146 replies to this topic

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Malleus011, on 04 May 2015 - 01:51 PM, said:

I find a number of Ryokens that I engage (at whatever my ELO is; I'm an average pilot, so nothing impressive) rarely even bother to torso twist. The geometry of their hitboxes and gait shields them from a significant amount of damage. At high level play (which I get into occasionally when with a unit) I see them twisting a lot more, and generally getting legged to death.

All that to say I'm not sure twist speed would fix all the Ryoken's amazing durability. Hitbox adjustments are probably necessary. (I don't disagree with you about twist speed, but I don't think it would fix the entirety of the imbalance).

Which is why I proposed multiple things- including both a twist range alteration and a hitbox alteration on top of the twist speed reductions. I think a significant part of the problem is that tactics that work well against 'mechs with similar hitbox advantages rely on using light 'mechs to attack from dead angles and pinpoint individual components- and the Stormcrow's dead angles are functionally nonextant because it can torso twist so far and swing its arms further, making Streaks exceptionally deadly. It's essentially impossible for anything traveling less than 140 KPH to escape a Crow's streak lock without serious intervening terrain, thanks to the sheer range of the Crow's torso twist, which is something it doesn't need to have to begin with, particularly since it can mount weapons to laterally-moving arms if it really needs to have horizontal range of fire while having a lower torso twist range.

Malleus011, on 04 May 2015 - 01:51 PM, said:

The Mad Cat is a tougher nut to crack. I find both the Mad Cat and Ryoken to be 'easy mode' 'mechs; they're simply much easier to do well in that a Hunchback or Orion. But assuming the JJ exploit for the Mad Cat has indeed been fixed, and that PGI won't rescale the whole 'mech (which they've resisted every other time it's been suggested for anything) the only thing I can really see to do with it is to make it, overall, more sluggish. Slow down the torso twist, slow up the accel/decel, and generally make it a skosh less responsive all around. I'm sure someone who knows Clantech better than I could suggest exactly which Omnipods should do what.

I wouldn't say 'easy mode', but they definitely come out with an advantage. Lowered responsiveness would be a thing to try, but I think enough of the issue with the Timber Wolf is how low slung the whole thing is that I really doubt you could go far enough via agility reduction without applying a crippling degradation.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 04 May 2015 - 02:00 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Keeping this frontpage of the subforum. I think this kind of thing is important, particularly given the statistics brought to light by the Battle of Tukayyid event. The dramatic difference in chassis use has to have come from somewhere, after all.

[bad arcade kitty]

the 'dramatic difference' is due to clan having only 13 chassis models and only 4-5 of them are good

and instead of buffing the underplayed you want to nerf the only good ones

[Burktross]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

the 'dramatic difference' is due to clan having only 13 chassis models and only 4-5 of them are good

and instead of buffing the underplayed you want to nerf the only good ones

There's no denying that even compared to IS mechs the Timber Dog and StormPigeon have a (decently large) edge. I for one seek to lower the Timby and Stormy to less "uber" mechs and then buff the rest of the clanner mechs such that all the clan mechs are on an even, well balanced playing field.

[Deathlike]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

the 'dramatic difference' is due to clan having only 13 chassis models and only 4-5 of them are good

and instead of buffing the underplayed you want to nerf the only good ones

It's an analysis of why these two are good.

Mind you, I think buffs to crappier clan mechs need to be done... since the gap is pretty bad in some cases.

[bad arcade kitty]

Burktross, on 04 May 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

There's no denying that even compared to IS mechs the Timber Dog and StormPigeon have a (decently large) edge. I for one seek to lower the Timby and Stormy to less "uber" mechs and then buff the rest of the clanner mechs such that all the clan mechs are on an even, well balanced playing field.

i think some overquirked is mechs need to be looked at first
6 ll stalker etc

is has more viable mechs so that fixing will be safer for the balance

[Burktross]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 03:48 PM, said:

i think some overquirked is mechs need to be looked at first
6 ll stalker etc

is has more viable mechs so that fixing will be safer for the balance

Both need to be looked at (and the gauss iron).

[1453 R]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 04 May 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

I really don't want to see anything get hammered into the dirt any more than I want to see anything given a jetpack. Way too many propositions regarding 'mech adjustments, and far too many of PGI's initial quirk amounts and balance adjustments have involved initial steps in the 15+% range of modification. That's not a good way to work on game balance or game imbalance, and it's not a good way to make adjustments whose results you then need to appraise with an eye towards modifying those adjustments. I absolutely don't want the Stormcrow genuinely nerfed for the same reason I don't want to see the Urbanmech limited to an engine size range of 60-110, the Thunderbolt's ERPPC insanity to return, or the Dragon 1N's double-rate AC/5s stay. Extreme outliers like that are for after trying everything subtler and finding that it doesn't help at all.

