1026 replies to this topic

[Noesis]

[Hexenhammer]

Nerf gun?

[C E Dwyer]

Hexenhammer, on 08 February 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

Nerf gun?

cute..not the gun..

[WarZ]

Cathy, on 08 February 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

Now you want to nerf the burst turn on JJ's so that if a jumping assault manages to get in close, and not be half dead, your making it an easier target..

I was right with you through your post agreeing with your points...

Until I hit that quote above and realized you just undermined your whole arguement. Basically you want some balance in mech design to help with the "meta". But you are more than happy to leave in THE SINGLE MOST ABUSIVE TACTIC in the game right now. Jump sniping, high reward - low risk damage engagements. Which is COMPLETELY CONTRADICTORY to wanting to address the meta / players exploiting the system.

Apparently you are just concerned about your jump sniping. Otherwise all the "window dressing" you piled on that statement was agreeable, if not transparent.

[Victor Morson]

Rebas Kradd, on 08 February 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:

What you seem to be describing is a game where choices and gameplay styles don't matter.

And that's where you are entirely wrong.

I am saying that every 'mech should have a viable role to play on the battlefield. That's a huge difference.

It'd be like me telling you "Any class you want to play in TF2 is viable." That's a true statement at, as far as I know, all levels of the TF2 community. It doesn't mean they play anything like each other.

So yes, I'd like to see a 6 Large Laser Battlemaster on the field to compete with the 2x Ultra 2x PPC Highlanders. Yes, I'd like to see a 4x SRM6 brawler Stalker out there firing rounds that can actually hit something under 50 tons. [Ed: BUFF THE VELOCITY]. Yes, I would love to see an Awesome that is given buffs to it's heat or something to put it back into the game. I love the Awesome on table top and I hate seeing it like this.

In other words, I'd like to see more styles viable. It does not mean they should be monotone or play anything alike.

[Victor Morson]

Cathy, on 08 February 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

and you increase weapon ranges..

On the upside unless the last 3 tiers are ridiculous, these weapon range increases are hilarious wastes of module space.

[C E Dwyer]

WarZ, on 08 February 2014 - 03:09 PM, said:

I was right with you through your post agreeing with your points...

Until I hit that quote above and realized you just undermined your whole arguement. Basically you want some balance in mech design to help with the "meta". But you are more than happy to leave in THE SINGLE MOST ABUSIVE TACTIC in the game right now. Jump sniping, high reward - low risk damage engagements. Which is COMPLETELY CONTRADICTORY to wanting to address the meta / players exploiting the system.

Apparently you are just concerned about your jump sniping. Otherwise all the "window dressing" you piled on that statement was agreeable, if not transparent.

then one of us is not understanding what burst turn is, my understanding of it is a brawl tactic to spread damage, and turn in the air to come down behind another mech..which is completely distanced from poptarting which is a very bad part of this game, though poptarting it does have counters.

Best one being correctly guess where said poptart is about to perform, and give it a full alpha as it goes up

I have never jump sniped so I'm apparently not caring about a tactic I don't use, as using a tactic you disagree with makes a person worse than one that wants the said tac tic in.


an Ideal world the lurm boat should be the bane of the sniper

sniper the bane of the brawler

brawler the bane of the lurm boat


all we have at the moment is the sniper safe and wasting all comers

[Wintersdark]

Steel Claws, on 08 February 2014 - 12:19 AM, said:

I would think that all of you would have learned by now that nerfing this or that doesn't do ANYTHING, It won't make drops more balanced, it won't prevent stomps. Nerfing will never solve anything. It won't even keep people from griping - past history proves this.

You take one thing away or make it less attractive and they will go to something else. Good players adapt and adjust. Bad players come to the forums and complain about the good players and beg for help from the devs.

Of course it won't stop griping, that'll always happen. Further, there will always be a "best" and "worst" set of weapons, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't buff/nerf things in pursuit of better balance.

And, as I've said before, you can't "only buff bad things, never nerf good ones" or you end up with power creep. You need to move towards a centerpoint.

