1084 replies to this topic

[Master Q]

MustrumRidcully, on 14 July 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

PGI was clever when they decided that lasers would have a beam duration. That automatically lowered their precision, even if boated.

And that's why I can't understand how Russ and Paul can't grasp this simple concept that the reason we are seeing problems with ACs and PPCs is that their damage goes in a 100% pinpoint-accurate single shot.

Convergence, 100% pinpoint perfect convergence, is the reason these weapons are being boated and are so devastating in operation.

SRM boating is dead. So dead that the damage needs to be brought up because when they were saying "OMG we need to nerf SRMs" they were being stupid. What fixed SRMs? Getting rid of the splash glitch.

LRM boating is still a thing. But you know what? It's not a game-imbalancing thing. It seems to be working as intended and that's fine.

Laser boating? Sure you can boat lasers but as mentioned,it really doesn't matter if you boat lasers because very, very, very rarely are you ever going to be able to hold that point on the right panel on a moving target.

So that leaves us with the PPCs and AC boats. And what's happening there? The combination of things, any one of which is not necessarily game-breaking but which add up to game-breaking when they are allowed to come together:

• All projectiles in the boat fire at the same speed.
  
• All projectiles in the boat hit with exact pinpoint convergence.
  
• All projectiles in the boat do their damage at once, rather than the Damage-Over-Time that fixed the laser problem.

Now, the fire-at-same-speed thing we can't fix. They're the same weapon. They will fire that way.

The damage-over-time fix that they implemented for lasers isn't going to work for PPCs and Autocannon. Not just that it's messy for Lore, but that we're sure they intend to implement other ballistic weapons that wil function more like lasers (Rotary Autocannon?) down the road.

That leaves the only logical choice to fix the issue of perfect convergence.

The easiest way to do it is just what has been suggested by almost everyone discussing this. Make those weapons have a set deviation from the crosshair, and force pilots to plan accordingly and if they alpha strike, know that the alpha's not all going to hit in the same area.

Just like with SRMs, they went for the stupidly pointless fix first and only later implemented the real fix. They've made us wait 3 months to fix SRM damage back to spec and it's been ridiculous.

What do we have to do? Make a video presentation? Build a flowchart? How do we get these guys to start following some basic design principles rather than just slapping badly considered band-**** on everything?

Edited by Master Q, 14 July 2013 - 05:49 AM.

[M4NTiC0R3X]

Yay, keep it up!

[FerretGR]

My understanding of the heat scaling garbage was that canon builds wouldn't be affected by it, ie. the hunchie could fire its hunch, and the AWS could fire its three PPCs. IMHO the 2 PPC limit is too low.

[MrMadguy]

And what does this 1xAC/20 limit mean? Developers are not looking forward into the future at all? What will they do, when time of "symmetric" assaults, like Mad Cat MKII, Dire Wolf, Hauptman with 2xBallistic slots will come? Some of that mechs will 100% have "ballistic" variants, with 2xAC/20 as intended loadout.

[Assaultfox]

Buffing SRMs would be a big mistake. There are already too many one-trick-ponies on the battlefield. Increasing the damage would only bring back Splat Cats and zombie Cents. This game is already filled with PPC/Gauss combos, LRM boats, and AC2 macros. Buffing damage would just add another unimaginative "must-have-to-win" build. I say Tennex's solution in the second post of this thread would be a great fix. Tightening the spread closer to the point of origin would make for more interesting strategy. Get more pin point damage at the risk of getting too close provides a healthy risk/reward factor. Plus concentrated damage potential satisfies the lust of more damage, and also reduces the chances of people boating SRMs exclusively.

[Master Q]

MrMadguy, on 14 July 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

And what does this 1xAC/20 limit mean? Developers are not looking forward into the future at all? What will they do, when time of "symmetric" assaults, like Mad Cat MKII, Dire Wolf, Hauptman with 2xBallistic slots will come? Some of that mechs will 100% have "ballistic" variants, with 2xAC/20 as intended loadout.

