716 replies to this topic

[Aethon]

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

The answer is that clan XL engines are too powerful regardless of what mech is using them. You can whine about all the terrible mechs being nerfed by this all you want, doesn't change that it's true, and on top of that those lower tier mechs are being addressed with quirks which clan apologists flagrantly ignore.

We never disputed that Clan XL engines were powerful. We disputed that a blanket nerf to every Clan mech in the game was actually a good idea, or necessary.

Furthermore, again, balance is a complex equation with many factors; when you take one factor out of the entire equation without even considering anything else, you are doing it wrong, and not actually balancing anything.

Many of the factors balancing Clan mechs are things that do not show up in stats; look at how low and wide most of our hardpoints are; when most people pilot a Nova, they end up shooting their buddies in the back half the time. Most of them have such low-mounted weapons, they have to expose a lot of their mech in order to crest a hill and fire. Many have weapon mounts that are below their waistline.

And people keep ignoring the burn time on Clan lasers, as opposed to IS ones...especially when you consider the quirks on both sides.

As for quirks, please stop bringing up Clan quirks until they are significant enough to actually matter. Take a good, long look at the quirks we got, and you will see what I mean. I understand they will never be as good as IS quirks, and that is ok; the quirks are a lot of what balance the IS mechs against the Clans. Still, a 2% quirk might as well not exist, and PGI is taking their sweet time making their 'iterative quirk' adjustments.

When you combine all the quirks the IS gets, their build flexibility, short-burn-low-heat lasers, cluster-fire LRM's, PPFLD autocannon weaponry, adjusted ghost heat on their Large Lasers and the highly useful quirks they tend to get, the IS situation is hardly what I would call dire. On the Clan side, with its long-burn lasers that generate more heat than their IS equivalents, range advantage that means nothing most of the time, terrible AC's, low and wide hardpoints, stream-fire LRM's, nerfed ERPPC's, and the inability to change structure, armor, or engine type all lead to the mechs being, ironically, very limited for omnimechs. As a result, the balance ends up being a lot closer than many here seem willing to admit.

The outliers are the ones that need adjustment, before anything else is changed; the Timberwolf, Stormcrow and Firestarter should be brought closer in performance to the other mechs, before any huge, sweeping changes are made to either faction.

Edited by Aethon, 01 April 2015 - 01:58 PM.

[Mcgral18]

KharnZor, on 01 April 2015 - 01:46 PM, said:

ok

Gimping the heat and speed on the already hot and slow robots....seems pretty ****** for their viability, since they already aren't too great.


People aren't suggesting buffing these bad robots, or a simultaneous change, but to let them remain in their ultra gimped form for months on end...

That's pretty ****** for those bad robots.

[Aethon]

Mcgral18, on 01 April 2015 - 01:52 PM, said:

Gimping the heat and speed on the already hot and slow robots....seems pretty ****** for their viability, since they already aren't too great.


People aren't suggesting buffing these bad robots, or a simultaneous change, but to let them remain in their ultra gimped form for months on end...

That's pretty ****** for those bad robots.

I actually bought the Mist Lynx, and sold it. I like it because it is cute as a button, but was such a **** that even I could not stand using it...and I keep some pretty bad mechs for sentimental value. *looks at his Awesome*

[KharnZor]

Mcgral18, on 01 April 2015 - 01:52 PM, said:

Gimping the heat and speed on the already hot and slow robots....seems pretty ****** for their viability, since they already aren't too great.


People aren't suggesting buffing these bad robots, or a simultaneous change, but to let them remain in their ultra gimped form for months on end...

That's pretty ****** for those bad robots.

Its not gimping. Its a consequence of being in a clan mech.
Like how having an IS xl means you explode if you lose that side torso, doesn't matter if its a good or bad build you just die.
However i do believe the bad clan mechs need to have something done to improve them, like that stupid flamer on the adder and other such improvements like being able to equip endo etc etc

[Mcgral18]

KharnZor, on 01 April 2015 - 02:00 PM, said:

Its not gimping. Its a consequence of being in a clan mech.
Like how having an IS xl means you explode if you lose that side torso, doesn't matter if its a good or bad build you just die.
However i do believe the bad clan mechs need to have something done to improve them, like that stupid flamer on the adder and other such improvements like being able to equip endo etc etc

Something that justifies a oversized light mech moving under 100 KPh, with nerfed (under 10) TrueDubs, while also having unoptimised construction?


