139 replies to this topic

[soarra]

Kunae, on 12 June 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

Not a sniper, myself, of any iteration. The OP, myself, and many others actually figured out how to counter these tactics rather than whining about it.

but instead of thinking about yourself, think about the game as a whole.. how is a massive alpha from a sniper good for the long term game

[Chavette]

soarra, on 12 June 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

but instead of thinking about yourself, think about the game as a whole.. how is a massive alpha from a sniper good for the long term game

I think its a minor issue, if the snipers had proper(per-weapon) heat generation and cooldown, they would be in the same kind of trouble close range as you are long range.

Preferrably in a bit more trouble, as you have to reward the effort for getting there in the first place.

Thats what the min. range is for.

[cyberFluke]

Honestly, the problem is twofold.

We have an increased heat capacity, this allows the firing of more heat generating weapons at the same time.
We have instantly converging, pinpoint accurate weapons.

In early Beta, each weapon had a "convergence" value. The "Pinpoint" Elite level Pilot Lab skill is a buff to this value. This value controls the speed at which the weapon tracked the aiming reticle. The convergence values have all been set to zero (or whatever signifies instant) for reasons I can only speculate. I've heard rumors that it didn't work correctly, but I suspect it is more of an issue of conveying the reason why your shot went wide of the target to the player.

With convergence on hiatus, it looks as though the devs are attempting to balance weapon accuracy (spreading damage over a mech) by projectiles having differing speeds, missiles being counterable and lasers being DoT. Barring the obvious difficulties balancing PPCs and missiles this will entail, it explains why they're adding the anti-boating heat penalties, boating is the easy way to break the aforementioned accuracy balancing attempt.

[Kunae]

soarra, on 12 June 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

but instead of thinking about yourself, think about the game as a whole.. how is a massive alpha from a sniper good for the long term game

I am thinking about the game "as a whole". PGI's "solutions" don't fix the problem, and only punish players/mechs who also are affected by the "fix", but weren't the "problem". Case and point: Jenners. Was anyone ever worried about a Jenner pop-tart? Yet they are punished with the JJ "fix". Were Jenners with SRMs OP? Yet they were punished by the many SRM nerfs. Now it's pointless to try to run plain SRMs on a Jenner.

See where I'm going with this?

[DocBach]

Kunae, on 12 June 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

PGI keeps "balancing for the moment" rather than for the long term. They need to revert all values back to TT/Solaris and wait until all of their systems are in before they try doing any further "balancing".

all the balancing we've done against Inner Sphere weapons are going to be bad when we get Clan tech that's way better....

[CancR]

Glad to see some one picking up exactly where I left off. They can delete our threads, but they cant delete our spirit!

[Raso]

Chavette, on 12 June 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Yes. Althought the seismic made it more difficult, but they are tweaking it next patch, so I don't count that as an issue.

Yeah.... see that's a problem, right there. There are other weapons that should be viable in a close in fight. It should be more worth while to use some medium lasers and SRM in close range than an ERPPC.There should be weapons other than the AC20 that offer you adequate close range options. There's nothing wrong with using the odd ERPPC in close range to supplement your brawling abilities. The problem is that right now you really don't need to use anything other than a few ERPPCs regardless of range.

I don't want to dumb the game down. I want to force players to think when they build mechs. I want them to consider the pros and cons of boating nothing but PPCs. I want them to suffer up close when all they have is a PPC boat vs someone running a few medium lasers and an AC10. I want someone running dual AC20s to have to respect an adversary approaching with some SRMs, not laugh at them then 1 shot them.

That's not dumbing the game down, it's balancing it to make more builds viable.

