173 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Roland, on 28 August 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

The CERSL suffered a 50% increase in heat, and a 25% reduction in range (and seriously, WTF here? Was someone complaining about the CERSL? ANYONE?)

I think someone noticed I was having too much fun legging in my 12 CERSL Nova Prime.

[Roland]

Onmyoudo, on 28 August 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

The idea of that was that people would play and find what was balanced or not through doing so, rather than seeing "IS LL major nerf" and using it expecting it to be crap. Because in that kind of scenario chances are you'll "find" that it's crap.

This mentality is ridiculous though, and no one who has even a basic grasp of the game should think this way... certainly not the DEVELOPERS and the folks making balance changes.

The reality is, you absolutely CAN look at the stats and get a good grasp on how things will play out.

The one thing which is harder to really grasp based purely on numbers is the burn time for weapons... But when it comes to things like damage and heat? You absolutely can tell what the impact of changes will be, even without playing it, unless you really have no ******* idea how the game works.

[Nightmare1]

Great, and here I actually enjoyed running my Nova Prime in its stock config. Guess I'll have to start experimenting to find a new build.

...And LRM buffs??? What??? We needed LRM nerfs, not buffs! What kind of brew are you drinking, PGI???

These nerfs are about as dumb and useless as snake mittens. You just drove the last coffin nails into my laser-boating Novas and Summoners, and made the IS ERLLs on my TDRs and BLRs useless. Who wants to stand in the open for 1.5 seconds while Clanners rain fire on your head with those uber-poweful LRMs???

[Viges]

Roland, on 28 August 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

the CERSL one really boggles the mind.

I'm not talking about small lasers at all its just like discussing locusts I rarely see them anyway.

[Johnny Z]

I can see that are they trying to make autocannons viable with the nerf to ERLL. Other visual reasons to come to mind, the beams just look cool on the field. But my main problem is the clans are so OP at the moment it is even effecting clan pilot skill and I am not kidding. Easy mode has negative effects.

I can see it now, the drooling clan pilot says "what I cant shoot 14 medium laser at LL range anymore none stop and do more damage!!!!!!"

Edited by Johnny Z, 28 August 2014 - 08:03 AM.

[stjobe]

Last night I counted; there's 51 patch notes in the Patch Notes section of these forums. That means they've patched the game at least 51 times; one would think they've gotten at least a semblance of weapons balance together by now.

Alas, no.

As for the "all CLRMs have the same cool down", remember that every balance patch has something really, REALLY stupid in it they can reverse and say "Look! We DO listen to feedback!" while keeping all the rest of the only really stupid changes.

Meh. MWO weapon balancing, round 52: Still nowhere near balanced.

[Mister Blastman]

His asinine changes basically killed the usefulness of the ersmall lasers.

Sometimes, I wish I could nerf something else in this game... (can't say due to COC policy)

[General Taskeen]

The only way they can have relative or comparative balance with "clan" and is weapons is by going back and fixing things like the heat system with equal thresholds so all Mechs have the same heat pool amount they can fire and gameplay-ish things like ecm/targeting/lrms, etc.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Johnny Z, on 28 August 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

I can see it now, the drooling clan pilot says "what I cant shoot 14 medium laser at LL range anymore none stop!!!!"

Except you couldn't do that anyway...

[Nik Reaper]

If only this was a test , and not the obvious show of where they think of going.... Sure I'll test this on the PTS but deng, I do feel this is coming to live....

[Kutfroat]

the IS ppc is allready unuseable at more than medium range, and now the er large will be made unuseable, too...although clans allready have a range advantage. where are the brawling buffs (IS small, med lasers and srm heat reduction? just anything?) for IS to compensate?

[Johnny Z]

This I know for sure, until clans came out I didnt comment on anything balance related except once, maybe twice, since closed beta. I am seeing clan mechs charging around dropping IS mech like its a walk in the park.

Yes they do run into trouble facing IS mechs, good chance i am in it, but the fact remains the over all play style of clan pilots shows how OP they are more than anything else. May sound like im patting myself on the back here but the point is valid.

Edited by Johnny Z, 28 August 2014 - 08:08 AM.

[Roland]

stjobe, on 28 August 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

Last night I counted; there's 51 patch notes in the Patch Notes section of these forums. That means they've patched the game at least 51 times; one would think they've gotten at least a semblance of weapons balance together by now.

Alas, no.

The reason balance is so bad is because the balance changes have always taken the form of what we see here... Changes to virtually every weapon in the game at the same time, which precludes any actual understanding of the impact of any individual changes.

If you want to converge on an optimal balance state, you need to make rapid, SMALL changes, and then look at the result...

Instead, Paul makes no changes at all for weeks or months at a time, and then changes EVERYTHING at once... and when it inevitably fails to result in a balanced game, we're still at the exact same place we started... an unbalance mess with no real direction for the next set of balance changes.

