213 replies to this topic

[Dark Horse X]

What I want to know is: If I choose, will PGI reimburse me for my Victor purchases? I bought mechs that performed a certain way. This was the draw, the sizzle. Now PGI wants to change the mech to an inferior state. Should I choose that the nerfs are too much to accept, PGI should refund all monies spent (I am talking MC used to buy the mechs, the XP to GXP conversions, camo, etc.).

You sell me a Rolls Royce, but then take it away and give me a Yugo in return? I don't think so.......biggest "Bait & Switch" scheme I've ever seen.

[Dark Horse X]

So, when is "teamwork" going to get a nerf? I and 3 lance mates focus fire on the idiot playing Rambo running across the wide open expanses at us, and we take him down in a matter of seconds..........do we now hear the screams of "OP"? He blames the PPC, AC, LLAS, LRMS, etc., whatever we rock him with and the nerf bat comes out again? Face it, he wants to suicide charge 4 mechs of hardpoints and complain when the shred is over? Quit nerfing, start buffing. You could start by either:

1. Make lasers more effective. (less duration time; Pulse lasers longer ranges)

or

2. Fix Hit Registration (LRMS and SRMS hitting when they should would be a great start)

Do both of those before you go mucking around with anything else. Sooner or later you will have to do #2 anyways, and what will you do if (because of every other nerf you've conceived of) LRMS/SRMS are perceived as OP then? Nerf some more?

[KharnZor]

Paul Inouye, on 06 February 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

[color=cyan]I'll chime in here since the write up was well thought out and presented. (Not that other posts haven't been the same, but I'm being prodded by other internal influences)[/color]

Josef above touched on the critical issue that we are looking at... increasing the time to kill. I'll go as far as saying this... some of the medium and heavy 'Mechs went through a quirk balance pass. This has not happened for any of the assaults. Currently, assaults are a little too agile for what they are... the giant sledge hammers of the battlefield. The two Mechs which are currently above expected behaviour are the Highlander AND the Victor. Now keep in mind, it is not just the chassis that is the problem in this case, the jump jet effects on turning and lift also compound the issue with these two 'Mechs specifically. We will be addressing both issues at the same time.

Remember.. the nerf gun is a mid caliber gun... it can do little to medium changes but it's not going to render the targets useless.

Pls don't hurt Victors Paul.

Vlad Dragu, on 06 February 2014 - 09:50 PM, said:

What I want to know is: If I choose, will PGI reimburse me for my Victor purchases? I bought mechs that performed a certain way. This was the draw, the sizzle. Now PGI wants to change the mech to an inferior state. Should I choose that the nerfs are too much to accept, PGI should refund all monies spent (I am talking MC used to buy the mechs, the XP to GXP conversions, camo, etc.).

You sell me a Rolls Royce, but then take it away and give me a Yugo in return? I don't think so.......biggest "Bait & Switch" scheme I've ever seen.

[Tekadept]

Vlad Dragu, on 06 February 2014 - 09:50 PM, said:

What I want to know is: If I choose, will PGI reimburse me for my Victor purchases? I bought mechs that performed a certain way. This was the draw, the sizzle. Now PGI wants to change the mech to an inferior state. Should I choose that the nerfs are too much to accept, PGI should refund all monies spent (I am talking MC used to buy the mechs, the XP to GXP conversions, camo, etc.).

You sell me a Rolls Royce, but then take it away and give me a Yugo in return? I don't think so.......biggest "Bait & Switch" scheme I've ever seen.

Nope, all part of the Blood oath you sign, anything can change at any time.

[Dark Horse X]

Tekadept, on 06 February 2014 - 10:49 PM, said:

Nope, all part of the Blood oath you sign, anything can change at any time.

Well, that really makes the thought of spending any real money on this game a major drawback. Hope the devs like the cascade effect this policy creates - meaning less real money coming in. By all means, nerf away - It's your pocketbook being affected!

[Craig Steele]

Vlad Dragu, on 06 February 2014 - 11:10 PM, said:

Well, that really makes the thought of spending any real money on this game a major drawback. Hope the devs like the cascade effect this policy creates - meaning less real money coming in. By all means, nerf away - It's your pocketbook being affected!

Or any other game, they're all the same.

On another note, I didn't get my money back on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy when they brought out the directors cut, they made me pay full price for the directors cut.

[Reno Blade]

Gut, on 06 February 2014 - 06:11 PM, said:

Why increase time to kill? Why not put people who can't survive in an environment where people are good shots in a different environment, based on their skill level?

