48 replies to this topic

[Alex Warden]

GingKing, on 11 July 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

Seems now you have to formulate the right build and stick to one type of weapon, cramming as many as you can to have any hope of surviving, let alone doing any real damage to others.

hm... i´ve been running my HGN with 1 ERPPC, 1 Gauss, 1AC2, and 3 ssrm´s lately... and still am... i gotout of a match with 1000+ dmg and 5 kills. for the most part i end up with about 700dmg 3kills, that´s a result i see very often. i have a few pepstalkers on my killcount, as well as ALOT of ac20 jägers,lots of lights etc.

the problem is, many people THINK they need to stick with the "musthave" builds,instead of learning to play... yes, i mean it like that. it´s really rare to see someone who is really good AND plays a peppy or such. i won´t consider myself a "pro" or whatever,i´d say i´m marely averagely skilled. and i am smart enough NOT to touch a mech that is in shutdown 60% of the match... sure, i die from multiple ppc´s now and then...but then i instantly know that i was stupid enough to let him aim long enough (in most cases).

btw, same counts for my ilja, my Quickdraw, my Cicada... basically any mech... none of my builds focuses on one special weapon,they are all mixed... and i am in the upper damage ranges more than not, survive often enough to not be angry at the game blabla...

long story short: the pilot leads the weapon and drives the mech, not fashion decissions...

Edited by Alex Warden, 14 July 2013 - 01:49 AM.

[Sir Ratburger]

Rhapsody Repine, on 13 July 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

Its not the 'coming back after 3 months away', its the fact that the game has degenerated from a 'tactical shooter' were you took off arms, legs, weapons.. and such to kill an enemy mech, to be what you now see with the 'load as many weapons / as powerful weapons' as you can onto your mech, set them ALL to the same fire-group.. and try to out-alpha the other guy while ONLY aiming for the CT.

3 moths ago, i'd see mechs losing arms, and having damaged legs all the time. Nowadays?.. i ONLY ever see CT damage, no other damage done to any mech except for 'accidental' damage when the enemy happened to stop or change directions suddenly causing the other guys aim to go off. Beyond that.. EVERY SINGLE ATTACK is always aimed at the CT now. No one ever aims for anything else.

This has caused the gameplay to degenerate into 2 playstyles. Those who use the mechs that can carry the most firepower and do the highest alpha's. And those who use lights with, again, as much firepower as possible and run circles around the larger mechs, again doing only alphas, and again, only aiming for CT.

You are right, I have seen this a lot and admit I only aim for the Centre Torso as it is pointless to waste time trying to take out parts. I dont even aim for the legs on lights anymore.

[pencilboom]

PGI has no competitive guy to address the balance issue of the game. Gosh, they need to fire that balancing guy they have atm...He has no friggin' clue.

[Waking One]

Problem is the alpha/ppc whoring has been going on for too long. It's super one dimensional and easy, making it grow old really really fast. The rest of the game is much much better but one insane imbalance like that ruins it all in the end.

And i assume whoever is talking about how you can be good in other builds never actually tried to run a PPC boat. It's so much easier it's stupid. I never ran them until one night i got so pissed off at being matched against all those PPC stalkers etc and fit out my highlander 732 for "meta". Everything was suddenly clear to me. :/

Edited by Waking One, 16 July 2013 - 07:57 PM.

[Mawai]

Actually, I am still having fun though I do get bored and stop for a while.

At the moment, I only find the game good for brief injections of adrenaline as you search for that cool and more or less balanced match. The surprising thing to me is how little has changed in the past year. Some new maps, some new mechs, some new eye candy, a surprisingly small number of changes to weapons given how much time they have had to experiment. Perhaps things will change with UI2.0, 12 vs. 12 and Community Warfare, but at the current time there are no long term motivators to play this game.

If you feel like you have to drive specific mechs with specific weapons to have fun ... well, unfortunately, that is you and not the game. There are some builds that can be more effective depending on the player and others less so. On the other hand, I finished a match in a Spider-5D equipped with 3 medium lasers with 320 damage, 1 kill and 6 assists. We won somehow but the point is drive what you are happy with, not what other folks tell you to be happy with. I have a catapult with 2 ERPPC and a large pulse laser that has been pretty good recently too ... LRMs are pretty good now, SRMs were just buffed while SSRMs apparently nerfed .. so try out what you like to drive and find a build that works for you that is both fun and which you find effective. Feel free to load 8 flamers on a blackjack if you like but you might not enjoy it that much.

There are no leader boards, no record for anyone except yourself of how you are doing. The biggest difference you can make to your team success is to make team suggestions in chat (assuming there is no pre-made on your side, in which case just follow them).

From a practical point of view, perhaps try turning down mouse sensitivity. I was spectating a recent match and a player could not hit the broad side of a barn never mind a mech because his aim kept jumping all over the place. It really looked like a mouse sensitivity issue ... so use the slider in MWO to adjust the sensitivity if this is an issue for you (or use a mouse with this on-the-fly adjustment).

