684 replies to this topic

[Xmith]

There are a lot less skilled targets than unskilled targets .

[Wolfways]

Xmith, on 14 July 2014 - 02:56 PM, said:

There are a lot less skilled targets than unskilled targets .

I don't care how many unskilled players there are if I'm not playing with them. Using LRM's is a PITA for me as my targets rarely get hit by more than the first salvo, if even that hits them.

[Mavairo]

Xmith, on 14 July 2014 - 02:56 PM, said:

There are a lot less skilled targets than unskilled targets .

There can't be THAT many on Team Derp in this game, if with next to no effort on my part, I've climbed up high enough that LRMs that are fielded in heavy numbers are as rare as seeing Awesomes.

[Aim64C]

I would actually argue that LRMs are underpowered in their current state - if only slightly.

Part of the biggest issue with LRMs was pathetic hit detection that failed to actually deal damage to an enemy mech (though apparently the end-of- match numbers said I was doing something when, quite clearly, I wasn't).

I actually argue that the entire mechanic of LRMs needs to be overhauled - but people enjoy their abysmally slow LBXs that can't even guide to a target properly (tail-chase, really? even the pioneers of chinese rocketry knew about the fallacy of tail-chase interception).

But I digress.

I have seen a number of teams fail because of a lack of good LRM support.

And by LRM support - I don't mean standing at next to maximum range, firing at red boxes.

When you know how to play a mech like a Catapult or missile-heavy Thunderbolt - you're shadowing an assault mech and sending volleys of missiles straight over his shoulders and into the target he's pummeling (or that just tried to dip out of sight to protect that fragile side torso).

You're constantly watching the flow of battle and trying to find that light pilot running a circle of death on a mech three times his weight with his hair on fire - and delivering the punch to crack some armor.

Then, in the event your team starts to take unacceptable casualties - you have to both fall back and deliver support at a time when your allies need it, most.

Perhaps it is ELO - perhaps it is just that there are few new players - but I see very few people who are vulnerable to the old LRM stereotype of "fire missiles at red box and get max damage."

A lot of times, while playing my C4, I only hit about 500-600 damage. Which is usually pretty consistent across the heavies and assaults of my team. I usually only empty about half of my ammunition (maybe a little more) in that time frame. Generally speaking - if I'm getting low on ammunition in my C4 - either my team has just been letting me duck hunt all day long with no real desire to kill anything, themselves - or we're dangerously close to losing with a handfull of mechs left.

I haven't broken a thousand in that thing for a very long time - going back to the days when missiles were 1.8 damage (and people complain about them being overpowered, now - I can just imagine the raging Direwolf pilots if missiles were to do 1.8 points of damage, again).

A lot of it is that the targets just don't present themselves like they used to. People are better at using the things called legs that their battleturret is attached to (I was shocked when I discovered these, too) than they used to, and direct fire weapons are far more brutal these days, for some reason (as in - I poke my head up too far and instantly lose half of my weapons).

Damage has been lowered - but it's not as easy to just rain missiles into enemies or to sneak around and dump missiles into their flanks (which is what I loved doing in my C1 - blitz while dumping missiles into their back and carve them up with the quad bank of medium pulse lasers before breaking off).

I ran entire teams with that thing back in the day (granted, some of them who could have done something about me didn't seem to quite know how to go about putting a stop to my spree).

Just 2x LRM15+artemis and 4x medium pulse lasers with nearly maxed armor and the heaviest XL the chassis can hold and 4 tons of ammo (plus heat sinks).

I think, at the time, people didn't know how to address the crazy catapult pilot who charged like an enraged clansman and actually wanted to get inside the minimum range of his LRMs where his pulse lasers were most effective. My favorite prey were stalkers - even with TAG and Artemis, their 60-missile+ swarms could be easily side-stepped in the middle of a charge. Then I'd eat off a side torso before pummeling a Hunchback who just figured out what was going on - only to get his hunch blown off before he got too much firepower out.

It was great. Though it didn't take too long for the meta to begin addressing players like myself - multi-gauss cataphracts and PPC stalkers were gaining popularity at the time for their ability to deal with LRM spotters and insane people like myself.

Then they introduced LRM splash damage and the corresponding nerfs with abysmal damage registry/hit detection ... and LRMs were shelved. Probably until this recent SRM update that I suspect doubled to fix LRMs - though I haven't read all of the patch notes leading up to this point.

My point is that LRMs, as they are, are fine. Their utility is essential in dealing with mechs like the direwolf that will hide with 5 CUAC5 ready to knock the slobbers out of the first thing to walk around the corner.

