483 replies to this topic

[Gwaihir]

lol

[Kunae]

Gwaihir, on 13 August 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

Brawling comps have not been at all viable ever since Elo came out. That should clarify my comment. And yes, all my commentary comes from the perspective of organized team play. It doesn't matter in a pub match.

That's just coincidence.

It just happens that Elo came out right before they nerfed the hell out of SRMs, while buffing PPC's and inserting HSR. Those things are why brawling took such a beating.

[BINDLETORC]

Homeless Bill, on 12 August 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

OVERALL:
Mostly no new information. Medium tweaks coming on August 20th sound great, whatever they're doing with Gauss/PPCs sounds scary, and everything else is coming after launch. It's particularly disappointing that they totally ignored #saveMWO. I'd praise them for answering more than five questions, but they really didn't have much of anything to say; I'd call it even.

TL;DR:
Q: Better 'mech efficiencies (per-chassis basis)?
A: Sounds cool, but no plans.
Bill's Thoughts: Expected.

Q: Top three problems with the game?
A: Hit detection, new user experience, and game balance.
Bill's Thoughts: Good answers.

Q: Command Console and Advanced Zoom?
A: They will continue to be useless until after launch.
Bill's Thoughts: Boo. Just temporarily make Advanced Zoom a 4x zoom. What? Like a 4x zoom would be totally OP and wallhacks are just fine?

Q: Increase internal health?
A: Probably not until HSR is fixed; maybe, though.
Bill's Thoughts: Acceptable. HSR isn't something I want them to dance around.

Q: Fix the Awesome?
A: It's bad, and we'll take a look at it. Medium buffs coming August 20th.
Bill's Thoughts: Its hitboxes aren't buggy; they're huge. Seriously guys, you need to accept that a lot of 'mech scaling is wrong, and you need to do a pass to rescale a lot of chassis (Awesome, Quickdraw, Stalker, Trebuchet, Kintaro, etc.). If it's difficult to do, you guys should figure out a way to make your asset pipeline support re-scaling. It keeps happening, and it needs a quick solution.

Q: 2xPPC + 1xGauss?
A: "We have looked at what we can do with the build in question and have come up with a plan to de-sync the firing times of PPC and Gauss and keeping the Gauss as a primary long-range weapon."
Bill's Thoughts: What the hell? If this is just recycle time, it'll have no effect. But what it sounds like is "one of these weapons will no longer fire when you click." If that's the case, I'm absolutely dumbfounded. Quit making new, confusing systems!

How can you possibly answer "New Player Experience" as the second biggest problem in the game, while simultaneously pushing through a bunch of unnecessary, convoluted changes that will do nothing but irritate and confuse the hell out of new players?

If it's not some new, weird system, you can disregard that. But that's sure what you're making it sound like. The last thing we need is a new, arbitrary mechanic.

Q: Graduated heat penalties?
A: Maybe eventually, but requires a lot of work.
Bill's Thoughts: Whatever.

Q: Replay mode?
A: Would be cool, lots of work, no time frame.
Bill's Thoughts: Hoping for it eventually, but I understand it's a lot of work.

Q: Have you considered a time frame for which bases cannot be capped?
A: 12v12 / capturing pace changes in the last patch.
Bill's Thoughts: Whatever.

Q: Groups of 5-11?
A: In the works, all group sizes accommodated, waiting on tonnage restrictions.
Bill's Thoughts: Hurray.

Q: What maps are next?
A: Island City and a Moon Base.
Bill's Thoughts: **** yeah.

seriously dude. talking about yourself in the third person is kinda weird.

bindletorc says "thanks for the answers people at pgi".

[Homeless Bill]

bindletorc, on 13 August 2013 - 11:45 AM, said:

seriously dude. talking about yourself in the third person is kinda weird.

Just wait until I start referring to myself in the fourth person and liking my own posts.

[Gwaihir]

?? Coincidence has nothing to do with it.
a) I said that back when brawling was viable, it was easily possible to utilize well a boomcat/splatcat combo for heavies
he said "No, they were always just picked off at long range by a good team, I've been at the top of the elo range so I know what I'm talking about"
c) I say if you're basing your experience on Elo ranges, it's meaningless, since brawling hasn't been a thing since Elo was introduced.

