92 replies to this topic

[Tom Sawyer]

So many of us are rocking our new warhammers. Just like we rocked the marauders. And so on.

Some us are trying to stay lore purists. PPCs as per lore. Others are searching for the perfect meta. Most DPS. Built for this map.

However my point is we keeping getting new mechs. We keep slapping on the same weapons. At some point when you have over a hundred mechs many start to blur together.

Some say the timeline is currently 3050, or 51, or even 52.

I know mechs sell. And this game needs the money from those mech sales to keep the servers alive. Also there are many many fixes the game needs particularly in CW.

But even table top had to evolve. IS saw the clans, saw the new weapons, saw many balance issues created some which still linger to this day.

However I am just curious to know others feel? Should PGI consider adding in new weapons by advancing the time a few years? This would introduce new mech possibilities too. Or should they really buckle down and fix what we have before introducing new weapons which will lead to new variations on the mechs we already have?

[Hit the Deck]

Yes, we need more weapons because it's getting boring playing in the Mechlab.

[Raggedyman]

New weapons would be "nice", however they are hard to add without making old weapons redundant, they are harder to balance than mechs, and its harder to sell off new weapons for cash than it is to do the same with mechs (as the mechs are basically shells to carry around the weapons available to everyone).

[Marcel Bekker]

Imho (and I will take a lot of hate for this) there are just way too many customisation options. Right now, I feel like most Clan mechs, by virtue of being Omnis, have paradoxically more character than most Battlemechs... those Battlemechs that have a certain character get it from their quirks, mostly.

I think Battlemechs should not be allowed to change engine sizes, just STD or XL. However, base speeds have to be adjusted to their supposed TT values as well, an Atlas or a Direwolf should NOT run at 48 kph, they should do 53 kph... the speed tweak should be a bonus, not a necessity.
Weapon hardpoints should also dictate which size of weapon can be changed in. Large energy for large energy, small ballistic for small ballistic...

And for the Omnimech side of things... keep the current hardpoint system, but fix the armor values. You want to pilot a Hellbringer? Then you better deal with its paper armor.

*equips http://www.sarna.net...esistant_Armor*

Edited by Marcel Bekker, 20 January 2016 - 05:09 AM.

[Juodas Varnas]

Which is exactly why we need QUADS.
It's something completely different from anything in the game currently!

Edited by Juodas Varnas, 20 January 2016 - 05:05 AM.

[Cyborne Elemental]

What do you expect when so many of the weapons in this game are either completely broken or near useless?

[El Bandito]

PGI can immediately add three new weapons if they buff the LBX, the Flamer and the MG back to usefulness. And it does not require a rocket scientist.

And buff IS lasers/ER/PPCs so PGI can finally remove/reduce some of the ridiculously large quirks people are taking advantage of.

Edited by El Bandito, 21 January 2016 - 06:48 PM.

[Lily from animove]

we need better chassis balance and also soem wepaon balance. Too less in variability is actually viable, that why we end up with too much the same wepaons ind the same mechs.

Lets be honest when someone steps into a Ac 20 multiple ML equipped emch and it cna be ugly.
But when someone hails down like 80 lrms on you damage is so spread out it's not that bad. Not evens peakign how easily you even cna avoid this from happening.

how is that balanced?

sometimes I think we should get rid of Techdifferences and just equalise them and do some chassis quirks depending on chassis differences and then see. There is too much in the balance equation to properly be handeled by PGI. Gettign more and new wepaons won't change this it may change the metaweapons yet not balance the current imbalance between already dead and viable weapons.

Mister D, on 20 January 2016 - 05:15 AM, said:

What do you expect when so many of the weapons in this game are either completely broken or near useless?

balance tweaks? But thats maybe asked too much

Edited by Lily from animove, 20 January 2016 - 06:08 AM.

[Marcel Bekker]

El Bandito, on 20 January 2016 - 05:18 AM, said:

PGI can immediately add three new weapons if they buff the LBX, the Flamer and the MG back to usefulness. And it does not require a rocket scientist.

And buff IS lasers so PGI can finally remove/reduce some of the ridiculously large quirks people are taking advantage of.

SPL DMG/HEAT
MWO: Clan 6/3 IS 4/2
TT: 3/2 both

A lot more damage on the Clan version than it should have... ranges are about right for both compared to TT

ERLarge DMG/HEAT
MWO: Clan 11/10 IS 9/8 Regular Large Laser 9/7
TT:Clan 10/12 IS 8/12 Regular Large Laser 8/8

This one is especially striking... both produce a lot less heat and do more damage than they should.

LPL DMG/HEAT
MWO: Clan 13/10(!) IS 11/7(!!)[
TT: Clan 10/10 IS 9/10

I literally can not... what? In one fell swoop PPCs are made pointless unless quirked!

Mhm...

What else? Oh yes, Armor Values are doubled in MWO, but for some reason ammunition count is not... LRMs have 180 compared to 120 in TT, merely 50% more.
SRMs have exactly their TT ammo count.
Gauss Rifles have 10 instead of 8, barely a 20% increase.
AC20s have 7 instead of 5.
AC10s actually have double their TT ammo values, 20 instead of 10.
AC5s have 30 instead of 20, another 50% increase.
AC2s have 75 instead of 45

And people actually wonder why Lasers are the "Meta", and most builds gravitate to ERLL or LPL boating for longer range and SPLs for short range? They actually wonder why everything gets so "samey"?

What can we expect Clan Heavy Lasers to look like when they come in 3058? A Clan Heavy Large Laser with 20 damage, 16 heat and 2 to 2.5 seconds duration?! It certainly looks that way from the other Laser systems.

