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1) With the changes on PTS, and the lack of any real buffs of substance to a lot of the IS mechs, there are a TON of chassis that are simply going back onto the trash heap, where they were before the quirkening. The list is pretty much the following, based on how they performed in the PTS: LCT, COM, JR7 (which may have bugged quirks ala the above), FS9-A, S, H, and K, SDR, PNT, MLX, CDA, CN9, BJ, HBK (all except the laserboat variant), QKD, CPLT, DRG, TDR, ON1, VTR, HGN, BLR (some, not all), and AWS, all of which were underperforming to a hilarious level. The ADR and KFX are managing to perform a bit mainly because you can use cERLL or cPPC to keep them at long range, and the Ember is back to being the best of the IS lights, though the RVN-3L still snipes well with the ERLL build. The ACH remains the strongest light of them all. The other light mechs, unfortunately, have been gutted, with some (Commando, the Spider-freaking-5V, MLX) being nerfed, despite their position as the bottom of the light pile before.
Heavy, medium, and assault mechs in the IS had a lot of issues as well, with the SCR, HBR, EBJ, and TBR being the reigning kings in the Med/Heavy slots. The AS7-D is by far one of the strongest IS assaults now, but its HP bonuses basically do nothing against the clan heavies and DWF, which are able to tear through all that extra health much too quickly for it to matter. The exclusion of a similar level of structure quirks on the other Atlai make for a stark contrast, as they utterly melt in comparison. The BNC still does alright, as does the Zeus (but less so), meanwhile the other assaults have a lot of problems. The interesting exception, btw, was the Mauler...but that kept its weapon quirks, so it's hard to say where it would have been otherwise.
IS vs IS I can say that the matches were amazing (early on, there were almost no people in clan mechs), with a lot of super-long battles and lower TTK. IS vs clan, however, was the opposite...and as more and more clan mechs showed up, things got VERY bad.
Edit, a quote from page 2 that's worth noting:
Hit the Deck, on 13 September 2015 - 05:20 PM, said:
I just want to comment on the HGN part. The 732b and 732 won't be underperforming because of Gauss+3LPL/LL (metamechs thinks that it's currently Tier 2). They do the loadout regardless of the weapon quirks anyway. 733C will be still somewhat ok/decent because of 2UAC/5+2PPC.
2) The Information Warfare part of it is, in short, garbage. The experienced players on the PTS basically ignored it: no LRM or SSRM builds as a result, and the game became nothing but point and click. No one bothered even targeting in some matches, and it just became a game of "look for the smoking component" on a lot of mechs. Within about 4 or 5 PTS matches, every single person I was seeing had switched to meta pinpoint builds: Gauss and ERML or something similar. No missiles, no brawling builds, just long range meta pinpoint that didn't rely on any kind of targeting to perform with. Light mech percentage dropped under 10%, and I never saw it go above that again (lowest I saw was 1%), which is telling. Of course, it may have been higher at other points of the day. The Target Acquisition Delay (TAD) is by far one of the worst changes...in addition to making LRM/SSRM builds more or less negate-able in a lot of situations, thinking from the perspective of a completely new player, it does nothing but make the initial parts of learning this game even harder. While experienced players can see a mech and know where to shoot (HBK, RT. HBR, LT for ECM/lasers RT for gauss. Etc.) a new player has no context for any of this, which means it will be even harder for them to learn how to target properly. Even worse, I'd predict it will make it even less likely that people will target properly as new players.
3) As I mentioned before, the maps are too small, too linear...this includes CW and the new River City/Forest Colony. This, in and of itself, negates a lot of what they are trying to do with the new information warfare. Making entire weight classes and chassis in the game into "scout mechs" completely negates them, as the endgame focus of every round is still on The Big D: Damage. Mechs that aren't able to do damage quickly and efficiently are completely unable to add anything in the grand scheme of each round, and this were quickly discarded on the PTS for mechs that COULD put out that damage. Again, as the PTS went on, I saw a lot less IS mechs, and a lot more SCR, TBR, HBR, EBJ, and DWF with the occasional ACH thrown in. Several rounds I saw only had 2-3 IS mechs TOTAL, not per side.
4) As someone mentioned above, and I mentioned in point 1, a lot of the mechs simply lost any unique feel that they had. The only builds that became worth taking on the PTS were the ones that could do pinpoint meta, since everything else was just too spotty. This meant that a lot of the flavor builds, or builds that made a specific variant feel unique, just went away. No more AC20 build on the HBK. No more SPL/MPL Firestarters (both builds are awful now). No more 3 PPC awesomes either. Add in that a lot of mechs lost their best features (for instance, Centurions lost the bonuses to their shield arm) along with their firepower potential, and you start to see major problems with diversity. Gauss/Medium Laser builds became the flavor of the day, since you pretty much NEEDED them.
