894 replies to this topic

[Gyrok]

Sh4nk0h0l1c, on 22 June 2014 - 09:56 PM, said:

AMEN !!!

PS: I would also add some penalties for loosing a sidetorso in a clanmech... 20*% Speed-reduction + 20*% base-heat ??? !!!

*to be changed in terms of balance...

Anyone??

That solves nothing and introduces RNG, which is inherently bad in a FPS title...seriously...aiming for that left torso? Whoops...you hit the right leg...too bad you would have killed him if your RNG was favorable. Now you took 2 PPCs to the face because he was standing still and died.

You only THINK there is QQ now on the forums...that would fly like a lead balloon for about 2 hours before a hotfix came in and you never saw it ever again mentioned.

Edited by Gyrok, 22 June 2014 - 10:20 PM.

[Shredhead]

Ok, I'll try this one more time.
Who am I? Some of you might have seen me playing alongside the 228th as a hired merc in the first official tournament, so I see myself as a competitive player, though I'm a bit of a newcomer in the NA scene. Our team was infamous at euro play times during closed and open beta, until dissent and player loss let it become a mere shadow of its former glory
I see myself as quite versed in tactics and gameplay issues. Just to give an example, I planned the tactics for the semi finals against HoL.
Let's take a look at the clan tech, shall we?

Lasers.
CERSL, CERML and CMPL are outright better than their IS counterparts. More range, more damage, better damage to heat ratio. Does the increased burn time offset for their advantages? No. It even helps with managing the heat by increasing reload times. All the other lasers only hold smaller advantages, aside from the absurd ranges they can reach. Burn time issues more of a hurdle for inexperienced or bad players, than for experienced players.
Heat for the lasers should be increased to match the damage to heat ratio of IS lasers, while burn time could be toned down a bit to only account for the superior range.
One example:
IS medium laser - Damage 5 Heat 4 D:HR 1.25 D 1 sec Range 270 m
C-ER medium laser - Damage 7 Heat 5.6 (5) D:HR 1.25 (1.4) D 1.2 (1.3) sec Range 400 m
In this case the clan mech can still take as many lasers as before, but pays with higher heat, which regulates the damage output down to that of their IS counterparts. Slightly longer beam duration offsets the higher range, and is really more of an issue at range.
The CERLL should be brought down to lore 750 meters. IS ERLL brought up to 750 meters. All the heavier lasers should get the same treat as in my example.

Missiles.
All clan missiles (with exception of streaks) weigh only half of their IS counterparts, with only half the slots needed.
This should be balanced by issuing less ammo per ton. This is a delicate piece to balance because of restricted pod space, but I'd start at 25% - 33% less ammo per ton. Something like this, or this, should not be possible.
I would then give clan streaks the ripple fire that was proposed by Paul originally, tone down their range to 270 meters and give the CSSRM6 a reload time of 5 sec, adjusting the smaller ones accordingly.

Ballistics
With exception of the LB-X, all CUACs need less slots and weigh less than their IS counterparts. They should get the same treat as the missiles, I think 20% less ammo per ton should be enough to offset their firepower. Same for the CGauss. Jam chance should be the same as that of the IS UAC5. First shot jams have to go.
With these changes you can give all IS ACs burst fire, as they should be on quite equal footing with all these changes.

PPCs
Leave CERPPCs as they are, but give them 16 heat to offset damage, weight and less crit slots. Give IS ER-PPCs 14 heat, 8 PP and 2 arc damage, IS PPCs 10 heat, 7 PP and 3 arc damage.

Targeting computers will pose a problem, they should get tied to the amount of weapons you carry, otherwise the 1 ton TTC will be a must have with no counterpart on IS side.
Clan mechs should also have drawbacks to losing a side torso with XL engine, heat level raise or movement restrictions.

With all these changes clans would keep their unique feel, superior range and have all the lore drawbacks of the clans, aka heat and ammo problems. Also the 2 CERPPC 1 CGauss build would become non-viable. Pilots have to decide between more weapons or more ammo/heat sinks. It brings down the absurd alpha damage that is now possible and increases TTK overall.

Edited by Shredhead, 22 June 2014 - 11:14 PM.

