58 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

Vanilla MW4 is known for it's horrendous butchering of balance. Medium Lasers did about as much damage as machine guns do here, and machine guns did even less damage. It was a mess. Yet people were way more forgiving of MW4, even while each successive release brought it more in line to the way we wanted. Then I realized why, even with so many individual bad guns, the balance still felt better:

There were no entirely paralyzed classes of weapons.

Heavy LBXs kicked tons of ***, giving ballistic players excellent primary weapons, even though the Ultra ACs were quite lackluster on the initial release; this also gave a strong infighter setup. Small and Medium lasers were horrendous, but Large Lasers were still exceptional, giving beam players something to run. It goes down the list: PPCs & Gauss give snipers a role, LRMs were powerful enough for them to have a fire support place, it goes on.

.. where as in MW:O, the minute the explosive bug was discovered, we lost an entire class of weapons (Missile Weapons), not individual specific LRMs. This goes beyond broken guns, this is broken groups of guns. Likewise, for whatever reason, they have always appeared afraid to effectively buff high caliber ACs to bring them into being a usable class.

We could even go one more level up on this: We don't have BRAWLER weapons, at all, outside of secondaries like Small Lasers or shadow-of-themselves SRMs. We only have effective Sniper weapons.

In summary: We have no functional missiles, we have no worthwhile ballistics outside of Gauss and UAC/5 (I'll give props to attempts made on the AC/2 and AC/5, however), we have tons of indirect fire support items without any effective indirect fire and one level up from that we have no effective brawler builds OR missile builds, excluding Streakboats.

This is why that this goes beyond "People freaking out about a gun being unbalanced" and why this deserves to be dealt with more than blown off. The weapons are an ecosystem and if you completely knock out an entire subsection of an ecosystem, well.. you get this.

I'm very concerned about the immediate future of MW:O. People aren't leaving because of CW, or the bugs that have been fixed, or anything - they're also not leaving because some guns are OP. But rather, entire classes of weapons are dead and at last comment PGI seems under the horrendous impression they are even close to where they should be. This is a serious issue and frankly I do not want the next HSR patch unless it is accompanied by damage fixes.

tl/dr:

MW4* - Had brawlers, snipers, fire support; had missiles, energy, infighting and ranged ballistics.
MWO - Has snipers. Has decent Gauss, PPCs, Ultras, Large Lasers and Medium Lasers.

The real tragedy is this is seriously something that a programmer could fix on his lunchbreak; add in a couple days of play testing and that's all that's needed. MW:O could be outstanding balance wise with minimal effort adjustments.

* Again, vanilla, when balance in MW4 was absolutely at it's worst with a huge number of useless guns; MW4 balance got progressively better with each version. Just clarifying again which MW4 I am speaking of.

Edited by Victor Morson, 29 May 2013 - 01:36 PM.

[Deathlike]

I'm pretty sure the AC20 is alive and well.

However, the obvious point that good/great/op weapons are still in power and mediocre/terrible/awful weapons are still MIA. It kinda would be nice if the UP weapons would be brought into line... at least we can tweak the details if/when they are actually OP, but it will stay a joke for a bit while missile trajectory keeps being tweaked more often than not.

[Victor Morson]

Deathlike, on 29 May 2013 - 01:18 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure the AC20 is alive and well.

Not really compared to the Gauss; the Gauss is just generally too good to sacrifice the AC/20 range on; you only really see AC/20 used on some super fragile glass cannon 'mechs that aren't very good (Like the Jagger that pops fast). I agree the AC/20, as a gun, is fine; if the Victor can sport two of them, it will be stellar.

Really the AC/20s biggest problem is you can only sport 1, so the ROF advantages and stuff don't add up as fast as the single all-range Gauss.

At least that's my take on the AC/20.. not a broken gun but the current "delivery platforms" are pretty bad for it. First 'mech to run two with solid armor will be a terror though. For that reason, it might honestly deserve a ROF buff, to make it more useful on all the designs meant to sport just one.

Edited by Victor Morson, 29 May 2013 - 01:31 PM.

