I'd be curious to know how much of your damage taken per-match was dealt soley by those strikes then. I'd be willing to bet it'd be minimum 15% - pretty significant number for being instantaneous damage, and if you get hit by 2-3 of those in a single game...then what happened?
I'd reckon it would be around 10-15%, based on team mates' percentage damage numbers, and which I find totally acceptable, especially given the fact that I consider it my fault for being caught inside a strike zone.
Also, I don't recall being hit my more than 1 in a single match, at least not for the last several months if my memory is still accurate.
But lest we forget, this thread was started as a complaint that strikes should not be able to kill fresh mechs, a position that I find silly. We are talking about artillery. It is supposed to obliterate almost anything and everything that gets a direct hit. It has been that way since the time of the ancient ballista, medieval trebuchet, and all the way up to the modern howitzer. As such, I really can't imagine a 31st Century equivalent not being able to obliterate any Mech cockpit.
1. Lasers have weight. Strikes do not.
2. Lasers have heat. Strikes do not.
3. Lasers have limited range. Strikes do not (unless you're on alpine, but it's not like people fight at 2000m even 1/4th of the time there)
4. Lasers dole their damage out over time, and not all-at once. Strikes are insta-hit.
5. Lasers don't shake enemy cockpits at all. Strikes most definitely do.
6. You would have to mount 5 Large Lasers just to do as much damage as a single strike shell with one click of the button - and you'd probably overheat if you fired a second time, no matter how many double heat sinks you have.
Drawbacks balance lasers. A lack of drawbacks is what unbalances strikes.
None of those modules confer a direct damage bonus. It's merely that simple.
I agree that all of those modules are fun, because they have drawbacks:
This isn't a LRM discussion thread. You can look at my posts in threads about LRMs (find my posts via profile or whatever); suffice it to say I have multiple reasons to completely disagree with you.
1) The drawback of strikes is that they are line of site. You HAVE to expose yourself to enemy fire to use it (unless you drop it around a corner and the enemy is kind enough to walk to the red smoke for you) so anyone who drops a strike could potentially take damage, and depending on how many enemies see them, they could potentially take more damage than their strike dishes out. Additionally, none of the other modules give out free warnings. That red smoke is SUPER conspicuous and an enemy who is paying attention will simply walk away and you spent 40k CBILLs for some pretty explosions that did nothing.
2) This is SOOOOOO reminiscent of the "NERF LURMS!!!!11111!!" threads. Half of the arguments are the same.
Sorry man, you're just gonna half to disengage the parking brake on your mech and engage those big metal legs
SharpCookie, on 13 November 2014 - 06:54 PM, said:
Strikes are only used as extra damage against single or small groups. I heard some defending strikes as a way to scatter campers, but they don't hit often when used for that purpose. Strike use has shifted towards engaged and distracted targets to maximize damage. I use strikes while my weapons are on recycle / cooling down just for the extra damage. They're always too busy trying to shoot me to look away to notice the smoke to their side/behind.
I don't know about you, but I find aiming artillery on engaged and distracted targets a very good use. Other than forcing the enemy into vacating their current position, why else would you want to aim artillery on someone who you know will just run away from it?
SharpCookie, on 13 November 2014 - 06:54 PM, said:
I would like to see strikes require a 2 second hold on the same location AND display a green laser beam (like TAG) from the source.
As has been suggested countless times, even by me.
Willard Phule, on 14 November 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:
How about we take this issue to a stupid level?
Perhaps what is needed here is a setting that will automatically make you move to avoid Artillery/Air Strikes based on your personal Elo score. If you have a low Elo, you have no choice....it will simply do it's best to move you, at maximum speed, out of the impact zone. After seeing your mech do this by itself 30, 40, 100 times...there's a chance that new players might actually catch on and be able to do it by themselves.
Perhaps this should also be applied to LRMs.....
Best solution I've heard in a while. I wonder how many of these whiners would have the "eureka" moment and suddenly realize, "holy ****! my mech can move!"
LocationPeeking over your shoulder while eating your cookies.
Posted 14 November 2014 - 08:35 AM
Telmasa, on 13 November 2014 - 09:08 PM, said:
I feel like we've discussed this before, but I digress.
1. The strike either missed you in your hunchie, or you managed to tank it on all your most-armored locations. Either way, you took a considerable bite in damage for no perceivable trade-off.
2. Just because most pugs don't always use it 100% of the time doesn't mean it's not broken.
3. I would almost actually agree that strikes are only a problem because you can bring 12 of them (potentially) per team/game. Taken as a one-time use for an entire team per match, yeah, it would be no big deal at all. Three would be livable.