So then he just pulls all the levers again, and crosses his fingers.

It's not how you're supposed to solve complex systems with tons of interdependent variables.

[Mister Blastman]

Roland, on 28 August 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

The CERSL suffered a 50% increase in heat, and a 25% reduction in range (and seriously, WTF here? Was someone complaining about the CERSL? ANYONE?)

The CERML suffered a 20% increase in heat.

Those aren't really minor changes.

the CERSL one really boggles the mind.

[Tw1stedMonkey]

Whoever is the lead balance designer in this game needs to completely destroy any evidence of his participation in this game when his terrible designs inevitably cause the dwindling playerbase to finally give up on this game nad he has to find a new job. Like it should be a crime to be this consistently terrible at every turn in balancing, despite mountains of better, more thought out and outright funner suggestions by your community. They always manage to surprise me even further how terrible they are at just about every facet of this game except for the amazing level of fun the core gameplay allows for. I am confident that just about any other human being, much less game designer, would be able to be more successful with this game and license than PGI.

[1453 R]

The beams nerfs are...not actually as bad as I was figuring they would be. I'm not honestly sure what they were supposed to do that would have been any better, or why everyone's facepalming so hard.

Mind, I was expecting the C-ERLL treatment to be spread out across all Clan beams. 1.7s medium lasers, anybody? I was totez legit expecting 1.7s C-ERML, and about ready to pitch a legendary snitfit over it. Increased heat and sharp range cuts, with a whole host of burn time reductions? That's...more sensible than I figured Piranha would be. The primary complaint on the forums was always that Clan beams had such a staggering range advantage over IS beams. That certainly wasn't the only complaint, but it seemed to be the biggest issue concerning the masses. Now that range advantage is still there as per lore, but it's not nearly so overwhelming. Yes yes, I know, normalization and homogenization and all kinds of other bad words. The issue had to give somewhere folks, and frankly I'd rather lose some range than gain some burn time. Lose range AND burn time? I'll take that trade for a spin. Provided I can get some test server time after my shift tonight, anyways. Yeah, the extra heat points across the board kinda suck, but it's the sort of change that looks cope-withable to me. Nova pilots are going to hate themselves for a while, but those things already took a special breed to get best use out of anyways.

And also we can get back to using C-ERLL and not hating ourselves! Mostly! Maybe! I hope!

THAT SAID...what the duck, Paul. In what sane world did the Inner Sphere ERLL need a 50% burn time increase?! o_O Dat maeks no senz. Nobody used those things except ECM Ravens already as compared to the regular Inner Sphere large laser, and now you're ensuring that nobody ever will. Even the ECM Ravens.

The missile changes are...interesting. I'm not sure whether to cackle in triumph or cringe in horror. Either way, the LURMS OP threads are about to triple and we're all about to drown in the tears of the thickheaded. The Streak launcher cycle reduction was needed - they're still slower than regular SRMs, but the whole 7 seconds thing was just too much and even the "Make Clans SUCK!!" crowd could see it. They wouldn't admit it, but they could see it. Not sure the cycle reductions given were enough, but you know what? I'm not even remotely going to complain about Paul putting in some incremental changes. If the man wants to practice his tweaking skills, I'M ALL FOR IT.

And you should be, too.

[GroovYChickeN]

Sooooo...... Anyone actually play on the test server yet?? Or are we just bitching about a post of the forums?

[Khobai]

the laser nerfs are fine. we all knew they were coming.

But why do lrms fire faster now? if anything lrms needed to fire slower, have lower impulse, and slightly more damage.

Edited by Khobai, 28 August 2014 - 08:17 AM.

[KodiakGW]

I believe the change in cool down for the CLRMs is to reflect that they stream out of the launchers instead of firing as a group/cluster. So the cool down starts after the last missile is launched. CLRM20s take longer to fire, therefore the time between vollies is longer than the CLRM15s.

At least, that was my understanding. I could be wrong.

[Sprouticus]

Roland, on 28 August 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

The reason balance is so bad is because the balance changes have always taken the form of what we see here... Changes to virtually every weapon in the game at the same time, which precludes any actual understanding of the impact of any individual changes.

If you want to converge on an optimal balance state, you need to make rapid, SMALL changes, and then look at the result...

Instead, Paul makes no changes at all for weeks or months at a time, and then changes EVERYTHING at once... and when it inevitably fails to result in a balanced game, we're still at the exact same place we started... an unbalance mess with no real direction for the next set of balance changes.

So then he just pulls all the levers again, and crosses his fingers.

It's not how you're supposed to solve complex systems with tons of interdependent variables.

I tend to agree Roland but consider 2 things:

1) When they have made rapid small changes people have had a **** fit because they 'dont get time to get used to the weapons'. I think that is a terrible argument, but it highlights that fact that people are going to complain no matter what PGI does.

2) We are not seeing the level of internal testing they are doing. Not sure whether that testing is valid, but it DOES occur.