757 replies to this topic

[Repasy Cooper]

Lol, all these laser nerfs and people are still going on about how LRMs suck. Have you even tried LRMs lately? Maybe PGI is trying to shift towards NON-LASER-META? Maybe???

O deeeeear, lasers become less viable and all of a sudden it's OMG-PGI-RAGEQUIT!!! #CWIZDEAD! #W3REFUND!!!!! Do you guys even realize all the self-entitled bs you're spouting?

Just adapt.

[Insects]

Ceneakor, on 18 May 2015 - 01:46 PM, said:

My inner Blakist would say that a co-ordinated negative campaign on gaming sites/blogs/steam generating plenty of negative publicity close to the steam release could work well. Nothing like a sharp stick nuke in the ribs to wake some people up.

Lol yeah you could join the campaign with all the people who quit over "OP clan mechs" when they were first released and still whinge about it.

[SkippyT72]

How about no more mech lab and you just use the load out that's in the source books. The can's get their full tech values and the IS get's what the source books have, then play the game a 8 on 12 for CW and you don't balance anything. You play the values that Table top gave and this BS of quirks, ghost heat and laser duration go out the window. Balance is in the numbers in the lore, not in someone throwing advantage on a per varient basis to screw the balance up for all the rest of the mechs. I know it's a crazy idea, but when I sit and read all the fluff about WHY this is done because of lore or the time line all I see is someone that makes excuses for screwing up a game we all love to play and driving folks away from it.

[Bilbo]

Mrs Leggin Ho, on 18 May 2015 - 02:10 PM, said:

How about no more mech lab and you just use the load out that's in the source books. The can's get their full tech values and the IS get's what the source books have, then play the game a 8 on 12 for CW and you don't balance anything. You play the values that Table top gave and this BS of quirks, ghost heat and laser duration go out the window. Balance is in the numbers in the lore, not in someone throwing advantage on a per varient basis to screw the balance up for all the rest of the mechs. I know it's a crazy idea, but when I sit and read all the fluff about WHY this is done because of lore or the time line all I see is someone that makes excuses for screwing up a game we all love to play and driving folks away from it.

And what happens in the public queues? Not that I think 8 v 12 would survive in CW for more than a day or two.

[Dr Kevorkian]

While this post will probably get buried, I hope someone who matters will see it and pass it along to the right places.


What I don't understand is;

The big Clan vs IS event (before tukkayid), the clans had a win rate of only 53% with zero planets taken. Obviously the matter was the match making/choosing mechanic. ok makes sense.

The next big clan event: Tukayyid: Was hovering around 50% most of the week, until a last minute surge by the clans sealed the event in our favor. Was very close fought and much enjoyed on both sides.

So why is there a need to nerf? Yes those 2 chassis are over represented, but overall the game was pretty balanced. Therewill always be mechs that are better than others, and thus more represented.

THIS IS OK. In lore not all mechs are created equal. People need to understand that this is OK. In real life, some militaries are superior than others. Their opponents react by changing tactics, playing to their own strengths and their opponents weaknesses.

This has always been the most fun part of MWO. Seeing what strategies and tactics evolve as teams face each other is glorious and is what makes the game special. The game is (and should be) in state of constant correction, as each side alters its builds and tactics to counter the other.
Quirks (especially weapons quirks) are a heavy handed way of trying to force balance, and will never be able to keep up with the constantly experimenting and optimizing player base.

By needlessly mega quirking/nerfing mechs (ex ppc thunderbolt, 6erll stalker, ghost heat changes, nerf of highlander etc) you introduce an artificial UNBALANCING force to the game,causing the distress and frustration that has unfortunately come to define the player base.

[Hellion Kell]

I plan on taking advantage of these nerfs yes advantage large laser crit per tick in game time so by using a mk7 target computer and the worst nerfed omi pods and 3 er large laser I plan to make a crit machine.

[KursedVixen]

I think i'm gonna change all my lasers on the stormcrow and timber to small pulses as they have a small cooldown and burn time and will be the least effeted by this

[Baba Gump Waters]

My analysis is that PGI is getting ready to close up shop.

This game and company will be one of the many victims Star Citizen will create.

I'm saving my money for that game as I know many other people are.

