19 replies to this topic

[Necromantion]

To sadly find that this game is still dismal compared to how it was

Ive been looking forward to the next mech game for years. I picked up this beta around nov 2012 and had a blast all the way up to the LRM buff then immediate LRM/SRM nerf hotfix. I have played the series since MW2 when i was probably about 7 or so.

I enjoyed giving constructive feedback on the forums, adding suggestions, helping new players, playing 4 and 8 mans every night with the same people every night for months and now its all just bland.

Its not that i dont have desire to play the game, i really want to have fun again playing but its just that the game isnt fun. Most weapons are useless or nearly useless resulting in nearly the same loadouts even more so than when cookie cutter "splatcats" and the like were prominent. So instead of making more weapons viable they have reduced the number of viable weapons and further reduced the amount of viable loadouts and desirable chassis to play on. So now the issue they were concerned about is compounded more than it was before by "splatcats".

I really hope that these things are balanced out as "Beta" ends. Srm damage was fine before, you had to get super close to use them effectively which always puts you at risk to get smashed by the enemy team. For srms to be 1-2 hit kill lethal you have to be point blank which is obscenely stupid to play that way unless youre able to catch an enemy player off on his own oblivious.

LRM flight path yes was wonky but what did you devs expect when you change the flightpath to a tight spiral and add splash? Of course mechs were going to be cored. Should have just made a spread out flight pattern that is tightened by Artemis and either left them with no splash or just a tiny bit.

Does anyone else feel this way or share the same sentiments whether youre playing or just poking around the forums still?

[MadTulip]

It is exactly that. you could have added "ppc or ppc with JJ only" somewhere in between. i didnt play since LRMs and SRMs where removed from the game and came back after they have been re anounced. they where used again for ONE day. ppl where complaining on the forums imidiatly that they where to strong (in other words "maybe as strong as ppcs") which is just not the case. so one day after flaming the whole meta shifted back to PPCs. you hardly see any LRMs atm. If you get killed you get killed by PPC, no?. so how can you then argue that LRMs are OP ? i simply dont get it. LRMs still need damage improovement and the stupid splash template needs to be fixed. i dont see why damage should not be assigned to random locations instead of where the missile graficaly did hit.

SRMs are the rock in rock paper scissors and they are not in the game. atm there is only the PaperPC so you better bring a larger paper to counter the paper - which is totaly broken mechanic. its the same essentialy as countering ECM with ECM. its good that there is another item to counter ECM now. i guess at least that topic has been closed. it is so obvious and the devs got all the statistics. i dont get why they dont just set the LRM/SRM damage to exactly what the statistics did spit out. dont use cluster statistics here as a not so funny dide note.

Edited by MadTulip, 26 May 2013 - 04:25 AM.

[senaiboy]

Weapon stacking/boating is being looked at by the Devs.

ACs and Lasers are just as viable, if not better than PPCs. My mechs with highest kill ratio is actually my 4 LL Jager and 4 AC/5 Jager.

The LRMs post-May 21st patch was broken due to the almost-vertical flight path and splash damage. The current LRMs are back to their weak state and maybe need their damage tweaked up slightly, but that's only my opinion.

[FREDtheDEAD]

Necromantion, on 25 May 2013 - 11:03 PM, said:

To sadly find that this game is still dismal compared to how it was

{snip}

Yeah I really enjoyed it back when, if your were playing from anywhere outside the US, the rubber-banding made it impossible and people, literally, could not hit a fast mech due to lagshield and desynch issues. At least the netcode is kinda fixed and state rewind has made it, mostly, possible to hit lights.

Necromantion, on 25 May 2013 - 11:03 PM, said:

{snip}
I really hope that these things are balanced out as "Beta" ends.
{snip}
Does anyone else feel this way or share the same sentiments whether youre playing or just poking around the forums still?

Beta ending? What a quaint idea.

I quite enjoying playing at the moment. I only visit the forums out of a need to justify intermittent acts of self-harm. Must stop doing it (visiting the forums).