The funny thing is that ASSAULT class 'Mechs that can slot 2x AC20 make sense. The problem is that PGI weren't paying attention to what they were doing, left a broken mechanic in the game (pinpoint convergence), didn't pay attention to the fact that the ACs still had the problems that they rewrote lasers to correct...

Here, maybe if we throw their OWN WORDS back at them they'll wake up.

http://mwomercs.com/news/2012/03/157-developer-answers-5-mech-warfare

"Basically, your targeting systems are always trying to adjust the angle of your weapons so that they converge or focus at a distance of whatever your aiming reticles are pointing at. So, if you fire at a target very far away, your lasers (or whatever else) may fire nearly parallel to each other; firing at a target up close will angle the shots inwards. However, the adjustment of these angles is not instant."

Well guess what? They turned around and implemented instant convergence anyways and utterly broke the game.

Instant convergence is a problem. By their own words.

[Ezazel]

I remember when people were crying about OP splat cats. Now they want it back. My 30 srm A-1 is laready warming up, try not to cry when i crush your mech with it.

About the heat thing, I don't like a completely new mechanic added. PGI could have simpy returned the original values of PPC and ERPPC. KISS.

[Master Q]

Ezazel, on 14 July 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

I remember when people were crying about OP splat cats. Now they want it back. My 30 srm A-1 is laready warming up, try not to cry when i crush your mech with it.

About the heat thing, I don't like a completely new mechanic added. PGI could have simpy returned the original values of PPC and ERPPC. KISS.

And you're going to be very, very disappointed because what fixed SRMs and killed Splatcats wasn't the damage nerf it was eliminating the splash glitch.

[Zerberus]

Definitely fix hit reg first... if you want to buff them as a bandaid until that happens, fine, but please take it off as soon as HSR is fixed so it doesn`t end up the same as the PPC, where buff, buff, fix = Oh boy...

That said I also feel that simply returning PPC values to Pre-buff level would have sufficed for the most part as a deterrent to the HiPPA meta, maybe along helped a bit by giving LRMs the >PPC range that they have in tabletop, 1200-1300m or so...

Edited by Zerberus, 14 July 2013 - 09:35 AM.

[Wintersdark]

MustrumRidcully, on 14 July 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

What I agree with is that one of the biggest hindrance of many hard point limitation models I've seen alluded to is that if you limit too hard, you can only downgrade, but not upgrade, which in the end means you can't change anything, because what do you with freed up weight if you can't add meaningful weight elsewhere?

I've been on about this for a long time, but nobody is ever willing to discuss it.

If you keep hardpoint type requirements and add size requirements, all you do is limit customization to reducing weapons in favor of larger engines. If you remove type requirements and add size ones, things get much, much worse.

It's the huge failing that never gets addressed. Customization essentially ends and we all play with stock mechs after that (albiet with DHS/ES upgrades and differing ammo loads). While this sounds awesome to some "purists" (if you will) it would lead to a great many chassis(not just variants) simply being irreparably bad - at a much greater level than currently, because tabletop mechs are absolutely not balanced whatsoever - see how much battle value varies from chassis to chassis, even inside a weight class or hell, even at a specific tonnage.

arghmace, on 14 July 2013 - 01:58 AM, said:

Arm lock makes all your weapons hit the exact same spot. Pin point damage wasn't nearly as big a problem earlier when arm lock was not present.

Arm lock does impact the convergence issue, but only at low Elo. Players who aren't new or terrible had no problem having their arms and torso weapons hit the same spot, because the torso lines up to the arms. It just takes time. You'd either fire your arm weapons, then your torso weapons, or you'd just wait till the torso caught up. It's the same amount of time it takes your arm-locked reticule to get where you want it anyways.

As you said later, it's just a small part of the problem - it makes convergence an issue at lower end play as well as high end play.

Ezazel, on 14 July 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

I remember when people were crying about OP splat cats. Now they want it back. My 30 srm A-1 is laready warming up, try not to cry when i crush your mech with it.

About the heat thing, I don't like a completely new mechanic added. PGI could have simpy returned the original values of PPC and ERPPC. KISS.

