75 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

cazidin, on 01 April 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

That's reasonable. Would the time be multiplicative or additive? That is to say, would it take 16 hours for 2 weapon stat changes or just 8+?

I don't think that 2 weapon changes would take up such an extreme amount of extra time compared to just 1 weapon. The vast majority of the time eaten up comes from non-XML changes, or so I remember (barely).

Even with these huge numbers we're throwing around, there still isn't much excuse for not buffing MGs or w/e.

Also keep in mind that my memory is hazy, it could have been either 8 hours or "just" 4 hours. I don't remember which, I just remember that it was one of those two.

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2016 - 07:21 PM.

[cazidin]

FupDup, on 01 April 2016 - 07:20 PM, said:

I don't think that 2 weapon changes would take up such an extreme amount of extra time compared to just 1 weapon. The vast majority of the time eaten up comes from non-XML changes, or so I remember (barely).

Even with these huge numbers we're throwing around, there still isn't much excuse for not buffing MGs or w/e.

Well, assuming that it's 8 hours for 1 stat, and plus 2 hours for every stat after that... yeah, there's still very little excuse and that's the most generous time table available. It'd be a few days work for a single programmer.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 01 April 2016 - 07:15 PM, said:

I don't remember it word for word, but it wasn't because of the XML line change. It had something to do with getting it to the live servers, testing, maintenance downtimes, stuff like that.

cazidin, on 01 April 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

That's reasonable. Would the time be multiplicative or additive? That is to say, would it take 16 hours for 2 weapon stat changes or just 8+?

The time would be to implement the changes, which would be compiling, uploading, testing (maybe?).

Changing them takes a few seconds. So, 50 (.XML changes) or 2 would take roughly the same time, just a few minutes more...theoretically.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

Tristan Winter, on 01 April 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

Well, let me know when I can put PPCs on my un-quirked mechs and see my projectiles hit their target before the match is over.

Can't make weapons decent on non-quirked mechs.... b/c then quirked mechs are OP, and no one uses them on the non quirked mechs anyway.

Didn't you learn anything from last year?

[Wintersdark]

Mcgral18, on 01 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

Something is better than months of nothing.
Maybe it will even be iterative! (lolno?)

I'm going with "Something is better than months of nothing"

Come on guys, with PGI's history your options are:

1) Do nothing whatsoever, and either ignore there's a problem or say "we'll get to it in a couple months", THEN ignore the problem.
2) Make a minor adjustment that improves something, though probably not enough
or
3) Make a major adjustment that makes that thing great but breaks the game in all sorts of other ways.

I'll be happy with 2. Eventually, 2 gets us to a good place without breaking all the things. Eventually.

[Chrome Magnus]

Pjwned, on 01 April 2016 - 06:37 PM, said:

PPC heat: If it needs to be less hot so that people actually use it then fine, but other changes would be better.

PPC velocity: It really shouldn't be any faster than it is right now, why does it need to be faster than 1100 m/s other than whining from bads?

(C-)ER PPC heat: Same thing as PPCs, if it needs to be less hot so that people actually use it then fine, but other changes (particularly a C-LPL range nerf) would be better.

(C-)ER PPC velocity: Still not nearly fast enough, the ER PPC needs to be significantly faster both so that it can fly fast enough to use its high optimal range and so that it's more distinct from PPCs; ~1750 m/s for ER PPCs would be good

PPCs also need to have their minimum range profile reverted back to the way it was a while ago, so that a PPC shot doesn't do 0 damage at 89m.

Overall PPCs are still not where they should be, and regular PPCs get a needless velocity buff because PGI are too lazy to make changes that make sense.

So a small PPC speed buff is just because of "whining from bads". But calling for a nearly 50% speed increase to ERPPC's so they "fly fast enough to use" isn't?

I welcome the small change but do feel that the ERPPC should have gotten a slightly better bump. Say 150-175.

Edited by Chrome Magnus, 01 April 2016 - 08:22 PM.

[Barantor]

Better than nothing and does this prove they read the forums or did someone twitter bomb the PGI guys about this?

[Clownwarlord]

Yeah ... mediocre is right. This will be minimal to give other options from the current laser meta, even though we recently have seen ERPPC and Gauss in comp play this will just be meh over all.

At least it isn't going backwards.

Edited by clownwarlord, 01 April 2016 - 09:19 PM.

[Pjwned]

Chrome Magnus, on 01 April 2016 - 08:21 PM, said:

So a small PPC speed buff is just because of "whining from bads". But calling for a nearly 50% speed increase to ERPPC's so they "fly fast enough to use" isn't?