Granted, there's a sense of foreboding just before each patch day (an extremely small sense of foreboding considering we're talking about a computer game here) : what will they fix slightly and what will they break disastrously? It's always entertaining in its own way.

I'd recommended this game to anyone - intermittent bugs, imbalances and all.

Perpetual development has a charm all it's own too (or is that just me?).

[edit - Engrish corrections]

Edited by Xajorkith, 26 May 2013 - 06:41 AM.

[Necromantion]

@Madtulip yeah i hear you man, they have announced that lrm dmg and flight speed is getting increased in the next patch but nothing about srms at all.

Something i would like to say is that i was not an lrm or srm boater prior to that patch either, i just liked having weapons loadouts with a bit of variety.

@Senai the previously improved flight path was literally a tight spiral cloud that would nearly all hit the same 1-2 components

@Xajorkith I honestly had very few qualms with hit reg on any lights before other than jenners, the issue that i experienced with any other light was just ravens and their stupid old hitbox. Didnt the overseas latency have to do with server issues/location? I as stated in the sentence above didnt have the same amount of issues probably due to lack of high latency.

When a good portion of tools whether its mechs/weapons/hardpoints etc are absolutely useless no that isnt charm, its stupidity. Theres no charm in buying 30 mechs and having anything with more than 1 missile hardpoint be a waste.

[C E Dwyer]

biggest problem with lrms is target lock, and pugs..you have a choice of your 'team' and the other team poptarting so you hardly get a lock long enough to do anything, or you try spot yourself and get hammered by AC's and direct snipers that can 'out range' LRMs ! who don't need a target lock to cripple you.

LRMs should be the longest ranged weapon in the game, but aoe with splash and not cluster with splash, or as a direct weapon with a shot gun effect, in both cases the longer the range the wider the spread

currently they are a guided missile, with external guidance

[Asmosis]

I treat LRMs as "direct fire only" when i play as i 100% pug, so i only use indirect target locks to help me position myself to get LOS because honestly its not worth the frustration of losing countless volleys of missiles

As for balance, its a beta and they are constantly adding, adjusting, breaking and fixing game mechanics, LRM's are a pretty good example. weak-> kinda strong -> OMG atremis -> nerf bat -> back to kinda strong -> splash OMGLOLZERS -> nerf dmg -> fix splash = where we are now.

Its at the low point on the viability cycle atm so right now LRM's (and srms and ssrms) are below par in terms of damage, but its not permanent, its part of the development cycle.

Either find something else to do until open beta ends (idk i think thats later this year in september?) or just take a break for a few weeks while they fix up the current issues, make some new ones and add some new toys to play with.

[Necromantion]

I havent played in like 3 months or more And thing is the weapons were 90% useful and worthwhile other than the debatable pulse laser up till the patch i mentioned. With that patch and the following with ppc buff again and ballistic buffs it did what we have now.

[PsychoSick]

I'm done with this game, I played it for 6 months, it had a good run, time to turn to something else. This last patch has completely ruined this game for me. I, For one, enjoyed not hearing, "incoming missle" every 5 seconds before the patch. GG Pgi...GG

[Aegic]

PsychoSick, on 27 May 2013 - 12:21 AM, said:

I'm done with this game, I played it for 6 months, it had a good run, time to turn to something else. This last patch has completely ruined this game for me. I, For one, enjoyed not hearing, "incoming missle" every 5 seconds before the patch. GG Pgi...GG

Its so strange because on one hand we have players complaining that LRMs are stupid useless and on the other hand we have posts like this.

[Necromantion]

Aegic, on 27 May 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Its so strange because on one hand we have players complaining that LRMs are stupid useless and on the other hand we have posts like this.

First of all this post is pointing out that missiles are a waste right now.

[BFett]

Aegic, on 27 May 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Its so strange because on one hand we have players complaining that LRMs are stupid useless and on the other hand we have posts like this.

