1217 replies to this topic

[Kunae]

DeaconW, on 25 June 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

Repeated nonsequiter uses of "straw man".

[NeoFighter]

Watch out DeaconW, your gonna get the same 5 guys that all like each others posts over and over gang up on you to prove their point with childish insults

As it stands, 5 people wanting change(even if they are the loudest qq-ers) isn't enough compared to the masses who are fine with the changes

So yeah, enjoy the shake as it balances very well the poptart issue via making JJ exclusive to maneuvering only

Gooday Sir

[Kunae]

NeoFighter, on 25 June 2013 - 02:04 PM, said:

Watch out DeaconW, your gonna get the same 5 guys that all like each others posts over and over gang up on you to prove their point with childish insults

As it stands, 5 people wanting change(even if they are the loudest qq-ers) isn't enough compared to the masses who are fine with the changes

So yeah, enjoy the shake as it balances very well the poptart issue via making JJ exclusive to maneuvering only

Gooday Sir

Pot, meet Kettle. And be sure to "like" his posts.

[DeaconW]

Eugenics, on 25 June 2013 - 01:46 PM, said:

Are you serious? This is a good example of selective sight, seeing what you want to see. Even in the Ask The Devs part of the forums it has been confirmed the game is in a heavy/Assault metagame phase. Very few lights and mediums. When you do see a light their score is very low.

Yes, I see lights and mediums in almost every game. And it was WORSE when the poptart meta had 5-6 HGH's on each team every match. I still see lights doing 300-400 pt games from time to time.

[DeaconW]

NeoFighter, on 25 June 2013 - 02:04 PM, said:

Watch out DeaconW, your gonna get the same 5 guys that all like each others posts over and over gang up on you to prove their point with childish insults

Yeah...I'm getting that... I think some of them realized their "I'm getting sick just like those other guys" ruse wasn't working so they are now appear to be trying a different tactic of "we reject the current reality and will insert our own"...

Not a big deal...this thread has been awesome for identifying people who deserve to be ignored... Makes parsing the forums so much more pleasant.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

I wish Deake would go back and read his posts like I enjoy going back to read mine. Then he would know that the jig is up, and he's already exposed himself as a selfish assault pilot who could give a damn what lights and JJ users have to deal with, just as long as he never has to face another Poptart. And that's all he cares about. His game play. I care about the game. They have changed the JJ dynamic entirely, and this definitely wasn't the first unfortunate stroke.

While we have tried to get conversation and thought going about this issue and possible changes or edits or really anything, Deake likes to saunter in and "correct" people's statements or accuse them of being disingenuous because we're all twirling our mustaches and trying to figure out how best we can Jump Jet in with our PPCGauss builds and ruin his game. We are lying about discomfort, because we're poptarters, and poptarters are bad people, and bad people lie. It's not a sudden unexpected change in a game where people have already had motion and disorientation issues have suddenly had them compounded. Oh no. This is a personal grudge between everyone who has ever fired a weapon while in the air, and DeaconW, the man, the myth, the mystery, himself.


He won't see this. But I'm not a poptart enthusiast. I'm a Jump Jet enthusiast. It was probably 40% of why I got so deeply into this game, how JJs worked in closed beta was sweet. It was graceful. It was beautiful. It felt freeing, sailing above an assault mech in my tin-can, doing a pirouette in mid-air and planting 3 UAC5 rounds into his back. That was real fun. It's all just memories now. JJ operation is merely only passable, and now they affect the shooting ability. I had a highlander. It was ****. **** em. I have a CTD-3D and I was damned good at taking your face off while jumping off of a mountain. And then I'd run up to you, fly around you in circles and shoot off both your {Richard Cameron} and balls. Yeah, regular poptart meta was a little boring for me. But he needs me to be a rabid poptartist. He needs all of you to be whining qq'rs, not people who are being serious and sincere, both about how much they want the game to work, and how much they're bothered by this new change. NO. We have to be liars who want to take that thing he cares about away from him.

