179 replies to this topic

[TexvoR]

Yes!!! Truth there ... Thanks PGI 0/

[Kin3ticX]

Ultimatum X, on 07 November 2015 - 12:01 PM, said:

I've watched Kin3ticX outscore multiple good players using lasers while he plays a Gauss+1xCERPPC Summoner poptart.

CW, Regular matches, Team queue. Doesn't matter.

He'll outplay those players with their lasers, he's just saying it's more accessible to the general playerbase.

I experimented with jumpsniping in CW more than the regular queues post nerf. I ran 3x Summoner and a Kitfox in CW for a long while. It was handy to have a dedicated jump sniper but its not something I think would have been more effective to stack. I was getting overall lower dmg vs my HBR vomit decks but on maps like Vitric or Hellbore it was nice to get eyes and shots up. Now I want to take my Summoner for a spin again

[Mystere]

Ultimatum X, on 07 November 2015 - 12:01 PM, said:

He's right, it's a fact.

Is it bad if a meta-friendly weapon system is more accessible to the general playerbase?

Or do you not realize that was one of the biggest reasons people cried about poptarts (most of them couldn't do it well).

I've watched Kin3ticX outscore multiple good players using lasers while he plays a Gauss+1xCERPPC Summoner poptart.

CW, Regular matches, Team queue. Doesn't matter.

He'll outplay those players with their lasers, he's just saying it's more accessible to the general playerbase.

Are you saying mechanics should be dumbed down because bad players cannot do it well? That sounds like catering to the lowest common denominator.

Edited by Mystere, 07 November 2015 - 02:59 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

Are you saying mechanics should be dumbed down because bad players cannot do it well? That sounds like catering to the lowest common denominator.

That's a cynical and rather narrow way to look at it.

Rather, I think he's saying that if there's only going to be one ultimate, dominating solution to the meta-game, then it should be one that isn't so hard to play that it drives people away from the game who can't pick it up as readily. More ideally, though, there would be various solutions to the meta-game, a rock-paper-scissors affair that is constantly in flux like most other games have.

[Mystere]

Yeonne Greene, on 07 November 2015 - 03:08 PM, said:

That's a cynical and rather narrow way to look at it.

Rather, I think he's saying that if there's only going to be one ultimate, dominating solution to the meta-game, then it should be one that isn't so hard to play that it drives people away from the game who can't pick it up as readily. More ideally, though, there would be various solutions to the meta-game, a rock-paper-scissors affair that is constantly in flux like most other games have.

I always saw poptarts as a problem to those who could not do or counter them. To those who can do the latter, it was like shooting clay pigeons.

If a so-called "meta" requires skill to do well, then that is a good thing. What is not a good thing is every Tom, ****, and Harry being able to do a skill-less "meta". That is what causes something to go stale.

Edited by Mystere, 07 November 2015 - 03:17 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

I always saw poptarts as a problem to those who could not do or counter them. To those who can do the latter, it was like shooting clay pigeons.

If a so-called "meta" requires skill to do well, then that is a good thing. What is not a good thing is every Tom, ****, and Harry being able to do a skill-less "meta". That is what causes something to go stale.

A meta requiring skill will still go stale if it doesn't have much depth.

[Wintersdark]

Mcgral18, on 07 November 2015 - 11:48 AM, said:

There was greater TTK because there were 1/3s as many guns; that's the only reason.
Or you grabbed a 1500HP Atlas.

Basically all the IS mechs had pretty substantial armor and structure buffs, as well as lasers frequently doing less damage. There were several reasons for longer TTK on the PTS.

Quote

The game was not better; it was about to get so much worse. Thank Mecha Cthuhlu PGI actually listened.
You balance the weapons BY BALANCING THE BLOODY WEAPONS, not by adding Ghost Mechanics.

No argument here. While I respect the goal of that laser change, it definitely fell under the umbrella of "well meaning solutions to problems that are going to create more problems in the process".