Better be worth it.

[Pjwned]

Aethon, on 01 April 2015 - 01:51 PM, said:

We never disputed that Clan XL engines were powerful. We disputed that a blanket nerf to every Clan mech in the game was actually a good idea, or necessary.

Anybody with any sense can see that clan XL engines are powerful, I clearly said that they are too powerful though, because they are.

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Furthermore, again, balance is a complex equation with many factors; when you take one factor out of the entire equation without even considering anything else, you are doing it wrong, and not actually balancing anything.

Many of the factors balancing Clan mechs are things that do not show up in stats; look at how low and wide most of our hardpoints are; when most people pilot a Nova, they end up shooting their buddies in the back half the time. Most of them have such low-mounted weapons, they have to expose a lot of their mech in order to crest a hill and fire. Many have weapon mounts that are below their waistline.

Clan XL engines still unbalance the equation even considering other factors that are questionably relevant.

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And people keep ignoring the burn time on Clan lasers, as opposed to IS ones...especially when you consider the quirks on both sides.

Longer burn time is not being ignored, it's that people acknowledge the damage, range, and (for large lasers) tonnage advantage pretty much balance it out. As far as quirks on both sides though, I do actually think that IS mechs have too many heat quirks for energy weapons; not that there shouldn't be any, but mechs like the STK-4N, WVR-6K, laser focused Thunderbolt variants, etc really shouldn't have heat quirks or at the very least much less heat quirks than they do now.

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As for quirks, please stop bringing up Clan quirks until they are significant enough to actually matter. Take a good, long look at the quirks we got, and you will see what I mean. I understand they will never be as good as IS quirks, and that is ok; the quirks are a lot of what balance the IS mechs against the Clans. Still, a 2% quirk might as well not exist, and PGI is taking their sweet time making their 'iterative quirk' adjustments.

The problem is you ignore every single quirk other than some weapon quirks that are lacking and the fact that more are guaranteed to come along with more revisions, so it's bullshit to say stop bringing it up.

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When you combine all the quirks the IS gets, their build flexibility, short-burn-low-heat lasers, cluster-fire LRM's, PPFLD autocannon weaponry, lack of ghost heat on their Large Lasers and the highly useful quirks they tend to get, the IS situation is hardly what I would call dire. On the Clan side, with its long-burn lasers that generate more heat than their IS equivalents, range advantage that means nothing most of the time, terrible AC's, low and wide hardpoints, stream-fire LRM's, nerfed ERPPC's, and the inability to change structure, armor, or engine type all lead to the mechs being, ironically, very limited for omnimechs. As a result, the balance ends up being a lot closer than many here seem willing to admit.

I'm not really disputing that balance is pretty close, aside from a few needed adjustments like making clan ACs less bad and reducing IS medium & small laser heat, or else I would be complaining about more than just clan XL engines; that doesn't change the engines being too good though.

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The outliers are the ones that need adjustment, before anything else is changed; the Timberwolf, Stormcrow and Firestarter should be brought closer in performance to the other mechs, before any huge, sweeping changes are made to either faction.

It's the other way around actually, core issues like unbalanced equipment need to be addressed first before continuing on to pick & choose mechs to arbitrarily nerf if needed.

Edited by Pjwned, 01 April 2015 - 02:22 PM.

[FupDup]

To shamelessly bump my $0.02 from earlier, I still think that we should start out with a 10% speed penalty and bumping up the heatsink penalty to like 30-40%(ish) instead of going straight to 20% speed and leaving it at 20% heatsinks.

10% is a nice number in that it coincidenally lines up perfectly with the boost you get from Speed Tweak, so basically you get that removed from your mech (if you have it, otherwise you go slower than that).

It's also much more merciful on the less optimized chassis, because an Adder going 87 kph would make me a sad Panda.

In general I'd rather nudge down some stats on many of the offending Clan guns (i.e. most lasers, SRMs, Gauss, etc.) along with bumping up the side torso penalty (but not going to a high value right away) instead of use just a large XL penalty all by itself to try to level the playing field.