ELO system needs brackets that actually work to span out the skill level.

AND it needs faster queue times.

Besides that, fix registration on all weapons (starting with SRMs) and introduce lobbies as soon as possible and people will be happy.

~The Best HGN player in the game

It seems you are contradicting yourself.
Putting people into different brackets would lead to smaller brackets and you don't find matches at all.
Wasn't this the reason we had some Elo changes lately? High elo players not beeing able to find matches sometimes.
If you have an environment where EVERYONE lives longer (e.g. less pinpoint damage), the game is much more fun. You can take a risk and don't be instant-killed by "best" players.

Vlad Dragu, on 06 February 2014 - 10:17 PM, said:

So, when is "teamwork" going to get a nerf? I and 3 lance mates focus fire on the idiot playing Rambo running across the wide open expanses at us, and we take him down in a matter of seconds..........do we now hear the screams of "OP"? He blames the PPC, AC, LLAS, LRMS, etc., whatever we rock him with and the nerf bat comes out again? Face it, he wants to suicide charge 4 mechs of hardpoints and complain when the shred is over? Quit nerfing, start buffing. You could start by either:

1. Make lasers more effective. (less duration time; Pulse lasers longer ranges)

or

2. Fix Hit Registration (LRMS and SRMS hitting when they should would be a great start)

Do both of those before you go mucking around with anything else. Sooner or later you will have to do #2 anyways, and what will you do if (because of every other nerf you've conceived of) LRMS/SRMS are perceived as OP then? Nerf some more?

If the "meta" would be nerfed (preferably pinpoint weapons), the mentioned Rambo would have a chance to survive and your team would need to shoot a bit longer.
But if you make weapons more effective that are not as strong, you will just kill everyone even faster with any weapon.

If weapons are too good, the game will be as fast as Call of duty and Battlefield and armor will make little difference.

[Ellen Ripley]

Quote

...the critical issue that we are looking at... increasing the time to kill...

Quote

...Currently, assaults are a little too agile for what they are... the giant sledge hammers of the battlefield. The two Mechs which are currently above expected behaviour are the Highlander AND the Victor. Now keep in mind, it is not just the chassis that is the problem in this case, the jump jet effects on turning and lift also compound the issue with these two 'Mechs specifically. We will be addressing both issues at the same time...

The time to kill is perfectly fine, as long as the opponents are of an equal skill/experience level and so is the mobility of the Highlander and Victor.

Increasing time to kill & nerfing the mobility of the Victor and Highlander will not solve any of the balance problems this game has currently.

All these two things do is to cater to less experienced / lower ELO players in an attempt to quiet their forum rage.

And it is there, where your real problem is located. So far you more or less threw everyone into one big pot and thought that was going to work out. What really happened was that noone was happy.

As other people suggested, the percieved problems of those pilots can be adressed a lot better by other meassures, like finally adding lobbies to this game and tuning ELO in such a way that less experienced / lower ELO players are not mixed together with pilots that dropped ~9k games and / or are at the top end of the ELO rating scale (something which it is still happening a lot).
(If this sounds arrogant now, please keep in mind that those high ELO/highly experienced pilots do not get any enjoyment out of stomping less experienced / lower ELO players. The closer the enemy team is to your own team's skill and experience level the more enjoyable those games are for everyone. I think the overwhelming mayority of pilots enjoys a good challenge as long as they know there is a realistic chance for them to win if they give their best.)

Enabling people to customize their game experience in such a manner that they can actively and reliably choose their opposition on the one, and making the "random" assignment of opposition (aka. the matchmaker) a fair one on the other hand will take a lot of fuel out of the fire.

Let's face it, it is PGIs neglect and prior unwillingness to have done these things despite the community asking for them for forever now, that is to a good deal responsible for the frustration and rage of the more casual segment of the playerbase.

If we really should finally get private matches in April it will have been over 17,5 month since the end of closed Beta. If you would have listened to your Beta testers back then there would be a lot less crying now.


tl;dr:
Stop trying to adress the symptoms and start dealing with the root of the problems. Make lobbies a reality ASAP and finally fix ELO / the matchmaker.

[RapidFire7]

Good to see some good ideas being tossed around here... as opposed to the latest 3-or-so pages on Paul's thread (20-22). Might reply to some posts on this thread when I get a spare half an hour... nearly midnight where I am now and I'm exhausted!

