356 replies to this topic

[Dymlos2003]

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 28 May 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

Try making these changes.....

Eliminate Gauss charge and put Gauss rifle recycle rate to 6 seconds. Increase PPC recycle time to 5 seconds and eliminate ghost heat all together. Reduce laser duration to .5 seconds for regular lasers and .3 seconds to pulse lasers. Reduce hill climb penalties and buff acceleration and stopping rates of all mechs by 15%. See what happens then to balance.... I bet a lot of positive things would come from these changes.

Based on what?

[Lightfoot]

I still think the Mechs are too weak to damage. Maybe it's the internal structure although the degradation of the internal structure in the diagram seems ok, so the armor is gone too fast. Not by much, but the mechs are not durable enough.

A lot of players complain of too much pin-point damage, but I see so many players in-game not using lateral movement to spread damage. I also know that as soon as I stop moving laterally in a battle, by getting stuck on a small rock let's say, my mech is almost instantly destroyed by the zeroing in of all the various weapon types. Not sure what can be done, good piloting is as much a part of the game as accurate shooting is, but tougher mechs would certainly help.

[Dymlos2003]

and zero, on 28 May 2014 - 07:23 PM, said:

...so you do play the game..and therefore simply must not understand it at all??? Spectacular. I mean seriously the game balance and state of the gameplay in general has been such **** for so damn long, if you really are playing the game, maybe you just do not understand it? Or are obscenely bad at it?

Just look at your coming 'tweaks' to pulse lasers. Firstly, they will still be ****. And, second and even more ridiculous, you have just been gradually bringing them closer to parity with regular lasers. Wow, what an innovative way to make them viable competitively.

Wow just keep your mouth shut if yoy don't have anything good to say.

[Sereglach]

It is nice to see mostly positive tones in feedback, with some actual constructive criticism, despite the usual negativity that permeates so much of the forums around here. I think most, if not all, of these changes are in the right direction, even if more could still be done. On the other hand, there were a few things I was concerned about.

Flamers: This is mentioned a couple of times in the thread already, but where is their love? . . . Way back I put up a suggestion about them, and it included a suggestion for the Firestarter. I'm still overwhelmingly delighted we got the Firestarter, but a flamer overhaul was also mentioned at the same time (delightedly this came shortly after a moderator posted in my thread).

Any ETA on that overhaul, and what it is, would be greatly appreciated, please. Think of the pyro's out there who are suffering! We need some love! If you need a reminder of what flamers need, just click the link in my signature.

Pulse Lasers: There is some concern in this thread (that I also share) that pulse lasers are moving too much in the direction of standard lasers. As it stands, you're just making our current pulse lasers fill the bill of the x-pulse lasers of canon technology, that close the gap between pulse lasers and standard lasers. They need to be more unique to be more viable. The shortening of beam duration was a significant move in the right direction.

These are in dire need of their own flavor to make them their own unique weapon system. There were several threads similar to this one, HERE, that sought to give pulse lasers their own life. Has a conversion like this ever been considered and/or tested? It would make pulse lasers fit a niche that really doesn't exist in the game, which is a highly potent, DPS sustaining, brawling energy weapon.

[Lootee]

About gddamn time.

Medium Pulses were nerfed with excessive heat just because people were boating large numbers of regular medium lasers. No one boated many pulse lasers in Closed Beta except derpy 7 MPL AWS builds.

They had their heat increased to 5 simply because derr hurr medium lasers got increased to 4 without thinking about whether pulses were good or garbage tier weapons. I'd like to see MPL heat lowered to 4 because they weigh twice as much as a normal ML and has a shorter range. The extra 1 ton of weight and short range are already serious enough drawbacks.

Good for the AC changes too. It just never seemed right for a weapon that's supposed to be a close range powerhouse effective out to 270m to be hitting like a PPC at the PPC's optimal range. Yes if you take AC/20s and nothing else you are SUPPOSED to be helpless against an enemy with a balanced mix of weapons who stays at long range.