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 01 April 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

To shamelessly bump my $0.02 from earlier, I still think that we should start out with a 10% speed penalty and bumping up the heatsink penalty to like 30-40%(ish) instead of going straight to 20% speed and leaving it at 20% heatsinks.

10% is a nice number in that it coincidenally lines up perfectly with the boost you get from Speed Tweak, so basically you get that removed from your mech (if you have it, otherwise you go slower than that).

It's also much more merciful on the less optimized chassis, because an Adder going 87 kph would make me a sad Panda.

In general I'd rather nudge down some stats on many of the offending Clan guns (i.e. most lasers, SRMs, Gauss, etc.) along with bumping up the side torso penalty (but not going to a high value right away) instead of use just a large XL penalty all by itself to try to level the playing field.

You know this is not the PGI way of balancing things.

[Aethon]

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 02:20 PM, said:

Anybody with any sense can see that clan XL engines are powerful, I clearly said that they are too powerful though, because they are.

Clan XL engines still unbalance the equation even considering other factors that are questionably relevant.

I disagree. The other factors are not of questionable relevancy, when the Clan XL is only one small part of the whole picture.

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 02:20 PM, said:

Longer burn time is not being ignored, it's that people acknowledge the damage, range, and (for large lasers) tonnage advantage pretty much balance it out. As far as quirks on both sides though, I do actually think that IS mechs have too many heat quirks for energy weapons; not that there shouldn't be any, but mechs like the STK-4N, WVR-6K, laser focused Thunderbolt variants, etc really shouldn't have heat quirks or at the very least much less heat quirks than they do now.

Burn time > almost every other stat on lasers, when it comes to hitting a moving/twisting target. It more than makes up for their other benefits, considering there are only a couple situations in this game, and one map, that actually allow a range difference to truly matter, and the tonnage saved by Clan lasers typically going into more heatsinks to partly offset their high heat.

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 02:20 PM, said:

The problem is you ignore every single quirk other than some weapon quirks that are lacking and the fact that more are guaranteed to come along with more revisions, so it's bullshit to say stop bringing it up.

I am ignoring nothing; the new quirks suck, and the past has shown that nothing is guaranteed where PGI is concerned. I will believe we have significant quirks coming when I see them. My frustration here stems from the impressive release-day quirks that IS mechs get, and the sheer timidity PGI displays when doing anything to help the worst Clan mechs. A 10-15% quirk to a meaningful stat for the Adder, for example, would really would go a long way.

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 02:20 PM, said:

I'm not really disputing that balance is pretty close, aside from a few needed adjustments like making clan ACs less bad and reducing IS medium & small laser heat, or else I would be complaining about more than just clan XL engines; that doesn't change the engines being too good though.

If balance is so close, then why not make the needed adjustments to the most outstanding mechs before trying any grand, sweeping game changes that affect the ones who do not need them?

Pjwned, on 01 April 2015 - 02:20 PM, said:

It's the other way around actually, core issues like unbalanced equipment need to be addressed first before continuing on to pick & choose mechs to arbitrarily nerf if needed.

There is nothing arbitrary about the need to nerf the Stormcrow and Firestarter. They not only overperform in general; they also make other mechs in their own faction and weight class obsolete. Why take a Jenner or Commando when you could bring a Firestarter? The same goes with the Nova and Ice Ferret, as opposed to the Stormcrow. When a mech is that far out of line, it needs a manual adjustment, because a system-wide nerf will hurt the mechs that do not need it, and not make that much difference to the one that caused the problem in the first place.

The gap between the overperforming and underperforming mechs will still exist, when such broad strokes are utilized.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Yeah, clans need no more nerfs, they are won 53% of CW games. So OP, and hella less then the like 64% it used to be when Russ did a guage on Clan WR...or is he trying to nerf the Clans till the IS get the 64% WR?>

So yeah, stop the Clan ST nerf. better XLs, its one of few Clan advantages still remaining.

[Dugra Dugrasson]

Russ stops Clan 'Nerfs when Clanners start using Zellbrigen.

Confirmed on Twitter.