From my post a page back:

Quote

The thing is, there are a LOT of background changes that have really changed things:
1) There are more large maps. Before the Splash fix, but after the release of Alpine, did you ever take a Splatcat there? SRM's were still stupidly overpowered, but Splatcats just fell over dead because you'd never get close enough to use them.
2) Splash damage fix. Mentioned above, but in more detail - Single missiles were doing upwards of 12 damage to certain mechs due to the splash bug. As a result, splash damage has been reduced in radius so much the missiles do effectively none. A Splatcat previously could do well over 100 damage to a mech in a single 36 missile volley then - that is no longer the case. 6xSRM6 would only do ~72 damage now, and....
3) Missile path changes. Back in the splatcats day, the missiles would converge at certain ranges. Decent Splatcat pilots could use this to cause all those missiles to converge on your center torso, delivering extreme damage to a central component. Now, missiles spread to a very wide area very quickly, and stay at that spread. Even with Artemis, the spread is fairly large and prohibits pinpoint damage entirely (unless you're facehumping the enemy mech at least)
4) Seismic Sensor (thanks Deathlike!). With Seismic, it's FAR more difficult to sneak up on opponents to get that close range high damage hit.
5) PPC/Gauss Meta. The biggest weakness of a Splatcat is high damage long range pinpoint alphas, which are capable of ripping off it's ears before it can deal substantial damage. Doing so is trivially easy. Adding that the average map size is substantially larger now (and will go up with the new large Lava map) re: point 1... Splatcats are quite neutered out of the gate.
6) Finally, these very heat scale penalties will force Splatcats, which already ran very hot, to drop down to 3srm6/3srm4 or to fire two groups of 6's individually, either way reducing the instant damage output substantially.

[Deathlike]

Victor Morson, on 14 July 2013 - 01:30 AM, said:

The balance team doesn't understand the game, period. We've explained and explained and explained and they go "Yep yep we're listening.. here's our dumb idea, tough if you think it's terrible." And it is, because again, see the previous sentence.

Given Paul personally posted this update, I will go as far as to say he doesn't understand the game at all either. They are trying to repair an ecosystem they simply can't understand.

This goes back to my favorite questions that I've said multiple times:

Does PGI even play its own game?

You don't need the PGI 8-man team vids to confirm what we already know.

The sad thing is that the PPC has received very few nerfs (the only recent one is the 4 second cooldown change)... so I'm starting to think someone (perhaps Paul) think they are "where they should be" and is the the only one in the PGI offices to "pwn" his co-workers.

I dunno... it could be less sadistic as I'm making this sound.

[Wintersdark]

I played a match yesterday - a pug match. Now, I don't know if it was a sync drop, two 4-mans with exactly the same battle plan, or just a random collection of people who just happened to all have the same idea.

However, the entire enemy team, all of it, without exception was using only three weapons: PPC, ERPPC, Gauss Rifle.

They stuck together, and were brutally effective.

Now, I'm an old hand at this game now, and I'm very honest about wins and losses - I don't blame the other team for cheese when they win through teamwork and execution. This team did, and they deserve credit for that. It wasn't spectacular teamwork - they just stuck together - but it was there.

However... I honestly could not come up with a circumstance wherein our team, with a wide assortment of weapons (a couple LRM boats, some PPC/Gauss mechs, some standard lights, AC/2's, /5's, etc) could have won. No amount of teamwork would have made any difference.

See, what would happen is as soon as any mech poked out of cover, it would be subjected to a barrage of PPC/Gauss shots. Not just from 2-3 mechs, but 5-6. Our mechs with LRM's, AC/2's, AC/5's and such where completely useless, because the LRM mechs couldn't get a target lock (keeping LOS long enough to get a lock resulted in death, and the autocannons couldn't get time on target, because once they started firing they'd be on the receiving end of a vast, vast volume of high damage fire. Poke out, fire a couple AC2 shots, get high with a dozen PPC bolts.

If we all charged together, that would have been the best result, but we still would have been obliterated. The PPC's simply do too much damage too fast when used like that. Even if we employed focus fire and they did not, we'd still have been crushed.

