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Baron von Mechthofen, on 08 August 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:
That's right, newcomers, the game was once not all about the long-range high-alpha nonsense you see today. It was like that without needless new bizarro-world heat systems. Belorion saw it, I saw it, the rest of the founders saw it. Several changes and updates combined made the game devolve into a snipefest. To believe that we need bizarro heat systems that punish "SRM2 boating" is incredibly dishonest because we've seen it work without such insanity.
Here's a quick-fix for dethroning the high-alpha long-range metagame. First, make mechs survivable enough to close the distance. Second, make close-range weaponry effective enough once you're there. Ta-da! PGI refuses to do that; they do the opposite even.
Adding heat penalties to SRM2 and SRM4 launchers, stripping their splash damage while making SSRM2 worthless, adding penalties to lasers, and screwing over twin AC/20 builds is going in the wrong direction and makes it harder for close range mechs to compete. Making mechs die faster via critical damage bonuses, and making mechs struggle to maneuvers up slopes, only makes it more likely for a mech to die to sniper fire before it enters weapons range. In short, the "balance changes" PGI have made simply continue to tip the scales towards the high-alpha long-range sniper meta by making other weapons less effective by comparison. You could balance the game without touching PPCs at all if you were willing to touch all the other weapons and adjust time-to-kill in order to make them competitive.
Here's a quick-fix for dethroning the high-alpha long-range metagame. First, make mechs survivable enough to close the distance. Second, make close-range weaponry effective enough once you're there. Ta-da! PGI refuses to do that; they do the opposite even.
Adding heat penalties to SRM2 and SRM4 launchers, stripping their splash damage while making SSRM2 worthless, adding penalties to lasers, and screwing over twin AC/20 builds is going in the wrong direction and makes it harder for close range mechs to compete. Making mechs die faster via critical damage bonuses, and making mechs struggle to maneuvers up slopes, only makes it more likely for a mech to die to sniper fire before it enters weapons range. In short, the "balance changes" PGI have made simply continue to tip the scales towards the high-alpha long-range sniper meta by making other weapons less effective by comparison. You could balance the game without touching PPCs at all if you were willing to touch all the other weapons and adjust time-to-kill in order to make them competitive.
Baron von Mechthofen, on 08 August 2013 - 11:21 PM, said:
PGI's balancing and mechanics changes, thus far, have done nothing to diminish the dominant strategy and the single most dominant build the game has seen. It's been seven months -- there is no time for it to "shake out" and it's not magically fading as you seem to believe. I argue that PGI's most recent balancing attempts have done nothing but reinforce this dominant strategy and its dominant build by decreasing the viability of once competitive builds, such as the twinned AC/20s on an XL-equipped large-torsoed heavy.
I further argue that the winning way to combat the dominant metagame and its dominant build does not necessarily lie in the way of unintuitive, arbitrary penalties ("ghost" mechanics). Never once should an attempt at balancing the past five, six, seven months of play have introduced a heat penalty to the SRM-2 launcher of all things. Boosting mech survivability across the board, increasing ammunition to compensate (ballistic weapons on the whole have long suffered usability problems, often due to low ammo per ton), and vying to make other weaponry actually useful is a good start.
Consider the LB-10X autocannon. PGI should immediately abandon all misguided attempts to ensure it does 10 damage per hit, first of all. What role is there for such a heavy weapon that, because of outdated decades-old tabletop guidelines, must do ten and only ten damage? Please, don't introduce bizarre critical-boost mechanics that reduce time-to-kill for all mechs just because of some misguided attempt to allow an LB-10X to do more than 10 damage without just changing the numbers to be greater-than-ten. The LB-10X currently has no role, in part due to being hamstrung like this; give it a role, make it worthwhile instead of worthless.
I further argue that the winning way to combat the dominant metagame and its dominant build does not necessarily lie in the way of unintuitive, arbitrary penalties ("ghost" mechanics). Never once should an attempt at balancing the past five, six, seven months of play have introduced a heat penalty to the SRM-2 launcher of all things. Boosting mech survivability across the board, increasing ammunition to compensate (ballistic weapons on the whole have long suffered usability problems, often due to low ammo per ton), and vying to make other weaponry actually useful is a good start.
Consider the LB-10X autocannon. PGI should immediately abandon all misguided attempts to ensure it does 10 damage per hit, first of all. What role is there for such a heavy weapon that, because of outdated decades-old tabletop guidelines, must do ten and only ten damage? Please, don't introduce bizarre critical-boost mechanics that reduce time-to-kill for all mechs just because of some misguided attempt to allow an LB-10X to do more than 10 damage without just changing the numbers to be greater-than-ten. The LB-10X currently has no role, in part due to being hamstrung like this; give it a role, make it worthwhile instead of worthless.
