744 replies to this topic

[HashtagComStarWasRight]

Sandtiger, on 30 September 2014 - 08:11 AM, said:

Poptarting was never truly a problem. That is one of the main reason JJ were designed (for their combat aspect) It was brilliant to see the buggers jumping into the air and making themselves such an easy target. Learning to lead them was easy. Players who complain about Poptarting annoy me. To punish players for using their mechs to its maximum potential is just asinine. Stop complaining because you are a poor marksman. =]

Jump Jets are meant for battlefield mobility. Pop-tarting is just an unfortunate result of the way they were implemented in this game, insofar as players will twist the intent of anything to give them the most advantage.

[Squarebasher]

I think what has been proposed looks good.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Sandtiger, on 30 September 2014 - 08:11 AM, said:

Poptarting was never truly a problem. That is one of the main reason JJ were designed (for their combat aspect) It was brilliant to see the buggers jumping into the air and making themselves such an easy target. Learning to lead them was easy. Players who complain about Poptarting annoy me. To punish players for using their mechs to its maximum potential is just asinine. Stop complaining because you are a poor marksman. =]

JJs were designed to allow mechs to take up superior positions such as on top of buildings, ledges and forward in a hurry. MWO butchered the implementation, if they were like MW2 then it wouldn't have been a problem as you'd have a hovering mech to blast out of the air.

[Mister Blastman]

Russ: Hmm curious--these are great ideas, btw, I love them, but say on the Summoner, it has five jets so the quirk will make it turn faster (I love this), you mention it scales as you increase jets, does this mean that if you have only one jet, current 'mechs will be getting a reduction in their turn rate they already experience when jetting or will it only scale upwards and faster from where we are currently at as it pertains to turning?

[C E Dwyer]

Russ Bullock, on 29 September 2014 - 04:32 PM, said:

You are assuming that the Victor isn't being changed? The Victor negative quirks are being flushed. Of course this immediately puts it in Tier 1 category again so it will not receive additional quirks but yes the negative ones have been flushed.

Yay and stroll on, my Victor brawlers are back

[Haroldwolf]

"I have instructed the team to make a small adjustment to fall damage for Medium and Light class 'Mechs. Currently Medium, Heavy, and Assault class 'Mechs all take falling damage at 35 m/s, with Light class 'Mechs starting at 38 m/s. After some more testing, we have decided to leave Heavy and Assault class'Mechs as they stand, but we will be slightly increasing Medium class 'Mechs to 39 m/s and increasing Lights to 46 m/s."

All objects fall at the same rate in any given gravity field. Proven centuries ago by different scientists. Are you trying to model the damage from the kenertic energy released by the fall? In this case the mass of the mech does come into play.

Edited by Haroldwolf, 30 September 2014 - 08:36 AM.

[Darth Futuza]

Sandtiger, on 30 September 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

People like you will always use excuses (such as Mechs being overpowered) to cover your own inadequacies. My IS Raven 3L has 3ML and 2 SRM2's and I deal 1-4 kills a match, and anywhere from 300-850 damage almost every round. Is it overpowered? It must be.

Perhaps if we make the Ravens have to run backwards to be able to fire its weapons it wouldn't be so OP, and a fairer match.

Learn to Pilot... Not complain. =]

Wait wut? Did you even read the post I was replying to? Nevermind.

If I were going to complain about something being OP, it'd be all the players with FPS > 20. So OP. So unfair.

[Russ Bullock]

Rasc4l, on 29 September 2014 - 04:54 PM, said:

Hi Russ, nice to hear from your future plans, thanks for the update. Nice that the said plans seem to make sense. But what about The Plan? Is it no longer being updated, because a) it was Bryan's domain and the Earth seems to have swallowed him since Transverse fiasco Your CW implementation changes so fast there is no point? What I'm basically after is information on UI 2.0, which is still one of the steps in the plan. I saw you're no longer looking for a guy to do the UI. Is this because you hired someone for that or you dropped improving UI 2.0 altogether? I'm interested in this, because I know so many people who are still on a break from MWO exactly due to the lack of smurfy like UI. I know I would be if my interest wasn't boosted by being in an active unit.

I think "The Plan" is a little pointless now considering that were actively working to release Phase 2 this year - I have never been involved with it but will look into re-furbishing it to be relevant to our current direction.

UI 2.0 has a full time developer who continues to make improvements - store got a round of improvements this last time as well as some more in the mechlab - we will get to the smurfy style improvements eventually. Every time we have a spare moment we fix some bugs and make some improvements in UI 2.0

FupDup, on 29 September 2014 - 05:05 PM, said:

Also, about the XL side torso penalties. The rule will be 20% of the internal sinks lost, so the Mad Cat would for example lose 3. An Adder has 8 internal sinks in its engine, so 20% of that is 1.6. Would this value round up or down to determine how many DHS he loses?

It will stay a partial number - we can calculate that way.

[PhoenixFire55]

HashtagComStarWasRight, on 30 September 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

The Yen-Lo-Wang is a canon CN9-A that traded the LRM10 and AC10 for an AC20 and added 'finger razors' to the left hand.