[GreyGriffin]

Gyrok, on 22 June 2014 - 10:20 PM, said:

That solves nothing and introduces RNG, which is inherently bad in a FPS title

How is RNG inherently bad for an FPS title? Most FPS titles only have a bare handful of weapons with pixel perfect accuracy. Reducing the impact of marksmanship increases the impact of strategic skills like heat management, throttle management, and team maneuvering, since you can't just count on blowing out an entire torso in one massive alpha strike shot. Killing an enemy 'mech would require a commitment to engage and a calculated risk. Light 'mechs (which are sufferers according to the OP) would get an enormous buff to their durability through damage spread. Ridiculous mechanics like ghost heat and gauss charge could be ramped down or even eliminated, and a whole new axis of balance would be created through accuracy from both chassis, movement type and speed, and weapon type.

The downside? Sometimes you hit CT on the Atlas at 200m instead of right torso. Should have throttled down if you really needed to make that shot.

[WarZ]

Gyrok, on 22 June 2014 - 07:22 PM, said:

I have contributed to games, but nothing that was outright my "design" from start to finish. I suppose your question, more appropriately, would be what games have I worked on...?

I contributed to balance/design on City of Heroes, though the studio shut down before my work was fully implemented...issue 24 did not release, and my content was to come in issue 25. I designed a psionic melee powerset that was supposed to be in that issue. The .pigg files for the game already had early implementations, though the balance, testing, and full implementation was not done...the animations were ready...and some of the mechanics were hashed out already...but it was not yet complete in the engineering phase...also the psionic defense set had not yet been implemented into the actual game itself...

http://cityofheroes....i/Psionic_Melee

Ha ha !!! I loved city of heroes. Played it from day 1 to close. I do miss that game.

[Lykaon]

JohnSoloman, on 22 June 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

With out a hard point restriction system akin to MW4, this is going to be the name of the game.

Welcome to closed beta.

If we could restrict people from putting PPC into a Mlas or LL mount point you would never see this. Nor would we have had to deal with Gausscats. It would also breathe fresh life into lights and other mechs such as the Awesome.

Ghost heat wouldn't even need to be around any more.

This design choice would end up with those few mechs that in their "native" builds possess the most access to pin point front loaded damage as the most frequently used and those mechs that can not access the "meta" gathering dust.

I would say an ideal design would be a combination of reduction or elimination of FLD mechanics and a reasonably flexable hardpoint system that restricted some weapons from some hardpoints (A Stalker with 6 PPC should never be but maybe a stalker with 2 PPCs is permisable)

Sadly the time for that sort of change was around 19 months ago.At this point I doubt we will see any alterations to the hardpoint mechanics.altering FLD mechanics however may be attainable.

[Torgun]

GreyGriffin, on 22 June 2014 - 10:27 PM, said:

How is RNG inherently bad for an FPS title? Most FPS titles only have a bare handful of weapons with pixel perfect accuracy. Reducing the impact of marksmanship increases the impact of strategic skills like heat management, throttle management, and team maneuvering, since you can't just count on blowing out an entire torso in one massive alpha strike shot. Killing an enemy 'mech would require a commitment to engage and a calculated risk. Light 'mechs (which are sufferers according to the OP) would get an enormous buff to their durability through damage spread. Ridiculous mechanics like ghost heat and gauss charge could be ramped down or even eliminated, and a whole new axis of balance would be created through accuracy from both chassis, movement type and speed, and weapon type.

The downside? Sometimes you hit CT on the Atlas at 200m instead of right torso. Should have throttled down if you really needed to make that shot.

RNG works fine in FPS were the weaponry are fast-fire ones and your opponent is just single torso that take damage equally except of course the head that might lead to "lucky headshot" due to RNG. Having RNG in MWO would be a terrible idea because our weapons have several seconds of reload time and damage are located to different parts of our mechs. An example: you fire an Ac20 round aimed perfectly at the red CT, but RNG decides it goes to RT where there is armor and your opponent survives. So your kill shot was randomized away and instead the opponent aims badly and fires at your right arm. But RNG decides it was a perfect shot that takes out your badly damaged ST and pops your XL engine and kills you. Is that really the kind of gameplay we want in MWO?

Edited by Torgun, 22 June 2014 - 10:59 PM.

[WarZ]

Shredhead, on 22 June 2014 - 10:24 PM, said:

Ok, I'll try this one more time.
Who am I? Some of you might have seen me playing alongside the 228th as a hired merc in the first official tournament, so I see myself as a competitive player, though I'm a bit of a newcomer in the NA scene. Our team was infamous at euro play times during closed and open beta, until dissent and player loss let it become a mere shadow of its former glory
I see myself as quite versed in tactics and gameplay issues. Just to give an example, I planned the tactics for the semi finals against HoL.
Let's take a look at the clan tech, shall we?

