366 replies to this topic

[Koshirou]

spectralthundr, on 13 February 2016 - 08:18 PM, said:

Oh jeez who cares? It's a flamer, did any one expect it to eventually become a meta weapon? It's largely been a useless weapon in practically every MW title it's been in. I swear some in this community just make up reasons to ***** at this point.

A rare stroke of genius on PGI's part. Now everyone talks about this utterly pointless and irrelevant-in-either-case niche weapon rather than the haphazard and inept "balancing".

[Lily from animove]

hmm, dunno, those TC changes,

I don't think the TC1 needed a buff.

also beam range increase and crit increase for the higher TC's is still bad.
because lets be honest, the truly important features are

ballistic projectile speed.
crit chance
beam range

Zoom is nice, but not that important.

and the deltas of those important stats compared to the weight delta, is still unreasonably. because TC 7
is 6 tons more for 5,04% crit. not really interesting, this will still be a 1 ton or 2 ton choice system, spending more seems unreasonable.

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 February 2016 - 04:26 AM.

[Nauht]

Hmm wilk have to see for myself about TCs but I seriously doubt it's worth dropping an entire gun in my dakkawhale for a TC.

I'm a raw firepower kind of guy.

[SpeedFiend]

Did I miss the SMN and GAR quirks that were supposed to make them less of a joke?

Oh. I did not.

[Koshirou]

Mister Blastman, on 12 February 2016 - 07:52 PM, said:

Why is Clan MASC still inferior to IS in regards to turn rate? It should be equal or superior in every way.

a.) Why should it?
b.) Inner Sphere MASC? Yessss. The WVR-7D is going to be truly unstoppable now. I suggest that metamechs.com make a new "Tier 0mfg" above Tier 1, which contains only the WVR-7D.

[spectralthundr]

Sereglach, on 13 February 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

Those of us who'd like to see every weapon in the game become at least somewhat viable care.

Plenty of us are sick of nothing but laser vomit ruling the day just like we were sick of poptarts ruling the day. We don't care if those kinds of mechs exist, but we'd like everything to be reasonably viable.

EDIT: That is, of course, unlike those who ride the meta wave, live the meta, and only care because the meta changes and "forces" them to change/rebuild mechs so they can keep up with the meta.

It's a flamer, it's never going to be viable, it's a flamer. You're going to be pissed no matter what PGI does because there's always going to be a go to weapon of choice, It used to be Gauss, people like you whined and cried it was OP now it has a nonsensical charge mechanic. Then PPC's were too good, so more whining happened and those got nerfed into the ground with velocity changes. People skilled enough to jump snipe, well we can't have that, more whining, jumpjets get nerfed into the ground and are now simply just used for maneuvering a little bit. Next it'll be lasers.

Flamers will never be a viable weapon, AC 2's will never be a viable weapon, <insert whatever other niche weapon system here> will never be a viable meta weapon.

The game was so much better in closed beta before all the bitching about "unfair weapons ruin my tabletop builds!!!111eleventy11!" And I actually enjoy TT Battletech.

[Pz_DC]

Our dear devs - don't You think that time for "mech-combat-value" is coming? Look - all those "across-the-board" nerfs-tweaks are not working as intended with rare cases as exception! its not yours problem, you actually going great (since closed testing start you have done unbelievable amount of balance tweaking etc!), but You cannot balance an apple with cherry! Leave with it - quick play and faction play cant be balanced same time with same rules! "Quick play" will be always unbalanced more or less because "mad technicians" will roll out more and more "mad" loadouts. So focus on balancing faction play because it hurts now - with "mech battle value" IS and CL will be balanced overall - doesn't matter what mechs they will bring down on the field but their overall value will be the same as it is with weight balance now.

P.S. I'm still thinking that giving flamers ability to increase target's weapons heat per shoot for X% is best way to make flamers work well. And give some love to IS command console at last! Or we going to wait few years more?..

--Oh more more critical thing to post right above--
We don't need "viable meta weapons", we need weapons that have their use! Its two different things - right now all ACs (except ac2 and, maybe, SOME LB-X) have their use on the field, even nerfed gauss is still there as VAIBLE weapon for dual-gauss loadouts. That's what we need to be with ALL weapons. They made it with MGs so why you don't believe they will make it with flamers?.. And about "closed beta times" - I believe they will be back right after devs will give us "stock mode"

Edited by MGA121285, 14 February 2016 - 04:28 AM.

