490 replies to this topic

[Villz]

I actually think it add's a skill curve to using what has traditionally been a VERY strong weapon. Now with the speed increase i really feel the sniper weapons are reflected in their performance.

PPC's feel balanced now but i wonder about how strong LL's will become now

[MizarPanzer]

UAC5 the next on the nerf list?

The way this is going when the clans hit the inner sphere factions will be fighting with longbows and trebuchets made out of wood.
















Just kidding

[SgtMagor]

with the new charge up for gauss, it works very well if your shooting at static targets 800+ meters away. but if you suddenly find yourself in a brawl and your opponent is not carrying a gauss, and moving very quickly your gauss rifle just turned into a wrist weight, your at serious disadvantage because you wont be able to hit your target when you want to, and wind up misfiring the weapon. I was fighting a jagger mech on alpine with my dragon slayer, I normally would have charged and kept the opposing mech off balance, but knowing I had a gauss he was able to shoot at me move out of the way, cause I was constantly having to charge the weapon sigh!. so if the Dev's wanted a weapon that was strictly for sniping, they succeeded, only problem is I rarely ever used my gauss for hill humping, pop tarting sniping heh! that's what missiles are for.

[Kahoumono]

I don't totally agree with the changes so I must be the vocal minority so disregard as you see fit. You the devs have successfully decoupled the PPC/Gauss rifle meta with the Gauss charge. Even with the supposed macros, you'd still have to prep your target for the charge time in most cases in extreme ranges/moving target this is pretty tough. By slowing down the PPC you have made the only viable sniping weapon the Gauss rifle because you can't reliably hit at extreme ranges with the PPC anymore and lets not even consider the small caliber ACs as sniping weapons. Paired with the heat bump I no longer see the PPC as a viable weapon. Sadly this doesn't only hurt the snipers, this also hurts the light and medium mechs which do not have the tonnage to carry the gauss rifle. This restricts light and medium mechs to close range weapon loadouts. So much for the advertised role warfare bit cause light and more specifically mediums have one role, fodder. At least for the time being lights are hard to hit with HSR not yet perfected. I hate to keep banging on the convergence drum but that more than any other is the cause of all these balance issues.

And what vision the devs have to lower the jam rate of the UAC one patch and then to review the weapon in the next patch. Really shows you are on the ball.

[Priest4357]

omegaorgun, on 03 September 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

Gauss is {Scrap} thanks for destroying my $30+ DOLLAR HGN-HM's ability to brawl! other than that hit detection sucks and rest is good.

Funny, my HGN-HM brawls just fine. Of course, I didn't cookie cutter it, and put on the standard stuff. You do know there are other good brawling choices besides a Guass and PPC/ERPPC combos right?

I know this sounds crazy, but try being creative. Do something that isn't just what everyone else does. See how that works for ya, then come crying about spending money on a mech.

[Deathlike]

If you're going to look into lights (I didn't actually make a post in this thread about it, but I have in others), PLEASE buff the non-Raven-3L variants engine options from 245 to at least 255, ideally 275/280.

Also, BUFF the Spider-5V by adding one energy hardpoint, ideally to the arm (probably right arm). It is currently the worst light variant (or of all variants?) ever. 4 Module slots and 12 JJs don't really make up for its lack of usable offense than the 5K and 5D enjoy.

While we're still in this discussion of buffing other mechs (the medium ones are insufficient as stated before), buff the BJ engines across the board. Buff the max engine of the non-BJ-1X models 245 to 255 AND buff the BJ-1X engine cap from 295 to 300. Also, increase the torso twist speed of the BJ-1DC from whatever it is now, to the same specs as the BJ-1 or BJ-3.

Also, you might as well buff the Stalker-4N to have the same torso speeds as the 3F, since there is nothing that makes this variant special.

Edited by Deathlike, 04 September 2013 - 08:56 AM.

[Catchmeifyoucan]

let the UAC 5 how it is now!!! its fun and its not to strong!!! LET IT BE!!!!

[Andross Deverow]

IMHO most of this balancing will be a moot point the instant clan tech arrives. Doesnt matter what we use for IS tech anyone using it will be completely outgunned in every match up. I mean seriously nerf this buff that its all goint to be pointless. By the time clan tech arrives we will all be throwing stones.

