950 replies to this topic

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

PPC changes I can probably live with.

CERLL changes are the work of an idiot.

Any chance PGI can move some staff round and get someone new to look at game balance?

[Travers]

Charles Seneca, on 08 August 2014 - 08:26 AM, said:

Let me see. How long has the community been telling the game designers that we need weapon size limitations? Hmmmm?

Mechs are not supposed to be able to carry 4*ppcs or 2ppcs+2gauss. Not even 100 tonners.

Swallow your ego Paul and do what we've been telling you to do for years and you can scrap all this ghost heat nonsense and all the other problems which are cropping up BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO STUBBORN TO ADMIT YOU F****D UP!

Actually some mechs can carry 3 gauss.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Devastator
I'd love one, but it'll never happen.

[Travers]

Travers, on 08 August 2014 - 08:41 AM, said:

Actually some mechs can carry 3 gauss.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Devastator
I'd love one, but it'll never happen.

Oops, meant 2 gauss

[WarHippy]

When everyone stops using the CLL they will switch to CML, and people will complain and PGI will see all these CML all over and nerf them into uselessness just like they are doing with the CLL. There has to be a better way of doing this without the hopelessly stupid nerfs that they are implementing. Lower the max optimal range to 750m, and raise the heat to 9 maybe 9.5 and that is a big maybe on going to 9.5 and you will have a much better gauge of where things are. All the other CLL changes are asinine.

The speed reduction on PPCs while stupid is tolerable, but the PPC splash has got to go as does the Gauss charge mechanic.

[ExAstra]

Apnu, on 08 August 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

The problem is the heat scale. Its not punishing enough in this game. The heat scale was always a joke in every MechWarrior title and that's the problem. Because the only consequence to over heating is a nice and brief gentile shutdown, MechWarrior inadvertently promotes a front-loaded, alpha-strike play style. Be it with long range sniping weapons, or a combination of AC20s and SRM6s.

Alpha-srikes are supposed to be a tactic of high risk, high reward, used in desperate situations. Players of MechWarrior, since the first version of the game decades ago, found the weak heat scale loop hole and exploited it.

This is one of the rare opportunities where the TT got it right with the heat scale. First off, the heat scale should be a measure of how you're over 100% cooling. Second, there should be gradual punishments as you go up the scale. Your speed and agility should be reduced, your targeting and HUD should be affected and you should risk ammo explosions (including GR explosions) at the top end, finally you should auto-shutdown at the very top.

Do that and players will have to balance their mechs and make different choices. We don't need ghost heat then and we don't need to tinker so much with weapons.

Take the 5 c-ERLL Dire Wolf (or the old 4 PPC Stalker). Sure they can take those weapons, let them use them and it will jack up their heat. Then those, already slow, beasts move more slowly and have targeting issues. Meaning its hard for them to hill hump if their movement is reduced by 50%. Want to alpha-strike 5 c-ERLLs? You can, but you'll be a slow bugger for a while afterward and get abused for it. Players will naturally adjust and bring more balanced builds to the battlefield. Or change up their tactics w/ less front loading pin-point damage and we'll come back to the happy days of snarling brawls.

Also, another idea, one kicked around in my unit, is to have a power output rating for the engines so they can only fire so many weapons at the same time. Bigger the engine, the more power to fire weapons. This brings engine weight and weapon weight into play as a balancing mechanic.

I would actually prefer to see more balanced weapons loadouts and a more punishing heat scale system.

Admittedly this system would make certain mechs, say the Nova Prime, very underwhelming (it is a great one trick pony as is right now, though).

But the pros would outweight the few cons. I only got into the TT version of the BattleTech franchise as of this year but I find it very engaging and fun.

[MuFasa]

Almost a month ago PGI introduced the clan mechs the almost universal feeling was, this was done right, this is fairly balanced. There were some things I think that needed some tweaking. CERPPC's are IMHO a bit too hot for regular use and CERLL were a bit too long ranged. That was MY opinion, your mileage may vary. I think for the most part though everyone was fairly positive and again IMHO the game was in a good of a place as it's been in years.

