517 replies to this topic

[Galenit]

Cimarb, on 27 March 2014 - 07:08 AM, said:

I am on the "nerf AC" camp, but am totally against ammo changes, as it doesn't fix anything that actually needs fixing. RoF/burst, range and recoil are really the only things that will be worth the work. Of those, range is the easiest fix, and RoF/burst is a pretty simple fix as well.

I think about ballistic weapons (depending on bt) as burst damage pinpoint weapons, they should hold their own characteristics.

The other way would be making them burst fire, what would them make to something like pulselasers with another effect.

I like diversity, i prefer them different to other weapons.


Range to 2x is a clear thing.

Reducing ammo and making ammo a risk would fix them too.
You cant spray and pray, 4 shot a ton for an ac20, 10 for an ac5 would change a lot.
You cant take enough ammo to use them the whole fight, you need backup weapons.
But if you could make good use for your shoots you get a good reward for it.

We have enough spray and pray weapons.

High risk (low ammo, good chance for ammo explosion) high reward (pinpointdamage with high dps) is how i want them and what would let them stay different.

Edited by Galenit, 27 March 2014 - 02:34 PM.

[Pygar]

Remove the stupid "charge time" from Guass Rifles, and either reduce thier cycle time or reduce thier damage if they are still too good.

Otherwise, I would just tell PGI to stop dicking around with this stuff- becuase A: This game is no longer in "Beta", and I'm tired of playtesting stuff instead of just playing the game. B: You shouldn't penalize players in a FPS game for being good at aiming, or for being good at using teamwork. and finally C: Frankly, I feel that most of the people giving you the most feedback here in the forums are giving bad feedback. (If nothing else, please stop doing weapons tweaks until private matches are available.)

You know what I think needs a nerf? Weapons that don't really require aiming, and don't require any teamwork except spamming "I haz LRMs, lock targets for me plz.k.thx." at the beginning of matches.

Edited by Pygar, 27 March 2014 - 03:19 PM.

[Cimarb]

ArchSight, on 27 March 2014 - 02:15 PM, said:

The low heat and the fire rate is what I think is causing autocannons to out perform other weapons.

The burst fire idea is only going to change auto cannons into ultra autocannons which we already have, going to get more of soon, and player's accuracy isn't going to be that bad using them that way either.

Low heat is a defining characteristic of ballistic weapons. Ghost heat needs to be removed from them completely, as it should not be a balancing tool.

Burst fire is not going to make autocannons into ultra versions, but it will break up the damage into more manageable "chunks". Whereas ultra ACs allow you to double the firing rate at the risk of jamming, burst-fire takes the existing damage and splits it into smaller portions.

Pygar, on 27 March 2014 - 03:17 PM, said:

Remove the stupid "charge time" from Guass Rifles, and either reduce thier cycle time or reduce thier damage if they are still too good.

Otherwise, I would just tell PGI to stop dicking around with this stuff- becuase A: This game is no longer in "Beta", and I'm tired of playtesting stuff instead of just playing the game. B: You shouldn't penalize players in a FPS game for being good at aiming, or for being good at using teamwork. and finally C: Frankly, I feel that most of the people giving you the most feedback here in the forums are giving bad feedback. (If nothing else, please stop doing weapons tweaks until private matches are available.)

You know what I think needs a nerf? Weapons that don't really require aiming, and don't require any teamwork except spamming "I haz LRMs, lock targets for me plz.k.thx." at the beginning of matches.

I love the Gauss rifle charge. Once you get used to it, it is a very neat way to differentiate the Gauss from all other ballistics.

Being out of Beta has nothing to do with balance. As a game grows and changes over time, as all good online games will do, they have balance changes and need playtesting. Every multiplayer game is like that. It is a part of the lifecycle.

Lastly, if you think LRMs don't require skill, you obviously haven't used them effectively before.

[Alaskan Nobody]

stjobe, on 27 March 2014 - 12:46 PM, said:

Ten ticks of damage for a 1 second duration beam.

Source?
Also - how does that work with the SL/MPL/LPL's 0.75 second burn time?
(could easily be 5 ticks for the SPL's 0.5 burn, but that feels off somehow)

[MisterPlanetarian]

10 ticks, one every 0.075 seconds. for a total of 0.75 second burntime.