[spectralthundr]

MGA121285, on 14 February 2016 - 04:16 AM, said:

Our dear devs - don't You think that time for "mech-combat-value" is coming? Look - all those "across-the-board" nerfs-tweaks are not working as intended with rare cases as exception! its not yours problem, you actually going great (since closed testing start you have done unbelievable amount of balance tweaking etc!), but You cannot balance an apple with cherry! Leave with it - quick play and faction play cant be balanced same time with same rules! "Quick play" will be always unbalanced more or less because "mad technicians" will roll out more and more "mad" loadouts. So focus on balancing faction play because it hurts now - with "mech battle value" IS and CL will be balanced overall - doesn't matter what mechs they will bring down on the field but their overall value will be the same as it is with weight balance now.

P.S. I'm still thinking that giving flamers ability to increase target's weapons heat per shoot for X% is best way to make flamers work well. And give some love to IS command console at last! Or we going to wait few years more?..

--Oh more more critical thing to post right above--
We don't need "viable meta weapons", we need weapons that have their use! Its two different things - right now all ACs (except ac2 and, maybe, SOME LB-X) have their use on the field, even nerfed gauss is still there as VAIBLE weapon for dual-gauss loadouts. That's what we need to be with ALL weapons. They made it with MGs so why you don't believe they will make it with flamers?.. And about "closed beta times" - I believe they will be back right after devs will give us "stock mode"

This is exactly what I mean, Every weapon has their use, some a lot more viable than others. Gauss is practically only useful as a snipe weapon at this point, unless you're great with timing in brawls. PPC's? Utterly useless, too much heat for too little velocity then add in their terrible hit reg and why would anyone take a PPC over a laser at this point? In all the crying to nerf this combination or nerf that weapon etc, this community created the laser meta it so hates. You guys who ***** about everything did it to yourselves. Hell it's to the point I don't think some people will be happy until every mech is only allowed small lasers on it and even then there would be bitching that the small laser has too much range or some crap like that.

If you want to run crap builds with MG's and flamers, hey go right ahead, just don't complain when you die to more viable loadouts. It was the same when jump sniping was still viable, people COULD have used cover to close on jump snipers on most maps and ruin their days, instead? People bitched so much and so loudly PGI went and removed an entire play style and a viable tactic from the game to sate you.

So the next time some higher tier player unloads a 50 point pin point mass of laser vomit into you and vaporizes you, just think the whining that this community does on a regular basis is the reason lasers are and have been the "in thing to do" for a while now. You took away most of the other options for go to builds with your incessant QQ.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

Could somebody explain me the reasoning behind buffing the oxide? It was already the toughest jenner, the best jenner overall, and now it's also the most agile jenner?

Somebody felt there was not enough p2w accusations lately or what?

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

IS Jenner was obsoleted by the Clan version.

It's seems like a great mech and I support all lights

+ if ya paid for it, it should really get some special treatment I guess (I dont have one but I'd argue it should get it).

-----

From the post above, PGI please please please let the PPC's have a distortion effect on victim's equipment.

Edited by The Unstoppable Puggernaut, 14 February 2016 - 05:21 AM.

[Chados]

Patches like this are the best reason to have a lot of mechs.

Seventy-two IS mechs got the nerf hammer, including such overpowered IS stalwarts as the Urbanmech and Locust. It just makes no sense at all, frankly, to nerf everything when it is ERLL optimum range that is the stated problem. Now anything less than a large laser on the IS side is gimped and medium and light mechs that depend on MLs and MPLs are in trouble unless terrain is favorable enough to let them close in to useful range. The CW maps favor long range sniping. That's going to hurt IS teams and drive them out of CW. The public queue maps like River City, Crimson Strait, and Polar Highlands have enough terrain masking to allow short-ranged IS mechs to close to brawling distances. Why run CW and get picked apart in every match when you can either run Clan tech yourself or use terrain to get in and fight in the public queues?

IS energy mechs won't be able to fight the Clan sniper game and will get torn to pieces while they close to useful ranges. I've seen this happen, and by the time IS brawlers get a gate open they're all cored out and one-shotted as they try to get to the Omega. That was the rule before the December patch. LRMs are useless vs. the Clans because every other Clan mech in a CW deck is an HBR or other variant with ECM, and Clan energy and gauss outrange IS LRMs anyway. And IS ballistic or SRM machines are still competitive, but they have to get close to fight and it's going to be a long hard winter on Boreal Vault vs the Clans when a TBR-S with TC1, advanced zoom, and A-variant left torso will be able to hit you on the drop zone from the Beta gate with precision, and the IS team won't have anything that can reply. We've seen how this one plays out, when you couldn't even shoot back with LRMs, couldn't get in position to open the gates without getting sniped to death, and were down 4-2 with half your team bright yellow by the time one gate was opened.

