31 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

We've gone three patches almost without any major balance changes. They made some progress for about a month before release but now seem to have dropped balance and have moved to really small upgrades.

For the record:

Machine Guns - Once again worthless.*
Med & Large Pulse Lasers - Underpowered
Flamers - Laughably Underpowered
NARC - Absolutely horrendous from the bottom up
AC/10 - The definition of "meh"
LBX/10 - A worse AC/10
AC/2 - Crippled by Ghost heat
Large Lasers in general - Crippled by Ghost Heat

* For the love of God stop trying to balance MGs as crit finders. It doesn't work, it never worked, and it never will work. Give them some burst fire capability or something so they can do more damage in a compressed span of time, followed by a short cool down, and you'll have something worthwhile. Absolutely terrible even in banks.

Not to mention...

Awesome - Inferior in every way to other 80 tonners
Kintaro - Inferior in nearly every way to other mediums, still huge
Hunchback - Inferior in every way to other mediums
Dragon - Inferior to all new heavies (Except the Flame)
Commando - Inferior to all other lights except the Locust

Honorary Mention:
Locust - Inferior to everything, but not much that can be done about it.

---

We've come quite a ways, and a lot of people stuck with all the setbacks and rage on these forums because of the positive changes we've seen. That said, that is no excuse to stop trying in the last mile. Yes the launch date passed and yes, things are not as bad as during the PPC+Gauss meta, but they are not perfect and they still need to be worked on every patch.

Fortunately, as usual, with the exception of the NARC - which I believe needs a ground up redesign - most of this stuff is like 5 minutes of changing a few XML values. Literally. There is no excuse to not make these tweaks every single patch for testing. None at all, except..

Do they think things are "fixed" now? Remember, the reason the PPC+Gauss meta took over for months is a combination of not being fixed, and PGI not realizing there was a problem since they don't want to use competitive feedback and their own testers/devs are incapable of holding their own against even the worst players in the game, and thus they never really get to see balance problems?

What do you think, folks? Why has balance work stopped entirely post-launch?

[Capfailboat]

Victor Morson, on 05 November 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

We've gone three patches almost without any major balance changes. They made some progress for about a month before release but now seem to have dropped balance and have moved to really small upgrades.

For the record:

Machine Guns - Once again worthless.
Machine gun arrays could be interesting here as an alternative.
Med & Large Pulse Lasers - Underpowered
Go look at your damage stats for Medium Lasers vs. ALL other weapons and rethink that statement.
Flamers - Laughably Underpowered
Agreed
NARC - Absolutely horrendous from the bottom up
More Range and More Ammo/Ton
AC/10 - The definition of "meh"
Agreed
LBX/10 - A worse AC/10
Fun in PUGS not so for competitive drops. These things shread Locusts
AC/2 - Crippled by Ghost heat
Not really, but not good for competitive matches.
Large Lasers in general - Crippled by Ghost Heaty
Why are you firing more than 2 of them less than 0.5 seconds apart?

* For the love of God stop trying to balance MGs as crit finders. It doesn't work, it never worked, and it never will work. Give them some burst fire capability or something so they can do more damage in a compressed span of time, followed by a short cool down, and you'll have something worthwhile. Absolutely terrible even in banks.

Not to mention...

Awesome - Inferior in every way to other 80 tonners
Hopefully the hitbox revamp will help, but the thing is as wide as a barn.
Kintaro - Inferior in nearly every way to other mediums, still huge
S.Hawks invalidated Cents and Kintaros
Hunchback - Inferior in every way to other mediums
Nah, the AC/20 build is fun and good.
Dragon - Inferior to all new heavies (Except the Flame)
Hopefully the hitbox revamp will help
Commando - Inferior to all other lights except the Locust
JJ's would help, but then you have another spider-esque mech on the field.

Honorary Mention:
Locust - Inferior to everything, but not much that can be done about it.
IDK why everyone thought this mech would redefine lights. SMH.

[Dirus Nigh]

A poll for forum posters to speculate on what the devs are thinking?

