876 replies to this topic

[Asmudius Heng]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 08:32 PM, said:

How many of your truly prefer that style of gameplay in MWO? Please I am actually asking.

I actually made a post about this a while back Russ.

http://mwomercs.com/...s-of-mwo-combat

Basically its a matter of taste, i came from MW4 which was very skillful its own way but very fast time to kill - you were severly punished for mistakes which made games really intense.

MWO is aiming more for an attrition type game which is more BT flavoured which i am cool with too .... the danger is that it can become bland and not feel fun if the risk vs reward ratios are so flat that you feel you are just sandpapoering away at any range. MWO is not like that mind you just an extreme if it goes too far.

As long as there is a noticable risk vs reward when running specialised mechs then its fine - let snipers be powerful at range but please let brawlers shin once they get in under that range for instance. Also make sure that positioning is still critical, sometimes mechs move so fast and twist so quickly that positionning is less important for instance.

Do not buff IS mechs like the buffing crowd keep asking for ... balance includes buffs and nerfs and its pretty clear that over time the TTK has become shorter due to better hit detection more than balance which has to shift your attention.

Also - thank you for addressing the clan XL engines which are THE MOST IMPORTANT part of why clan tech is doing so well I feel.

A look into internal damage and criticals would probably be worth investigating if you really want the mechs to end up smoking wrecks but still working and fighting.

Edited by Asmudius Heng, 07 September 2014 - 08:45 PM.

[Russ Bullock]

drunkblackstar, on 05 September 2014 - 10:47 AM, said:

I could agree with "Clan Heat and Movement penalties if a Right or Left torso is destroyed", but Clans are forced to use XL, they can't switch to standard.

I believe the rule will be - 3 critical hits to the engine in the RT or LT will cause X% slowdown and x% heat. This of course will not impact IS mechs because with 3 critical engine hits to either torso means they are dead. It is true that a clan mech cannot get away from this because they have to use XL engines but look at the current situation. A Direwolf missing its RT is only still alive but moving and full speed and pointing up an entire IS mechs weapons at you still. They really dont seem that injured.

Many will ask, why not take this further so perhaps 1 critical engine hit in say the CT or just critical engine hits in general have these negative impacts. This is something that I believe has some credibility in the future. But step one to implement this functionality is to put this new negative impact onto Clan mechs that have lost a torso and review from there.

[Asmudius Heng]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 08:37 PM, said:

But were still committed to keeping them very unique and VERY powerful. We just need to make it so IS can compete if they play them right.

Just a note that clan mechs suffer more from the issue that some of them hit the perfect storm of hit boxes, FF/Endo etc with decent sized engines while other really suffer.

This can be solved with some tweaks mind you but its not just the weapons.

[Russ Bullock]

Asmudius Heng, on 07 September 2014 - 08:45 PM, said:

I actually made a post about this a while back Russ.

http://mwomercs.com/...s-of-mwo-combat

Basically its a matter of taste, i came from MW4 which was very skillful its own way but very fast time to kill - you were severly punished for mistakes which made games really intense.

MWO is aiming more for an attrition type game which is more BT flavoured which i am cool with too .... the danger is that it can become bland and not feel fun if the risk vs reward ratios are so flat that you feel you are just sandpapoering away at any range. MWO is not like that mind you just an extreme if it goes too far.

As long as there is a noticable risk vs reward when running specialised mechs then its fine - let snipers be powerful at range but please let brawlers shin once they get in under that range for instance. Also make sure that positioning is still critical, sometimes mechs move so fast and twist so quickly that positionning is less important for instance.

Do not buff IS mechs like the buffing crowd keep asking for ... balance includes buffs and nerfs and its pretty clear that over time the TTK has become shorter due to better hit detection more than balance which has to shift your attention.

Also - thank you for addressing the clan XL engines which are THE MOST IMPORTANT part of why clan tech is doing so well I feel.

A look into internal damage and criticals would probably be worth investigating if you really want the mechs to end up smoking wrecks but still working and fighting.