This simply will swing the big units back to Clans, and in solo queue we will see all Riflemen for two weeks while we all level them, along with Clan mechs. Then it'll be 18 Clan mechs out of 24 in every solo queue drop, about like it was back in October. I had several drops right before PSR was implemented where I literally was piloting the only IS mech on the map. MS is already overrunning FRR. It's the shape of things to come, CW-wise. CW is already a ghost town again, even with the rise of the Steam PuGs, and that won't change. I was in last night for three hours and got three drops, one of which was a ghost drop. And once the map is all Clan, the nerf bat will come out and the Clans will be nerfed into submission, and so the cycle continues.

I'm not usually salty about these changes because I don't typically run meta anyway. But this one has me shaking my head, honestly. They've essentially buffed the best mechs in the game while adding incentives for sniping, but stacked them all on one side. It just doesn't make sense. If they wanted more brawling, why nerf every IS energy fighter, then buff Clan TCs *and* remove the negative quirks from powerful mechs that the IS has no real counterpart to, like the Timberwolf? Why not just drop the negative quirks and see what that does first?

Edited by Chados, 14 February 2016 - 05:34 AM.

[Insufficient Skill]

Thanks PGI, thanks.

InnerSphereNews, on 12 February 2016 - 12:22 PM, said:

Tuesday, February 16th 2016 from 10AM – 1PM PST
Patch Number: 1.4.53
Patch Size: ~300 MB
Greetings MechWarriors,
[…]
Quirks
These are the broad changes you'll see in this Quirk pass:
• All remaining negative/detrimental Weapon Quirks on Clan 'Mechs have been removed. A small amount of negative Armor and Turn Quirks remain for certain variants.
• All Inner Sphere Energy Range Quirks are now set at 10% (if present).[indent]
• This 10% standardization applies specifically to 'Energy Range' Quirks. Weapon-specific Range Quirks are not effected by this change.[/indent]
[…]

Inner Sphere

• Spider SDR-5K: Now has a +20% Machine Gun Rate of Fire Quirk.
[…]

So, what about the clearly OP Spider 5V? It has a 30% energy range quirk right now for it's 2 (two!) energy hardpoints - it's ONLY hardpoints besides AMS.

You don't have a clue how the balance works in your own games (I give you a hint: BOATING!), but you swing the nerf hammer like there's no tomorrow (maybe there isn't from your POV, dunno). You keep ruining peoples experiences and fun in this game over and over again. There has been a problem with individual energy boats that got way to highly quirked and your reaction is: NERF HAMMER to all IS instead of just fixing the problematic ones. You're creating more unsuable mechs by the minute and you wonder why people don't want to buy the mech packages or why steam players keep fleeing from this game? Seriously??

Just look at the numbers in Steam Spy: https://steamdb.info.../342200/graphs/
Especially total players in 2 weeks is scary - means more and more people are DL MWO, but most people shy away from coming back.

I am just glad that I didn't give in to the urge to buy into Cicadas after the recently won free Cicada 2A(C) and get the Hero X-5 for real money as well.

Btw fresh proof from an hour ago, that Spider 5V deservedly got nerf-hammered, since it's clearly much OP as an energy boat sporting 2 MedLas:




TL;DR: Use balancing more cautiously, hitting only the problematic spots instead of overreacting at EVERY SINGLE TRY.

Edited by Insufficient Skill, 14 February 2016 - 07:24 AM.

[Koshirou]

Insufficient Skill, on 14 February 2016 - 07:13 AM, said:

TL;DR: Use balancing more cautiously, hitting only the problematic spots instead of overreacting at EVERY SINGLE TRY.

I think there are three main problems:
a.) Townhalls and Twitter mostly populated by sycophants.
b.) Balance issues are used by community "advisers" (NGNG and the likes) as pretexts to push their pet ideas, no matter how spurious the relation to the actual balancing issue is.
c.) PGI listening to these people.

Edited by Koshirou, 14 February 2016 - 09:22 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Insufficient Skill, on 14 February 2016 - 07:13 AM, said:

Just look at the numbers in Steam Spy: https://steamdb.info.../342200/graphs/

I think the most important number on that page is the owners:players:players last two weeks.