I liked the marked difference between the Clan mechs and their play-style vs that of the IS mechs. I like that here was a series of mechs that instead of leaning on ballistics and PPC's for every build. Used a different weapon system. I liked beams before the clans, they were just harder to use. I was worried about the beam duration times. Let's face it how much damage you do is directly tied to how much damage you are willing to take CT because unlike the other systems you can't fire and look away to save that CT. And you don't have a ton of cockpit shake and explosions in your opponents face to prevent them from effectively returning fire. Not only that but if you want that “great damage number” to be effective you have to have enough skill to NOT wash your beam all over your target but hit the same spot on your target for the entire beams duration. It made them challenging to play with. It made them fun. It required skill, a totally different skill than the guy that had to pop up acquire a target identify the weakest point and then hit that one spot all inside a second or so. Beams made you find your target, decide what part you needed to strike and then HOLD that beam there. Clan weapons because of their increased range and damage numbers (clan tech stuff) had the length of the time that had to be done increased. The CERLL had the longest weapon duration of any weapon in the game. Making it harder to make its full damage number effective. I think we all saw the damage clan mechs were doing in after match screens and going OMG NURF NURF!!11!!1! But where the skilled victor pilot was shooting out the side torso of the Jagermech and dropping it in 2 or 3 vollys. And doing 60 to 90 damage, the TBR was washing it with lasers doing 130 or more for the same kill. (just taking a stab at numbers if they are off sue me)

These changes as they are proposed aren't the way things should have been done. It will get the job done. Much like driving a finish nail with a twenty pound sledge hammer. It will drive the nail alright all while obliterating EVERYTHING around it. That's what this patch does. PPC use will plummet, CERLL's are apparently done. And both of those were the goal. Mission accomplished. You have however obliterated any good will and good feelings this community had. This game was in as good of a place as its been since closed beta. Totally done and gone now, saddly EVEN if the patch is as balanced Im not certain that it wont take eons to generate the amount of good will that is present now, or rather was.

On a final note, correct me if I'm wrong, if I create a group and want my guys to be able to use their newly purchased clan mechs, we will have to create a mercenary group that is loyal to a clan faction. Or join a clan faction. And as such will be unable to play any of my IS mechs with my clan buddies. Or the inverse if someone wants to stay on the IS side of things. Think folks are angry now? Wait till the guys that have supported you the most, that bought founders packs, phoenix packs and then clan mech packs find out they have to choose which part of their investment in your game they want to use setting the rest of it aside.

[Roadbeer]

Didn't they spend 6 months stopping production on everything else in order to work on Clans and make sure they were balanced at launch?
No CW
No new maps
No new modes
Slow balance on existing issues
Minimal bug/UI/MM fixes.

Developing as intended

[Pope RW]

I guess I'm a slow learner, Founder, Phoenix and Clan purchases. But I can say now that the lesson being taught has finally been learned.

No more $ for PGI.

[VanillaG]

So a quick look at the maths of the cERLL changes:

• Ghost Heat for 2 = 8.64
  
• Ghost Heat for 3 = 19.44

So any mech that has a loadout of 3 cERLL can fire 2 for the same amount of heat as they currently generate with 3. Any mech that currently has 5 cERLL can fire 3 for the same amount of heat. So the 3 cERLL mech gains 4 tons for other equipment by dropping 1 laser and the 5 cERLL gains 8 tons by dropping 2 lasers. This change is actually pretty effective if the goal is to limit boating of cERLL.


Here is the breakdown of cERLL, cERPPC, and cLPL:

• 2xcERLL = 22.5 damage for 26.64 heat at 890m for 2 crits and 8 tons
  
• 2xcERPPC = 30 damage for 30 heat at 810m for 4 crits and 12 tons
  
• 2xcLPL = 23.6 damage for 16 heat at 600m for 4 crits and 12 tons.

When you look at that it makes the cLPL look more viable. Combined with the PPC velocity nerf it tries to reduce the Clan optimum range to around 600m. Higher skilled players can probably go out to 800m - 900m but that is going to require some skill or an investment in Targeting computers to make that more likely for PPC.


I think that these changes probably error on the side of over nerfing. I think a reduction of the ghost heat multiplier to 9, which would mean ghost heat for 2 of 6.48 and for 3 of 14.58, and reduction of the beam duration to 1.8 would probably be the sweet spot if these values are too drastic.

[Khan Hallis]

Pope RW, on 08 August 2014 - 08:51 AM, said:

I guess I'm a slow learner, Founder, Phoenix and Clan purchases. But I can say now that the lesson being taught has finally been learned.

No more $ for PGI.

Ya think???

I discovered that last December when the Clans were announced and saw all the flaws in that announcement.

[Goldhawk]

Clan ER LLS were causing that much of a disruption?

I thought most of the kills were from Missiles and Ballistics.