Also big thank-you to Paul for clarifying the reasons behind his pointing the nerf guns at Highlanders

Here's a few questions for you all (although a few of you have pretty much answered them for yourselves already):
If PGI hired you to be in charge of fixing gameplay balance, how would you fix it?
Do you agree with Paul's intended solution?
Why/Why not?

[Reno Blade]

Time to kill is OK, if you are NOT using ACs and PPCs.
If you see a team with 4 poptart Highlanders (of high skill), you die instantly and can't prevent that.
If you have mixed mechs of all weight classes and without PPC/ACs, you can even survive a mistake.
And that is what makes a match exciting! Surviving with pumping heart in a messy shoot out of lot of mechs.
NOT searching for an enemy and getting one-shot before you can even see how many mechs are there.

My approach to balancing would be brutal and probably too much for most, but here it is described with nice little graphs about DPS, HPS, and all the other values you can think of about ballisics:
http://mwomercs.com/...istic-tweaking/

If only changing ballistics, this is what I'd take as my goal:


But if you want to whole picture, I'd go this route with more changes over the board with ranges and speeds for all weapons:

[Ellen Ripley]

Reno Blade, on 07 February 2014 - 02:59 AM, said:

Time to kill is OK, if you are NOT using ACs and PPCs.
If you see a team with 4 poptart Highlanders (of high skill), you die instantly and can't prevent that.
If you have mixed mechs of all weight classes and without PPC/ACs, you can even survive a mistake.
And that is what makes a match exciting! Surviving with pumping heart in a messy shoot out of lot of mechs.
NOT searching for an enemy and getting one-shot before you can even see how many mechs are there.

This is a PvP game and therefore mistakes should be punished.

Your heart will be pumping if you go against an equally skilled team (no matter what your skill level is). Searching for an enemy is a vital part of playing this game, it's one of the main roles of a team's light Mechs, aka. scouting/reconnaissance.

If you run into 4 "poptart Highlanders" because you where completely unaware of their position and allow them thereby to have a clean shot at you, then your scouts have failed big time.
The problem here is not their ability to kill you in such a scenario because their weapons allow them to, but you/your team failing in the first place, leading to this situation.

If you want this game to be dumbed down to the level where you can survive such a big mistake without severe consequences for your team (losing a Mech/Mechs), then why play a game that is essentially a war game in the first place?
It's war, weapons kill. Please deal with it by learning to avoid putting yourself into situations that allow the enemy to hurt you instead of trying to nerf every weapon in this game to a point at which we basically throw cotton balls at each other.

[Craig Steele]

Ellen Ripley, on 07 February 2014 - 03:31 AM, said:

This is a PvP game and therefore mistakes should be punished.

Your heart will be pumping if you go against an equally skilled team (no matter what your skill level is). Searching for an enemy is a vital part of playing this game, it's one of the main roles of a team's light Mechs, aka. scouting/reconnaissance.

If you run into 4 "poptart Highlanders" because you where completely unaware of their position and allow them thereby to have a clean shot at you, then your scouts have failed big time.
The problem here is not their ability to kill you in such a scenario because their weapons allow them to, but you/your team failing in the first place, leading to this situation.

If you want this game to be dumbed down to the level where you can survive such a big mistake without severe consequences for your team (losing a Mech/Mechs), then why play a game that is essentially a war game in the first place?
It's war, weapons kill. Please deal with it by learning to avoid putting yourself into situations that allow the enemy to hurt you instead of trying to nerf every weapon in this game to a point at which we basically throw cotton balls at each other.

Agree in principal, but completly irrelevant to the casual gamer that logs on for an hour of mech stomping laser blasting fun.

Seriously all those guys the Pro's chew up as canon fodder have feelings you know. They'll take a few knocks for sure, but if all they get to do is look at load screens, they'll be gone soon enough. If you're in denial over that, well I can see why you argue so.

Then what will the die hards do, scream about "failed to find match" screens I expect.

The game has to cater for the majority population or it DIES, which means making it entertaining to the casual gamer.

[Ellen Ripley]

Craig Steele, on 07 February 2014 - 03:42 AM, said:

Agree in principal, but completly irrelevant to the casual gamer that logs on for an hour of mech stomping laser blasting fun.

Seriously all those guys the Pro's chew up as canon fodder have feelings you know. They'll take a few knocks for sure, but if all they get to do is look at load screens, they'll be gone soon enough. If you're in denial over that, well I can see why you argue so.