Quote

Too much damage? Tune the bloody damage down.
Hey, let's give that a try:

damage="7.0"

Oh look..the cERML deals 7 damage. Perhaps a touch too high. How ever can we fix that?

damage="6.0"

Praise Mecha Cthulu, it's fixed. HOW BLOODY EASY WAS THAT?!

People will freak the f*ck out, but really, the tabletop stats just don't all work in MWO and need adjustment.

MANY weapons need adjusted damage stats. PGI needs to let go and do that. Tabletop stats simply don't work in MWO - an entirely different kind of game.

That an AC10 does 10 damage, or a medium laser does 5 damage, does not determine if a game is "Battletech" or not.

[Weeny Machine]

I didn't like the laser lock-on either, simply because it makes no sense.

However, the question is now: will ANYTHING be done to bring velocity weapons (gauss excluded) on par with the lasers or the lasers down to velocity weapons.

[nocturne]

No Lock on target- lasers shoot from their respective placement origin straight forward, within logical range of your crosshair.

With lock on, lasers converge and cause "mostly" pinpoint damage. You need a lock for the computer systems to pull this off.

Have a random cone of damage b/c physics.


I fail to see what the issue PGI has here. This is a limitation how? They didn't build the game with basic FPS principles in mind or something?

[Y E O N N E]

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

I always saw poptarts as a problem to those who could not do or counter them. To those who can do the latter, it was like shooting clay pigeons.

If a so-called "meta" requires skill to do well, then that is a good thing. What is not a good thing is every Tom, ****, and Harry being able to do a skill-less "meta". That is what causes something to go stale.

That's not what causes something to go stale. What causes something to go stale is if there is no alternative to that particular solution and no way to force an alternative. When the only way to counter something is to respond with the exact same thing, it's going to get stale. It has nothing to do with individual skill and it has nothing to do with individual players not thinking outside the box. The game simply doesn't allow it.

What you need are many solutions accessible to many people of many skill levels. You need to have high-risk, high-reward items and you need to have low-risk, low-reward items, but risk on the former should always be such that the absolute utility between both is the same.

[Mystere]

Yeonne Greene, on 07 November 2015 - 03:51 PM, said:

That's not what causes something to go stale. What causes something to go stale is if there is no alternative to that particular solution and no way to force an alternative. When the only way to counter something is to respond with the exact same thing, it's going to get stale. It has nothing to do with individual skill and it has nothing to do with individual players not thinking outside the box. The game simply doesn't allow it.

What you need are many solutions accessible to many people of many skill levels. You need to have high-risk, high-reward items and you need to have low-risk, low-reward items, but risk on the former should always be such that the absolute utility between both is the same.

Who said anything about not having any alternatives? Where did I say such a thing?

I was just differentiating between a "meta" requiring skill and one not requiring any. A skill-less "meta" gets stale much faster than one requiring skill.

Poptarts had a counter. If you did not find any, then ...

Edited by Mystere, 07 November 2015 - 04:03 PM.

[Ultimax]

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

Are you saying mechanics should be dumbed down because bad players cannot do it well? That sounds like catering to the lowest common denominator.

Nothing was dumbed down.

Lasers have always been more accessible, they were also always a worse choice vs. PPCs.


PPCs got nerfed, and then overpowered clan lasers that circumvented ghost heat for huge alphas were introduced.

That's how we ended up with a laser meta.



So if you want to argue that overpowered clan mechs catered to the lowest common denominator by introducing easy to use weapon systems that had the raw damage and ranges to compete with or dominate every other weapon system on mechs with CXL engines - then you go right ahead and be my guest.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 07 November 2015 - 04:56 PM.

[Mystere]

Ultimatum X, on 07 November 2015 - 04:34 PM, said:

Nothing was dumbed down.

Lasers have always been more accessible, they were also always a worse choice vs. PPCs.

PPCs got nerfed, and then overpowered clan lasers that circumvented ghost heat for huge alphas were introduced.