It shouldn't take the whole team concentrating fire on a single mech to do any kind of meaningful damage to it (already, I would say the amount of concentrated fire needed is on the high side - but I don't think the answer is necessarily going to be in adjusting the values in the spreadsheet - but in adjusting the mechanics of how LRMs work).

There have only been a couple times where I've "died" because of LRMs. I was almost always in an assault. I was almost always after I did something stupid. And I was most probably narced at the time. It would just happen that I would be in a spot where the missile trajectory and the map layout offered little in the way of cover.

I'm just surprised we haven't seen more clan missile boats - since Clans pretty much get free catapults in every chassis.

[ShinVector]

Hmmm.. General thoughts of MWO at the newbie/entry level...

You are:

• Still learning the game...
  
• Lack efficiencies... slower and less agile.
  
• No exp or cbills for ECM or Radar Derp..

Meanwhile in the minds of LRM spammers... "This takes skill newbies !! Die Newbies !! L2P newbies !!"

I can imagine how much it would suck for any newbie who are more interested in brawling than lobbing LRMs.

[Lynx7725]

Just a couple of observations on the new team queue.

I normally don't group, and usually solo. Previously, with a pre-made in the team, there's usually enough teamwork in PUGs that LRMs can be utilized, and sometimes devastatingly so. Nowadays with only solos in the team, the teamwork component is not reliable enough IMO to get it to work consistently.

But more interestingly, because of the bigger groups now available, I drop with a bunch of jokers more often. I usually end up in a heavy LRM boat simply because the boss thinks I know what I'm doing in one. We've had games where the opposing team was good and pushed hard, so fun for all. Well sorta fun. Getting hit by 6 arty/ air in one game gets sort of old.

What I'm noting is that some of these "better" teams/ players actually have very little knowledge of how to protect themselves against LRM attacks. They'd overly expose themselves, do not warn each other of being narc'ed, attacked from a single vector, do not send harassers forward. I'm not sure why, though. Lack of practice, maybe?

[Mavairo]

ShinVector, on 14 July 2014 - 04:55 PM, said:

Hmmm.. General thoughts of MWO at the newbie/entry level...

You are:

• Still learning the game...
  
• Lack efficiencies... slower and less agile.
  
• No exp or cbills for ECM or Radar Derp..

Meanwhile in the minds of LRM spammers... "This takes skill newbies !! Die Newbies !! L2P newbies !!"


I can imagine how much it would suck for any newbie who are more interested in brawling than lobbing LRMs.

LRMs used to do 1.8 damage. In a time before ECM. And in that time they were still considered sub par against competent pilots.
There was exactly ONE time in MWO where LRMs were overpowered, which was the result of a bug that was fixed less than 24 hours after launch where LRMs would land squarely on your mech's head. During that same 24 hours there was also a bug on the literally brand newly introduced Jager where hitting the head was easier than hitting the CT of an Awesome.

When I was first really getting into assault mechs, in my Atlases (and thus with a low ELO, and no efficiencies and this was before Radar Derp modules) in my first few matches I had to deal with LRM boats. I had no issues moving at 55 kph, and avoiding LRM fire, and still getting to grips with the enemy.

It's really just a matter of not being a damn moron. Particularly at the lower ELO brackets where LRM boats consist of guys with a bunch of LRMs loaded in an assault mech firing at max range.

[Kilo 40]

ShinVector, on 14 July 2014 - 04:55 PM, said:

Hmmm.. General thoughts of MWO at the newbie/entry level...

You are:

• Still learning the game...
  
• Lack efficiencies... slower and less agile.
  
• No exp or cbills for ECM or Radar Derp..

Meanwhile in the minds of LRM spammers... "This takes skill newbies !! Die Newbies !! L2P newbies !!"

I can imagine how much it would suck for any newbie who are more interested in brawling than lobbing LRMs.

Absolutely no one other than you is claiming people think it takes 1337 skillz to lrm newbies.

But you have fun slapping that straw man.

[ShinVector]

Mavairo, on 14 July 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

It's really just a matter of not being a damn moron. Particularly at the lower ELO brackets where LRM boats consist of guys with a bunch of LRMs loaded in an assault mech firing at max range.

Just commenting a quite possible new player experience. Everyone can't help being morons at the start.. I know even I was.

Haha.. Hmmm anyway how long ago was this ? I remember being a light spotter for nuking mech especially Atlases during the closed beta days... LRM kills things fast back then...