Generally speaking, regardless of your tech base, 3E is all you need. Two large pulse and one ER/Standard Medium laser is plenty of firepower to wreck face and isn't too hot to be sustainable. I should probably reword what I said, as what I meant is that relative to the torso hardpoints, the arms are unimportant, which is part of why the seemingly much anticipated 6E right arm on the Stormcrow hasn't actually been seeing use at all.

I agree quite heartily on the Timber Wolf's advantage being partly psychological, which would account for its being called 'Timbergod' despite not actually performing beyond its weight to anything like the degree of the Stormcrow.

Yeah, I hate 40+ percent quirks on most everything that has them. There's just no reason for it, especially when, as you said, it doesn't actually fix the issue that machine suffers in 90% of cases.

As for the 6E arm on the SCR...heh, there's a few reasons why it's seeing no use, chief among them being that using it costs you eighteen bucks, as I recall. Even then, there's a 4E option on the other arm that doesn't come with significant negaquirk drawbacks; the number of builds that can make effective use of the two extra energy slots without doing something dumb ("I turned my Stormcrow into most of a Nova Prime, YAAY!") is...low. Ironically, most of them involve a left-arm ballistic, or they did when I was experimenting in Smurfy. It's almost there as a convenience more than anything else - do you prefer your backup energy on the machine spread all over the 'Mech, or tightly clustered in a mobile arm?

Anyways.

I'm getting awfully tired of everyone going on and on about the TBR's mobility, honestly >_<. Everyone throws out "remove its Speed Tweak!" or "cut its turn/twist/accel/decel by 20%!" as a perfect flawless fix for the TBR because of A.) the God Machine™ problem making them desperate to nerfhammer it into the ground so it stops being so frightening, and B.) the general refusal of anyone in this forum to tolerate anything with a 350+-rated engine moving like it has a 350+-rated engine in it. They did it to the Victor, they did it to the Highlander, they've been trying to do it to the TBR since day 1, and frankly I'm figuring they'll try and do it to the Executioner, if the Executioner turns out to not be Garfayle-level unplayably bad. I've said it over and over and been ignored every single time - you cannot keep slapping gigantic mobility nerfs on everything over 70 tons that moves over 60 klicks. You just can't do that, not when the original BattleTech canon itself has so many examples of machines, both good and bad, which exist outside the normal mobility curve for their tonnages.

A model rescale to kick the TBR up a few sizes is an interesting notion, if not a tenable one, but short of that, can you think of anything else other than VTR Giganerfing its mobility into legged-Atlas levels that would have an impact, Crobat? I've been trying, and other than heat penalties I can't come up with anything solid. There really isn't any one thing you can hit to bring it into line, and making half a dozen smaller adjustments is largely beyond Piranha's ability/methodology. What else is left?

[Tiamat of the Sea]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

the 'dramatic difference' is due to clan having only 13 chassis models and only 4-5 of them are good

and instead of buffing the underplayed you want to nerf the only good ones

Only 4-5 are good, but only 2 got the numbers slanted so heavily in their favor. This is indicative that those two are even better.

Also, don't get me wrong, I want to improve the worse-performing ones as well- but that's a different topic altogether, and one on which I'm not nearly as versed on the Clan side as I am on how the top performers behave.

IS-side, there are a lot of 'mechs that need improvements and a number that need to be cut back to varying degrees, and I've never said otherwise- although the situation at any given moment changes which 'mechs are which.

In fact, if you go back and look at my posting history, you'll find that I'm most emphatically not in the 'clams op pls nerf' category of players- I happen to think that the weapons stats for right now, and for a while now, have been in a good place and it's 'mechs themselves that need to be looked at.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I think one other aspect that enhances many builds for the Stormcrow and Timber is being able to increase both Heat Capacity / Threshold and Dissipation with DHS to have high agility and mobility with a big alpha potential, with how we can fire weapons. That high heat endurance could see a tweak for all mechs to reduce such damage across the board.

Since elements like Convergence and having Cone of Fire and so on are not likely to be done any time soon, I'd like to try what older MW titles had, and then boost dissipation as needed (such as external DHS values to be the same as ones inside the engine).

MW3 had a max at 30, MW4 has a max at 60. So, I'd like to see how utilizing such a values for Capacity / Threshold impacts balance, with the hope that it provides improvements between different chassis and variants.

