58 replies to this topic

[James The Fox Dixon]

I would have added "and Constant Aiming" to the title.

[PanzerMagier]

Amen.

[Andross Deverow]

xDeityx, on 30 July 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

The last couple of weeks since the max alpha update I've been running the following 'mechs:

AS7-D-DC - 2xML, 3xASRM6, AC20
CPLT-K2 - 4xML, 2xUAC5
JR7-F - 6xSPL (tried it as 6xML for a bit as well)

As you can see, I am 100% unaffected by the max alpha update. I still think it is the most convoluted, reactionary, and unnecessary change I've ever seen. It is the poster child of treating the symptoms instead of the disease, and I can't believe that after Paul got done explaining it to Bryan for the first time Bryan didn't immediately develop Alzheimer's disease.

There can be no honest defense of this max alpha system. It is horrible, it did not improve the game, and the only reasons a person would defend it are 1) they are a giant PGIGP fanboi, or 2) they have no clue what they are talking about.

Try running ASRM4's and 2 LL, I seem to get alot more damage than with the ASRM6. Seems like the ASRM4 spread is tighter. I seemed to get between 200 and 300 more damage per match.

Regards

Edited by Andross Deverow, 30 July 2013 - 12:39 PM.

[Sybreed]

Bobdolemite, on 30 July 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

yes arbitrary rules that make 0 sense in any kind of application are the answer not something like reactive reticule and hardpoint restrictions. its like trying to get people to quit smoking by charging $20 a pack rather than just making it illegal or subsidizing alternative methods like quitting supplements or smokeless cigs.

This idea simply punishes new players and those who dont read the forums. It is one of the most convoluted systems I have seen in any game. Most of us will be unaffected by this by waiting .5 between group firings.

The funny part is imagining their job of weapon balance once additional weapons hardware becomes available. This is a nightmare for the devs and a useless annoyance for players. Bad form, make hard decisions about hardpoint restrictions and convergence if you want to address boating the right way.

Not really a fan either, and everyone knows I'm a partisan of hardpoint restriction + convergence to ultimately fix the game. If you read my OP correctly, you would know that what is ******* me off are the noobs crying they can't use their 5 LL loadouts anymore. THEY STILL CAN.

Soldryn, on 30 July 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

anyone with a 4 digit post count has no right to claim to be good at ANYTHING except forum trolling, as they CLEARLY have no time to PLAY THE GAME

Some of us have what they call "jobs" and some "jobs" require more than 40 hours of work per week.

Edited by Sybreed, 30 July 2013 - 12:43 PM.

[FrDrake]

FupDup, on 30 July 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

Do you really think that alpha striking is dead?


Okay. Let's look at some example case studies:

1. Two 6 ML Jenners/Cicadas/whatevers are in a furball. One of them is chain firing and the other is alpha striking. Who is at the advantage?


2. Two K2's with 2 PPCs and 2 ML are hillhumping each other. One is chain firing and the other is alpha striking. Who will win?


3. Two Highlanders, each with 2 ERPPC and a Gauss (and whatever backup weapons). One will alpha strike, the other will chain fire. Who is at the advantage?


4. Do you see where I'm going with this?

In each of these scenarios the player with better aim will win the duels.

But for the sake of your argument we're talking equal skill at aiming.

Poor aiming skill the player chain firing more will win.

Good aiming skill the player with alphas will win.

So, a buff for newbs and for good players nothing changes, whatdya know.

[Rippthrough]

Sybreed, on 30 July 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

All that is nerfed IS YOUR ABILITY TO ALWAYS FIRE ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME.

No they haven't.

And even if they had, the game mechanics still dictate alpha striking in ever smaller amounts being the most useful.
Bandaids, more bandaids, crap mechanics and people daft enough to believe it works.

[FupDup]

FrDrake, on 30 July 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

...and for good players nothing changes....

And that is precisely my point. Chain-firing is still virtually useless if you don't reach the max alpha limit.

Balancing for the steering wheel underhive FTL.

Edited by FupDup, 30 July 2013 - 01:00 PM.

[Monky]

PinCushion, on 30 July 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Chain-firing isn't skill. Neither is alpha-striking someone off the field.

I mean, they're skills I guess. But they're skills you could teach a 7 year old in an afternoon.

chain firing intelligently is a skill, whereas alphaing intelligently is also a skill, but a much, much easier one (usually made easier by building your mech for simple alphas).

[Trauglodyte]

xDeityx, on 30 July 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

The last couple of weeks since the max alpha update I've been running the following 'mechs:

AS7-D-DC - 2xML, 3xASRM6, AC20
CPLT-K2 - 4xML, 2xUAC5
JR7-F - 6xSPL (tried it as 6xML for a bit as well)

As you can see, I am 100% unaffected by the max alpha update. I still think it is the most convoluted, reactionary, and unnecessary change I've ever seen. It is the poster child of treating the symptoms instead of the disease, and I can't believe that after Paul got done explaining it to Bryan for the first time Bryan didn't immediately develop Alzheimer's disease.

