402 replies to this topic

[Top Gun Killer]

The Nerf Bat to the Awesome really? R.I.P 9M

[eCryptic]

So, with loss of optimal laser range without lock gone those absolutely unneccesary Sniperbuilds at over 1 km will continue to be viable....

Honestly, THAT was going to be THE most anticipated change EVER. Why did you cancel that? And please don´t quote your "It didnt turn out as expected" phrase. The Lazor-Meta is going to be stronger than ever, cause your Heat Sink adjustments dont change the way the weapons work.

Information warfare. Give it to us. NOW!

Quirks....really? Weapon quirks are nearly as strong as before, which basically turns your long announced rebalancing into dust.

[TheCharlatan]

So... new quirkening?
Ok then, let's look around ...
From a quick reading:

• Still no CT structure quirks for the jenners (except Oxide)...
  
• Did you really nerf the Urbie R60L? No more reduced heat? REALLY?
  
• Where is the Locust Pirate's Bane? Looks like you forgot it.
  
• Holy structure quirks Blackjack (+28 CT/+22 ST)!
  
• Sparky lost it's PPC velocity quirk... why?
  
• Black Knight got buffed a LOT. Could it be a valid Timber Wolf contender?

The others look intresting! I'm ready to test them on the PTS. Looks like IS now has some pretty tanky mechs...that alone will rise TTK.



However still no solutions to the big long range alphas (Clan lasers only got a nerf at max range, which is a start, i guess) and STILL NO FIXES TO MGS AND FLAMERS!

Edited by TheCharlatan, 14 November 2015 - 01:36 AM.

[Kotev]

I was expecting something more drastic which is not good. This is good becouse the values and quirks are pretty much balanced across the mechs so we dont have overpowered mechs and the player skill will be more important. Now we wait to see clan mechs but i have faith that they will be balanced. One thing i dont understand is WHY buffing structure in assault mechs and not armor. Good work PGI!

[Duke Nedo]

All in all a better quirk pass than what we have online, but some weirdness still. Awesomes nerf? In general, armor quirks that became structure is a nerf. My rvn 2x again? Grasshopper nerf? Interesting: atlai, victor's, cents, cics, blknts etc.

The big disappointment is that this spells out: there will be no tech balance. Quirks is what we get. Huge disappointment. This was the chance to actually fix balance.

[Kirtanus]

PTS4 sounds much better but need to review quirks table. Believe there should be more tweaks to make more mechs competetive to each other and current maps.

[Reno Blade]

Overall this might be a very good move.
I would've liked to see the infotech and a alpha-balancing mechanic (whatever it might be) getting into the game asap, but it's better to polish them than to screw it up at steam launch.

I like the weapon changes so far (on paper).
I would reduce Ghost heat limits to kick in earlier for most weapons (e.g. M lasers limit 4) instead of increasing the limits for more efficient alphas (as we can see here with 4x SRM6).

I looked over all the quirks and they are looking very good.
The best: nothing is over 30% combined (e.g. AC5 cooldown and Ballistic cooldown on a Dragon not going over 30% combined) (besides the Locust)
Also the general weapon quirks are mostly stronger than the specific weapon quirk, which brings more freedom without sacrificing too much of the quirks if you want different weapons.

It's also nice to see some differences with the Accel / Decel quirks between the variants.
I'm just not sure how much these will bring the variant back to the fully skilled +X% we have now on live servers with the current skill tree.

Noticed the Awesome 8Q (the PPC variant) is missing in the sheet.

Edited by Reno Blade, 14 November 2015 - 02:49 AM.

[coe7]

Quirks to IS chassis are not a bad thing. The fact in BT world is that IS mechs are garbage vs. clan. Thats the inherit tabletop design where handfull of clan mechs kill hordes of IS mechs in ratios up to 1 clan mech vs 10 trash IS hulls. Thats cool on tabletop, however this is a PVP team arena shooter. Best way to balance lack of hardpoints, badly placed hardpoints, etc on IS mechs is quirks. Now that they have removed the really big weapon quirks they can tune weapons easier and thus allow meta shifts from laser to dakka to brawl to whatever.