[Mcgral18]

nodebate, on 01 April 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

Russ stops Clan 'Nerfs when Clanners start using Zellbrigen.

Confirmed on Twitter.

IS robots are also going to be stock without quirks?

SHS all the way!

[Ultimax]

FupDup, on 01 April 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

To shamelessly bump my $0.02 from earlier, I still think that we should start out with a 10% speed penalty and bumping up the heatsink penalty to like 30-40%(ish) instead of going straight to 20% speed and leaving it at 20% heatsinks.

Here's my idea to you, and Deathlike, and anyone else.



Russ has stated that many mechs are getting quirks like +Armor and +Structure because their ARTWORK from table top becomes a hindrance here - even though it was irrelevant in TT.


This same premise means that the larger the IS mech, the more risky it is to use an IS XL engine, because their STs become larger and easier to single out.


How do we solve this?

How do we make it so IS mechs with XLs that are large and easy to hit, something not relevant in their TT forms, can run XL without it being a huge liability?



This is what I've been pondering.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 April 2015 - 03:09 PM.

[Johnny Z]

How about no speed reduction on Omni XL side torso loss and instead make a 50/50 chance for a small 150meter by 150 meter by 150 explosion? If other Omni mechs are nearby and lose a side torso there could be a chain reaction. It would be GLORIOUS! GLORIOUS!

[Dugra Dugrasson]

Mcgral18, on 01 April 2015 - 03:02 PM, said:

IS robots are also going to be stock without quirks?

SHS all the way!

My body is ready for the removal of Ghost Heat and true DHS, followed by the removal of the 'MechLab. Canon/stock 'Mechs for everyone.

Edited by nodebate, 01 April 2015 - 03:13 PM.

[Ultimax]

LordKnightFandragon, on 01 April 2015 - 02:56 PM, said:

Yeah, clans need no more nerfs, they are won 53% of CW games.

Listen man, I'm not here to say clan mechs need more nerfs.

But let's break your statement down.


Clans won 53% of their games, with IS having an additional 120 tons in their team decks PER WAVE.

That means across 12 players, and 48 mechs, the IS teams had an extra 480 TONS.

The entire IS faction has received quirks.


On top of that, all of the Clan trials are STOCK MECHS.

All of the IS trials are Champion builds and while not all of them are good - many of them are clearly better than hysterically bad builds like the Stock Gargoyle Prime or stock Hellbringers with the armor of a mid-weight medium mech.




So the unquirked, lower tonned deck faction with many worse trial mechs ... still won 53% of the matches.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 April 2015 - 03:16 PM.

[Ultimax]

Discuss.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 April 2015 - 03:38 PM.

[Pjwned]

Aethon, on 01 April 2015 - 02:55 PM, said:

I disagree. The other factors are not of questionable relevancy, when the Clan XL is only one small part of the whole picture.

That doesn't change my response and it's not much of a counter either when you can look at pretty much every pro & con that clan mechs have and see that it's balanced by something else except in the case of clan XL engines.

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Burn time > almost every other stat on lasers, when it comes to hitting a moving/twisting target.

I forgot that's why small pulse lasers (and small lasers) are so popular other than on 1 fast mech that has several quirks and enough hardpoints to boat them to hell and back.

Oh wait.

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It more than makes up for their other benefits, considering there are only a couple situations in this game, and one map, that actually allow a range difference to truly matter, and the tonnage saved by Clan lasers typically going into more heatsinks to partly offset their high heat.

You vastly underestimate the value of range on lasers and as a result you apparently underestimate the value of extra range on clan lasers.

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I am ignoring nothing; the new quirks suck, and the past has shown that nothing is guaranteed where PGI is concerned. I will believe we have significant quirks coming when I see them. My frustration here stems from the impressive release-day quirks that IS mechs get, and the sheer timidity PGI displays when doing anything to help the worst Clan mechs. A 10-15% quirk to a meaningful stat for the Adder, for example, would really would go a long way.

You're ignoring a multitude of quirks already implemented such as extra armor/structure for arms & legs, turn rate, torso twist speed, movement speed, acceleration & deceleration, a few others like UAC jam chance or even AMS range, and on top of that discounting any decent standard weapon quirks like missile cooldown. All you do is look at the worst offending weapon quirks, quirks that are due to be changed and added onto, and then declare all of them to be bad.