Now the situation is different.. With the increased speed and target decay at work.. Too bad for the newbies. Can imagine their first thought of their first showering of LRM rain.. "WTF!"

Edited by ShinVector, 14 July 2014 - 07:20 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Actually LRMs are too weak when you have Line of Sight to the target. They are so easy to evade I am really surprised players complain. PGI has really made LRMs a lot harder to use than other MechWarrior games. LRMs are really on the verge of uselessness now, they are only mild support for teammates. I was killed by LRMs for the first time in about two months the other day, but only because the other team had already won 10 kills to 2. So shame on you complainers. L2P.

[ShinVector]

Don't worry crew soon CLRMs will allowed to scaling damage from 0M to 180M so, there should be no reason hiding behind your team mates.

L2P...

[Kilo 40]

ShinVector, on 14 July 2014 - 08:19 PM, said:

Don't worry crew soon CLRMs will allowed to scaling damage from 0M to 180M so, there should be no reason hiding behind your team mates.

L2P...

And I'm waiting for all the whining from the guys who don't think twice now about stepping in front of a teammates LRM boat mid stream.

epic tears will flow when their back turns cherry red an a couple of seconds.

[Lyoto Machida]

Face it...if people think LRMs need to be nerfed, it's because they suck at the game or it interferes with their usual playstyle. Ulterior motives and all that.

The people that suck...that can be fixed for the most part. The other category of players will just keep whining about it though. Those are the players that I'm happy to rain no-skill, scrubtier death upon.

Xmith, on 14 July 2014 - 02:47 PM, said:

My C-LRM15 hit rate is at 29%. Not very much when my hit stats for ballistics and energy weapons are around 75%-80%. Then I looked at the average damage numbers. For me anything over 400 is acceptable. Average damage from the LRMs are at 412 at a 29% hit rate.

Can you imagine what LRMs would be like if hit rates were at 50% or higher?

Yes, LRMs can be OP with a skilled pilot.

CLRMs are not good compared to IS LRMs. I'm at about 40% on most of my IS LRMs but I don't stand like a noob 980m away shooting at mechs I can't even see.

[ShinVector]

Kilo 40, on 14 July 2014 - 09:26 PM, said:

And I'm waiting for all the whining from the guys who don't think twice now about stepping in front of a teammates LRM boat mid stream.

epic tears will flow when their back turns cherry red an a couple of seconds.

Thanks for the heads up... I overlooked that... I await in the sideline waiting for the TK show to happen.

Hmmmmmmmmm.... Dumb firing CLRMs might actually be a fun thing to try.. Long Range SRMS !!

[Monkey Lover]

I can't even lrm to death any mechs anymore without having to cool off a few times. Lrms need a buff.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 14 July 2014 - 10:47 PM.

[Haxburch]

LRM s are fine . I have in all my builds some lrm . Not a boat but 1 LRM 15 or 3 LRM5. I use this in direct view mostly. Ranges 400-200m. Its great for supression and give a chance to cooldown my main wapons. Because there is not much heat. Also its great if u play from secondline and some of your mates block your firearc .

But fire LRM in indirect mode over 600m is bullshit ! waste of ammo . I do not even use ASM all i need is a radar derp-modul on daishi and nothing on greif. Sure my DDC has ECM but this more for the team to bring them in close combat. I ongly play PUG.

[ShinVector]

Haxburch, on 14 July 2014 - 10:54 PM, said:

LRM s are fine . I have in all my builds some lrm . Not a boat but 1 LRM 15 or 3 LRM5. I use this in direct view mostly. Ranges 400-200m. Its great for supression and give a chance to cooldown my main wapons. Because there is not much heat. Also its great if u play from secondline and some of your mates block your firearc .

But fire LRM in indirect mode over 600m is bullshit ! waste of ammo . I do not even use ASM all i need is a radar derp-modul on daishi and nothing on greif. Sure my DDC has ECM but this more for the team to bring them in close combat. I ongly play PUG.

The most interesting LRM build I had seen recently was a fast LRM5 boat Griffin that was carry NARC.
Kinda interesting to see the combo working so well and poptarting the NARCs..

Too bad he was kinda of a lousy mech pilot.

[Tw1stedMonkey]

You can circle jerk all you want pretending to be great players and everyone who disagrees it awful but the facts will remain facts despite your bias. In the PUG queue (which is a pretty good majority based on the only official stats i have seen) multiple lrms racks from multiple mechs (talking about 60+ volleys at a time) with spotter(s) will win the game nearly every time with little effort required beyond looking at a person but thankfully aren't common enough anymore thanks to separate queues. In the group queue balance is a pile of crap anyway because people min/max to hell and mostly just pop tart/snipe/FLD/NARC&lrmspam their way to wins anyway.