All these changes look good. People who wanted total removal of quirks do not understand how hardpoint limited the mechs on IS side are and how hardpoints would dominate everything. And there is very few mechs worth playing on IS side if hardpoints decide, much fewer than we now have with quirks.

Also, many IS chassis had generated real flavor and internal community love with the quirks, that would never be played anymore without them. That flavor is not something to be tossed out lightly, sure its not original BT flavor, but its MWO flavor and flavor is important to keep alive to have sense of continuing effort for the game.

Now if rest of infotek garbage gets kicked out and role warfare gets buffed to be lights kill assaults, mediums kill lights, heavies kill mediums and assaults kill heavies, I think we have perfect roles. Only thing stopping this to be reality is huge model size on several medium mechs. If mediums get proper rescaling & hitbox buffs making it harder for heavies to pinpoint XL shoulders & place shots on CTs, we have pretty much a great versitile arena shooter.

For me, real class warfare is when good twichy light pilots take down assaults while medium mechs hunt them down while heavies try to protect everyone and while assaults lay down the area denying damage.

Screw infotek. Real infotek is people communicating and killing stuff, not playing world of tanks clone spotting game. Nothing makes me happier than infotek getting tossed the hell out being a balance factor. It was dead on arrival.

Edited by coe7, 14 November 2015 - 01:52 AM.

[Khobai]

ECM still needs to be fixed. 90m isnt gonna cut it. Missiles are still gonna be useless.

[coe7]

Khobai, on 14 November 2015 - 01:55 AM, said:

ECM still needs to be fixed. 90m isnt gonna cut it. Missiles are still gonna be useless.

IMHO. LRM's need skill based shooting mechanism. They just need to figure out some sort of aim based system where players skill matter more in terms of positioning and firing. My take would be that LRM's would be shot thru seperate aiming window, where spread of missiles is based on how well you can keep tacking the target. Kinda similar way guns are operated in world of warships. When LRMs are more prone to player skill, they can be buffed up.

[Alistair Winter]

A lot of cool stuff and as usual in the latest PTS updates, I agree with most changes, but...

You still plan to keep going with weapon quirks?

You actually added a bunch of weapon quirks to several mechs?

So we're keeping weapon quirks for almost all mechs, but adding a number of different mechanics on top of that? That will make it easier to continuously balance the game?

[Matthew Ace]

Skill Tree Bonus
Happy to see it toned down, albeit a little heavy handed for a few items. I hope to see Speed Tweak goes down further. Could this also signal the beginning of plans to revamp Skill Tree? Shall wait and see. The heat changes alone may lengthen TTK slightly overall.

Core Mechanics
I'm kind of disappointed to see no core mechanics changes - not even removing the effect of "Jesus Field" - I would rather keep the 180m field, but targeting factor and/or target locking adjusted. Isn't this going to still keep LRMs less relevant than direct fire weapons?

Info Warfare
Disappointed to see that no Info Warfare component will come in at PTS4, but understood it needs more time to be polished. However, I'll give the finger to anyone that wants Info Warfare gone.

Weapons
It's nice to see some needed weapon adjustments happening, but hope to see MGs and Flamers get improved before the changes finally go live.

Also hope to see Heat Scale Penalty for AC20s go down from 24 to 12.

Quirks in general
Quirk-wise, I'm happy to see 67% (with weapon module) net weapon cooldown quirk got toned down, this is good.


Awesome
I'm still concerned as to why the Awesome is still overall less durable than a Zeus not even considering hitboxes/geometry (we know PGI is hopeful and intends to start on rescaling earliest by Jan '16). There are some slight quirk nerfs to offensive capabilities for some variants which is a curiously odd decision (might have something to do with increased double heat sink performance), but it's something I can live with. It needs some additional armor quirks thrown in to torso. Will be giving the feedback again once PTS4 is up.

Victor
Glad to see it gets souped up with PTS4, hope that breathes life to usage of this 'mech.

