1084 replies to this topic

[MrMadguy]

There will be only one result of this change - I will instant quit any hot map in this game, cuz it will be just a waste of time for me. I was in so good mood before yesterday: was very happy about the game, was thinking about what mechs I'll buy next, about donating into extra slots, exp transfering and etc. And yesterday you spoiled my mood. And I'm not going to donate anything, while I'm in bad mood.

[Sephlock]

Also, and I swear to you I am straining to say this as politely as possible:

In what UNIVERSE do SRM2s need a nerf in any way, shape, or form?

Does anyone even USE SRM2s?

[arghmace]

Sephlock, on 13 July 2013 - 01:32 AM, said:

Does anyone even USE SRM2s?

I used to use them a bit when they were very accurate. You know, earlier SRM6 had more spread than SRM4 which had more spread than SRM2. But now they are all equally inaccurate so SRM2 is completely useless with current stats. It should at least run cooler and cycle faster to make it viable in any way. Unlike with SRM4 and SRM6 you cannot even make it more accurate with Artemis. Well, you can, but that would be just stupid considering the relative weight increase.

Edited by arghmace, 13 July 2013 - 01:44 AM.

[Sephlock]

For the love of god if this must be done just do it to PPCs and nothing else.

[WWWWWWWWWWWWW]

Gwaihir, on 12 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

Balance in MWO has long been a contentious subject, on that is difficult to really look at clearly because of the number of factors that interact with each other. There is no one issue, or one single bullet fix, that can patch over the issues currently afflicting the game. It’s a complex integrated system, and there’s three main parts contributing to the current state of play.

Before I get into those three interlocking factors, I need to talk about weapons, and playstyles in a general sense.

What we generally have, are two (and a half, ish) sorts of weapon paradigms.

Weapons that are very efficient damage per ton, but with generally awful damage per heat. (Energy weapons)
Weapons with bad damage per ton, but excellent damage per heat. (Ballistics)
Weapons that fall into the middle ground, with a balance of both, with no extremes either way (Missiles)
There are variations inside the three categories (rapid fire ACs vs AC20s, etc), but Battletech starts with these three base sorts of weapons, and that’s where you need to start with the balance.

The different playstyles want different weapons:
Brawlers want weapons that are very efficient damage per heat- Generally once you are in a brawl, you aren’t able to disengage and spare time for cooling down, so you need to be able to keep up the most efficient damage for as long as possible.

Snipers want the most damage per ton, so they can front load the most damage possible. They generally always have an opportunity to back off and cool down, or rotate out with a friendly team mate.

Missiles fall into a mixed spot, with SRMs being invaluable for brawlers, allowing them to load up with decent damage per ton as well as damage per heat weapons, that are not as weight and size constrained as ballistics. They’re also essential for light mechs to be able to effectively engage heavier targets.

This is pretty simplistic, but that’s what a general overview of weapons should look like, and how they should work. Sooo, the current problems? Going down the list:

Mech health is generally far too low. Snipers rely on being able have enough heat capacity to burst enough weapons fire to critically damage an approaching brawler before their heat cap drastically cuts their DPS down.
For an ideal example, take the typical Highlander 732 with 3 PPC + gauss and 15 dhs, versus an AC20 + 3x SRM6 mech with 18 dhs. The highlander has a much higher peak DPS, almost double that of the brawling mech. However, it can sustain that level of damage for a much shorter time than the brawler can. If a fight managed to go on for 45 seconds, the brawling mech would pump out 500 damage compared to the sniping mech’s 350. Now, back in the golden age of SRMs, around November/December of last year, the brawling mech would have pumped out 780 damage vs the same 400 damage sniper mech.
This leads me to my next point:

All the brawling weapons are broken to unusability. SRMs, which are the bedrock staple of both brawlers and lights alike, are flat out nonfunctional in their needed role. Between hit detection and quite low damage, they just plain don’t work at all. See the above example for the difference in damage levels. That kind of difference between brawler damage over time and sniper damage over time was absolutely necessary to maintain a balance between weapons and playstyles.In addition to SRMs, the smaller ballistics need some serious weight and size reductions to fix the issues they have being useful on anything smaller than 65 tons.

