195 replies to this topic

[Cy Mitchell]

Yankee77, on 21 March 2016 - 06:23 AM, said:

Not really, it depends on who the 50% are .Given that the 50% who say they are NOT in a good place tend to be the top tier players, where LRMs are almost never used, that implies that they are in a terrible place right now and very sub-par.

The problem is that they are very effective against bad players, so new players struggle against them a lot, so any buff which makes them competitive will turn them into horrible beasts in the lower tiers.

As such, this means that whatever buffs LRMs receive should be in ways that don't make them better against the lower tiers. Generally, this means keeping their indirect performance where it is now, and only improving there direct-fire effectiveness (at which point they're no more devastating than direct-fire weapons, after all).

That said, a post earlier mentioned that this thread popped up because there was a hint that PGI was trying to fix LRMs... where was this stated?

I agree with most of what you said except the part about them only being good against "bad" players. New player and "bad" players are not necessarily the same thing. One of the things (a big thing) that makes LRMs a joke at higher Tiers is Radar Deprivation. New players do not have access to that module because it takes a while to unlock the slot with GXP.

I have also seen a few Tier 1 and 2 players still complaining about LRMs being too prevalent.

Even though I almost never use them.....OK never, I am in the camp that thinks that LRMs need to be made more viable throughout the game. I would even be in favor of removing Radar Derp from the game to make that happen. It seems a bit of any abomination to me. How does a Pilot's skill have anything to do with falling off the radar instantly when LOS is broken? Who is the pilot? Harry Potter?

[Cold Darkness]

Krivvan, on 21 March 2016 - 08:59 AM, said:

The disadvantages of needing to hold a reticule on an enemy exist for both lasers and lrma. But for lasers you need tI hold it on one small component. For lrms you need to hold it on a giant box. It's magnitudes easier to aim with lrms.

The exact same positioning skills are required for any long range build. LRMs aren't special in that regard except you have to do the difficult task of seeing if your reticule turns red or not when you shoot...


The number drops as you get higher in tier. Tier 3 is the first big change and after that the prevalence of lrm boats gradually drops.

lasers have a burntime far below 2 seconds in the WORST case and burntimes that prohibit any reaction to them (due to ping & reaction time) in a few higly quirked cases. outside of that, your target is irrelevant, which allows things like damage spreading by twisting. you do have similar options with lrms, too. it is just a lot harder to do so, because if you **** up the timing while locking, or before the impact, you will straight out miss. this not only delays the initial twisting, it also forces you twist back in early enough to actually relock your target.
but sure, lasers are super hard to use. being hitscan weaponry, and aiming being one of the easiest tasks anyways.

second point:
lrms are NOT long range weapons. and your positioning, even when using them for long range combat, will be DRASTICALLY different from a direct fire long range build (and mid- to shortrange positioning would be a few steps up from long range builds anyways). reasons being: direct fire has more effective range and more obviously, you will miss every single shot if you play like a direct fire build, because you are playing into the enemy units cover options.

on a more serious note: if you are arguing about how easy to use lrms are, i would like you to think about the arguments you use to reinforce your statement. like heat. that would be about the only reasonable disadvantage of lasers compared to lrms next to lrm indirect and artillery fire capabilitys.

on a side note: i assume that many of the people arguing that "lrms are easymode" are people that think of a slow, high tubed combatant in the backline. considering that mindset, the reasoning is much more logical, but still far of from reality. which is why wrote "hard to effectively use".

[Yankee77]

Rampage, on 21 March 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

I agree with most of what you said except the part about them only being good against "bad" players. New player and "bad" players are not necessarily the same thing. One of the things (a big thing) that makes LRMs a joke at higher Tiers is Radar Deprivation. New players do not have access to that module because it takes a while to unlock the slot with GXP.

I have also seen a few Tier 1 and 2 players still complaining about LRMs being too prevalent.

