220 replies to this topic

[mariomanz28]

InnerSphereNews, on 11 March 2016 - 04:58 PM, said:

Along with this new Penalty System, every point of Team Damage you inflict will now incur a -21 C-Bill penalty to your End of Round rewards.

This part isn't very clear. Does the team damage threshold apply to this penalty as well or is it just the strike system. If it doesn't it should because I always wind up with a few points of team damage every single match because of clipping a friendly when running past them or vice versa.

I realize it's only 21 cbills per point but that will still add up to a lot over time especially when I bet most people get at least 1 point per match because of the collisions. In the end this winds up being another stealth nerf to cbill income like Polar Highlands.

If we are going to start penalizing team damage and not just team kills, then maybe team collision damage should be excluded from counting as "Team Damage" at the end of the match.

[Threat Doc]

JagdFlanker, on 11 March 2016 - 07:34 PM, said:

Russ may have hinted on twitter that the minimum threshold for the team damage penalty is 30 - which is perfectly fine for me since i always do a few damage each game from leg hits but otherwise rarely do more than 15 team damage

When I think of it, I think I've had 3 team kills in as many years, but I've had several games where I've done more than 30 points of damage. I can't always see where my missiles are landing, though I do pay attention to the mini-map and I do work hard to maneuver to positions where I'm less likely to hit my own guys. However, I still have these issues from time-to-time.

[MechWarrior4023212]

Is it that all mastery packs are IS only for a reason?

[Tarogato]

REALLY appreciate you guys putting together that texture comparison image - you didn't have to do that, but you did, and it's great. =]

[DefyingReality]

Ember Stormfield, on 11 March 2016 - 08:22 PM, said:

Is it that all mastery packs are IS only for a reason?

Likely because we don't have Clan hero mechs yet, and every mastery pack comes with a hero.

[MechWarrior4023212]

DefyingReality, on 11 March 2016 - 08:45 PM, said:

Likely because we don't have Clan hero mechs yet, and every mastery pack comes with a hero.

LOL and that is my next question.....It is pretty annoying to not being able to give them my money!

[Sereglach]

Earthtalker, on 11 March 2016 - 06:27 PM, said:

I also agree with Sereglach. Flamers should be linear in heat generation for the firing mech, and it should begin as soon as you pull the trigger.

Thanks for the support. Also, the sad irony is that Russ was mentioning on Twitter how the heat system is up in the reasonably near future (seems to be hinting right after the rescale hits . . . if not at the same time) and it's going to have to cause quirks and whatnot to be completely reviewed and reworked. I'm sure, whether PGI is going to want to admit that or not, that it's going to have to include all of their weapon systems as well. Right now there's so much heat tampering on both the heat scale and the weapons it's ridiculous. Some weapons generate more heat than their TT counterparts, and some generate less. All weapons, especially the Flamer, will need reworking to adjust to any new heat scale.

Also, the Flamer, as this current setup has been created, is only created to function in this current heat system. If the heat system changes to a low cap and aggressive cooling system (which is pretty much the only way to curb alpha striking . . . Russ's intended goal), then the current Flamer system is useless. By the time you'd do any heat damage to the target and overcome its aggressive cooling, you've gone past your "free fire" limit, enforce the pseudo-cooldown (the only semi-reasonable way to fire the weapon currently) and then their aggressive cooling will eliminate all the effort you put into crowd control in mere moments. Thereby, you'll have accomplished nothing. On the other hand, a flat and fixed number system would actually work, allowing for constant stream fire which would hinder the aggressive cooling under the most-likely new heat scale, and create a legitimate form of crowd control that's actually functional under any circumstance.

Will PGI do this? No, probably not at their current rate. When the new heat scale comes out either the Flamer is going to be even worse then it is now (which is the worst iteration of the weapon system, yet, in my opinion), OR if they lower the heat thresholds and don't add more aggressive cooling, then it'll be "Flamergeddon" all over again (mechs would be able to "free fire" flamers on multiple mechs and get them to heat cap -and have them be there even longer- with the current "fix"), because PGI will have failed to address the inherent problems in their Flamer mechanics and how reliant it is on the current heat system, as-is.