There can be no honest defense of this max alpha system. It is horrible, it did not improve the game, and the only reasons a person would defend it are 1) they are a giant PGIGP fanboi, or 2) they have no clue what they are talking about.

The funny thing is that they came up wiht a terrible and convoluted means to try to punish the meta crown and their followers but really ended up punishing new people that don't scower for information like a lot of us do. On top of that, it seems like they're trying to punish you for mass weapons firing when it was their fault for adding so many weapon hard points and/or not putting limitations on player creativity. To take that one step forward, they're more content with punishing heat with alpha firing instead of punishing heat accumulation (ie, not applying penalties from building heat). It makes no sense to me and would seem MUCH easier to put in heat scale penalties like TT and bumping up heat on weapons where it is needed which would make it more intuitive instead of doing something like a boat penalty. We all know that boating is fine and canon but is abused by player absurdity.

[Dakkath]

Moving to patch feedback

[Roland]

I don't think you really understand why folks are complaining.

People don't really care about the "nerf" in regards to how it affects their builds.

They tend to be complaining because the change doesn't actually change much... It doesn't affect strong builds like PPC's paired with Gauss.

Further, the linkage between LPL and LL suggests some kind of weird inability to understand how the game is played... because no one boated LL's with LPL. Those two weapons don't work well together. The LPL kind of doesn't work well at all.

So you see, folks aren't really upset about the ghost heat changes themselves, but rather about the fact that it demonstrates some inability to understand what some of the current balance issues are. It is eroding the faith that people have in PGI's ability to fix things.

[Dude42]

While I fully agree something needed to be done about AlphaWarrior Online, I do not agree with the "Magic Heat" system.

I'm not even sure why I still read these forums. I quit playing the moment they went ahead with such a foolish idea. It's not even that it has any effect on any of my builds at all, it's that it is just stupid. Who wants to play a game where the developers intentionally make backwards, foolhardy decisions. Not to mention a ll the dumbing down they've done to the game over the last few months. As plenty of others have stated it's a classic example of treating the symptoms of a problem, and not its root cause(perfect instant convergence). GG Paul. You win. My only regret is dumping so much money into this game.

I guess I still enjoy seeing the new people posting on here, and watching PGI slowly crush them, and their hopes and dreams for what could have been a great game. Anyway, I'm off to play DOTA 2, a game that understands that being harder is better, and that a high skill cap is a good thing in competitive games. It seems more than obvious to me that they are intent on producing a game geared toward casual players only. You guys enjoy your magic heat system and 3PV. Me, I'm gonna hang my hopes on the next MW game, if there's ever another one made after what PGI/IGP has done with the IP.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Roland, on 30 July 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

I don't think you really understand why folks are complaining.

People don't really care about the "nerf" in regards to how it affects their builds.

They tend to be complaining because the change doesn't actually change much... It doesn't affect strong builds like PPC's paired with Gauss.

Further, the linkage between LPL and LL suggests some kind of weird inability to understand how the game is played... because no one boated LL's with LPL. Those two weapons don't work well together. The LPL kind of doesn't work well at all.

So you see, folks aren't really upset about the ghost heat changes themselves, but rather about the fact that it demonstrates some inability to understand what some of the current balance issues are. It is eroding the faith that people have in PGI's ability to fix things.

As i believe i stated before.

You can have the numbers, but if you don't understand them.

Game Over.

[Daybreak]

These last two patches have stolen a lot of the fun from the game, and driven me to resent the 1500 matches I've played thus far, to build up 3 different chassis of mechs, only one of which I consider functionally feasible. I'm one more nerf away from uninstalling and I know none of you would miss me, but here I am... beating my head against the wall out of frustration in the futile pursuit ... hoping beyond hope that maybe just this once, I will be listened to.

Every game developer seeks this kind of quick fix and all it does is alienate the playerbase because now we (the consumer) can no longer play the way that enjoy playing. Think I'm wrong? Go chase down the pvp patch history of every online game since The Realm and investigate what drove their players away.

Alpha builds are a pain in the ***, yes... so adjust your tactics instead of crying to the dev's for a patch because you believe that it's the system that's flawed.

My Jaegerboomer was unplayable far before the heat patch because people have taken to targetting jaegers on the outset of every engagement! Excellent! This is exactly the kind of one-upmanship I love to see in PVP games!

My 4x ERPPC stalker is a tight build, but is vulnerable to brawlers who have the brains to stick to terrain rather than try to charge right in. I do great when idiots run into the open and brawl there... but in an urban map where my enemy is as likely to come around the next corner at point blank as not? I start to retrograde and my heat starts to climb... and I start wondering what my epitaph will say in the next issue of Life 3050.