Even though I almost never use them.....OK never, I am in the camp that thinks that LRMs need to be made more viable throughout the game. I would even be in favor of removing Radar Derp from the game to make that happen. It seems a bit of any abomination to me. How does a Pilot's skill have anything to do with falling off the radar instantly when LOS is broken? Who is the pilot? Harry Potter?

I dunno about that, Radar Dep is a big deal, yes, but somewhat countered by Advanced Sensor Decay (it brings it back to the 2 second baseline), which all LRM users should have.

No, the actual reason why LRMs are better against less skilled players, is that by and large the onus is on the target to defend properly against LRMs.

This is much the same way as skilled players learn to defend against lasers by torso twisting: less skilled players rarely roll their torso between salvos, and so tend to die much faster than top tier players.

In the case of LRMs, there are many things skilled players do to counter LRMs, all of which focus on preventing indirect fire:

1- Avoid keeping LOS on LRMs.
2- Stay close to cover, and never maneuver in the open.
3- Recognize which cover provide proper protection from LRMs.
4- React properly to incoming LRMs.
5- Stick with the ECM or AMS cover.

Skilled pilots can practically make LRMs impossible to use indirectly, through their experience and proper movements. That is a FAR greater advantage than Radar Deprivation. In fact, even back when Radar Dep did not exist LRMs were still sub-par against the better players.

And, of course, the converse is also true: those players who aren't experienced or skilled tend to leave themselves far too open to LRMs and die quickly when it starts raining. The fact of the matter is they have no one to blame but themselves... but that's a rather unpopular things to say, and it's hard for people to recognize their own failures. but in reality it's no different than if they decided to stand on top of a hill while someone nailed them constantly with Gauss rounds.

The same goes for those top tier players who complain about LRMs: they are so used to LRMs being rare at high tiers that when they DO get caught out in the open and massacred, they blame the game instead of themselves. Of course, those top-tier players are extremely rare... most good players who fall prey to indirect LRMs generally recognize that it's their fault, learn their lesson, and go back to using proper anti-LRM tactics.

That said, either way the fact remains that LRMs are the most complained about weapons, which is why the devs have to be careful about how they buff them. They can't simply make them more powerful, because then they'd be utterly devastating in the lower tiers and raise more cries of lurmageddon.

This leads me to believe that whatever buff is made to LRMs should be for direct-fire usage only. How this could be done is a bit of a challenge, but it's the best option. After all, complaining about direct-fired LRMs is silly, when you consider there are other direct-fire weapons out there that would work better anyway. But by giving LRMs a direct-fire buff, it would make them more useful even at the top tier, since player skill is mostly good at canceling indirect fire.

Basically, as it stands LRMs really depend on their indirect-fire capabilities to be a worthwhile weapon system. While they ARE pretty good in direct-fire mode (artemis and TAG really help a lot), it's true that under most circumstances that tonnage would be better used for lasers or ballistics. It's the indirect capability that makes it useful to have a few launchers in a drop.

But since good players are good at denying indirect-fired LRMs, and you really don't want to buff indirect-fired LRMs as they'd murder lesser-skilled players, what is needed to make them useful at the higher tiers is a direct-fire improvement. This way the reduced indirect-fire capabilities (Against good players) would be compensated for by added direct-fire lethality.

For example:

- When you have direct LOS, make LRMs fly significantly faster with a flatter trajectory, making them much more useful against those who poke in and out of cover, but also less prone to hit your target indirectly when they get behind cover (since they wouldn't be dropping in an arc that might get past cover).

- Maybe make a big distinction between dumb-fired LRMs, and LRMs with locks: when dumb-fired, LRMs could fly much (much) faster and in a much shallower arc than when guided. This would make LRMs significantly more useful in LRM-unfriendly terrain, brawls, and even peek-a-boo fights, without buffing their indirect fire modes.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[Yankee77]

