74 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

MrZakalwe, on 11 May 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

Out of interest do you think artillery and airstrikes are overpowered?

For a mere consumable that does not take any crit space or weight? Yes. It has BIG damage on top of LUDICROUSLY SHORT arrival time.

And it is crowding out other modules due to being heads above them. In fact, if you are not packing Strike in a remotely serious match you are gimping your team.

Reminds me of pre-nerf Seismic Sensor. Boy, was that cowdung.

Edited by El Bandito, 11 May 2014 - 12:15 PM.

[Aresye]

MrZakalwe, on 11 May 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

Out of interest do you think artillery and airstrikes are overpowered?

From my own experiences against them, including 12mans? No.

For starters, I know I can survive 9-10 arty/air strikes in a row from competitive drops, so even the worse spam is very survivable if you keep your head on a swivel and know how to react as soon as you see smoke.

The only time arty has ever killed me (seriously, 1 time) was when I took a PPC blast to the cockpit shortly before an artillery came down (both courtesy of Lords [thanks guys]), which finished off the last 2-3 points of armor there. I have seen artillery headshot fresh mechs before, but it's definitely not such a regular occurance to call it game-breaking. I might see it once every 40-50 matches of pug play.

Overall I think arty is a waste.

I've bought the MC artillery before for the sole purpose of keeping myself from using it, and it works! With real money spent on an in-game consumable, you tend to not really want to use it unless you absolutely have to.

I think upping the Cbill prices for artillery and air would make it spammed less often, because as of right now, I can drop it every game if I wanted to and still make a profit.

Edited by Aresye, 11 May 2014 - 12:33 PM.

[Roland]

Aresye, on 11 May 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

I have seen artillery headshot fresh mechs before, but it's definitely not such a regular occurance to call it game-breaking. I might see it once every 40-50 matches of pug play.

I've actually killed two fresh mechs with a single artillery strike before. Dropped it onto some mechs sitting near the saddleback on Crimson Straits.

Aresye, on 11 May 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

Overall I think arty is a waste.

Artillery and Airstrikes are pretty much the most useful modules you can possibly load onto a mech, hands down.

[MrZakalwe]

So if they are a waste and not very powerful why are 12 mans full of them? (literally dozens of them sometimes).

People aren't using so many of them because they are weak.

[Void Angel]

BarHaid, on 10 May 2014 - 08:17 PM, said:

Glad I'm not in "completion level" play. I only see a few per game. I put arty on almost every mech I play, and you know what? Often I forget to use it! In the years (years!) I've been playing, I have killed ONE person with an artillery strike. And that was just last week. Finally earned me a "Headshot!" achievement! So no, I do not find them onerous. Don't huddle together like a lemming pack. Don't sit still. Don't complain when someone sneaks the smoke behind you.

This will change as your Elo rises - it's not just a simple case of "don't sit still;" strikes have a decidedly disruptive effect on such things as concerted pushes and defensive formations. Which is nice to have, and no one sane really wants to go back to where they were useless; but we already have a problem with ranged weapons being vastly preferred - they are the. standard. weapons. Now you have the buffed strikes, and they are much more useful for flushing people out into the open - or disrupting a charge - than they are for dealing with dispersed snipers. So now the snipers are even more powerful, and long-range weapons are more preferred. Sure, some people (like me) will take short-ranged weapons, but the majority of players are packing PPCs, AC5s, LRMs, and/or ER Lasers for their serious builds. Add to this the fact that there is literally no other modules that even come close to the utility of strikes and cool shot, and you have a balance issue that does need to be addressed.

All that being said, I do not think we'll see a rework of these modules until the devs get their planned module system implemented (ever wonder why the weapon-specific modules suck so bad? It's because they're intended for a separate class of slot that's not in the game yet.) Just like things that required UI 2.0 didn't get fixed while they were working on the new interface, they're not likely to want to do work just to redo it when the module system comes out, whenever that happens. It makes sense to do things this way - do you really want to slow down the development process on this game even more? =)

[Aresye]

Roland, on 11 May 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

[/size]
I've actually killed two fresh mechs with a single artillery strike before. Dropped it onto some mechs sitting near the saddleback on Crimson Straits.

I've seen 2 kills with 1 artillery before, and I've seen headshots from artillery before, but I've never seen 1 artillery get 2 headshots on 2 completely fresh mechs.

Not saying it couldn't happen, but that sort of situation is so unlikely to happen with any regular occurence that it's pointless to base it as reason for balance changes.

If we're going to make fixes based off rare occurences, we may as well focus on the disconnect issues, because you're far more likely to end up 3 players down due to disconnects than you are to have an artillery headshot 2 members of your team at once.

