775 replies to this topic

[Taifune]

Thanks!

[Ajantise]

Not enough minerals Paul... to little and to late.

[Sheraf]

Why not bring back the damage to 1.8, but reduce speed to normal. Make the LRM arc more shallow so low cover can block LRM partially just like before.

[Charons Little Helper]

Shredhead, on 24 March 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

No, it's just that against boats AMS is absolutely useless. So in high Elo we just adapted by going back to or staying with sniper builds and being way less aggressive.

Against boats a SOLE AMS doesn't do much. Get a group of 4-5 together - and it'll put a dent in any LRM volley.

[Taifune]

BTW: when is the "next patch"? - Tuesday/tomorrow or next week/1.4.?

[Kyle Lewis]

Corbon Zackery, on 24 March 2014 - 10:10 AM, said:

Good reply,

However, the damage has already been done to the community.

I think it would be better if you lowered the missiles back down to 120ms, and warmed up that public test server, and conducted your tests there instead of in a live running open license game.

I will tell you right now. I have no faith in the staffs ability to balance all the new Clan tech that will be going into the game.

I am also out of Premium time so I see you later on when you have sorted all this out.

I encourage everyone else who doesn't have premium time to do the same. We the community shouldn't have to spend weeks on Paul's little pet LRM blunder project being his lab rats.

just wow... yes lets use a test server that most players don't utilize or log into, so that a small MINORITY of players can have a say in the final product....or we can do it publicly and get it working right faster...

Edited by Kyle Lewis, 24 March 2014 - 01:26 PM.

[Bagheera]

Roadbeer, on 24 March 2014 - 09:27 AM, said:

This you can handle in 2 weeks, but over a year and SRMs... nevermind, I'll leave that for someone else to expand on.

No, that pretty much says it all right there.

[Eddrick]

After thinking about it for a bit. A bigger reason for Higher Elo people adjusting slow would probably be because the Lower Elo people are more use to Missle spam.

[Bishop Steiner]

Paul.

Have you considered that due to the timing of your patch implementation, your data is too skewed to provide any reliable or meaningful results?

You patches the LRM buff while you had a LRMboat trial Stalker in rotation. (Also, you need to speed up the rotation on trials). This means no Cbill, no MC investment to quickly flood the battlefields with LRMs. Then, immediately after, you hold a faction tournament. This did two things: The usual Meta practitioners are using their poptarts in solo play, not premades, thus skewing results, as the remaining premades lean toward the FotM, AND for the ose who look for low hanging fruit, the obvious "ezmode" answer was to saddle up in the trial Stalker, yet again, artificially inflating LRM presence.

Perhaps you should also step back, and examine the loadout of the top performers across the boards in your tournaments, and notice the utter lack of LRM boats there.

Reacting before you have reliable data, is worse than not acting at all.

[Mystere]

Paul Inouye, on 24 March 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

About the interesting find I was talking about:

• Lower Elo players adapted to the changes much faster than the higher Elo players.

Interesting.

The former could have adapted by acting "shell shocked". (jk, jk )

And the latter did not have to, or they did not want to. Not wanting to would indicate that some people were correct on guessing who whined the loudest.

Paul Inouye, on 24 March 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

• LRM use spiked hugely on the day of the change and has been dropping off slowly as time goes by.

That was expected.

Paul Inouye, on 24 March 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

About the reason why the slight nerf? Had nothing to do with the outcry... it was the monitoring of games and seeing the impact on the various types of gameplay that was observed.

I don't believe you.





...

Seriously, though, thanks for the information.

Edited by Mystere, 24 March 2014 - 01:35 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

nice to see a slight change from paul instead of just dialing back 39% and then buffing 80%

now just need to buff SRM too

Edited by Mazzyplz, 24 March 2014 - 01:36 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 March 2014 - 01:30 PM, said:

Paul.

Have you considered that due to the timing of your patch implementation, your data is too skewed to provide any reliable or meaningful results?

...

Reacting before you have reliable data, is worse than not acting at all.

You mean like getting your data about the frequency of solo drops when the social aspect of the UI was so broken as to make grouping an exercise in futility AND during an event where 5 wins gets you a free mech/mechbay.

Why would they pay attention to things like that?

[Jolly Llama]

It was sure nice of you to test a weapon change and run a tournament at the same time. Do you guys even talk to each other or do you just sit around and think of ways to piss us off?

It was sure nice of you to test a weapon change and run a tournament at the same time. Do you guys even talk to each other or do you just sit around and think of ways to piss us off?

[Bishop Steiner]

FupDup, on 24 March 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

#1 sounds very, very strange. One would assume that higher Elo players would be more likely to use "tried and true" powerbuilds like the dreaded poptarts. And, I would *think* that higher Elo folks would be more likely to use cover and other tactics to defeat the newly buffed Lurms than lower Elo folks.

#2, though, sounds pretty normal.

You make a bad assumption there Fup.... that "High Elo" actually equals better player.

Most of the High Elo is based off Win/Loss, remember? And the "winners" are those who ride Meta hardest. Aka, Poptarts, who have not had to invest in actual tactics for nearly a year. (Yes there are some poptarts who ARE very good players, but as with any group they are the minority). And team dynamics, aka premades factor into that more than individual skill, as 4 mediocre but coordinated players will own 4 really good but uncoordinated players almost every time. Since the introduction of Heavy Metal, it's find any form of concealment (not I don't say cover, more on that in a jiff) and play pogostick. Yes, some actually play a mobile poptart, but we are not talking about the cream here, let's face it.