Regards

[Priest4357]

Mechsniper, on 03 September 2013 - 05:34 PM, said:

Sorry {Noble MechWarrior}, but the randomness of tabletop was to simulate skill and movement of both mechs over varying terrain. The varying terrain and movement of the mechs and skill of the operator are already here so your proposed double nerf would further screw things up. And the lore is NOT going to hash with a firing delay that is already in cooldown and a charge that magically disappears from a capacitor in .5 seconds(my measured time of hot weapon in actual use). It also goes against common sense. FURTHER show me a prior MechWarrior title where things were as you proposed. You can't. I played them back when they were released including the NES and NES games. NEVER did gauss work this way, or was the ERPPC a shutdown from firing so few. Only PGI is responsible for ignoring hard point limitations and trying to "fix" the problems this creates.

Have you read the books? The Game play books, the novels, etc...? This isn't a remake of all the old games. It's a new one, and they are doing it there way. Just in case you didn't know the Table Top (TT) version of the game, and the books took these things into account. So if you are going to reference old materials (aka Lore), make sure you use it all, not just the parts YOU want to have in it.

[Andross Deverow]

Catchmeifyoucan, on 04 September 2013 - 08:56 AM, said:

let the UAC 5 how it is now!!! its fun and its not to strong!!! LET IT BE!!!!

Sorry bro, any item that is fun to use gets da' HAMMER of NERFTITUDE. Its coming very shortly. Every other round will jam up making the gun undesireable as it was before. The only reason u see it used more now is the jamming reduction. They will surely mess that up and we will be back to standard A/C5's.

Regards

[Priest4357]

Kyocera, on 03 September 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

We talk about respecting staff and whatnot but I'm afraid I feel so strongly about this patch (along with previous poor changes) that I'm going to have to say that you should be removed from the team Paul. I'm sorry to say something so harsh but I believe your work is leading this game inexorably down a unrecoverable path. I could dress it up in any number of ways but that is how I feel and I'll say it as such.

You would think this patch has screwed over my entire mech bay, well it hasn't. I don't use PPCs on any of my mechs and I use the gauss on only one of them... or at least I did. I have a dual LBX 'phract, a dual UAC Jager, AC/10 Victor and an Orion which I'm working to build around an AC/20. I had a Highlander with a gauss. It had no jump jets, no PPCs, it wasn't a slice of poptarting cheese.

All of the ballistics weapons have a use of some kind, advantages and drawbacks. Granted the low heat and long range of the gauss put it in a strange position between the AC/10 and 20 but the low HP and high risk of explosion did balance it out somewhat. Anyone who'd played the game a few times and knew the hardpoints of their opponents would disable that gauss first.

It was definitely a weapon suited more towards a medium/heavy, especially as they would stand a bit more chance of maneouvering away from shots directed at their gauss. It also suited the ducking and diving aspects of striking and sniping. Most assaults get stripped of their gauss pretty quickly in a brawl.

Now the gauss simply has no role. Charging it up makes long range shots a lot less reliable and at closer ranges you have much less chance to hit light mechs. It has a bit more HP but still explodes when destroyed. For the tonnage required to carry one, it's now borderline useless.

The funny thing is we TOLD you not to nerf the gauss like this because it wasn't necessary. We TOLD you to put the mechanic onto PPCs because it would suit them better as a projectile type energy weapon but not just because of that, the gameplay itself and the required nerfs would have suited it better.

Do you just not listen at all Paul? Are feedback and discussion threads like this one even worth it? Sometimes I wonder if you read all the posts and all you see is:



Sometimes I wonder if we might as well just write that in the future because you sure as hell don't listen to pretty most of what we tell you and you go off doing your own things. A developer's vision (and their pride) are one thing but you need to find a balance between what you want to achieve and the feedback you're getting. You acknowledge there's something to fix yet instead of listening to many of the credible suggestions, you come up with your own ludicrous idea, the community tells you not to implement it, you add it anyway. You have a dreadful case of Developer's Arrogance, you really must sit there saying that the players know nothing, thinking that we will ignore it and like it after it's put in, get used to it. Stop it Paul, I've seen this development arrogance and ignorance of the playerbase destroy many games before their time. Twice I've worked alongside devs who had a huge case of Developer's Arrogance. One said "The players are wrong, they don't know what they want". I told him to listen to the feedback and find a happy medium but he didn't listen. His decisions killed the game. The other wanted to add various convoluted mechanics which were just downright confusing and difficult for even Einstein to balance but he added them anyway, it killed the game.

Do yourself, this game and the players a favour, please with all due respect, put a firm lid on your Developer's Arrogance. If you can't do that then like I said at the start you should be removed from the team.

I hope this isn't deemed to be disrespectful. It's strong but it's fair and most of all it's the harsh truth. It'll probably be deleted anyway.