Lasers.
CERSL, CERML and CMPL are outright better than their IS counterparts. More range, more damage, better damage to heat ratio. Does the increased burn time offset for their advantages? No. It even helps with managing the heat by increasing reload times. All the other lasers only hold smaller advantages, aside from the absurd ranges they can reach. Burn time issues more of a hurdle for inexperienced or bad players, than for experienced players.
Heat for the lasers should be increased to match the damage to heat ratio of IS lasers, while burn time could be toned down a bit to only account for the superior range.
One example:
IS medium laser - Damage 5 Heat 4 D:HR 1.25 D 1 sec Range 270 m
C-ER medium laser - Damage 7 Heat 5.6 (5) D:HR 1.25 (1.4) D 1.2 (1.3) sec Range 400 m
In this case the clan mech can still take as many lasers as before, but pays with higher heat, which regulates the damage output down to that of their IS counterparts. Slightly longer beam duration offsets the higher range, and is really more of an issue at range.
The CERLL should be brought down to lore 750 meters. IS ERLL brought up to 750 meters. All the heavier lasers should get the same treat as in my example.

Missiles.
All clan missiles (with exception of streaks) weigh only half of their IS counterparts, with only half the slots needed.
This should be balanced by issuing less ammo per ton. This is a delicate piece to balance because of restricted pod space, but I'd start at 25% - 33% less ammo per ton. Something like this, or this, should not be possible.
I would then give clan streaks the ripple fire that was proposed by Paul originally, tone down their range to 270 meters and give the CSSRM6 a reload time of 5 sec, adjusting the smaller ones accordingly.

Ballistics
With exception of the LB-X, all CUACs need less slots and weigh less than their IS counterparts. They should get the same treat as the missiles, I think 20% less ammo per ton should be enough to offset their firepower. Same for the CGauss. Jam chance should be the same as that of the IS UAC5. First shot jams have to go.
With these changes you can give IS UACs burst fire, as they should be on quite equal footing with all these changes.

PPCs
Leave CERPPCs as they are, but give them 16 heat to offset damage, weight and less crit slots. Give IS ER-PPCs 14 heat, 8 PP and 2 arc damage, IS PPCs 10 heat, 7 PP and 3 arc damage.

Targeting computers will pose a problem, they should get tied to the amount of weapons you carry, otherwise the 1 ton TTC will be a must have with no counterpart on IS side.
Clan mechs should also have drawbacks to losing a side torso with XL engine, heat level raise or movement restrictions.

With all these changes clans would keep their unique feel, superior range and have all the lore drawbacks of the clans, aka heat and ammo problems. Also the 2 CERPPC 1 CGauss build would become non-viable. Pilots have to decide between more weapons or more ammo/heat sinks. It brings down the absurd alpha damage that is now possible and increases TTK overall.

Ummm, wow. Though you are trying you really dont fully grasp the disadvantages of the clan weapons. Or the clan mechs restrictions.

First and foremost the burn time on lasers makes them a real b**** to get full damage on target if you have any sense of using cover and not standing toe to toe with an enemy mech in the open. So sure they do more damage. However you more often than not, do not get to have full damage delivered, but you always pay the full higher heat. And of course they spread like crazy with even modest movement.

The burst nature of clan AC's vs IS, just no contest.

Then you come to the mechs themselves and because of all the restrictions built into each chasis, you have mechs that you cant go nuts and build anything with. The most effective builds tend to be mixed builds. You think with those awesome weapon stats that they would be way OP. But when you get down to building the mechs, you end up with builds that are decent to good, but rarely absolutely jaw dropping. And those jaw dropper builds are either so madly HOT, or so heavily sacrificed, or so ammo deficient, or unbelievably slow, that they are well on par with what IS mechs can accomplish.

Here is what I'm seeing most:

A lot of players who do NOT own or play in clan mechs, bitching about how OP they are. You have to PLAY them, not just get mad cause someone owned you in one, and the mechlab says they are awesome.

Edited by WarZ, 22 June 2014 - 10:53 PM.