Anyway, the bottom line is that you left 3 months ago for some reason and, to be honest, the game is fundamentally the same now as then. They have a big feature list supposed to come out this summer so we will see where that leaves the game when Sept 17th roles around but there isn't much in it at the moment that will provide long term appeal.

[Mawai]

Waking One, on 16 July 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

Problem is the alpha/ppc whoring has been going on for too long. It's super one dimensional and easy, making it grow old really really fast. The rest of the game is much much better but one insane imbalance like that ruins it all in the end.

And i assume whoever is talking about how you can be good in other builds never actually tried to run a PPC boat. It's so much easier it's stupid. I never ran them until one night i got so pissed off at being matched against all those PPC stalkers etc and fit out my highlander 732 for "meta". Everything was suddenly clear to me. :/

Personally, I have mastered 3 Jenners, 3 Hunchbacks, 3 Catapults and 3 Stalkers and have filled out basic on at least 8 other mechs. Blasting away with PPCs is fun. However, my Stalkers have always been easy to over run and then will overheat easily when being used for close defense. LRM stalkers, SRM Stalkers are also both decent loadouts.

The favorite sniper fit at the moment appears to be 2xERPPC + Gauss. It works ok but again is vulnerable at close range to quicker mechs. However, does that qualify as high alpha? Where is your limit/cutoff? I suspect the game would become quite unenjoyable if you could only fire one weapon at a time ... which is probably the only way to get rid of alpha strikes ... prevent simultaneous weapons fire.

Do you want to nerf PPC heat so that you can't fire any? How many PPCs/Large Lasers/AC20 are too many?

In any case, if the objective is to reduce the damage striking one component then when a weapon group hits the target it should have a convergence circle within which the damage is applied. Instead of all damage applied to the point of impact, draw two random numbers for angle and radius for each round within a defined convergence circle. The damage from each round is applied at the point calculated. The probabilty will peak at the center of the convergence circle. If the circle has zero radius we have what we have now. A larger circle increases the chance that each round in a salvo will hit a different component. Convergence circle size is a function of weapon and range to target. Thus a close range shot will have a small convergence circle while one at a very long range may have one that covers most or all of the mech. Weapon convergence could be improved by skills or by holding a target in the crosshairs for a length of time or by firing from a stationary position. Purists will object to this since it takes part of the aiming and replaces it with a partially random distribution of damage. On the other hand, if you don't want all the damage from an alpha strike to affect the particular aiming point then something like this is required and it is probably better than fixed parallel convergence in which weapons can never hit the same targeting point.

[Blaze32]

This is me using a Jenner D with only small lasers and 2 ssrm's, I used this build since CLOSED BETA! The game is no worse than the first open beta version just change tactics...

Im on the bottom; 1st lance, 1st person. 284 damage; 4 kills and 1 assist... IN A JENNER!

Although there are always times you get rofl-stomped there are fun games, even if you do lose

Edited by Blaze32, 17 July 2013 - 09:53 AM.

[Finn McShae]

3 months ago? You mean April? When I couldn't even play 40% of the matches due to crashes and HUD bugs? Or earlier during the "Great Lurmageddon"?

Nah, I think right now I'm having the most fun I've had since early closed beta. Especially if the current heat changes keep matches as fun as they were last night.

YMMV, naturally.

[Thumper3]

I run several mechs with several configs, NONE of them a PPC boat (ok, my K2 was running 4x PPCs, but it's a Catapault, how threatening is that really? LOL And most times they were fired in pairs or chain, rarely Alpha'd.) I do not stick to ONE build or build type......I never die in the first 2 minutes. Usually scouting or waiting for the first probing encounter in that time. Spiders, Atlasi, Dragons, Ravens, Highlanders, Quickdraws.......each has their role, each has their place, and each has their strengths and weaknesses that must be understood and handled.

And the new heat rules should really see the PPC boats disappearing....in nuclear fireballs of overheated reactors no less.

Game has a long way to go......no argument......but that doesn't mean it's not fun playing now. Given the choice of playing MWO as it grows and evolves and not having any outlet for my big stompy robot fighting urges.....I'll take MWo everytime.

[Warge]

Rhapsody Repine, on 13 July 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

3 moths ago, i'd see mechs losing arms, and having damaged legs all the time. Nowadays?.. i ONLY ever see CT damage, no other damage done to any mech except for 'accidental' damage when the enemy happened to stop or change directions suddenly causing the other guys aim to go off. Beyond that.. EVERY SINGLE ATTACK is always aimed at the CT now. No one ever aims for anything else.

So what changed in this 3 months? All the same, only SSRMs fixed and MG less useless...

[Blackadder]

People complain about PPC's as if they were the only things boated, when in fact they are just the latest in a long line of weapons being boated, and boating has been the most viable option since closed beta in most cases. Its the same with alpha strike, its been the default fire mode since closed beta, the only difference is that the damage per alpha has constantly climbed as more equipment has been put in the game.

