291 replies to this topic

[Mike Forst]

Wing 0, on 07 April 2015 - 10:11 AM, said:

wouldn't it be nice to get a preview of it? we did that last time.

All things in their due time.

[Domenoth]

Mike Forst, on 07 April 2015 - 10:14 AM, said:

All things in their due time.

I was the very last post on page 9 so I think you might have missed my question. I promise to stop spamming now.

Edit:
Just a quick we thought about it/are thinking about it/no that's never going to work would be sufficient.

Edited by Domenoth, 07 April 2015 - 10:20 AM.

[Summon3r]

Mike Forst, on 07 April 2015 - 09:48 AM, said:

You may have also noticed I am also biased more towards survivability, movement and agility instead of weapons buffs. Mechs are getting Time to Live boosts right now because in my opinion that's really what they need.

i like your line of thinking here Mike, i would like to point out in terms of the SMN-PRIME with only 3 hardpoints an 8 omni bonus of E and B cooldown would go a long ways, in terms of teh WHK-PRIME 8% heat gen on the erppc's is a little to light, i think 7.5% per arm would be good or the 8 piece set bonus giving like 10% heat gen erppc, also the WHK in general coudl use less arm survivability and more ST survivability this is the WHK's main issue in terms of survivability BY FAR

Edited by Summon3r, 07 April 2015 - 10:22 AM.

[Mike Forst]

Summon3r, on 07 April 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

i like your line of thinking here Mike, i would like to point out in terms of the SMN-PRIME with only 3 hardpoints an 8 omni bonus of E and B cooldown would go a long ways, in terms of teh WHK-PRIME 8% heat gen on the erppc's is a little to light, i think 7.5% per arm would be good or the 8 piece set bonus giving like 10% heat gen erppc, also the WHK in general coudl use less arm survivability and more ST survivability this is the WHK's main issue in terms of survivability BY FAR

For now I'm avoiding weapon quirks on Sets of 8. They pigeonhole mechs even more in terms of build flexibility and basically force the player to use a preset loadout. I actually have better things in mind for the Set of 8 but they're not available yet.

[KTOdius]

Color all the white cells to dark grey, that will help with the color complaints.
Otherwise well done, patching game now.

[Mike Forst]

KTOdius, on 07 April 2015 - 10:25 AM, said:

Color all the white cells to dark grey, that will help with the color complaints. Otherwise well done, patching game now.

A different colour scheme is already being used for future spreadsheets.

[Summon3r]

Mike Forst, on 07 April 2015 - 10:25 AM, said:

For now I'm avoiding weapon quirks on Sets of 8. They pigeonhole mechs even more in terms of build flexibility and basically force the player to use a preset loadout. I actually have better things in mind for the Set of 8 but they're not available yet.

understandable, but teh WHK prime is pigeonholed to erppc's no? and 8% as much as its a start is really not close to enough especially when you get on map the is above heat neutral, as for teh SMN prime well i dont think that one needs much explanation.

thx for the response though!

[aniviron]

Mike Forst, on 07 April 2015 - 09:48 AM, said:

You may have also noticed I am also biased more towards survivability, movement and agility instead of weapons buffs. Mechs are getting Time to Live boosts right now because in my opinion that's really what they need.

This is a big improvement, and has been needed for a very, very long time.

The problem is that not all quirks are created equal. The way MWO plays, weapon quirks are far superior to structure quirks, at least as they are implemented right now.

Let's take the DRG-1N as a case study right now. Given that it's in the same tier-five position as the Awesome, and has similar CT issues to that mech, let's say you gave it structure quirks instead of weapon quirks. Even if you doubled the magnitude of the AWS' CT quirks on the structure-heavy hypothetical Dragon, it would get +40 IS, for a total of 150 with heavily stacked ~70 front CT armor plus 80 CT IS. The weapon quirked DRG is still going to win that fight even without any CT structure buffs because of the magnitude of the refire quirk being given to it. The structure buffs are just too small to make the same amount of difference right now. It's why I rarely see good players driving Zeuses, despite their huge amount of armor and relatively generous hitboxes.

You could say that this is an unfair comparison, as it's spreadsheet-warrior at its finest though; our two hypothetical Dragons here are fighting in a vacuum. So let's look at the two most common types of combat in MWO. The first is long range fighting; weapon quirks are king here, you need look no further than the TDR-9S and STK-4N for that. Shorter burn times and faster projectile speeds mean that you're putting damage on-target far more often than your opponent, and given that you only have to burn through an additional 10-20 HP in all but a handful of cases, the weapon quirks are more than going to make up for that. That amount of structure is one or two PPC hits, which is virtually nothing- velocity and burn times are far superior to such a small amount of health. I will concede that heat quirks are far less useful at range given that your opponent can just duck back down behind cover, but it does significantly reduce the opportunity cost of firing, meaning snipers can take much riskier shots without having to worry about heat, which is a relatively big deal. Even more importantly, it means that long range mechs can compete with close ranged loadouts in terms of heat at close range.