Either way, PGI needs to actually address their broken weapon systems and heat scale (heat scale at least coming "soon"), fix the programming issues they have and lostech coding (redo it if necessary), and it would go leagues in improving game balance and improving gameplay across the board.

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I just find it sad that, with all the problems they have in the game and all the engineering limitations that they have for feature development (one of the reasons for not getting a new quick-play game mode since 2013), that PGI/Russ are advertising the desire/need to hire more artists on Twitter, but not Engineers and Programmers. It's baffling on a whole new level.

Understanding game design or not, PGI's hiring decisions only exacerbate the issue of why they're so far behind on their development and why there's so many empty promises that haven't been fulfilled, yet (Phase 3 was originally last Fall, Game Mode overhauls "started" a year and a half ago, New Rewards and more Rewards tuning, Ammo Swapping, Information Warfare Overhaul and the true ECM fix we saw on the Test Center, a True Flamer Fix, more iterative and constant weapons tuning, etc.). Granted, they've done better since unshackling themselves from IGP, but they've got a long way to go and they're rapidly falling back into their old habits from being under IGP (in particular: you get more news on the game from Twitter then is ever posted on the Forums, the "informative" Roadmaps and Town Halls are nothing more than patch-notes previews nowadays instead of being actual news, the completely MIA dev vlogs and weekly updates, and the MIA overhauled and important reasons for signing up to the email list to get exclusive offers and information). It's not a warm-and-fuzzy inducing prospect, recently.

[Aidan Pendragon]

All in all, seems like a decent patch. Not sure about the Team Damage penalty, though...as others are already noting, it's easy to get some points of this from teammates who walk into your laser fire or LRM splash damage. 30 points seems like a low threshold.

THANK YOU for the voting changes. Only one chance to vote and secret tallies will prevent a lot of the screwing around we see now.

What I really want is a change back to fix Assault mode, by putting the turrets back in. Getting stuck in Assault games, only to have some jokers base-cap two minutes in, is just a waste of time. This is why I stopped playing Assault back in Open Beta days. By contrast, one of my best games ever was when I was the last on my team against four enemies, retreated to the base, and picked off three of the four with turrets' help to force a major come-from-behind tie. Assault without turrets is either Skirmish, or 2-minute-mode, and stinks either way.

[Volthorne]

Aidan Pendragon, on 11 March 2016 - 09:04 PM, said:

Getting stuck in Assault games, only to have some jokers base-cap two minutes in, is just a waste of time. This is why I stopped playing Assault back in Open Beta days.

Is a win objective capturing the enemy base? Yes? Play the objective. Keep a Medium or a Heavy close-ish to your base to prevent the two-minute-losses you seem to find yourself in so often (which, by the way, would require at the very least a pair of Lights with Cap Accelerator mods).

I would rather not have turrets back on Assault, though, as they made it difficult if not sometimes outright impossible for the 'Mechs who SHOULD be doing the capping (Lights and ultra-fast Mediums) to actually, you know, CAP. Putting the turrets back would only encourage players to pick Skirmish more often than it currently is. Alternatively, remove Skirmish from the game mode pool entirely and solve the problem forever.

[Scanz]

clan trials are the same.
still no fix for Trebuchet Nozzles model

low setting now - medium
medium = high.
brave yuorselfs many whine is coming

Edited by Scanz, 11 March 2016 - 09:18 PM.

[YUyahoo]

About the TK/FF damage penalty...no one likes or appreciates an intentional team killer or the guy on your team who alphas you in the back and then says "oops sorry I slipped" (but does it again to either you or someone else a few seconds later), but sometimes legitimate accidents can happen. Like many of you I have played this game for over 3 years and I rarely have more than 5 team damage in a game as well as maybe 4 total team kills (all of which were accidental). Last night I had a horrible game where one teammate in a light mech ran into an AC20 round I fired, it hit him in the back sidetorso and blew out his XL engine...a short while later while I was shooting another enemy mech with med lasers, the teammate beside me decided to step in front of me and before I could move the beams he was dead. I have never had a game like that in the 5000ish games I've played...my total team damage was low, 27 (20 of which were that AC20 slug). If what people are guess the damage threshold is for a penalty is 31, this game would have earned me 2 penalties and a "time out". I can also recall a game where a teammate with a bright red torso ran into me and blew out his CT, charging me with a team kill and a total of 2 team damage. This also would have been at least 1 penalty under this system. Things happen sometimes, some things are avoidable, some aren't. A human being reviewing these 3 instances would probably recognize these things as accidents (but issue a warning for the 2 TK game...because 2 TK) but the automated system will just punish you (and that can become something people will exploit). Giving people the option of "forgiving" a team kill is one way to approach it but it adds more "programming clutter" to a game. A better approach to keeping things simple and automated might be to assign a friendly fire damage threshold to a team kill for it to count as a penalty (because if someone was purposely trying to kill friendlies they would need to do a lot more damage than just 2-5) that way we won't be penalized for those accidents when LRMs lose locks or cored teammates run into a shot fired. Accidents happen but accidents shouldn't be punished like intentional team kills.