The problem with this idea, though, is finding a way to enforce such restrictions, and making sure there's no bugs or exploits, and so on - especially with everything that's already on PGI's development plate.
I think that adjusting the cooldown times (both between uses and the time between smoke-pop and strike-hit), damage output, and possibly accuracy/splash range, would all be far easier to access, while still allowing strikes to be an "area of denial" consumable and worth the 40k-cbills.
In fact, when it comes to area of denial, a longer time between the "smoke" and the strike hitting would be a beneficial change - because then anybody would be able to notice the smoke and react, without question, unless they really did somehow ignore it for, say, 8-10 seconds.
I'd even be fine with a larger splash radius per shell if it meant the damage would be lowered significantly.
4. I really think that if you 'dodged' a strike in a DW, the truth is that it missed and could have been aimed better.
5. It's not about being 'killed' by it, it's about the amount of damage that's being dealt by a zero-drawback magic card consumable, especially in organized drops, and that it's too drastic.
As others have pointed out, it should be able to be an "area of denial" weapon.
The way it's currently implemented misses that mark by a very wide margin, and instead makes it a "pay to click this one time and get a huge amount of near-guaranteed, nigh-instantaneous damage" gimmick.
Yeah, you and discussed this in detail quite a bit over in the Feature Suggestions Forums, so I don't think either of us probably wants to go over it all again.
I'll just make a few quick points and be done then.
1) I ran through the strike zone accidentally and definitely recorded three solid hits. Most of the damage was dealt to my RT (hunch) but, like I said, failed to open the armor. It's true that there was no trade-off on my part, but it was something I could have avoided if I had been more attentive. Remember, anytime a strike is used, the user is cutting into his/her pool of C-bill rewards which can be pretty hurtful if that pilot's team loses. That's the trade-off.
2) Individual strikes really aren't a problem. In fact, I would say that, individually, strikes are under powered compared to historical and modern strikes, as well as the fictional BT accounts. I recognize that they can't possess that kind of power or else they will break the game. I simply maintain that, on a per strikes basis, they are very well balanced at this time. Nerfing them would ruin them. I know that I would stop purchasing them entirely because they would no longer be worth the C-bills. UAVs, already edging out strikes as a more powerful module, will completely take over until enough people complain about them being OP. After they get that nerfed, I suppose the Cool Shots will be next on the nerfers' agendas.
3) Already the accuracy and splash is pretty mild. There have been four separate occasions where I was caught in a strike and failed to receive any damage because I was lucky enough to move between the shells. I have also had strikes land on target areas that actually had Mechs in them, but fail to deal damage because of the spread and more limited splash. That doesn't happen often, but it does still occur occasionally.
The cooldown timer is probably an okay way to balance the quantity of strikes in a match, but I still believe that a more sensible balance would be to limit the number of strikes to three per team. I laid out a method of doing this over in Feature Suggestions. The Reader's Digest Condensed Version of it is this: Implement a voting system for each match to select a Team Leader. Let the other two lances select their Lance Leaders. Those three leaders get to use strikes. If anyone else has them, then their indicators get grayed out and the strikes can't be used. This pushes role warfare and team coordination a bit more because now leaders are the only ones who can use strikes, while everyone else will have to focus on different modules and (potentially) roles.
For area denial, a longer strike duration would be useful, but I feel that the number of shells would need to be increased proportionally. If the same number of shells fell across a longer span of time, then it becomes possible for quick Mechs to run through the zone in between shells and escape damage due to pilots' skills in timing the shell drops. That would defeat the purpose of area denial.
4) I was stationary and saw a Mech take a long look at me without firing weapons. The Mech's behavior practically screamed "STRIKE!" so I started backing. Sure enough, after a heartbeat, the smoke roiled up past my cockpit. I barely escaped the zone; the first shell hit just in front of me, the splash damage missing me completely. It was a close call, but I did it. Typically, Dires are a bit slow to escape zones from a stand still. That's one reason why I try not to stop with my Dires; they have too much inertia.
5) *Shrug* I feel that strikes are supposed to be a part of a war. They have been for a very long time and it makes sense to have them in the game. Strikes have always been a powerful, area-blanket, death-dealing, destroy everything kind of attack. I feel that the ones in-game are under powered, but that they are so necessarily to keep from breaking the game. Getting hit by a strike may mean that you are being damaged by an invisibly enemy, but I look at it from the perspective that you are taking damage from the enemy team. It's like buying grenades in Ghost Recon or some other shooter. You expose yourself for a fraction of a second to throw something that explodes four seconds later with the potential to kill a half dozen guys if they are in the blast zone. They are expensive, pretty much guaranteed, low-skill, nearly instant death-dealing consumables. The main difference between them and strikes is that strikes aren't as dangerous. I've never seen more than one Mech killed by a strike at a time. I don't even see components get destroyed very often. Most of the time, the strike is just softening targets up a little, or denying an enemy the ability to move through an area.