The other typical combat situation in MWO is a more sustained brawl, an up-close slugging match. Again, weapon quirks are always superior to structure, at least in the amounts we have now. This is for two reasons: the first is that a mech that can cripple its opponent faster is much more likely to win, and the second because of the heat cap. In the first scenario, the structure-buffed mech is at less of a disadvantage, and in a couple of cases, it's often enough to tip the scales. The Hunchback, for example, has traditionally been bad because it was easily crippled, and could then be finished off at leisure. Because of the huge amount of armor and IS the RT has received however, it's now better to just try and core them straight through. Most mechs aren't so lucky, however, and their structure bonuses are spread thin across the mech, meaning that it's still easy to target a single spot to wipe out most of your opponent's weapons quickly, and in this case again, the weapon quirks almost always allow you to cripple your opponent before he can do the same to you, granting you a win.

Brawls are also heat limited, meaning that in a symmetrical duel of, say, a HBK-4SP vs another 4SP, heat reduction is more important than structure. During the initial seconds of the fight, due to the sheer amount of HP that the 4SP gets, it often has an advantage against its enemies. Because of the difficulty of disengaging an enemy at under 270m however, it's going to be about 10 seconds before the HBK is running hot enough that it's firing half or less of its weapons, while their opponent will still be firing most of theirs for another salvo or two at least- again, far outstripping the amount of HP that the mech gets.

Lastly, while structure and armor buffs are nice, you really need to reexamine where they're going. I keep hearing people who don't pilot Warhawks going "Wow!!! +28 arm armor, OP pls nerf!" Well that's nice, but the Warhawk's hitboxes are set up in such a way that the side torsi are so huge and the arms small enough that even with a 90 degree twist relative to your opponent, it's very rare that I will lose an arm before a side torso because the ST can be hit from every direction. So sure, the numbers look big, but in the end they grant virtually no benefit to the Warhawk- and the issue is absolutely not limited to the WHK. The only mech on the list that seems about right is the Nova, but that's simply because the Nova is such a huge, slow whale of a medium that virtually every component of it is vulnerable to being shot off.

tl;dr right now structure quirks are too spread out and too small in magnitude to come close to equaling weapon quirks. All the top-tier mechs are weapon-focused, and it's no coincidence.

[S13gtastic]

Was excited to see the Lynx getting more quirks.....and just became sad. So much for the ERPPC/ECM Lynx ;_;

[Reno Blade]

Good points aniviron.

I would take the whole thing like this:
- DOUBLE all all internals
- keep armor values the same
- keep component (weapons) health the same
- cap weapon quirks at 30% combined (15% weapon, 15% general weapon type)
- cap heat quirks at 20% combined
- try to give most mechs values of around 10-15% and only occasionally go up to the mentioned cap

In general, I like the quirk updates today.
But I'd like to see values of 5-15% generally instead of 1-3% for a full Omni Mech.

[Summon3r]

just ran a WHK prime, 4 erppc is not even close to viable, cannot even chain fire 2 full salvos before shut down on river city

[Mike Forst]

Domenoth, on 07 April 2015 - 10:19 AM, said:

I was the very last post on page 9 so I think you might have missed my question. I promise to stop spamming now. Edit: Just a quick we thought about it/are thinking about it/no that's never going to work would be sufficient.

Domenoth, on 07 April 2015 - 09:58 AM, said:

I'm a fan of the localized quirks. Just curious if you've also considered Diminishing Quirks. In a perfect world, I'd like to see the option for both. Localized and diminishing quirks are really just ways to provide bonuses without providing carte blanche to boat.

You're right, I did miss this. The idea is interesting and I will definitely add it to my feedback pile.

[Jabilo]

MLX side torso seems to be some mistakes.

Some quirks such as MLX B armour strength missing (should be listed in blue and crossed out if taken away).

Some of the Yaw rates seem to be reduced yet are in yellow cells not blue.

MLX C armour quirk in yellow but was pre existing?

What gives?

Still have to work through the rest.

Edit:

MLX quirks look good on paper but in reality the mech is still trash.

Needed armour quirks on the right arms and CT and a laser hard point on the MLX C left arm.

Other than that it's window dressing which will not translate to this mech becoming viable.

Other choices seem to beggar belief. Missile cool down reduced from 5% to 3%? For the love of god why? Presumably to conform to some internal formula...

Rather than buggering about with 1% here and 2% there you should have just said "right, what is going to make this piece of junk viable?".

Well the mech is 25 tons and slow as a duck so it is blown to pieces immediately. It has only one real choice for a left arm which means people strip the right arm in one shot leaving you weaponless.

Armour on the side torso is no good if you have no weapons or are CT cored in one shot.

