70 replies to this topic

[Vassago Rain]

Furthermore, you cannot increase TTK by bringing more guns to the gold standard. That's not how it works.

If one gun is superior, having more on its level does nothing for TTK, as the superior gun already sets THE GOLD STANDARD THAT ALL OTHERS ASPIRE TO, but it provides choice and alternatives.

When everything is terrible except one weapon, you only see that one weapon, and time to kill remains unchanged.

[OneEyed Jack]

Methinks you need to learn the meaning of the word strategic. First of all, strategy has no bearing is fights as small as those in MWO. Maybe you mean tactical. In which case you're still wrong. Nerfing everything into the ground and making everything into a drawn-out slug-fest where no single event or small series of events can have a significant impact on the outcome is actually pretty much the exact polar opposite of tactical.

[Livewyr]

OEJ..

1: The UAC is overpowered for two reasons:
1a: The amount of DPS/Capability is staggering. (I know from personal experience- I dusted off my Ilya and it was *ugly*.. I felt dirty playing it.)
1b: While doing the DPS, it disrupts the opponent, making them consistently unable to engage as effectively. (This implies shooter has accuracy- which most people have at least some.)

2: In this game armor needs to mean something. (It's an Armor "FPS" where engagements are supposed to be determined by weapons vs armor/defenses, not a twitch shooter CoD HC mode.)

3: If a weapon is killing people so fast that the engagements last a few seconds, then armor doesn't mean anything and you might as well remove it. (I know this from experience... when I took the Ilya out; first game I flanked the enemy and destroyed 6 of them from behind within 3 mintues.. only one of them, an Atlas, actually lived long enough to turn around and be killed from the front.)

4: If this weapon is killing people that quickly, and it still isn't on every mech, the mathematically, if you boost the other weapons to "viability" (the same killing power), the overall TTK (engagement length) will decrease dramatically and armor will mean even less.

5: Part of weapon balance, in an armor game, is balancing the weapons versus armor on the fulcrum of the type of engagement you want.
Weapon too powerful = shorter engagement length, less satisfaction for time invested in setup. (And also for the baddies...)
Weapon too weak = longer engagement length, less satisfaction for effort invested in combat and individual contribution.

Balance in an armor FPS is more than just comparing the killing power of a weapon to that of its peers.

[Gallowglas]

Here's the problem with this philosophy: if everything feels extemely powerful, this means that mechs are not surviving long. Right now I firmly believe that mechs die too quickly. When an Atlas can be stripped to internals in just a few seconds of combat, that's a problem and any weapon that can do that definitely needs to reviewed and, yes, maybe nerfed.

Honestly, I've heard the whole "don't nerf [X], just buff everything to that level so everything is awesome!" mantra from just about every game. It's typically a defensive mechanism from someone who doesn't want their amazing killing machine to stop standing out. However, people fail to consider that the result is a faster death for more players, which is almost always bad for the game. They also don't consider that if everyone is getting the same result from other weapons, your UAC will still not be a standout and you'd have to buff the long cycle weapons to do an insane amount of weapon per hit. Do you seriously want an AC/20 to go internal on an Atlas in 1 hit?

[Viral Matrix]

For awhile, thats what PGI was doing. Last balance patch started to reverse that very enjoyable theme. I was hoping they would continue on that way until all weapons were effective. They still had more to buff, like Flamers, NARCs, or Pulse weapons.

I dont really like the last balance patch. Gauss and PPC got nerfed too hard imo. I didnt play in organized matches, but from what i understand, 'high-level' play was totally about that combo. It didnt seem to be a huge problem for me, even jumpsnipers were easy to sneak up on in my brawler Atlas. Only if 5-6 ppl on the enemy team had sniper/Gauss+PPC builds was it a problem for me, and i didnt see that very often. Even then, if my team used cover, instead of trying to snipe with MLasers, we could have a good fight.

Its ok though, i like the idea for the Gauss charge. Charge time is too short, imo, could be doubled. PPCs getting a min range of 90m with no damage, is too much. I dont see how a normal PPC is so much better than a AC/10, that it needs this level of nerfing. ERPPCs seem a little bit too hot, but their heat level isnt totally unreasonable, for a purely sniper weapon. I really liked these weapons at 9 and 12 heat, didnt have to build your entire mech around them. But it gave mechs without a Missile or Ballistics hardpoint some enemy screenshake, a very usefull trait.