Well Deake, some of the enjoyment for this game has been taken from us. And the way you responded to it rubbed me the wrong way tens of pages ago. You all but called people liars and whiners, because you couldn't believe anyone would disagree with whatever took the evil poptarts away. I'm immature? fine. I'm on your ignore list? Great. Probably in good company. Socrates and Plato and Abraham Lincoln, I'm sure. But there's a lot more than 5 of us who are bothered by this, and if you and the 5 others liking your posts weren't so "hooray for me and screw everybody else", who knows. I probably wouldn't have felt compelled to post as much.

So there.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

And I would never ignore Deaky Weakie. No never. In fact I'm thinking of renaming my Cata from Melissa to Deacon's Blues.

[Ilithi Dragon]

ArchMage Sparrowhawk, on 25 June 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

I wish Deake would go back and read his posts like I enjoy going back to read mine. Then he would know that the jig is up, and he's already exposed himself as a selfish assault pilot who could give a damn what lights and JJ users have to deal with, just as long as he never has to face another Poptart. And that's all he cares about. His game play. I care about the game. They have changed the JJ dynamic entirely, and this definitely wasn't the first unfortunate stroke.

While we have tried to get conversation and thought going about this issue and possible changes or edits or really anything, Deake likes to saunter in and "correct" people's statements or accuse them of being disingenuous because we're all twirling our mustaches and trying to figure out how best we can Jump Jet in with our PPCGauss builds and ruin his game. We are lying about discomfort, because we're poptarters, and poptarters are bad people, and bad people lie. It's not a sudden unexpected change in a game where people have already had motion and disorientation issues have suddenly had them compounded. Oh no. This is a personal grudge between everyone who has ever fired a weapon while in the air, and DeaconW, the man, the myth, the mystery, himself.


He won't see this. But I'm not a poptart enthusiast. I'm a Jump Jet enthusiast. It was probably 40% of why I got so deeply into this game, how JJs worked in closed beta was sweet. It was graceful. It was beautiful. It felt freeing, sailing above an assault mech in my tin-can, doing a pirouette in mid-air and planting 3 UAC5 rounds into his back. That was real fun. It's all just memories now. JJ operation is merely only passable, and now they affect the shooting ability. I had a highlander. It was ****. **** em. I have a CTD-3D and I was damned good at taking your face off while jumping off of a mountain. And then I'd run up to you, fly around you in circles and shoot off both your {Richard Cameron} and balls. Yeah, regular poptart meta was a little boring for me. But he needs me to be a rabid poptartist. He needs all of you to be whining qq'rs, not people who are being serious and sincere, both about how much they want the game to work, and how much they're bothered by this new change. NO. We have to be liars who want to take that thing he cares about away from him.

Well Deake, some of the enjoyment for this game has been taken from us. And the way you responded to it rubbed me the wrong way tens of pages ago. You all but called people liars and whiners, because you couldn't believe anyone would disagree with whatever took the evil poptarts away. I'm immature? fine. I'm on your ignore list? Great. Probably in good company. Socrates and Plato and Abraham Lincoln, I'm sure. But there's a lot more than 5 of us who are bothered by this, and if you and the 5 others liking your posts weren't so "hooray for me and screw everybody else", who knows. I probably wouldn't have felt compelled to post as much.

So there.

So I had this great, grand post that I was writing earlier, almost finished it, too. Then the power blinked off because of an electrical storm rolling through the area, and I lost it all. It was great, really awesome, I was reaching out and everything.

But I'm too disheartened by the loss of my post to try and recreate it. So I'll quote Sparrowhawk here for calling DeaconW out on his strawmanning. A little more inflammatory than I would have put it, but a valid point, nonetheless.

Deacon, I'm not lying, I'm not some dirty, dishonest, whiny QQer that you seem to take such revelry in painting me and the myriad of people who have complained about screen shake in this thread as.