This mech needed right arm armour, CT structure and top speed at the least and it got none of these.

From the perspective of the MLX I would say this was a waste of time and entirely missed the point.

You even nerfed heat gen on the MLX C right arm, nerfing one of the popular community builds of 2 med pulse and ecm.

Not trying to be rude but have you ever personally driven this mech or looked at the popular builds in the mech forum?

Edited by Jabilo, 07 April 2015 - 11:43 AM.

[aniviron]

Jabilo, on 07 April 2015 - 11:13 AM, said:

MLX side torso seems to be some mistakes.

Some quirks such as MLX B armour strength missing (should be listed in blue and crossed out if taken away).

Some of the Yaw rates seem to be reduced yet are in yellow cells not blue.

MLX C armour quirk in yellow but was pre existing?

What gives?

Still have to work through the rest.

Edit:

MLX quirks look good on paper but in reality the mech is still trash.

Needed armour quirks on the right arms and CT and a laser hard point on the MLX C left arm.

Other than that it's window dressing which will not translate to this mech becoming viable.

Other choices seem to beggar belief. Missile cool down reduced from 5% to 3%? For the love of god why? Presumably to conform to some internal formula...

Rather than buggering about with 1% here and 2% there you should have just said "right, what is going to make this piece of junk viable?".

Well the mech is 25 tons and slow as a duck so it is blown to pieces immediately. It has only one real choice for a left arm which means people strip the right arm in one shot leaving you weaponless.

Armour on the side torso is no good if you have no weapons or are CT cored in one shot.

This mech needed right arm armour, CT structure and top speed at the least and it got none of these.

From the perspective of the MLX I would say this was a waste of time and entirely missed the point.

You even nerfed heat gen on the MLX C right arm, nerfing one of the popular community builds of 2 med pulse and ecm.

Not trying to be rude but have you ever personally driven this mech or looked at the popular builds in the mech forum?

I was wondering about that too, I noticed the MLX-B torso armor quirks were missing from that sheet. I'm looking at it in the MWO mechlab now, and indeed, the old armor quirks are missing. I absolutely cannot believe that the Mist Lynx got nerfed this patch. What the hell is going on? The MLX is a very serious contender for the title of absolute worst mech in the game, and it just got a nerf. I'm just... I don't even know what to say about this.

[Summon3r]

Mike, nice work on the WHK-A, very fun to play... maybe some of those arm armor/internal buffs to ST though would be good, still havent lost an arm at all but die to ST losses

[Koniks]

I like the direction of the revised Summoner quirks, especially the energy duration and heat gen quirks. But I still don't think they go far enough to push it to viability. The energy quirks still don't make up for not having enough tonnage to carry LPLs and heatsinks. It doesn't have the hardpoints to carry enough smaller lasers to match even the Gargoyle. And the duration quirk isn't enough to make it preferable as an ERLL boat over other mechs. Putting the ballistic cooldown and velocity quirks on the Prime and C arms also limits options to combine Gauss+lasers.

The SRM quirks are interesting but probably not enough to make it replace the SCR, MDD, or TBR. Heat Gen would probably be more useful than velocity. Or in addition to.

The Gauss+ERPPC build got buffed slightly but not enough to make it replace its alternatives.

Same for NARC+LRMs.

Basically, the Summoners need to not be quirked towards their stock loadouts unless those quirks are significantly better.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Mike Forst, on 07 April 2015 - 10:25 AM, said:

For now I'm avoiding weapon quirks on Sets of 8. They pigeonhole mechs even more in terms of build flexibility and basically force the player to use a preset loadout. I actually have better things in mind for the Set of 8 but they're not available yet.

Why did you have to mention that, that's just mean.


Edit: I was just calling you a tease for getting us excited about next changes and now we have to wait

Edited by shad0w4life, 07 April 2015 - 01:21 PM.

[Mike Forst]

shad0w4life, on 07 April 2015 - 12:10 PM, said:

Why did you have to mention that, that's just mean.

Better to let you know that something is planned but not available yet than to just leave it idle and unanswered IMO.

[S13gtastic]

Out of curiostiy what's the direction you guys (PGI) want for the Mist Lynx Mike? Things more suicidal than a Spider to drive. Asking out of pure curiosity.

[Soy]

John McHobo, on 07 April 2015 - 03:12 AM, said:

A thought about the Nova: Everyone wants it to run cool, but consider this: The Nova is infamous for its ABILITY to overheat, it has one of the nastiest Laser-Alphas you can put up on a medium. Give this mech the ability to use its firepower constantly and it will be overpowered and simplified. Why is everyone so mad about a mech that simply needs good heat management and timing after its Alpha?

Because they nerfed its heat. Unless you use ML with all those hardpoints. In which case, it's still way too hot. Thus, what's the ******* point of 12[14] EHP. Do you not understand this? Lol.