74 replies to this topic

[Odins Fist]

Just take a break for a while.. I did.

[Wintersdark]

JTAlweezy, on 04 August 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

typical fanboy response. These are similar to people who would let the police into their home without a warrent. lmfao

People leave games. It'll always happen. Saying bye is just that, saying bye. There's no need to argue it - whether or not his reasons are valid (I understand them completely, even if I don't agree with everything). The analogy and fanboy comment, though, is truly terrible and doesn't belong in this thread at all. It's needlessly argumentative and offensive.

Edited by Wintersdark, 04 August 2014 - 11:13 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Lordred, on 04 August 2014 - 08:14 AM, said:

If you still have fun with MWO, please by all means, enjoy. My fun however, has been drained out long ago, each new feature or fix makes this game worse and worse. The only thing I had left that was fun was taking screenshots, and even now that is much MUCH harder because groups of two get placed in the group que only.

Logging off.

~Red

Just take a break. Come back when a new patch interests you. I did that with this last patch when they added the quirks for some of the IS mechs. I was rather underwhelmed with the quirks, but I find I can still enjoy this game in moderation.

[JTAlweezy]

Wintersdark, on 04 August 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

People leave games. It'll always happen. Saying bye is just that, saying bye. There's no need to argue it - whether or not his reasons are valid (I understand them completely, even if I don't agree with everything). The analogy and fanboy comment, though, is truly terrible and doesn't belong in this thread at all. It's needlessly argumentative and offensive.

say a blanket bye has more meanings then you are willing to admit to. I find it just as offensive as you find what i said offensive. Whats your rebuttal now? Oh and I am not sorry for having an opinion.

[Sky Hawk]

It's sad.. I thought, that Lordred is famous enough to do something like:

Game Chat:

Lordred <All> Hi guys, I will take some nice screenshoot, it would be nice, if you kill me as last...
[Red Team Commander]<All>Ok team, you heard the man! Kill Lordred as last...
[Red Team Member]<All>rgr

Very sad... I hope, he come back soon...

[Wintersdark]

JTAlweezy, on 04 August 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

say a blanket bye has more meanings then you are willing to admit to. I find it just as offensive as you find what i said offensive. Whats your rebuttal now? Oh and I am not sorry for having an opinion.

You infer more meanings, that doesn't mean they are meant. There are countless things he could have meant. Being offended by what you infer is one thing. However, your response leaves nothing to be inferred, it's simply offensive and deliberately inflammatory. Anyways, this is off topic, and out of respect to a pilot who I'll definitely miss (despite never having dropped with), I'll leave this be.

[Lefty Lucy]

Koniving, on 04 August 2014 - 09:31 AM, said:

Truth be told, Lordred wasn't someone who had to win matches.

The game just is not battletech. It uses the names and that's about it. The balance is awful, the gravity is warped, the game itself simply isn't what the developer described in the many dev blogs. When problems arise, they do their best to treat various symptoms but not the cause.

For example, the cause of fall damage complications with their newest implementation is that mechs accelerate to a dangerous speed 3 times faster than they should given the established universal gravity. Rather than fixing it (which in turn would make Poptarts easier to hit as they would accelerate downward slower and virtually 'stop' in air during the transition from upward inertia to gravity's pull, thus truly addressing the poptart situation while preventing mechs from breaking their legs for 'walking down the stairs' on a 3 meter fall), PGI adjusted it to give us a 6 meter buffer for lights.

Gauss Rifles are fine, but PPCs have been an issue since they began to register hits. Convoluted mechanics were built to bandage the problem rather than fix the core issue of heat threshold being ridiculous. (With 30 threshold, it's 15 seconds to cool to zero with 10 true DHS, 30 seconds with 10 SHS. Funny enough the very reason SHS is useless in this game is that it takes 40 seconds to cool with them with 10 SHS and no unlocks and LONGER after unlocks despite faster cooling; and no matter what it will always have LESS alpha strike potential than an equivalent amount of DHS. It takes 10 DHS with a 250 engine only 25 seconds with no unlocks. But if you have a 180 engine and 10 DHS it takes 25.5 seconds to cool with a smaller threshold [so for a light mech with a 180 engine as many can't equip more than a 235 engine, you are made virtually worthless], meaning you cannot fire as much in addition to having weaker armor and many other issues). Threshold But ultimately, the PPC issue is always ignored.