The simple truth is that the majority of players will always chase the best weapon in the game, and its been proven over and over with multiple weapons all of which have been at the top at some point in time, be it PPC, LL, LRM, ML , SL SRMs SSRMs or any other weapon you can name that was actually worth using.

Whats really sad, is that people cite brawling as some kind of mythical land of puple rainbows and cotten candy, when in fact the only reason people fought at short range was due to how effective SRM's were, and it had nothing to do with actual brawling, just boating as many SRM's as possible for max damage alpha strikes.

So until PGI actually puts some decent restrictions in place, most players will always follow the current pattern. So instead of Gauss PPC boats, we see more splatcats, and zombie centurions as it becomes worthwhile to run those boats again in some cases.

Edited by Blackadder, 18 July 2013 - 04:58 AM.

[Warge]

Blackadder, on 18 July 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

So until PGI actually puts some decent restrictions in place

Could this help?

[Ridersofdoom]

Be nice with novice developers... (PGI).

[Warge]

Right now I have one big problem: just can't find the answer to the question "What I am doing in MWO since there is nothing to do here?" No challenges: faction vs faction. All my Mechs at maximum upgrades. All useful modules - unlocked and bought. Why I'm still playing this game?

[Ridersofdoom]

im playing with my ratio and stats, its fun.

[Finn McShae]

Warge, on 18 July 2013 - 07:35 AM, said:

Right now I have one big problem: just can't find the answer to the question "What I am doing in MWO since there is nothing to do here?" No challenges: faction vs faction. All my Mechs at maximum upgrades. All useful modules - unlocked and bought. Why I'm still playing this game?

I would say its a good time for you to take a break for a few months, get some fresh mechs to master.

[Warge]

Finn McShae, on 18 July 2013 - 08:48 AM, said:

I would say its a good time for you to take a break for a few months,

Can I do this? Doubtful.

Finn McShae, on 18 July 2013 - 08:48 AM, said:

get some fresh mechs to master.

All my Mech's builds - quite ballanced (mostly Lights/Medims). Never tried PPC/LL boating. What do you think - is it too late to start?

Edited by Warge, 18 July 2013 - 09:09 AM.

[XX Sulla XX]

Warge try the Victors I find them very fun.

[Prophetic]

The answer is simple. ELO was implemented.

The better you do the harder your matches get. You will eventually run into the same group of people running the same type of builds which basically pigeon holes everyone into using the same mechs over and over.
You could try to take a different mech to level but that would only lead to you and your team getting smashed because you did not do what is expected of you as an individual in a team game.

Match making was better when there was zero ELO and weight class restrictions were used to balance drops. Back then I felt comfortable leveling a brand new heavy or medium while not being a burden to my team. Now I won't touch a zero xp mech while grouping. I will take a new mech as a solo pug and just get smashed while grinding xp but that gets old really quick.

I play as a stress reliever and enjoy the witty comments over TS. If it weren't for our unit members I prob would take a long break until CW. Since the game still shows promise I will still drop but you won't find me in a theory/zero xp mech unless there is an opportunity to win in one.

[Finn McShae]

Warge, on 18 July 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

Can I do this? Doubtful.

Nor can I.. nor can I. I thought I could a while back, but then they waved Tbolts and Shawks and Bmasters in front of my face.. sucked me right back in.

Quote

All my Mech's builds - quite ballanced (mostly Lights/Medims). Never tried PPC/LL boating. What do you think - is it too late to start?

Its never too late, but its probably not worth it. I keep trying to make Atlas work for me, its just too danged slow no matter what weapons I put on it. Stalkers too, just too slow. I got my first Victor last night, and apparently now I need to save up another few million to get an XL on it to make it go fast enough. The jury is still out on that one.

Heck I always just go back to my Firebrand (2 ac/5, 2 ppc, 2 mlas) to grind.

Prophetic, on 18 July 2013 - 11:21 AM, said:

The answer is simple. ELO was implemented.

The better you do the harder your matches get. You will eventually run into the same group of people running the same type of builds which basically pigeon holes everyone into using the same mechs over and over.
You could try to take a different mech to level but that would only lead to you and your team getting smashed because you did not do what is expected of you as an individual in a team game.

Match making was better when there was zero ELO and weight class restrictions were used to balance drops. Back then I felt comfortable leveling a brand new heavy or medium while not being a burden to my team. Now I won't touch a zero xp mech while grouping. I will take a new mech as a solo pug and just get smashed while grinding xp but that gets old really quick.

I play as a stress reliever and enjoy the witty comments over TS. If it weren't for our unit members I prob would take a long break until CW. Since the game still shows promise I will still drop but you won't find me in a theory/zero xp mech unless there is an opportunity to win in one.

My solution to the above is that I generally end up playing drunk and solo/Pug drop. Means I don't get that good, therefore play with people who play the casual(er) style I like.

So, less skill, more whiskey!

Edited by Finn McShae, 18 July 2013 - 02:56 PM.