Because PPCs already fly fast enough for the range (and heat, as in lower than the ER PPC) they have right now.

Can you tell me that ER PPCs have enough velocity to make use of their high optimal range in exchange for greatly increased heat? If the answer is no, then there you go.

[Homeskilit]

I have mixed feelings on this.

On the one hand I will take any buff because it is a step in the right direction.

On the other hand the buffs seem pitiful, they could have gone 1 and 2 instead of .5 and 1.

Any buff to PPCs has to be balanced by a nerf to PPC quirked mechs, which they seem reluctant to do, and with the June update and subsequent quirk pass after that we may not see any more changes until then.

[Chrome Magnus]

Pjwned, on 01 April 2016 - 09:25 PM, said:

Because PPCs already fly fast enough for the range (and heat, as in lower than the ER PPC) they have right now.

Can you tell me that ER PPCs have enough velocity to make use of their high optimal range in exchange for greatly increased heat? If the answer is no, then there you go.

If firing at their high optimal range then generally yes as the opponent will be ducking in and out of cover (unless they suck) and your shots fired will be more greatly spaced. The increased heat also gives the benefit of the weapons being usable when the enemy decides to snuggle. So at ~1350-1400ish then yes I'd say it's a good speed. Esp considering most shots wouldn't be at near max range.

Of course I'd rather see something like PPC's do half damage below 90m but that's another story.

[DjPush]

Tristan Winter, on 01 April 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

I think it says a lot about the PPC and ERPPC that the only mechs using it are the ones who are quirked for it.

People are like "hey bro, PPCs are fine, I use them on my AWS-9M all the time"

Well, let me know when I can put PPCs on my un-quirked mechs and see my projectiles hit their target before the match is over.

Same could be said about every weapon with a quirk on any mech.

[Ted Wayz]

They will still run too hot.

Velocity helps but what about cooldown rate?

Still just meh. This will in no way entice people to mount them on mechs that do not have PPC specific quirks. Even with PPC quirks the large pulse is usually superior in most cases.

[Aeon Veritas]

Barantor, on 01 April 2016 - 09:15 PM, said:

Better than nothing and does this prove they read the forums or did someone twitter bomb the PGI guys about this?

Unfortunately it was on twitter some time ago...

JagdFlanker, on 07 March 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

I'm very sorry to squish your hopes that there is any chance they read the forum

[Pjwned]

Chrome Magnus, on 01 April 2016 - 10:22 PM, said:

If firing at their high optimal range then generally yes as the opponent will be ducking in and out of cover (unless they suck) and your shots fired will be more greatly spaced.

It's not entirely clear how that answers my question, because it seems like what you're saying indicates ER PPCs being too slow, but you don't seem to agree with that.

Quote

The increased heat also gives the benefit of the weapons being usable when the enemy decides to snuggle.

True, that does amount to something, although of course the increased heat also makes it a rather hot weapon if you're forced to brawl with it.

Quote

So at ~1350-1400ish then yes I'd say it's a good speed. Esp considering most shots wouldn't be at near max range.

Okay, so if I'm understanding correctly then 1300 m/s velocity good enough for ER PPCs with 810m optimal range, so then why do PPCs need to be 1200 m/s with only 540m optimal range? Seems to me that would indicate 1 of them being too fast or the other being too slow, or possibly both cases are true which is what I think by increasing PPC velocity (when it doesn't need it) and not increasing ER PPC velocity enough.

Quote

Of course I'd rather see something like PPC's do half damage below 90m but that's another story.

PPCs used to have scaling damage within minimum range very similar to how C-LRMs work now, and that's how it should work.

I wouldn't say it's a different story either, we're talking about changes to PPCs and PGI keeps skirting around the proper fixes for whatever dumb nonsense reasons they have for not doing it correctly.

[Alardus]

Tristan Winter, on 01 April 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

I think it says a lot about the PPC and ERPPC that the only mechs using it are the ones who are quirked for it.

People are like "hey bro, PPCs are fine, I use them on my AWS-9M all the time"

Well, let me know when I can put PPCs on my un-quirked mechs and see my projectiles hit their target before the match is over.

I keep telling you all and you don't. *******. get it.

Quirks are PGI's way of enforcing "standard" loadouts to get BT gameplay out of bag-of-gun mechs. The hardpoints weren't limited enough. Their fault. However, instead of reducing hardpoints even more, which would be seen as punitive or draconian, they instead nerf the **** out of all weapons, and then add on quirks based on the chassis variant to make those weapons useful again.