Thanks for these thougths on my question. Very reasonable and so your okay with our approach but just watchful to see if it goes to far. But I agree with you, it is a preference thing that was very much established in MW4. To me and many it became too much about who saw who first and brough their alpha strike on target. That to many is to close to a call of duty game type.

Happy to hear from those players as well

[N0MAD]

So as it stands now, Clan mechs are to powerful compared to IS mechs?.
If so the people that have been saying Clan (currently ) are P2W since the worst offenders are not yet available fo ingame $ and wont be for months?.

[Asmudius Heng]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 08:50 PM, said:

Thanks for these thougths on my question. Very reasonable and so your okay with our approach but just watchful to see if it goes to far. But I agree with you, it is a preference thing that was very much established in MW4. To me and many it became too much about who saw who first and brough their alpha strike on target. That to many is to close to a call of duty game type.

Happy to hear from those players as well

You will never be able to have it perfect for everyone as i am sure you are well aware.

But from many years of competative play in MW4 I can say that many that came from MW4 leagues like NBT are not looking for a CoD experience - but they do want a game where positioning and manouvre warfare are the keys to victory along with gunnery.

That and clear ROLES for mechs so the game becomes more about fitting those role together in a functioning team. - That is getting well off the topic though in regards to sensor and role warefare along with game modes though so i will not derail just that the preferences of many of the MW4 era guys who are or were strong supporters originally are many and varied but TTK is probably not an huge an issue for many of us though i can hardly speak for us as a group. We jsut want a strongly tactical and team oriented game

[Russ Bullock]

GumbyC2C, on 05 September 2014 - 10:48 AM, said:

....sigh...


I get that the Clan stuff needs some balance work. And honest communication about issues is important. But the news about 10v12 makes me sad. CW won't feel right if the clan units are organized just like the IS units.

I think everyone in the world wants to see this, including people at PGI. But I just don't think anyone including PGI wants to delay planetary combat any further.

BUT I count the days before we see CW planetary combat in full swing. I just dont see how 10v12 can ever properly achieve that competitive sense. Players especially good players gravitate towards the best mechs, that is simply a fact of life and will never change. We have enough evidence right now. In the end we would be saying "Clearly your IS mech isn't as good, but since you have more it should be even". The best players still gravitate to the best technology and we either end up with all the best players on the clan side and having to way over emphasize in tonnage to help the IS out or we also possibly end up with 3 times as many Clan players as IS and can't make CW viable. I believe it has to be balanced 12v12 for CW to have the best chance possible to be the feature we all want it to be. Once its established we can re-assess.

[Russ Bullock]

N0MAD, on 07 September 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

So as it stands now, Clan mechs are to powerful compared to IS mechs?.
If so the people that have been saying Clan (currently ) are P2W since the worst offenders are not yet available fo ingame $ and wont be for months?.

Yes its true. But its not uncommon for items to go for real money for a time before they go for free in game currency. Also this Tuesday the Summoner goes for Cbills and then just 2 weeks until the DireWolf. In short the situation will be settled out by the time were in CW planetary combat.

In the end everything is available for C-bills

[Russ Bullock]

Kmieciu, on 05 September 2014 - 10:48 AM, said:

I must say that I fully agree with Russ on this topic. 10vs12 was a doomed idea from the start. Who would want to be on the IS side anyway?

This from a Steiner player. Everyone needs to really think about this. We want to be the first game ever to truly have an IS vs Clan invasion. This means even amounts of players and not just putting clan weapons on IS mechs either. Two sides that truly feel and play differently but are competitive with each other.

EvilCow, on 05 September 2014 - 10:53 AM, said:

I think that the changes to lasers are reasonable (waiting to test them). The plan sounds good, as usual the devil is in the details.