The real problem is that people think if the last weapon that killed them is nerfed, they will have more success in the game. But itll just be another weapon that kills them after the 1st is nerfed. That said, some things can really be unbalanced. It takes a lot of wisdom to tell when a weapon is really overpowered and when its players just complaining. IMO, they went a lil bit too far last patch.

[Galenit]

Vassago Rain, on 16 September 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

It's better to have multiple superior builds than just One True Build, because that's predictable, but having only weaksauce builds is even worse.

Multiple superior builds, sounds not that balanced for me.

Is weaksauce weaksauce if there is nothing other the weaksauce?

Vassago Rain, on 16 September 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

More choice is strategic.

But if you have to choose from 3-5 "superior builds" it is much less choise there, then when you have to choose from 237 flavors of weaksauce.
And it will not hurt you, because everyone get the same, thats makes it to the standart because there is no superior or weaksauce anymore.

Edited by Galenit, 16 September 2013 - 07:15 AM.

[Almond Brown]

"Balance" is so subjective as to be a misnomer. Given that having even 2 of the 27 current weapons in this game, that have even 2 points more of damage more, 1 point less of Heat, 100m more range or fire just .25s quicker, will produce a build, on some chassis that will be seen as OP. Turns out we have a lot of different weapons with different stats.
You want true "Balance" you will have to eat having all weapons have the same stats for the key functions of heat, damage and range.

Nerf the crazy ones and the other instantly get useful, whether everyone see that, the Dev can only "try" and provide variety. They will never be able to stop the Min/Max/Lemming Warrior builds given any stat variation. That is what gamers do, abuse everything via spreadsheet.

[TexAce]

Vassago Rain, on 16 September 2013 - 02:40 AM, said:

Furthermore, you cannot increase TTK by bringing more guns to the gold standard. That's not how it works.

If one gun is superior, having more on its level does nothing for TTK, as the superior gun already sets THE GOLD STANDARD THAT ALL OTHERS ASPIRE TO, but it provides choice and alternatives.

When everything is terrible except one weapon, you only see that one weapon, and time to kill remains unchanged.

Theoretically yes. But practically nope.
Because if I never encounter the gold standard packing sniper but a LBX or Pulse packing whatever who now has better weapons than before, I will die faster than before -> thus TTK was shortened.

or to explain it to you in another way: If you sum up the time everybody of the losing time was ALIVE, then this sum would be smaller if you buff all other weapons instead of nerfing the one OP weapon.

Which.Is.Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Its not true only weapon is being used by now. I know most of you whiners want to make that statement stand out but it just is not true, especially not in pugs. All kind of weapons are being used. If you buff them all, have fun with 3 minute matches.

Edited by TexAss, 16 September 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[Jestun]

Get TTK out of your heads people.

If it gets too high or too low they can adjust defensive values instead of changing every single weapon to get it right again.

If a buff makes it too long then armour can be lowered. If it becomes too high then it can be increased.

Obviously this is only for major shifts in TTK, not every balance patch.

[TexAce]

Jestun, on 16 September 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Get TTK out of your heads people.

If it gets too high or too low they can adjust defensive values instead of changing every single weapon to get it right again.

If a buff makes it too long then armour can be lowered. If it becomes too high then it can be increased.

Obviously this is only for major shifts in TTK, not every balance patch.

you clearly didn't thought that out really.
You can't just play with armor values. They have a strong impact on tonnage, you would need to adjust every mech again, especially every stock loadout. It's much easier to tweak weapons than armor. They did it once, but it was in CB where they had how many mechs? 4? It would be a complete change now.

Edited by TexAss, 16 September 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[DeadlyNerd]

Soooooo, you(OP) want LRMs to kill as fast as UAC5s? Wish we had a time machine...

Edited by DeadlyNerd, 16 September 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[Hythos]

Lotharian, on 15 September 2013 - 01:26 AM, said:

So rather than nerfing the weapons that work... buff the stuff no one uses to the point of awesome.... then every weapon will be on the same level. Its gotta work better than upsetting everyone that likes a weapon that gets nerfed to poosticks right?