[sarkun]

I agree that missiles suck, but i disagree with the suckiness of ballistics - MG and LBX do suck but the rest is pretty solid - and AC20 seems widely used to me... I see lots of 2xAC20 Jaegers, almost every Atlas has one... You see it on Misery, the 733C... hell the 1X brawler build was king at a time, and is still dangerous.

[jeffsw6]

I really think the AC/20 is good except it eats too many crits (because it occupies 10 slots.) This problem is amplified by the huge damage from currently-popular PPC/Gauss weapons.

However, AC/20 projectile speed could really use a buff. I don't mind that I can't hit someone at 500m with it. Fine. I mind that I often miss at 200m or 300m because my opponent is simply ... not stupid ... and is moving at any reasonable speed. Forget about trying to hit a light mech with an AC/20 because that's just a waste of ammo most of the time. I miss Stalkers with it, though. Stalkers are slow and big, and it should be pretty easy to hit them with AC/20, but it's just too slow.

[Appogee]

Some people must think LRMs are working. I certainly see, get hit by, and last game, got killed by, many a wave of them...?

Edited by Appogee, 29 May 2013 - 01:42 PM.

[Victor Morson]

sarkun, on 29 May 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:

I agree that missiles suck, but i disagree with the suckiness of ballistics - MG and LBX do suck but the rest is pretty solid - and AC20 seems widely used to me... I see lots of 2xAC20 Jaegers, almost every Atlas has one... You see it on Misery, the 733C... hell the 1X brawler build was king at a time, and is still dangerous.

Oh it's usable and those twin AC/20 jaggers are MASSIVELY damaging - they're stellar for playing PUGs because you can sneak around and blast unsuspecting people who might not even have Seismic and rack up tons of cash.

If you run against a 4-man or take one into an 8-man, well.. you're going to have a bad time. The reason is your options are to go way too slow to brawl (Standard engine) or mount an XL, and the XL causes the Jagger to have the durability of a water balloon.

It's not the guns fault, though, like I said; the Victor carrying two of them, if it's durable, could be a terror. However I think it still needs a ROF buff to be useful by itself against serious players, rather than just being "OK but a Gauss might be better - it's lighter, all ranged, and does near the same damage."

I really don't want to derail to the AC/20 though; the AC/20 is, honestly, the least broken of all the big ACs. The AC/10 and LBX/10 need a huge ROF buff IMO.

Appogee, on 29 May 2013 - 01:42 PM, said:

Some people must think LRMs are working. I certainly see, get hit by, and last game, got killed by, many a wave of them...?

People are still trying to cling to the dream. They hit you but the damage is so minor that I will often continue to fight while exposed to them right out in the open; heaven help the LRM boat if I turn my attention to him next, there's no way he'll do enough damage to drop me before I'm on him unless somebody with real guns has ripped me up first.

Seriously, I was getting pounded by twin LRM/20s last night and I don't even have an AMS and I ultimately ended up just turning my back armor to them, finishing the guy I was after in a not-too-quick fight, and walking away after. That was just sad.

Edited by Victor Morson, 29 May 2013 - 01:45 PM.

[Roland]

Quote

Heavy LBXs kicked tons of ***, giving ballistic players excellent primary weapons, even though the Ultra ACs were quite lackluster on the initial release; this also gave a strong infighter setup. Small and Medium lasers were horrendous, but Large Lasers were still exceptional, giving beam players something to run. It goes down the list: PPCs & Gauss give snipers a role, LRMs were powerful enough for them to have a fire support place, it goes on.

You and I both played as IS units in various planetary leagues, including the pure-tech NBT, where our IS mechs were confined to only using inner sphere weaponry.

I believe that you are misremembering some aspects of weaponry in MW4, and giving it more credit than it deserves in terms of balance.

Specifically, I point to your recollection of LRM's.

In MW4, inner sphere LRM's were total trash. You know why? Because their stats were basically that of normal Battletech LRM's. (i.e., what we see in MWO). For the amount of damage they dealt, innersphere LRM's were terribad weapons. They simply weighed too much.

In MW4, if you wanted to use LRM's, you used clan LRM's.