Yes, I'm a poptarter, have been since Mercs, but I'm more than just a poptarter, I'm a JJ driver, and I have a distaste for the classic, stationary poptart tactic. I'm a JJ skirmisher, I love speed, agility, and lots of firepower at the expense of having jack **** for armor. Screen shake ruins that for me.

Being a poptarter also does not make me a bad person. Poptarting is not a bad or cheese strategy, and it is not inherently OP. It is also a part of this game, and has been a part of Mechwarrior since MW2.

The only problem is that sniper weapons are overpowered, and need to have the buffs they got to compensate for the old latency issues removed, now that the latency issues have been removed (that, and SRMs and AC/10 and LBX/AC10 need buffs to make Lights and Mediums more powerful).

But, there are people like you, Deacon, who seem to have some terrible hatred of jump snipers, and you go out of your way to paint anyone who does not support screen shake, who thinks it's a bad idea, even people, like myself, who have repeatedly suggested alternatives to screen shake when calling for it's removal, you paint all of us with this lurid, demonizing and belittling brush.

Why? Do you honestly believe that all these people complaining about screen shake are all just Evil Poptarters ™ who want to QQ up a storm to try and get this supposedly super-overpowering meta back so they can go stomp over everyone else and their puppies while they cackle in glee?

Why do you insist on painting anyone who opposes screen shake in that sort of light? Why do you insist on dressing all of us up in that straw man?



Also, as a side note, the only time I ever regularly saw anywhere NEAR 6 Highlanders on a team was back when House-Marik.net was having it's in-house Civil War campaign and we were in the 600-ton drop rounds of our competitive matches, on 'worlds' that had ECM restricted, and that was just so one or the other or both teams could fit two 35-ton Lights into the 600-ton weight requirement.

In general pug matches, I saw a wide variety of mechs, and I saw just as many PPC Stalker builds as I did poptart Highlanders. Every once in a while I got a match with a bunch of Atlases, or a bunch of Stalkers, or a bunch of Highlanders. Had a few with four or five Jaegermechs now and then, but those matches were relatively rare, and I never saw a prevalence of Highlanders so great that I routinely saw 5 or 6 on a team. That many highlanders on a team was very rare, and I have NEVER seen a match, outside of a specific strategic situation in the FWLM Civil War Campaign (and even then only once, maybe twice) where there were five or six Highlanders on EACH team.

[B0oN]

I am still of the opinion I need to see actual real videos of all the users that are claiming "physical illness, nausea and disorientation" because of JJ shake.

My CTF3-D does still fine hopping around, be it snipe-tarting or brawl-tarting, not to mention I very much like my "Grin-cada" 3M which deals out quite some damage and if I am lucky is game deciding.


This grumpy GrammarFascist still needs proof of your discomforts or he gives a heartless fart about it because : no proof, no truth.

And really guyses ... lay off all the cute aggroes and smoke a neat little blunt.

Now go on spamming those videos showing all of ye puking about ... and I dont mean shizzles you just dug up out off yugotubes, ye silly buggars ye

Commence flaming war

Edited by Rad Hanzo, 25 June 2013 - 05:36 PM.

[StonedDead]

Kunae, on 25 June 2013 - 09:35 AM, said:

If the cockpit is shaking for the user, shouldn't the mech also shake for whomever's targeting it? As it stands, if you actually use JJ's, you are placing yourself at a severe disadvantage to your opponents.

Maybe the mech should shake a little bit more, idk, but from having watched when i fire lasers, they tend to shoot fairly straight once the beam starts. I mean, they don't move around with the reticule as much as say a PPC. That is what makes it feel like just overdone screen shake and not feel like the whole mech is actually shaking that much. I also somewhat agree with JJ's putting the user at a disadvantage. But, that depends on how you use them. Poptarting can still be done, it's just much harder to do with PPCs and Gauss. If you don't use them for poptarting, JJ's are still quite useful for maneuvering and clearing obstacles.

