12 replies to this topic

[Davoke]

As you could probably guess, and see from the various forum titles and campaign ribbons I've probably got stored somewhere in the back of my now stripped bare AS7-D(F), there's almost too much I've seen in this game. So for once, I've decided to rant. I typically refrain from ranting, since most of what I ranted about has for the most part been better than what I expected; sometimes a bit worse, but hey, that's gaming. My rant today, assault mechs. And no, this isn't a "n3rf AC/5 Daishi OP hax0rz" rant. Its something of the opposite. I've dropped countless times in the Daishi(after a brief check, that's 30. But I'm from the Marian Hegemony and we just started building retrotech mechs, so it's acceptable.) Out of these matches, I've survived 6, and nearly every time I survived I had less than 50% structural integrity left. I've checked my builds, they're either a well-balanced mix of ranges and heat-curves to allow for maximum combat time; a cheesy build for close combat; or a transition sniper, which should rule the late game. Every time I play the Daishi, I feel like something is missing. With 105 points of Center Torso armor, it falls in under 3 seconds to a pair of lighter mechs packing ultra autocannons and a handful of LRM's, and everything other frontal component is at least in the orange. I tried sniping, staying away from the main body to remain somewhat stealthy, I've stuck with the group and focused fire, I've stayed at the back and supported the brawlers. But alas, my chest is nothing but a target the size of an Awesome! So I take out my Atlas, my Banshee, my Victor, I do what I always do and play it smart like a veteran Mechwarrior should. But every single one of these crumbles as soon as I move to engage, and instead of soaking up damage and letting the guy behind me live to slaughter the guy who pummeled me, they cut him down like he's nothing! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MEEEEEEE???? NO NO! ANYTHING BUT THE STRAITJACKET!!! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!!!!!! I'M AN OFFICEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELP!

[Marmon Rzohr]

Davoke, on 27 June 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

As you could probably guess, and see from the various forum titles and campaign ribbons I've probably got stored somewhere in the back of my now stripped bare AS7-D(F), there's almost too much I've seen in this game. So for once, I've decided to rant. I typically refrain from ranting, since most of what I ranted about has for the most part been better than what I expected; sometimes a bit worse, but hey, that's gaming. My rant today, assault mechs. And no, this isn't a "n3rf AC/5 Daishi OP hax0rz" rant. Its something of the opposite. I've dropped countless times in the Daishi(after a brief check, that's 30. But I'm from the Marian Hegemony and we just started building retrotech mechs, so it's acceptable.) Out of these matches, I've survived 6, and nearly every time I survived I had less than 50% structural integrity left. I've checked my builds, they're either a well-balanced mix of ranges and heat-curves to allow for maximum combat time; a cheesy build for close combat; or a transition sniper, which should rule the late game. Every time I play the Daishi, I feel like something is missing. With 105 points of Center Torso armor, it falls in under 3 seconds to a pair of lighter mechs packing ultra autocannons and a handful of LRM's, and everything other frontal component is at least in the orange. I tried sniping, staying away from the main body to remain somewhat stealthy, I've stuck with the group and focused fire, I've stayed at the back and supported the brawlers. But alas, my chest is nothing but a target the size of an Awesome! So I take out my Atlas, my Banshee, my Victor, I do what I always do and play it smart like a veteran Mechwarrior should. But every single one of these crumbles as soon as I move to engage, and instead of soaking up damage and letting the guy behind me live to slaughter the guy who pummeled me, they cut him down like he's nothing! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MEEEEEEE???? NO NO! ANYTHING BUT THE STRAITJACKET!!! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!!!!!! I'M AN OFFICEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELP!

Don't worry. The fact that you notice this merely indicates that you are still sane.

It's not an assault mech problem. It's a meta problem. No matter what you do, what type of mech you play the dominant meta is camping and sniping. If you are not a sniper or light mech there is actually very little for you to do in the opening phases of a match. If your team pushes aggressively then you can join in and blast things, but if they won't you have to wait. You can't poke the enemy snipers or try to make a move on your own. You just take too much damage.

