216 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Deathlike, on 04 March 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

Never met Paul in the game either I think.

I saw Russ during the most recent UI 2.0 PTS.

[Kaeb Odellas]

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 10:26 AM, said:

This is exactly what I am talking about.

OVER balanced is not a GOOD thing, the term means there is absolutely no balance due to the constant tweaking. You talk about PPC's as if this was a new phenomenon. Anyone since closed beta can lead you through a series of weapons that have been the "meta" and finally nerfed to the point of being almost useless. Guass, Streaks, etc, etc.

Man, what?
Streaks were completely broken in CB. Now they're fine. Strong against lights, weak against heavies. Balance.

PPCs were useless during CB, since they were hot and couldn't hit anything. PGI buffed them incrementally until they swung too far the other way and made them broken OP. Now their stats are about where they were in CB, but they can actually hit things now. Still a little too strong for my liking, but better.

Gauss rifles were broken because they were great sniper weapons, synergized well with broken PPCs, and still were extremely effective up close as long as you didn't mount them in a torso section. Now they're harder to use, but still plenty effective at what they were designed for: long ranged sniping. Not useless. Arguably pretty well balanced. Could use better UI.

[Ahja]

You got it about right No Remorse. The weapons in this game are the easy part. The basic stats were laid out thirty years ago. All they had to do is bring them into this game but they had to "balance" them. When I first came to MWO closed beta I thought to myself thank god a PVP game that will not me changing/balance every week. After all who would be foolish enough to change thirty years of beloved franchise and piss off the players who made this game in all its forms great for thirty years. Well now we know who would do that. Get ready for a year of Clan weapons "balancing". *sigh!*

[Void Angel]

This is typical fairy-tale logic about how game balancing is done. As soon as someone says words to the effect of "people complained, so the devs nerfed X," you can be sure that the speaker doesn't understand the balancing process.

Developers do listen to player complaints - then they do their own testing and analysis to determine if there is a problem and how to fix it. Sometimes this fix has been suggested by the player base (the Raven's hitboxes, for example,) but often the developers will come up with their own analysis. This does not mean their solutions are always correct, or that we don't have the right to disagree with them - the last straw for me with WoW was when they told us that it was ok for Hunters to be useless in Arenas and PuG play because they were "well-represented" in ranked Battlegrounds. The point here is that the game is not designed by forum committee.

Did any significant fraction of the player base advocate heat scale? With all the hate you can find for poptarting, why hasn't it been "nerfed into utter uselessness?" Didn't the (ER)PPC need to be nerfed down into sanity? And PPCs are still a very common weapon system - as are Streaks, for that matter.

If you want to understand the state of any game, indulging your ego in fairy-tale storytelling to explain how everything you dislike is wrong won't be helpful. Nor will outright dishonest tactics like poisoning the well against dissent for your pretend explanations. "Dreaded PGI Defenders," indeed.

Deathlike, on 04 March 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

TBH, I see Blastman all the time. If anything, we joke about it. Devs? Ahaahahahhahahaah no.

Never met Paul in the game either I think.

I see them every so often. Not a lot, but I get the feeling they're stretched pretty thin - so they've probably been busy.

[Mechteric]

New weapons don't really arrive in this universe like other games do things with their own IP. Instead where they have a chance to continually create new content is in the form of maps and mechs. Sure we'll get the clan weapons soon enough, and there's a few new IS weapons to come along eventually but the timeline for them is sparse. Light gauss and heavy gauss are really the only ones I care about.

Of course balance with existing weapons is far more important to getting any new weapon anyway, and they aren't quite there yet either.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 04 March 2014 - 10:48 AM.

[DaZur]

Joseph Mallan, on 04 March 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

This is Trolling!

Interesting... This is how I troll.

Edited by DaZur, 04 March 2014 - 10:54 AM.

[Varent]

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

WAY back in closed beta there was a mech, the loathed and feared master of battlefield, the K2 guass kitty. This is where our story begins.

There were so many people who whined and complained that people could actually aim and hit their target with these guns that PGI eventually relented and nerfed the weapon. This is when PGI took that fateful step into submitting to every whim of their player base if it meant another dollar. This, of course, led to many more dollars lost in the long run.

As an aside, I played A LOT in closed beta. Do you know what my favourite mech to attack was? The K2, I would search them out and kill them before they had a chance to wreak havoc. I did it with another kitty, my "Whoosh" cat, two LRM 15s and four streaks, purpose built to kill K2's. If the K2 was lucky he would have my pods off before I got to him, but usually my LRMS would mess his aim up so badly he couldn't hit me until I was on top of him. So the K2 was far from the invincible machine everyone claims, you just had to use... what's the word, oh, yeah, TACTICS!

So with their new powers, the "Whiners Club" joined forces and began to complain about EVERY weapon in the game which killed them in game at least twice. PGI began its blitz to balance this game, not matter what the cost. Patch after patch was tweak this, re-tweak that, oops that was overboard, reign that in, now this is too powerful, wait, no it wasn't, it wasn't powerful enough. "Statistics, bah, we don't need statistics to balance things. This is a game! Why would we use complex statistical models when we can just ask our cadre of whiners, oh, I mean our player base?"