[Mystere]

Rad Hanzo, on 25 June 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am still of the opinion I need to see actual real videos of all the users that are claiming "physical illness, nausea and disorientation" because of JJ shake.

Sending a video is a really bad idea given that an unscrupulous person can just upload it to YouTube to the humiliation of the person in it. As such, can I just send you the puke instead? I have access to a courier company that specializes in sending biologically hazardous materials.

I'm sure others will be willing to do so too if you give your home or office address.

Edited by Mystere, 25 June 2013 - 06:59 PM.

[Catamount]

DeaconW, on 25 June 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

For anyone looking for a classic example of a "straw man" logical fallacy. See the above.

It's amusing to see you accuse me of a straw man in the very same post that you do exactly what I claim. That seems self-defeating.

I said:

Catamount, on 24 June 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

In short, Ilithi is correct. This fix hits everything other than the intended target. Someone can be just as OP with poptarts are before, and the fact that people are choosing to eschew JJ usage doesn't change the fact that the poptarts themselves are demonstrably overpowered. To conflate usage with capability is a red herring intended to dance around Ilithi's point.

And here you are, continuing to use that same conflation as a red herring to dance around Ilithi's point:

DeaconW, on 25 June 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

This would be a completely fabricated statement. Still see JJ mechs in game, just not 5-6 PPC+Guass jumping HGH's anymore. Therefore the *evidence* I see in game is the opposite of your contention.

You're dancing around any discussion of how this balance changed affected actual mech behavior, essentially saying "well I still see jenners, therefore jumpjets must be fine". The statement is not only directly contradictory to Ilithi's well-recorded observations, it has nothing to do with what's actually being discussed, hence the red herring.

DeaconW, on 25 June 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

Catamount, on 24 June 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

Just because screen shake technically affects the behavior and handling of poptarts doesn't mean it's the most ideal solution for dealing with the problem of them

Never said it wasn't.

You're right; you never said that it wasn't. You said that it was. Thank you for agreeing with me.

Here you are, saying it:

DeaconW, on 21 June 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

It was awesome.

I'd say claiming that something is "awesome" can be reasonably interpreted as saying that it's ideal.

Of course, this again begs the question of at what point I'm "straw manning" you.

It seems pretty clear where you're saying everything I suggest.


You've amply made my point, and you can't actually offer a reason as to why this is in any way an ideal way to address the poptarting problem, and you continue dance around any discussion of how mechs have been changed, positively or negatively, by relying on a red herring or pointing out how frequently a mech is supposedly used -I say supposedly, because again, it's contradictory to a much more formal and thorough examination of the subject- rather than how capable said mech actually is.

Did I miss anything?

Edited by Catamount, 25 June 2013 - 07:27 PM.

[Neutron IX]

Rad Hanzo, on 25 June 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

I am still of the opinion I need to see actual real videos of all the users that are claiming "physical illness, nausea and disorientation" because of JJ shake.

My CTF3-D does still fine hopping around, be it snipe-tarting or brawl-tarting, not to mention I very much like my "Grin-cada" 3M which deals out quite some damage and if I am lucky is game deciding.


This grumpy GrammarFascist still needs proof of your discomforts or he gives a heartless fart about it because : no proof, no truth.

And really guyses ... lay off all the cute aggroes and smoke a neat little blunt.

Now go on spamming those videos showing all of ye puking about ... and I dont mean shizzles you just dug up out off yugotubes, ye silly buggars ye

Commence flaming war

Well, I can grant you the point that, "hey, it's the internet, people are possibly lying about stuff", since yeah, there's inherent misrepresentation built in right off the bat with the fact that we're all here as a "forum handle". I mean, my "actual" name certainly isn't "Rip Snorgan".

That being said, this kind of pointless in-fighting in a fan base does make me more than a little sad, even though I learned long ago that it's an inevitable part of things like, "the internet", "being a fan of something", and "nerds".