That's probably the most obvious case of canon modified mechs, but there are plenty of others.

Yeah, that is ONE person our of billions of people, one out of tens of thousands of Centurions manufactured that has been customized. And even then it wasn't customized, its was built different, it is a unique mech that had nothing to do with other Centurions. The build on it didn't change after mech was built. Nor any other battlemech.

[Pezzer]

I do not like what the sound of Russ is hinting at regarding HEAT and MOVEMENT SPEED. This is not a good combination of things and should not be pursued. I know that the TT punishes people for using high-heat weapons, but I thought MWO's arena-based gameplay was taking a step away from that. And I never thought that it would be implemented a speed reduction penalty for high heat mechs...

How about a speed penalty for players that fire a high-damage alpha strike? Something like, if firing an alpha of over 45 points that mech's speed is reduced by X amount?

What I am saying here is that ANYTHING will be better than gimping a new player who just shot all of his Highlander's weapons at once and is about to get mopped up because he cant run away from the ENEMY THAT HE CANNOT SHOOT. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HEAT DOES, IT MAKES YOUR MECH DEFENSELESS.

/rant-but-seriously-I-think-this-is-a-horrible-idea

Glad to hear that the clan mechs are getting a rework in regards to the JJ implementation. I know that we are trying to break away from poptarting, but come on, if a mech is sacrificing 5 tons of weaponry for jump jets they should really get something out of it. So good on you guys for that change.

Edited by Pezzer, 30 September 2014 - 08:50 AM.

[WarHippy]

Russ Bullock, on 29 September 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

I am sorry you feel this way but this is just game development and balance. And in the end your Timberwolf's are likely still going to be the best heavy mech's in the game. Just based on hard point configurations they are kind of untouchable from that status. Has been true in every MechWarrior game to date and remains true in MWO.

It's just a dang good mech.

I don't know. Screwing over the S because the other two are really strong doesn't exactly scream balance to me.

[Mister Blastman]

Russ Bullock, on 29 September 2014 - 04:46 PM, said:

Again I think this ends up helping build diversity.

When I currently run my Dragon mechs it seems each one looks dang similar. AC10, medium lasers and SRM.

Now I might actually make my 5N about AC2 and my FANG about AC10 and my 1C about Gauss etc. A reason to diversify my Dragon mech's from each other.

The alternative is just buffing all weapons for every Dragon so you have the same issue you have now where I take the same thing out in my 5N that I take out in my 1C or near enough.

How about 6 ballistic hardpoints on the 5N? Eh? You know you like it... 6 in one arm... monster machine gun of doom. Yeah. Heh heh heh heh.

[Russ Bullock]

Mister Blastman, on 30 September 2014 - 08:32 AM, said:

Russ: Hmm curious--these are great ideas, btw, I love them, but say on the Summoner, it has five jets so the quirk will make it turn faster (I love this), you mention it scales as you increase jets, does this mean that if you have only one jet, current 'mechs will be getting a reduction in their turn rate they already experience when jetting or will it only scale upwards and faster from where we are currently at as it pertains to turning?

I haven't tuned numbers yet but in the case of 1 JJ I would expect slower turning in the air, after all if a 2 JJ TW can spin in the air and brawl as fast as a 5 JJ Summoner that wouldn't be right.

Perhaps expect the Summoner current in air turn rate and it slows from there with less JJ - I am not positive yet

WarHippy, on 30 September 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

I don't know. Screwing over the S because the other two are really strong doesn't exactly scream balance to me.

In the end isn't the TW-S still going to be tier 1? won't it still eat an Orion 1v1.

Let's see how it pans out.

Remember this is the biggest reason I decided to make the other Clan mechs have fixed JJ's rather than removing the Summoner's fixed JJ's.

If we do that, it opens up conversations to removing every other aspect of fixed equipment non the clan mechs, and allowing the removing of any more would completely blow up the balance were looking to achieve with IS. The game relies heavily on the Clans being balanced by the fixed equipment on the Clan side.

Okay I can't look at the thread any longer, I need to get back to work on JJ's

Oh btw -

I am considering removing the negative quirks on the S variant now that it has the fixed JJ slots

[Mister Blastman]

Interesting. One thing you might consider is how say Mechwarrior 2 handled turning with jets--they significantly sped up how fast you could turn if you used directional thrusting. I've run the Summoner a bit and managed to be successful in it in PUG drops (basically ran it 90% of the time in PUG drops) and it already is a decent brawler when the Timby isn't involved--perhaps make 5 jets double the turn rate versus what it has on the ground, three be equal and anything less be... less than the rate on ground down to one which halves it (heck even using only two on a Timby would slow down its turn rate which is a good thing).

Just a thought. Take it with a grain of salt.

[FupDup]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Oh btw -

I am considering removing the negative quirks on the S variant now that it has the fixed JJ slots

That seems fair enough, given that it's about to have the built-in negative quirk of -2 tons and -2 slots per side torso.