The PUG queue is the funnest it has ever been, despite some mostly lrm induced cover humps, now that the tryhards can't ruin it with abusive compositions and far superior coordination compared to people just looking for some stompy robot action without all the commitments. You can actually try fun and interesting builds without abysmal results because everyone isn't using cut and paste cookie cutter builds developed to be least risk/highest reward in coordination with dozens of people and forums. The simple fact is premades were the reason we can't have nice things all along, just like I tried to tell everyone.

I mention all the to counter the arguments that the lrms lack of representation at high level play means they shouldn't be changed. The natural predator to lrms is ECM which is abundant and intelligently used in group play. Good coordination and communication are also key in countering lrm fire. Guess what can be controlled and accounted for when you know who and what your teammates are dropping with. The fact of the matter is lrms need a fundamental change such that they are never overpowering and never utterly useless. This means both buffs and nerfs. Both high level and lower levels of play need to be considered and really the one with the most people playing in it should be the primary concern as far as balance goes. IF YOU WANT A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS YOU APPEAL TO THE MAJORITY OF CUSTOMERS (players) that's kinda business 101.

TBH if they really want to alleviate some of the balance concerns they should put in a game mode with multiple mech (different mechs preferably, not so much just respawning, and preferably with ejecting implemented and required) drops per match with an objective that requires spreading out and takes less time to complete than killing all the enemy team's "lives." Then simple mistakes don't take you out of the match permanently and newer players aren't such a drag on the team as they can still come back to prevent stomps caused by 2-4 dumb teammates running off to die alone leaving their teammates without meat shields or additional firepower.

[Aim64C]

Tw1stedMonkey, on 14 July 2014 - 11:17 PM, said:

You can circle jerk all you want pretending to be great players and everyone who disagrees it awful but the facts will remain facts despite your bias. In the PUG queue (which is a pretty good majority based on the only official stats i have seen) multiple lrms racks from multiple mechs (talking about 60+ volleys at a time) with spotter(s) will win the game nearly every time with little effort required beyond looking at a person but thankfully aren't common enough anymore thanks to separate queues. In the group queue balance is a pile of crap anyway because people min/max to hell and mostly just pop tart/snipe/FLD/NARC&lrmspam their way to wins anyway.

The PUG queue is the funnest it has ever been, despite some mostly lrm induced cover humps, now that the tryhards can't ruin it with abusive compositions and far superior coordination compared to people just looking for some stompy robot action without all the commitments. You can actually try fun and interesting builds without abysmal results because everyone isn't using cut and paste cookie cutter builds developed to be least risk/highest reward in coordination with dozens of people and forums. The simple fact is premades were the reason we can't have nice things all along, just like I tried to tell everyone.

I mention all the to counter the arguments that the lrms lack of representation at high level play means they shouldn't be changed. The natural predator to lrms is ECM which is abundant and intelligently used in group play. Good coordination and communication are also key in countering lrm fire. Guess what can be controlled and accounted for when you know who and what your teammates are dropping with. The fact of the matter is lrms need a fundamental change such that they are never overpowering and never utterly useless. This means both buffs and nerfs. Both high level and lower levels of play need to be considered and really the one with the most people playing in it should be the primary concern as far as balance goes. IF YOU WANT A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS YOU APPEAL TO THE MAJORITY OF CUSTOMERS (players) that's kinda business 101.

TBH if they really want to alleviate some of the balance concerns they should put in a game mode with multiple mech (different mechs preferably, not so much just respawning, and preferably with ejecting implemented and required) drops per match with an objective that requires spreading out and takes less time to complete than killing all the enemy team's "lives." Then simple mistakes don't take you out of the match permanently and newer players aren't such a drag on the team as they can still come back to prevent stomps caused by 2-4 dumb teammates running off to die alone leaving their teammates without meat shields or additional firepower.

ShinVector, on 14 July 2014 - 04:55 PM, said:

Hmmm.. General thoughts of MWO at the newbie/entry level...

You are:

• Still learning the game...
  
• Lack efficiencies... slower and less agile.
  
• No exp or cbills for ECM or Radar Derp..

Meanwhile in the minds of LRM spammers... "This takes skill newbies !! Die Newbies !! L2P newbies !!"


I can imagine how much it would suck for any newbie who are more interested in brawling than lobbing LRMs.