5) The build focused almost entirely on IS, but had Clan changes that were either nonsensical, or just plain...missing. I mentioned before that the TBR actually got stronger than it was previously. The SCR, HBR, EBJ, and DWF also all remained more or less the same...but the GAR, MLX, IFR, SHC, and SMN all were made worse. Meanwhile, the removal of all weapon quirks on the IS side gave the Clans a huge range advantage that proved insurmountable in many rounds. No one that I know went into CW, but I kinda hope that they would re-open the PTS and only let people do CW in PUGs, no premade groups. I imagine that a very stark realization would be seen at that point, as it would paint a very clear picture of exactly how much that range advantage really matters when one side has nothing of substance to be able to counter it with (even the best Gauss platforms would likely not be a strong counter). However, I doubt that we're going to see that happen any time soon. Another option would be to just force Clan vs IS on the regular modes, like they did once before. It will be ugly, without a lot of changes, and a MAJOR amount of focus needs to be diverted to that problem.
6) Building on #5, one of the major mistakes with this is that Paul and Russ both hinted that this balance pass will be dedicated to mech balance and quirks...but not weapon changes, which will come in a later pass. Now, I'm hoping that they just meant a PTS pass, but the way this was stated before does not give me a very strong hope in this regard. If weapon quirks don't make some sort of return in the later PTS passes, it's going to be disastrous if they take it live, since we'll have to go through the entire "what the **** are they doing" phase a second time when they then rebalance all of the weapons...and we have to wonder if it was done properly to account for the new quirks. However, this is going to have some side effects. For instance, does rebalancing the weapons mean that clantech is neutered, or is IS tech going to be brought up to the level of Clantech? The advantage of quirks, in addition to making each mech feel different, also meant that IS weaponry had a chance to stand up against clan weapons in various situations. That is now gone, and it needs a lot of attention before it gets fixed.
7) As someone who remembers the "Dark Days" before quirks, and even before the Clans, the unquirked mechs had a lot of problems. Each weight class had some major heroes: Lights had the Ember and Jenner F, plus the Raven 3L and maybe the Spider 5D. Mediums had the Shadowhawk. Heavies had the Cataphract. Assaults had the Victor. If you go back and watch videos of the early league play, you notice that every single team is running the same mechs in the heaviest slots: CTF-3D and VTR-DS, the two best poptart mechs in the game. High-end play was stale and repetitive, because that was literally all you saw the top players bothering to run. Almost the entire rest of the mech lineup was categorically ignored until the JJ nerf came into the game, and then before much longer we got the clans. This introduced the SCR and TBR as the top mechs of their weight classes, and with the possible exception of the HBR, nothing has dislodged them (the HBR many consider better thanks to its high mounts). Everything I witnessed on the PTS showed a return to those days...a tiny roster of mechs worth playing, and an entire slew of mechs that you warned people away from purchasing. It was, in short, complete and total ****.
8) The final note: This. Wasn't. Good. Enough. This is not what we've supported, paid for, and tried to get people to play. The quirk system, even with all its flaws, was playable and it allowed for a lot of variance in what you would see in each match. The next few PTS runs have a chance to fix things, repair the damage, and make the game still playable without neutering 90% of the mechs in the game, but it needs to be done right or this will kill this game. I can honestly say that if what we saw during the PTS this time were to go live, MWO would be done for. Now, we still have at least 2 more PTS iterations to get through, and with any luck, Paul will listen to what people are saying and undo the worst of what they've done here...but if not, I honestly believe that we could be looking at the worst thing to ever happen to this game, and that's including IGP still being around.
So that's it. I'll keep playing on live, I'll check the next PTS when it drops...but overall, this first run has left me completely demoralized, and already looking for another game to play, just in case the worst happens. Call that alarmist if you will...but as someone who saw it all first-hand, I'd simply call it honest. I want to continue playing this game, I like this game, and really enjoy streaming it as well...but it needs to be better than what we saw this weekend. It HAS to be better. I truly hope you will see this, Paul, because we have a significant amount of improvement to be built around the current base for this patch to have a chance to help the game, rather than irreparably harm it.
Edit: Addendum 1: another thing I left out of my original post: the increased structure buffs, while they can be somewhat nice, also have a majorly negative side effect on those mechs that got a LOT of them (Ilya Muramets and Atlas D, for instance). They last a lot longer in a fight, but it was not unusual to see them walking around with almost no weapons left, despite having every component. Since every shot after armor could crit weapons and ammo, it was leaving them alive, but neutered. In future builds, some thought needs to be given towards crit chance on exposed components for those mechs.
Edited by Durandal, 14 September 2015 - 08:32 AM.