PPCs should also get their speed buff rolled back, and their heat upped to 9 per shot. ERPPCs should keep the current projectile speed. They don’t really need anything other than that though, it’s the other broken weapons that need buffs.


Finally, the matchmaker. The interactions with the matchmaker and the game types just reinforce the existing problems. Since there is no tonnage matching right now, there’s no reason not to go 6 assault 2 fast mover- This also just happens to both almost require a sniper comp, as well as working best with a sniper comp.
The requirement is because, with 6 assaults, you’re going to be slow in general. You require the longer ranged weapons to exert the area control needed, since you can’t quickly reposition like a lighter force can.
The other half of the coin is that snipers work far better the heavier you are, because of their weapon choices- The ideal burst/sniper weapons are the ones that have the most damage per ton. Since their function relies on having enough tons to pack in enough of them for the highest burst, they really only work well on the heavier mechs. A more balanced 2/2/2/2 composition really just does not work out ideally with a heavy sniper composition, compared to 3/3/0/2, or even heavier groups. Anything lighter than 2/2/2/2 practically requires good brawlers, because it just plain does not have the critical mass of sniper burst power necessary to win.

tldr: It ends up being a self-reinforcing cycle of weapons, matchmaker, mech health, and the random map pool all contributing to there being only one viable choice of gameplay right now. However, ALL of it is solvable just with pure numbers tweaks. There is absolutely no need for extra complicated and unintuitive systems layered on top of the base gameplay in order to have a balanced game.

This man knows his stuff and should replace whoever is in charge of weapon balance at PGI

[WolvesX]

Its whole heat penatly system is utter crap as explained on over 60 pages in the original thread about it.

You lost a coustomer today.

HF & GL

See you in a few months maybe, when its out of the game.

Edited by WolvesX, 13 July 2013 - 02:27 AM.

[Frostbeast]

The Maps are getting bigger and bigger. Its way more difficult to get close to one and fire some srm at an enemy mech. i see no problem in more dmg

[CrashieJ]

we should do a tabletop day or week on the Public Test Server, where every stat is receded to tabletop numbers. EVERYTHING

just to settle this crap once and for all. Hell, we might actually both have fun and find a bedrock to do some actual good balance-wise.

[MrMadguy]

You'll better do something with hit detection problem and invulnerable lights. It's not funny at all. You could strip all Atlas CT armor via 2-3 alphas, but at the same time you may drive even 10 alphas into this guys and they won't be even "orange". I already start hating this freaking Spiders, freely running among all of my team. It just can't be. I can swear I hitting them in almost face-to-face fight with full 4xLGL 1sec duration. Ok, my damage may spread over their armor, but still, they have not so much armor to sustain so much damage!

Imagine the fight, that happen just a few minutes ago. I was on my AS7-RS with 4xLGL fighting with COM, that was just running around me and on every "lap" I was driving full alpha into him. This fight lasted about 2-3 minutes, before another 2 enimy lights not joined the fight. I fired into him about 10-15 times. Ok. I killed 2 of them at the end. But still. Such amount of damage, I made, might have killed 3-4 assault mechs. How could it be? Sometimes lights are doing 500-700 damage per match. Is this ok?

Edited by MrMadguy, 13 July 2013 - 02:58 AM.

[arghmace]

gavilatius, on 13 July 2013 - 02:44 AM, said:

we should do a tabletop day or week on the Public Test Server, where every stat is receded to tabletop numbers. EVERYTHING

Please no. I don't wanna have an AC2 that fires once in ten seconds.

[arghmace]

Excellent post by Gwaihir, especially about how tonnage limits would lead to less snipers. One thing, though:

Gwaihir, on 12 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

Mech health is generally far too low. Snipers rely on being able have enough heat capacity to burst enough weapons fire to critically damage an approaching brawler before their heat cap drastically cuts their DPS down.

Another way to look at this is that mech health is not too low but heat cap is too high. If firing a sniper alpha would take you on the verge of shutdown, all would be well. Or... you could also say that weapon recycle times are too fast. I really do not think that the already doubled mech health should be increased further. It becomes quite ridiculous in a way that a single medium laser is basically only able to scratch the paint off.