[Sky Legacy]

the main reason artillery is so annoying is because it looks and acts nothing like real artillery/airstrike. It is cheesy

[Vermaxx]

The entire consumable system is a waste, poorly implemented, and then nerfed to end p2w arguments. The idea was MC only items to provide constant revenue streams. They should have stayed MC only and become worth using.

This is a f2p game, meaning they have every right to find significant ways to entice people to pay something somewhere. At the rate 10 or 25 mc per use items go, you could buy 7 dollars worth of MC and use them for months. But no, PGI insisted on implementing things they promised never to use, and then made them CB also, and then made them enticing to actually get people to use them and validate the work they put in.

I hate getting hit by artillery in a medium - it really fks my mech up and usually at a REALLY bad time. I don't see them often though, and I definitely don't see 10-15 per game.

[AEgg]

Vermaxx, on 11 May 2014 - 04:22 PM, said:

The entire consumable system is a waste, poorly implemented, and then nerfed to end p2w arguments. The idea was MC only items to provide constant revenue streams. They should have stayed MC only and become worth using.

This is a f2p game, meaning they have every right to find significant ways to entice people to pay something somewhere. At the rate 10 or 25 mc per use items go, you could buy 7 dollars worth of MC and use them for months. But no, PGI insisted on implementing things they promised never to use, and then made them CB also, and then made them enticing to actually get people to use them and validate the work they put in.

I hate getting hit by artillery in a medium - it really fks my mech up and usually at a REALLY bad time. I don't see them often though, and I definitely don't see 10-15 per game.

They have every right to make artillery/airstrikes pay only. But it's pretty obvious a huge portion of the playerbase would take advantage of their right to no longer play the game if they did. You simply can't have significant pay only content and have a successful F2P game (well, unless you're a Chinese MMO). If you can pay for an advantage then there's no point in playing for free, and if no one plays for free then you get no new players and the game dies off.

That said, I'd agree that artillery and airstrikes are a good addition to gameplay. They work against the "lets stand in a crowd and wait for ten minutes" strategy that lots of games devolve into. The problem with them is their implementation. As it is right now, you can't use consumables unless you don't need cbills. That's a big problem for something with such a large effect on a match.

I don't know what the best way around it is. Both types obviously should be available for both MC and cbills. The cbill versions simply cost too much to be usable for free right now. I don't know what the best solution is, but an item that the majority of the playerbase can't use isn't it.

To be fair it's very difficult to properly implement consumables into a F2P game. Either they're so cheap no one buys them for real money or their effectively pay only. The only way I've seen around it is selling them time-based (i.e. spend X cbills or X MC on X days of unlimited airstrikes, maybe also with a very expensive MC-only item that gives unlimited airstrikes forever). At least in that case a player who plays a lot can afford to keep them up, while someone who doesn't play as much or who needs cbills more would be inclined to buy them.

[Chagatay]

The only issue with arty/airstrike I have seen is that I have been struck in complete cover (i.e. bunker section, river city underneath sigma area) on occasion which should be impossible unless they added terrain collapse which by the way would be cool and totally awesome. I suspect this is a bug of some sort, hard to test though.

Edited by Chagatay, 11 May 2014 - 06:04 PM.

[Mystere]

MrZakalwe, on 10 May 2014 - 09:12 AM, said:

In game decisions I agree with. Decision between pay or compete? Not so much.

Compete for what, really? We don't get awarded medals. No trophies are handed out. There are no cash prizes to speak of. What real competition is there? What other than bragging rights are there to be had?

[Mystere]

MrZakalwe, on 11 May 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

Out of interest do you think artillery and airstrikes are overpowered?

No. It's just that most of the other modules suck. Therefore, another nerf is not the answer.

[RAM]

Sky Legacy, on 11 May 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

the main reason artillery is so annoying is because it looks and acts nothing like real artillery/airstrike. It is cheesy

You clearly have never seen real artillery or airstrikes then. Not 'cheesy' in the least; real Arty & Air are _FAR_ more devastating.


RAM
ELH

[AC]

DonGardenio, on 10 May 2014 - 08:43 AM, said:

Well all those Founders who own all the mechs and have nothing to use their C-Bills for have to spend on something I guess.

Dude... don't want to burst your bubble, but most of us founders gave up on this game ages ago.

[El Bandito]

AC, on 11 May 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

Dude... don't want to burst your bubble, but most of us founders gave up on this game ages ago.

Yeah, it is depressing to look back into some of the archived threads I made when I first joined. So many Founders who are no longer with us.

Edited by El Bandito, 11 May 2014 - 08:27 PM.