Compared to other games, our strike consumables are pretty tame. It's just the number/frequency that is a problem. Fix that by capping the number per team, and you solve the whole issue. Everyone can go home happy.
Compared to other games, our strike consumables are pretty tame. It's just the number/frequency that is a problem. Fix that by capping the number per team, and you solve the whole issue. Everyone can go home happy.
They have capped the number per team. It is 12. Each person can only carry one.
Try actually reading my post to understand what I meant by that.
I read your post. You meant a lower cap, which is silly. How do you decide which people who brought an arty strike aren't allowed to use theirs and which ones are? Do I get bonus cbills if MM decides I'm not allowed to use my consumable but other people are?
Or do we use the category "equipped an arty or air strike" as a category for matching teams, making it even more difficult for MM to balance everything out?
12 per team is reasonable. If the cooldown goes up by 5 seconds, that could help reduce "spam" (I don't personally see them being spammed, but ok)
LocationPeeking over your shoulder while eating your cookies.
Posted 14 November 2014 - 02:08 PM
Voivode, on 14 November 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:
I read your post. You meant a lower cap, which is silly. How do you decide which people who brought an arty strike aren't allowed to use theirs and which ones are? Do I get bonus cbills if MM decides I'm not allowed to use my consumable but other people are?
Or do we use the category "equipped an arty or air strike" as a category for matching teams, making it even more difficult for MM to balance everything out?
12 per team is reasonable. If the cooldown goes up by 5 seconds, that could help reduce "spam" (I don't personally see them being spammed, but ok)
No, I am fine with the cap as-is. I put forward the idea of a lower cap, enabling only Lance and Drop commanders to use their strikes, as a means of compromising with the "nerf it" crowd. I would rather have strikes capped than have them nerfed.
You can't just jump into a discussion between two people and cherry pick a few lines to nitpick over. You have to look at the discussion as a whole. If you had done that, you would know my stance on the issue.
As far as the 'Who gets it" question, I discussed that over in the Feature Suggestions forum with someone else. I'm not going reiterate all of that information. If you are curious, go check out my posts over there.
Diablo Intercepter, on 14 November 2014 - 01:31 PM, said:
Can the smoke from an airstrike be a different color than the smoke from an artillery strike? Please?
It's already easy enough to differentiate between the two. When you see smoke, look up. A big shiny jet will fly overhead a couple seconds before the strike. The strike goes in the direction that the jet is flying. If you're in line with it, just sidle over a bit and watch the pretty flames roll by.
These quotes are getting long...so if anybody is still bothering to pay attention, apologies in advance! lol
Willard Phule, on 14 November 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:
How about we take this issue to a stupid level? Perhaps what is needed here is a setting that will automatically make you move to avoid Artillery/Air Strikes based on your personal Elo score. If you have a low Elo, you have no choice....it will simply do it's best to move you, at maximum speed, out of the impact zone. After seeing your mech do this by itself 30, 40, 100 times...there's a chance that new players might actually catch on and be able to do it by themselves. Perhaps this should also be applied to LRMs.....
Funny especially because even the game won't be able to make your mech dodge properly aimed air strikes....
Mystere, on 14 November 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:
I'd reckon it would be around 10-15%, based on team mates' percentage damage numbers, and which I find totally acceptable, especially given the fact that I consider it my fault for being caught inside a strike zone. Also, I don't recall being hit my more than 1 in a single match, at least not for the last several months if my memory is still accurate. But lest we forget, this thread was started as a complaint that strikes should not be able to kill fresh mechs, a position that I find silly. We are talking about artillery. It is supposed to obliterate almost anything and everything that gets a direct hit. It has been that way since the time of the ancient ballista, medieval trebuchet, and all the way up to the modern howitzer. As such, I really can't imagine a 31st Century equivalent not being able to obliterate any Mech cockpit.
1. You're totally okay with your mech's effectiveness (bear with me) effectively being reduced by 10-15% per strike used on you, with no further drawbacks than their c-bill earnings being hurt a smidgen?
Personally speaking, I can't comprehend that, at least as a 'fun' way to play a game.