[CHWarpath]

Chavette, on 12 June 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

Prolouge:

What I name "dumbing down" or "holding hands" are these examples:

-Long ranged direct fire weapons and tactics are getting nerfed so cover is less needed. If brawlers can't 1v1 out in the open against them, nobody is brawling.
-LRMs are getting nerfed/buffed back and forth, and people only use it when its strong enough to not need guidance. If the LRM isn't viable soloing, people stop using it.
-I don't even want to bring up surprising and capping against HGN poppers as they aren't too good of an example because they had too little risk involved with a popping setup(they could brawl too well for being specialized), though I'll point out nerfing a piece of equipment to fix a mechs' OPness has a slew of side effects which I'm sure you're aware of now(2.5t assault jj-s sound like a better fix, since it will mess up their loadout or make em really slow but w/e).

The post:

People will always favor the play style that requires the least effort for the highest rewards.

This might be a shocker, but for the last two months brawling was almost as effective as ever, you just had to put a little more effort into it. Coordination, element of surprise, all that good stuff the average player have no idea even existed in mwo. And I don't really blame them, they don't really have a source on how to play the game outside from a tutorial for basic controls and monkeying what other pugs do on their same elo. How should they learn from that?

On the other hand, since we are talking about LoL alot, after 15 matches players are familiar with the current meta, and try pick a team accordingly for the highest chance of winning. Same with MMOrpg game parties. They didn't all figure it out themselves, they see it from the other players, teams, and then themselves gained the experience that it indeed works. It became part of the game culture, as most people want to win, and that specific setup has is the most effective.

Most naysayers argue it would force some cheese on all the game, and they couldn't play what they like. Its not the players' fault that some loadouts are abusively strong when used in proper coordination, its a simple game balance/design issue(ie. Ecm 3L some time ago), or poppers of the highest damaging tier.

How is PGI trying to form some game culture or teamwork incentive with no player brackets, featured livestreamers, 8v8 tournament support? They have all of these neat warfare gameplay levels planned, yet they are just letting people loose the same way a deathmatch only game would.

Instead, they just nerf everything in the world so Rambo Billybob can equip random weapons of his choice, hit W at the start of the game and have an equal chance of winning agaiit nst every other play style in the game
TLDR is prologue and the paragraph before the last one.

Of course, it is human nature to chase maximum reward for less effort, that is called efficiency. Your tone suggest that you are "above" the peasants of this community and that they should be "forced" to play a certain way. That reminds me of a person who would idolize Karl Marx in my experience.

All of these games need to keep skill in the game and keep out skilless weapons, such as lock on weapons. Anytime a person has to use a considerable amount of eye hand coordination (foundation of video games) it is difficult to push a nerfing agenda.

[CHWarpath]

Raso, on 12 June 2013 - 08:49 PM, said:

Yeah.... see that's a problem, right there. There are other weapons that should be viable in a close in fight. It should be more worth while to use some medium lasers and SRM in close range than an ERPPC.There should be weapons other than the AC20 that offer you adequate close range options. There's nothing wrong with using the odd ERPPC in close range to supplement your brawling abilities. The problem is that right now you really don't need to use anything other than a few ERPPCs regardless of range.

I don't want to dumb the game down. I want to force players to think when they build mechs. I want them to consider the pros and cons of boating nothing but PPCs. I want them to suffer up close when all they have is a PPC boat vs someone running a few medium lasers and an AC10. I want someone running dual AC20s to have to respect an adversary approaching with some SRMs, not laugh at them then 1 shot them.

That's not dumbing the game down, it's balancing it to make more builds viable.

Lasers are viable options if you have been any good at this game. An AC20 is low ammo capacity, high damage weapon but it requires considerable more aim than a laser weapon. Light and medium lasers provide for consistent damage over the length of the game as you can alpha strike for most of the game. All of these PPC/AC20 builds if they even land are early game damage and are not consistent because of heat. When I look at my personal percentage of shots landed, I have 92.5% with medium lasers vs. about 60% with an AC20.

[Gaan Cathal]

cyberFluke, on 12 June 2013 - 03:48 PM, said:

In early Beta, each weapon had a "convergence" value. The "Pinpoint" Elite level Pilot Lab skill is a buff to this value. This value controls the speed at which the weapon tracked the aiming reticle. The convergence values have all been set to zero (or whatever signifies instant) for reasons I can only speculate. I've heard rumors that it didn't work correctly, but I suspect it is more of an issue of conveying the reason why your shot went wide of the target to the player.