[Victor Morson]

I think you misunderstood me Failboat, I was saying Med Pulse, not Med Las. Med Las are fine. It's one of the few weapons that is more or less dead on.

Med Pulse is in need of a small buff. Large Pulse.. a larger buff.

Edited by Victor Morson, 05 November 2013 - 01:09 PM.

[Sybreed]

Machine guns need to be a short burst weapon that deal 2 dmg. Consider them kind of like small lasers, but they fire projectiles instead of a laser beam.

NARC? Anyone saying NARC only needs more range and ammo per ton has absolutely no idea how NARC works and shouldn't be listened to. NARC needs to have the HP per beacon removed and its duration increased, period. Ammo per ton? Perhaps, but do these 2 fixes first.

Flamers are awful. LB-X should be firing a slug that deals an AoE dmg on its point of impact (therefore making it useful at ranges over 250m) because let's face it, the shrapnels suck at long range and PGI aren't gonna introduce switchable ammo until we all suffer from kidney failure.

AC/10 is okay, not great, but okay. It's a workable weapon on my CN-9A and that's the mech I used to get to higher elo in the medium bracket.

Finally, LRMs, freaking LRMs need a huge rework. They're either too good when boated or completely useless when not boated. Too easy to counter, too punishing when not countered. You need to massively boat ammo to make your LRM mech useful as its 25% accuracy means around you can deal at max 350-400 dmg when firing around 720 missiles.
- They need to make them travel faster so they can actually hit their target, but at the same time they need to spread more, as receiving 1 salvo and being almost cored simply sucks. Damage could be upped to 1.5 if damage is spread enough. RoF should be decreased across the board for LRMs if they become as powerful as they should be.
- Increase ammo per ton to 200, having 3 tons of ammo for a dual LRMX15 should make you last the match. Right now, it doesn't.
Got other ideas, but I'm at work and can't really spend too much time here.

Edited by Sybreed, 05 November 2013 - 01:22 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Weird, they've said as much that they don't think it's balanced, that's why they keep talking about weapons passes.

Fail poll is fail.

Someone has a case of the crankys.

Edited by Roadbeer, 05 November 2013 - 01:24 PM.

[Wolfways]

PGI thinking? Players are buying stuff = All is fine.

You forgot:

ECM - way OP.
LRM's - OP indirect, UP direct.
DHS - UP.

[Treye Snow]

LL's are fine if you stop trying to alpha them. Not everything needs to be alpha'd.

MG's are actually ridiculously strong for their purpose. People want them to shred armor when that's not their purpose. Hell, the entire weapon system costs 1.5 tons with 0 heat and is perfect for a finisher. Truly, what else do you want?

AC/2's I will agree need to be reworked. The only reason they were nerfed in the first place was because of the screen shake (It literally says that in the sticky) so when they do a tuning pas on screenshake and all that jazz they'll be returned to their original, beautiful pure DPS glory.

I'll be happy when hitboxes and HSR is entirely fixed and nailed down (or close to it) because for normal players, sub-competitive, this is really the biggest issue right now.

[cSand]

Victor Morson, on 05 November 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

We've gone three patches almost without any major balance changes. They made some progress for about a month before release but now seem to have dropped balance and have moved to really small upgrades.

For the record:

Machine Guns - Once again worthless.*
Med & Large Pulse Lasers - Underpowered
Flamers - Laughably Underpowered
NARC - Absolutely horrendous from the bottom up
AC/10 - The definition of "meh"
LBX/10 - A worse AC/10
AC/2 - Crippled by Ghost heat
Large Lasers in general - Crippled by Ghost Heat

* For the love of God stop trying to balance MGs as crit finders. It doesn't work, it never worked, and it never will work. Give them some burst fire capability or something so they can do more damage in a compressed span of time, followed by a short cool down, and you'll have something worthwhile. Absolutely terrible even in banks.

Not to mention...

Awesome - Inferior in every way to other 80 tonners
Kintaro - Inferior in nearly every way to other mediums, still huge
Hunchback - Inferior in every way to other mediums
Dragon - Inferior to all new heavies (Except the Flame)
Commando - Inferior to all other lights except the Locust

Honorary Mention:
Locust - Inferior to everything, but not much that can be done about it.