What you'll see is the number of owners is increasing as is the number of players, but the "players last two weeks" is decreasing.

This means people keep trying the game, but never come back. They're getting a lot of tries, but their retention is terrible--they aren't retaining any of them.

[Insufficient Skill]

Mister Blastman, on 14 February 2016 - 08:06 AM, said:

I think the most important number on that page is the owners:players:players last two weeks.

What you'll see is the number of owners is increasing as is the number of players, but the "players last two weeks" is decreasing.

This means people keep trying the game, but never come back. They're getting a lot of tries, but their retention is terrible--they aren't retaining any of them.

That's what I said, ain't it?

[Cy Mitchell]

Mister Blastman, on 14 February 2016 - 08:06 AM, said:

I think the most important number on that page is the owners:players:players last two weeks.

What you'll see is the number of owners is increasing as is the number of players, but the "players last two weeks" is decreasing.

This means people keep trying the game, but never come back. They're getting a lot of tries, but their retention is terrible--they aren't retaining any of them.

Those numbers have nothing to do with nerfing or buffing in patches. New players have no idea what came before so they are oblivious to how changes effect the game and the meta. The number of players downloading the game and then only playing it for a short time is more an indication of the steep learning curve of the game. Even FPS players will have a fairly difficult time adjusting to the game due to the lack of agility and size of their avatar in comparison to what they normally play. They may be good at other shooters and are not used to getting their a$$es handed to them in every match. Most of them also do not have a background in BattleTech lore so they do not possess the "love" for the franchise that will keep them going and trying to learn the game. I am not a FPS player but even I, as someone who has played every Mechwarrior computer game, find MWO challenging.

Gamers today are incredibly lazy. They want easy to learn games and they want to be spoon fed with all the answers, optimum builds and the best tactics. They do not want to invest time in becoming good. Only a few will stay around any game long enough to become great at it. I am not a least bit surprised by the numbers that are being tracked following the Steam release. I would be more surprised if they were anything other than what they currently are.

I do not see how the February Patch has anything to do with those numbers nor do I see how future patches can improve player retention unless they simply make the game stupid easy to play. If that happens then I will leave.

Edited by Rampage, 14 February 2016 - 10:15 AM.

[NocturnalBeast]

Rampage, on 14 February 2016 - 10:12 AM, said:

Even FPS players will have a fairly difficult time adjusting to the game due to the lack of agility and size of their avatar in comparison to what they normally play. They may be good at other shooters and are not used to getting their a$$es handed to them in every match.

It is the opposite for me, I do mostly well in MWO, but get my A$$ handed to me regularly in twitch shooters.

[zinus kun]

Well i guess screw me for wanting to use medium laser cicadas (tho raven 4x also got screwed bad) :u

I'm fairly new and all that but I'm pretty sure that doing a blanket nerf without giving anything back is not a smart move.
Heck i don't even care about balance, the change basically makes all energy quirked mechs samey... it's... boring.

I wanted got fresh into the game, find it nice, bought in monthly for easier cbils and mechslots and now all the cool mechs suddenly have 10% range increase without anything cool to offset it... alright, i guess I'll just wait and buy something else then...

As for flamers, i'm nowhere near good enough to comment, but at least from my perspective it looks like a bold and interesting change. Sure it might not be viable, but the change offers a new direction for the weapon to go that's not just pure damage and i find it interesting.

Edited by zinus kun, 14 February 2016 - 01:53 PM.

[Zmflyin]

I think people might be thinking short term here instead of long term about the laser dequirking for IS. Though there were pts servers for a bit, I am pretty sure this is a way for them to collect real test data about laser ranges for the IS and provide quirks like people expect, appropriately. IE: Maintaining a +45% laser range quirk, but with a counter of -35% ErLL range quirk.

As a positive, these broad changes keep me from getting bored as I get to tinker more with what I thought was g2g before a patch.

[zinus kun]

Zmflyin, on 14 February 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

I think people might be thinking short term here instead of long term about the laser dequirking for IS. Though there were pts servers for a bit, I am pretty sure this is a way for them to collect real test data about laser ranges for the IS and provide quirks like people expect, appropriately. IE: Maintaining a +45% laser range quirk, but with a counter of -35% ErLL range quirk.

As a positive, these broad changes keep me from getting bored as I get to tinker more with what I thought was g2g before a patch.

Well sure, but until they do change the quirks again we are kinda stuck with all these bland quirked IS mechs :/