[Mordin Ashe]

Soooo many words when onl one solution is needed - prevent heavy and assaults Mechs in flight from shooting. Simple as that, and the problem has been sovled. Either give them a huge cockpit shake or anything, just keel the advantages to mediums and lights and take it away from anything heavier.

[Shredhead]

WarZ, on 22 June 2014 - 10:52 PM, said:

Ummm, wow. Though you are trying you really dont fully grasp the disadvantages of the clan weapons. Or the clan mechs restrictions.

First and foremost the burn time on lasers makes them a real b**** to get full damage on target if you have any sense of using cover and not standing toe to toe with an enemy mech in the open. So sure they do more damage. However you more often than not, do not get to have full damage delivered, but you always pay the full higher heat. And of course they spread like crazy with even modest movement.

That's the same with IS lasers. I have no problems holding a med laser on target for one second, so where's the problem holding it .3 seconds longer? You should also not forget that it's free damage at ranges IS lasers can't reach, longer burn time or not.

Quote

The burst nature of clan AC's vs IS, just no contest.

That's why I suggested burst for IS ACs as well. Maybe I should edit my post to make that more clear.

Quote

Then you come to the mechs themselves and because of all the restrictions built into each chasis, you have mechs that you cant go nuts and build anything with. The most effective builds tend to be mixed builds. You think with those awesome weapon stats that they would be way OP. But when you get down to building the mechs, you end up with builds that are decent to good, but rarely absolutely jaw dropping. And those jaw dropper builds are either so madly HOT, or so heavily sacrificed, or so ammo deficient, or unbelievably slow, that they are well on par with what IS mechs can accomplish.

No, they're not. I can provide specialist builds for all clan mechs that outgun any IS mech without getting into a sweat.

Quote

Here is what I'm seeing most:

A lot of players who do NOT own or play in clan mechs, bitching about how OP they are. You have to PLAY them, not just get mad cause someone owned you in one, and the mechlab says they are awesome.

And here's what I'm seeing most. Players who don't acknowledge that IS mechs always have to either sacrifice speed, survivability or firepower and still get easily outmanoeuvred and outgunned by clan mechs sporting XL engines that allow them to lose a torso without any disadvantages (aside from the lost weapons, ammo and heat sinks).

[AussieGiant]

Outstanding contribution by the original poster!

No surprise this thread has gotten some legs. I truly hope PGI is reading this.

[Demoncard]

heimdelight, on 22 June 2014 - 11:30 AM, said:

Clan laser duration needs to be increased.

It's made even funnier by the fact that he's serious, and a handful of people actually agree with him.

[Octavian]

1. OP plays at a level where using anything slightly non-meta is an instant loss and will probably get you ridiculed instantly as well

2. He probably never does actual PUGs either

3. A lot of what he says is contradictory


On a side note. Why is it everyone throwing around the word "lore" seems to think MW4 is the definition of canon BT?

Edited by Octavian, 22 June 2014 - 11:53 PM.

[XX Sulla XX]

Quote

Soooo many words when onl one solution is needed - prevent heavy and assaults Mechs in flight from shooting. Simple as that, and the problem has been sovled. Either give them a huge cockpit shake or anything, just keel the advantages to mediums and lights and take it away from anything heavier.

The problem is not jumping and firing. The problem is the amount of pin point damage that is fired. A 15 point alpha jump sniper is not a problem. A 30-40 point alpha jump sniper is a problem. Just make it so you cant fire PPCs in the air and all these problems are now fixed.

[Thorqemada]

OP speaks many truths though i feel quite different about changes.

Imho all IS-ACs should switch to the Clan-Model of Burst Fire Mode at the current burst duration.
All Gauss + PPC should be charged weapons + "Rule of 2" to any combination of them, cooldwn increased to 6 seconds + 1 second charge up for a 7 second (or more) delay between the shots.
All PPC inside 120m range spread their damage the more the closer the target is and Gauss do not full damage insde 120m bcs the pojectile has not aerodynamically stabilized and counts as ricochet (These Weapons be optimized for very Long Range and thus they need to have a serious Short Range Drawback as well as a Cooldown that offers a Slight Chance to Close Distance to them).
Beam duation for Clan Beam Laser can be increased - Pulse Laser stays as is.

LRM work somehow somewhat, SSRM have a niche and SRM may work again in that envionmnt.
In a non economy environment Ammo Spam is only countered by Ammo Restrictions - though PGI seems to be well with Ammo Spam.

From there on data can be gathered and values adjusted.