With that said, they don't need to nerf the Highlander directly - it's fine. They don't need to nerf Jump Jets overall (though I'm sure Paul will), but they DO need to make more than a single jump jet worth taking. Right now, they're not.

Unfortunately, Paul's shown a propensity for finding overly complicated "solutions" to problems... that don't actually fix the core problem, but mess with lots of other things.

[C E Dwyer]

Victor Morson, on 08 February 2014 - 03:21 PM, said:

On the upside unless the last 3 tiers are ridiculous, these weapon range increases are hilarious wastes of module space.

at t1 the max range of an AC2 is increased by 45 meters its effective 15 meters so around 1500 meters they're going to be doing about 1.5 per pop the new graph system is worse than the old weapon info text boxes so having to estimate

snipers need zoom, a module for the ac2 a module for either ppc or ac5 depending on build, most mastered heavies and assaults carry 3 module slots mastered.

and if a quad ac2 chain fired, you can have, module for weapon, zoom, and sensor module.


While its not a killer increase in distance it does exasperate further that the only effective counter for a sniper is another sniper as the lurm boat which should be the go to method of dealing with a stationary mech has half the range.


the ac2 in its transfer from TT to twitcher, has gone from a joke weapon even combined with others, to the weapon that along with the ultra /ac5, the weapons that dominate more now than the quad ppc stalker with its 40 alpha did before heat scale

[MischiefSC]

Victor Morson, on 08 February 2014 - 03:21 PM, said:

On the upside unless the last 3 tiers are ridiculous, these weapon range increases are hilarious wastes of module space.

Victor Morson, on 08 February 2014 - 03:17 PM, said:

And that's where you are entirely wrong.

I am saying that every 'mech should have a viable role to play on the battlefield. That's a huge difference.

It'd be like me telling you "Any class you want to play in TF2 is viable." That's a true statement at, as far as I know, all levels of the TF2 community. It doesn't mean they play anything like each other.

So yes, I'd like to see a 6 Large Laser Battlemaster on the field to compete with the 2x Ultra 2x PPC Highlanders. Yes, I'd like to see a 4x SRM6 brawler Stalker out there firing rounds that can actually hit something under 50 tons. [Ed: BUFF THE VELOCITY]. Yes, I would love to see an Awesome that is given buffs to it's heat or something to put it back into the game. I love the Awesome on table top and I hate seeing it like this.

In other words, I'd like to see more styles viable. It does not mean they should be monotone or play anything alike.

By the way -

A 4x PPC BM 1G isn't bad. With the torso twist nerfed into the ground it's incapable of brawling and with the inability to turn to shoot at a target while walking 90 degrees off so you have to circle towards what you're aiming the PPC + AC long-range brawler doesn't work either.

However, you run it like a stalker that can mount a 375 XL packed with DHS and it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. Hill-hump, straight in and straight back. It'll hold 19 DHS with 2 MLs for chasing off lights.

Not great, but not bad. Oddly the 4x PPC 1G is about the only build on it that's even mediocre. It's still like having paid $80 for an Awesome but, well.... meh.

Try it though. Old school hill-humping and peeking. Straight in, straight back, hope nobody sees you and blows out your massive, over-sized torsos - you won't be able to twist away to protect them with those hefty but useless arms because even with 2x basics it's not possible to twist enough to protect your shoulder. Try to use the forward/backward speed of the 375 to get back into cover.

[Wintersdark]

Cathy, on 08 February 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

an Ideal world the lurm boat should be the bane of the sniper

sniper the bane of the brawler

brawler the bane of the lurm boat

No. The LRM boat will never be a counter for snipers, under any circumstance. It can't be. The reality is that LRM's both require long lock times, and long missile flight times. Both utilize cover. The LRM boat can in some cases fire from cover, but not always. The Sniper, while it does need to expose itself, can pop out of cover (via jumping, peeking, etc) for very limited windows of time. Thus, as a Sniper, you should never be hit by an LRM. Ever. That simply won't change, unless they move the LRM flight path back to a near-vertical drop on the target... which would start another lurmpocalypse.

