45 replies to this topic

[Darkside7777]

The state of balance currently in the game is the best it's been in months, if not ever. There are too many posts from the vocal minority making poor suggestions (the suggestions to add some kind of wonkiness to the aiming system are the worst, and would most likely destroy the player base, but I digress), because the happy majority are playing the game and ignoring the forums.

No, PPCs are not too hot. No, LRMs do not need buffed/nerfed. Both weapons see high levels of usage in their current state (especially PPCs in upper tiers of play, despite their nerfs). I'm amazed how willing some forum-goers are to forget the months of PPC hell, LRMpocalypse, or 90 point SRM alphas.

Sure, there are a couple weapons that could use a little help, like the LB 10-X or pulse lasers. But overall, balance feels very, very good at the moment. Despite all the whining about the ghost-heat system, and my own personal reservations about the two large laser limit before penalties, it seems to be doing a great job of keeping balance in check.


In summary, just wanted to make a post to tell PGI this, because not enough people are:
You guys are doing an amazing job with balance at the moment, keep up the good work!

[DaZur]

BLASPHEMY!!!!!!

Lynche him!

[Joseph Mallan]

Two in one day!!! The end of the world is Nie!

[Thorqemada]

Its somehow in the best state of Balance since the pre ECM weeks...so better than the other 95% of its time

[IronChance]

I agree with OP. It feels like we're at the point where PGI should now be making small tweaks to weapon balancing rather than meta-changing changes. Nothing feels too good or too bad. I agree LBX-10 and pulses could use a little love, as well as SRMs. Streaks may need to be tweaked down in damage, too. AC10 might need a little projectile velocity buff. ETC, ETC, ETC. Blah, blah, blah. All small stuff.

[Mister Blastman]

Balance sucks right now. Are you kidding? PPC+AC meta is alive and strong at the moment. Pinpoint damage > all and SRMs+Medium/short range weapons suck.

[Joseph Mallan]

Sorry Blastman but there will always be a favorite go to set up. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. And there is nothing wrong with that!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 30 October 2013 - 09:52 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

I will agree that the current balance is basically the best it's ever been. However, that isn't saying a whole lot considering how terrible balance was before the recent changes. Hunger is the best spice, after all.

There is still a whole lot of balancing work to do, and the relative lack of movement in that area in recent weeks has made people antsy. Frequent balance changes were great back in the day, as they were a good source of variety when you only had 2 gametypes on a handful of maps. Right now, even a new mech release isn't particularly interesting, since a lot of their weapon configurations could already be done in some way on other mechs.

Right now, with the relative lack of balance changes, people have figured out what works and what doesn't, and things have generally settled and are getting stale again. We need more tweaks to weapons and mechs to increase variety again.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 30 October 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[Darkside7777]

Mister Blastman, on 30 October 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

Balance sucks right now. Are you kidding? PPC+AC meta is alive and strong at the moment. Pinpoint damage > all and SRMs+Medium/short range weapons suck.

This is simply not true. Although powerful, PPC+AC weapons are not the end-all be-all. As someone who has always played a brawler, even during the dark days at the height of the PPC spam, I feel like brawling is in a very good place right now. Sure, you get shredded if you wade through an open field, but you can easily tear people up if you're smart about closing the distance.

Edited by Darkside7777, 30 October 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[NuclearPanda]

SRMs are still broken, as they have been for the past six months or so.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Joseph Mallan, on 30 October 2013 - 09:51 AM, said:

Sorry Blastman but there will always be a favorite go to set up. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. And there is nothing wrong with that!

This is a terrible cop-out. Yes, there is always going to be a "best" mech and loadout, but that doesn't mean alternatives can't also be equally or more effective under different situations. Right now, there are a lot of mechs and weapons that just should not be used, period. That should be corrected.

[General Taskeen]

First of all, OP, who or what are the "vocal minority" making poor suggestions. Can you give example of the poor suggestions you are reading? Can you distinguish between root problems and the good suggestions to resolve root problems? Why do you think people are making constant suggestions for root issues?

- PPC's are "too hot" = Relative To Heat Design (Heatsinks raise thresholds = you can fire lots of weapons over and over and over) (this was not possible to "raise" thresholds in previous games and boat enormous amounts of weapons)

^ You ever try using SHS and PPC's in MWO? It is certainly possible in MW2/3, and it works fine and stock builds are "efficient" with SHS or DHS. And the case with heat thresholds, the "ppc apocalypse" existed solely for that reason of being able to raise your threshold to enormous levels unlike any other Mech game. A Mech with 10SHS has 40 Threshold, an Mech with 10DHS has 50 Threshold, can fire even more and increasings with the more heat sinks on the Mech.

- LRMs buffed/nerfed = Relative to ECM and improper Design of Indirect Fire with Current MWO "Radar" System. Sole reason they are either buffed/nerfed. LRMs are unable to fire at an ECM Mech in Line of Sight - This is a root issue, LRMs could always fire at an ECM Mech that it could "see" in any Mech Warrior game. Radar system functionality does not even require indirect fire tools to fire LRMs indirectly, hence why they are thought of as "powerful" and thus "lurmapocalypse."

- 90SRM alphas = Relative to their design functionality of splash damage and "all missiles shoot in blobs." Sole reason they were buffed/nerfed. SRMs shoot all at once, hence high damage combined with previous "splash damage." The issue is that they are still blob missiles, and they don't behave like SRMs should work (I.E. very fast firing missiles that fire 1 missile after the other "ripple fire" - current missiles are slow and blobs unlike Mech Warrior 2, 4, and LL)

Edited by General Taskeen, 30 October 2013 - 10:08 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Darkside7777, on 30 October 2013 - 09:54 AM, said:

This is simply not true. Although powerful, PPC+AC weapons are not the end-all be-all. As someone who has always played a brawler, even during the dark days at the height of the PPC spam, I feel like brawling is in a very good place right now. Sure, you get shredded if you wade through an open field, but you can easily tear people up if you're smart about closing the distance.