The clan LRM's weighed only HALF of the IS version... And those weapons were, while effective in the hands of some, not really uber-overpowered compared to various other weapons in MW4. Certain folks like Valk were extremely good at dealing damage with LRM's, but the LRM's fired by more players could be easily dodged if you understood the mechanics of how they worked (for anyone playing still, if someone fires missiles at you in MW4, you turn your torso 90 degrees from the direction it was facing when they launched the missiles. If they had targeted any torso panel when they pulled the trigger, all of the missiles will slam into the ground. I'm always amazed at how few people knew this. Good shooters would target a mech's crotch when they fired the missiles, which would prevent them from being dodged, and maximize damage).

But really, no one used IS LRM's.. they were terrible. They weighed far too much for the damage they dealt... which, interestingly enough, is what we see in MWO.

When clan tech comes around, you're likely to see the same ultimate issue.. it's impossible to make IS LRM's even remotely competitive, without making the clan version the most overpowered insanity you've ever dreamed of. If you make the clan version somewhat balanced, then you make the IS version terrible.

Sometimes, I actually wonder if perhaps PGI actually is already doing some work with clan weaponry, and running into these horrific balance issues, which ends up coloring what we see.

[jeffsw6]

I think dual AC/20 Jagermechs are kind of stupid right now. You would be better off with either one of the following:

• MISERY with AC/20 + 2 ERPPC 2 LL or similar
  
• STK-3F with 4 ERPPC and some side-weapons (streaks and MLs or whatever)

The simple fact is that the RoF on the AC/20 is pretty darn slow, and the Jagermech is paper-thin in the current meta. Besides that, you can use up all your ammo or get it blown up; and it is not very effective at range.

A Stalker is so much better. It might not go quite as fast, but look, a Stalker has fully-articulating arms and a Jagermech doesn't. A Jagermech has to expose his CT to aim and you get hit back every time you do it, plus it's hard to shoot lights that harass you, etc.

Seriously, if you are running AC/40, why wouldn't you just cheese up and buy a Stalker?

[Victor Morson]

Roland, on 29 May 2013 - 01:45 PM, said:

I believe that you are misremembering some aspects of weaponry in MW4, and giving it more credit than it deserves in terms of balance.

Specifically, I point to your recollection of LRM's.

In MW4, inner sphere LRM's were total trash. You know why? Because their stats were basically that of normal Battletech LRM's. (i.e., what we see in MWO). For the amount of damage they dealt, innersphere LRM's were terribad weapons. They simply weighed too much.

While this is entirely true (I didn't misremember it), we still at least had a working class of LRMs with the Clan ones, which were just apart of that game's tech. They worked very well back in vanilla; outstandingly even. Which tied into my point about how there were broken guns in every class in MW4 - REALLY broken guns - but each class had weapons all the same.

So long story short, you are entirely and 100% right, IS LRMs sucked there, just above stuff like the lasers or horrible light ACs. But LRMs as a system were still alive and kicking, and the reason many puretech units brought Vultures along.

While obviously here, they need to make the IS LRMs good (and thus more powerful than MW4) enough to exist within the weapon ecosystem we have, here in 3050. If this was 3068-3072 they might have more options in each role/type of gun.

Edited by Victor Morson, 29 May 2013 - 01:57 PM.

[CancR]

Quote

Vanilla MW4 is known for it's horrendous butchering of balance. Medium Lasers did about as much damage as machine guns do here, and machine guns did even less damage. It was a mess. Yet people were way more forgiving of MW4, even while each successive release brought it more in line to the way we wanted.

Untrue. MLS did a little less damage (2-3 per if I remember correctly) but a MW 4 six ML jenner would crush a MWO six ML jenner as they also had much higher dps, and heat effec. MLs in MW4 where direct hit weapons with a .80 sec recycle time, and would do enough dps to blow most mechs to tin cans with in seconds.

Quote

The real tragedy is this is seriously something that a programmer could fix on his lunchbreak; add in a couple days of play testing and that's all that's needed. MW:O could be outstanding balance wise with minimal effort adjustments.

This is true. Tonnage limits per lance, take out the **** maps (forest colony, caustic, ect) for Tourmaline, Desert Canyon, and Alpine, and make maps even bigger, with a lobby system that lets you find servers to play in and **** would be fine.