Cold Darkness, on 21 March 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

lasers have a burntime far below 2 seconds in the WORST case and burntimes that prohibit any reaction to them (due to ping & reaction time) in a few higly quirked cases. outside of that, your target is irrelevant, which allows things like damage spreading by twisting. you do have similar options with lrms, too. it is just a lot harder to do so, because if you **** up the timing while locking, or before the impact, you will straight out miss. this not only delays the initial twisting, it also forces you twist back in early enough to actually relock your target.
but sure, lasers are super hard to use. being hitscan weaponry, and aiming being one of the easiest tasks anyways.

second point:
lrms are NOT long range weapons. and your positioning, even when using them for long range combat, will be DRASTICALLY different from a direct fire long range build (and mid- to shortrange positioning would be a few steps up from long range builds anyways). reasons being: direct fire has more effective range and more obviously, you will miss every single shot if you play like a direct fire build, because you are playing into the enemy units cover options.

on a more serious note: if you are arguing about how easy to use lrms are, i would like you to think about the arguments you use to reinforce your statement. like heat. that would be about the only reasonable disadvantage of lasers compared to lrms next to lrm indirect and artillery fire capabilitys.

on a side note: i assume that many of the people arguing that "lrms are easymode" are people that think of a slow, high tubed combatant in the backline. considering that mindset, the reasoning is much more logical, but still far of from reality. which is why wrote "hard to effectively use".

Well said. LRMs are easy to use if you just sit back and lob, but they will hardly be effective.

Getting to use LRMs effectively in a high-skill environment is a lot harder, to the point where most people don't bother as it's easier to use lasers or even ballistics.

Generally speaking, against good players I find that LRMs are best as medium-to-close range weapons used to directly support the brawling line: you stick 100m or less behind your brawler line and use LRMs with Artemis+TAG. Indirect-fire is only used as the occasional potshot (that is likely to miss), or to support a brawl in progress while you move to get in position for direct fire.

[Krivvan]

Rampage, on 21 March 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

I agree with most of what you said except the part about them only being good against "bad" players. New player and "bad" players are not necessarily the same thing. One of the things (a big thing) that makes LRMs a joke at higher Tiers is Radar Deprivation. New players do not have access to that module because it takes a while to unlock the slot with GXP.

It's not as if it's just Radar Dep that immediately makes LRMs bad. I rarely if ever bother to add on modules when playing pug and CW matches, and LRMs still don't give much trouble when I do see them.

[Cy Mitchell]

Krivvan, on 21 March 2016 - 12:03 PM, said:

It's not as if it's just Radar Dep that immediately makes LRMs bad. I rarely if ever bother to add on modules when playing pug and CW matches, and LRMs still don't give much trouble when I do see them.

I never implied that Radar Derp was the only thing that makes LRM less of a problem. I said that new players do not have access to Radar Derp which is a very effective tool in combating LRMs. Obviously skill plays a major role in that too. There is no denying that. However, the Radar Derp module makes the task so much easier and will make the player look more skilled than he really is because he will have to avoid the incoming LRMs for a significantly shorter time than new player that does not have access to it.

I would guess that another reason you do not bother with the Module is because LRMs are much more rare and you do not face them often enough to feel the need to carry it at Tier 1-3 where you are PUGing. The reason why they are so rare there? Radar Derp is available to everyone and bringing LRMs is not socially acceptable at the higher Tier where meta rules.

Edited by Rampage, 21 March 2016 - 12:18 PM.

[Krivvan]

Rampage, on 21 March 2016 - 12:17 PM, said:

I would guess that another reason you do not bother with the Module is because LRMs are much more rare and you do not face them often enough to feel the need to carry it at Tier 1-3 where you are PUGing. The reason why they are so rare there? Radar Derp is available to everyone and bringing LRMs is not socially acceptable at the higher Tier where meta rules.

I don't bring it to CW either, and LRMs are definitely common there.

[Deathlike]

Krivvan, on 21 March 2016 - 12:03 PM, said:

It's not as if it's just Radar Dep that immediately makes LRMs bad. I rarely if ever bother to add on modules when playing pug and CW matches, and LRMs still don't give much trouble when I do see them.

Seismic still the best goto module ever!