Sooooo, The Dire Wolf Prime is out of commission.
Many of the variants of the Warhawk is out of commission due to large energy boating.
The Stormcrow 3 LL variant is dead....
Must I go on?
I disapprove.

And the PPCS!

*Clears throat*

I must inquire who are these "high level players" that are making decisions for the majority of the community.

Me and my clan aren't that pleased, and I'm guessing the 45 pages behind me feel the same.

Edited by Goldhawk, 08 August 2014 - 08:57 AM.

[WarHippy]

MuFasa, on 08 August 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

Almost a month ago PGI introduced the clan mechs the almost universal feeling was, this was done right, this is fairly balanced. There were some things I think that needed some tweaking. CERPPC's are IMHO a bit too hot for regular use and CERLL were a bit too long ranged. That was MY opinion, your mileage may vary. I think for the most part though everyone was fairly positive and again IMHO the game was in a good of a place as it's been in years.

This is a big part of my overall face palming over these changes. People were very happy with the overall balance between Clan and Inner Sphere with a few malcontents on both sides. Tweak some numbers sure, but these are some seriously heavy handed nerfs.

[WM Wraith]

Kotev, on 08 August 2014 - 08:25 AM, said:

You are right on some points but the logic implies that more powerfull weapon or weapon groups should have penalty like heat, tonnage, etc. So my opinion is that PGI is right on the issue.

I think the point is, Clan mechs already have the penalties - if you own them you know the quirks, limitations due to hard points, locked engines, locked internals...which is why clan lights are slow. They can't upgrade their engines.

If you don't own them...engine, FF armor, endo are all locked. Chasis also have quirks (penalties like energy weapon recharge delays when taking certain weapon pods).

These negatives/penalties offset the range advantage. Nerfing weapons based on bad feedback, bad testing (IS threw away matches with poor tactics, poor builds, and in some cases just by not playing...they died on spawn) and prior to 10 v 12 testing is bad methodology all around.

The real grievance is the massive number of changes at one time a single weapon system gets.

Make a small change, observe, listen to feedback, adjust....common sense.

Back to the main point, Clans have range advantages...Inner Sphere has PP damage advantages. If we are making all things equal which seems to be the goal, then immediately implement the same AC firing mechanism that clans have for Inner Sphere mechs. My AC40 Jaeger does a ton of butt hurt on clan mechs when I took it out during the tests. Guess AC20s are OP too - perhaps their max range should be only 90 meters, their projectile speed cut in half, reload doubled and their ghost heat tripled using the C-ERLL logic?

I for one would not play a game where we all have to take the same mech, use the same weapons, and must stand still and fire at one another across open terrain without being allowed to use cover, tactics or my brain to out smart, out play, out skill another in what should be a skill based rewarding game. This is where these "make us all equal, make all weapons equal" balance (and I use the term balance with sarcasm) changes have been heading ever since Paul started with the Highalander and Victor, Gauss, and JJ nerfs.

Heaven forbid part of the player base think and try hard. We all must obviously conform to the PGI norm, and noobs should be on equal footing with those of us who have been around since startup right out of the box.

Edited by WM Wraith, 08 August 2014 - 08:57 AM.

[Apnu]

ExAstra, on 08 August 2014 - 08:47 AM, said:

I would actually prefer to see more balanced weapons loadouts and a more punishing heat scale system.

Admittedly this system would make certain mechs, say the Nova Prime, very underwhelming (it is a great one trick pony as is right now, though).

But the pros would outweight the few cons. I only got into the TT version of the BattleTech franchise as of this year but I find it very engaging and fun.

There would have to be quirks to allow certain canon mechs, like the Nova Prime, and like the AWS-8Q which should not have ghost heat for firing 3 PPCs.

[Jalik]

Ghost Bear, on 07 August 2014 - 06:24 PM, said:

Heh, being able to only fire 1 clan er large now is pretty cute I have to admit.

not entirely true. you can fire as many as you like and can fit into your mech. at a price. sounds reasonable to me. lets see how it turns out. my experience is, that most nerfs/changes played out pretty well after a while (and maybe some small corrections). well, most ...

[Josef Koba]

Sprouticus, on 08 August 2014 - 06:57 AM, said:

But IF (and it is a big if) Paul was sincere that they will be making frequent changes in the near future, we can hope it gets undone or modified when they realize that the cERLL is a shelf weapon now.

It seems like this should be the point of test servers. I don't understand why regular servers are most frequently used to evaluate balances/nerfs/buffs.