[Corvus Antaka]

it's beta!

[FupDup]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 29 May 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

it's beta!

Not for long.

[Soy]

Filing this in the ol DGAF dept...

[Deathlike]

Clan LRMs will always be better from a tonnage/crits perspective. It's the only class of weapons that clans benefit the most from...

The only way to "nerf" them is nerf the damage, which although contradictory to the entire Clan vs IS tech debate would actually be balanced in an online game. There's unfortunately no alternative to that.

Edited by Deathlike, 29 May 2013 - 02:09 PM.

[Roland]

Quote

Untrue. MLS did a little less damage (2-3 per if I remember correctly) but a MW 4 six ML jenner would crush a MWO six ML jenner as they also had much higher dps, and heat effec. MLs in MW4 where direct hit weapons with a .80 sec recycle time, and would do enough dps to blow most mechs to tin cans with in seconds.

This isn't actually true, I don't believe.
It's been a long time, so I don't trust my memory, but going by all the old weapons stats available on the web, the medium lasers were truly terrible weapons in MW4 (which is exactly as I remember them).

They are listed on most sources as being 1 ton, 2 damage, 3 second recycle time, for 1.5 heat. They had one of the lowest DPS's of any weapon in the game.

The reason for that was that prior mechwarrior titles were plagued by medium laser boats, because with TT stats and gunbag mechs, loading up a billion medium lasers was extremely effective. In order to try and prevent that, the FASA guys tried to nerf the crap out of medium lasers. Unfortunately, this resulted in folks just moving to the LL's as a replacement, since it was the next best thing for boating.

Edited by Roland, 29 May 2013 - 02:26 PM.

[Roland]

Quote

While this is entirely true (I didn't misremember it), we still at least had a working class of LRMs with the Clan ones, which were just apart of that game's tech. They worked very well back in vanilla; outstandingly even. Which tied into my point about how there were broken guns in every class in MW4 - REALLY broken guns - but each class had weapons all the same.

Well, if you put clan LRM's in this game, they'd work exceptionally well. Even with the existing chassis limitations, you'd see LRM's on every freaking mech, because they are so insanely good for their weight.

Quote

While obviously here, they need to make the IS LRMs good (and thus more powerful than MW4) enough to exist within the weapon ecosystem we have, here in 3050. If this was 3068-3072 they might have more options in each role/type of gun.

But like I said, when they introduce clan weapons, you're gonna have horrific balancing problems.
MW4 got around the problem by making IS LRM's into trash weapons... So perhaps MWO will simply do the same. Not ideal, but just as good as MW4 was in terms of balance.

[Victor Morson]

CancR, on 29 May 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

Untrue. MLS did a little less damage (2-3 per if I remember correctly) but a MW 4 six ML jenner would crush a MWO six ML jenner as they also had much higher dps, and heat effec. MLs in MW4 where direct hit weapons with a .80 sec recycle time, and would do enough dps to blow most mechs to tin cans with in seconds.

You are thinking of MW4:Mercs Medium Laser, not vanilla. The Vanilla MLs were worse than flamers in MW:O.

Still, MW4 had the Large Laser that owned, so it still was not as dire as things are here.

[keith]

don't forgot IS LL were the best LL mid range wep in that game. i played mostly clan side, most IS stuff was at disadvantage, too heavy. very few things beat clan tech in that game, arrows, light guass. and if PGI can get their missiles to work like MW4 it would be amazing low and high skill ceiling on them, did love dodging them:P
edit: lets not forgot MRM amazing wep there

Edited by keith, 29 May 2013 - 03:14 PM.

[Drunk Canuck]

If they buffed Small and Medium lasers, then they would have to find a way to compensate weapon balance elsewhere. I think the moment you start increasing the damage on smaller weapons, lighter Mech's are going to become far more popular because they are harder to hit and will deal more damage. The X-5 and JR7-F(C) will become extremely powerful light and medium classes if they buff Medium lasers and while it's needed, I think the lack of weapons technology is a huge balance barrier right now. Start introducing more types of weapons like Clan and Lostech weapons such as MRM's, Light Gauss and the X-Pulse Lasers and then you give players more choice over itemizing their Mech's.