[conquistadorst]

Alienized, on 18 May 2015 - 11:55 AM, said:

im not driving any thunderbolts.
and you are proving why it should get a bloody massive nerf.
no brains required to play.

Bingo. Thanks for catching my point, your previous points said they lacked data and evidence to arrive at a conclusion. That statement was wrong, there's plenty of evidence already. Seeing you don't even play one, maybe you should defer to other folks' judgement on that one. In the mean time, I'm enjoying the OP TDR while it lasts

Edited by conquistadorst, 18 May 2015 - 04:53 PM.

[oldradagast]

Dermot, on 16 May 2015 - 08:56 PM, said:

I remember when WoW used to nurf classes every other patch day and buff others. Back when I PVPed as an Arms warrior. I loved hearing people whine about nurfs and buffs back then cause its the same now with mechwarrior. A lot of the people whining now cause of the nurfs were whining only a few weeks ago about something else. I just sat here fighting clans in my Hunchies and spiders the whole time. Were there mechs that were better? Yeah, but it made me push myself harder and try to be a better pilot. Just like when in WoW when my class got hit with the nurfs I played harder. Stop whining, Adapt and Overcome.

Pffft.

If you can't understand the idiocy in these buffs - literally nerfing mechs based on the number of hardpoints, not the number USED - than you don't "get it" enough to be commenting.

But, hey - they haven't nerfed your Hunchback and Spider, so who cares, right? Except as the insane nerf to the Raven 2X - a mech nobody was using anyway - proves, they can and will nerf anything at random.

People don't play this game for Quirk Lotto, with every patch wondering what mech will be ruined next.

The worst part: this fixes nothing. All that will happen is laser vomit will move to the next Clan chassis because that's about the only viable build for most Clan mechs. I guess they'll just keep nerfing Clan chassis until none of them are usable. Brilliant!

[oldradagast]

Mrs Leggin Ho, on 18 May 2015 - 02:10 PM, said:

How about no more mech lab and you just use the load out that's in the source books. The can's get their full tech values and the IS get's what the source books have, then play the game a 8 on 12 for CW and you don't balance anything. You play the values that Table top gave and this BS of quirks, ghost heat and laser duration go out the window. Balance is in the numbers in the lore, not in someone throwing advantage on a per varient basis to screw the balance up for all the rest of the mechs. I know it's a crazy idea, but when I sit and read all the fluff about WHY this is done because of lore or the time line all I see is someone that makes excuses for screwing up a game we all love to play and driving folks away from it.

Nope.

A huge number of mechs in Lore were designed by morons, with everything from grossly oversized or undersized engines to lack of ammo, to terrible range gaps, to having way too many differing weapons systems to be able to focus fire on anything. Also, none of that translates well from a board game where each player has multiple mechs and "aims" by rolling dice to a first-person shooter where people only have 1 mech per game and have to actually aim all those different weapon systems.

If we were suddenly restricted to Lore and stock loadouts, the number of viable mechs would fall to single digits right before the servers went dark.

[Sevronis]

ScarecrowES, on 18 May 2015 - 01:45 PM, said:

Ive been thinking more and more about this patch and the tbr and scr quirk changes, and the more i think about it the less effective I think it will be. Let's say the goal is to reduce the effectiveness of laser boats on those chassis. Just how are laser boats typically used on 99% of battles? The pop out of cover, vomit red, green, and blue, and pop back into cover to cool off. It's not like these mechs are out there fighting in the middle of a brawl doing slow and steady damage. The heat is too much to handle in a stand up fight. They just aren't used that way.

So... how exactly is adding some relatively minor beam duration and cool down hurting a build that's going to spend much of its time after firing recovering behind cover anyway? They have to spend that much time and more chilling out just to bring built up heat down to fire more volleys. In the end, this sorta change will have little practical effect on how these mechs are built and used. The meta, ultimately, will remain unharmed.

What builds will really feel the impact of these changes are the majority of those that are non-meta. so few people actually run meta builds anyway. Outside your dedicated groups roling 12-mans against pugs, you really never see meta builds. Most players simply run what works for them. Those are going to get hit the most, while the meta builds will hardly feel it at all unless somehow they're caught out in the open... in which case they should be no worse than other optimized builds, right? Its such a pointless change.