So, if you're looking for RPS, you'd look for Sniper > LRM > Brawler > Sniper. The brawler should be a hard counter to a sniper - get close to them, and they have no chance. Unfortunately, this isn't currently the case because brawling weapons are so bad that sniping weapons are superior in a brawl. This... well, this sucks.

[Bishop Steiner]

MischiefSC, on 08 February 2014 - 04:34 PM, said:

By the way -

A 4x PPC BM 1G isn't bad. With the torso twist nerfed into the ground it's incapable of brawling and with the inability to turn to shoot at a target while walking 90 degrees off so you have to circle towards what you're aiming the PPC + AC long-range brawler doesn't work either.

However, you run it like a stalker that can mount a 375 XL packed with DHS and it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. Hill-hump, straight in and straight back. It'll hold 19 DHS with 2 MLs for chasing off lights.

Not great, but not bad. Oddly the 4x PPC 1G is about the only build on it that's even mediocre. It's still like having paid $80 for an Awesome but, well.... meh.

Try it though. Old school hill-humping and peeking. Straight in, straight back, hope nobody sees you and blows out your massive, over-sized torsos - you won't be able to twist away to protect them with those hefty but useless arms because even with 2x basics it's not possible to twist enough to protect your shoulder. Try to use the forward/backward speed of the 375 to get back into cover.

Odd. I am doing just fine in my 2 PPC, 2 AC5 and 4 medium laser 1G, though I admit I prefer the 1D. (But I embraced the suck, agility wise and only run a 300xl in the dumb thing and use it more like I would an Atlas, as an Anchor mech for the formation.)

I suppose if one wants to compare it to the poptart meta, it is at a disadvantage though.

[MischiefSC]

Bishop Steiner, on 08 February 2014 - 06:37 PM, said:

Odd. I am doing just fine in my 2 PPC, 2 AC5 and 4 medium laser 1G, though I admit I prefer the 1D. (But I embraced the suck, agility wise and only run a 300xl in the dumb thing and use it more like I would an Atlas, as an Anchor mech for the formation.)

I suppose if one wants to compare it to the poptart meta, it is at a disadvantage though.

I've run that for a while and it's alright-ish, but the 1D does it considerably better. Even against a Cataphract it's at a disadvantage. Tell you what - run a similar build on a 5-ton lighter Victor without JJs, just the exact same setup and see how it does, just swap SRMs even for the MLs. Narrower hit-boxes, smaller profile, better torso turn so you can actually protect yourself with your arms. Even leaving the JJs out of it the Victor out-performs the 1G significantly.

Or even just compare it to the 1D with the exact same setup. The 1G got gimped, painfully gimped, because it got the 30% bonus. It's already fat and slow, gimping the torso twist radius just makes it a victim.

[Victor Morson]

Wintersdark, on 08 February 2014 - 04:35 PM, said:

No. The LRM boat will never be a counter for snipers, under any circumstance. It can't be. The reality is that LRM's both require long lock times, and long missile flight times. Both utilize cover. The LRM boat can in some cases fire from cover, but not always.

It worked fine in Living Legends because missiles would come straight down out of the sky like bolts from the heavens if someone had a NARC, and a NARC could actually reliably hit.

[Bishop Steiner]

MischiefSC, on 08 February 2014 - 06:58 PM, said:

I've run that for a while and it's alright-ish, but the 1D does it considerably better. Even against a Cataphract it's at a disadvantage. Tell you what - run a similar build on a 5-ton lighter Victor without JJs, just the exact same setup and see how it does, just swap SRMs even for the MLs. Narrower hit-boxes, smaller profile, better torso turn so you can actually protect yourself with your arms. Even leaving the JJs out of it the Victor out-performs the 1G significantly.