[darrencheesecake]

I would make all AC lose their accuracy at long range and implement a recoil system. These should small in size but balance the AC at long range. AC2 would have the largest recoil and be the most inaccurate at range (doesn't have to be big, just enough to make it balanced) and AC20 has the least recoil and it is slightly more accurate at range.

If they could change the sound of the AC 10 ad AC 20 so they sound like they'll deliver a greater punch that'll be awesome.

[wanderer]

Quote

As most people have massively higher accuracy with lasers than Autocannons, clearly this is not the case.

Yes that is due to even a partial hit registering as a hit, but that was already one of my points. You can adjust with beams, AC hits are hits and misses are always misses. The only adjustment you can make is to fire again.

I hear this a lot. Lemme address it.

It's not even your hit rate that matters here. It's "how much damage do I deliver?"

I fire my large laser four times, getting grazing hits for 3 damage per shot. I hit every time.

I fire my AC/10 four times. I hit twice. Not only did I deal 20 damage vs. 12, I put it in 10-10 instead of 3 damage spread across the target per hit.

I may have half the accuracy with that AC, but what matters is how much damage I did- and generally, you have to be a REALLY bad shot for lasers to be more effective hitwise...which likely means you're missing so much with them that you likely whiff horribly, period.

Edited by wanderer, 28 March 2014 - 05:28 AM.

[Pygar]

Cimarb, on 27 March 2014 - 04:26 PM, said:

Low heat is a defining characteristic of ballistic weapons. Ghost heat needs to be removed from them completely, as it should not be a balancing tool.

Burst fire is not going to make autocannons into ultra versions, but it will break up the damage into more manageable "chunks". Whereas ultra ACs allow you to double the firing rate at the risk of jamming, burst-fire takes the existing damage and splits it into smaller portions.


I love the Gauss rifle charge. Once you get used to it, it is a very neat way to differentiate the Gauss from all other ballistics.

Being out of Beta has nothing to do with balance. As a game grows and changes over time, as all good online games will do, they have balance changes and need playtesting. Every multiplayer game is like that. It is a part of the lifecycle.

Lastly, if you think LRMs don't require skill, you obviously haven't used them effectively before.

Making ACs a spread weapon instead of a pinpoint weapon sounds terrible, the game already has too much damage spreading.

The Guass rifle nerf is also terrible. It didn't need to "feel different" it just needed a slight nerf if anything. (The Guass was always the best weapon, get over it.)

The game is out of Beta, and games can find a balance and stick with it...or even in some cases have bad balance and just stick with it.

LRM boats...oh yeah, I did it like two times and got hella bored, and I've watched plenty of LRM boats in matches where I lost my mech. 1: take two steps forward off back edge of map. 2: spam "I haz LRM, lox pls" into chat. 3: get locks and spam the chainfire button until you run out of missiles or your target dies- totally kidding yourself if you think that requires a lot of skill, in fact LRM boating is a great way to play the game with a sub-par computer that can't get enough FPS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anything, a good AC nerf might be to tone down the range, I saw a post a page or so back that does show that max AC range is actually longer than LRM...and that shouldn't be like that. Beyond that, they really need to come up with a finalized balance and stick with it- otherwise it really kind of feels like they are guessing when it comes to balance or worse, that they change stuff just to promote thier next weekend sale...either way it's unprofessional.

Edited by Pygar, 28 March 2014 - 07:46 AM.

[wanderer]

Quote

Making ACs a spread weapon instead of a pinpoint weapon sounds terrible, the game already has too much damage spreading.

It's already been noted that non-spreading damage is the problem by the devs.

That is, the less damage spreads, the lower TTK becomes. Devs have already stated TTK is too low.

Three guesses what weapons cause the greatest reduction to TTK and why.

[Joseph Mallan]

wanderer, on 28 March 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

It's already been noted that non-spreading damage is the problem by the devs.

That is, the less damage spreads, the lower TTK becomes. Devs have already stated TTK is too low.

Three guesses what weapons cause the greatest reduction to TTK and why.

Its a shame that it is coming to this.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

There have been many suggestions on here. Whatever PGI chose to do is likely to be something no one has mentioned.

[3rdworld]

wanderer, on 28 March 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

It's already been noted that non-spreading damage is the problem by the devs.

That is, the less damage spreads, the lower TTK becomes. Devs have already stated TTK is too low.

Three guesses what weapons cause the greatest reduction to TTK and why.