That's how we ended up with a laser meta.

So if you want to argue that overpowered clan mechs catered to the lowest common denominator by introducing easy to use weapon systems that had the raw damage and ranges to compete with or dominateevery other weapon system on mechs with CXL engines - then you go right ahead and be my guest.

Your responses are already way off track from this:

Kin3ticX, on 07 November 2015 - 06:58 AM, said:

At least with laser vomit more people could do it since its easier

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 08:20 AM, said:

Don't you think there's something wrong with this statement.

So I am ending this chain here.

[Ultimax]

Mystere, on 07 November 2015 - 04:42 PM, said:

Your responses are already way off track from this:




So I am ending this chain here.

My responses are exactly what they need to be, there would not be a Laser meta if there had never been clan mechs.

That was the catalyst for a series of changes that lead directly to a laser meta, it's not even arguable.

[MischiefSC]

Gas Guzzler, on 07 November 2015 - 09:02 AM, said:

Lol.

It has nothing to do with pressing R, its more of having "R" select the wrong target or having to wait a second out in the open before you can fire to get your range. For some of you, that might boil down to "just pressing R" because you stand out in the open waiting to be shot anyway, but for others it is not attractive at all.

Imagine balancing lasers by tweaking the weapon values themselves. What a novelty.

Like we've done for years. That's going to work TOTALLY DIFFERENT THIS TIME.

No, wait, wait, I got it!

'They just weren't doing it RIGHT'.

You are way to smart a guy for this. You know better. I know you do. Changing weapon values for heat/damage/range simply shifts the meta. It's irrelevant to actual BALANCE. It just changes the math on what's optimal. Like what quirks did. It didn't balance anything it just shifted optimal around.

The damage falloff for lasers was minimal given their inherent superiority for damage/ton to ballistics and missiles. All it did was carve out a niche for ballistics as the 'run-n-gun' option. Lasers trumped poptarting still for the same reason they do on the live server.

It wasn't hard. There's no way I'm a vastly better player than you and it took me like 3 matches to work it out. If you're in a fast moving mech you're playing closer (baring ERLL sniping) and if you're in a bigger laser boat (like a WubShee that I played dozens of matches in) you stick to the same target as much as possible, especially in a group so you don't get your locks muddled.

It is supposed to make lasers a bit harder to use effectively. That is what makes it a nerf. By doing so in a way that adds complexity instead of a flat stat nerf it keeps them viable without just shifting the math to have something new be the optimal loadout.

A stat change is irrelevant on weapons. Totally, completely utterly irrelevant. It balances NOTHING. It's never balanced weapons. It will never balance weapons. Hitscan vs PPFLD vs missile spread isn't going to be balanced by DPS or HPS but by optimal performance situations. Unless SRMs are *drastically* better than everything else in brawling they will always be inferior to weapons that reach beyond 270m. If ballistics are not near gauss speed for their optimal range they will always be inferior to lasers, unless lasers are too hot, in which case they will always be superior to lasers.

IN addition to that, Information Warfare. Useful scouting as a role that's not a waste of 1 of your 12 mechs. There is no way to do that without IW/Scouting directly impacting weapon performance. We worked that out in PTS1! You were one of the people saying it! It plays out irrelevantly! Yet the moment that actually happens, when IW actually impacts weapon performance everyone flips their absolute ****?!

It was never hard. More to the point, it still wasn't enough to knock lasers off from being the best overall weapon to take. The arguments you guys are making are like the arguments people make for LRMs being OP. Yes, I'm sure there was this one time in this one match in this one situation where you had trouble locking the right target who happened to be between 160 and 270m from your ML boat and so in that one shot, that one time? You did less damage and life was terrible.

Flipping damage/heat/range/recycle values will never balance weapons in MW:O. It has never and will never balance them. Sure, some values need adjusted. I'm all for that. It's not going to 'balance' them though. You want actual balance, you want IW and Role Warfare and such, then you need to accept that aspects of the game will be more complex than they are currently to add those things in.