2. For the same reason - no drawbacks besides c-bill earnings - it's not particularly fair to even have the *potential* to instantly kill (or cripple, even) an enemy mech with a single button press.
I'm sure you've noticed that refrain from me by now, though.
Voivode, on 14 November 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:
1) The drawback of strikes is that they are line of site. You HAVE to expose yourself to enemy fire to use it (unless you drop it around a corner and the enemy is kind enough to walk to the red smoke for you) so anyone who drops a strike could potentially take damage, and depending on how many enemies see them, they could potentially take more damage than their strike dishes out. Additionally, none of the other modules give out free warnings. That red smoke is SUPER conspicuous and an enemy who is paying attention will simply walk away and you spent 40k CBILLs for some pretty explosions that did nothing. 2) This is SOOOOOO reminiscent of the "NERF LURMS!!!!11111!!" threads. Half of the arguments are the same. Sorry man, you're just gonna half to disengage the parking brake on your mech and engage those big metal legs
Sorry man, if you're not going to bother to keep up with the discussion, I'm not obliged to waste text on you. I've already been through this before. But even so:
1. Having to expose yourself to line of sight *one time* for mere milliseconds at most (or a couple seconds at worst), is not a 'drawback'. You have to try pretty hard to even get shot the first time you're exposed, it takes a little bit of time for the enemy to see, aim, and shoot at you.
2. "Disengaging the parking brake" would 'work', IF there was an appreciable delay between the smoke being popped (which should also come with an audible warning from bitching betty) and when the strikes hit.
There isn't.
Nightmare1, on 14 November 2014 - 08:35 AM, said:
Yeah, you and discussed this in detail quite a bit over in the Feature Suggestions Forums, so I don't think either of us probably wants to go over it all again. I'll just make a few quick points and be done then. 1) I ran through the strike zone accidentally and definitely recorded three solid hits. Most of the damage was dealt to my RT (hunch) but, like I said, failed to open the armor. It's true that there was no trade-off on my part, but it was something I could have avoided if I had been more attentive. Remember, anytime a strike is used, the user is cutting into his/her pool of C-bill rewards which can be pretty hurtful if that pilot's team loses. That's the trade-off. 2) Individual strikes really aren't a problem. In fact, I would say that, individually, strikes are under powered compared to historical and modern strikes, as well as the fictional BT accounts. I recognize that they can't possess that kind of power or else they will break the game. I simply maintain that, on a per strikes basis, they are very well balanced at this time. Nerfing them would ruin them. I know that I would stop purchasing them entirely because they would no longer be worth the C-bills. UAVs, already edging out strikes as a more powerful module, will completely take over until enough people complain about them being OP. After they get that nerfed, I suppose the Cool Shots will be next on the nerfers' agendas. 3) Already the accuracy and splash is pretty mild. There have been four separate occasions where I was caught in a strike and failed to receive any damage because I was lucky enough to move between the shells. I have also had strikes land on target areas that actually had Mechs in them, but fail to deal damage because of the spread and more limited splash. That doesn't happen often, but it does still occur occasionally. The cooldown timer is probably an okay way to balance the quantity of strikes in a match, but I still believe that a more sensible balance would be to limit the number of strikes to three per team. I laid out a method of doing this over in Feature Suggestions. The Reader's Digest Condensed Version of it is this: Implement a voting system for each match to select a Team Leader. Let the other two lances select their Lance Leaders. Those three leaders get to use strikes. If anyone else has them, then their indicators get grayed out and the strikes can't be used. This pushes role warfare and team coordination a bit more because now leaders are the only ones who can use strikes, while everyone else will have to focus on different modules and (potentially) roles. For area denial, a longer strike duration would be useful, but I feel that the number of shells would need to be increased proportionally. If the same number of shells fell across a longer span of time, then it becomes possible for quick Mechs to run through the zone in between shells and escape damage due to pilots' skills in timing the shell drops. That would defeat the purpose of area denial.
4) I was stationary and saw a Mech take a long look at me without firing weapons. The Mech's behavior practically screamed "STRIKE!" so I started backing. Sure enough, after a heartbeat, the smoke roiled up past my cockpit. I barely escaped the zone; the first shell hit just in front of me, the splash damage missing me completely. It was a close call, but I did it. Typically, Dires are a bit slow to escape zones from a stand still. That's one reason why I try not to stop with my Dires; they have too much inertia.