You are NOT speaking for the community here. I'm thrilled with the patch, and believe that they have done a great job. Paul is working hard, and doing good.

If you don't like it, take your Debbie Downer attitude and leave the game then. Come back when you can act like an adult.

[ShadowbaneX]

I've got only one minor problem with the Gauss change and that is that the charge up time seems to have just been tacked on which essentially increases it's cool down time by 0.75+ seconds. This might have been requested elsewhere in this thread, but would it be possible to have the cool down time decreased by 0.75 seconds to make up for this?

[Koniving]

TexAss, on 03 September 2013 - 03:08 PM, said:

please tell us, when is the change for the pulse lasers coming? You said you are tweaking those. At the moment they really are nowhere...

My personal opinion: they should fire pulses constantly as long as you hold the trigger, like a machine gun. This would make them differ enough from the typical laser weapons. Basically no cooldown but same HPS and DPS as before.

Make the wubwubwubwubwub viable again please

You haven't been using them have you? This is from a recent post.

Koniving, on 04 September 2013 - 05:08 AM, said:

[/size]
4 medium lasers

• do 20 damage,
  
• require 1 full second of being on target to do the damage,
  
• generates 20 heat (5 * 4),
  
• have a range of 270 meters,
  
• and requires (1 second beam time before cooldown begins + 3 second cooldown) 4 seconds to fire again.

The twin large pulse lasers

• do 21.2 per shot,
  
• require 0.6 seconds of being on target to do the damage (more precision),
  
• generates 17 heat (8.5 times 2),
  
• have a range of 300 meters,
  
• and requires only (0.6 beam time + 3.25 second cooldown) 3.85 seconds to fire again.

Thus, after 12 seconds...
The 4 medium lasers have dealt 60 damage (requiring a total of 3 seconds of being on target), fired 3 times, generated 60 heat, and will fire again at the 16th second (4 more seconds).
The twin large pulse lasers have dealt 63.6, (requiring a total of 1.8 seconds of being on target), fired 3 times, generated 51 heat, and will fire again in (0.6 beam + 3.85 cooldown * 3 = 13.35) in 1.35 seconds more or at 13.35 seconds.

4 ML are inferior in every way.

I believe the changes to pulse lasers were in favor of laser variants. If they do a constant fire laser beam those pulse lasers will actually be a lot weaker (for LPLs for example it'd spread the 10.6 damage across 3.85 seconds, meaning you'd deal 2.753246753246753 per second of sustained fire).

I had ideas for different laser variants. Such was an idea but for regular lasers.


In the mean time.. I like the Gauss, but I would have preferred the charge up on PPCs.. Because I have to charge up "a lot of energy" for a Gauss Rifle (the cockpit lights dimming is a nice effect), but the (according to lore) much more energy demanding, so much heat that without a field inhibitor the weapon would destroy itself, uber powerful particle projection cannon fires MUCH more energy in an instant! An instant! O_O!

So yeah. One might see why I would have preferred it on PPCs. Better still, charge them both. For PPCs, charge to do damage. You can fire before fully charged but not do full damage? Perhaps a shorter charge (since PGI seems to want these to be brawler weapons), one that would cancel out before the Gauss Rifle is ready if charged at the same time.

[C E Dwyer]

I thought the pulses got tweaked not that long ago..

nothing seems overly powerfull

dev time would be better spent all out on CW than anything else..

tweaking time once thats running..

[Keyman1848]

The Gauss change is bad. The whole charge up thing is a pain and doesn't work well. the press and release mechanic sucks. A better solution would be to treat the Gauss charging like the missile bay doors. Press a key to charge the weapon and keep it charged, it you don't charge it before firing then you have a delay before the weapon fires. Obviously, you take more damage if the weapon is shot and explodes while charged. Let's keep things simple and easy for everyone to understand.

[TexAce]

Koniving, on 04 September 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

You haven't been using them have you? This is from a recent post.



I believe the changes to pulse lasers were in favor of laser variants. If they do a constant fire laser beam those pulse lasers will actually be a lot weaker (for LPLs for example it'd spread the 10.6 damage across 3.85 seconds, meaning you'd deal 2.753246753246753 per second of sustained fire).

I had ideas for different laser variants. Such was an idea but for regular lasers.