Fighting smart can defeat any build.

You see, my point is that it's not that MW:O needs a patch to create balance to make a better game. What they need, is smarter PLAYERS.

My advice? Take all these people who want to play with these grade school type rules and put them on seperate servers and restore an OUNCE of challenge back to the game. I demand to fight a higher grade of PLAYER.

[xDeityx]

Andross Deverow, on 30 July 2013 - 12:38 PM, said:

Try running ASRM4's and 2 LL, I seem to get alot more damage than with the ASRM6. Seems like the ASRM4 spread is tighter. I seemed to get between 200 and 300 more damage per match.

Regards

I'll give it a shot, thanks. I just switched over from 2xLL, AC20, 3xSSRM2 so I was really missing the extra range from downgrading the LL, this could be a good way to get it back.

Trauglodyte, on 30 July 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

The funny thing is that they came up wiht a terrible and convoluted means to try to punish the meta crown and their followers but really ended up punishing new people that don't scower for information like a lot of us do. On top of that, it seems like they're trying to punish you for mass weapons firing when it was their fault for adding so many weapon hard points and/or not putting limitations on player creativity. To take that one step forward, they're more content with punishing heat with alpha firing instead of punishing heat accumulation (ie, not applying penalties from building heat). It makes no sense to me and would seem MUCH easier to put in heat scale penalties like TT and bumping up heat on weapons where it is needed which would make it more intuitive instead of doing something like a boat penalty. We all know that boating is fine and canon but is abused by player absurdity.

It makes you wonder what actually goes on internally up there. If the minutes from a balance meeting were published on these forums, would we be laughing our butts off at them or crying in despair? I'm guessing a little of both.

[Dino Might]

Daybreak, on 30 July 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

These last two patches have stolen a lot of the fun from the game, and driven me to resent the 1500 matches I've played thus far, to build up 3 different chassis of mechs, only one of which I consider functionally feasible. I'm one more nerf away from uninstalling and I know none of you would miss me, but here I am... beating my head against the wall out of frustration in the futile pursuit ... hoping beyond hope that maybe just this once, I will be listened to.

Every game developer seeks this kind of quick fix and all it does is alienate the playerbase because now we (the consumer) can no longer play the way that enjoy playing. Think I'm wrong? Go chase down the pvp patch history of every online game since The Realm and investigate what drove their players away.

Alpha builds are a pain in the ***, yes... so adjust your tactics instead of crying to the dev's for a patch because you believe that it's the system that's flawed.

My Jaegerboomer was unplayable far before the heat patch because people have taken to targetting jaegers on the outset of every engagement! Excellent! This is exactly the kind of one-upmanship I love to see in PVP games!

My 4x ERPPC stalker is a tight build, but is vulnerable to brawlers who have the brains to stick to terrain rather than try to charge right in. I do great when idiots run into the open and brawl there... but in an urban map where my enemy is as likely to come around the next corner at point blank as not? I start to retrograde and my heat starts to climb... and I start wondering what my epitaph will say in the next issue of Life 3050.

Fighting smart can defeat any build.

You see, my point is that it's not that MW:O needs a patch to create balance to make a better game. What they need, is smarter PLAYERS.

My advice? Take all these people who want to play with these grade school type rules and put them on seperate servers and restore an OUNCE of challenge back to the game. I demand to fight a higher grade of PLAYER.

Some might get mad about being lumped in the "lesser grade" category, but I, being one of them, find this post to be good as one of the more accurate in terms of describing feeling. I heartily agree that the game evolves with or without the adhesive bandages thrown all over the place. I remember when I used to run an AC 40 catapult and did well for about a month. Then people got wise to it and started LL headshotting and focus firing on any cat with two big gun barrels that was anywhere near them. I went from about 4 kills a match to maybe 2 on a good round, and sometimes got wiped out without doing more than 200 dmg. Ok, let's hear it - I suck and the AC 40s were the only thing that let me be competitive. Let's assume that going in. So what? Did the playerbase suffer that much as a result? Apparently not - I'd say they actually got better because of the additional challenge I posed before they adjusted tactics. Then I played the triple PPC hunchback. Outstanding build for the given rule set. That thing still does great, but then people started to realize they could shoot out my hunch and then it's game over for the guy who used to get 5-6 kills in a match (kill stealing frenzy). These fixes in player tactics were far better than any band aid patch that upsets the entire understanding of how the game works for 100% of the players. But what about those really good players who use the high alpha builds??? Nobody can beat them! False. And all the more reason to want to play them, because when you do beat them, it's great. The victory is that much sweeter.

Maybe it's me, but I like two things in a game: challenge and thoughtfulness. I want to have to adjust my play to suit conditions. So I'll take my Raven even with it's gigantor leg hit boxes because it's just plain fun whether I win or lose. Sometimes getting one-shotted as I'm jumping over the canyon is actually kind of funny (yeah...even better, it's a 4X. Now start talking to me about handicaps).