IMO these changes are a step in the right direction. What took so long?

Edited by PanchoTortilla, 28 May 2014 - 08:16 PM.

[SirLANsalot]

PanchoTortilla, on 28 May 2014 - 08:10 PM, said:

About gddamn time.

Medium Pulses were nerfed with excessive heat just because people were boating large numbers of regular medium lasers. No one boated many pulse lasers in Closed Beta except derpy 7 MPL AWS builds.

They had their heat increased to 5 simply because derr hurr medium lasers got increased to 4 without thinking about whether pulses were good or garbage tier weapons. I'd like to see MPL heat lowered to 4 because they weigh twice as much as a normal ML and has a shorter range. The extra 1 ton of weight and short range are already serious enough drawbacks.

Take into account they deal 1 more damage too for that extra ton. 6 MPL is quite "hot", its a very nice 36 point damage alpha but you cant do it repeatedly (6ML you can alpha a few times before getting the warning), but its a lot of fun to pop someone with that from a battlemaster. Hitting lights with a 6MPL alpha, makes for a very dead and sad light. With this small reduction in heat and an extra 20m range, they will become slightly better and should be something people should strive to put on a mech, only dropping to ML if you need tonnage for more ammo/DHS.

3+ MPL make for some very good backup guns on LRM boats, and is a nice short duration making it very good for popping light legs.

Totally love seeing this buff to them, since a lot of these "adjustments" are being made because CLAN weapons reach a lot further and would be broken to no end if ballistics kept there 3x range. There Lasers already will have some very long ranges, 200m (opti) for a 5 damage .5t ER Small Laser! 450m (opti) for an ERML!!!! There Pulse lasers are longer then IS ones, but for some reason FASA didn't label them ER despite them having 2x the range of IS.

[Asmudius Heng]

I just worry that a lot of these changes have been suggested for a long long time and now they come in months later.

I know you play the game in various ways looking at data Paul but data and how things work in practice are very different.

Everyone knew that small lasers were too short range and damage to really work ... even with this change they still are unless they do more damage. MPL was buffed a tiny bit a short while ago but EVERYONE knew it was not enough to save that weapon when compared with the regular medium laser due to poor range and way too much heat ... hell I would say it could still use a slight buff to damage but i can wait and see this time around.

Data vs common sense and game experience there needs to be a balance.

On the ACs though ... AC5s were hardly considered a brawling weapon. I feel the AC10 has never been in a great place and now shots over 450m have a more severe damage drop off.

[Aym]

Are Gauss Rifles getting the same max range treatment as AC's?

[crossflip]

Don't see anything I don't agree with.

[Shredhead]

Dear Mr Paul,

Let me start by congratulating to these changes.
I have only one objection to make, regarding arty+air strikes. The tweak won't, sadly, be enough. 35 damage by a shell dropping on your cockpit will still instagib you. This is the worst kind of RnG, and it has to go.

In order to fix the problem without making the strikes useless, I propose following changes:
- Drop damage per shell/bomb to 20 points
- Double the amount of incoming shells/bombs
- Increase the time to arrival of the shells/bombs to 6 seconds (now 4)
- Increase the time of arty bombardment to 10 seconds (now 6)
- Double the rows of falling bombs from air strikes, adjust the spread accordingly
- Revert the area of effect of arty strikes back to 60 meters, increasing this radius is bad for damaged mechs that try to escape out of the zone
- Give an audio warning to all mechs within range of an incoming strike. I'd like a short siren sound or something, not Bitching Betty, as she's too slow talking.

This would bring the cooldown time up to 16 seconds and make strikes a true area denial weapon, essentially working like grenades in a FPS, scatter and take fire or stay and eat the damage.