**Edit (somehow it got cut-off?)
~2003, we were told that no matter what, Blizzard would NOT nerf any item or ability in WoW - and instead, bring the things that were determined to be underperforming in-line with others. By the time the game launched, they had determined that couldn't be possible, because of PvP.
If they would practice a little more clarity and honesty when needing to make changes vs making up stories, I'd be much more accepting. Bryan's mentioning of the UAC/5 fix on Twitter made me a slight bit more comfortable (with *that* issue) because they didn't try to explain it away. Were it to be the same with other issues, it'd be a different story.

Edited by Hythos, 16 September 2013 - 07:47 AM.

[Wip3ou7]

Lotharian, on 15 September 2013 - 01:26 AM, said:

You know what? The developer that buffs weapons that are not a focal point of whines to the same level of the awesome that is the other weapon will have the killer game.

What? No, that's not obvious, in fact it barely makes any sense. What are you trying to say?

[Corvus Antaka]

if all the guns are equally underpowered - hmmmm

[Almond Brown]

Hythos, on 16 September 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

**Edit (somehow it got cut-off?)
~2003, we were told that no matter what, Blizzard would NOT nerf any item or ability in WoW - and instead, bring the things that were determined to be underperforming in-line with others. By the time the game launched, they had determined that couldn't be possible, because of PvP.
If they would practice a little more clarity and honesty when needing to make changes vs making up stories, I'd be much more accepting. Bryan's mentioning of the UAC/5 fix on Twitter made me a slight bit more comfortable (with *that* issue) because they didn't try to explain it away. Were it to be the same with other issues, it'd be a different story.

Could you Link us in to these "stories" you speak of. They sound interesting...

[Vassago Rain]

I've made a picture to illustrate what their change actually meant for the game.



So, as you can see, the UAC and AC20 didn't move, but gauss rifles are rarer than hen's teeth right now, for many, many reasons. They weren't uber before, and I had long since traded mine for UACs (I knew they were gonna swing the bat too hard).

If you think back to when the patches hit, you saw a whole ton of miseries, 3Ds, and old catapults running AC10s as a straight swap for their gauss rifles, and some were doing bizarre large pulse laser replacements of PPCs. This is becaue people don't understand what's really going on, or how to build mechs (they copypaste), but now word's gotten out, and everybody's boating the remaining viable weapons, which in MWO's ballistic heavy environment at the middle of mount tryhard means UACs.

So when they put UAC down with the gauss rifle, everybody will switch to AC20 robots. When they downgrade AC20, ER larges will dominate. Then what? Are we going to look at the almost viable weapons when the current viable ones are all gone? Perhaps the next phase is a return to medium laser XL awesomes.

Rather than make it so I have less viable choices, they should give me more. I want there to be a choice between the good ballistics. I want to do the math on whether PPC or ER large is right for my build. I want viable pulse lasers, flamers that do something, missiles that aren't locked at no damage for half a year...

Speaking of that, remember when someone thought it'd be a good idea to outright remove all missiles from the game with super low damage? That was fun, wasn't it? Because they were 'OP and broken.' Don't fix them - remove them. Make them a non-option.

[Hythos]

Almond Brown, on 16 September 2013 - 08:16 AM, said:

Could you Link us in to these "stories" you speak of. They sound interesting...

Stories? Possibly.
WoW closed-beta was 10 years ago, and I think the CB-forums were wiped. Not sure I can find that info.

PGI stories:
"Gauss Rifle is a sniper weapon that requires a charge-time like a sniper holding their breath before firing".
"Firing N of X weapon simultaneously generates more than 3x that weapons' heat".
"Clans are being developed to the intended spirit of the Clans, not the actual Battletech stats".
"Our Double Heatsinks don't really dissipate 2x the heat".

Those are just a couple, but would you like links?

[Jestun]

TexAss, on 16 September 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

you clearly didn't thought that out really.
You can't just play with armor values. They have a strong impact on tonnage, you would need to adjust every mech again, especially every stock loadout. It's much easier to tweak weapons than armor. They did it once, but it was in CB where they had how many mechs? 4? It would be a complete change now.

Unless you change the armour given by a single ton, then the tonnage stays the same as does the ratio between different weight mechs.

But it would likely require a little extra work rather than just a universal x% increase in armour, given that different mechs have different sized hitboxes for each armour section.


Obviously I'm not saying ignore the weapons and just balance based on armour, but if they get the weapons balanced at a level where the TTK is significantly off from intended I expect there would be less work to adjust how much armour a single ton gives and make a few tweaks to the mechs with oddly shaped hitbox layouts than to change each weapon by the same overall amount.