Edited by Dino Might, 30 July 2013 - 01:25 PM.

[Sable Dove]

Way to miss the part where almost everyone is complaining because the boating penalties are arbitrary, nonsensical, and they didn't address any of the issues. A bandaid that doesn't work, so they don't have to actually fix the poor mechanics they implemented.

Remember, the devs don't actually want an end to high-alpha gameplay. According to the devs, gameplay based around building a heat-efficient, sustained DPS build is bad. Burst DPS is good, sustained DPS and smart play is bad.

[Flux Reversal]

[REDACTED] IT was obviously made for individuals who cant use cover (forward/reverse ppl).

Just frikn go ahead and make it impossible to shoot more than one weapon at a time [REDACTED].

Seriously, just take the legs off and make the maps wide open so we can jsut stand still and shoot one weapon at a time at each other.

"We can play some mechwarrior now" ..my hairy a$$! How is this anything like tabletop? Time to change the name because its quickly getting further and further away from what MechWarrior is was.

Stand by for next weeks patch were any two weapons fired together causes your mech to overheat and shut down automatically.

Edited by Destined, 30 July 2013 - 01:55 PM.
Insults

[Sybreed]

OZYM4NDI4S, on 30 July 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

if your agree with the changes your a **** moron. IT was obviously made for individuals who cant use cover (forward/reverse ppl).

where do I say I agree with the change? Learn to read.

Daybreak, on 30 July 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

These last two patches have stolen a lot of the fun from the game, and driven me to resent the 1500 matches I've played thus far, to build up 3 different chassis of mechs, only one of which I consider functionally feasible. I'm one more nerf away from uninstalling and I know none of you would miss me, but here I am... beating my head against the wall out of frustration in the futile pursuit ... hoping beyond hope that maybe just this once, I will be listened to.

Every game developer seeks this kind of quick fix and all it does is alienate the playerbase because now we (the consumer) can no longer play the way that enjoy playing. Think I'm wrong? Go chase down the pvp patch history of every online game since The Realm and investigate what drove their players away.

Alpha builds are a pain in the ***, yes... so adjust your tactics instead of crying to the dev's for a patch because you believe that it's the system that's flawed.

My Jaegerboomer was unplayable far before the heat patch because people have taken to targetting jaegers on the outset of every engagement! Excellent! This is exactly the kind of one-upmanship I love to see in PVP games!

My 4x ERPPC stalker is a tight build, but is vulnerable to brawlers who have the brains to stick to terrain rather than try to charge right in. I do great when idiots run into the open and brawl there... but in an urban map where my enemy is as likely to come around the next corner at point blank as not? I start to retrograde and my heat starts to climb... and I start wondering what my epitaph will say in the next issue of Life 3050.

Fighting smart can defeat any build.

You see, my point is that it's not that MW:O needs a patch to create balance to make a better game. What they need, is smarter PLAYERS.

My advice? Take all these people who want to play with these grade school type rules and put them on seperate servers and restore an OUNCE of challenge back to the game. I demand to fight a higher grade of PLAYER.

see, I never really piloted any of the affected builds by the heat scale system, so I'm not really getting the same feelings as you. Do I feel it's convoluted, arbitrary and unintuitive? Yes. Am I affected by it and therefore, pissed at PGI? Nope.

I'm sorry but you'll just have to learn to play. If all you could do is alpha, alpha, alpha, then perhaps this game isn't for you. Mechwarrior has never been about huge alphas all the time. It's like asking DOTA 2 devs to remove the "lose gold each time you die" mechanic they have in the game. It's harsh, but it's manageable.

Ideally, the devs would have to find another more intuitive way to fix the heavy alpha meta that is plaguing MWO. But, people like you will still whine about it because it's no longer about alphaing one weapon group all the time. Oh noes, you might have to use 3 or more weapon groups

You want a challenge you say? You just got one. Before this new mechanic (that I repeat, I don't like myself), this game had a very low skill ceiling and having everyone of you whiners cry about your alphas prove it.

I'll use a phrase the alpha-elite noobs like to use often: Adapt or die.

[TripleEhBeef]

I have noticed more medium mechs on the field though since the heat scale penalties were applied last patch. One issue with all those ERPPC and AC40 builds was that a single lucky shot on a medium would basically strip its CT down to a handful of armour points, and since most meds are slow out of the box, shots like that could be difficult to dodge.

I haven't played on the current patch yet, so I don't know how the game has changed yet. Just tossing in my two cents as someone who plays that class.

Though I agree that hardpoint restrictions is the best way to balance all the weight classes and keep the game from being Godzilla and Spider Warrior Online.

Edited by TripleEhBeef, 30 July 2013 - 02:06 PM.