If you play in a lance, you can do much more as a coordinated lance CAN lead a push and advance the game, but if you're solo there is pretty much nothing you can do to alter the flow of the match.

This is the same in heavies and mediums as well. But the bigger the mech, the more pronounced this effect is. You can sometimes get away with doing some crazy flanking and closing the distance in a medium mech, just because you're smaller and faster and most people don't focus on you that much.

This is one of the reasons why leveling my brawling Timber Wolf has been such a frustrating experience. You just have to be soooo passive for so long in most matches.

EDIT: When I say meta I don't mean the loadouts but the way people play matches in MWO. So many players I see play very passively and have little understanding of how to actually win the match, what to do. It doesn't matter if there are a million snipers in the match or none, people still play with incredible indecision and a total lack of teamwork. So few people will actually pay attention to the map and try to support others.

Edited by Marmon Rzohr, 27 June 2014 - 01:12 PM.

[AlexEss]

also it does not help that the D has a CT problem almost as bad as the Kintaro had... Ok slight exaggeration but it is a bullet magnet.

Will probably be tweaked a bit soon.

[Elizander]

Put an LRM 5 on and troll the enemy team's AMS ammo by firing the missiles over them while you wait for the brawl to happen.

[Xenocidez]

Marmon Rzohr, on 27 June 2014 - 01:08 PM, said:

Don't worry. The fact that you notice this merely indicates that you are still sane.

It's not an assault mech problem. It's a meta problem. No matter what you do, what type of mech you play the dominant meta is camping and sniping. If you are not a sniper or light mech there is actually very little for you to do in the opening phases of a match. If your team pushes aggressively then you can join in and blast things, but if they won't you have to wait. You can't poke the enemy snipers or try to make a move on your own. You just take too much damage.

If you play in a lance, you can do much more as a coordinated lance CAN lead a push and advance the game, but if you're solo there is pretty much nothing you can do to alter the flow of the match.

This is the same in heavies and mediums as well. But the bigger the mech, the more pronounced this effect is. You can sometimes get away with doing some crazy flanking and closing the distance in a medium mech, just because you're smaller and faster and most people don't focus on you that much.

This is one of the reasons why leveling my brawling Timber Wolf has been such a frustrating experience. You just have to be soooo passive for so long in most matches.

EDIT: When I say meta I don't mean the loadouts but the way people play matches in MWO. So many players I see play very passively and have little understanding of how to actually win the match, what to do. It doesn't matter if there are a million snipers in the match or none, people still play with incredible indecision and a total lack of teamwork. So few people will actually pay attention to the map and try to support others.

I agree with every word you posted.

[Davoke]

Its just gotten really frustrating lately with these ridiculous range light rapid-fire cannons. You step around a corner to slap someone with a Gauss or laser, and then suddenly its death by a million papercuts.

[ShinobiHunter]

I have noticed that the Direwolves seem to attract even more attention than Atlases. They're magnetic in more ways than one.

[Graugger]

And I just came from a topic where a spider pilot was complaining about getting stomped by a heavy mech .

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I've seen many Daishi die by CT, in another thread I shared an idea and wonder if giving them the Stalker treatment might work?

Here are some crude examples, inspired by this thread and I hope this will continue.

Spoiler

Then give its Omnipods more negative quirks as necessary after adjusting their hitboxes if that type of thing could work.

[Thunder Child]

The problem is not just Assault mechs. Its the entire game mechanics. With the amount of damage potential out there now that can be focused on one location, no mech is going to survive more than a few seconds (if that) in the open. This results in people cowering in cover, because the moment they try to move from cover, they get torn apart. Which would be fine, if we were playing some semi-realistic Modern Warfare type game. But until they find a way to prevent (or at least restrict) the pinpoint convergence of all the weapons on a chassis, this is the game we are gonna be stuck with. Dual PPC + Gauss Pogo-Wolves, and ER PPC/ER LL ECM "Scouts".

