the explosive damage and re-up missiles? Why haven't you temporarily given them the same damage total (1.2 originally) per missile, instead of simply rendering the explosive damage too small to apply and leaving the damage at 0.9? Are you aware that the currently weak SRMs is the main reason we don't have brawlers that can deal with jump snipers, since SRMs are actually inferior to ranged weapons up close right now?

Holy hell, this. A thousand times this.

The nerfing of the SRM was the end of the last, no-BS infighting weapon. Additionally, as light weight, low-crit weapon it was also usable on medium and light mechs. After it was nerfed, there were no longer any weapons that could compete with sniper weapons: the marginal benefits of the ML, AC20, SSRM and SRM are not good enough to warrant their use. Immediately after the SRM was nerfed, we saw the GR/PPC meta take over, and it won't go away until infighting (or hell, mid range weapons like the AC10) are buffed/unnerfed.

Restore SRM damage and eliminate splash. And while you're at it, drop ML/SL heat to pre-nerf levels from closed beta (i.e. subtract one point each), drop AC20 heat to like 2 or 3, and increase AC10/LBX10 damage to 12/14 and/or drop their heat to almost nothing.

[Victor Morson]

MustrumRidcully, on 28 May 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

With LRMs at least, I figure the reason is because the system for LRMs itself is broken and fixing that will have all kinds of side effects you don't know beforehand.

With MGs or LBX... I got nothing.

Definitely things like flight path might take way more work than damage values; however I don't think adjusting missile base damage would cause issues with anything, to compensate for the lack of explosive right now.

[jeffsw6]

zorak ramone, on 28 May 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

This is something that needs to be done. However, its worth noting that even if you tighted spread to make it an AC10 .. it would still need a damage boost. The AC10 and LBX10 both need damage boosts. However, there seems to be hesitation on the part of the devs to change AC damage values. There is no good reason for this hesitation, especially when so much more has changed from CBT.

Alternatively, they could lower the tons or slots of these weapons. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There is absolutely no reason to use an AC/10 or an LB10-X. They are trash.

[xDeityx]

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

Frankly there's a growing concern in the community in general that you guys aren't really aware of the balance situation within the game, and I would really, really like to clear that up. This is something that I think, after this many roller coaster balances, that deserves an official response or even a discussion, at this point.

This is MWLL déjà vu. The devs who made the balance decisions for the majority of the MWLL lifespan weren't very good at actually playing the game. Finally they had Maus and Andreas doing weapon balance but I think it was too little too late. This is why I think your previous suggestion thread about having top-level players as advisors is so spot on.

PGI has proven that they don't have a clue what they are doing with balance. This game is so far from being ready for competitive play that it's depressing to think about because there is no incremental progress. The metagame just wildly shifts around as opposed to becoming more fine tuned.

I honestly don't know what the solution is because PGI is content to leave the game unbalanced as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line.

[Victor Morson]

jeffsw6, on 28 May 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

Alternatively, they could lower the tons or slots of these weapons. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There is absolutely no reason to use an AC/10 or an LB10-X. They are trash.

I think people would, in general, reactive negatively to an established piece of equipment changing size. I can't really explain it but it irks the core audience (myself included) more than any other change that can be done to a weapon.

I'd rather the guns brought up to be worth their space & tonnage - not have that space & tonnage changed, which I think is fine - as it stands, there is a diverse list of weights & space to properly stat.

xDeityx, on 28 May 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

This is MWLL déjà vu. The devs who made the balance decisions for the majority of the MWLL lifespan weren't very good at actually playing the game. Finally they had Maus and Andreas doing weapon balance but I think it was too little too late. This is why I think your previous suggestion thread about having top-level players as advisors is so spot on.

PGI has proven that they don't have a clue what they are doing with balance. This game is so far from being ready for competitive play that it's depressing to think about because there is no incremental progress. The metagame just wildly shifts around as opposed to becoming more fine tuned.

I honestly don't know what the solution is because PGI is content to leave the game unbalanced as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line.

To be honest the main reason I stopped playing MWLL before MW:O ever came about was more the community than the balance. The best server in the game was run by ~SJ~ who were pretty much a bunch of whiny babies about everything (Don't shoot me in the leg, don't shoot me in the back, don't shoot off my arms, don't take advantage of me standing still...) despite half of them getting banned for smurfing accounts to push their views forward. That said the ~SJ~ that have joined MW:O seem like a massive improvement on their original attitude from my few encounters with them.

But yeah, there weren't enough active units to really make the game keep going for me. I thought they had a lot of things pretty close to right in LL, definitely better than here.

Then again, I'm not sure when Maus took over; the last version I played was when the Fafnir was being added, and I found it pretty well balanced at that point overall. Not to say there weren't hilarious balance issues at times with MWLL - the early LPL boats, esp. the tanks, were stupidly OP. Still, they found a good way from the very start to give AC/2s, MGs, etc. a use without having to buff them which I thought was kinda neat.