With convergence on hiatus, it looks as though the devs are attempting to balance weapon accuracy (spreading damage over a mech) by projectiles having differing speeds, missiles being counterable and lasers being DoT. Barring the obvious difficulties balancing PPCs and missiles this will entail, it explains why they're adding the anti-boating heat penalties, boating is the easy way to break the aforementioned accuracy balancing attempt.

This. Simply bringing back convergence (and hooking it to the targeted mech's range, not the range of whatever hill is under your reticule when you're leading) would fix a whole heap of problems with low skill floor alpha builds.

CHWarpath, on 12 June 2013 - 09:10 PM, said:

Of course, it is human nature to chase maximum reward for less effort, that is called efficiency. Your tone suggest that you are "above" the peasants of this community and that they should be "forced" to play a certain way. That reminds me of a person who would idolize Karl Marx in my experience.

That is the single dumbest comparison I have ever read. You clearly lack even the slightest concept of the principles of Marxism, and are just applying "socialist!" to any concept you dislike in the american fashion irrespective of it's accuracy. Using the guy's name doesn't make your idiocy sound more intellectual, it just makes it sound like you're trying to be intellectual.

CHWarpath, on 12 June 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

Lasers are viable options if you have been any good at this game. An AC20 is low ammo capacity, high damage weapon but it requires considerable more aim than a laser weapon. Light and medium lasers provide for consistent damage over the length of the game as you can alpha strike for most of the game. All of these PPC/AC20 builds if they even land are early game damage and are not consistent because of heat. When I look at my personal percentage of shots landed, I have 92.5% with medium lasers vs. about 60% with an AC20.

No. A laser requires better aim because it needs to be on target ten times as long to do it's damage (assuming an AC/20 is on target for .1s for trigger pull).

The reason your laser accuracy is so high is that any damage from a laser beam makes that beam a 'hit', even if only one damage tick lands. It's a stupid way to do the metric, of course, and makes laser accuracy stats meaningless.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 12 June 2013 - 09:26 PM.

[Alex Warden]

Waking One, on 12 June 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Do tell me how dangerous and skill based sitting behind a hill moving out for a shot and back in, while guaranteeing high damage to the enemy. Or poptarting before the nerf. I'd love to hear your priceless argument.




So have I. Fact remains, PPCs are just too good for their cost and too easy to use skewing the balance completely. They're the opposite of "skill" if you will.

if i can hit a very small target at 900, me moving 60+ with a gauss, how hard can standing behind a hill shooting at a slow/ standing mech really be? (PPC are no different, i just don´t use them very often at moment) it is not. and yes, there are counters... in many many many cases moving alone solves the problem,in others it´s getting close and slamming some damage in the snip0rs face... but the fact remains that MWO is the easiest shooter i ever played (yes,i said shooter, and it feels bad...)

Edited by Alex Warden, 12 June 2013 - 09:30 PM.

[Raso]

CHWarpath, on 12 June 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

Lasers are viable options if you have been any good at this game. An AC20 is low ammo capacity, high damage weapon but it requires considerable more aim than a laser weapon. Light and medium lasers provide for consistent damage over the length of the game as you can alpha strike for most of the game. All of these PPC/AC20 builds if they even land are early game damage and are not consistent because of heat. When I look at my personal percentage of shots landed, I have 92.5% with medium lasers vs. about 60% with an AC20.

That's simply not true and you know it.

An AC20 Jager or Cat is many times more dangerous than a medium laser boat. Accuracy be damned, even missing several shots you are still a massive threat to an enemy laser boat. All you need to do is connect with the same location of most mech's torsos twice to end them and that's not something which is very hard to do. Even if you don't kill them from a side torso explosion you've effectively reduced the threat of the enemy mech to the point that only the WORST players will end up killed by a one armed laser boat.