If you do not actually want IW, Role Warfare or anything more complex than the game exactly as it is, right now, save maybe some XL tweaks and maybe some new toys for CW, then great. Be honest about it. Congratulate PGI on throwing those ideas away and sticking with what we've had for 3 years and embrace that it's actually exactly the game you want, put on your white hat and cheer the mother ******* status quo.

PGI didn't invent the ideas of IW, or map and game mode voting or iterative tests on the PTS. We asked for ALL this stuff and when we get it we act like total and complete ********. I could rant about PGI for weeks, and have. Yet in this situation, this topic, they were right all the way through. That irritates me more than anything else.

[Ultimax]

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:04 PM, said:

You are way to smart a guy for this. You know better. I know you do. Changing weapon values for heat/damage/range simply shifts the meta. It's irrelevant to actual BALANCE. It just changes the math on what's optimal. Like what quirks did. It didn't balance anything it just shifted optimal around.

You are speaking in circles.

Shifting what is optimal and balancing are basically the same thing.

People did not move away from PPCs until they were nerfed, and then the IS was given quirks which allowed them to run lesser version of Clan Laser builds.

Boosting PPC speeds back up, and toning down what is easily one of the silliest oversights in all of this game's balance issues* would be more than enough to balance things.

*That would be the ability to circumvent ghost heat using Clan ER Meds with Clan Large Pulse - these weapons play at 400-500m and basically just become a super version of a laser build that no IS build can replicate without quirks due to tonnage and ghost heat.

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:04 PM, said:

It wasn't hard. There's no way I'm a vastly better player than you and it took me like 3 matches to work it out.

It has nothing to do with "working it out".

The better your opponents, the more dangerous your exposure time becomes.

The longer your exposure, the lower your own personal Time To Survive is (let's call that TTS).

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:04 PM, said:

It is supposed to make lasers a bit harder to use effectively. That is what makes it a nerf.

The issue with Lasers are:


1) PPC velocities
2) Clan Laser build Ghost Heat circumvention
3) Clan ER Mediums competing directly with IS LLAS (probably the most ludicrous tonnage disparity in the entire game)
4) IS Laser quirks that were needed very specifically because of points number 1, 2 & 3 and because Lasers are one of the few build choices that allow IS mechs to run STD engines and stay within 15kph of a similar clan mech build.*

*Indirectly IS XL vs. CXL balance needs to be dealt with, because if you want to take any kind of a competitive ballistic + energy loadout on an IS mech you are almost 100% going to be painfully slow, or you are in an XL build.



Fix those things, and you fix the problem, and you don't need new mechanics that seem to ignore the history of AN ENTIRE YEAR or more of Lasers being considered garbage next to PPCs.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 07 November 2015 - 05:20 PM.

[MischiefSC]

FupDup, on 07 November 2015 - 10:06 AM, said:

That's not information warfare, that's weapon buffs with a different label plastered over it. It's time to call a spade a spade.

Under that system, sensor quirks are pretty much just weapon quirks because they directly make your guns more powerful...something that you don't like if I remember correctly.


For scouting not being that great, it's because our maps tend to have specific locations that are good and certain ones that aren't, thus we have a pretty good idea of where the red team is going to be. And with the current state of the game, we also have a fairly good idea of what mechs/guns they'll be bringing. And even then, scouting can technically be done by any mech because anybody with any mech can just look across the map to find the red team (barring huge amounts of fog and other spammed obstructions that PGI has taken a liking to lately).



You keep using that word, but I'm sure that it means what you think it means.

Waiting a few moments for a magical dorito that makes your guns stronger isn't complex.

Are you just trying to troll me Fup? Scouting doesn't work... because of map design? Scouting doesn't work because it doesn't matter, because the game always ends with people shooting each other and it gets to that point very quickly. Because of ECM creep lots of matches are 1/2 over before one side even gets a dorito. Position of the enemy is irrelevant in most matches. Scouting is sorta nice but any mech can scout - the 'scout' is the guy that sees the other team first. 'Scouting' is irrelevant to the playout of the fight by and large. You know that. Do I really need to dig up your critiques of PTS1?