But weapons have far more stats. How they are balanced is based on more than just DPS. There are weapons which can be entirely countered like LRM vs. ECM, there are weapons which are point and click and ones which you must maintain your aim to deal damage, there are a number of factors which go into how "good" a weapon is.

Armour is just armour. If all weapons have too high TTK then decreasing armour across the board (as above, with a few tweaks on the oddly shaped mechs) will do a much better job of maintaining weapon balance.

[Livewyr]

Jestun, this is where I'm going to throw a bone to the TT crowd (because in a small way, I'm like them.)

I like working with Weapons from battletech, as close to their original design as possible, and similarly with Armor.

I'm rather happy with the choice made to:
Increase RoF (because I don't want to shoot every weapon at 10 second intervals..)
Not changing the weapon damage values (much) ->
-> Double armor (so mechs don't die too quickly to the increased RoF)

I personally think they've struck a good balance of making armor worth having, while still being within 1 multiple, with weapons maintaining (mostly) TT values but quicker RoF.

----------------------------------------
They would've had the long individual road to take bringing everything to balance.. no matter where the fulcrum was. The fulcrum has been placed (and I personally like the placement) and just about everything is balanced around it- UAC5 being too "heavy" and flamer being too "light.." Those are really the only adjustments that need to happen anymore.

LRMs need tweaked in their mechanics, but their numbers are good IMO.

[Thunder Lips Express]

IL MECHWARRIOR, on 15 September 2013 - 01:50 AM, said:

Totally agree: my point is that if you downgrade all weapons at the end all roles will be deleted, actually the sniper role is UNDERPOWERED because of gauss downgrade, medium range role is underpowered because of normal ppc excessive heat, noob short range mess is overpowered because of mediumlasers, largelasers, srms, ac 10 and ac 10.

all the weapons need to have more power, but in different places, so there are different roles, now many builds are the same because too many weapons have to be used in the same way

DAMAGE HEAT WEIGHT AMMO RANGE RELOAD SLOTS DURATION
PPC 10 8 7 540 4 3 0
ERPPC 10 11 7 810 4 3 0
LGLAS 9 6 5 450 3 2 1
ERLGLAS 9 7,5 5 650 3 2 1
LGPLSLAS10 6 6 300 3 2 0,4
MDLAS 5 3,5 1 250 3 1 1
MDPLSLAS7 4,5 2 150 3 1 0,4
SMLLAS 3 1,5 0,5 90 2 1 1
SMLPLSLAS 5 2,5 1 70 2 1 0,4
AC 2 2 0,5 5 100 700 0,5 1 0
AC 5 5 1 7 50 600 1 4 0
AC 10 10 2 10 25 450 2 7 0
AC 20 21 6 14 10 270 4 10 0
UAC 2 1,2+1,2 0,75 5 100 650 0,5 1 0,2
UAC 5 3+3 1 7 50 550 1 4 0,2
UAC 10 6+6 3 10 25 400 2 7 0,2
UAC 20 11,5+11,5 7 14 10 240 4 10 0,2
LBX AC2 3 0,5 5 100 500 0,5 1 0
LBX AC5 7,5 1 7 50 350 1 4 0
LBX AC1013 2 10 25 300 2 7 0
LBX AC2025 7 14 10 150 4 10 0
GAUSS 15 0,5 14 15 700 4 7 0
SRM 2 5 2 2 120 300 3 1 0
SRM 4 10 3 3 120 300 4 1 0
SRM 6 15 4 4 120 300 4 2 0
no change on lrms, just on narc, it always remains active for 10 seconds, even if you hit it.

Lbx ac 20 and 10 have big spread, so you can not exploit their huge damage to focus it all in one part unless you are in the range of a small laser.

SRMs spread is reduced by 20%

ultra ac waste 2 ammo per shot, so it is like they have half ammo.

ARMOR DOUBLED, , up to 156 for 70 tons mech on ct

endo steel and ferro fibrous occupy 7 slots

ferro fib efficiency moved from 0.028 to 0.024

ppc have a spread damage formula: suggested formula (x= number of ppc used)
damage on hit part= (9-x)x
damage spread all around [10x-(9-x)x]/6, no damage on head

gauss speed 900, no load time

nerd