And even so you're basically saying that if the AC40 Jager sucks enough that a laser boat can beat him. All skills being equal an AC40 platform will beat a laser boat any day of the week. Even at ranged out to 800m dual AC20s will still rip you and your laser boat asunder. All things being equal there is little room to use much else than an AC40 built or ERPPC/Gauss build in close range (aside from maybe lights or the odd high speed medium). And ammo might be an issue if games weren't already so gosh darn short. No single mech is expected to make more than maybe 3 kills per match and if you're hitting targets in coordination with your team mates than the fact that you're dealing 40 points of pin point damage to an enemy mech is enough.

Yes, lasers might be "viable" but they are not worth the risk or the reward in the current meta and that is simply unacceptable. There needs to be a reason to make a something like a Cataphract armed with several lasers and some hard hitting weapons like an AC10 or PPC as a back up as viable as a Catapult armed with nothing more than dual AC20 or a ERPPC boat. We need to make it so that heavy weapons are still useful but that other weapons are equally viable and that you would be rewarded for bringing them to the table rather than loading up on more heat sinks and ammo. Because as it stands now while you could make a Cataphract with 2 ERPPC, and Gauss and some medium lasers it's more worth while to skip the lasers all together than load up extra ammo and heatsinks and that's a problem.

[Theodor Kling]

Waking One, on 12 June 2013 - 12:16 PM, said:

To be honest, i'd like them to use this as a proper beta instead of the bs we have now. Let people know that theyll try something, make people test it, revert if it doesn't work. Huge buff to MGs? Try it, see if it works. 2.0 DHS? try it, see how it works etc. you get the idea. We don't have much until release all in all and they should use these months to properly test it all out. Their own internal testers have proven to be useless time and time again anyway.

Seyla!

As to the problem of lacking complexity: Some might come with good balancing. But in general this game is oo much of a shooter and not enough of a simulation. In a way MW felt ore like a simulation, and that was already pretty arcade style. Before you pick me apart for this statement: I can't nail it to something specific, it's just a personal, totaly subjective, feeling.

[Deathlike]

Balance is supposed to occur at ALL LEVELS of play... whether it is for the newbie or the elite. It's not perfect, and surely there will be growing pains, but everyone will be better for it.

The issue is that PGI does not truly understand its own meta... and if it did, it wouldn't be doing these insane solutions to "fix" a problem with the wrong tools. It's madness and it's dreadfully obvious to those that are reading between the lines.

With that said, there is no one magical solution... only by using your wallets (by not spending a penny more) and "desertions" (in the form of inactivity) where they will listen to you like the spouse that keeps thinking the gravy train will keep on rolling, until you to tell them you're planning to divorce them. That's effectively the only solution.

Even more simple and obvious solutions have been mentioned, but frankly the PGI dartboard of balance is always working as intended™ and will continue to do so until they take a hard look at what they are doing to the game...

[Chavette]

Deathlike, on 12 June 2013 - 11:05 PM, said:

Balance is supposed to occur at ALL LEVELS of play... whether it is for the newbie or the elite. It's not perfect, and surely there will be growing pains, but everyone will be better for it.

Thats my point, its near impossible to do that when the playstyles of 8mans and randoms are completely different. Where one is barely useable soloing, and gets buffed, it will be completely OP used in coordination.
This thread discusses the need to bring those two closer.

[Lostdragon]

What is really frustrating to me is that PGI seems to be aware the problem with both boating and brawling PPCs can be fixed with heat but rather than use a simple solution that addresses the root of the issue like setting a static heat cap with greater dissipation then balancing weapon heat around that they have chosen to add more duct tape.

They remind me a lot of my dad, actually. We used to have this old hay baler that was held together with electric fence wire, duct tape, a few spot welds, and a lot of hope. We spent more time fixing it than we did baling hay and a few times we had cut hay rot in the field because the baler was broken down. We spent more buying hay to replace what we lost than we would have spent on a new baler.

Right now PGI has the opportunity to rip all the duct tape off and apply permanent solutions. If they fail to do so they are going to be stuck with their hay rotting in the field and it is going to cost them.