[Wizard Steve]

PGI should just remove DHS, ES & FF. The game was far more balanced, there was far less boating, we saw far more interesting builds and players played far smarter back then.

[Victor Morson]

gavilatius, on 13 July 2013 - 02:44 AM, said:

we should do a tabletop day or week on the Public Test Server, where every stat is receded to tabletop numbers. EVERYTHING

just to settle this crap once and for all. Hell, we might actually both have fun and find a bedrock to do some actual good balance-wise.

Nobody is suggesting that is a good thing. Well a few are but oh boy.

I've played raw TT #s in a mech game twice now and it's very ugly.

Wizard Steve, on 13 July 2013 - 02:57 AM, said:

PGI should just remove DHS, ES & FF. The game was far more balanced, there was far less boating, we saw far more interesting builds and players played far smarter back then.

A ton of people suggested making doubles true double, but not doubling the ones in the engine. A lot of people even feel that would make TT more balanced overall, even.

However they went with this odd 1.4/engine hybrid system.

like everything else, these things do not need removing, they need fixing. It's sad we've gotten to the point we're saying "Take this stuff out because you can't fix it."

[Cybermech]

there are some nice points in this thread.
I have always being saying the streak and srm damage has to be different.
Think someone pointed it out to me a long time ago, but thing is when streak 4/6's come out there will have to be a change anyways.

give small bump to streaks but tbh there still useful but just not on big targets atm.
when most shots don't hit the center torso then bump them up more.
srm damage buff is needed and will bring back a few mechs especially in medium wieght.

[egreSS]

Some of you need to gain some perspective and not get so emotional. I understand your passionate but acting so entitled is counter-productive to getting your point across.

On the other hand: Seriously though PGI? This idea seems half-baked and lazy.

The new heat > 100% mechanic makes sense and might be all that is needed at this point. Can we all just try that out first and get some feedback/observe before we do something really radical?

[Cybermech]

double post ftw

Edited by Cybermech, 13 July 2013 - 03:58 AM.

[HansBlix WMD]

Has the amount of heat penalty been written anywhere? Especially for AC/40s?

[Wrenchfarm]

I support anything that makes brawling more viable.

Close range builds should be rewarded for getting in through the nightmare of snipers and LRMs out there in the common gameworld. A nice hard hitting SRM punch isn't an end all be all, but it does help.

I agree that the SplatCat will still be a problem. I agree that brawling should equal more than just SRMs. These are problems I want to see solved. However, I would rather have powerful SRMs and deal with the occasional Splat than leave brawling as gutted and as useless as it is for months (more) on end.

[Cybermech]

I can't believe the rage in this thread over things that have not being tested.
There are so many holes in peoples posts.

First all the weapons needed this, for better balancing is one thing but also for gameplay.
Not sure if enough people in this thread has being around long enough to be commenting on things that they do not know about or are misinformed.
If this was done just to PPC's the amount of rage about "OLD" cheese builds and yes there are many of them.
While bringing up srm damage which is needed.
streaks to 2.0 is not the best idea

Sniper mechs in this game are not long range mechs atm.
There are ANY range mechs, that is a problem.
Boost in heat especially in close range will ruin PPC builds when they are boating.
I believe the numbers for 1 PPC/ER go up in heat and drop multi down to 1.
But I'm not guna rage over it, especially until I can see it in action.
People already decided its guna be utter failure, not sure what is wrong with bringing back lights and mediums.
They can only be fielded cause of bad hit detection atm

[Bloody Moon]

Alex Warden, on 13 July 2013 - 01:23 AM, said:

wrong... you can chainfire them faster, if you klick for every gun in the chain. i always chainfire 3LL+3ML in my Laserstalker,and i can fire them FAST. you can also "alpha" a center torso of a slow target, even in chainfire (if klicked fast enough and aimed accurately...) i didn´t time it,but i can easily assume you can make 6 shots within 2 seconds.

plus, only because the weapons have a beam duration doesn´t mean you absolutely can´t alpha pinpoint with them. you can. not always, but you can

Of course you can, against those who move at a snails pace and have no idea what torso twisting or using cover is. Any half-decent player in a Gauss/PPC/ERPPC mech will laugh in your face and beat you both on range and in a brawl.