Or, really, since Alpine was introduced and put in to the map pool. Even though brawler and sniper comps may be closer than they seem based on forums wailing, the fact that alpine is in the pool just totally messes it up based on that alone.

[Dan Nashe]

HSR is broken. Once that's fixed we can solve other problems.
Tons of awesome features "someday".

It's not what I'd hoped to hear, but its honest and true. Pacing is slower than I want, but its not some huge moral failing on PGI's part. I'm not going to get worked up about it. Other than *when* stuff will happen, nothing else is either new information or particularly troubling.

I hated ppcs in mw 2 and lrms were stupidly broken. Still loved the game. This one is better. I'll adapt.

I would vastly prefer longer recycle times to velocity nerfs on ranged weapons. I am hopeful this is what they mean by syncing.

I don't honestly see why they can't group gauss rifles with ppcs for ghost heat. I mean, yeah, the gauss won't produce more heat that matters, but the two ppcs will. It's not like the three gr build is an issue. And the tradeoffs for a two gr one er pc that does 18 heat grouped are obvious. That's 45 tons of weapons.

Edited by DanNashe, 13 August 2013 - 12:01 PM.

[Gwaihir]

Because ghost heat is an idiotic waste of time of a system and is not a way to end up with balanced weapons.

[Kunae]

Gwaihir, on 13 August 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Because ghost heat is an idiotic waste of time of a system and is not a way to end up with balanced weapons.

Precisely. So many simpler ways to address the issues, that PGI created in the first place.

[Lemming]

I love when people bring up the arguments of "just adapt!" or "you should just get better and learn how to play" when people bring up balance issues.

Obviously the good players adapt. The good players adapt by using the weapons and builds that are more powerful than everything else. Leading to the current supreme sniping strategy. Which is boring since it's the only viable option.

[Gwaihir]

The fact that they're continuing to double down on it has been all the answer I've needed as far as deciding whether to keep spending money and time on MWO. I'll keep arguing for some common sense to break out, but any design team that really and truly things something like ghost heat is a legitimately good gameplay system that was required to balance weapons, in spite of all the evidence staring them in the face to the contrary? Not something I'm interested in supporting.

[Duncan Jr Fischer]

"Question from Chronojam:Are there any plans to increase internal health to capture that stubborn resilience we're told mechs have, to capture the feel of wrangling a giant war machine as various weapons and support systems shut down over time, to diminish the impact of the high-alpha long-range dominance over short range builds, to reduce the odds of a lucky snap-shot or bad maneuver insta-killing lighter mechs, and ultimately to increase time to kill so we feel we're playing a mech sim where strategy and maneuvers (plus a commander's quick decision-making) matter more?"

"so we feel we're playing a mech sim where strategy and maneuvers (plus a commander's quick decision-making) matter more"
With current mechs' 'durability', does it diminishes the importance of tactics and strategy to you? As I see it, it is the current balance that urges players to move smart, make decisions quick and implement good strategies. Otherwise we would have a game where all weapons seem totally weak and ineffective. Mechs would be clogging more trying to bring at least one enemy down. It would be BORING. Right now a good pilot in med or heavy lives long enough even under focus of three other mechs, and that's nice. No need to change it.

And increasing the IS durability is the most stupid (sorry) thing to do. The Atlas has monstrous amount of armor and almost as much IS, which is truly the second armor in MWO, as long as neither Engine, nor Gyro, nor Actuators are critable. And it's unbalancing and unnerving, especially for the light and med pilots. It's against canon and fluff, and it takes away some gameplay moments. With engine crit you lose speed and gain extra heat, with crit actuator your arm gets locked in the position it was at the moment and your leg stops responding, making your mech limp, with damaged gyro you are easy to fall and can move slowly.

Edited by Duncan Jr Fischer, 13 August 2013 - 12:17 PM.

[Gwaihir]

Uh.. I'm not sure which game you've been playing, sadly, but a good pilot in a heavy being focused by three other (non light) 'Mechs does not live very long at all. Unless you consider 10-15 seconds long enough I guess?

