141 replies to this topic

[Revis Volek]

El Bandito, on 27 April 2016 - 09:26 AM, said:

Fun and effective are two different things.

Are they?

I do both on a nightly basis here, guess to each his own.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Revis Volek, on 27 April 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

Are they?

I do both on a nightly basis here, guess to each his own.

Yeah, many of us can do fine in "non-meta builds" but this thread is based on a request to curtail long-range weapon effectiveness in order to force people into brawling loadouts since they are not good enough to hold their own against people who mount what they want to mount.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Prosperity Park, on 27 April 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

this thread is based on a request to curtail long-range weapon effectiveness

That will never really happen unless you nerf long range to useless status because of the way that solo queue works (and was the case even in MW4 opens). That said, making mid-range work is not that hard in solo queue, it's only short and brawling that has a bit of trouble and I'd rather that not change just because the meta in group and coordinated play would be only brawling.

[El Bandito]

Revis Volek, on 27 April 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

Are they?

I do both on a nightly basis here, guess to each his own.

Of course they are. I find the cacophony of 6xAC2s a music to my ear on my Mauler, but I sure as hell will not use that loadout in serious matches where mistakes are not tolerated.

[Tatula]

Well. We have a voting system for maps and game modes. How about a voting system for tiers? Very simple up, down, or equal vote for the tier you want to play in. Tier 1 can only vote down or equal. Tier 5 can only vote up and equal. Tier 2, 3, or 4 can vote up (if I feel like having a challenging game), equal (this is what I would normally get without the voting system), or down (this is when I feel like derping around in a non-meta build).

Yeah. People will say we don't need to add more complications to the game. Or PGI will just screw it up more. Etc. But hey! I'm proposing a possible solution to OP's problem.

[STEF_]

El Bandito, on 27 April 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

Of course they are. I find the cacophony of 6xAC2s a music to my ear on my Mauler, but I sure as hell will not use that loadout in serious matches where mistakes are not tolerated.

(nothing to do with the OP but....)

I'm still waiting for AC2 modules.....

[DAYLEET]

Jazzbandit1313, on 26 April 2016 - 09:15 PM, said:

, I've been playing regularly. At least 3 matches per day.

There's your problem, you dont play nearly enough, it's a xp bar remember and you are grinding xp, if don't matter how good you do if you only play 30minutes a day, totalling 3 match a day.

When Tier was implemented i was fresh T2, almost no visible bar, im 1/3 of the way to T1 with big breaks in there(months). For example since Polar was implemented i played 5 night at best. Ive not improved myself in anyways, im still getting new mech when i feel like it. To be short, my stats have not improved, in fact they lowered. When Tiering was implemented, my kd dropped from 1.36 to 1.1 and my win ratio stayed rougly the same. Yet i move on, inexorably toward T1 because when i play, i play a lot of hours. If i had not stopped playing, at the rate i play id be T1 now or very close, would i be better though?

[LowSubmarino]

Ppl that like to play competitively are either in very organized groups that actually move in formation and know how to take advantage of various builds or - when playing alone - use builds that allow you to minimize facetime while maximizing dmg. They know how to trade really well.

And that gets infinitely harder the closer you have to get into somebody's face. Real brawler builds are absolute specialist builds that wont allow you to be effective in a lot of scenarios. Most early to midgame encounters with teams that down scatter too much and dont play too bad will occur at medium to long distances.

I dont even know why so many ppl complain about peekaboo gameplay. I love exchaning shots with different mid - long range builds. I love trading and I love trading better than my opponents. Forcing heavies and assaults to retreat or reposition as I pepper them with my little hunchbacks double ppcs again and then again and then overagain.

And then - piff paff - I made a mistake, was so focused on trading well, was so proud to trade without getting much dmd, that I forgot to check on my teams position. Im isolated, and suddnely a yenlowang or an atlas or 2 lights swarm me and force me into a brawl and I die pretty quickly.

All of that is pretty cool and exciting.

If the gameplay wasnt fun I wouldnt have played this game so much. I love sniping and destroying mechs from a distance above all else. Many ppl make it out to be dull and just peek, alpha, vanish and repeat. When in truth being a good sniper that wins trades a lot is an art and much more demanding than any brawl could ever be.

Brawling is pathetically easy by comparison.

The best players I have seen are mobile med to long range snipers that are excellent traders. They win the trades. You barely see them. They use builds that allow them to reduce face time and they know the terrain very well. That playstyle is very demanding. You not only need to focus on micromanagment (your positioning, how much you expose your mech, what kind of mech and build you are trying to trade with) but also the overall movement on the map. Where your team is, how fat away you are from next cover and where the next good sniper position is.

Against decent players you cannot just peekaboo, alpha and repeat that all the time. Try it three times in a row from the same position and they will expect it and alpha your mobile/fragile sniper right when you wanne popp up again. You need to reposition constantly. And lights and skirmishers are your bane.

If all that isnt exciting and great for you than I dont know what is.

As if running into a brawl and blindly shooting enemys at point blanc range all the time is so much more satisfying. I love hearing and seeing gauss shells explode right next to me in the hill where my head was moments before, missiles flying over my head, ppcs streaming past me, lasers washing over my mech as I try to find a better spot.