But, the reality was in attempting to push, suppression fire caused some to hesitate, or move back into cover - 8 mechs with 20+ PPC's and 4 or so gauss rifles firing justifiably scares the hell out of anything, and generates enough shots that there's always some flying, even with a 4s cooldown. As soon as a couple move back into cover or hesitate, the PPC team is forced to focus fire.

This just doesn't happen with other weapons. They take time to get locks, do spread out damage, etc.

Again, full respect to a team that employed a brutally effective tactic well.

But it sucked playing against that. In a huge way. And it really, really showcased the high alpha problem right now.

[Deathlike]

Wintersdark, on 14 July 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

I played a match yesterday - a pug match. Now, I don't know if it was a sync drop, two 4-mans with exactly the same battle plan, or just a random collection of people who just happened to all have the same idea.

However, the entire enemy team, all of it, without exception was using only three weapons: PPC, ERPPC, Gauss Rifle.

They stuck together, and were brutally effective.

Now, I'm an old hand at this game now, and I'm very honest about wins and losses - I don't blame the other team for cheese when they win through teamwork and execution. This team did, and they deserve credit for that. It wasn't spectacular teamwork - they just stuck together - but it was there.

However... I honestly could not come up with a circumstance wherein our team, with a wide assortment of weapons (a couple LRM boats, some PPC/Gauss mechs, some standard lights, AC/2's, /5's, etc) could have won. No amount of teamwork would have made any difference.

See, what would happen is as soon as any mech poked out of cover, it would be subjected to a barrage of PPC/Gauss shots. Not just from 2-3 mechs, but 5-6. Our mechs with LRM's, AC/2's, AC/5's and such where completely useless, because the LRM mechs couldn't get a target lock (keeping LOS long enough to get a lock resulted in death, and the autocannons couldn't get time on target, because once they started firing they'd be on the receiving end of a vast, vast volume of high damage fire. Poke out, fire a couple AC2 shots, get high with a dozen PPC bolts.

If we all charged together, that would have been the best result, but we still would have been obliterated. The PPC's simply do too much damage too fast when used like that. Even if we employed focus fire and they did not, we'd still have been crushed.

But, the reality was in attempting to push, suppression fire caused some to hesitate, or move back into cover - 8 mechs with 20+ PPC's and 4 or so gauss rifles firing justifiably scares the hell out of anything, and generates enough shots that there's always some flying, even with a 4s cooldown. As soon as a couple move back into cover or hesitate, the PPC team is forced to focus fire.

This just doesn't happen with other weapons. They take time to get locks, do spread out damage, etc.

Again, full respect to a team that employed a brutally effective tactic well.

But it sucked playing against that. In a huge way. And it really, really showcased the high alpha problem right now.

What you've just played is literally the worst case scenario. Welcome to that reality PGI.

[Sasha Volkova]

Wintersdark, on 13 July 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

Ah, of course, I must have missed the sarcasm font.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's very, very common for posts like yours above to be entirely serious, and the "tone" is entirely in your head. Text medium, right? I assume you're not new to the internet, so you should well know that there are a LOT of really ranty, stupid people, who rant things just like that in all seriousness. So, given that, it's a pretty reasonable assumption that you were serious - that's where the good odds where anyways.

Hell, just look back in this thread. There's oodles of entirely serious "omgsplatcats" posts.

Regardless, my apologies for misunderstanding.

No problem darling.
I dont hold grudges.

[Sasha Volkova]

Brown Hornet, on 13 July 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

I think SRM6 alpha should by 2+ not 3+. I've voted for a 2.0/missile dmg buff because that's where SRMs should be. If there's a problem with them wrecking big mechs raise the cooldown instead.


There is a solution even if dmg is buffed to 2.0. see my post above.


Remove Arm-lock.

I totally agree that the limit at 2 SRM6's is better since it will stop the centurion 3 x srm6 builds.
For the pult though ppl will just run 2 x SRM6 + 4 x SRM4 and still avoid the heat penalty.
I am not saying the pult is OP, but an idea would be limiting SRM4's to 3 and limiting SRM6's to 2.
It would be an interesting way to do things and would possibly result in LRM+SRM builds instead of the old splatbuild which then would become a versatile mech able to support from range with LRM and go in for the kill with SRM wich I consider the idea from the beginning (mechs that can both attack at long range and close range)

Regarding arm-lock I thing it should stay since it does make it easier for newer players which PGI seems to be catering to ALOT.