This is exactly what I'm worrying about will happen. I stated in an earlier post that my 2 ERPPC, 2 MPLS 2 Streak-6 build (with cAP, TC1 and the TBR-S ST) on my Prime already runs kinda hot, but I mostly snipe with my PPCs, saving the medium pulse and streaks for anyone who gets too close. But even using just the short range weapons can build up heat fast (was better when I could put a JJ in the CT rather than the 2 fixed ones from the S...then I couldve added 2 more DHS unless I swapped torsos to do it). That means I am one of those non-meta players that will get hurt by this and it's either I keep what I got and deal with the heat, or change my traditional loadout like I've always liked since MW2. While I would love for the meta builds to get stomped on, I don't really think this will solve anything merely because of how much long range trades there are these days. I do prefer long ranges as a sniper, but when I hop in a mech that isn't for long range, I either end up running out to brawl by myself like a ******, or I stay back and do nothing while I wait for the long range trades to start killing everybody, and me not being able to do a thing about it. One other reason I don't see this fixing anything is because so many players just do alpha strikes all the time. So basically all this will do is lower the number of times they can alpha before overheat shutdown. But who knows, maybe more frequent shutdowns will become too annoying to alpha-spammers that they'll at least try to change to cooler weapons or actually try to manage their heat. EDIT: Was thinking only about the heat gen increase and competely forgot cooldown was getting increased too until it was mentioned. However more time to cool off between alphas makes me more convinced this won't change anything.

I will have to see how it plays out after the patch.

Edited by Sevronis, 18 May 2015 - 05:36 PM.

[KursedVixen]

actually because of the cool down increase clan mechs will run colder so you can potentially get more alpha strikes just in less time between them

[White Bear 84]

Binbo Gami, on 18 May 2015 - 07:31 AM, said:

As a side note this phoenix challenge has taught me 1 thing,
Battlemasters totally suck!!!
If only they were commando size, then they could suck atlas balls and be slightly useful.

You know, people like to say locusts suck. Depends who is piloting them.. But you know, when you can get in 3/4 kills and do 500+ damage that is often more than assaults/heavies in the same game, the mech does not seem to suck so much...

same rationale applies to any mech in any class.

Edited by White Bear 84, 18 May 2015 - 05:44 PM.

[Twilight Fenrir]

I discovered something today....

The Mad Dog only has 1 ton less of free space than a Timberwolf, each with full armor. Granted, the Timby has MORE armor, but it's also much larger... They also have similar hardpoint options.... You could even take 4 of them, if you wanted!

New meta?

Mech----------Free Tonnage-----armor
Timberwolf---27.46----------------462
Mad Dog------26.03---------------402
Hellbringer----23.31---------------422
Summoner----20.69---------------434

Granted, the Timby has 3 more heatsinks built into it as well...

Edited by Twilight Fenrir, 18 May 2015 - 07:32 PM.

[Clideb50]

Elizander, on 16 May 2015 - 03:37 PM, said:

The salt mines shall be very prosperous in the coming weeks!

I still think that PGI needs to add a threshold setting to their quirks where first (x) weapons are not affected and if you put more than (x) then it either kicks in for all or only for the additional weapons. It's like the quirk version of... Ghost Heat.

That way regular and reasonable loadouts aren't penalized as much.

I like the stalker changes though. My 4N has 2 LL 4 ML and 3 SRM4.

I like this idea. It won't hurt the stock builds as much as the meta builds that just spam lasers.

[Alienized]

conquistadorst, on 18 May 2015 - 04:52 PM, said:

Bingo. Thanks for catching my point, your previous points said they lacked data and evidence to arrive at a conclusion. That statement was wrong, there's plenty of evidence already. Seeing you don't even play one, maybe you should defer to other folks' judgement on that one. In the mean time, I'm enjoying the OP TDR while it lasts

you are enjoying it? no, you just abuse it and causing its nerf with it. i dont need to play mechs that will obviously get a nerf bat soon because of people like you.
yep they got enough data evidence to nerf flat out all IS large laser boats and it will happen.
again, thanks to you. you destroy a good weapon by massively boating it.