[Deathlike]

Chavette, on 13 June 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

Thats my point, its near impossible to do that when the playstyles of 8mans and randoms are completely different. Where one is barely useable soloing, and gets buffed, it will be completely OP used in coordination.
This thread discusses the need to bring those two closer.

Part of the problem above all else is the tutorial. Even if you disagreed with the original implementation of ECM, the newbie was ill educated on how it works, functions, and didn't understand the implications of it and to some degree was hard to counter unless you experienced it.

It took a while for me to understand when to use ECM counter mode... and although ECM in its current state is tame since everything practically counters it (even BAP), you removed parts of the gameplay that intelligence/higher level play had benefited from (although, it also created massive ECM-based teams due to imbalances). In my comments when it was revealed that ECM was nerfed... part of it did harm newbies. Even today, I bet most of them don't even know how to use ECM correctly (I remember trying to tell a few pilots using ECM to USE COUNTER MODE in certain situations, with mixed results). So, ultimately something that would have normally benefited from higher level play, got removed in favor of "dumbing it down"... except...

Back to, THERE IS NO FREAKING TUTORIAL TO TEACH PLAYERS HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME EFFECTIVELY.

[Kunae]

Deathlike, on 13 June 2013 - 06:22 AM, said:

Part of the problem above all else is the tutorial. Even if you disagreed with the original implementation of ECM, the newbie was ill educated on how it works, functions, and didn't understand the implications of it and to some degree was hard to counter unless you experienced it.

It took a while for me to understand when to use ECM counter mode... and although ECM in its current state is tame since everything practically counters it (even BAP), you removed parts of the gameplay that intelligence/higher level play had benefited from (although, it also created massive ECM-based teams due to imbalances). In my comments when it was revealed that ECM was nerfed... part of it did harm newbies. Even today, I bet most of them don't even know how to use ECM correctly (I remember trying to tell a few pilots using ECM to USE COUNTER MODE in certain situations, with mixed results). So, ultimately something that would have normally benefited from higher level play, got removed in favor of "dumbing it down"... except...

Back to, THERE IS NO FREAKING TUTORIAL TO TEACH PLAYERS HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME EFFECTIVELY.

But they can't put in an actual tutorial... They'd have to change it every 2 weeks when they entirely change the meta and dynamics.

[RG Notch]

Deathlike, on 13 June 2013 - 06:22 AM, said:

Part of the problem above all else is the tutorial. Even if you disagreed with the original implementation of ECM, the newbie was ill educated on how it works, functions, and didn't understand the implications of it and to some degree was hard to counter unless you experienced it.

It took a while for me to understand when to use ECM counter mode... and although ECM in its current state is tame since everything practically counters it (even BAP), you removed parts of the gameplay that intelligence/higher level play had benefited from (although, it also created massive ECM-based teams due to imbalances). In my comments when it was revealed that ECM was nerfed... part of it did harm newbies. Even today, I bet most of them don't even know how to use ECM correctly (I remember trying to tell a few pilots using ECM to USE COUNTER MODE in certain situations, with mixed results). So, ultimately something that would have normally benefited from higher level play, got removed in favor of "dumbing it down"... except...

Back to, THERE IS NO FREAKING TUTORIAL TO TEACH PLAYERS HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME EFFECTIVELY.

Just curious, when should the tutorial have been made? Or when should it be made? Right now? With the current balance in place, or should they wait until they change things? Should they make a new one after each patch, or only after major changes? What about if these changes get changed?
I'm not arguing that new players need help, I'm just curious how they would get something that is accurate to the game and doesn't get outdated.

Edited by RG Notch, 13 June 2013 - 06:28 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Waking One, on 12 June 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Long ranged alpha snipers are low effort low danger high effectiveness easy to win...

[redacted]

Kunae, on 12 June 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

Pft.

None of the above.

I on't know, As a sniper IF you picked a good spot, the OP is correct. Shooting at long range isn't the same as sniping though. I can hit at long range pretty well, that isn't hitting the right leg on the knee level shooting though. This is the difference between sniping and being a good shot.