356 replies to this topic

[wanderer]

Tombstoner, on 29 May 2014 - 07:30 AM, said:

What needs to happen is a fundamental change in the damage adsorption mechanic and how it effects time to kill: currently way too short. To increase it you cant simply increase armor per tone across the board. because armor and speed interact this makes lights much stronger then intended.

The problem has never been needing more armor, it's been that one class of weapons delivers focused damage while all the others don't.

And the fixes were used instead by Paul to create nerfed Clan weaponry instead of making all weapons of the type function in a more balanced manner. GG, Paul. GG.

[HimseIf]

The SRM boost and small laser boosts are nice, but i am not crazy about the ballistic changes or the airstrikes dropping in power. Probably because i am unusual in that i try to adapt a little more than most people do. (there are things i think are overpowered IRL but nobody nerfs them)

[HimseIf]

Dark Radiance, on 28 May 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

Paul, can you give us any update on Flamers? There was something mentioned about buffs or at least balance changes to them back when the Ember came out but no changes have been made. Do you think they're performing up to par after all?

The heat starts small, rising wildly, is that an effect of ghost heat? If so, remove ghost heat from flamers and they should be fine, or at least better.

[Magna Canus]

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.

Thank you very much for that bit of insight. It's always a good thing to remind the forum community that there are real people on the other end of the name. What the poster that incited this comment wanted to say, from my interpretation, was not really if you sat down and played the game itself, but the same game he is playing, e.g. public matches.

The ELO system seems to be messing with a lot of people; some feel they are being pitted against players far beyond their ability, others are disgruntled as they feel that they are being "saddled with the steering-wheel under-hive". There are tons of speculative posts out there about the number of active players being the issue, that we have too few players online at once to keep the ELO average really an average of equals rather than mixing high and low extremes to get an average. Either way it would be nice to put some concerns to rest and reinstate the "Number of players online" ticker. It existed once and would be a great tool of clarity for now and the future.

Weapon balancing; As far as I remember Clan ACs are supposed to be burst fire weapons when they come out. It would be great if eventually all ACs would gain this mechanic. Since the PPC also counts as a projectile would it be possible to apply the burst fire mechanic to it as well? You may have already thought of this, but it has my vote as a significant step in the right direction and away from FLD.

Now that clans are coming out will we be getting the ability to choose a clan as our faction?

Right now I have decided to take a break from MWO after over 2 years of regular play. Recently I get the impression I am a hamster in a wheel, going round in circles without a real goal at the end of the day which is why I am looking forward to the first iteration of Clan Warfare, merc corps, loyalist life, etc. Hopefully the come sooner than later as they will probably mark my return to regular play.

[Shredhead]

Magnakanus, on 30 May 2014 - 01:30 AM, said:

[...]

Now that clans are coming out will we be getting the ability to choose a clan as our faction?
[...]

Russ on twitter:

Quote

Russ Bullock ‏@russ_bullock 10 Std.
Correction June 3rd for selecting of clan factions

[Reno Blade]

HimseIf, on 29 May 2014 - 11:30 PM, said:

The heat starts small, rising wildly, is that an effect of ghost heat? If so, remove ghost heat from flamers and they should be fine, or at least better.

Nothing to do with ghost heat.

I think this is the effect of the so called "heat retention" where the heat generated is higher if you hold down the trigger for over x seconds and as the flamer has no real cooldown you hold down the trigger most of the time.

It works way better if you try with X flamers for a long burst, do some (very short) breaks and use chainfire to cool yourself off.

Edited by Reno Blade, 30 May 2014 - 03:36 AM.

[Magna Canus]

Shredhead, on 30 May 2014 - 02:48 AM, said:

Russ on twitter:

Awesome, thanks a ton!

[StillRadioactive]

Cathy, on 29 May 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

Yup the screen shake changes seemed odd, 2 srm missiles hitting you are not going to shake you up as much as 6 will.
neither would 5 lrms shake you up as much as 20 hitting you full in the face.

An ac10 will shake your up more than the spread of a XB10

if weapon type and not damage or numbers shake you up then, based purely on shake, small launcher spamming you is far more effective

I'd say an LB/10-X is going to shake you more than an AC/10 would, for the simple fact that they fire with the same force, and the LB/10-X doesn't penetrate as much. That means you're getting 10-damage worth of kinetic energy transferred to your 'mech in the first millisecond or so of the impact event, as 10 pellets strike individual armor plates and transfer all of their energy rather than the single slug penetrating and striking concurrent layers of armor plating over the course of 2 or 3 milliseconds.

Sorry to science it up, but... that's how it is.

That said, LRM-5 having the same shake of LRM-20 is bullshit.

[Reno Blade]

Shake is impulse X damage. In case of LRM5 vs LRM20, the 20s will be stronger, as you will have more missiles adding to the shake.
I think the shake is a random direction for each hit (in this case, for each missile) and it can happen that overall one impact feels stronger than multiple impacts.

Imagine 5 missiles hitting you, where 4 missiles will get a shake direction of each direction (left, right, up down). These would negate itself, or half or whatever happens then. And the 5th missile will shake in another direction. This 5th shake might be stronger than the other 4 combined.
It all depends on what exactly happens to a shape if two missiles do exactly the opposite direction for their shake.

Obviously, in this case an LRM20 would have a statistically more even spread amount of directions and could feel less powerfull in one direction than a single hit.

[Desintegrator]

It should be a step into the right direction. At last...
But why did it take months to do so ??

Balancing weapons should be a vital part of a Beta phase !

[Gattsus]

Like it and support it.
Still the PPC/pop-tart are OP.

[Rhialto]

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.

I do play the game, just not on production where I don't have the tools...