---

We've come quite a ways, and a lot of people stuck with all the setbacks and rage on these forums because of the positive changes we've seen. That said, that is no excuse to stop trying in the last mile. Yes the launch date passed and yes, things are not as bad as during the PPC+Gauss meta, but they are not perfect and they still need to be worked on every patch.

Fortunately, as usual, with the exception of the NARC - which I believe needs a ground up redesign - most of this stuff is like 5 minutes of changing a few XML values. Literally. There is no excuse to not make these tweaks every single patch for testing. None at all, except..

Do they think things are "fixed" now? Remember, the reason the PPC+Gauss meta took over for months is a combination of not being fixed, and PGI not realizing there was a problem since they don't want to use competitive feedback and their own testers/devs are incapable of holding their own against even the worst players in the game, and thus they never really get to see balance problems?

What do you think, folks? Why has balance work stopped entirely post-launch?

[aniviron]

Well, based on what Bryan said at the launch party that he thinks even flamers are well balanced now, yes, I would have to assume they think the game is in balance.

To be fair, it's as close as it's even been to being in balance, even if many things still need work.

[Nick Makiaveli]

I think they know that they have to give EVERYTHING some attention from time to time.

If they spent all appropriate assets on weapons, then who would work on new mechs? Fixing existing mechs? Etc.

Oh and the whole point of us speculating and whining etc doesn't really help. They look at the stats, ie who uses what weapons and mechs etc. Also, the whole point of the game was intended to be CW, so despite being launched, MWO isn't truly out.

[Bhael Fire]

I think weapons are pretty much as balanced as they've ever been. There's a few weapons that need some love, but nothing screams over-powered or broken.

If I had to guess, I'd say most of the devs feel the same way.

In other words, I think the nerf hammer and buff blaster have been shelved, and they've brought out the polishing rag until it's deemed the heavy game changers need to be brought out again (which will probably be when Clan tech is introduced).

[Sybreed]

Nick Makiaveli, on 05 November 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

I think they know that they have to give EVERYTHING some attention from time to time.

If they spent all appropriate assets on weapons, then who would work on new mechs? Fixing existing mechs? Etc.

Oh and the whole point of us speculating and whining etc doesn't really help. They look at the stats, ie who uses what weapons and mechs etc. Also, the whole point of the game was intended to be CW, so despite being launched, MWO isn't truly out.

I got an honest question for you: Do we really need to get a new mech every month? I've got my phoenix package and the only mech I tried so far is the Shadow Hawk. With the current hardpoint system, mechs can hardly be considered as new content. If they all had a specific role (say, the Awesome is the only PPC boat) then yeah, new mechs would mean new stuff you could do on the battlefield, but it's not the case. New mechs are, taken to an extreme, reskins of mechs we already have. Having a new 65 tonner won't really affect the battlefield. Having NARC reworked so it lasts more than 3 seconds will entirely change how players use the item and how the game is played. Turn MGs into fast firing burst weapons and it immediately change how you perceive the MGs on an assault mech (it turns them into a useful short range weapon).

I think I made my point.

IMO, balance comes way before new mechs.

Edited by Sybreed, 05 November 2013 - 02:31 PM.

[Funkadelic Mayhem]

cSand, on 05 November 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

this is the 1st thing that came to mind when I read the title. And thats all im reading in this thread.

[Zyllos]

The reason why many things feel/seem broke is that, I personally think, many of the core mechanics are just not done correctly.

When weapons have pin point accuracy, why use a weapon that spreads to seek for critical hits? Just blow off a section.

There are SO many things wrong with this game, at the core level, that I think it will take some major overhauls to get it to feel right.

These are the core mechanics that I think need changing:

• Aiming mechanics
  
• Hardpoint mechanics
  
• Heat mechanics
  
• Weapon specific mechanics
  
• Equipment mechanics
  
• Mechlab mechanics
  
• Critical Hit mechanics

Some of these only need minor additions, changes, or revisions, but these minor changes make a big difference within the game. But others need some major modifications or complete revamps.