In the mean time.. I like the Gauss, but I would have preferred the charge up on PPCs.. Because I have to charge up "a lot of energy" for a Gauss Rifle (the cockpit lights dimming is a nice effect), but the (according to lore) much more energy demanding, so much heat that without a field inhibitor the weapon would destroy itself, uber powerful particle projection cannon fires MUCH more energy in an instant! An instant! O_O!

So yeah. One might see why I would have preferred it on PPCs. Better still, charge them both. For PPCs, charge to do damage. You can fire before fully charged but not do full damage? Perhaps a shorter charge (since PGI seems to want these to be brawler weapons), one that would cancel out before the Gauss Rifle is ready if charged at the same time.

I used them a lot (Large Pulse Lasers mostly) before they pumped the heat on them.

What you don't have in your comparison is one thing: Weight.
The 4MLas are TEN TONS lighter. If you take that into account I'd happily take the Mlas + 10 tons over the 2 LPLs.
Its true that MPlas and SPlas got a buff a few weeks ago but the LPL got nerfed hard for no reason. It wasn't that they were much used before that to begin with. They were lackluster most of the time.

Edited by TexAss, 04 September 2013 - 10:23 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

SteelPaladin, on 04 September 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

I'm of two minds on this. Weapons need to stand out in order to be used. They need to only stand out under certain circumstances, or they'll be the ONLY ones used. I don't see just tweaking damage/heat/cycle time being able to do that for all weapons. That doesn't leave much else besides some form of "role-based" behavior to tie the weapons to their circumstances.

I think unique aspects of weapons directly clash with "mix your weapons", and thus it can't really work out in practice. EIther every weapon is a unique snowflake, and then you have to live with people boating to keep the complexity to a doable level, or you want mixed builds, and then weapons must be more similar so the complexity stays manageable.

There is still a lot of differentiation possible, just most of it would be based on the full mech loadout. A mech with 2 PPC and 1 AC/5 plays different then a mech with 2 LRM10, 2 SRM6 and 2 MLs. Mixing unique mechanics for each weapon would just mean that a 2 PPC + a AC/5 mech would seem impracticable compared to a 3 PPC mech.

[SteelPaladin]

MustrumRidcully, on 04 September 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:

I think unique aspects of weapons directly clash with "mix your weapons", and thus it can't really work out in practice. EIther every weapon is a unique snowflake, and then you have to live with people boating to keep the complexity to a doable level, or you want mixed builds, and then weapons must be more similar so the complexity stays manageable.

There is still a lot of differentiation possible, just most of it would be based on the full mech loadout. A mech with 2 PPC and 1 AC/5 plays different then a mech with 2 LRM10, 2 SRM6 and 2 MLs. Mixing unique mechanics for each weapon would just mean that a 2 PPC + a AC/5 mech would seem impracticable compared to a 3 PPC mech.

But if weapons don't stand out in some fashion, what's the incentive to mix? To address the most recent change (not weighing in on it's actual effect; just the concept), why do I even want to carry a backup weapon w/a gauss rifle if it is deadly at all ranges? The cooldown rate is only a bit slower than the combined burn/cooldown of an ML (and you can only jack the cooldown so high before you the "gameplay is too slow" and/or "it's not useful at all" threshold) That's just tons I could have spent on more gauss rifles/ammo/armor/speed.

That's the catch-22. Perhaps each individual weapon doesn't need to be a unique snowflake, but they all need to be firmly seated in some form of role where they are very good at what they do, or they'll just gather dust in the mechbay.

[Elyam]

Good work on Gauss. Keeps the spirit of the original weapon without breaking established BT norms. Looking forward to the other weapon adjustments. And good on the PPC velocity reduction. I haven't tested it directly yet so can't comment on the heat increase at this time.

Edited by Elyam, 04 September 2013 - 11:40 AM.

[Azakael]

I officially love this patch. Not for any meta changes, but because of the community. Half the people are, "I love this patch, the gauss change is perfect!" and the other half is, "PGI screwed it up again!" And the split isn't all, Founders lean towards "Gauss is dead"/ new posters lean towards "This is the best patch evah!"
Now the question is - who has (re)ordered PP because of this patch and who has cancelled/ reaffirmed they made the right choice cancelling because of this patch?

That said, I rarely use Gauss so I can't say anything about them. (Haven't used 'em since I sold the JM6-S.) And the heat penalty on PPCs didn't affect me too badly.

However, if PGI was to say... ditch the ghost heat mechanic... I'd be much obliged. I shouldn't overheat faster with two AC/2s firing rapidly (one started after the first one is half-way through cooldown...) than firing them in a group...

Edited by Azakael, 04 September 2013 - 11:43 AM.