One could go on and on, about issues where assaults and heavies are the mainstay, where lights of 20 and 35 tons could have even chances when it came to armor (Locust and Jenner D come to mind), where lore is ignored, where objectives are of such little significance that it is actually considered "Trolling" to play to them as it makes BOTH teams lose potential money to accomplish the objective.

Long range weapons keep getting reduced heat, Clan brawling weapons are about at canon values for heat, but IS brawling lasers are ABOVE canon values for heat, meaning they are too hot and unable to properly compete.
Example:

• Canon values for IS ML and SL: 3 heat, 1 heat.
  
• MWO values for IS ML and SL: 4 heat, 2 heat.
  
• Canon values for Clan ER ML and ER SL: 5 heat and 3 heat.
  
• MWO values for Clan ER ML and ER SL: 5 heat and 3 heat).
  
• Canon values for universal ER LL: 12 heat. 2 damage greater for Clan.
  
• MWO values for universal ER LL: 8.5 heat, 2.25 damage greater for Clan.
  
• Canon values for LPL heat: 10 heat. (IS LPL was 9 damage and Clan was 10 damage).
  
• MWO values for LPL: 8 heat. (IS LPL does 10.6 damage and Clan was 11.8...why?)

Everything values long range. Everything. It's more damage, more efficient, etc. In MWO long range is everything which is very poor for game balance and instead encourages un-fun camp festivals where the greatest and most range-enhanced light show is the only thing to do. Even the weapon modules ONLY enhance range. Nothing else. Range only. That's the only thing that has any value in this game. Targeting computers enhance range, modules enhance range. Know what enhances firing speed or makes guns run cooler? Nothing that you can get (without a faux skill tree full of 'skills' of which many don't work and all are generic and over-enhancing).


Where Battletech valued close range, everything was better the closer you got. MLs were loads better than an ER LL as you could fire 4 ML for every ER LL in terms of heat. Here in MWO, you can't even fire 2 ML within the heat of 1 ER LL. Want to know why brawling is dead? It's not efficient.

Information warfare has had many missed opportunities. ECM could have been a gold mine of dynamic gameplay opportunities. Instead it's a cloaking device (which btw ECM could NOT jam or stop anything beyond 180 meters except Artemis, NARC, BAP, and Thermal/MAG/Night Vision modes as well as active radar. Didn't do jack to passive basic on-sight sensors which...interestingly enough... is ALL MWO has; a module giving advanced range is not advanced sensors. Active area radar is.)

Role warfare, truth be told... if a game has to bribe players to play their roles then clearly the game has failed to provide the tools to play those roles. Every time a new role is introduced, it's promptly hammered down on. (See 6 AC/2 Jagermech fire suppression, see glass cannons, see ghost heat, see just about everything that doesn't involve a PPC).

I'm personally discouraged, but will wait to let PGI try to redeem itself with CW. Though right now the balance while 'close' to what they envision... is little more than a pop-tart festival. I miss closed beta. The game was tactical and actually was the thinking person's shooter, with time-delayed convergence handling pinpoint issues, low thresholds, mechs that handled like mechs rather than gundams, and a medium mech at 64.8 kph and a light mech at 81 kph were viable pieces of equipment that could confront and take down Atlases with skill and cunning.

Eh, I think you're viewing CB with very, very rose-colored goggles, but I totally agree that the game is a mess. I thought he was saying that he was leaving because groups of 2 have a hard time of it in the group queue, but that seems like it's not the case.

[JTAlweezy]

Wintersdark, on 04 August 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

You infer more meanings, that doesn't mean they are meant. There are countless things he could have meant. Being offended by what you infer is one thing. However, your response leaves nothing to be inferred, it's simply offensive and deliberately inflammatory. Anyways, this is off topic, and out of respect to a pilot who I'll definitely miss (despite never having dropped with), I'll leave this be.

I agree, I just wnat to say I feel his Bye was insulting to Lorde thats why I posted what I posted. But He will be missed for sure.

[Koniving]

Lefty Lucy, on 04 August 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

Eh, I think you're viewing CB with very, very rose-colored goggles, but I totally agree that the game is a mess. I thought he was saying that he was leaving because groups of 2 have a hard time of it in the group queue, but that seems like it's not the case.