However this is just my 2 cents.

Edited by 0okami, 14 July 2013 - 11:25 AM.

[Neput Z34]

In a current form SMRs are not worth it as secondary heck even tertiary wapons since LRM5 only does 0.5 damge less then SRM4 and has more ammo per ton.
Plus ther is whole PPC/ Gauss spam going on like it's 3068, I would rather have LRM5 or 10 over SRM4 or 6 atleast just for some PSY-OPS/ harass.

and here is my opinion on heat penalty/ scale

http://mwomercs.com/...-scale-penalty/

[Ardney]

Ok, haven't gotten through the whole thread yet but I can't help but post...

So far I've seen several people comment to the effect that "100% heat dmg threshold is a good idea". No. It isn't. In fact, it is the single most ridiculous change announced in Paul's entire post, and that's saying something. Mechs have always taken damage past 100% if...wait for it.....you didn't shutdown. Now that they will take damage even while shutdown, what's the point of that mechanic again? To force players to press an additional key? There is absolutely ZERO reason to allow auto shutdown now as the choice is simply between taking damage or taking damage while staying perfectly still.

Edited by Ardney, 14 July 2013 - 12:25 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Wintersdark, on 14 July 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

I played a match yesterday - a pug match. Now, I don't know if it was a sync drop, two 4-mans with exactly the same battle plan, or just a random collection of people who just happened to all have the same idea.

However, the entire enemy team, all of it, without exception was using only three weapons: PPC, ERPPC, Gauss Rifle.

Welcome to the Island.

[Glitchbit]

If it is buffed, I think it will be good, not only to catch those pesky lights, but also to balance the battlefield more and give mediums a place. If the Assaults and Heavies are more vulnerable, hopefully we will see more Mediums out there and give them a fighting chance. Especially, since I really want to play that Shadow Hawk when it comes out, and don't want it to be the unwanted team member.

Ardney, on 14 July 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Ok, haven't gotten through the whole thread yet but I can't help but post...

So far I've seen several people comment to the effect that "100% heat dmg threshold is a good idea". No. It isn't. In fact, it is the single most ridiculous change announced in Paul's entire post, and that's saying something. Mechs have always taken damage past 100% if...wait for it.....you didn't shutdown. Now that they will take damage even while shutdown, what's the point of that mechanic again? To force players to press an additional key? There is absolutely ZERO reason to allow auto shutdown now as the choice is simply between taking damage or taking damage while staying perfectly still.

I agree, that would defeat the whole purpose of auto-shutdown and we might as well override all the time. The only other time I would shutdown is to go off the radar for a bit.

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 14 July 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

What you've just played is literally the worst case scenario. Welcome to that reality PGI.

Indeed. As I said, I don't hold it against them, but sadly the only way to combat it that I can see is to do exactly the same thing. Their loadout rendered 2/3's of the games' weapons utterly useless, and their tactics where simple and easy to implement in a PUG. I'm not insulting them of course, using a winning strategy isn't a bad idea, and it doesn't make them bad people.

But as I played through that match and afterwards, I couldn't help but think that this is where the game is heading. I don't think the heat scale will help it, either - gauss+2ppc is unaffected, multiPPC builds can simply fire groups. I don't really see a way to move away from this until such a time as convergence is addressed in some manner.

SRM buffs will help, but ultimately the PPC is still an extremely good weapon - small, moderate weight, you can fire quickly and be back in cover, not requiring any time on target, fast travelling long range bolts. Try getting a LRM lock with several mechs chain-firing PPC's at you.

12v12? Even if SRM's were really overpowered, try to get into SRM range with an enemy team even vaguely close to each other, and every single mech sporting PPC's.

Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe these changes will help, but honestly I'm deeply concerned. That match showed me just how effective that can be... And I don't say that lightly. I'm nearly always the voice of moderation in these forum threads, and a huge proponent of viewing the situation as calmly and reasonably as possible.