Edited by Thorqemada, 22 June 2014 - 11:54 PM.

[TOGSolid]

Torgun, on 22 June 2014 - 10:49 PM, said:

RNG works fine in FPS were the weaponry are fast-fire ones and your opponent is just single torso that take damage equally except of course the head that might lead to "lucky headshot" due to RNG. Having RNG in MWO would be a terrible idea because our weapons have several seconds of reload time and damage are located to different parts of our mechs. An example: you fire an Ac20 round aimed perfectly at the red CT, but RNG decides it goes to RT where there is armor and your opponent survives. So your kill shot was randomized away and instead the opponent aims badly and fires at your right arm. But RNG decides it was a perfect shot that takes out your badly damaged ST and pops your XL engine and kills you. Is that really the kind of gameplay we want in MWO?

Except they're not saying RNG all the time. They're saying you should have to slow down and think more about positioning in order to get pixel perfect shots. This is basically tank combat 101. Pinpoint damage absolutely has its place, players should just have to actually work for it as opposed to what we have now.

Edited by TOGSolid, 22 June 2014 - 11:59 PM.

[smokefield]

i wanted to post here why i disagree with op but warz just posted more or less what i was thinking :

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3496694


and also on clan mechs and weapons i agree with him :

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3497120


to summarize - i have played clan mechs and i have played IS mechs. pgi managed to balance the clans pretty well. they feel more powerfull but you need experience and some skill to be able to use clans mechs/weapons at their full potential.

begginers and low skill players will do bad in clan mechs. regardless of the loadout or the chassis.

I don't think we need to nerf a lot any of the clan assets. we need maybe some minor tweaks. For example my direwolf dies form CT cored always....regardless of my twist. And I do not lose the sides or arms - which means there is a problem. Like LPL clan - duration of beam is too long for a pulse...but these are tweaks. Clan gauss doesnt need to be nerfed. the only mech using a dual setup with succes is direwolf. On the rest you dont have enough weight/crits. ERPPC clan is a very hot, splash damage weapon that require a lot of hs to be able to use it right. And not many mechs can run 2 and have some backup weapons too.

Play the clan mechs and test the loads. you will see that is not so easy to do well against decent players. Play it for 1 month or more then we will see where tweaks are really needed.

[Torgun]

TOGSolid, on 22 June 2014 - 11:58 PM, said:

Except they're not saying RNG all the time. They're saying you should have to slow down and think more about positioning in order to get pixel perfect shots. This is basically tank combat 101. Pinpoint damage absolutely has its place, players should just have to actually work for it as opposed to what we have now.

I don't really think we need more advantages given to bigger and slower mechs, as it it'll simply benefit bigger mechs with more armor to move slower while shooting, while the smaller and faster ones end up having to spray all over the place while running and gunning to stay alive.

Edited by Torgun, 23 June 2014 - 12:13 AM.

[pwnface]

While I mostly agree with heimdelight's original post, I don't think the clan ERPPC needs to be nerfed. The ERPPC/Gauss timberwolf is a much hotter build than the IS counterparts fielding standard PPCs, the fact that no standard PPC is available for the clans is the only thing making it balanced in my mind. We could slightly reduce the heat of IS ERPPCs so that they are actually viable and can be used in longer range sniping engagements against the Clan ERPPCs which have several benefits over the Inner Sphere ERPPC already (slots/weight/splash). In regards to the overall balance of timberwolves hitboxes/movespeed/survivability I agree completely with heimdelight.

To the people suggesting cone of fire or reducing the importance of marksmanship just NO. To the people complaining about "metagame", metagame will always exist whether it is poptarting or something else. If you can't do what everyone else is doing to play competitively it isn't going to change by shifting the metagame to a different playstyle or weaponset. The top players will still beat you because they will adapt and outperform you regardless.

I feel like with the introduction of clan mechs and the SRM fix we are on our way to a pretty fair balance, but there is always room for improvement.

[Charronn]

Leave the Timber Wolf alone.It's a good mech but is NOT op.I've died plenty in it.
Clan ac's are crap,cerppc way too hot,clasers are good but hot.
Clan mechs have been out for less than a week,stop crying nerf ffs.

[Karmen Baric]

You do see Clan Gauss & Clan ERPPC on more mechs, & it will be more common as more become aware of the possibilities and finish playing with their mechs and want to get the most from them. Clan OP weapons really need to be nerfed / changed.