I don't usually complain about nerfs or buffs. Instead I try to adjust my tactics or the equipment I use. But these changes seem incredibly heavy handed to me. So much so that I'm legitimately flummoxed by them. Surely something needed to be done about the dual Gauss/dual PPC combo seen on the Direwolf. Even though I used that combo to devastating effect and it allowed me to rapidly increase my experience and progression in the platform, I acknowledge that it was pretty powerful. That said, I didn't see it a great deal, but when I did it was a mech that I feared (and rightly so). Personally I like encountering mechs I fear, like the AC40 Jager of old. But still, for the sake of balance a change was needed. I don't believe the nearly 50% reduction of velocity was the best way to achieve it, nor a dramatic decrease in effective range, but I guess that's the way they went. The problem with this, however, is it doesn't just affect the Direwolf/PPC boat builds, but those that may rely on one PPC as primary armament. I have a Battlemaster with one PPC and several medium lasers. I'm not sure how effective I will be at hitting moving targets as it seems that the lead required will be problematic, but we shall see after we test it out.

The ER Large Laser nerf, however, I have a great deal of difficulty understanding. The fact that a pilot can fire only one at a time before incurring a heat penalty is patently absurd. Other than the AC20, there isn't another weapon that has such a low ghost heat requirement. The Clan ER Large Laser is not the AC20, which applies all its damage to a single location. The burn time was already pretty high, requiring a steady hand to apply damage. The further increase in burn time exacerbates that issue. As has been pointed out, there was some issues with heat versus damage output, so yes, a tweak might have been required to balance the weapon out. I could have supported, with reservations, the increase of burn time to 2 seconds. But this on top of the low ghost heat requirement seems far, far too much. It gimps the ER Large to an incredible degree. There's no denying that the weapon was effective, but I don't really see it having been abused. I've seen precisely one Direwolf with eight ER Large Lasers; intimidating, yes. And maybe it's an issue at higher ELOs than my own. But there has to have been a better way to balance this and mitigate the large scale boating of ER Large Lasers than this application of ghost heat. Far more builds utilize two ER Large Lasers than four or five or seven or nine. Yes, this nerf dramatically impacts my stable of mechs, but I don't believe I'm being too biased here because I have to face the same sort of builds as the ones I field. As has been mentioned, I think that some will simply boat ER Mediums instead. In fact, my Nova with 12 ER Smalls is an incredibly potent platform, and so I think that these combinations will become more popular and in turn more powerful. Logically that suggests that these systems will be further nerfed (the ER Smalls already have I believe) in the future as folks get upset at having their back armor stripped off in less than a second.

All in all, there seems like there are better ways of achieving balance. Many of the smart mechwarriors here have suggested a number of systems and balances that appear, at least on paper, to better achieve balance. I know that many might disagree with me on this point, but earlier this week I found myself please overall at the state of balance in the game despite the few occasions were abuse was obvious. That, however, seems to have been upended somewhat.

[Sprouticus]

Josef Koba, on 08 August 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

It seems like this should be the point of test servers. I don't understand why regular servers are most frequently used to evaluate balances/nerfs/buffs.

::snip::

I agree. However in the past when PGI has done testing the population was not high enough to produce good results. the is especially critical when doing balance acrosss large Elo's. Heck, I don't think the 12-6 PM PST population is high enough to get good results to TBH. the only time they can get a really tight Elo spread is during North America primetime.

So even if they left the test servers up for a week I don't know that we would get good test numbers.

If MWO had 10x the current population, maybe a test server would be useful. Now, not so much.

[ExoForce]

I will NOT buy weapon modules. I will NOT put real cash in this game anymore.

Thank You! Ill save some money and spend it on other things/games.

[Jalik]

WM Wraith, on 08 August 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

Back to the main point, Clans have range advantages...Inner Sphere has PP damage advantages. If we are making all things equal which seems to be the goal, then immediately implement the same AC firing mechanism that clans have for Inner Sphere mechs. My AC40 Jaeger does a ton of butt hurt on clan mechs when I took it out during the tests. Guess AC20s are OP too - perhaps their max range should be only 90 meters, their projectile speed cut in half, reload doubled and their ghost heat tripled using the C-ERLL logic?

not a fair comparison. an AC20 is something entirely different and thus has to be treated differently. also, an AC40 jaeger has another disadvantage.. it's sooooooo easy to kill

[NoSkillRush]

All positive changes it sounds like. Relax people ....