IW, if it does not directly affect weapon performance, is irrelevant. Completely and totally. Fluff, window dressing. ECM was the 'strongest' IW you could get in this game and everyone pretty much learned to ignore it unless they were using LRMs.

That last bit was so disingenuous I'm not sure if I should just troll you back and make a 'Yo' Mama' joke or actually point out how absurd it is.

Having locks impact laser range performance added significant complexity to playing laser boats. Not a ton, but significant. Lasers were still superior but not nearly so much and that superiority became situational and not fiat. Which was more balanced than we've had any weapon in this game since it came out. Yes, that's complexity. In fact I didn't start using 'complexity' in this debate, people arguing along side you did. Saying it was 'too complex'. Too hard.

The arguments I'm hearing about the problems with it sound exactly like people arguing why LRMs are too strong. It's this conjecture based off a 'This One Time, In Band Camp' anecdotal experience. I've played 30 or 40 matches on the PTS in PTS3, about 20 in PTS2. All the people who say how bad it is I saw like 3 times. Total. The people I agree with were there almost every match.

As a given rule Fup I respect your opinion, you and Mcgral, Deathlinke and a few others on here but in this? I can't find any basis, at all, for your objections. They don't play out. They are cut from whole cloth and contrary to what you've been saying you wanted from MW:O for years. Stat changes are utterly bum-**** irrelevant. We've done them for years, it doesn't 'balance' anything. Yes yes, we all want heatscale and convergence and etc. and those would work but right now I am 100% confident that if PGI introduced a heatscale and convergence exactly like you asked for you'd be here calling it 'Ghost Speed' when it slows you down and 'Ghost Accuracy' when convergence makes you miss and saying how it ruins the game.

This is an iterative PTS change. It's not a finished product. The concept of using locks to affect weapon performance is about the only way anyone has put forward to make IW exist as anything other than fluff in this game. The changes to lasers were so minor that it was a faction as relevant to mech/loadout performance as removing skills were and almost irrelevant compared to quirks. Yet you guys acted like it gave you seizures blotted out the sun.

[Wintersdark]

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

This is an iterative PTS change. It's not a finished product. The concept of using locks to affect weapon performance is about the only way anyone has put forward to make IW exist as anything other than fluff in this game. The changes to lasers were so minor that it was a faction as relevant to mech/loadout performance as removing skills were and almost irrelevant compared to quirks. Yet you guys acted like it gave you seizures blotted out the sun.

This is a good point.

I didn't like the laser range thing because of how unintuitive it was, and how awkward it seemed; I'm not really sad it's gone.

However, I *DO* want IW, and I want IW to matter. Scouting - as Mischief says in the above post - is utterly pointless for public queue matches, and nearly so for all matches. If LRM's weren't so terrible, at least there'd be LRM spotting, but that becomes a chicken-and-egg situation.

The laser lock range thing, combined with the varied ranges, served to make lights and mediums far more survivable at range (a serious problem in live, where a heavy laser vomit Clam mech can melt a medium in half at long range, further acting against lights/mediums) and gave them a very valuable role too.

If the laser lock range thing isn't going to happen, something has to.

I *want* role warfare, I want meaningful information warfare. I want something other than two murderballs smashing into each other over and over again, I want varied roles in battle. Convergence at lock range would be awesome, but I doubt it'll happen.

The laser lock deal is off the table, but something needs to be there to make the whole IW system meaningful at all. If the IW system isn't meaningful, then we go back to simplistic murderball smashies and irrelevant IW components as per PTS1 which I'll go out on a limb to say we all agreed was tremendously unimpressive.