But back on target, I do believe you're right. PGI wants to focus towards the casual gamer so they are resisting balance advice from the upper tier players, despite the fact that a well balanced game has very much a "trickle down" effect to everyone. Letting the upper units have more influence in balancing does not adversely impact casuals, even if the casuals might have a slightly higher learning curve because of it. Learning curves are good things, if newbies have more to learn than "These 6 guns rule, everything else is trash."*

The big thing about this post is while a lot of buff cries are met with fierce argument and debate, one look at the stats of these weapons should tell them everything they need to know about how dire the situation is - heh, honestly they only need to look at one. "Damage done." In theory if the game were perfectly balanced, most weapons would be averaging about the same damage, with the exception of lower-model missiles (SRM2 would obviously be responsible for less damage than the SRM6 overall I suspect, since it would often be an "extra launcher".) It would also help filter things like "Amount the gun is taken" because a lot of clueless newbies are hauling bad guns (then dying to good ones), making it too "noisy" to read.

* Large Laser, (ER)PPC, Gauss, Streak/2, Ultra/5, Medium Laser

EDIT: I hope they realize this IS hurting their bottom line - a lot of paying customers that have even bought heroes have more or less completely "checked out until it's fixed." Just look at how long it is to find a game. If anyone at PGI thinks this is because of anything other than the guns desperately needing buffs they are wrong, wrong, wrong in 80% of cases.

Edited by Victor Morson, 28 May 2013 - 01:44 PM.

[xDeityx]

Victor Morson, on 28 May 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

.

It's just so frustrating to see the huge potential for the game wasted due to ineptitude. I'm one of the folks who play a fraction of what I used to (hopefully that will change with community warfare...which I'm remaining cautiously optimistic towards despite the signs). I'm a competitive player at heart but I just can't bring myself to put forth the effort in MWO yet because the end game seems so unappealing. I'd love to get all serious about tactics and strategy but...meh. The victories seem like they would be hollow because there's so little depth in the game right now.

I don't think you'll get an official response to this post. My guess is that they'll misguidedly point you here, if they even respond at all. That being said, it's good to see you trying though; keep up the great posts because maybe you'll break through to them one of these times. So far you've been spot on.

[Sephlock]

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?

YES!

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.

They just need to buff SRMs back to the way they used to be and install a filter on the forums that doesn't allow you to post: SRM, SRMs, Short range missiles.... etc

Quote

PULSE LASERS: just cut the beam duration in half already

I'd agree with you but that would threaten the position of autocannons.

Quote

Air Strike / Artillery Strike: needs more damage

Or SOMETHING, anyway.

[jeffsw6]

xDeityx, on 28 May 2013 - 04:23 PM, said:

I'm a competitive player at heart but I just can't bring myself to put forth the effort in MWO yet because the end game seems so unappealing. I'd love to get all serious about tactics and strategy but...meh. The victories seem like they would be hollow because there's so little depth in the game right now.

The current end-game is basically teams loaded up with one kind of mech or another. That's because of bad victory conditions and limited map choices, and bad map design.

For example, it is not unusual to see an 8-man team of any of these things:

• all lights who rush and cap at the first sign of possible defeat, sometimes having one assault defender
  
• all PPC boats save a scout or so
  
• all AS7-D-DC who just try to steam-roll the maps they can do it on

I do think this can improve but but it can't really be fixed by weapon changes, because it is always to your advantage to have a team that is loaded up on one basic kind of mech, and just hope you win. Diversity is not helpful; just take your loss and move on to the next team you can steam-roll.

[Stoicblitzer]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 26 May 2013 - 04:22 PM, said:

I will also say, that I think the "nerf" to PPC's actually was a buff because it sync's them better with a Gauss Rifle for poptarting.

increasing cooldown wasn't meant to be a nerf/buff but i agree. it did turn out to be a buff. helped people with heat management.

[Lukoi Banacek]

OP - in regards to your initial comment specifically about ECM.....Isn't BAP being a hard counter at short range while not impacting it's protective/masking properties at long range a fairly viable method to IW? I think that's what the Dev's aimed for and I think that's worked out to be the case.

ECM isn't useless, it's situational. And that's much fairer than where it was before in the perceptions of MOST of the playerbase if the metric-crap-ton of "ECM is OP" threads that used to festoon these forums are to be believed.

[Asmudius Heng]

jeffsw6, on 28 May 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

The current end-game is basically teams loaded up with one kind of mech or another. That's because of bad victory conditions and limited map choices, and bad map design.