Sincerely,

Shredhead

[Deathlike]

ShinVector, on 28 May 2014 - 07:11 PM, said:

I don't get you.... LBX kinda sucks at range due to the spread... Reduce damage at range is going to make it suck even more.... LBX at 3x max range versus AC at 2x max range would make an interesting pro/con choice.

LRMs 'nerfs' (not limited to LRMs btw...) are going to be insignificant because they are module based... It going to inaccessible to a significant number of players that do have the GXP, Cbills or module slots to fit them.

If you're trying to fire LBX past max SRM range, you're pretty much using it wrong.

At LBX's optimal range, whatever shot you took is woefully ineffective at hitting the target, and if you did hit the target, you'd be doing the same thing as spreading some lasers to the target.

Keeping the max range for LBX does nothing to help it, neither does nerfing it... because LBX at either max range is like "lol what" in terms of damage (it's 1 damage per pellet).

[VagGR]

Good changes in general...but

Burst fire AC for the clans. Burst fire AC for the innersphere. Reducing the range of the AC5 has ZERO effect on the AC/PPC meta...zero..none.

Edited by VagGR, 28 May 2014 - 09:37 PM.

[White Bear 84]

Paul Inouye, on 28 May 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

I've seen this thrown around a few times now so let me respond to it.

There are a total of 9 different builds of MWO on my machine... all at varying stages of completion of new features.

In 7 of these specialized builds, I can turn on specific debug tools that allow me to see exactly what's happening in the game simulation which is something you will never be able to determine in production (live build). I can also dynamically tune things as the game is running in these builds which is also something that is impossible to do on the live servers.

I do play the game, just not on production where I don't have the tools that let me see exactly what's going on in the game engine. Plus I do randomly play now and then on production and I do spectate players quite a bit when I'm not at work.

And remember, PGI is not a huge company where I sit in my office isolated from the team and just messing about doing this or that. I'm very hands on with the dev team and don't have a lot of time to head up features and play the game during the average workday.

This is why the game needs more public testing - if you or your team are too busy developing as developers do, put the changes on the test server before it goes live to see how it impacts gameplay in RL! Imagine a world not having to deal with QQ about SRM's not doing damage or LRM's being too fast if they were properly public tested before going live!!

Edited by White Bear 84, 28 May 2014 - 10:01 PM.

[Kaeseblock]

Increasing spread on Arty- / Air Strikes and reducing the damage per shell to 35? Seems like a good call.
Overall, I really like the balancing ideas presented.

[Coldblood]

1. Fix HSR, so that weapons do damage when they hit.
2. Tweak weapons to make them all viable.

[Gyrok]

Helmer, on 28 May 2014 - 05:32 PM, said:

Between maxed out armor and internal structure the head has 36 pts of damage it can take. So as long as a pilot doesnt skimp on head armor, they can still sustain a direct head hit and survive (until someone sneezes on their head)



Cheers.

Not sure what mech you are playing,..but smurfy shows 18 armor + 15 internal on every mech I look at, and that comes to 33.

GG

[Dragonosi]

ugh.. burst fire needs to be very.. very cool. cannons are a joy in this game

[AtomCore]

Why arty is 35?! Pilot cabin is 33 max. Make them 30-32 already!
Make the arty's spam not possible! 3 times bigger cooldown or max 4 strikes per drop (24 per 6 min is a hell). Or make them available foe MC only, or 250000 CB per shot.

[MangoBogadog]

The change from 40 to 35 base damage from strike shells is not really helpful at all.

One of the things that makes strikes overpowered is the fact they can and do sometimes hit a mechs cockpit and one shot it dead.

35 damage in one hit will still take out the cockpit just as 40 damage did. This does not help at all.

[Attish]

Well, i m happy for the med pulse upgrade, i used them occasionly but from now, i ll mount more of them.

As for the AC-s, its make sense, but i dont know, how ll the meta change. We'll see...

And hurray for the srm fix, my Kintaro is under heavy dust in my garage, time to call my maid for spring cleaning