[Deathlike]

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

As a given rule Fup I respect your opinion, you and Mcgral, Deathlinke and a few others on here but in this? I can't find any basis, at all, for your objections. They don't play out. They are cut from whole cloth and contrary to what you've been saying you wanted from MW:O for years. Stat changes are utterly bum-**** irrelevant. We've done them for years, it doesn't 'balance' anything. Yes yes, we all want heatscale and convergence and etc. and those would work but right now I am 100% confident that if PGI introduced a heatscale and convergence exactly like you asked for you'd be here calling it 'Ghost Speed' when it slows you down and 'Ghost Accuracy' when convergence makes you miss and saying how it ruins the game.

The issue primarily is how it doesn't really work, but more importantly how this gets explained to other people.

In one of the tests I did with Mcgral on the day the PTS appeared (I was starved for time, but wanted to see stuff)... I was running a Hellbringer and Mcgral ran a Centurion.

IIRC, the distance before I could even get a Dorito was ~300m, based on my build (omnipods affect the range, and I was running a very common Gauss+4ML build). For Mcgral, he had a better sensor range, despite bringing a brawling build (3 SRM6s - no Artemis IIRC). Note that this was no "Doritos delay" involved.. but essentially in order to deal anyware close to optimal damage, I would have to close on him - which totally favors Mcgral's build because of the sensor range in conjunction with the laser lock change. Taking CERMEDs is woefully inefficient for something like that (would have to rebuild it with CMPL or CSL/CSPL - or go the ERPPC route).. but that also changes the dynamics of the build seriously.

Of course, had I used something like a Direwolf-W (with some mathematical quirk entry error probably), I would've avoided such a penalty. Remember the Hellbringer itself has its ECM changed too, so that indirectly nerfs the "additional armor" through ECM (it's not really there, but it's effective enough to make you not focus fire on a critical section when it comes to its current use on live servers).

What would end up happening is that a lot of mech builds on a meta levels shifts in such a way that there's no "middle ground".

Long range - lol, don't bother due to being inefficient+hitreg
Mid range - all the dakka (including Gauss), and lol Lurms, ERPPCs, PPC, CLPL
Short range - ML/CERMED/MPL/CMPL/CSPL/CERSML, with the occasional IS LL/LPL (only choice based on tonnage availability with limited hardpoints), SRMs/SSRMs

I mean, you've removed essentially long range, and downgraded all IS LL/LPL to brawl weapons. In part, it has to do with the significant 60% optimal range nerf (I think I had said in PTS2 feedback that it would have to be much closer to 75%-80% to be something more tolerable).

What becomes a tragedy is that IS SL/SPL still don't have a role in the game, and while I don't think any particular mech (Clan omnipod combinations) will make the range go below 200m, but when your Doritos can't appear at a first engagement, you have to rely on the weapons synergizing with the situation (either through avoidance/PPC or working with it.. which means removing/downgrading weapons due to being totally suboptimal).

This is just not something I'd want to deal with... let alone explain (just like Ghost Heat).

Edited by Deathlike, 07 November 2015 - 06:50 PM.

[Ultimax]

MischiefSC, on 07 November 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

The concept of using locks to affect weapon performance is about the only way anyone has put forward to make IW exist as anything other than fluff in this game.

Again, why does implementing "IW" need to directly result in a Laser nerf?

Part of me feels that you like this more because it was nerfing lasers than it was about IW.


I'm not trying to strawman you here, I'm just going on my gut.


If players shift away from laser builds because of a nerf like that, how the hell was "IW" suddenly a success?

It isn't.




If they want information warfare to mean anything, they need to come up with something that isn't some kind of ball and chain on ONE existing weapon system.


And it's not like we haven't given them ideas, Active/Passive radar (probably put forward by multiple players but Roland's old thread was probably the most well thought out in recent history) is easily several orders magnitude better than "HOLD LOCKS FOR LASERS".



If they want IW to be a thing, it needs to be its own thing and not a knee jerk reaction to a meta-game state that they not only created but apparently don't even recognize how they created it.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 07 November 2015 - 07:41 PM.