That's the problem... you never have the chance to sit EXACTLY in the same seat as us and play our game. You're always distracted looking at numbers you have access and we don't.

It's obvious that you would have to play the exact same game as us with same environnement to experiment and feel what the players are talking about.

I throw this in the air! I propose you randomly pick a players evey 2 weeks that lives not too distant from your HQ and pay him a visit at his home to play MWO using his computer. You can turn each visit into a VLOG. Community would be happy of that I think and you would learn a lot from players, configs, habits, etc.

Silly idea? I don't think so but maybe it's just not possible.

[skorpionet]

WOW, nerf to AutoCannons!? Then give me back my Victors, not these crappy pigs!

[catspider]

So if autocannons have their max range reduced does this mean that min range for PPCs will be increased - to you know keep them long range weapons?

[Reno Blade]

skorpionet, on 30 May 2014 - 06:54 AM, said:

WOW, nerf to AutoCannons!? Then give me back my Victors, not these crappy pigs!

Do you shoot at about effective range? = you will see no difference.
do you shoot your ACs 1.5x the effectie range? you will notice the difference, if you even hit at that range before.

catspider, on 30 May 2014 - 07:02 AM, said:

So if autocannons have their max range reduced does this mean that min range for PPCs will be increased - to you know keep them long range weapons?

Do you use ERPPCs? Does anyone?
PPCs have a very good range and reange from shortrange to long range with only minimal deadzone.
Only ERPPC has longer range which is the reason for beeing ER-.

Rhialto, on 30 May 2014 - 06:52 AM, said:

That's the problem... you never have the chance to sit EXACTLY in the same seat as us and play our game. You're always distracted looking at numbers you have access and we don't.

It's obvious that you would have to play the exact same game as us with same environnement to experiment and feel what the players are talking about.

I throw this in the air! I propose you randomly pick a players evey 2 weeks that lives not too distant from your HQ and pay him a visit at his home to play MWO using his computer. You can turn each visit into a VLOG. Community would be happy of that I think and you would learn a lot from players, configs, habits, etc.

Silly idea? I don't think so but maybe it's just not possible.

Did you see the rest of his post, where he mentioned spectating games on the Live servers?
While it doesnt put him into the seat of a cockpit (where he would get focused by the enemy team anyway!) he probably still sees enough of the pug stomps and meta hording (depending on time and player elo).

Now, be honest. Do you think spectating is enough in this game to see how bad pugs can get stomped, or does someone need to play the game to feel the frustration that can rise very quickly?
I think it can get frustrating very quickly when you get stomped and I think you don't need to sit inside one of the wreckages of the loser team to see that.

Edited by Reno Blade, 30 May 2014 - 08:16 AM.

[Valdemaar]

Overall I like these changes although I'm not thrilled about the AC nerfs. I wish they would have at least put on the test server a build that had burst-fire AC's.

[ZachMan119]

Oh great... more nerfs... just what we need...

[Joseph Mallan]

I'm happy to see the range reductions for ACs. They look much better now.

[WarHippy]

Koniving, on 29 May 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

Notice how the crosshair moves?
Move at different speeds.
Notice if the mech jiggles, the crosshair jiggles.
If the mech hobbles, the crosshair hobbles.
If the mech limps, oh god is the crosshair useless!

Wouldn't it only be fair if that was also true for first person?
We'd have no need for cone of fire or random chance or even delayed convergence.

But even better!
Every mech will have a unique (well as unique as the animation is) crosshair movement. Diversity!
Every mech will automatically have improved or worsened accuracy at different speeds.
Climbing a hill? Welp that affects accuracy.
Falling from jumpjets? Oh god you should see what happens! O_O!
Got shot? WHAM! Crosshair jerks so far to the side that you can miss by almost 75 degrees that if you fired then!

So why the heck isn't it in first person? It's not that different from a headbob.

Something like that could give the targeting computer and the pinpoint talent a use by allowing them to lessen the jiggle. I still prefer the idea of firing one weapon at a time equals accurate and firing multiple causes cone of fire with varying degrees of spread depending on the type and number of weapons, which could also be decreased by the use of a targeting computer and the pinpoint talent.

[Koniving]

WarHippy, on 30 May 2014 - 09:55 AM, said:

Something like that could give the targeting computer and the pinpoint talent a use by allowing them to lessen the jiggle. I still prefer the idea of firing one weapon at a time equals accurate and firing multiple causes cone of fire with varying degrees of spread depending on the type and number of weapons, which could also be decreased by the use of a targeting computer and the pinpoint talent.

Well what used to keep players firing less at once was a lower threshold. 30 threshold means at most you can fire at once is 7 ML (28 heat) while stationary! You know how long it takes for 6 ML to cool even in a cold mech. That's without ghost heat. Meaning if you want to have better use of the weapons, you'd fire them one at a time, or 3 at a time even.

3 PPCs? 30 heat. 2 PPCs? That's 66.67% heat instantly. 1 PPC? That's 33.33% heat.
2 ER PPCs? 30 heat. (And since range is going to matter more, now, this is quite viable as ER PPCs will outperform even AC/5 and AC/2s at range). But it's entirely possible to fire 4 ER PPCs in 10 seconds with ease.

Want to experience 30 threshold? Next time you get a brand new mech 10 SHS, put it on the testing grounds with no changes. That's 40 (not 30, 40) threshold. Now take the time it cools off and cut it by half. That's DHS done right. How much can you alpha strike? Not much at all right? Even with half that cooldown time, would you dare spam your weapons all at once? Maybe sometimes, but never frequently.

Didn't require any cone of fire at all. Problem is we've been asking for that since closed beta.