If you read my posts in this thread again, I'm sure you'll find that I'm very aware of that problem.
That's why I wrote what I wrote about the matchmaker/ELO and lobbies.
If you have beginner or casual player fight against beginner or casual player then you will see a lot less of the current frustration and rage that is going on amongst those pilots right now, even with keeping the rest of the game as it is.

Most of the highly experienced/high skilled players I know do not really enjoy PuG matches as it is right now. If there where the ability to make custom games in this game like it was in MW4, most of them would hang out in those I'm sure and not in the PuG queue.

[Reno Blade]

Ellen, if you want a shooter with one-shot style where tactic is > everything else, please play CS, CoD and BF instead.

I can understand that you want to be competitive and you guys are always a nasty opponent, but you also have to remember that this is a Mech game where you have multiple weapons, multiple different mechs and all of them are armored and should not die in seconds.
Do you have fun moving 5-10 minutes into a good position and then shooting everything to bits in 10 seconds (exaggerated)?
I'd call that a waste of time!

If you can't have "action" (aka. FUN) in a game, why play it? Beeing in spectator mode for more time than in your mech (not even speaking about actually fighting) is NOT fun.

Therefore, I say the balance between moving into position and actually fighting (a.k.a. time to die when combat starts) needs to be adjusted to have more time in combat than out of combat.

All this is because we don't have respawn. If you have respawn, you can be a lot faster back into action (like in Unreal Tournament).
But we have 15min matches and only one mech.
Thinking about future modes that could involve repair and multiple maps without full repair&rearm to fight a scenario, then the whole thing increases even more so.

[Craig Steele]

@ Ellen, sorry. I do read the threads but don;t always associate names. My bad. But I still see your point as being fraught with danger in that you seem to be arguing the further segregation of the players. Thats OK to a point, but sooner or later if those PUG's want agame they get thrown in with the elites anyway.

Now that won't be a problem where the game allows pilot skill to determine the outcome, but that exercise needs to balanced with encouraging the loser to come back and try again. That means entertainign them.

@Reno, yeah I remember a time in MWO when I spent more time loading screens than firing guns. It was very frustrating, about 3 weeks it was. So now I rarely play unless my freinds badger me

[Ellen Ripley]

Reno Blade, on 07 February 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

Ellen, if you want a shooter with one-shot style where tactic is > everything else, please play CS, CoD and BF instead.

This game is widely advertised as "a thinking person's shooter" and yes, therefore it should be that "tactic is > everything else".

Situations like the one described by you in your inital post is defnitely one where a Mech should go down within seconds despite it having weapons and armor, else you take away every reason for coordinated team actions such as scouting or focused fire.

As I'm sure you know, even in such a situation there is still stuff one can do -on an individual pilot skill level- to prolong ones live, such as torso twisting and/or shielding (shielding of course requires one to have a shield side, a point that brings Mech design into play).

And again, if we'd have the level of control over the way we play this game that MW4 offered (lobbies where you could even restrict the use of certain weapons), you could use those tools to design a game evironment that would suit your wishes more (ban all those weapons and/or Mechs you perceive as op), while I and others at he same time could play the game somewhat differently. There would be no need for us to even have this discussion and we could both be happy at the same time with the same basic game. (The same goes for the whole stockbuild/battletech purist vs. Metagame thing).

Reno Blade, on 07 February 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

Do you have fun moving 5-10 minutes into a good position and then shooting everything to bits in 10 seconds (exaggerated)?
I'd call that a waste of time!

If you can't have "action" (aka. FUN) in a game, why play it? Beeing in spectator mode for more time than in your mech (not even speaking about actually fighting) is NOT fun.

Which one is it now, because those 2 scenarios exclude each other...

Edited by Ellen Ripley, 07 February 2014 - 04:34 AM.

[wanderer]

Vlad Dragu, on 06 February 2014 - 11:10 PM, said:

Well, that really makes the thought of spending any real money on this game a major drawback. Hope the devs like the cascade effect this policy creates - meaning less real money coming in. By all means, nerf away - It's your pocketbook being affected!

Boy, if you think that's the case, you'd have wept bloody tears when engine limits went in and suddenly, speedy Awesomes full of medium lasers was no longer the top-tier. Or when Streaks stopped homing on the CT. And so on.

Adjustments will be made. IMHO, it's not the frickin' chassis, it's the combination of systems that need fixing that leave the Victor/Highlander as poster children for the nerf gun firing squad here. The changes don't need to be chassis-specific...they need to be global, to jump jets and jumping in general, to PPC's, and AC's. Change those, and the two chassis need absolutely no specific changes themselves.