Edited by Marcel Bekker, 20 January 2016 - 06:39 AM.

[TexAce]

Juodas Varnas, on 20 January 2016 - 05:05 AM, said:

Which is exactly why we need QUADS.
It's something completely different from anything in the game currently!

Yeah that would certianly look funny without Inverse Kinematics

[Mawai]

El Bandito, on 20 January 2016 - 05:18 AM, said:

PGI can immediately add three new weapons if they buff the LBX, the Flamer and the MG back to usefulness. And it does not require a rocket scientist.

And buff IS lasers so PGI can finally remove/reduce some of the ridiculously large quirks people are taking advantage of.

I agree weapon balance still needs work in respect to the quirk system and clans vs IS. However, across the board buffs to IS lasers will buff every IS mech with an energy hard point ... effectively giving every mech an energy quirk.

For example, if IS laser range were increased by 10%, That is effectively the same as a 10% energy range quirk applied to every mech. If you then remove the 20%+ range quirks from the handful of mechs that have them then you will have buffed every IS mech with a less than 10% range quirk while nerfing the few that have larger quirks.

The question is ... will that give any better balance than the current situation and I am not sure that it will. IF there are certain IS mechs where the quirks are too large would it not be better to simply reduce those quirks a bit? ... and IF the IS laser is found to need a buff on EVERY IS mech then perhaps the lasers should be made slightly more effective while reducing the "over-quirked" mechs.

Anyway, I agree that basic weapon balance issues are being compensated for by the application of quirks. Fundamentally, in general, clan weapons are more effective than the IS variants with very few exceptions. It would take a lot of changes to actualy make clan weapons equal IS weapons while still retaining a unique character and I suspect that there is resistance to that process because some folks believe that clan weapons SHOULD be better than IS based on lore.

[Arctourus]

been asking for new weapons for ages. There are some interesting light ballistics that could be put into play, giving lighter mechs more options that just machine guns. There are some lighter energy weapons...think light ppcs, that could also give lights more flexibility.

[Juodas Varnas]

TexAce, on 20 January 2016 - 06:23 AM, said:

Yeah that would certianly look funny without Inverse Kinematics

Inverse Kinematics for Quads-only!

[DaZur]

Not to point out the obvious but x number of hard points + x number of potential weapon types = An eventual point of redundancies...

In short at some point the only difference between a percetage of mechs and chassis is cosmetic. It's a known compounded outcome mathematically.

[Sjorpha]

I'm fine with new tech if there is no power creep to it.

The new technology should be different from what we have and provide new options, but it should absolutely not be stronger and make anything obselete.

The mechlab doesn't become any more interesting simply by adding new stuff, it only becomes more interesting if there are more competitive and difficult choices to make.

There are also some weapons already in the game that remains to be made properly viable, such as flamers, machine guns, LBX and LRM20. By making those good enough to compete you would create some new variety. It seems reasonable to fulfill that potential before advancing the timelime.

We also haven't really gotten to play a fully featured CW yet, which is supposed to be about the clan invasion, I wouldn't want an advanced timeline until I have played CW with a bit more content.

[Foxtrot four eight]

In my opinion we have reached the saturation point. Are there other things that could be added besides weapons? Minelayer/Mine detector equipment, Repair equipment, etc.

[Lostdragon]

Eventually when you have 30 or 40 chassis mastered you start to run out of new and interesting stuff to do with mechs. At this point the only thing that really differentiates mechs is hitboxes because I have a mech that can run just about any combination of weapons I want to use. I don't really have any incentive to buy mechs and I definitely don't have any incentive to put a lot of money down sight unseen for mechs that might ultimately suck because their hitboxes are awful.

MWO desperately needs some new game modes and content to keep my attention.

Edited by Lostdragon, 20 January 2016 - 07:18 AM.

[Jetfire]

El Bandito, on 20 January 2016 - 05:18 AM, said:

PGI can immediately add three new weapons if they buff the LBX, the Flamer and the MG back to usefulness. And it does not require a rocket scientist.

Agreed.

Flamers - should do damage through armor if the mech is above XX% heat (85% or so)
MG - slight damage increase
LBX - higher crit rate

Add in mortars too.

[mogs01gt]

Tom Sawyer, on 20 January 2016 - 04:28 AM, said:

So many of us are rocking our new warhammers. Just like we rocked the marauders. And so on.
Some us are trying to stay lore purists. PPCs as per lore. Others are searching for the perfect meta. Most DPS. Built for this map.However my point is we keeping getting new mechs. We keep slapping on the same weapons. At some point when you have over a hundred mechs many start to blur together.Some say the timeline is currently 3050, or 51, or even 52.
I know mechs sell. And this game needs the money from those mech sales to keep the servers alive. Also there are many many fixes the game needs particularly in CW.But even table top had to evolve. IS saw the clans, saw the new weapons, saw many balance issues created some which still linger to this day.However I am just curious to know others feel? Should PGI consider adding in new weapons by advancing the time a few years? This would introduce new mech possibilities too. Or should they really buckle down and fix what we have before introducing new weapons which will lead to new variations on the mechs we already have?

Its been like this for two years now. The game is stale and we need new weapons badly!

[KahnWongFuChung]

I agree OP new weapons are needed but one of my hates about MWO is not being able to build multiple layouts and save them for reuse then pick them after the map has been selected like in older PC MechWarrior games. MWO makes the mechlab boring new or old weapons when you have to run the same build over and over or rebuild and save after every battle.

Also before considering new weapons I personally would rather see 2-3 new game modes for solo MM and CW the game need a fresh new look and feel to play with new game modes then all those new weapons wont become same same so fast.

Edited by KahnWongFuChung, 20 January 2016 - 07:22 AM.