Not if your team is unwilling to engage because they are full of snipers. In upper ELO you find this a lot. Thus, if you take a brawler, you sit around behind a rock the entire game waiting for either your team to destroy enough that they finally push or your team gets wiped leaving the enemy team coming in close to finish you off.

SRMs are way too weak and inconsistent in counting damage and medium/short range weapons are too hot.

The game is still very broken in the top ELO brackets.

[Itsalrightwithme]

Mister Blastman, on 30 October 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

Balance sucks right now. Are you kidding? PPC+AC meta is alive and strong at the moment. Pinpoint damage > all and SRMs+Medium/short range weapons suck.

Heat and ammo considerations aside, pinpoint damage will always beat beam damage in the hands of a better pilot. The issue with past PPC+Gauss meta was that unless one was very bad at shooting (and trust me, I'm quite bad), there was little reason to play anything else.

With the increased heat and min range damage penalties to PPC, they are run mostly only by the better pilots, you see this clearly in 12-man comps. When PPC boats are run by lesser pilots, they tend to do poorly. The AC20 boat is still out there, and these days they still dangerous but fewer pilots favor them due to AC20 ghost heat penalty, so you tend to see only better pilots run them.

These days when you run your MLas BLR up to a PPC HGN, the HGN is pretty much screwed unless the pilot is really, really good. So it's quite balanced.

I think you are mistaking piloting skills for weapons advantage. Better pilots can shoot and position better, so they'll always prefer pinpoint weapons unless there is significant penalty against them, and thus arguably the penalty against them are quite fair.

Slightly digressing, the reason there is so little fanfare with the current state of the game is that there were plenty clarion calls to increase PPC heat, and this was largely ignored by the devs, with no explanation, for a very long time. Lots of players are suffering under a strong sense of "we told you so!" I think this is fair.

[NuclearPanda]

General Taskeen, on 30 October 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

- 90SRM alphas = Relative to their design functionality of splash damage and "all missiles shoot in blobs." Sole reason they were buffed/nerfed. SRMs shoot all at once, hence high damage combined with previous "splash damage." The issue is that they are still blob missiles, and they don't behave like SRMs should work (I.E. very fast firing missiles that fire 1 missile after the other "ripple fire" - current missiles are slow and blobs unlike Mech Warrior 2, 4, and LL)

So then lower the damage or something to make it reasonable. The current problem is HIT DETECTION. SRMs simply do NOT connect the way they are supposed to. That is the largest damn problem I have with them.

[Mister Blastman]

Joseph Mallan, on 30 October 2013 - 09:51 AM, said:

Sorry Blastman but there will always be a favorite go to set up. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. And there is nothing wrong with that!

There shouldn't be, though. There isn't in Mechwarrior Living Legends--many mechs are extremely effective in it with varied loadouts. Granted, there is no mechbay.

Still, having the range of weapons so narrow at the top is hurting this game way more than helping it. If you were to tell me: We are at the pinnacle now and it will remain AC5/UAC5 + PPC from here on out as the ultimate loadout--well, then I quit. Done. No more time to play this.

That isn't saying I can't play the meta. Hell, I dominate the meta. But do I enjoy it? Hell no. I hate the top tier meta at the moment. It is boring as hell.

Other weapons should be viable and the awful truth is brawling is punished still, to this day by not having strong enough potential up close to counteract the tradeoff of having to close through a barrage of insane, focused, pinpoint damage on the way.

[Darkside7777]

Mister Blastman, on 30 October 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

Not if your team is unwilling to engage because they are full of snipers. In upper ELO you find this a lot. Thus, if you take a brawler, you sit around behind a rock the entire game waiting for either your team to destroy enough that they finally push or your team gets wiped leaving the enemy team coming in close to finish you off.

SRMs are way too weak and inconsistent in counting damage and medium/short range weapons are too hot.

The game is still very broken in the top ELO brackets.

Again, simply not true. As someone who plays in the high ELO brackets myself while dropping solo with the majority of my builds using at least two srm6 launchers. Yes, the hit detection is not great on SRMs at the moment, but the weapon itself is BALANCED.

It bears mentioning, however, that I exclusively play conquest mode, specifically because of the problem you mention of people sitting behind hills and not moving in assault mode. But I feel that this is just a byproduct of a poorly thought out game mode, not the gameplay balance itself.

Edited by Darkside7777, 30 October 2013 - 10:12 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Itsalrightwithme, on 30 October 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

\
These days when you run your MLas BLR up to a PPC HGN, the HGN is pretty much screwed unless the pilot is really, really good. So it's quite balanced.
\

You are assuming you can get there. In the absolute top ELO brackets, you will not get there if the enemy team is comprised of top ELO players. You will die. You'll also be the lone mech on your team carrying medium/short range weapons.

[Clit Beastwood]

I've had a LOT of games recently where there was maybe a minute left with 1-2 players on one team alive. The matching is getting a lot better!

[General Taskeen]

NuclearPanda, on 30 October 2013 - 10:08 AM, said:

So then lower the damage or something to make it reasonable. The current problem is HIT DETECTION. SRMs simply do NOT connect the way they are supposed to. That is the largest damn problem I have with them.

This is also hard to judge when you think about it. They are very slow missiles that fire all at once. Meaning if you fire them, they likely aren't going to land where you want them to.

Unless you are referring to missiles that do hit and do no damage.