I'd like to just add a few things to mull over, that maybe could benefit the lot of us.

1). A few personal facts about myself, to give me some "relatability" (though sure, it's the internet, so you'll just have to go out on a limb and trust that I'm not manufacturing this stuff). I am male, in my mid-30s and left handed. I have 3 kids, all girls. I love 70s and 80s punk rock (in addition to a broad variety of other bands/genres, though truth be told, I kind of hate the word "genre"), and I'm a huge fan of craft beer. I've been playing Battletech in some form or another since I was about 14 years old, about 20 years now. And I'm a Sagittarius (though if you really pressed me on it I'd tell you that I think it's a bunch of ********).

2). Pop-tarting is a real thing, that people were really doing, and do seem to be doing less after JJ shake was added, regardless of "why".

3). Pop-tarting can be legitimately seen as "game-breaking", "annoying", "a legitimate tactic", "cheap and cheesy", "easy to counter so not a real problem", in addition to other things, since all of those are perspective based "facts", so there is room for them to all be "true".

4). Motion sickness is a real thing, that affects many people, in many different ways and with varying degrees of severity. There are multiple types of motion sickness out there, and plenty of information to be found online for anyone with a few seconds to google it.

5). Since the JJ change, complaints of motion sickness have increased. We can debate back and forth for our entire lives (seriously, our ENTIRE lives) as to the "percentage" of people who are legitimately suffering vs. those who might be using it as a smokescreen to mask their love of poptarting, but we should not assume that everyone is lying anymore than we should assume that everyone is telling the truth. Therefore, can we agree that "this change has definitely affected some people who were not having this problem before the change" and leave it at that?

6). Some who are "legitimately affected" find that all mechs with JJs are unplayable due to shake (P.S. I appreciated your suggested "work-around" Rad Hanzo, but it didn't work for me, since that isn't the nature of the problem for me personally).

7). There are many on both sides of this particular fence who are very passionate about this, and that is a good thing, since it shows that players care about this game.

8). Adopting one stance or another doesn't make someone a "bad" person. Merely a person that disagrees with you (and hopefully none of us are quite on the "Kanye" level of self aggrandizement, so we can handle that ).

9). When confronted with discussion, rather than debate, even those that "disagree" can find common ground, and again, I'll call out DeaconW here for this, since even though I'm solidly in the "anti-shake due to motion sickness" camp, and he's solidly in the "pro-shake due to pop-tarts" camp, and there are many points we might disagree on, buried somewhere way back in this thread is an exchange between he and I that was agreeable, reasonable, and conciliatory, along the lines of "Me: I don't like Pop-tarts but I love this game and JJs make me want to barf. DeaconW: I love this game, and appreciate that you do too, if there were some sort of reasonable solution that could address that without bringing pop-tarts back I could support that". Yeah, I loosely paraphrase here, but my point is, we can get so much further when we don't attack each other (though points specifically to ArchMage Sparrowhawk for being hilarious in a way that really suits my own personal sense of humor while doing it, I mean, come on..."shoot off both your {Richard Cameron} and balls"? Hilarious! And the bit about who is populating DeaconW's ignore list? Classic), and that even as we give each other the business for being unreasonable, we drown out those moments where even those being called so most loudly prove themselves to in actuality be quite the opposite in truth when given room and opportunity to be so.

Anyhow. Not that I expect this to make everything all fancy and cutesy hand-holdy. But still, some stuff to think about?

*Edited to repair some faulty html formatting that didn't translate, since I suck at "quoting" sometimes....

Edited by Rip Snorgan, 25 June 2013 - 08:14 PM.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

spider 5d 3 ML ecm 8jj

spider 5v 1 ER LL 12jj

catapult c1 2 LPL 2 MPL 2 jj

c4 1ML TAG 4 LRM 10 4jj

[DeaconW]

Rip Snorgan, on 25 June 2013 - 08:02 PM, said:

DeaconW: I love this game, and appreciate that you do too, if there were some sort of reasonable solution that could address that without bringing pop-tarts back I could support that.