See basically any AWS variant. PPC variants are +50% velocity and other crazy ****. LRM 15 variants have LRM boots, etc, etc.

This is the second hand approach to getting people to run "canon-like" mechs. The first hand approach was flawed hardpoints.

Now maybe you understand why atlases will always be laser/ac/missile boats, no matter what, while the 8Q and the 9M will always be PPC/ERPPC spammers.

I have a love/hate relationship with this design. On the one hand, they should've severely limited HPs in the first place, so that you wouldn't have room to take a bunch of small weight weapons on an awesome, and instead would desire greatly to load stock PPCs, etc. On ther other hand, they've granted PPC wielding bots such as vindi, griffin, awesome, panther, etc, the ability to use their originating weapons better than another other mech, 'soft' handedly pushing people to use these mechs in their original BT design.

mechs shouldn't be bags of guns. Gameplay and diversity are good things. However there are bags of guns running around still which kind of ruin this paradigm.

Edited by Alardus, 01 April 2016 - 11:15 PM.

[Vossiewulf]

Mcgral18, on 01 April 2016 - 07:23 PM, said:

The time would be to implement the changes, which would be compiling, uploading, testing (maybe?).

Changing them takes a few seconds. So, 50 (.XML changes) or 2 would take roughly the same time, just a few minutes more...theoretically.

This isn't the early '90s when a couple dudes could stuff some cheap servers in a closet and make changes on the fly whenever they wanted to. Anything this big is a complex web application with an enormous number of processes and checkpoints and smoke testing and regression suites all having to happen in the correct order with the desired results achieved. That's why just about everybody has a fully independent Release Management group whose job is to define, document, and manage releases and it's generally a nightmare of logistics.

But in this case he was talking of the whole process - create a story, define reqs, design, design review, testing review and plan creation, implementation, testing in dev>stage>CAS/Sandbox>production, with a code release and testing/certification at each stage of the process. If they're full Agile, each time they publish a release to production a new one is being pushed to dev, the process is continuous.

My group is responsible for the uptime/functionality of a large payments application and release planning and TOIs and new monitors and alerts for each new release and training the operations people in managing new features/systems/components... it's a little complicated.

Anyway, 8 hours total time for a minor fix to a single xml file that will need basic user certification plus all the combat/weapon automated regressions run sounds perfectly reasonable.

[Tristan Winter]

Alardus, on 01 April 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

I keep telling you all and you don't. *******. get it.
Quirks are PGI's way of enforcing "standard" loadouts to get BT gameplay out of bag-of-gun mechs. The hardpoints weren't limited enough. Their fault. However, instead of reducing hardpoints even more, which would be seen as punitive or draconian, they instead nerf the **** out of all weapons, and then add on quirks based on the chassis variant to make those weapons useful again.

Now maybe you understand why atlases will always be laser/ac/missile boats, no matter what, while the 8Q and the 9M will always be PPC/ERPPC spammers.

Uhm...

• Small lasers
  
• SPLs
  
• Medium lasers
  
• MPLs
  
• Large lasers
  
• LPLs
  
• AC2s
  
• AC5s
  
• AC10s
  
• AC20s
  
• LB10Xs
  
• Gauss rifles
  
• LRM5s
  
• LRM10s
  
• LRM15s
  
• SRM2s
  
• SRM4s
  
• SRM6s
  
• SSRM2s
  
• MGs
  
• Flamers

There's a list of weapons that are commonly seen on mechs without weapon-specific quirks (or any weapon type quirks at all, even). Here's a list of weapons that are usually only seen on mechs with relevant weapon quirks.

• PPCs
  
• ER PPCs
  
• LRM20s (I guess?)

So yeah. This kind of goes against your argument. It's not even like PGI is splitting energy weapons up into "laser weapons" and "PPC weapons" as two different groups to support your claim. If a mech only has 'energy' quirks, then people will only use lasers, as a rule of thumb. This is indicative of how bad unquirked PPCs are.

Edited by Tristan Winter, 02 April 2016 - 12:57 AM.

[invernomuto]

Vossiewulf, on 02 April 2016 - 12:46 AM, said:

Anyway, 8 hours total time for a minor fix to a single xml file that will need basic user certification plus all the combat/weapon automated regressions run sounds perfectly reasonable.

Agreed. However what it really worries me is that the changes seems to be guided by the whining of the community and not by a structured "balancing" process. I mean, you could adjust the PPCs, but you need to evaluate this modification after a month or so to see if the balance is reached.

[theta123]