Or even just compare it to the 1D with the exact same setup. The 1G got gimped, painfully gimped, because it got the 30% bonus. It's already fat and slow, gimping the torso twist radius just makes it a victim.

never said it was a meta breaker, just saying ti's not the gimped ride of death that people on this forum are making it out to be. And because the 1D DOES have better agility, I prefer to actually take advantage of it's strength with a bigger engine to take advantage of it, which means realistically I can't run the same build, and running an agile mech with without using that agility, is just silly (like when I see people post Victor and Highlander builds with no JJs......)

[Jonathan Paine]

So instead of a single chassis nerf, the powers that be might want to look at the underlying problems for once. Perfect accuracy on the descent. High damage pinpoint alpha strikes. Lack of knockout tournaments to settle epeen issues. Lack of private matches so I can finally fight Ferret.

[Imperius]

Paul Inouye, on 05 February 2014 - 05:09 PM, said:

Sitting across from the studio from me is a board with all the 'Mechs on it. In my crosshairs... the Highlander. More info to follow along with intended implementation date. Just giving you all a heads up.

[Victor Morson]

Jonathan Paine, on 08 February 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

So instead of a single chassis nerf, the powers that be might want to look at the underlying problems for once. Perfect accuracy on the descent. High damage pinpoint alpha strikes. Lack of knockout tournaments to settle epeen issues. Lack of private matches so I can finally fight Ferret.

The problem is a mix of things.

Their desire to nerf SPECIFIC THING by nerfing SYSTEM WIDE THING is, as you say, not entirely unfounded because the problem is the underlying system that renders the other assaults moot.

The problem is they are barking up the entirely wrong tree, and attacking a system (Jump Jets) that is not the cause of the dominance of the Highlander/Victor. While jump jets are powerful, it's not even the same debate.

Put it this way: If the Awesome could jump and the Victor could not, nobody'd bother with the Awesome anyway and just drive Victors.

EDIT: I also still hold that if the movement system reduced speed to 2m/s instead of 0, allowing 'mechs to climb (even if slowly) rough terrain, jump jets wouldn't be so important. It's not just about the pop anymore, it's about the terrain navigation.

Edited by Victor Morson, 09 February 2014 - 01:41 AM.

[Sephlock]

Cathy, on 08 February 2014 - 04:34 PM, said:

the ac2 in its transfer from TT to twitcher, has gone from a joke weapon even combined with others, to the weapon that along with the ultra /ac5, the weapons that dominate more now than the quad ppc stalker with its 40 alpha did before heat scale

Aside from the zoom module thing (you don't need it for the ac/2 since you can just spam shots and then walk your fire onto your target, wasting only a few shells in the process if you aren't cross-eyed), I was with you right up until this point.

You have to be joking...

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Victor Morson, on 09 February 2014 - 01:40 AM, said:

The problem is a mix of things.

Their desire to nerf SPECIFIC THING by nerfing SYSTEM WIDE THING is, as you say, not entirely unfounded because the problem is the underlying system that renders the other assaults moot.

The problem is they are barking up the entirely wrong tree, and attacking a system (Jump Jets) that is not the cause of the dominance of the Highlander/Victor. While jump jets are powerful, it's not even the same debate.

Put it this way: If the Awesome could jump and the Victor could not, nobody'd bother with the Awesome anyway and just drive Victors.

EDIT: I also still hold that if the movement system reduced speed to 2m/s instead of 0, allowing 'mechs to climb (even if slowly) rough terrain, jump jets wouldn't be so important. It's not just about the pop anymore, it's about the terrain navigation.

Personally speaking i agree and disagree with this one post of yours.
Jump Jets are part of the problem, but so is terrain navigation as you point out, the change they made to that was and still is horrendous and needs some serious work.
Jump Jets need to have more forward momentum rather than the small amount they have now.

But you can trace the change in balance right the way back to SRM's, once broken and left unfixed brawling was left inferior.
Fix SRM's increase the agility of mediums across the board so that fast paced agile mediums become a natural gap closer into Jump Sniper lines.