For example, it is not unusual to see an 8-man team of any of these things:

• all lights who rush and cap at the first sign of possible defeat, sometimes having one assault defender
  
• all PPC boats save a scout or so
  
• all AS7-D-DC who just try to steam-roll the maps they can do it on

I do think this can improve but but it can't really be fixed by weapon changes, because it is always to your advantage to have a team that is loaded up on one basic kind of mech, and just hope you win. Diversity is not helpful; just take your loss and move on to the next team you can steam-roll.

The game modes and maps have a huge influence on balance and are not discussed enough imo.

[Akulakhan]

jeffsw6, on 28 May 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

The current end-game is basically teams loaded up with one kind of mech or another. That's because of bad victory conditions and limited map choices, and bad map design.

For example, it is not unusual to see an 8-man team of any of these things:

• all lights who rush and cap at the first sign of possible defeat, sometimes having one assault defender
  
• all PPC boats save a scout or so
  
• all AS7-D-DC who just try to steam-roll the maps they can do it on

I do think this can improve but but it can't really be fixed by weapon changes, because it is always to your advantage to have a team that is loaded up on one basic kind of mech, and just hope you win. Diversity is not helpful; just take your loss and move on to the next team you can steam-roll.

However, it is unusual to see an eight man. That queue is dead as a doornail. We tried to get an 8-man matchup today around 6pm/EST, and six failed to find matches, straight in a row. So I would actually be somewhat inclined to argue there is no endgame at the moment. Just load up your PPC heavies and assaults and four-man it up. It's sad, really.

As for the OP and the discussion thereafter; as a light pilot I see the meta changes as somewhat of an outside, neutral observer. My medium lasers and missiles aren't really going to go anywhere, after all (well, perhaps in the case of dumbfire missiles, but honestly streaks haven't really moved up and down much at all recently, save for a few sightings of the BAP streakcat), but I digress: the high alpha builds will never go away until boating is penalized.

You can buff the LBX, pulse lasers and whathaveyou all you want, but as long as people can put multiple 10-15 damage weapons on their mech, they're going to do it. There's currently no penalty, so why not? It's the quickest and easiest way to do damage and get kills, and let's be honest, a monkey can aim four PPCs with the current convergence system.

For example, say, over night, pulse laser heat and duration is reduced, and the LBX damage per pellet is buffed. Will there be a change? Perhaps for a day or two, as us ELO barons test them out and see what they're made of. But the final outcome will just be a reversion back to the high pinpoint alpha builds, because you can hit from far away (LBX and lasers and missiles will never do that) and you can one shot a medium mech. the splatcat was a decent counter to this, but that's still a high alpha build, albeit a brawly one, and wouldn't shift the meta very much, to be honest.

tl;dr: Even with any and all proposed changes, the problem is high alpha boating. Until boating is penalized in some way, you can buff alternate weapons all you want. The long range alpha strike will remain king.

[LordBraxton]

Can we get the old SRMs back?

like the ones from 2 months ago??

that were useful????

before the game favored snipers only?????

PLEASE??!?!?!?!

[Victor Morson]

Akulakhan, on 28 May 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

tl;dr: Even with any and all proposed changes, the problem is high alpha boating. Until boating is penalized in some way, you can buff alternate weapons all you want. The long range alpha strike will remain king.

As I need to keep reminding people the problem is definitely not boating.

The problem is the lack of tonnage/BV limits on matches. Assaults SHOULD be very powerful, big gun toting alpha strikers. It's what they do, at least any that aren't more geared for damage soaking. The problem is assaults should not be the majority force on the battlefield.

PGI needs to understand that all classes are NOT created equal in BattleTech and a team of mediums will not beat a team of assaults no matter what you do.

They absolutely need to introduce pre-lobby ques with hard limits on this stuff, or do something with matchmaking. In fact I would be fine if there was a straight 8-man tonnage cap.

Again, if you screw alpha strikes and boats, you're screwing totally reasonable builds like 3 SRM6s on medium 'mechs or twin PPC strikers just as much as 6 PPC Stalkers. The problem is not PPC Stalker boats or Highlander jumpers, it's that everybody is in one!

This is like saying Quarterbacks are OP because someone decided to change football rules to have unlimited Quarterbacks.

Edited by Victor Morson, 28 May 2013 - 07:10 PM.

[Victor Morson]

I've got to say catching up on the posts, I really dig the idea of the LBX/10 and AC/10 getting buffed with a refire bonus. I think the AC/20 could stand for a small refire boost too. I think that would bring them totally up to speed, honestly.

[Sephlock]

Seriously, I'm insane enough that I've tried 3x LBX on my Ilya just so I can pretend I have LBXes as they SHOULD be... it doesn't end well .

[Pixelmancer]

Asmudius Heng, on 26 May 2013 - 04:28 PM, said:

Communication Competence has always been PGIs greatest weakness.

Fixed.