Personally I think missiles are pretty good where they are. Removing the splash damage would help but as long as players are near other mechs with AMS LRMs don't become much of a problem.

[Necromantion]

The weight they use and damage per missle or damage per heat as well as the extra weight required for ammo makes ppcs the obvious choice over them just like ballistics even.

I like missiles i like direct and indirect fire because its makes the game different and creates different contexts in combat, but now when i hear incoming missile and am fighting someone thats nearly dead and im semi ok i dont even care i just finish the other person off rather than run for cover anymore.

[Aim64C]

Honestly, I feel that removing splash damage and adding a terminal scattering effect with increased per-missile damage would be the better way to go. The missiles would fly in a tighter cluster, then the swarm would "shotgun" to try and limit the effectiveness of last-minute maneuvers of the pilot and to confound AMS during the terminal phase.

Light mechs would receive fewer missiles... being generally smaller. While heavier mechs would receive more missiles, being generally larger - and neither would be able to completely ignore the threat of missiles, but you wouldn't be auto-coring larger mechs or completely splashing smaller mechs (though it would still be a bad idea to stand still in a Commando - always fun to see one of those things pop wide open to an LRM 40 salvo because they aren't paying attention while capturing).

But as far as their utility, now... I definitely find myself able to score more hits... but I can't help but feel my hits aren't doing what they should compared to what everyone else is doing with their primary weapon loadouts... and with the knowledge that I've been hitting a number of players who didn't seem to be as experienced - and the weapon will not be nearly as effective against experienced players.

I think damage could stand to go up a little bit - but that's also from the perspective of PUG matches. Organized teams could make much better use of LRMs that changes the experience, considerably. Of course... the same could be said for any weapon system. The advantage LRMs have, here, is indirect fire.

Still not really sure. I'll have to play quite a few more matches before I can really develop a solid opinion. But, right now, my first thought is that my Jenner is running the rail on my Catapults in terms of kills and damage. So I suspect that my opinion will be that LRMs need to come up a bit in damage.... but we'll see.

[Necromantion]

Very nice post aim, any thoughts on srms? Did you play with srms prior to the nerf?

[Darwins Dog]

MadTulip, on 26 May 2013 - 04:09 AM, said:

It is exactly that. you could have added "ppc or ppc with JJ only" somewhere in between. i didnt play since LRMs and SRMs where removed from the game and came back after they have been re anounced. they where used again for ONE day. ppl where complaining on the forums imidiatly that they where to strong (in other words "maybe as strong as ppcs") which is just not the case. so one day after flaming the whole meta shifted back to PPCs. you hardly see any LRMs atm. If you get killed you get killed by PPC, no?. so how can you then argue that LRMs are OP ? i simply dont get it. LRMs still need damage improovement and the stupid splash template needs to be fixed. i dont see why damage should not be assigned to random locations instead of where the missile graficaly did hit.

The most recent missile hotfix had nothing to do with forum comments. The patch was released with the missiles not working as intended. There was a dev post within hours explaining that.

As to OP: I don't agree. There is a lot more variety now than there has ever been. Maybe we are at different Elo "levels", but I think there are a lot more viable builds out there. There are some that are either easier to use effectively or have a higher skill cap than others, and there are certainly ineffective builds.

I would agree that some systems need more attention (small pulse lasers come to mind), but the variety is really good.

[Aim64C]

Necromantion, on 28 May 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

Very nice post aim, any thoughts on srms? Did you play with srms prior to the nerf?

No, I didn't.

Though after playing a Jenner... I think I may just make a dedicated streak build with a TAG to go run the train on Ravens. God help those little ***** once we get Streak 6s. See how they like that ****.

But, no, I didn't play with SRMs during the same time frame that I was playing with LRMs. I still don't make huge use of them except for two of my Jenner builds. They seemed to pack an adequate punch even after people had complained about their damage reduction. I could see room for a little damage increase, perhaps - but it was largely okay.