It makes me miss the pre-HSR days, when hitting something with an AC required Skill, Luck, Low-Ping (mine is 250+) and the alignment of the stars. But at least people had to get out and fight, and actually had the chance to do so!

[Khobai]

They definitely need to give the Dire Wolf partial Stalker treatment. A Stalker should not be better at tanking damage than a Dire Wolf. Additionally other assaults like the Atlas, Battlemaster, Awesome, etc... all need major buffs. The Stalker and Victor are the only two assaults that are competitively viable.

And yes pinpoint damage is still very much a problem and the bane of assault mechs. All IS autocannons need to be burst. And IS PPCs need to be 6.67+3.33 splash damage. Gauss also needs a reduction in pinpoint damage... either make it 10+5 splash or 10 damage + some kindve armor piercing mechanic.

By taking those steps, that 30 damage pinpoint everyone is so afraid of on the Dragon Slayer would be reduced to a very reasonable 16.67 pinpoint at most. Pinpoint damage reduction is key to making assaults competitively viable.

Edited by Khobai, 27 June 2014 - 08:20 PM.

[Thunder Child]

I'm of a differing opinion regarding pinpoint. I don't think it's the damage itself that is the problem, so much as it's the accuracy and the rate at which it gets applied.
In Tabletop.... Hang on, hear me out for just a moment.... but, in Tabletop, all these damage values were based around a random allocation table, and turns equating to 10secs of real time. Not only did PGI reduce the "Turn Time" to 4 secs (instantly making all TT damage values 2.5x better), they then increased the firing rate yet AGAIN on the smaller weapon systems. They then doubled the armor value to "compensate". The problem is, that although the Damage and Defense are supposedly balanced, we still have the issue between the TT Allocation chart, and the FPS All Weapons on the Crosshair. The TT armor values, even doubled, could never stand up to the kind of strain that gets applied to them in a FPS setting, because they were designed for random distribution.
The only way to truly get that true Assault Mech (or even just giant stompy robot) feel back into the game, is to either rework the targeting mechanics so that getting all of your weapons to line up takes a few seconds on target, or to completely rebuild all the weapon values (effectively Nerf to them death, from orbit, with nukes) so that TTK is increased, and damage output is dramatically Decreased.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Thunder Child, on 27 June 2014 - 08:39 PM, said:

I'm of a differing opinion regarding pinpoint. I don't think it's the damage itself that is the problem, so much as it's the accuracy and the rate at which it gets applied.
In Tabletop.... Hang on, hear me out for just a moment.... but, in Tabletop, all these damage values were based around a random allocation table, and turns equating to 10secs of real time. Not only did PGI reduce the "Turn Time" to 4 secs (instantly making all TT damage values 2.5x better), they then increased the firing rate yet AGAIN on the smaller weapon systems. They then doubled the armor value to "compensate". The problem is, that although the Damage and Defense are supposedly balanced, we still have the issue between the TT Allocation chart, and the FPS All Weapons on the Crosshair. The TT armor values, even doubled, could never stand up to the kind of strain that gets applied to them in a FPS setting, because they were designed for random distribution.
The only way to truly get that true Assault Mech (or even just giant stompy robot) feel back into the game, is to either rework the targeting mechanics so that getting all of your weapons to line up takes a few seconds on target, or to completely rebuild all the weapon values (effectively Nerf to them death, from orbit, with nukes) so that TTK is increased, and damage output is dramatically Decreased.

I agree.

It certainly is a tough nut to crack with where we are now, but I hope that our discussions can at least help give the ideas on where we can take MWO towards a better balance for the future.

And I mean that Clan AC weapons feel like they are heading in the right direction, providing opportunities to continue reducing FLD within the context of current weapons so that MWO can remain fun and challenging as we progress through the Battle Tech timeline.