CB wasn't perfect, but at least it was closer to BT.

Spoiler

Delayed convergence helped with the pinpoint issues. Minimap had a delay, so information wasn't instant. You'd know about a target spotting shortly after someone else did generating a tiered response.

Scout detects a mechIt gets sent to neighboring units over time rather than instantly, making the scout Valuable. After all, if you are 1,000 meters ahead of the others and make a detection, about a second later the next unit (400 meters away from you) will have it. He transfers the information to the next player (500 meters away from him; 900 meters away from you), and then from there the information is sent to the others and then they all react. So if an enemy got detected then he had time to stop this process, denying information to your team.

An actual heat penalty. If you rode above 80% heat for 1 second or longer, you began to systematically receive damage across your weapon systems, ammunition, engine, and heatsinks at 1 damage per second to 1 internal equipment. This meant your heatsinks, weapons, and ammo could be destroyed without you ever losing your armor due to excessive firepower; this made people chain fire even when DHS came around, and was shifted to 95% in October 2012 [which almost never happened as no one stayed above it for long], and the overheat system overhauled in January 2013 to do damage to the mech itself.

It also had problems.

As for Lordred, the hard time in the group queue is the last straw, the tip of the ice berg.

The only thing that was fun anymore was taking screenshots. But now to take screenshots of someone you gotta go into the group queue and the only way to play there is pure meta. And the meta is boring as hell. There is nothing more boring than taking potshots at someone from across the map and then dying by LRMs or instantly being killed in a single shot after a 15-minute-wait to get into a match because "Commandos are not viable."

If you don't have 35+ tons, you can barely find a match in the group queue and when you do, bam one shot you're dead.
Bring something that isn't 55 tons, and unless you're in a Clan mech or a jump-jet capable mech, bam one shot you're dead.

If you take a 3 meter step by turning off a ramp prematurely to avoid the instant kill twin PPC + AC/5 heading your way and bam there goes 2% of your overall health and the armor on your legs is borked. Wait, the enemy at 80 tons fell 159 meters after a full jumpjet boost and only lost 5%? Weren't they supposed to take damage easier? My own Stalker takes 3% for a 3 meter fall, and at 100 meters I take 4 to 5%.

It isn't weighing right, and supposedly they go through all this rigorous testing but fail to find issue after issue with game balance tweaks, and when it's found it's simply ignored unless it prevents people from playing or paying.

So many simple yet viable ideas have been thrown out there. PGI even listened to one, starting a hitbox overhaul. Then one day in December "We didn't do it because someone went on vacation." Next month through the rest of the year, nothing. Not a single other mech has been fixed ever since November 2013. The Jenner is still a walking center torso and the latest changes in missiles means with 3 SRM-6 packs you can instantly destroy a Jenner by front CT and exclusively CT; from ANY angle including directly behind it.

Don't forget perfect convergence.

(Shot by Lordred), see how the convergence is perfect...but the arms aren't even adjusted to make it happen?


Shot by Koniving (from video). Now c'mon, how is THAT possible?

This should be what happens.


Oh wait, think that's bad enough? This is the unflexible, immoveable torso mounted AC barrel... watch this convergence! Doesn't even start from the barrel anymore, THAT is how broken the game's pinpoint is.


The issues with the game run deep and the scars will last. I'm just hoping that PGI will think of the actual game with the vigor and innovation of the original Dev Blogs.

Here, swap the link name's number with 1 through 5. Sometimes adding a month or name is necessary, as these CANNOT be accessed by point and clicking. Though after my past complaint they became available in search again if you want to go that route.

(Oh and if you want the real secret for why poptarting works so well? They look around corners while invincible like this due to invisible walls... then poptart, shoot, and disappear; the entire time you can barely respond to them).

Invisible walls. Problem since closed beta.

Edited by Koniving, 04 August 2014 - 11:54 AM.

[TercieI]

I almost always disparage posters of threads like these, but not this time. This is a real loss.

Edited by Terciel1976, 04 August 2014 - 11:49 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

CB had the advantage in that everything was still fresh and new, and since it was still in "Beta" we cut the game a little more slack when everything wasn't working at 100%.