Considering how long many of these issues have been around and PGI acting like there are no problems, I doubt many of these mechanics will ever get fixed.

Edited by Zyllos, 05 November 2013 - 02:43 PM.

[Zyllos]

Victor Morson, on 05 November 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

...
What do you think, folks? Why has balance work stopped entirely post-launch?

My thoughts is that they are working on CW and UI2.0.

After this stuff gets out of the way, balancing fixes has to be 100% until we are in a good state.

[Karyudo ds]

Sybreed, on 05 November 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

LB-X should be firing a slug that deals an AoE dmg on its point of impact (therefore making it useful at ranges over 250m) because let's face it, the shrapnels suck at long range and PGI aren't gonna introduce switchable ammo until we all suffer from kidney failure.

Well technically I think it fragments 50ish meters from the target or something like that but PGI and the other Mechwarrior games just think pew-pew-shotgun! I could live with that if we did actually get switchable ammo but of course there's the fact that the LBX was a straight upgrade if you load it with slug rounds. Unless you tweaked numbers making some Battletech builds not match up...not sure if that's important to them though.

Really the AC and LBX existing together only really makes sense when one is cheaper to maintain or something, without that here it's just sort of odd.

Nick Makiaveli, on 05 November 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

If they spent all appropriate assets on weapons, then who would work on new mechs? Fixing existing mechs? Etc.

Beyond things like hitboxes I don't imagine there to be much overlap there. I think we're just talking about making things more functional so the artists could still be making more mechs or fixing them.

[Guchion]

I'll try to keep this short.

First off this is a leading poll, there are no options for "They know its broken, or part broken, but..." nor any options for "Fix hit detection first"

Which is pretty much what it seems to me.

Notice that there's work going into hit boxes and hit detection?
Well hit detection in particular is the reason why I don't think we are seeing much change on the weapon balance this moment. Why change the numbers to balance a part broken system?
They need to get the weapons working properly before any major changes can be made.

Also For the record:

Machine Guns - Work fine as crit finders, ive shredded plenty of mechs with them, sure you need 3 or 4 to make it worthwhile, but then its a half a ton weapon.
Med & Large Pulse Lasers - Need work, but I dont think they are that far off either, maybe a reduction in heat and a mild damage increase?
Flamers - Never going to beat a med laser in damage, cannot become a griefing weapon, will never be competive but as a annoyance? Maybe just a bit more heat generated for the heat they cost.
NARC - Pointless currently, but definately needs more than "...5 minutes of XML editing"
AC/10 - Not Good, not bad, suffers from the TT Weight and damage restrictions, Maybe a faster fire rate would tempt people. Can't tell of course since hit detection is off, cant really tweak it till then
LBX/10 - Its a situational weapon, but its not bad any more, not by a long shot.
AC/2 - I see a LOT of 3x AC2 mechs now, and having fun them myself I can see why, okay 4 is a bad idea, but even then its manageable, and nothing can run 5+ sensibly.
Large Lasers in general - again not seeing the ghost heat being a big problem? Fire in twos, they arn't a big alpha weapon im really not sad to see the end of 4xLL mech pinpointing a location, thats more the autocannons job. That said 3 without penalty I could live with.

That's what I think anyway. I wasn't going to post, but this poll isn't really fair to my viewpoint, Its just, like a lot of similar posts non-constructive rabble rousing. Or at least that's what it looks like.

I'll end this with one question: Where and when at ANY point have PGI said they are completely happy with balance? Or that they are going to stop balance changes?

[Khavi Vetali]

Voted other.

My guess is that balancing is either held up by bug/feature fixes (HSR) or they are monitoring the data/metrics before making more changes.

[3rdworld]

I think it is mostly because it is better than it has been from the PPC + Goose + JJs on everyting!!!

Now it is PPC + AC/5 or UAC or AC/20 or AC/10 + JJs on everyting!!! Progress baby

Edited by 3rdworld, 05 November 2013 - 03:43 PM.