Yes, I have agreed with that concept in multiple posts.

[DeaconW]

Catamount, on 25 June 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:

Did I miss anything?

1. "Awesome" doesn't mean "ideal" to me. It was awesome to me because it irritated a lot of the (now former) poptarters who I felt were ruining the game by exploiting a broken game mechanic. It was karmic justice to me. Unfortunately there was collateral damage for others (light pilots in particular) that i sympathize with.
2. You are correct, I mistyped in my earlier post...I do agree with you that this solution isn't necessarily ideal.
3. I'l more specifically address your "red herring" point...I still see mechs *jumpjetting* in matchs, not just JJ mechs.
4. I do agree that something should be changed so that the people who do legitimately get ill are not affected. (I am not sadistic)

Did I miss anything?

[DeaconW]

Ilithi Dragon, on 25 June 2013 - 05:00 PM, said:

But I'm too disheartened by the loss of my post to try and recreate it. So I'll quote Sparrowhawk here for calling DeaconW out on his strawmanning.

Appreciate you posting it. For the record, he is wrong. I pilot multiple types of mechs, including JJ mechs. I also care about the *game*...I just believe the poptart mechanic was game-breaking and needed to stop.

Quote

Deacon, I'm not lying, I'm not some dirty, dishonest, whiny QQer that you seem to take such revelry in painting me and the myriad of people who have complained about screen shake in this thread as.

I simply believe a lot are...unfortunately that is the nature of the internet and I take it all with a grain of salt..ESPECIALLY on this topic.

Quote

Being a poptarter also does not make me a bad person.

Debatable. Seriously, by your definition I am also a "poptarter" in some of my mechs. Using JJ for mobility is exactly what they are for. Getting pinpoint accurate shots because the game mechanic was broken isn't.

Quote

The only problem is that sniper weapons are overpowered, and need to have the buffs they got to compensate for the old latency issues removed, now that the latency issues have been removed (that, and SRMs and AC/10 and LBX/AC10 need buffs to make Lights and Mediums more powerful).

I simply disagree. While there may be some minor adjustments needed, the solution is ending perfect convergence.

Quote

But, there are people like you, Deacon, who seem to have some terrible hatred of jump snipers, and you go out of your way to paint anyone who does not support screen shake, who thinks it's a bad idea, even people, like myself, who have repeatedly suggested alternatives to screen shake when calling for it's removal, you paint all of us with this lurid, demonizing and belittling brush.

Yes, I have...in some cases probably unwarranted. For that I apologize. But it is all about what you are advocating. For reference, See Rip's post above, which I agreed with. If someone wants to "make it like it was before" They are going to get properly lambasted by me. If someone wants to keep the poptart jumpsnipe mechanic eliminated but desires to end the screenshake due to physical issues, I can get behind that.

Quote

Why? Do you honestly believe that all these people complaining about screen shake are all just Evil Poptarters ™ who want to QQ up a storm to try and get this supposedly super-overpowering meta back so they can go stomp over everyone else and their puppies while they cackle in glee?

Not all...but I do understand human nature and absolutely believe that a significant number of former jumpsnipers have got on the "Oh, it makes me sick" bandwagon because they want their OP meta back. IMO, It is safest to assume someone who has issue with the current change is one of these until proven otherwise.

[HarlekinEO]

Since Im newly playing a jumpjet mech, im not bothered at all. Its pretty fun to do all this crazy acrobat stuff and messing arround.
Mostly, I dont need to fire while jumping. But even in fights I can hit other Mechs, as good as while running arround them.

Using a Trebuchet 5J, 3 Jump-Packs, MedLasers in Arms might help to keep aim...

Edited by HarlekinEO, 26 June 2013 - 04:46 AM.