[Roadkill]

Rampage, on 21 March 2016 - 09:34 AM, said:

One of the things (a big thing) that makes LRMs a joke at higher Tiers is Radar Deprivation. New players do not have access to that module because it takes a while to unlock the slot with GXP.

High level players don't use Radar Derp because they don't need it. They know how to negate missiles without needing any assistance.

I don't use Radar Derp. I rarely get hit by missiles at all, let alone killed by them. And on those very rare occasions that I do get killed my missiles, it's inevitably because I tried something risky and it didn't work. Or I was just stupid.

Radar Derp is a crutch. Learn to live without it and you will no longer be a target for the Noob Tube.

[LastKhan]

Have LRMs gone too far? nope but can always be worse #Lurmaggedonsurvivor

[Rocket2Uranus]

LRMS was worse... but its still bad.

[Thrudvangar]

What ya all doing in a match where youre on the "IS" side, so to speak, having almost no or even 0 ecm mechs on your side PLUS playing a map where "cover" isn't really covering you from lrms? If an unseen light (or more) are spotting you from behind or attacking you and the have a permalock on you, you're simply ******.

Tourmaline Desert, Alpine, ... almost every map has spawn points where one of the team is ****** up if they start in the wrong spot and getting spot-locked by (a) light(s)... while the other team is the lucky one, reaching this spot on the map wich provides enough cover to fire at the enemy and hide back into cover.

Also, and thats what i personally hate the most: fighting against one of these over the top ACH a...hole mechs, he permanently locks you, you have to twist and maneuvering alot just to not die within two or three of his abnormal alphas... and now the rain falls down on you. You simply can't back up trying to find a hill/building wich is high enough to protect you while this little scum is ripping your *** apart. Beside that, if you think you're in good cover, a hill or (should be) high enough buildings, the rain hits you anyway.

Thats the game feeling I have had in the past two weaks. And thats why i think LRMs passive locking and shooting without LOS to the enemy should get fixed.

My oppinion.

[Lyoto Machida]

The Lobsters, on 19 March 2016 - 08:37 PM, said:

Tag and Artemis is much better than the tag and narc that a good spotter can provide, and that's if the spotter, which is usually a light can get his tag on, AND the lrm mech does not have artemis which cancels the narc even without LOS, which is needed for artemis to work anyway.

Not to mention the actual skill elements of knowing when to shoot, making sure the missiles hit, reading the situation and the terrain and keeping LOS while taking/dodging incoming fire.

Ultimately, actively getting LOS with your own tag is the more effective option. Artemis gives a better spread bonus that narc too.

On my dedicated lrm boats I'll have maximum 6.5 tons of ammo and I do more for the team that any "I HAZ LURMS, PLS LOCKS FOR MEES PLS FOR MY 40,000000 MISSILES PLS" routine.

6.5 tons only? What's that good for? 400-500 worth of spread LRM damage?

[Damia Savon]

Roadkill, on 21 March 2016 - 12:46 PM, said:

High level players don't use Radar Derp because they don't need it. They know how to negate missiles without needing any assistance.

I don't use Radar Derp. I rarely get hit by missiles at all, let alone killed by them. And on those very rare occasions that I do get killed my missiles, it's inevitably because I tried something risky and it didn't work. Or I was just stupid.

Radar Derp is a crutch. Learn to live without it and you will no longer be a target for the Noob Tube.

Radar Dep works for all target locks so it is useful even if no one is using LRMS.

[Pjwned]

Thrudvangar, on 21 March 2016 - 01:19 PM, said:

What ya all doing in a match where youre on the "IS" side, so to speak, having almost no or even 0 ecm mechs on your side PLUS playing a map where "cover" isn't really covering you from lrms? If an unseen light (or more) are spotting you from behind or attacking you and the have a permalock on you, you're simply ******.

Tourmaline Desert, Alpine, ... almost every map has spawn points where one of the team is ****** up if they start in the wrong spot and getting spot-locked by (a) light(s)... while the other team is the lucky one, reaching this spot on the map wich provides enough cover to fire at the enemy and hide back into cover.