I still think that the only lingering error is the current placement of PPCs, those should be restored, as alternative you can just limit grouped weapons to 30pts of damage. The excess damage could be fired after 0.5secs or eliminated entirely.

the point I would like to take from this is that most everyone is on board now about limiting pin point alpha damage in one way or another, there are just slightly varying opinions on what they might tweak to achieve it differently. So hey were not all so far apart, which means balance is actually in a pretty good state. But wil NEVER be complete.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 09:06 PM, said:

Yes its true. But its not uncommon for items to go for real money for a time before they go for free in game currency. Also this Tuesday the Summoner goes for Cbills and then just 2 weeks until the DireWolf. In short the situation will be settled out by the time were in CW planetary combat.

In the end everything is available for C-bills

Thats the cool thing about this game. I can buy MC mechs if I wanted and I actually do despite mechs being free

[Russ Bullock]

Kmieciu, on 05 September 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:

I meant: who would want to be on the side that outnumbers the enemy? Not much glory in zerg-rushing using superior numbers. Not enough kills to share. Less salvage to split.

more very good points - possibly driving more and more players to clan side until CW isnt a viable game mode.

BLOOD WOLF, on 07 September 2014 - 09:14 PM, said:

Thats the cool thing about this game. I can buy MC mechs if I wanted and I actually do despite mechs being free

Thanks for the support.

[Deathlike]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 09:02 PM, said:

BUT I count the days before we see CW planetary combat in full swing. I just dont see how 10v12 can ever properly achieve that competitive sense. Players especially good players gravitate towards the best mechs, that is simply a fact of life and will never change. We have enough evidence right now. In the end we would be saying "Clearly your IS mech isn't as good, but since you have more it should be even". The best players still gravitate to the best technology and we either end up with all the best players on the clan side and having to way over emphasize in tonnage to help the IS out or we also possibly end up with 3 times as many Clan players as IS and can't make CW viable. I believe it has to be balanced 12v12 for CW to have the best chance possible to be the feature we all want it to be. Once its established we can re-assess.

When feedback threads created solely for the purpose of discussing the new mech chassis, those threads were actually useful in discussing stuff about the chassis and how it functions. Although many of the stuff then may or may not translate in what the state of balance is now, it was a clear starting point of trying to address issues of each and every individual chassis, so that they be may be considered "useful" moving on further down the road.

However, this (the creation of chassis feedback threads) stopped sometime around the release of the Golden Boy/Kintaro. One of the first things you noticed/realized, despite immediate criticism at the time was that it was insanely easy to core them. Their TTK did not match up with anything that severe in a long time.

It took you (PGI) to acknowledge that weeks later, when I suspect sales correlated with that change. The fact that little to no care was taken into any consideration into making that chassis better AT THE TIME OF RELEASE does you a future disservice. This is also why trying to sell the Pretty Baby to anyone these days is futile. DESPITE the most recent CT buff, the overall usage of the Awesome has not really changed the opinion of people willing to buy the hero mech.

While I doubt you will want to "sink in resources" to fixing/addressing this problem in detail, fixing mech scaling IS IMPERATIVE to improving the overall distribution usage of a mech this maligned. Even if you decided not to go that route, YOU WOULD HAVE to meticulously balance it, either through major quirks, or my current preference, which is to massively redo the hitboxes, to extend more of the arm structure at the top of the mech and not consider that section the appropriate side torso. It's part of base reason why the Awesome is not being in use.

If you took the time and effort to properly analyze AND balance the mechs, they would not be in such "poor tiers" as constituted by the "competitive community". Once you improve the obviously underperforming mechs, like the Locust, then the overall TTK improves for the better. Otherwise, there is every reason to murder Locusts with a simple Commando... that is able to chase them at will because they have matching top speeds when equipped appropriately. The role of the Locust is non-existent for the most part due to that simple thing.

In any case, unless you took a serious look at balance instead of "randomly picking things to change", you would never "need" to give up on balancing IS vs Clans. That's just the reality we're in.

[cSand]

Damn man, comin out an answering sh*t left right and centre

well played

Well, since you're here:

Can we have an Urbanmech for Christmas?

Edited by cSand, 07 September 2014 - 09:18 PM.