5) *Shrug* I feel that strikes are supposed to be a part of a war. They have been for a very long time and it makes sense to have them in the game. Strikes have always been a powerful, area-blanket, death-dealing, destroy everything kind of attack. I feel that the ones in-game are under powered, but that they are so necessarily to keep from breaking the game. Getting hit by a strike may mean that you are being damaged by an invisibly enemy, but I look at it from the perspective that you are taking damage from the enemy team. It's like buying grenades in Ghost Recon or some other shooter. You expose yourself for a fraction of a second to throw something that explodes four seconds later with the potential to kill a half dozen guys if they are in the blast zone. They are expensive, pretty much guaranteed, low-skill, nearly instant death-dealing consumables. The main difference between them and strikes is that strikes aren't as dangerous. I've never seen more than one Mech killed by a strike at a time. I don't even see components get destroyed very often. Most of the time, the strike is just softening targets up a little, or denying an enemy the ability to move through an area.
Compared to other games, our strike consumables are pretty tame. It's just the number/frequency that is a problem. Fix that by capping the number per team, and you solve the whole issue. Everyone can go home happy.
1. I don't see a c-bill pricetag as a true gameplay drawback. I doubt someone is going to see a direwolf and think, "oh, I need to save my c-bills", versus "oh, I can whip out my magic-card air strike and really hurt his mech!". Even without premium, 40k cbills isn't a whole lot.
You could make air strikes cost 250k c-bills or more, and it wouldn't change its inherent imbalance, as currently implemented. (And it definitely wouldn't fix the spam in organized drops, none of those guys care about earnings.)
2. As it currently stands, compared to any other consumable there's very little reason to NOT take an air/arty strike. It should instead be an interesting alternative, not a "go-to" gimmick.
Rebalancing strikes to behave as delayed area-of-denial, rather than 'sudden-death-from-nowhere', would achieve a good level of usefulness without making them an overwhelming advantage, I think.
*I doubt many people would purposefully ignore any air/arty strike regardless of the damage; it's not like we regenerate "health points" or anything. Still, I admit it should do something worth thinking about - just not 35-damage-per-shell (unless it can't damage any component for more than 5 damage each, or something like that)*
3. The splash range...is "acceptable", I think, if I ignore that it comes with a whopping 35 damage per shell; the accuracy, however, I think should be different.
Not as in the strike can "miss" the mark, mind you; just that the area the shells land in ought to be spread out more. It's too much concencrated damage to be fair as-is.
I'll admit, even, sometimes I see strikes *seem* to be aimed right and not really do much...but it's pretty rare, and usually happens on Tourmaline.
I think the voting system would simply spawn wide-spread complaints from the playerbase, about "why did I pay for this if I don't get to use it in a match???", x100 ad nauseum until it was rolled back. That's the main reason I'm not really hopping onto the "limit number of strikes per match" idea-cart anymore.
You raise a good point about area of denial - spreading out the time it takes for all the shells to land from first to last - but I don't think you'd have to increase the number of shells to achieve the desired effect.
4. That sounds like wildly good luck to me...I've had that situation many times before, and sure, I can 'back out' away from the smoke if I'm really intuitive and quick, but those shells don't miss for me.
5. I kinda disagree...there's a reason military arsenals aren't simply made up of nothing but artillery and air support. They're suppression, area-of-denial weapons, not "murder-everything because we can" weapons.
Grenades in first-person-shooters have limitations that make them fair, though - range, timer, limited radius, and usually don't cost very much. (That's why 'noob-tubes' became so OP, they had range, were insta-hit, and more ammo.)
Plus, we aren't flesh-bag gun-toters - we're pilots of multi-tonned, thick-armored (relatively speaking, even in the case of a Locust it's more armored than some tanks in our era) Battlemechs, the pinnacle of warfare from before the formation of the Star League.
We oughtn't fall to pieces to something like artillery or air strikes the same way that AI infantry from Ghost Recon can be wiped out by grenades. Things like that merely ought to be considerations for Mechwarriors, like: "hmm, I see/hear an inbound artillery strike, and I can't repair my mech or anything like that, so I should avoid the area it's been sent to - or else I'll take damage that, even if slight, might make me lose the next engagement".
Not life-or-death panic, in other words.
I'm starting to wish I'd taken screenshots of the times I've seen air/artillery strikes result in multiple kills; it does happen...and there's no real way for me to have quantifiable proof of all the organized group matches that are determined by who can strike-spam the bestest, without accumulating lots of replays or something.
I'll tentatively agree that compared to other games (what few there are that are comparable to this), the artillery/air strikes aren't as bad...BUT.
But, everything else in MWO has been done with the ideal of fair & balanced competition = fun.