[Malcolm Decker]

Look the cold hard truth that no one wants to hear is that a more "diverse" build that features a mix of weapons is never going to be optimal in this type of game. This is not English Literature class. Subjective interpretation carries no weight. It is simple math. There will always be a "best" build objectively speaking in terms of damage output, range, etc. and anything else is sub-optimal. Furthermore, because it's a shooter game, the build that can put the most damage in a single component in the shortest amount of time is going to be the go-to build for skilled players that like winning.

It is the nature of a multiplayer game. The smartest, most competitive players are going to break down the numbers and find the most efficient and powerful builds for the role they want to play. Most of the time you end up with some kind of min-maxed setup just like you see with current TBR, SCR, or Stalker 4N laser vomit. These players will then proceed to faceroll all of the more casual or inexperienced players running other, lesser builds.

The laser nerf will just herald the return of gauss spam since that's generally the only other viable weapon for the clans right now. How long before those are nerfed too after complaints regarding the inevitable gauss/ppc/AC boating? History has just been repeating itself since closed beta. What's worse from a business perspective is that I have held off on making further MC and package purchases due to the massive level of uncertainty regarding the future of any chassis or weapon.

What we really want to see is a true fix to hit detection and HSR issues and a new approach to balance that seeks to make each and every type of weapon viable. Trying to nerf down the best mech/weapon combo every time it appears is not balance, it is just a temporary solution that only lasts as long as it takes for players to crunch a few numbers to find the next "OP" mech/weapon combo. The entire system needs a reboot.

[KursedVixen]

Malcolm Decker, on 18 May 2015 - 09:31 PM, said:

Look the cold hard truth that no one wants to hear is that a more "diverse" build that features a mix of weapons is never going to be optimal in this type of game. This is not English Literature class. Subjective interpretation carries no weight. It is simple math. There will always be a "best" build objectively speaking in terms of damage output, range, etc. and anything else is sub-optimal. Furthermore, because it's a shooter game, the build that can put the most damage in a single component in the shortest amount of time is going to be the go-to build for skilled players that like winning.

It is the nature of a multiplayer game. The smartest, most competitive players are going to break down the numbers and find the most efficient and powerful builds for the role they want to play. Most of the time you end up with some kind of min-maxed setup just like you see with current TBR, SCR, or Stalker 4N laser vomit. These players will then proceed to faceroll all of the more casual or inexperienced players running other, lesser builds.

The laser nerf will just herald the return of gauss spam since that's generally the only other viable weapon for the clans right now. How long before those are nerfed too after complaints regarding the inevitable gauss/ppc/AC boating? History has just been repeating itself since closed beta. What's worse from a business perspective is that I have held off on making further MC and package purchases due to the massive level of uncertainty regarding the future of any chassis or weapon.

What we really want to see is a true fix to hit detection and HSR issues and a new approach to balance that seeks to make each and every type of weapon viable. Trying to nerf down the best mech/weapon combo every time it appears is not balance, it is just a temporary solution that only lasts as long as it takes for players to crunch a few numbers to find the next "OP" mech/weapon combo. The entire system needs a reboot.

The entire Pgi team needs to realize that their balacing the wrong way. They need to stop listening to unskilled whiney pilots and listen to the skilled pilots.

Some mechs are just hard to kill thats how it is.

Edited by KursedVixen, 18 May 2015 - 09:35 PM.

[Intelekt]

Tinkering with quirks and balance in this fashion while hit boxes throughout the game are as flawed as the are is equivalent to giving a haircut to a severed head..

Beyond that, the changes are not great or extremely poor, but strange.. Some of these mechs aren't seeing ANY play, others are far too common but the issue is not the mechs themselves; but the Clan weapons being poorly designed to a point that Clan has one option, albeit a very deadly one. IS has more variety but the real issue is that upwards of 75% of the mechs are not viable for competitive play in the current game state.

Lastly, these types of little detail changes while we still have no PVE, new game types, or any real content to create a better game are happening.. if there are truly only 20k players participating in CW events, it needs to be reworked. I have completely stopped any CW, it feels stale and pointless these days.

Balance comes from countering and carefully coming up with solutions to the strongest or most "overpowered" mechs.. It does NOT mean handpicking the meta builds and nerfing them, that won't change the meta, it will change the mech used for the platform..

I really hate to say how much this feels like PGI is trying to sell wave 3, but I am not buying anymore packages until we see some REAL content injected into this game.