Then they turned their attention to the chassis, oh boy, hit box hell began. Do I need to talk about all the posts on hit boxes? Hit box here, hit there, hit boxes are everywhere. Now you have problem with hit registration, most likely to the amount of tampering with the hit boxes of every mech!

Breathe... okay I'm good, back to the point.

The results of all this mess is PGI has allocated so much time and resources on "balancing" these issues that they have failed to produce a single new weapon for the IS, and have no clue as to how to balance Clan tech. New chassis come out which drastically over power current mechs. On top of that, the forums are flooded with the over righteous and highly indignant whiners club who feel justified in complaining over everything! That's my job damn it!

If PGI could have stayed focus on developing the game like adding features instead of over balancing the hell out of it, we might have actually had a great game right now. But we got what we got, take it or leave it, I suggest the latter. This as much PGI's fault as it is the "Whiners Club" of course, this also led the the rise of the dreaded "PGI Defenders"

I actually get what your saying to a degree. The problem isn't over balancing though. Its more or less proper balancing and rebalancing. That said even with proper balancing there will always be a 'best option' Its simply a fact. Every game has a dominant meta wich most high end players will use. You get it as close as you can and you make it fair for the middle ground and the you let it ride. Proper balancing using means that different things are useful in different areas and the dominant meta then tries to focus on the area where there dominance takes precedence. I would love to see them do more subtle balances wich they seem to be focusing on now.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 04 March 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

I saw Russ during the most recent UI 2.0 PTS.

PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!

[Mcgral18]

Master Maniac, on 04 March 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

People cry when they get shot down by players who have better skill and accuracy than they do, and they whine because there's no single-button counter to it. It's a sad affair.

Ah, but you're wrong, there IS a single button counter, and also a 2 button counter. ACx+PPC and Gauss+PPC. The most effective way to kill, since there is no wasted damage assuming you have a tiny bit of patience and know how to aim.

That's what some of the complaints are, that SRMs and LRMs are rather useless, and all other forms of damage are inferior to FLD because of the pinpoint instantaneous convergence. Since the devs can't get rid of the convergence, the natural progression would be to curb FLD, which some don't want to.

[DaZur]

Varent, on 04 March 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

That said even with proper balancing there will always be a 'best option' Its simply a fact. Every game has a dominant meta wich most high end players will use.

QTF...

The premise that balance = All weapons, mechs, and tactics are equal is a fractured premise. As you eluded to, there will always be a convergence in optimization that net the apex design.

In short... not every sows ear gets to be a silk purse no matter how hard you try to sell it as one...

The problem is everyone has their personal agenda to codify... Which in essence means no two players will agree exactly on what is "balanced".

Where exactly should PGI draw the line in regards to the meta?

Fact is and I will admit this is pure unadulterated hyperbole but I'm not convinced there's not a segment of this community that would not be happy until the only difference between a PPC and a sLas would be the particle effects....

[keith]

PanchoTortilla, on 04 March 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

Yeah there was absolutely nothing wrong with the weapon that generated almost no heat, did extreme damage at all ranges, NEVER exploded like it was supposed to due to a bug, and also had non-explosive ammunition. Despite it clearly NOT fitting core BattleTech rules or PGI's own description of the weapon's explosive nature.

The Closed Beta Gauss Rifle was the textbook definition of broken -> it was not functioning the way the programmer intended and all the Beta testers that demanded PGI take a look at it because it was too good (mostly due to K2 abuse) were 100% correct in their assessment.

PGI admitted it was bugged and fixed it yet we still have ignorant cretins who insist the bugs they exploited were the way the game was supposed to be.

The people you call 'whiners' did their jobs as Closed Beta testers and brought the bugged gauss rifle to the devs' attention. What exactly did YOU do as a beta tester besides remain oblivious to the bug that made gauss rifles the undisputed best weapon in the game which the CPLT-K2 was able to exploit two of?

CB guass was broken because of linear fall off with the 3 times distance. same reason now ac20 does more dam at the same range ac10 does.the core mechanics of the game PGI chose are broken, pretty sure were explained back in CB. PGI did not care and just went on kept adding on "other" fixes to problems. hence the current "balanced" game we have today.

[Noesis]

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 10:33 AM, said:

Who's whining? I'm trolling

[GreyGriffin]

The Gauss Cat's ability to snipe your torso off at 3000 meters, and then turn those dual gausses into the hands-down best brawling weapons as soon as the distance was closed was totally balanced. It was the only 'mech at the time that really had ammo consumption issues, but only because it started running dry after coring an entire lance.

[Khobai]

Quote

WAY back in closed beta there was a mech, the loathed and feared master of battlefield, the K2 guass kitty. This is where our story begins.