[Reno Blade]

Ellen Ripley, on 07 February 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

This game is widely advertised as "a thinking person's shooter" and yes, therefore it should be that "tactic is > everything else".

Situations like the one described by you in your inital post is defnitely one where a Mech should go down within seconds despite it having weapons and armor, else you take away every reason for coordinated team actions such as scouting or focused fire.

As I'm sure you know, even in such a situation there is still stuff one can do -on an individual pilot skill level- to prolong ones live, such as torso twisting and/or shielding (shielding of course requires one to have a shield side, a point that brings Mech design into play).

It's because you CANT survive in that situation that I'm posting and that the "meta" needs a nerf.
If you are not in a meta mech yourself, you are dead in the second you get shot.
There are mechs with less armor than a 80t mech, no JJ, or XL engine. Not to forget anything that needs speed (light/med) that get legged instantly, or outright killed.
Would it be so bad if you had to land multiple shots instead of 1 to get all your damage on target? Wouldn't that show the "skills" of the good players even more so?
But no, point&click is more "pro".

If you want to compare MWO to a shooter, then the meta is running around with sniper rifles and instashooting everyone who is not as fast as you.
Did you play CoD and get permanently one-shot by quick-scope snipers bunny hopping around the map and not even have a chance to use your MP/Assault rifle? That what it compares to.

Ellen Ripley, on 07 February 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

And again, if we'd have the level of control over the way we play this game that MW4 offered (lobbies where you could even restrict the use of certain weapons), you could use those tools to design a game evironment that would suit your wishes more (ban all those weapons and/or Mechs you perceive as op), while I and others at he same time could play the game somewhat differently. There would be no need for us to even have this discussion and we could both be happy at the same time with the same basic game. (The same goes for the whole stockbuild/battletech purist vs. Metagame thing).

Yes, if you don't plan to play Meta in the Pug group at all, that would be fine then.
Would that mean all the "Meta players" would never fight in the other queues/brackets again? I doubt that.

But even when you say, 'its no fun pug-stomping', why are there so many "meta players" who still only play in "meta" mechs like the highlander instead of trying to have fun playing "average" mechs/weapons and maybe proving that its really skill > build?
It looks like win > fun no matter the "cost".

Ellen Ripley, on 07 February 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

Quote

Do you have fun moving 5-10 minutes into a good position and then shooting everything to bits in 10 seconds (exaggerated)?
I'd call that a waste of time!

If you can't have "action" (aka. FUN) in a game, why play it? Beeing in spectator mode for more time than in your mech (not even speaking about actually fighting) is NOT fun.

Which one is it now, because those 2 scenarios exclude each other...

Which two scenarios?
Moving 10 minutes and dieing in 10 seconds vs. beeing a spectator for >7.5minutes?
Thats the one scenario you described (tactics>all killing your opposing team) vs. the typical end of a player facing "Meta players" (in pug matches) (dying early and quick and then need to spectate the majority of the game).

[Fais]

Paul Inouye, on 06 February 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

[color=cyan]I'll chime in here since the write up was well thought out and presented. (Not that other posts haven't been the same, but I'm being prodded by other internal influences)[/color]

[color=cyan]Josef above touched on the critical issue that we are looking at... increasing the time to kill. I'll go as far as saying this... some of the medium and heavy 'Mechs went through a quirk balance pass. This has not happened for any of the assaults. Currently, assaults are a little too agile for what they are... the giant sledge hammers of the battlefield. The two Mechs which are currently above expected behaviour are the Highlander AND the Victor. Now keep in mind, it is not just the chassis that is the problem in this case, the jump jet effects on turning and lift also compound the issue with these two 'Mechs specifically. We will be addressing both issues at the same time.[/color]

[color=cyan]Remember.. the nerf gun is a mid caliber gun... it can do little to medium changes but it's not going to render the targets useless.[/color]

Sounds to me just a bandaid thats goign to leave the Cataphract 3D back as the alpha mech.

[Viges]

Paul Inouye, on 06 February 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

Josef above touched on the critical issue that we are looking at... increasing the time to kill.

Good to hear this is the plan.

Fais, on 07 February 2014 - 05:48 AM, said:

Sounds to me just a bandaid thats goign to leave the Cataphract 3D back as the alpha mech.

3d is pretty good balanced - with heavy weapon pack you will need to use xl and be pretty vulnerable or be very slow. With JJ fixes it will be ok.