[101011]

Stormwolf, on 12 August 2013 - 01:35 PM, said:

i'm somewhat disappointed, I was hoping for answers for these questions:

That's why I phrased my question the way I did: they answered my question by leaving it out. No, they won't be responding to it. Great work, PGI, great work.

[FuzzyLog1c]

Niko Snow, on 12 August 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

Answer from David:
Regarding Advanced Zoom, that has admittedly gotten left by the wayside. It’s still too expensive to properly render a picture in picture zoom like that, but we probably should take another look at that module, and find some ways to make it more viable.

Lack of familiarity with CryEngine 3 does not make that a true statement.

Even if you can't implement it properly, you could do the OPPOSITE of the present implementation and make everything AROUND YOU blurry, instead of the stuff in the scope.



Genius!

Edited by FuzzyLog1c, 13 August 2013 - 01:15 PM.

[Gremlich Johns]

FuzzyLog1c, on 13 August 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

Lack of programming aptitude does not make that a true statement. Even if you can't understand how to implement it, you could simply do the OPPOSITE of the present implementation and make everything AROUND YOU blurry, instead of the stuff in the scope.

Genius!

MW:LL did it better than PGI did and they did it for free.

[Sug]

Mokou, on 13 August 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

OH MY GLOB HOW THEY MAKE IT IN NINETEEN NINETY-NINE?!

Lostech!

[Archon Adam Steiner]

Kunae, on 13 August 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

*snip*

Stating where one is coming from - in this case a competitive background - is useful context for the discussion and for the developer's who read our discussions. Turning provided context into an attack on someone you don't know and a game-play style you evidently hold no respect for was uncalled for.

As to the issues at hand, in complete fairness, we need to see and test changes before decrying or lauding them. I appreciate the developer's efforts to give some outline to their future balance changes, but specifics are lacking... of course, that's probably because specifics don't exist yet, so I'm not sure we can fault them for that.

[101011]

Gremlich Johns, on 13 August 2013 - 01:13 PM, said:

MW:LL did it better than PGI did and they did it for free.

That's Crysis, not MW:LL.

[Chronojam]

Duncan Jr Fischer, on 13 August 2013 - 12:16 PM, said:

"Question from Chronojam:Are there any plans to increase internal health to capture that stubborn resilience we're told mechs have, to capture the feel of wrangling a giant war machine as various weapons and support systems shut down over time, to diminish the impact of the high-alpha long-range dominance over short range builds, to reduce the odds of a lucky snap-shot or bad maneuver insta-killing lighter mechs, and ultimately to increase time to kill so we feel we're playing a mech sim where strategy and maneuvers (plus a commander's quick decision-making) matter more?"

"so we feel we're playing a mech sim where strategy and maneuvers (plus a commander's quick decision-making) matter more"
With current mechs' 'durability', does it diminishes the importance of tactics and strategy to you? As I see it, it is the current balance that urges players to move smart, make decisions quick and implement good strategies. Otherwise we would have a game where all weapons seem totally weak and ineffective. Mechs would be clogging more trying to bring at least one enemy down. It would be BORING. Right now a good pilot in med or heavy lives long enough even under focus of three other mechs, and that's nice. No need to change it.

And increasing the IS durability is the most stupid (sorry) thing to do. The Atlas has monstrous amount of armor and almost as much IS, which is truly the second armor in MWO, as long as neither Engine, nor Gyro, nor Actuators are critable. And it's unbalancing and unnerving, especially for the light and med pilots. It's against canon and fluff, and it takes away some gameplay moments. With engine crit you lose speed and gain extra heat, with crit actuator your arm gets locked in the position it was at the moment and your leg stops responding, making your mech limp, with damaged gyro you are easy to fall and can move slowly.

The idea is to make it so you can crit engines, actuators, etc. and struggle to control a dying mech rather than the current situation where mechs die so quickly it would not currently matter if they added actuator crits. Without rebalancing health, nobody's aiming for the arms when they fire their long-range high-alpha flavor-of-the-year weapons.

[Graufalk]

His point was that rather than leave the broken module in-game as is (it's pretty funny how they don't remove it and potentially allow new players to waste a ton of GXP on it), they could just make it function like a standard sniper rifle scope.

At least then it would have a purpose and players would actually use it.