[Jucopa]

jump jet nerf just takes a valid tactic away

and now we have ppc/gauss on o most every mech every battle and jj was the prob no it was the ppcs

Edited by Jucopa, 26 June 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Catamount]

DeaconW, on 26 June 2013 - 03:30 AM, said:

1. "Awesome" doesn't mean "ideal" to me. It was awesome to me because it irritated a lot of the (now former) poptarters who I felt were ruining the game by exploiting a broken game mechanic. It was karmic justice to me. Unfortunately there was collateral damage for others (light pilots in particular) that i sympathize with.

The poptarting thing really was getting obnoxious, although at the same time, it's kind of one more thing in a long line of broken or unbalanced mechanics that people always exploit. Remember streak A1s in CB?

Let me get to the point though. I think there's some amount of failture to realize the nature of the problem that makes poptarts what they are. I don't think they're broken at all, or at least that isn't the whole story. I think the problem is largely that they seemed unstoppable because nothing was there as a counterbalance. Balance issues aren't just present because a mechanic is overpoweringly effective; it can also be because the opposing mechanics are too weak or even nonexistant, and I would argue that this is what has happened here, combined with things like the PPC heat reduction that make poptarts much less niche platforms than they're supposed to be.


Let's go back a bit to when this problem was created:

There was a time when poptarts really weren't that hard to deal with. They weren't that hard to deal with because poptarts are not, by nature, some kind of uber-effective omnipotent battlemech. Their weapons do modest damage and often can only be fired slowly because of heat and/or ammo. Truth be told, they're actually quite easy to kill: you just have to take a good short range loadout and close the distance. Let me rephrase that; they're supposed to be quite easy to kill. Most poptarts aren't fast, can't really get away, and are useless when they have to try because they're being chased from their sniping position. They're also supposed to be next to useless in a short range fight. The problem is that there is no good short range loadout anymore, and the long-range weapons are too powerful, so they become great in their sniping niche, and competent in roles they aren't even supposed to be able to compete in.


Let's look at what happened in more detail. First, PPCs happened. PPCs used to be heat monsters; they're supposed to be. PPCs are the kind of weapon where you either land your shot, or you're screwed, because you don't get too many of them. They were also never good short range weapons in Mechwarrior (other than in NHUA). Because HSR wasn't yet implemented, that was difficult, so PPCs were made into, well, not PPCs. The heat was axed so they were made into some kind of godly no-ammo gauss rifle. This creates a problem. PPCs are the poptart weapon; they're absolutely perfectly designed for it. But PPCs and poptarts are supposed to be both made niche items by that enormous heat, items that can't be used in shorter-range combat. Axe the heat, and suddenly PPC users become some kind of no-drawback all-range ubergun, and it's not supposed to work like that.

So the first problem is the omnipotent PPCs.

Then this problem was compounded by general weapon velocity changes. PPCs, ACs, everything that wasn't a laser or a missile basically, went from being actual ballistic weapons to little more than ammo-using laser beams (except PPCs, which don't even have that limitation). That further slanted balance towards snipers.


Even when we had all that going on that, though, PPCs were made into okay short-range weapons, not good short-range weapons, and sniping wasn't the end all be all of combat. SRMs still ruled the day in close. In fact, back when poptarting really began to take off, I used to laugh at the pure poptarts, because they weren't that good in general combat. Me? I ran a hybrid; I took a CPLT-C1, slapped on two ER-PPCs with JJs, but complimented them with a decent engine and two Artemis SRM6 packs. Whereas other poptarts were really bad once you got in close, and good SRMs meant the game had plenty of fast brawlers, I could fight where the niche poptarts couldn't. Yes, I could have run a pure poptart, a 3 PPC or 2PPC/1Gauss phract, but I didn't, because poptarting was still a niche ability, and I had a mech that was half poptart, half poptart killer, and was great in a general brawl (soften the armor with SRMs, pinpoint 20 damage with the PPCs whereever it opened up first; it was great). This design even saw combat in the Marik Civil War in our unit, to great effect, and was popular in general for awhile.