[Nomex 99]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

In the end isn't the TW-S still going to be tier 1? won't it still eat an Orion 1v1.

Anything else won't be Mechwarrior.

Edited by Nomex199, 30 September 2014 - 09:06 AM.

[Rhialto]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 08:43 AM, said:

UI 2.0 has a full time developer who continues to make improvements

Tell him to add a clock! Now that UI is full screen (unlike UI 1.0) I don't see the clock on the Windows desktop after every match. I usually play in the evening and in the dark (and 3D) for better immersion and often I get late in bed because I keep pressing the Play button.

ALT-TAB to look at the clock is a bit anoying.

[WarHippy]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

In the end isn't the TW-S still going to be tier 1? won't it still eat an Orion 1v1.

No, I don't think it will still be tier 1. The other Timber Wolves sure, but not the S with loss of crits and weight to work with. As for fighting an Orion 1v1 that depends on the pilots involved which I don't think is ever taken into account when you guys look at the raw numbers.

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Let's see how it pans out.

Of course I will see how it pans out since you are not giving me much of a choice and are doing this anyway. I still think it is a poor decision.

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Remember this is the biggest reason I decided to make the other Clan mechs have fixed JJ's rather than removing the Summoner's fixed JJ's.

If we do that, it opens up conversations to removing every other aspect of fixed equipment non the clan mechs, and allowing the removing of any more would completely blow up the balance were looking to achieve with IS. The game relies heavily on the Clans being balanced by the fixed equipment on the Clan side.

I don't see why it needs to be one or the other. I'm not asking for the ability to remove JJ's or any other equipment from the other mechs I just don't see the point in forcing the JJ's on the omnipods of mechs that don't have them as core equipment. This hurts the Kit Fox as well not just the Timber Wolf, and I don't think you have fully taken that into consideration.

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Oh btw -

I am considering removing the negative quirks on the S variant now that it has the fixed JJ slots

That would help, but honestly it probably isn't enough.

[TercieI]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Oh btw -

I am considering removing the negative quirks on the S variant now that it has the fixed JJ slots

Excellent. This was honestly my one concern with this change (I'm ok having to fix builds I know are broken good). 2 fixed JJ is a heck of a negative quirk in a lot of ways.

[Túatha Dé Danann]

Russ Bullock, on 30 September 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

I haven't tuned numbers yet but in the case of 1 JJ I would expect slower turning in the air, after all if a 2 JJ TW can spin in the air and brawl as fast as a 5 JJ Summoner that wouldn't be right.

Perhaps expect the Summoner current in air turn rate and it slows from there with less JJ - I am not positive yet



In the end isn't the TW-S still going to be tier 1? won't it still eat an Orion 1v1.

I've killed Madcats left and right with my Orion. Here is the Build:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...347ac22e603e43c

The sustained DPS is even higher than on some Madcats, it has a pinpoint-weapon and can fire nearly all the time, while having a Std reactor, not suffering from anything beside a total destruction of the CT.

Quote

Let's see how it pans out.



Remember this is the biggest reason I decided to make the other Clan mechs have fixed JJ's rather than removing the Summoner's fixed JJ's.

Its not the mech that is the problem but the game mechanic forcing issues on the balance. Fix the cause, then you fix the issues - not need to nerf a chassis or a whole range of chassis.

Quote

If we do that, it opens up conversations to removing every other aspect of fixed equipment non the clan mechs, and allowing the removing of any more would completely blow up the balance were looking to achieve with IS. The game relies heavily on the Clans being balanced by the fixed equipment on the Clan side.

What about this: Give a mech a maximum amount of loadout-stuff for a certain weapon category and test it how it works. Like
Madcat:
30 LRM tubes in variable configuartion
20 SRM-tubes in variable configuration

5 Light Laser slots (Small/SP/Medium/MP)
or Two Light and two Heavy Laser slots
(LL/LPL/ER-PPC couint as heavy)

Up to 3 small ballistic weapon slots (machine guns)

If you leave out some of those options (like the machine guns) you gain the ability to mount other stuff, like JJ.
With such a balancing category, you effectively limit on what a mech can bring in (both for IS and Clans) and you can give omni-pods a tweak like (+10 missile slots, +1 light energy slot)

The count of the omni-pod is GLOBAL for the mech, meaning, that if you have the LT with one light energy slots but do not equip it there, you could mount it in the LA.
You could also do that for IS mechs. In the end, you can balnce the mechs this way, also hard-capping boatig and get rid of ghot heat with that.

Quote

Okay I can't look at the thread any longer, I need to get back to work on JJ's



Oh btw -

I am considering removing the negative quirks on the S variant now that it has the fixed JJ slots

Just try to change your point of view fom time to time. I have the feeing, you are pretty fixed n a certain point of view for balancing. Drink a tea, imagine funny squirrels, jump 3 times up and down and take another fresh look at the topic. Maybe it helps to balance the stuff without limiting the modability of mech which is the main selling point of this genre.

Edited by Túatha Dé Danann, 30 September 2014 - 09:24 AM.