So, when everything else has been made with that in mind, having this one exception makes it stand out that much more, and is the reason why I waste so much time and effort making these rants about it!
P.S. In the townhall meeting the other day, Paul confirmed that he'll start looking at this artillery/air strike thing next week. Personally, that's all I've needed to hear; hopefully, while skimming through our various discussions he'll strike upon something we can all agree with.
I'll just say, I really doubt anybody would quit the game if strikes were banned, nerfed, or changed.
1. You're totally okay with your mech's effectiveness (bear with me) effectively being reduced by 10-15% per strike used on you, with no further drawbacks than their c-bill earnings being hurt a smidgen?
Personally speaking, I can't comprehend that, at least as a 'fun' way to play a game.
2. For the same reason - no drawbacks besides c-bill earnings - it's not particularly fair to even have the *potential* to instantly kill (or cripple, even) an enemy mech with a single button press.
What's so hard to comprehend about "I consider being hit by artillery my fault for not having enough situational awareness"?
Maybe this should explain a lot: I see no problem with poptarts, ECM, and mixing solo players and groups in a single queue. As such, my threshold for what is considered "OP", "imbalanced", and "unfair" is probably higher than most players.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
I'm sure you've noticed that refrain from me by now, though.
I think Betty should give a "artillery/air strike detected" warning to the whole team and replace the smoke with a tiny red dot everyone has to frantically look for.
LocationPeeking over your shoulder while eating your cookies.
Posted 18 November 2014 - 02:58 PM
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
1. Having to expose yourself to line of sight *one time* for mere milliseconds at most (or a couple seconds at worst), is not a 'drawback'. You have to try pretty hard to even get shot the first time you're exposed, it takes a little bit of time for the enemy to see, aim, and shoot at you.
That depends on the quality of the pilots. I've CT'ed Lights that attempted to sneak up and plant a strike simply because their pilots where too slow to position the strike.
That being said, it doesn't take long to plant one at all. Some people have recommended that a "hold" be applied so that you have to point and hold down the key to trigger the strike. Personally, I do not favor this and prefer the method used in MW4. Make the consumable a launched object like a Narc beacon and give it an 800 meter range (keep it a consumable though!). If it strikes a Mech it does not stick, but falls to the ground. Now the issue becomes one of marksmanship and reaction time is increased slightly due to the beacon's flight. Now you have 4 seconds from the moment the beacon hits the ground plus whatever flight time it needed to reach its target. If the Narc Beacon model is used, then it will be a visible object to which pilots can react that much more quickly. This does not nerf it greatly outside of the 800 meter limit. The downside is that it would not make much sense to release smoke from an electronic beacon, so it would be best to eliminate that warning. This would hopefully be well compensated by the more difficult targeting method. Alternatively, the smoke could be kept if people do not mind the break in immersion, providing no negatives at all for the "nerf it" crowd.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
1. I don't see a c-bill pricetag as a true gameplay drawback. I doubt someone is going to see a direwolf and think, "oh, I need to save my c-bills", versus "oh, I can whip out my magic-card air strike and really hurt his mech!". Even without premium, 40k cbills isn't a whole lot.
You could make air strikes cost 250k c-bills or more, and it wouldn't change its inherent imbalance, as currently implemented. (And it definitely wouldn't fix the spam in organized drops, none of those guys care about earnings.)
I'll admit that I am probably in the minority when it comes to being cost-conscious in-game. I actually have done exactly that; held off on using a strike on a Dire because I didn't want to waste the C-bills (we were winning). That being said, I recognize that's probably the exception rather than the norm.
I could stand strikes increasing in cost. Personally, I think that 80,000 C-bills is the absolute max that it could go though. Couple a strike with a UAV or Cool Shot 9x9 and you find yourself 120,000 in the hole. That's punishing to a lot of players, particularly noobs.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
2. As it currently stands, compared to any other consumable there's very little reason to NOT take an air/arty strike. It should instead be an interesting alternative, not a "go-to" gimmick.
True, except that I see UAVs starting to edge out strikes a bit in frequency of use. In most of my matches now, I'm seeing a lot of UAVs (five or six or more per match) while the number of strikes has declined to about two or three. I'll admit that I even starting switching our strikes for UAVs myself because of the greater returns generated by a well-placed UAV. If strikes get nerfed, I think we'll see them largely vanish outside of the overly-competitive 12-man arenas.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
Rebalancing strikes to behave as delayed area-of-denial, rather than 'sudden-death-from-nowhere', would achieve a good level of usefulness without making them an overwhelming advantage, I think.