I haven't seen the changes in flight path that were talked about in the recent patch notes - largely because I haven't played with that build of Jenner that uses SRMs.

After playing a little more with LRMs, today, I've come to the conclusion that their damage seems to be.... less than adequate.

Perhaps some people will call me crazy... but a Black Jack should not be able to take 5x40 missile volleys and still have armor. Not when it's been taking the majority of those missile barrages. It used to be that LRMs allowed you to play effective support... you could find one of your guys in trouble with an assault over the next ridge and drop enough damage onto him in a manner that allowed you to make the difference between that team mate surviving, and not. Now it takes you twice as many salvos to accomplish the same job (roughly) - and while your team mate may thank you for the attempt... it just wasn't realistic without at least one more missile boat focusing fire.

Perhaps that will change with 12v12 matches - and the probability of having two missile boats that can focus fire to support a good light/medium team will make missile damage reduction mandatory. Of course - if that's the case, they need to nerf a lot of the direct fire weapons, as well. It's insulting that a 40-missile barrage will barely yellow the armor of most mechs but a glancing pair of PPCs will turn all but the thickest of armors orange.

A pair of snipers can drop mechs very fast... and if we're nerfing missiles because a pair of missile boats can potentially clean house on a team... then we need to look at a lot of our long ranged weaponry and what happens when people have enough common sense to focus fire.

[Asmosis]

reduce all ballistic/laser burst weapons damage by 50% and give them impact splash? makes no sense RL but it would balance them for gameplay in line with missiles. PPC projectiles are pretty big after all.

[FREDtheDEAD]

Another LRM thread? I think the devs know by now that around 5 people really really want LRMs buffed to make them a front-line weapon. It's OK, I have an Stalker LRM boat I use every time missiles get accidental absurd buffs. Great fun.

[Aim64C]

Xajorkith, on 29 May 2013 - 04:50 AM, said:

Another LRM thread? I think the devs know by now that around 5 people really really want LRMs buffed to make them a front-line weapon. It's OK, I have an Stalker LRM boat I use every time missiles get accidental absurd buffs. Great fun.

For now, though, you'll just be sticking PPCs onto whatever mech chassis you happen to pilot. Medium lasers make an okay trade-off if you can't work a PPC or six into your build.

With host-state rewind in effect - direct fire is more effective than ever. You could bump missiles back up to 1.8 points of damage (and not fix whatever ******** splash damage code they have that caused stupidly high damage), and I can guarantee that missiles would still be relatively rare on the battlefield - simply because of how fast direct fire can drop a target and how much more reliable the weapon system is.

Missiles - at least as they are... simply aren't viable weapons. Dropping 5 salvos of 40 missiles into a blackjack with the vast majority of the salvo hitting should -not- leave a living blackjack. That's just stupid.

Yeah - if you have enough ammo to blow a football sized crater in the ground, and a good team that can keep targets well illuminated and driven into the open... then an LRM player can rack up decent amounts of damage as they can mash the fire button and watch the armor slowly crumble from around the enemy. There's just enough time in the match that an LRM stalker could destroy the entire team before the match is over (assuming they've got more ammo than armor).

Realistically - you are watching as a commando takes a full swarm of LRMs to the face and walks away from it. Which sounds somewhat balanced until you figure that you are absolutely useless when it comes to trying to provide fire support against advancing enemies. It used to be that you could put some timely missiles into critical enemy targets when they advanced on your position - saving your team and the game.

Now, all you really do is remind them that there's an enemy farther back to kill after they get done cramming a telephone pole up your team's collective ******.

If you removed LOS restrictions, allowed detection at 1.2K, and got rid of ECM - the argument that missiles are "for softening the enemy up beforehand" would fly.

But that's simply not realistic. One can argue that teamwork mitigates these things... but the counter also applies - teamwork effortlessly renders a team LRM strategy null and void. Missiles need to come up at least 30% in damage before they will be viable.

At least for LRMs. SRMs seem okay on damage, at present.