Now how cover vs concealment factors in? Hard Cover has to be relatively sharp angled, and TALL. Canyon Network, some crystal spires in Tourmaline, tall Buildings, etc. To clear those as a popptart required investing in more than 1 JJ. Most Poptarts ran the minimal number need to pop. Thus, since LRms have not been an issue since LRMageddon, the trend was toward concealment (such as the low buildings or rolling lip of the caldera in Caustic), which provided direct fire protection, but were easy to clear when one "popped".

Since the LRM buff, and with NARC, that concealment is now useless in most cases vs LRMs. Most People have either been too stubborn to rethink their Poptart builds or haven¡'t had time (kneejerk easier to beg for LRM nerf), or for the good pilots, simply started using hard cover again, and moved on.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 24 March 2014 - 01:46 PM.

[Renegade Robot]

Paul Inouye, on 24 March 2014 - 09:21 AM, said:

Just to let you all know that I've been monitoring the LRM change and their performance on the battlefield. Yes... they are a tad fast... but far from "LRMageddon". Next patch the speed will be reduced by 15m/s. I.e. net change will be from 120 to 160 (instead of 175). I'm also reducing the amount of screenshake caused by LRM explosions slightly. (0.35 instead of 0.4)

It was important to watch the speed impact in gameplay for at least a week to see the actual change in overall gameplay. As you may or may not know, I do have the ability to remotely monitor specific and random games being played. I spent a large portion of my time last week monitoring gameplay of players of all Elo ranges. There were some interesting finds to say the least in terms of how players adapted to the speed change.

I thank you for watching. I have to know something though. What was your snack of choice while monitoring these games?

Edited by AMT527, 24 March 2014 - 01:47 PM.

[Joe Decker]

I think the main Problem is when many People on each Team are using LRMs with the current Stats. Only one LRM Boat on the enemy Team is a small Problem. Two is a big Problem, quite deadly already. Three or more is sure Death for every slower Mech that does one wrong Step.

Someone compared LRMs to PPCs in this Thread. That is in no Way comparable as a Missile Boat can sit save and in Cover and the Pilot needs absolutely no Skill and does not need to expose himself.

A PPC Sniper at least needs to get out of Cover to a Degree and needs to be able to hit a moving Target. Sometimes he hits but some Shots might miss.

So one Problem is the indirect Fire indeed and that LRMS follow the Target. The Mechanic.

Shooting on Sight is okey and should not be a Problem though.

And a PPC does less Damage on longer Range than Missiles who always do same Damage, no Matter the Range. So what we need is a System that limits the Amount of Missile Boats per Team to maximum 2 of them.

Or better limit the maximum Amount of LRMS for each Team.

Like there should not be 12 Assault Mechs in a Team there should not be 11 Missile Boats and one TAG/NARC Light Mech.

And plz disable the ECM Counter from the NARC Beacon.

Everything else is just fine.

Edited by Joe Decker, 24 March 2014 - 01:55 PM.

[Henchman 24]

Last patch when I saw the numbers, I thought to myself, this is too much, a tad less would be just right, and it's what I heard from many others as well.

I think what made the buff so bad in play...was the AMS range buff, which causes AMS to now spray and pray in a wider arc, wasting ammo and being LESS effective than before.

Combine that with it just turning off it seems when it wants to on some mechs, and the LRM buff became yet another bane. Oh, the "it shoots through schools" feature is still very annoying. You know what I mean, when your AMS goes off while in tunnels, caves, under bridges...pretty much anywhere it's a total waste. Can we get AMS to have a line of sight requirement for activation maybe? Anything to make it seem more capable than a Thalidomide baby.

Other than that, I had no issues really, they seemed too fast...but if AMS worked better, it would not have been a big problem.
Twice, however, my dual AMS Firestarter experienced AMS shutdown in mid-game. It was working fine in both cases until about 500 or so rnds in...then just stopped working.

At one point I tried to position my little mech between assaults with no AMS to be useful...I watched as both died within 100m of me under a torrent of LRMs w/ my AMS doing Blake knows what. It sure wasn't shooting missiles down. That was about when the "Why do I bother?" feeling rushed over me and I just walked away.

[stjobe]

AMT527, on 24 March 2014 - 01:46 PM, said:

I thank you for watching. I have to know something though. What was your snack of choice while monitoring these games?

Tears.

The tears of his players.

[Red Chaos1]

Tw1stedMonkey, on 24 March 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:

All I want is for missiles to actually spread their damage better. With artemis and tag bonus about 75-90% of the missiles fired at a large assault will CT or another single component depending on how you torso twist. That is not an ideal situation. I think making each group of 5 lrms targeting a random "bone" of a mehc like streaks do would go a long way toward culling the complaints about lrms. Frequently I am being hit and losing 40-60 armor in one location with minor if any damage to other parts of my mech from one volley of an enemy team's lrms. I also would like the angles the lrms travel to avoid obstacles to be reduced but I don't know if that will be necessary if they actually spread damage like they should.

So basically you want Artemis and TAG to not do what they are meant to do? Riiiight. Makes perfect sense.

[Chemie]

Paul Inouye, on 24 March 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

About the interesting find I was talking about:

• Lower Elo players adapted to the changes much faster than the higher Elo players.
  
• LRM use spiked hugely on the day of the change and has been dropping off slowly as time goes by.

About the reason why the slight nerf? Had nothing to do with the outcry... it was the monitoring of games and seeing the impact on the various types of gameplay that was observed.

Meaning low ELO jumped into LRM boats and high ELO didn't? What do you mean by adapt?