[Yosharian]

I was sceptical at first but these new weapon changes and quirks are actually... freaking amazing. Didn't look at all the mechs but most of these changes look absolutely SOLID.

Have to see how the base efficiency nerfs combine with the specific chassis mobility quirk boosts in-game (I see what you did there and its very smart) but I'm very optimistic.

Shame, then (for me at least), that you still haven't removed the game mode voting system and thus I won't be playing the game.

Back to Fallout 4!

Edited by Yosharian, 14 November 2015 - 02:36 AM.

[Rebel Ace Fryslan]

WIll you make 8v8 (6v6) possible so that EU and Oceanics can finally test on PST

This was not possble in ANY of the previous sessions, 30-45min wait and no game.
You are only getting feedback from certain timezones now!!!

[Kazzun]

Some steps in right direction, but those 25%+ rangebuffs on lasers (BLR as ex.) should be investigated.. or it will not change much in CW on some maps... Rangepeaking 4 the win.

[PFC Carsten]

Hugginn will be a monster with the SRM adjustments... oh wait. It does not have any double-firing-rate quirks left. Too bad, money wasted for all those who wanted a deadly light.



I'm VERY sceptical of these changes and I would love to see whether or not reward adjustments will be made in order to account for the importance of that rather nebulous „info warfare“.

I'll give it a thorough try once it's live, but I just cannot be bothered to waste my time with PTS, sorry. It's a bad idead to have PTS and a CW event running simultaneously, IMHO.

edit:
Just reading through the quirk changes... wow, just wow. WVR-6K still not made useless enough? Grid Iron completely useless now? Well... can I haz my MC for that one back?

Edited by PFC Carsten, 14 November 2015 - 03:18 AM.

[PFC Carsten]

Chuanhao, on 13 November 2015 - 08:51 PM, said:

Best thing to do is now MOVE on and look at other mechanics like game modes, Solaris, FINALLY.

Like... Skirmish with less participants? Easily done in 5 minutes.

[Kazzun]

wvr-6k? 3 ERLL @ 900 Meters + Agility Buffs.. good Long Range Peeker.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Overall, I'm impressed.

I wish it was going to be live for at least a month before Steam release, but it's your schedule.

I really like that you're finally abandoning most of the ridiculously high quirks for specific weapon systems on specific 'mechs.

Some things I noticed, that have me a bit concerned ...
- a few 'mechs missing from the Quirks list ... LCT-PB, AWS-8Q
- QKD-IV-4 is one of the few 'mechs that gets armor quirks to the torsos ... is this applied to both front and back? It was in previous iterations, and is kind of OP, compared to other values.
- FS9, JR7, WVR-7K, STK, and BNC receive zero armor or structure quirks. FS9, I can see. JR7 probably could use some CT love. STK and BNC are two of the best weapons platforms in the IS arsenal, and make sense. WVR-7K? Really? This one seems like it got missed.
- AS7, CPLT, HBK-4SP, and BJ all receive structure (and, for the CPLT, armor) quirks that essentially gives them the hit points of a 'mech 20 tons heavier. AS7 makes sense. I'm not sure about CPLT ... could it be that the model is just too damn big? This is an interesting way of acknowledging what we've been telling you for years. HBK-4SP was one of my favorites, and may be again (especially for large groups) ... I bet this gets dropped by about half (it would still be good, then). Even with the toning down of the weapon quirks ... the BJ line does not need this much love.

Stuff that makes perfect sense to me (and makes me kind of wonder what took so long) ...
- AC and Gauss changes.
- All the missile changes ... especially SRMs

[PFC Carsten]

Kazzun, on 14 November 2015 - 03:28 AM, said:

wvr-6k? 3 ERLL @ 900 Meters + Agility Buffs.. good Long Range Peeker.

Heat output before: 2,25 ERLL, heat output now: 2,7 ERLL, +20%.
Firing speed: 085 before, 1,0 now, +17,6%

Pokeability has improved by 4%. I'll grant that in addition to the possibility to use LPL again. But still, (IMO way) worse than before.