Edited by Praetor Knight, 04 May 2015 - 04:07 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

1453 R, on 04 May 2015 - 03:54 PM, said:

A model rescale to kick the TBR up a few sizes is an interesting notion, if not a tenable one, but short of that, can you think of anything else other than VTR Giganerfing its mobility into legged-Atlas levels that would have an impact, Crobat? I've been trying, and other than heat penalties I can't come up with anything solid. There really isn't any one thing you can hit to bring it into line, and making half a dozen smaller adjustments is largely beyond Piranha's ability/methodology. What else is left?

The main problem here is that while you can at least look at the Stormcrow and go 'Yeah, way more durable than its weight or weight class' to identify one of the two excessive advantages of the chassis, you can't really do that with the Timber Wolf. It's not that it's flat out better in one or another specific category, it's just really good in general.

Failing a size upscaling (Which at least seems like the simplest fix, particularly since it involves stretching the whole 'mech, which ought to be simpler than redoing the model from the ground up, shouldn't it? Can anyone verify or actually present a genuine argument against this admitted presumption?) I would be more inclined to say taking nibbles off its effectiveness in all regards is the best option- -1.5% or maybe at top end -2.5% to nearly everything, for instance. I absolutely do not want to see this iconic 'mech become useless or even just plain one of the bottom half of the Clan 'mechs in terms of usability. It just feels a tiny bit too strong when fighting it, not like it's thoroughly outclassing positively everything.

In fact, its mobility seems the least out of line, if you're willing to ignore that PGI brought in the S variant early in the timeline. Perhaps just some tiny reductions in arm mobility, refire rate, heat dissipation, and durability?

It's really hard to think of something that wouldn't get out of hand too easily, which is the other part of why I suggested a very small scaling up in size and not anything else.

Praetor Knight, on 04 May 2015 - 04:06 PM, said:

I think one other aspect that enhances many builds for the Stormcrow and Timber is being able to increase both Heat Capacity / Threshold and Dissipation with DHS to have high agility and mobility with a big alpha potential, with how we can fire weapons. That high heat endurance could see a tweak for all mechs to reduce such damage across the board.

Since elements like Convergence and having Cone of Fire and so on are not likely to be done any time soon, I'd like to try what older MW titles had, and then boost dissipation as needed (such as external DHS values to be the same as ones inside the engine).

MW3 had a max at 30, MW4 has a max at 60. So, I'd like to see how utilizing such a values for Capacity / Threshold impacts balance, with the hope that it provides improvements between different chassis and variants.

Well, that's not confined to just the Stormcrow and Timber Wolf, so it's not something I want to talk about here. The advantages that these 'mechs hold really don't relate to the heat scale size, outside of the Timber Wolf's 15 starting double heat sinks, which only relate to that in that it's a potential issue anyways. Things get just as out of hand with 'mechs that aren't Stormcrows and Timber Wolves.

[Kiiyor]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 04 May 2015 - 10:36 AM, said:

I Would Suggest:

• Reduce the base torso twist range of the Stormcrow. Not a huge amount, maybe 10-15 degrees. The current torso twist makes it literally impossible for a light 'mech to actually escape Streak missile locks from the 'crow, which is not something it needs stacked onto its other advantages.
  
• Remove the torso twist speed quirks from the torso sections that have them and apply minor (-5% or less, maybe -7.5%) twist speed quirks to the torso sections that didn't already have quirks. This would make it just a touch more difficult to soak as much damage with the Stormcrow, and might actually make torso omnipod selection matter for purposes of soaking damage.
  
• Alternately to the last point, reduce side torso and arm durability. I'd prefer not to suggest this, but it is an option. Probably should be avoided if possible.
  
• Adjust the side torso hitboxes, particularly around the torso projection. Not sure how exactly, but making them a less-perfect match for the arm shape would be a decent start, as would anything that makes the center torso a little easier to hit when trying to shoot it. Not a -lot- easier, they should still reach out along at least part of the projection, but enough to matter.

These are the options that immediately come to mind. I may come back and edit the post to add more thoughts later.





I would suggest:

• Increase the size of the Timber Wolf. Not a lot, almost certainly less than 10% by linear proportion. Possibly restrict this to an increase in height. Making it just that little bit easier to hit in the first place would likely result in the thing falling over when it should fall over and not well before or noticeably after.

Thanks for reading! Please discuss! And I mean discuss, not shout at people (me or anyone else) that they're stupid or PGI is dumb or whatever. That's not going to help anyone, and there are already places for you to vent.

Great analysis. I agree with almost all of it, even though it will likely rustle the jimmies of the Clan players out there, who are fiercely protective of their mechs.

