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The other titles that had multiplayer components became arms races to get Clan Tech and once achieved, nothing changed from that point on.
What Paul fails to mention is that past MW titles either revolved around med laser boating (due to taking all stats straight from the tabletop (TT) version), or sniper loadouts, which was not a result of clan tech being superior, but the nature of pinpoint alphas in a game based off a TT game where pinpoint damage was impossible. He makes no mention of the fact that for more than half a year, MWO has been dominated by sniper loadouts and poptarting, which is honestly no different than MW4. There is a reason why more than half of every high ELO match is simply victors/highlanders with PPC/Ballistics and JJs.
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We are aiming to make sure that all types of gameplay are available while keeping all current BattleMechs viable on the battlefield.
And yet no attempt has been made to balance terrible mechs like the HBK-4G since closed beta started, 1.5 years ago. When was the last time you saw someone try and use a HBK-4G competitively? No, the 3 MG joke loadout does not count. Oh and we STILL have dual AC20 jagermechs. There are right now so many mech variants in the game but only about 10% of them are competitive, the rest are inferior choices. You have entire mechs that no sane person would use competitively. Funningly enough, this includes the Griffin (i have to seriously laugh at people who bought that).
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What the above changes allows to happen is that the Clan ER Large Laser still gets a reach buff, still gets to have higher damage, still gets the tonnage and space reduction but requires the player to hold targets longer and it will generate much more heat when Alpha’d. i.e. The weapon still keeps its Clan properties/feel but requires better skill and heat management to operate.
There are a few major problems with this comparison. Firstly, IS ER large lasers are pointless currently. They generate a ton of extra heat and their only advantage is extra range. Extra range is pointless unless you are sniping with it, but if you are sniping you would be using PPCs instead. Again, there is a reason why the most competitive build now is PPC/Ballistic victors/highlanders poptarting with JJs.
Secondly, holding the beam longer does not imply or require a "higher skill level" as Paul claims it does. It is INCREDIBLY easy to have your beam stay centered on an enemy CT unless it is a light mech going at 150 kph, using JJs or you are playing wtih 300 ms ping where the game actively refuses to have your shots hit (Paul, you really should try that once to see what the game is like). The only thing that a beam duration does is make it worse as a sniping weapon, since it forces you to be exposed, unlike PPCs. Also another reason why no sane person snipes with large lasers right now.
Thirdly, Paul makes zero mention of the fact that energy weapons are largely junk now compared to ballistics, because of the heat problem. Nobody will use clantech ER large lasers due to this. They will be mounting IS large lasers instead. Hell, right now you dont even see any sane person mount IS ER large lasers because of the increased heat for marginal benefit.
This design decision pretty much shows that Paul has no idea what goes on in current MWO matches. Otherwise he would not even be attempting to balance off the currently useless IS ER Large Laser.
Now let's look at how Paul wants to balance clan streaks.
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- Allow only 2 projectiles to leave the launcher at any given time. SSRM-4 will fire 2 volleys of 2 missiles. SRM-6 will fire 3 volleys of 2 missiles. This will stagger the incoming missiles allowing AMS to take down more if the targeted Mech has AMS.
- Increase the cooldown period of refire on the larger launchers and allow the above staggered shots to happen during this time.
Secondly Paul says that a advantage of Streaks is that it always hits. This completely ignores two things : The damage is VERY spread out, to the point that if you have 4 streak launchers firing 8 missles, at least 2 will always hit the legs. The current meta, has been snipers doing 40 pinpoint alphas to the CT for more than 6 months. Why? Because it is the most effective. Streaks literally have no purpose except to kill lights right now (and the only reason for THAT is because of terrible hit detection and lag compensation in the game). A mech loaded with streaks goes up against a mech loaded with pinpoint weapons...the latter will core the former with all his armor intact (albeit, sandblasted). Paul assumes that larger sized streak launchers will be OP....for the completely wrong reasons.
So Paul's solution is to make it easier for AMS to shoot down streaks. This has a couple of problems which he clearly missed :
1. Assuming streaks do become OP, it simply forces people to mount AMS to counter the OP streaks while screwing over every build without one.
2. Streak missles already do terrible damage unless boated and shooting at light mechs. Making it easier to shoot them down will make them even worse.
3. Most importantly of all, staggering the firing creates MORE cockpit shake. Oh boy, you thought a CPLT-A1 chain firing Streak-2s to stun lock you was bad? Now imagine 6 streak-6 launchers, chainfiring them in staggered volleys of 2 streaks each. I'm guessing Paul has never dropped in a match and gotten stun locked to death without being able to fight back. This will simply force people to mount AMS to try and counter stun locking (see point 1 above).
This is excluding the problems with Streaks that are well documented on the board, such as the inability to fire without a lock (easily exploitable by running in circles around a building to break LOS and constantly reset the lockon timer), the **** poor damage, the inability to do pinpoint damage in a meta entirely focused on pinpoint damage, easily neutralised by the typical ECM spam, etc....
Once again we see that Paul has no idea how Streaks work in the current meta and is making very incorrect assumptions about it. Doesn't look like a good future for clan streaks.
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The fact that the Clan version of LRM-20s have no minimum range is a huge problem. What you effectively now have is a Streak SRM-20 available to you if we cut minimum range to 0. The fact that this weapon weighs half as much and takes up 1 less slot makes this a significantly over powered system.
The following will probably be applied to this weapon system:
The following will probably be applied to this weapon system:
Actually, no it's not. Paul is making a number of incorrect assumptions here (again).
1. The fact that LRMs are unable to do pinpoint damage in a meta entirely focused on doing pinpoint damage is already a huge disadvantage.
2. Not all 20 missles hit currently, even if AMS is not around and the mech is out in the open. This is especially true for fast mechs.
3. Having a streak SRM-20 means nothing if they are easily countered like regular streaks.
4. It doesn't matter if a mech can mount 120 clan LRMs with no minimum range, they will still be unable to do anything to victors/highlanders hiding behind buildings and sniping. Because all the missles will impact uselessly into the building.
5. LRMs currently do so little damage that even Cicadas can tank 150+ Artemis LRMs in the open. Yes, i tested this.
However Paul is correct in that compared strictly to IS LRMs, clan LRMs would be OP. But he ignores the fact that IS LRMs are worthless in the current sniper meta. He's making the huge mistake of comparing two single weapon systems without considering how they work in the actual game with all choices available.
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Now the weapon system still keeps it “no-minimum” range property and it still keeps a weight reduction and generates a little more heat. Again, this will translate into better piloting skills, fire timing and heat management to take full advantage of the Clan LRM-20.
Im wondering where Paul is getting the idea that this would somehow translate to better skills or heat management. No LRM boat currently relies on any of these. It's not like LRMs are a heat intensive weapon or anything, considering that it has 1000m range and you should be firing it indirectly, where you can safely wait to cool down.
Now let's look at Paul's omnimechs.
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Now there wouldn’t be balanced unless it came with a cost. In this case, the ability to customize hardpoints comes with the tabletop OmniMech restrictions. All the configurations of a given OmniMech are based around a base configuration (not to be confused with the Prime configuration). This is the core of the Mech, with all the modular bits stripped out, and what remains cannot be customized at all. These include:
- The engine type and rating
- The number and placement of a minimum number of heatsinks
- The amount and distribution of armor
- The armor type and the location of any critical slots occupied by Ferro-Fibrous
- The internal structure type and the location of any critical slots occupied by Endo Steel
- Enhancements such as MASC
- The occasional weapon or other piece of equipment (e.g. jump jets) that is included as part of the base configuration
Uller (Kit Fox) Prime :