However, 2 years later, we find that some parts of the game are still just as broken as it was in the past, and other parts have managed to break along the way. Fixes to certain problems (HSR increasing weapon accuracy, the SRM "fix") managed to cause other problems (higher accuracy means even lower TTK, dominance of pinpoint sniper builds over close-range brawlers, etc.) that still haven't been fixed. The game is stale. Even the luster of the new Clan mechs has faded, as we see the problems the new tech introduced.

[Why Run]

PGI said no hardpoint restrictions because they wanted creativity. I bet if they put hardpoint restrictions in, you and many others would return. It would eliminate many laughable builds, they could do away with bandaid ghost heat and other nonsense changes. Forget JJs, thats just another symptom of the ability to stuff stupid weapons on certain mechs. If they make either of the proposed changes to Gauss/PPC happen, I'll be following him out the door. And I've spent plenty myself...

[Andross Deverow]

Lordred, on 04 August 2014 - 08:14 AM, said:

If you still have fun with MWO, please by all means, enjoy. My fun however, has been drained out long ago, each new feature or fix makes this game worse and worse. The only thing I had left that was fun was taking screenshots, and even now that is much MUCH harder because groups of two get placed in the group que only.

Logging off.

~Red

Salvation is on the horizon.... Warhammer 40K Eternal Crusade .. 2015

regards

[Sarlic]

I miss the times that it actually took teamwork and time to take a Atlas down. All beta things. It was a feared mech on the field. Sure it overheated so you needed to watch carefully wich weapons you did fire. It felt more like a real Assault which could withstand some fire and lead a frontline attack or a serious defense.

Game was in a different shape. But core play was much more better.

And the sound... music to my ears. .

Edited by Sarlic, 04 August 2014 - 12:12 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

>magical convergence.

[Koniving]

Kaeb Odellas, on 04 August 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

CB had the advantage in that everything was still fresh and new, and since it was still in "Beta" we cut the game a little more slack when everything wasn't working at 100%.

However, 2 years later, we find that some parts of the game are still just as broken as it was in the past, and other parts have managed to break along the way. Fixes to certain problems (HSR increasing weapon accuracy, the SRM "fix") managed to cause other problems (higher accuracy means even lower TTK, dominance of pinpoint sniper builds over close-range brawlers, etc.) that still haven't been fixed. The game is stale. Even the luster of the new Clan mechs has faded, as we see the problems the new tech introduced.

I fully agree. The things that had originally made the game good were taken away.. The things that are hurting the game are still around and if they get addressed at all it's in a bandage. The problems with the game have remained for a long time. For example we were supposed to get high end graphics optimizations in January 2013. We only got partial optimizations in this last patch alone (August 2014).

Texture quality bounces between 1k and 2k textures without rhyme or reason, so the game is hideous. Worse yet the CryEngine does NOT handle mixed texture quality too well; it's notorious for causing bad performance. So PGI continues to pump out awful mixed-quality textures? Meanwhile it's teased by two developers that they have a stash of 4k textures for "everything."

...Why don't we have it? Smaller download size? How about releasing it as a separate download? From a visual standpoint the game is washed out with heavy grain filters that can't be removed (they could briefly and were quickly disabled again).

Then... there's thermal. DX 11: thermal is just monochrome vision. In either DX, thermal ignores actual heat sources and only demonstrates pre-designed ones. If I started a fire in the cryengine, thermal will not see it. Cold snow registers as HOT. Mechs in the distance of hot maps show up as cold and solid black, making them easy to snipe.

If a mech powers down, it will not get colder. In Closed Beta a mech could get cold enough to become invisible when powered off. Colors changed for heat, and if you fired a heat generating weapon at a surface it left (extremely briefly) a heat signature. Now... it leaves nothing.

In the past the asphalt cracked when a mech fell on it and armor could be hollowed out to demonstrate damage. Look at that hip actuator.




Now you have 'gun-hole puke'. Fun fact: The textures are the same size and require approximately the same amount of memory. But the good stuff was taken away for the generic bullet-hole puke.

I personally would just like to see some intelligent design decisions. Something that shows they actually think before they act, rather than play Skyrim all day and say "Hey I thought of another way to dumb down gameplay even further. Wait, too dumbed down? What if we made it really convoluted by adding all these little conditions for it then?"

[Vassago Rain]

Koniving, on 04 August 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

I fully agree. The things that had originally made the game good were taken away.. The things that are hurting the game are still around and if they get addressed at all it's in a bandage. The problems with the game have remained for a long time. For example we were supposed to get high end graphics optimizations in January 2013. We only got partial optimizations in this last patch alone (August 2014).