This is where people can't see the forest for the trees.

Let me ask you what MechWarrior Online is.

It's Team Solaris.

There are no 'newbie' objectives. There, basically, is no game other than an alpha game meant to test: "Does this **** actually work?"

This is why light mechs are so rare. The objective is to kill other enemy mechs - light mechs have very little armor and most do relatively minor damage. Those that do any kind of damage are high-risk moderate-reward mechs to run.

There's no game here. You drop, blow things up, and repeat.

This is the absolute core of most of the imbalances in MechWarrior: Online. The fact that there is no game other than "turret-with-leg shoot-em-up." So, we could go back to the wire frame BattleZone games and make them multiplayer - and you'd see about the same depth of play.

There's nothing for a new player to do but face other more experienced players and die.

There's not a good stand-off role for them to take (except, maybe, outfitting their mech with a few LRMs and firing at red boxes for 200 damage a match - which is better than they would do in any direct fire build).

I have never seen a successful "noob brawler."

Ever.

Why?

Because us more experienced players know there really is no "brawling" in this game. Weapons are tiered toward pinpoint alpha damage, and more experienced players position themselves so that they and another player (or more) can contribute to the "brawl."

The only time there is a "brawl" is when one side perceives a numerical or situational advantage and charges. I've seen it happen a few times - and it generally lasts for about 15-20 seconds before one side or the other 'wins' - usually by a landslide.

There is no brawling in this game. What you perceive as being 'brawling' is peek-and-shoot. Maybe in really advanced teams, you're talking about advance-and-cover strategies.

From a design perspective, the game is broken and has no real role for new players to naturally grow into a role. They simply have to choose a role and be the scourge of the team at the bottom of the damage charts enough times to figure out how to play that role.

Which is probably the vast majority of the players I encounter seem to have a pretty good idea of what they are doing with their mech (may not have any idea what they are doing when it comes to infantry tactics - since that is basically what we are doing, here - but you can hardly hold that against them since the game rewards the very behaviors the military tries to drive out of infantry in the first days of infantry school - namely, piling up for a single mortar strike to take them all out or a single machine gun to pin the whole team down).

But, I digress away from the point.

The point is that the game is nothing more than serial deathmatch. Players can dump 50% of their LRMs into the side of a mountain with little consequence other than they lose the match they were either going to win or lose, anyway - then drop into the next match with a brand new mech and set of ammo.

Of course - repair and rearm doesn't work in a game that is nothing but solaris (where you are forced to either win or die ... in a PVE game - this is fine, as the player can logically win every time) for an online multiplayer. You want to talk about a system punishing to newbies.

Which is why, no matter what they do with the weapons (even if they balance the mechanic of those weapons as I suggest), no matter what they do with the mech hardpoints, with jump jets, engines, heatsinks, etc - it will all feel broken and wrong.

Because the game (if it can be called such) is broken and wrong from a fundamental design standpoint.

The Locust was not built to be a "scout" - it was built to be an anti-infantry and light vehicle interceptor. It was not built to confront mechs 5 times its weight in an even-numbered team deathmatch. It was built to slip in behind the battle line and interrupt the support that goes to that battle - the field artillery, the helipads - to destroy mobile repair/rearm stations. It was built to deal damage where the enemy didn't have mechs 5x its weight.

The same goes for many other mechs - they weren't built with the primary focus of "blow up other mechs" - and even then, we constrain many of those mechs and tactics by locking inside of such hideously small maps as Alpine (which is small by war theater standards).

But, I'm pissing into the wind, here.

[Sorbic]

Mavairo, on 14 July 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

LRMs used to do 1.8 damage. In a time before ECM. And in that time they were still considered sub par against competent pilots.
There was exactly ONE time in MWO where LRMs were overpowered, which was the result of a bug that was fixed less than 24 hours after launch where LRMs would land squarely on your mech's head. During that same 24 hours there was also a bug on the literally brand newly introduced Jager where hitting the head was easier than hitting the CT of an Awesome.

When I was first really getting into assault mechs, in my Atlases (and thus with a low ELO, and no efficiencies and this was before Radar Derp modules) in my first few matches I had to deal with LRM boats. I had no issues moving at 55 kph, and avoiding LRM fire, and still getting to grips with the enemy.

It's really just a matter of not being a damn moron. Particularly at the lower ELO brackets where LRM boats consist of guys with a bunch of LRMs loaded in an assault mech firing at max range.

I thought you started with an middle of the road, not low elo rating.