There were so many people who whined and complained that people could actually aim and hit their target with these guns that PGI eventually relented and nerfed the weapon.

PGI didnt nerf gauss because of the K2. They nerfed Gauss because of the Highlander. Gauss was nerfed because of Gauss + Dual PPC. Which has just become AC20 + Dual PPC or Dual AC5 + Dual PPC now.
Gauss nerf accomplished absolutely nothing but make Gauss suck in any combination besides dual Gauss. And pinpoint damage is STILL the biggest balance issue in the game.

PGI in their infinite wisdom decided to mess with jumpjets instead of fixing pinpoint damage. If they just fixed pinpoint damage there would be no poptarting because the whole reason poptarts are effective is pinpoint damage. Not only that but brawling would be somewhat viable again (moreso if they upped SRM damage to 2.5 per missile).

Why is it so hard for PGI to grasp that its pinpoint damage thats ruining the game? Poptart meta is dominant because of pinpoint damage. Mechs die too fast because of pinpoint damage. Medium mechs are underpowered because of pinpoint damage. Literally half of the games weapon balance issues are a direct result of pinpoint damage. And for nearly 2 years PGI has obstinately ignored the real underlying problem.

Quote

The premise that balance = All weapons, mechs, and tactics are equal is a fractured premise

Obviously the weapons will never be exactly equal. The problem is weapon balance isnt even close. Ideally weapons should be balanced within +/-10% of eachother. At most an LRM 10 should be 10% weaker than a PPC, since both weapons take up the same tonnage and crit slots. But currently the PPC is several magnitudes better. LRMs are crap because they have soft and hard counters (ams/ecm), give a warning theyre about to hit you, and give you plenty of time to dodge them.

Edited by Khobai, 04 March 2014 - 02:03 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

sry but the Gauss was nerfed at first - during the reign of the Gauss Cat - reducing the HP to 3 points...and the Mech that was hurt was the Atlas....the tiny side torsos of the Gauss Cat was a hard target.

I don't want to talk about touching a working system (LRMs and SRMs - they worked very good (when i did start to play the game - powerful? Yes? Easy to use (maybe, but easy to use and still have enough money after rearm when you didn't abuse the system? No hardly.

Sounds a little bit stupid but the game starts to become worse and worser when non hardliners start to min max the hell out of the game- abusive use of repair and rearm (take the 75% for free - and start with a damaged mech
dragon bowling

splash cats
ppc stalkers

when you are lucky to find a game - where all the other 23 other guys have a mixed load out or don't give a damn about the best and optimum build, or farming or grinding or else - mwo is still very exciting.

[Nick Makiaveli]

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

what's the word, oh, yeah, TACTICS!

That's not just tactics, it's a specific mech/build. Also, if you were only able to take one mech like that, it doesn't sound like a very effective tactic.

Also, they have to figure out where the money is, and work to keep it. It won't make everyone happy, but they have to make money or else no one is happy.

[keith]

GreyGriffin, on 04 March 2014 - 01:39 PM, said:

The Gauss Cat's ability to snipe your torso off at 3000 meters, and then turn those dual gausses into the hands-down best brawling weapons as soon as the distance was closed was totally balanced. It was the only 'mech at the time that really had ammo consumption issues, but only because it started running dry after coring an entire lance.

u fail at MWO. 660 is guass base range doing the full 15 dam. at then the drop off kicks in. the max range is 1980 doing 0 dam. so at 1979 u can .1 dam. how can u snipe off a a full torso at 3k? the problem was the crystal clear maps and sniping at 1000ish range. with each rifle doing 12 or so dam. this giving u a ranged ac20 at 1k. thats y CB guass were nerfed. PGI in a nutshell given todays maps with the horrible fog it would not be such a problem or the other balanced ranged weps. lrms sucked back then.

[Name115734]

Nick Makiaveli, on 04 March 2014 - 02:58 PM, said:

That's not just tactics, it's a specific mech/build. Also, if you were only able to take one mech like that, it doesn't sound like a very effective tactic.

Also, they have to figure out where the money is, and work to keep it. It won't make everyone happy, but they have to make money or else no one is happy.

No, no, I said it was purpose built for K2's, it just so happens that build was damned amazing at pretty much any range and any target. Before I took a break about 10 months ago I had logged over 1.25 Mil xp in A1's, almost all of that was with that build, it was my favourite. Of course, its horrible now, thanks to, say it with me, overbalancing.

[Rebas Kradd]

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

The results of all this mess is PGI has allocated so much time and resources on "balancing" these issues...

This is, without doubt, the first time I have EVER seen anyone claim this. Much less view it as a complaint.

You people can't even agree on what your criticisms are.

[Name115734]

Rebas Kradd, on 04 March 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

This is, without doubt, the first time I have EVER seen anyone claim this. Much less view it as a complaint.

You people can't even agree on what your criticisms are.

No Remorse, on 04 March 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

On top of that, the forums are flooded with the over righteous and highly indignant whiners club who feel justified in complaining over everything! That's my job damn it!