I run the gamut of 'Sphere and Clan meta. I always do better in my Clan machines. From my point of view, the Clans ARE superior to the 'Sphere, but not by much. Anecdotal!

While I think there is an advantage in overall performance, I think the 'Sphere has an advantage in general usability. Shorter beam times, some high weapon mounts on the meta... whereas the Clan mechs, after all the Clan weapon changes, are bordering on being frustrating to use.

In the interest of SCIENCE, I've run a couple of newer players through some hoops, and they all initially sucked in clan machines. Surprisingly so. Embarrassingly so. Out of about a dozen, 10 or so found a far a more comfortable fit with 'Sphere machines, before transitioning gradually to Clan meta as they imroved. They all agreed that they felt more powerful in Clan machines, but had to concentrate more to get the most out of them. Again, anecdotal, but I found it interesting.

I think you do have to be a better pilot to get the most out of the Clan hardware, as most weapons require far more finesse than those in the 'Sphere arsenal. I also think that design of the machines lends them to work better in packs - which is great for CW, but bad for determining performance from a single mech perspective.

As to your proposed fixes, i'm going to say with almost absolute certainty that geometry changes will never happen - they are a fairly big job. Models have to be redone, animation redone, textures and mapping redone... big job. As soon as that cat is out of the bag, the mob will shift it's unruly attention to under performers like the Awesome or any other mech with particular flaws.

Maybe mobility should be addressed, but even then i'm hesitant.

[bad arcade kitty]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 04 May 2015 - 03:59 PM, said:

Only 4-5 are good, but only 2 got the numbers slanted so heavily in their favor. This is indicative that those two are even better.

it means they fit the limited deck size well

[Tiamat of the Sea]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

it means they fit the limited deck size well

You have provided no evidence nor actual arguments (sets of information or reasoning) to support your statements.

Given this, I can only come to one of five conclusions.

1) You are not actually interested in discussing the topic, you've decided what your opinion is and everyone else can go hang themselves. In which case, please go away as you are not contributing anything.

2) You don't understand what an argument (the conversation type) actually is. In which case, please understand that the point of an actual argument is to reach common ground through providing information and examples that support your point of view, with the intent that by the end of the argument both sides will be in agreement, even if one side, the other side, or even both sides wind up with differing perceptions than they held at the start. Please provide evidence or reasoning that supports your point of view in order that we might have an actual discourse on this topic.

3) You don't care about the actual topic here, you just want to provide an unrelated opinion (IS 'mechs, or certain IS 'mechs, are OP). In which case, please go away as you are not contributing anything.

4) You are trolling. In which case, please go away as you are not contributing anything.

5) You want to contribute to the discussion, but don't have time to. In which case please feel free to observe the topic, but at the same time please do not post until you either have something new to say or have enough time to provide reasoning or information to back up your point of view.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 04 May 2015 - 04:47 PM.

[ShinobiHunter]

Excellent write up OP.

I think a torso twist reduction or twist speed reduction would help bring the Crow in line a bit.

Timberwolf isn't actually too bad, IMO. I think it's one of the best mechs in the game right now, but I'm not convinced that needs to be changed. If anything really needs changed with it, I would probably rather have agility nerfs. Maybe slightly slower turning speed.

As far as removing Speed Tweak, I can't say I support that idea.

[Kiiyor]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 May 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

it means they fit the limited deck size well

This is also true - but I think there's more to it than that.

I think that those two machines do indeed perform well when looked at in a vacuum - but they perform even better when paired with their legions of clones, especially in CW. They are all fast, mobile, and the weaknesses they have with beam time and face time are mitigated by the fact there are usually so damn many of them shooting at you, all with similar ranges and capabilities.

With the Sphere, you may have a handfull of different mechs that cover each others weaknesses quite well. However, a flock of MadCats and StormCrows don't really need to cover weaknesses - they are already great all-rounders, and that makes their strengths even stronger when taken together.

With the Clans, one of their greatest strengths in CW is almost guaranteed synergy. MadCats and StormCrows don't have to spend frustrating minutes at the gates waiting for some plodding KingCrab, Stalker or XL toting Jagermech to waddle their way to their positions in the vanguard. They just gather together in a cacophonous rampage and arrive en masse with little expended tactical effort.

Maybe when the next Clan release arrives, we'll see some diversity. I'm trepidatious about that though, for 2 reasons:

Numero uno: The mechs either won't be as great a combination as the Crow and Cat decks, and nothing will change, or...

Numero duex: The added diversity of viable lighter mechs will strengthen the Clan dropdecks.