Edited by YUyahoo, 11 March 2016 - 09:24 PM.

[Cy Mitchell]

Sounds like an interesting patch but I must admit that ever since the last Town Hall I will not be truly excited for a patch unitl it includes the Mech rescale and/or the modified heat scaling mechanic that eliminates ghost heat and reigns in the Laser Alpha meta game. I hope work is progressing well in those two areas.

[SockSlayer]

Ok, this patch may have new stuff, but it will mean the game will get even slower than before. Its sad that even a 1000 dollar computer has to run the graphics on low, and it still runs slow, the more you add to this game, the more slower it gets, and not everyone can afford a 1000 dollar computer. So if this problem continues, expect to start losing players, I'd rather see new weapons, than all of these unnecessary HUD changes, because that is more code that it has to run through, plus new weapons equal new fun if done right.

[Kurbeks]

Really 7GB?

[Aidan Pendragon]

Volthorne, on 11 March 2016 - 09:15 PM, said:

Alternatively, remove Skirmish from the game mode pool entirely and solve the problem forever.

Alternatively, let us go back to being able to choose what game mode we want instead of having to vote (and often losing). I don't like the new/current Assault so stopped playing it, until the voting system came in and periodically forces me to. Voing on maps...fine. Voting on gamemodes, bogus.

[Navid A1]

InnerSphereNews, on 11 March 2016 - 04:58 PM, said:

Gameplay Fixes and Changes

• Improvements have been made to the 'Mech movement code to provide more consistent mobility over small

....

• Kit Fox: Fixed an issue where the cockpit would appear to tilt to the left while running.

Thanks Russ.

[M A S E]

Looks great!! T-comp 5's projectile speed should still be dropped to 25% though. Just putting that out there.

[Volthorne]

Aidan Pendragon, on 11 March 2016 - 09:56 PM, said:

Alternatively, let us go back to being able to choose what game mode we want instead of having to vote (and often losing). I don't like the new/current Assault so stopped playing it, until the voting system came in and periodically forces me to. Voing on maps...fine. Voting on gamemodes, bogus.

I suppose you don't like conquest either then, because a co-ordinated team could just run around doing nothing but capping on most maps (except when they inevitably run into the OpFor)? I hate skirmish. It is nothing but a cancer to MWO. If it disappeared this next patch and players had to actually start THINKING about what they're doing, it would be amazing. Voting is semi-bogus (double-blind voting partially fixes this). Turrets on assault were extremely bogus, for the reasons I stated previously. They encouraged bad habits and sloppy piloting and wasted everyone's time. There was literally nothing good about them - they didn't even properly deter the tactic they were supposed to prevent, as all the God Tier Lights could just blow right on through them and cap your base anyway.

TL;DR: Don't like voting on gamemode? Convince Russ to deep six Skirmish. That'll even out the queues almost instantly. Or force all the Skirmish players to Assault and the new Domination. One of the two.

[Kshat]

Ember Stormfield, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

LOL and that is my next question.....It is pretty annoying to not being able to give them my money!

You're free to buy a Clan package or that mech a la carte. You might miss out on some prem time, but that should be all. Instead you're given some colours and stuff.

This concept doesn't apply to many of the older IS mechs, since they haven't been released as a pack - or their pack isn't available any more.

@patch: I heard people mumbling about a credit system for AMS-usage - did I miss that point in the patchnotes?

[ZeroKelvin]

New map?

NEW MAP!

DO WANT MORE MAPS!

I think you guys need to to mention that if you want more.