Possibly, but I don't think that this is in keeping with the spirit of strikes. Strikes are, historically and fictionally, a powerful area-of-effect weapon that is largely destructive. Nerfing them to the point where they are merely annoying is antithetical.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
*I doubt many people would purposefully ignore any air/arty strike regardless of the damage; it's not like we regenerate "health points" or anything. Still, I admit it should do something worth thinking about - just not 35-damage-per-shell (unless it can't damage any component for more than 5 damage each, or something like that)*
Of course folks won't ignore them if they see them in time, however it will still come down to a cost/benefit analysis. If you're in a group doing some hard charging, and you've got the enemy team ropes though the scores may be similar at that moment, would you break your attacking momentum to avoid a strike? I wouldn't. I would order my pilots through the smoke and into the enemy ranks while they were in disorder. The strike, in that instance, is to buy Red Team time to reorg and redeploy. I've seen teams make substantial comebacks because the attackers did not maintain pressure. Shoot, my own four-man did that once in this vid where my 4-man lance managed to slay the 9 surviving Mechs on Red Team:
The enemy team let off pressure. Instead of pressing forward hard like they should have, they eased back on the throttle and gave my group time to stage a counterattack.
The bottomline is this: Is the risk of sustained damage from a strike greater than the risk of the enemy team recovering? In most cases, current strikes would warrant a "No," unless you are facing an actual 12-Man. Anything less, and the enemy team will most likely lack the coordination necessary to take advantage of the strike damage or attack, and will use the time bought to regroup with Pugs or to try to run.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
3. The splash range...is "acceptable", I think, if I ignore that it comes with a whopping 35 damage per shell; the accuracy, however, I think should be different.
That 35 is spread out pretty drastically. The only time you actually receive 35 damage to a single component, is if you take a direct hit from one of the actual shells. That doesn't happen often. To be honest, judging by some of the damage I have received from splash, I'm not even entirely sure that the full 35 points of damage is always dealt via the splash itself.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
Not as in the strike can "miss" the mark, mind you; just that the area the shells land in ought to be spread out more. It's too much concencrated damage to be fair as-is.
I'll admit, even, sometimes I see strikes *seem* to be aimed right and not really do much...but it's pretty rare, and usually happens on Tourmaline.
Spreading out the strike zone is an okay idea, I think. I actually like a wider zone because it creates more area denial. It just can't be too large or the instances of Mechs being in the zone without taking damage will be too many. Increasing the size of the zone may actually give some folks a reason to equip the "Strike Accuracy" modules.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
I think the voting system would simply spawn wide-spread complaints from the playerbase, about "why did I pay for this if I don't get to use it in a match???", x100 ad nauseum until it was rolled back. That's the main reason I'm not really hopping onto the "limit number of strikes per match" idea-cart anymore.
Perhaps. I think most complaints would originate from solo puggers though. The groups would be able to mitigate that by planning their drops accordingly. Overall, it would definitely make group drops more interesting!
Perhaps another solution would be to create a second artillery module and call it "Light Artillery." Give it all the same specs as the current module, but decrease the damage to 25 (I believe that is what it was originally?). Then take the current module, call it "Heavy Artillery," increase the damage back up to 40, and cap the number of them at three per match. The Light Artillery would only be available to solo puggers while the Heavy Artillery would only be available to groups. The groups could then use the voting system no problem and everyone can go home happy.
That may be an overly complicated fix though in terms of what PGI can code.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
You raise a good point about area of denial - spreading out the time it takes for all the shells to land from first to last - but I don't think you'd have to increase the number of shells to achieve the desired effect.
The splash radius could be increased instead. This would still decrease the likely damage dealt because the shells drop more slowly, while the increased splash would help ensure that quick Mechs can't run through the zone in betwen shells, thus preserving the area denial nature of a strike.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
4. That sounds like wildly good luck to me...I've had that situation many times before, and sure, I can 'back out' away from the smoke if I'm really intuitive and quick, but those shells don't miss for me.
I won't argue; sometimes it really is just dumb luck. I am able to do it fairly consistently though on macro scale.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
5. I kinda disagree...there's a reason military arsenals aren't simply made up of nothing but artillery and air support. They're suppression, area-of-denial weapons, not "murder-everything because we can" weapons.
Generally, artillery is called down on an area for saturation destruction. This is done prior to an attack, to cover a retreating unit, etc. Regardless, they are immensely powerful weapons that annihilate whatever they hit. Check out YouTube for some videos of artillery in action and you'll see what I mean.