Texture quality bounces between 1k and 2k textures without rhyme or reason, so the game is hideous. Worse yet the CryEngine does NOT handle mixed texture quality too well; it's notorious for causing bad performance. So PGI continues to pump out awful mixed-quality textures? Meanwhile it's teased by two developers that they have a stash of 4k textures for "everything."

...Why don't we have it? Smaller download size? How about releasing it as a separate download? From a visual standpoint the game is washed out with heavy grain filters that can't be removed (they could briefly and were quickly disabled again).

Then... there's thermal. DX 11: thermal is just monochrome vision. In either DX, thermal ignores actual heat sources and only demonstrates pre-designed ones. If I started a fire in the cryengine, thermal will not see it. Cold snow registers as HOT. Mechs in the distance of hot maps show up as cold and solid black, making them easy to snipe.

If a mech powers down, it will not get colder. In Closed Beta a mech could get cold enough to become invisible when powered off. Colors changed for heat, and if you fired a heat generating weapon at a surface it left (extremely briefly) a heat signature. Now... it leaves nothing.

In the past the asphalt cracked when a mech fell on it and armor could be hollowed out to demonstrate damage. Look at that hip actuator.




Now you have 'gun-hole puke'. Fun fact: The textures are the same size and require approximately the same amount of memory. But the good stuff was taken away for the generic bullet-hole puke.

I personally would just like to see some intelligent design decisions. Something that shows they actually think before they act, rather than play Skyrim all day and say "Hey I thought of another way to dumb down gameplay even further. Wait, too dumbed down? What if we made it really convoluted by adding all these little conditions for it then?"

The old, good damage textures were part of the old, good textures. Said textures had to be remade entirely when they changed the camo system in feb. 2013.

So that's why we have the bullet holes.



Edit: since then, they've remade things several times, the most recent time for the interchangable weapons, which the community calls cancer boxes, or legos.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 04 August 2014 - 12:26 PM.

[Zervziel]

Lordred, on 04 August 2014 - 08:14 AM, said:

If you still have fun with MWO, please by all means, enjoy. My fun however, has been drained out long ago, each new feature or fix makes this game worse and worse. The only thing I had left that was fun was taking screenshots, and even now that is much MUCH harder because groups of two get placed in the group que only.

Logging off.

~Red

Wait! Don't leave yet!

*looks around*

Sh*t! Why are tiny violins so damn easy to lose!?

[Vassago Rain]

Zervziel, on 04 August 2014 - 12:28 PM, said:

Wait! Don't leave yet!

*looks around*

Sh*t! Why are tiny violins so damn easy to lose!?

Get good, son.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Koniving, on 04 August 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

Then... there's thermal. DX 11: thermal is just monochrome vision. In either DX, thermal ignores actual heat sources and only demonstrates pre-designed ones. If I started a fire in the cryengine, thermal will not see it. Cold snow registers as HOT. Mechs in the distance of hot maps show up as cold and solid black, making them easy to snipe.

If a mech powers down, it will not get colder. In Closed Beta a mech could get cold enough to become invisible when powered off. Colors changed for heat, and if you fired a heat generating weapon at a surface it left (extremely briefly) a heat signature. Now... it leaves nothing.

In the past the asphalt cracked when a mech fell on it and armor could be hollowed out to demonstrate damage. Look at that hip actuator.

Now you have 'gun-hole puke'. Fun fact: The textures are the same size and require approximately the same amount of memory. But the good stuff was taken away for the generic bullet-hole puke.

Night vision is borked too. The sky is always black despite the fact that it's brighter than most of the terrain in night matches. And heat vision should work the same on all maps, including the Terrra Therma and Caustic. Your techs should be able to calibrate your thermals to match the temperature ranges you'll see at the drop site. Heck, it should do it automatically.

I'll give them the mech shut-down thing though. Realistically, it would take a long time after shutting down for a mech to cool down to ambient.

As for the damage decals, has damage ever affected the mech's geometry? I always thought those were just textures. While I think the old damage effects looked weird, the current bullet-hole ones are kinda lame, especially since they don't reflect the kind of damage you take. A laser burn should look different from an AC20 round.