PPCs

[wanderer]

3rdworld, on 28 March 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

PPCs

2nd best. It's the humble autocannon, thanks to it's higher ROF and relative lack of heat allowing it to keep the dakka rolling. The two combined are pretty much the ideal kill engine in MWO right now, though.

[Ultimax]

wanderer, on 28 March 2014 - 05:28 AM, said:

I hear this a lot. Lemme address it. It's not even your hit rate that matters here. It's "how much damage do I deliver?" I fire my large laser four times, getting grazing hits for 3 damage per shot. I hit every time. I fire my AC/10 four times. I hit twice. Not only did I deal 20 damage vs. 12, I put it in 10-10 instead of 3 damage spread across the target per hit. I may have half the accuracy with that AC, but what matters is how much damage I did- and generally, you have to be a REALLY bad shot for lasers to be more effective hitwise...which likely means you're missing so much with them that you likely whiff horribly, period.

1) If you are only getting 3 damage grazing hits every time using a large laser that sounds like "whiffing horribly" (i.e. beam is on target for 3/10ths of a second only).

2) You're not only assuming that you only graze the target 4 times for only 0.33s each time, the target also has lightning reflexes spreading that damage over their whole body during that time frame! So every 0.11s they are changing their body facing?



The average damage per hit for large lasers is probably more around 50% to 60% for most players, if we could edit out the grazing hits that do less than a certain threshold and just count them as misses that number would likely go up.




I also think this is partially a perception issue. AC 10 =/= LLAS.

They both do similar damage per hit (10 vs. 9), so they have similar Alpha potential.

Their DPS design is completely different due to duration (LLAS = 1s vs. AC 10 = Instant), Recycle (LLAS = 3.25 vs. AC 10 = 2.5).

So as they are currently implemented, the AC 10s are by design better DPS weapons on a 1 to 1 comparison.

Is it fair to compare them on a 1 to 1 comparison though, when tonnage wise they are so different?

1 x AC 10 + 3 Tons Ammo = 15 Tons.
2 x LLAS + 5 DHS = 15 Tons.

Now the combined LLAS has an Alpha of 18 vs. the AC 10's alpha of 10, and a DPS of 4.24 vs. 4.

So a higher alpha, slightly lower max sustainable DPS (4 vs. 3.35 in smurfy), you give up pinpoint damage but gain unlimited ammo for what is effectively the same weight.



To me that actually sounds fairly balanced.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 28 March 2014 - 12:44 PM.

[Harathan]

Prezimonto, on 27 March 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

It won't do anything really for three reasons:

1st, ammo explosions are very, very, uncommon.
2nd, the vast majority of mechs roll with XL engines not standards, making CASE extra pointless.
3rd, no engine crits means you don't really even need a reason to pad your side torsos to protect those engine slots.

Respectfully, I disagree. Ammo explosions are uncommon now because of where ammo is being placed (head, CT, legs). Forcing ammo bins to be in or adjacent to their weapons will mean more ammo bins in torso and arm locations, making it much more likely. XL engines will become a real trade-off of pros and cons, instead of the go-faster button they are now. Finally, ammo crits will do the work for you instead of the engine crits.

[Archon]

Autocannons don't need to be nerfed. I contest that other weapons need to be buffed, ghost heat needs to be done away with, and armor on mechs increased for more interesting battles.

[FupDup]

wanderer, on 28 March 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

Three guesses what weapons cause the greatest reduction to TTK and why.

Do I win?

[Khobai]

deathstar exploded because of ghost heat

[Coralld]

Khobai, on 28 March 2014 - 04:18 PM, said:

deathstar exploded because of ghost heat

Last time I checked, Luke used his FLD weapons into the Death Stars internals and rolled a critical.

Moral of the story? Don't use an XL Engine in something the size of a small moon.

Edited by Coralld, 28 March 2014 - 04:25 PM.

[3rdworld]

wanderer, on 28 March 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

2nd best. It's the humble autocannon, thanks to it's higher ROF and relative lack of heat allowing it to keep the dakka rolling. The two combined are pretty much the ideal kill engine in MWO right now, though.

Really? 20 of the 30 damage alpha is coming from autocannons? Cool.

And saying RoF is important to TTK....lol. That is why AC/2s are beasts right? Right?

Edited by 3rdworld, 30 March 2014 - 09:57 AM.