It's true that armies are not made up entirely of artillery, however, this isn't because artillery is supposed to be ineffective. Rather, it is because artillery can not break into a room to rescue hostages or capture a command post. It cannot enter a city and engage at close range. It cannot jump up in the air and fly around to shoot down air craft, or go for a swim to sink ships. Each weapon of war has a specific function. Artillery has, for centuries now, possessed the function of long-range, high explosive, wide-area, death-dealing. I see no reason to change that in this game.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
Grenades in first-person-shooters have limitations that make them fair, though - range, timer, limited radius, and usually don't cost very much. (That's why 'noob-tubes' became so OP, they had range, were insta-hit, and more ammo.)
Good point about the limitations. It got me to thinking about ways that strikes could be altered to make them more like a real consumable, hence my initial comment about making them a launch able beacon. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a rough idea that could be refined. The reason why I am vehemently against a "hold time" is because that would be very difficult for Light Mechs as well as a lot of Mediums to accomplish. Many of them move too quickly to look at one spot accurately for very long, but standing still is something of a death trap for them. A launch able beacon could be a good compromise though.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
Plus, we aren't flesh-bag gun-toters - we're pilots of multi-tonned, thick-armored (relatively speaking, even in the case of a Locust it's more armored than some tanks in our era) Battlemechs, the pinnacle of warfare from before the formation of the Star League.
We oughtn't fall to pieces to something like artillery or air strikes the same way that AI infantry from Ghost Recon can be wiped out by grenades. Things like that merely ought to be considerations for Mechwarriors, like: "hmm, I see/hear an inbound artillery strike, and I can't repair my mech or anything like that, so I should avoid the area it's been sent to - or else I'll take damage that, even if slight, might make me lose the next engagement".
Not life-or-death panic, in other words.
Again, you're assumption/preference is that strikes be a relatively minor annoyance and not a significant threat. That ignores the nature of strikes though.
Skip to 33 minutes for material on modern strikes, or just go straight to 35 minutes for the list of things that strikes will kill:
Bottomline, strikes are designed to destroy, period. Making them anything less defeats the purpose of calling them artillery strikes. In that event, their names should be changed to something else; what, I honestly don't know.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
I'm starting to wish I'd taken screenshots of the times I've seen air/artillery strikes result in multiple kills; it does happen...and there's no real way for me to have quantifiable proof of all the organized group matches that are determined by who can strike-spam the bestest, without accumulating lots of replays or something.
I can only distinctly remember one strike that scored two kills. All the others I've seen, if they killed at all, only scored a single kill. Perhaps multi-kills are more prevalent when facing 12-Mans. I haven't fought very many in the last couple of months (been too busy, so I've been doing more solo pugging than usual), so it's possible that I'm wrong on this point.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
I'll tentatively agree that compared to other games (what few there are that are comparable to this), the artillery/air strikes aren't as bad...BUT.
But, everything else in MWO has been done with the ideal of fair & balanced competition = fun.
So, when everything else has been made with that in mind, having this one exception makes it stand out that much more, and is the reason why I waste so much time and effort making these rants about it!
Like I previously said, strikes feel pretty well balanced right now. The only time I've ever felt they were overpowered was when fighting an organized group that spammed them. In that event, lowering the cap per team from 12 down to three or so would be, I think, the best balancing method.
Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:25 PM, said:
P.S. In the townhall meeting the other day, Paul confirmed that he'll start looking at this artillery/air strike thing next week. Personally, that's all I've needed to hear; hopefully, while skimming through our various discussions he'll strike upon something we can all agree with.
I'll just say, I really doubt anybody would quit the game if strikes were banned, nerfed, or changed.
Battletech and reality have no baring on eachother, stop trying to say Arty should be balanced around how deadly it is in real life: In real life 100ton walking bipedal tanks wouldn't be stopped by pebbles 1 pixel tall, or for that matter be able to support their own weight.
LocationPeeking over your shoulder while eating your cookies.
Posted 18 November 2014 - 03:53 PM
QuantumButler, on 18 November 2014 - 03:04 PM, said:
Battletech and reality have no baring on eachother, stop trying to say Arty should be balanced around how deadly it is in real life: In real life 100ton walking bipedal tanks wouldn't be stopped by pebbles 1 pixel tall, or for that matter be able to support their own weight.
...And you'd think that people with the technology to create those massive war machines would also be able to craft artillery strikes that can destroy them (as evidenced in the books).
If anything, modern day artillery should be the baseline.
15
Telmasa, on 13 November 2014 - 09:08 PM, said:
especially because even the game won't be able to make your mech dodge properly aimed air strikes....