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If balance is so close, then why not make the needed adjustments to the most outstanding mechs before trying any grand, sweeping game changes that affect the ones who do not need them?

Because on top of the overperforming mechs being toned down it's still not fair seeing even the underperforming clan mechs shrug off 20% of their engine lost with barely any penalty, and if they need a bit more help with reasonable quirks afterward then so be it.

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There is nothing arbitrary about the need to nerf the Stormcrow and Firestarter. They not only overperform in general; they also make other mechs in their own faction and weight class obsolete. Why take a Jenner or Commando when you could bring a Firestarter? The same goes with the Nova and Ice Ferret, as opposed to the Stormcrow. When a mech is that far out of line, it needs a manual adjustment, because a system-wide nerf will hurt the mechs that do not need it, and not make that much difference to the one that caused the problem in the first place.

The gap between the overperforming and underperforming mechs will still exist, when such broad strokes are utilized.

And how do you propose those mechs are nerfed in a way that's not arbitrary? My point was more about the method being arbitrary rather than which mechs selected for nerfs being arbitrary, though it still is both to an extent.

LordKnightFandragon, on 01 April 2015 - 02:56 PM, said:

Yeah, clans need no more nerfs, they are won 53% of CW games. So OP, and hella less then the like 64% it used to be when Russ did a guage on Clan WR...or is he trying to nerf the Clans till the IS get the 64% WR?>

So yeah, stop the Clan ST nerf. better XLs, its one of few Clan advantages still remaining.

I hope you realize clan engines still objectively have an advantage even with an extra speed penalty, it's just not a glaringly unfair advantage after that point.

Edited by Pjwned, 01 April 2015 - 03:48 PM.

[Pjwned]

Ultimatum X, on 01 April 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Discuss.

XL engines on any big mech should be a risk unless you want to add in more power creep and make standard engines increasingly irrelevant, which I don't want.

[FupDup]

Ultimatum X, on 01 April 2015 - 03:08 PM, said:

Here's my idea to you, and Deathlike, and anyone else.



Russ has stated that many mechs are getting quirks like +Armor and +Structure because their ARTWORK from table top becomes a hindrance here - even though it was irrelevant in TT.


This same premise means that the larger the IS mech, the more risky it is to use an IS XL engine, because their STs become larger and easier to single out.


How do we solve this?

How do we make it so IS mechs with XLs that are large and easy to hit, something not relevant in their TT forms, can run XL without it being a huge liability?



This is what I've been pondering.

Ultimatum X, on 01 April 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Discuss.

The only weirdo idea I've been able to think of would be to make engines able to be critted out like most components, with the IS XL having way way higher health than the Clan version. So, the Clan version could still survive that side torso loss, but it would be vulnerable to "crit seekers" like LBX and MGs etc. Meanwhile, the IS version would be tougher against those but would still die upon side torso loss.

That doesn't completely close the gap, especially because crit-seeking guns are poop right now, but that's about all I can think of in terms of buffing the IS engines. It also has the potential to make TTK complaints more valid if RNJesus doesn't love you enough.

The IS having more engine size freedom helps give some minor degree of "asymmetric balance" to an extent, but then again we have some Clan robots that get a "just right" base chassis (including good engine size) right out of the box...



I've seen some people in the past suggest that the IS XL should survive a side torso loss but with a steep penalty, but that might or might not cause issues with things like STD engine relevancy. I'm not a big fan of this one specific idea...

There was once a related idea that IS CASE should let an XL engine survive side torso loss, but for only 0.5 tons and 1 slot that would be pretty bonkers and basically a 1 ton and 2 slot tax to the majority of IS mechs...

Maybe something more moderate (from my own imagination this time) could be to make IS CASE give a little bit of durability (I dunno, like +3 or +4 internal structure? It's only 0.5 tons...) to side torsos? That would allow people to slightly toughen up their sides if they wanted to spend a little bit of weight, without going all the way to crazytown with outright survival of the side loss. Plus IS CASE is about as common as unicorns anyways, so it getting a little buff probably couldn't hurt.

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2015 - 04:01 PM.