You also still saw a lot of other general brawlers, including many fast brawlers. You saw a lot of 4SPs with that nasty SRM/ML combo attached to a big engine, you saw a lot of K20s, you saw a lot of splatcats, UAC Ilyas, etc. They were good because in 8 mans, brawlers who could push the fight could still roflstomp the niche snipers, despite the OP PPCs making them better than they should have been in a brawl, and because in general drops, there was a healthy mix of snipers and brawlers, and all it took to get rid of a poptart was one fast brawler getting sick of him.


...and everything was great, until the devs threw SRMs out of the nerf tree, and they hit every branch on the way down.


Yes, the situation with missiles was ridiculous, but LRMs were by far the biggest problem. SSRMs were absurd because of their combination of tracking and splash damage which basically meant you hit the CT with every single shot, and LRMS basically became a nuclear MLRS, while SRMs were by far the least egregious of the bunch (they were a tad unbalanced). You would have though the strength of the balancing mechanics would have gone LRM>SSRM>SRM, but instead everything other than LRMs became fubar. LRMs got balanced about right, SSRMs are still OP, but that's just a bandaid to fix the OP ECM mechanic until the more permanent fix comes in (BAP), and SRMs... SRMs went from being like 25% overpowered to like 100% underpowered.

The result was that fast brawlers disappeared effectively overnight, with the remaining brawlers being limited to assaults and the occasional new release mech that people want to play with for awhile. Because fast brawlers effectively no longer exist, and slow brawlers are just easy picking for poptarts, people nearly stopped bringing brawlers altogether, and fire support mechs (especially poptarts) just completely took over.


In short, the fundemental game balance is now fubar. You know the PPC/SRM C1? I don't use it anymore, because SRMs are so underpowered, and PPCs so overpowered, the design is self-defeating, because its PPCs are now better knife-fight brawling weapons than its SRMs. That's how fubar game balance is right now.

Poptarts were an outwardly visible issue with the game, but the poptart issue was a symptom of the core problems here, not the problem itself.


That's why I'm opposed to how PGI fixed this, not because of complaints about physical illness that have bizarrely taken front and center, but because fixing the problem with screenshake is a fundementally flawed concept, because it's fixing the symptom, throwing a bandaid on it, and ignoring the larger, more fundemental game balance problems.


I don't want them to tweak this bandaid fix; I want them to take the bandaid off and FIX THE PROBLEMS of which poptarts are symptom. Because they're fixing the symptom, rather than the problem, here's what we have: We have poptarts who's actualy capability is largely unaffected, because the balancing mechanic is childlishly easy to practice past. We have collateral damage with lights. We still have overpowered sniping weapons, and underpowered brawling weapons. High alpha snipers and fire support mechs, JJs or no, still rule the battlefield, while brawlers continue to largely sit around and collect dust in uselessness.


I'd rather we took an approach to fundementally repair these issues.

What we should instead do:

-increase PPC heat to make them the niche weapons they were intended to be, and make snipers niche mechs again, rather than omnipotent all-range fighters

-reduce all direct fire weapon velocities (sans lasers, of course)

-reinstate useful SRMs, and drop the weight of LBXs, to get brawlers back into the fight

-if you want to change JJs, link accelaration to mass; make the little guys fly around agilely, and the big guys lumber. It's more realistic than some silly screenshake mechanic, and targets the mechs you want with far less fallout. Remember, poptarts only came in in the first place after JJ accelaration was massively increased. Big mechs would suddenly fly like mechs used to before poptarting.


Rather than doing a half assed job of fixing just one problem, while creating ten more, like screenshake, this would fix all of the most pressing balance problems, or at least most of them, and fundementally fix them, rather than taking broken mechanics, throwing some duck tape on them, and hoping they work despite being broken. Why would that not be a preferable fix? I want to get rid of the game's balance problems, not compound them with more balance problems.

Edited by Catamount, 26 June 2013 - 09:34 AM.