Also, and thats what i personally hate the most: fighting against one of these over the top ACH a...hole mechs, he permanently locks you, you have to twist and maneuvering alot just to not die within two or three of his abnormal alphas... and now the rain falls down on you. You simply can't back up trying to find a hill/building wich is high enough to protect you while this little scum is ripping your *** apart. Beside that, if you think you're in good cover, a hill or (should be) high enough buildings, the rain hits you anyway.

Thats the game feeling I have had in the past two weaks. And thats why i think LRMs passive locking and shooting without LOS to the enemy should get fixed.

My oppinion.

Get better cover and don't wander away from your team so far that they can't help you deal with a pesky light.

Edited by Pjwned, 21 March 2016 - 03:38 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Nope they're still trash.

[General Solo]

Damia Savon, on 21 March 2016 - 06:39 AM, said:

What I said was not that you posted anything untrue or wrong, just that it was absurd.

I don't feel attacked,
just a bit confused by your statement.

[Spartan 04]

No, I don't find them out of balance (since the OP asked). I'd imagine with the release of the Archer mech, there's just a larger amount of them running around because they're fresh and popular, leading to a perception bias. I imagine the same thing would occur with a release of a new ballistically-inclined mech - suddenly, a player would perceive a lot more hits to be bullet-based and wonder what the deal is.

Don't get me wrong, I too get frustrated by the occasional constant rain of impacts, but in the same way getting hit by chainfiring autocannons is annoying. Lasers I don't notice as much, but really, I'm likely taking on as much, or more, damage but it doesn't have the same visual/audio cues so it doesn't seem like as much. I also don't see a lot of AMS on fellow 'mechs (I assume they are generally unpopular), but if everyone mounted one like a comprehensive defense strategy calls for, then sustained missile fire would be less effective. (It also makes playing a KitFox with 3x AMS a lot of fun - two of us shut down a missile-heavy triplet of Archer mechs long enough for our mediums to close and destroy.)

In my opinion, missiles (and rockets, if you use SRM's) are an important part any battlefield combat game, for immersion as much as gameplay mechanics, as is indirect fire. I do personally find AMS a liiiiitttllle underpowered, but I am biased as I do not generally use missile launchers so I don't have experience to the contrary. Only the bulk aggregate stats would know for sure, and the mere act of dying in a frustrating manner does not imply that the means to a player's end is overpowered. (Or failing to kill means it's underpowered.)

[Wolfways]

Krivvan, on 20 March 2016 - 10:29 PM, said:

LRM usage is a one button push too. It just doesn't require them to aim first.

Have you used LRM's? They require you to aim for longer (while getting the lock) than direct fire weapons do. If your reticle moves away from the center while getting lock you start to lose lock.

Quote

Don't mistake "hardest to use" with "least effective."

LRM's are by far the hardest weapon to use effectively in the game (subject to targets piloting ability and use of counters).

Noesis, on 20 March 2016 - 10:02 PM, said:

A weapon system killing things ...... fancy that.

ATM it's less of a weapon system and more of a notice system designed to tell the enemy that you can see them

[QuantumButler]

TBH LRMs are trash weapons because they spread damage all over the target and take 5x-10x as long to kill the target as just shooting it with lasers, goose, acs, or srms.

I have been hit and killed by like 6+ mechs worth of lrms when I got NARC'd on Polar Highlands with literally no cover, all missles hitting me, and it still took a good 20-30 seconds for me to die, in comparison I'd have died in about 3 seconds flat if I got focused by 2 or 3 robots with anything else other than joke guns like the flamer and megagun. [the lrm team then got rolled over because the rest of my team had real weapons and used those 20 seconds to bumrush the enemy]

This is why lrms are trash and why people hate you for bringing them on your own team.

If they were lighter, they could be good harassment weapons, because getting hit by a billion of them does make the one pilot really salty, but they eat up all the tonnage so you have to dedicate your mech to a mediocre weapon system.
.

Edited by QuantumButler, 21 March 2016 - 04:53 PM.