[Russ Bullock]

NuclearPanda, on 05 September 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

Chimed in to say that I'm thoroughly disappointed and feel it's quite lazy to write off 10v12 completely. I would understand why it would NOT be an option at this time, but to write it off so blatantly like you did within the post makes me a sad panda.

This game is moving further and further away from being an actual Mechwarrior title into being Generic Robot Shooter XXVIV.

Well in my replies you will see it may not be written off entirely and I hope to see it in some form, certainly buttons in Private matches at the least.

But the rest of your statement I must take issue with as simply irresponsible. I truly feel this is the most true to MechWarrior title there has ever been. There is no doubt we have the advantage of todays computers and technologies, but we can start a seperate thread to have this debate sometime.

[Imperius]

Ok, I'll bite!

Why did you nerf the speed of the ER-PPC (a sniper weapon) has the longest effective range in the game hinting it's a sniper weapon.

Please do not say it's a medium range weapon, because lore and gun values say sniper (long range)

Speed matters when you are aiming across the map while guessing/hoping you hit the right component since hit detection is at the mercy of the server gods.

[N0MAD]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 09:06 PM, said:

chat...

With 10v12, if balancing was set up for this wouldnt that lead to a situation where mixed groups of IS & Clan mechs in same team wouldnt be possible?
BTW, thanks for the chat, apreciated.

[Malleus011]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 08:32 PM, said:

How many of your truly prefer that style of gameplay in MWO? Please I am actually asking.

We've asked and asked and proposed and proposed solutions to remove and diffuse PP FLD, to no avail. Obviously your community doesn't desire shorter time-to-kill.

That said, the IS small and medium laser are a tad hot, and could be cooled off to canon levels - but that's not going to fix Clan balance, or the PP/FLD problem.

[Russ Bullock]

cSand, on 07 September 2014 - 09:15 PM, said:

Damn man, comin out an answering sh*t left right and centre

well played

Well, since you're here:

Can we have an Urbanmech for Christmas?

For Christmas? probably not I have the guys pretty much completely tapped out making some other cool new mechs. Let you guys know about that pretty soon.

[UBCslayer]

Russ Bullock, on 07 September 2014 - 08:32 PM, said:

Only 20 pages? Okay sorry I'm late to the party but I am going to jump in here:



Well lets keep in mind that many players including myself are very concerned with "average time to death". I personally wish the average lifespan was a little longer. As we have stated many times lots of our design decisions are based on a desired game where players really feel like they are driving a giant stomping mech that can take some abuse and possibly survive a mistake. A more "battle of attrition" feeling is what we and many of our players desire. This has been the basis for most design choices that steered us away from large pin point Alpha's and punching holes through mechs. So I would rather try and keep time to death at least where it is and that means not just buffing up the IS mechs to reach Clans. So the main problem with buffing IS mechs is just that everyone dies faster.

How many of your truly prefer that style of gameplay in MWO? Please I am actually asking.

Fairly certain most players agree that TTK shouldn`t be lowered, so why not add more robust quirks to IS mechs while at the same time increasing armour values on ALL mechs, something along the lines of 10%.

[Russ Bullock]

Imperius, on 07 September 2014 - 09:22 PM, said:

Ok, I'll bite!

Why did you nerf the speed of the ER-PPC (a sniper weapon) has the longest effective range in the game hinting it's a sniper weapon.

Please do not say it's a medium range weapon, because lore and gun values say sniper (long range)

Speed matters when you are aiming across the map while guessing/hoping you hit the right component since hit detection is at the mercy of the server gods.

Well I wanted to make this about Clan balancing but a quick diversion.

You can make a good case that it is a sniping weapon and it still has all of that range. But the bottom line is that TTK was the most effected by PPC's doing too much pin point damage at ranges outside of most other weapons. It was just too dang good, and we dealt with constant PPC complaints of not being any fun and there not being any "brawling". Based on feedback we recieve most of our players feel the game is funnest when brawling is brought into a more medium range setting. This change helped with that, while still leaving them as a very effective weapon, they still almost travel at 1 km a second. May not make you feel better but that is the reasoning.