I'm worried about the second one the most. I live in constant fear of facing DireWolves on a regular basis in CW. By themselves, they are mostly an oddity in CW, and not especially dangerous. If there were 4 or more in a drop though, that's 8 Gauss + bajillions of ERLL to contend with. Imagine 12 of them! Mobility weaknesses are irrelevant when there's a DireWolf behind every DireWolf!

What were we talking about again?

[1453 R]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 04 May 2015 - 04:09 PM, said:

...
Failing a size upscaling (Which at least seems like the simplest fix, particularly since it involves stretching the whole 'mech, which ought to be simpler than redoing the model from the ground up, shouldn't it? Can anyone verify or actually present a genuine argument against this admitted presumption?)
...

As I recall the last time Russ addressed it - I'm going purely off of memory here, so please forgive if the details end up fudged - it's not so simple a matter as just stretching-squashing the mesh. The animations and hitboxes, for whatever cockeyed reason, aren't hooked up to the same visual meshes and would both need to be rerigged separately to the visual mesh, and all the 'Mech's textures, paint schemes, and whatever elses would need to be redrawn from the ground up, as simply rescaling them produces something of a smudgy mess. As well, certain details of the design would have to be rescaled independently - things like cockpit hatches, window glass, other bits that are supposed to be around the same size regardless of the 'Mech they're on - in order to preserve a proper sense of scale on the battlefield.

Or, TL;DR - however it is they design 'Mechs in MWO under the hood, it is in such a way that rescaling the visual mesh more or less completely and utterly breaks a given 'Mech, and it would need to be rebuilt pretty much from scratch to figure out all the issues with it.

Why 'Mech code in MWO works this way, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, but I'm not any real kind of programmer, nor am I a Piranha dev. It is what it is, which is why Russ just outright shot down rescaling the Quackdraw, and never mind that the damned thing is bigger than a flippin' Highlander for no reason whatsoever. If they wouldn't do it to save the Quickdraw, when the entire forum was begging them to do just that and offering to buy all the Quickdraws if they did, they sure as shootin' aren't going to do it to the Timber Wolf on the potential balance suggestion of a half-dozen pontificating forumites.

Sad, really...it's completely and utterly dumb that they can't do any kind of fixes whatsoever to such a fundamental aspect of inter-chassis balancing.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

1453 R, on 04 May 2015 - 04:54 PM, said:

As I recall the last time Russ addressed it - I'm going purely off of memory here, so please forgive if the details end up fudged - it's not so simple a matter as just stretching-squashing the mesh. The animations and hitboxes, for whatever cockeyed reason, aren't hooked up to the same visual meshes and would both need to be rerigged separately to the visual mesh, and all the 'Mech's textures, paint schemes, and whatever elses would need to be redrawn from the ground up, as simply rescaling them produces something of a smudgy mess. As well, certain details of the design would have to be rescaled independently - things like cockpit hatches, window glass, other bits that are supposed to be around the same size regardless of the 'Mech they're on - in order to preserve a proper sense of scale on the battlefield.

Or, TL;DR - however it is they design 'Mechs in MWO under the hood, it is in such a way that rescaling the visual mesh more or less completely and utterly breaks a given 'Mech, and it would need to be rebuilt pretty much from scratch to figure out all the issues with it.

Well, scrap.

After a moment's additional thought, I have yielded this gem of an idea: I wonder if that might account for the supposed lagshield and buggy hitboxes that people keep complaining about? I still haven't seen them myself that I could notice, but.....

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 04 May 2015 - 05:05 PM.

[1453 R]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 04 May 2015 - 05:04 PM, said:

Well, scrap.

After a moment's additional thought, I have yielded this gem of an idea: I wonder if that might account for the supposed lagshield and buggy hitboxes that people keep complaining about? I still haven't seen them myself that I could notice, but.....

A hitbox pass on the Crow and Wolf both is one of the things I've been almost desperate for Piranha to do for this exact reason. I don't even know if they're bad, but enough people are convinced they're bad to warrant investigating the hitboxes on the design and seeing if there's anything hinky going on, a'la Spiders. I was hoping they'd do it when they did the animation clean-up for the jump jets, but alas. Heh...who knows? Investigating, discovering, and cleaning up some wonky hitbox issues might well be all the 'Mechs actually need to fall into line, hm?

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Actually, I'm speaking specifically of the hitboxes and motions being not directly connected to the visual models. If they aren't directly connected, then this could at least theoretically result in the server and pilot registering one set of motions while the observer registers a slightly different one, with limbs especially not winding up in the positions that the observer perceives them.




Edit: Whoa, straying from topic. Mebbe leave that for another time.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 04 May 2015 - 05:18 PM.