Its definitely not just peek and alpha.

Whoever says that has no idea about the sniper business hehe.

[demoyn]

Jazzbandit1313, on 26 April 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:

Lrms, when used properly, are just as effective as gauss or lasers, at least in my experience.

No.

Jazzbandit1313, on 26 April 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:

Also I think it's quite unfair to judge my skill based on what weapons I think are good or not, no?

No.

Edited by demoyn, 27 April 2016 - 10:44 AM.

[Idealsuspect]

Khobai, on 26 April 2016 - 08:50 PM, said:

the whole tier system idea was stupid anyway.

if you pick 24 random players to be in a game, statistically youre going to get players of all skill levels on both teams, and over time thats going to average out anyway.

So there was never any need whatsoever to have a tier system.

What they absolutely did need to balance was tonnage/weight classes and the matchmaker doesnt do that....

Yea i am saying this since ELO ...

Specially when you realise that pgi's people who implement MM, ELO or PSR, don't even know how play or balance this game ...
How they could build a system better than total random or chaos ( chaos is building universe right now should PGI staff do better ? not really ... if you don't agree with chaos building universe just type entropy in google search )

[Escef]

Prosperity Park, on 27 April 2016 - 08:53 AM, said:

Shortening the range of all weapons and forcing this to be a brawler's game would take away a huge amount of immersion for me, as you are forcing us all to play like idiot soldiers.

What, you mean MPs?

[Jazzbandit1313]

Does anyone have a link to the new heat scale/energy system coming into play soon? I haven't been able to find it. It may be useful in nerfing the long range peekaboo meta builds...

[Bilbo]

Jazzbandit1313, on 27 April 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

Does anyone have a link to the new heat scale/energy system coming into play soon? I haven't been able to find it. It may be useful in nerfing the long range peekaboo meta builds...

Nothing to link to. Russ mentioned it in a town hall but there have never been any real details released on it.

[Revis Volek]

Prosperity Park, on 27 April 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

Yeah, many of us can do fine in "non-meta builds" but this thread is based on a request to curtail long-range weapon effectiveness in order to force people into brawling loadouts since they are not good enough to hold their own against people who mount what they want to mount.

Could have sworn the title was about tiers, but i guess that means weapon balance?

El Bandito, on 27 April 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

Of course they are. I find the cacophony of 6xAC2s a music to my ear on my Mauler, but I sure as hell will not use that loadout in serious matches where mistakes are not tolerated.

So you settle on 5 ac5's or 2 UAC5's and 3 AC5's and now you have the best of both world....

Edited by Revis Volek, 27 April 2016 - 02:05 PM.

[wanderer]

I'm staring T2 in the face now.

I expect very little to be different. Given I don't play every night and there's plenty who do, it's just another tier into which players march into given X amount of games played.

PSR is just a slightly slower introduction of total newbies into the shark tank of T3. It has nearly nothing to do with skill and everything to do with time played, and lacks any sorting ability whatsoever. Given a year or so, we'll see the same horrible players with garbage builds and a T1 tag....because there is nothing that really pushes a player down in tiers because they are, frankly, bad at robots. It is the same requirements to gain or not lose rank at T5 as it is in T1, or even the amount of bar lost for a bad game is unchanging. Once you're T3+, you're in the same player mix really, regardless of actual tier.

Until you need higher match scores at higher tiers to gain/stay in place/avoid losing and lower match scores push you further down at higher tiers, it really isn't much of a sorting system.

[Felicitatem Parco]

The only difference between tier 3 and Tier 2 is that Tier 2 lacks the new Tier 5 players.

You are only playing with/against people who are not brand-new to the game. My Tier 2 experience has been no different from my Tier 3 experiences, other than the reduction in players who don't understand the various game mechanics.

Tier 3 players are already playing against Tier 1 players. The jump to Tier 2 really doesn't change much.

[bLeeat]

Jazzbandit1313, on 26 April 2016 - 08:42 PM, said:

The tier system was implemented quite some time ago if I remember correctly. I haven't moved up by a decent amount at all, maybe a few pixels or so. However, my statistics have only been improving, things like K/D, W/L.

Something else to note, and I think anyone in low-mid tier two will agree, is that the builds being run and the play-style being used is utter meta crap and it pisses the living hell out of me.

In 13/15 of my matches tonight, I had at least 30-40% or more of my armor stripped off from 600M out or further. Yes, you could use the argument that I'm a dumb player who doesn't know how to use cover. But no, not valid. Anyone that's played a game with me or watch me play knows that I know better than to peek a stalker with 6ERLL at 800M or something like that.

Three things that are problematic in my eyes:

The more competitive the games get due to the tier system, the more meta people will be loading their mechs with (I.E. gauss, erll, erppc, lpl, lrm) and the more saturated the tier will become with meta vomit builds that rely on perks that amplify damage at extreme ranges, while I'm sitting behind a rock with my SRM's and AC/20's, bored as the rock I'm standing behind.

Map design nowadays, such as Plexus, encourage peek and alpha gameplay that ruins the game for a lot of people. How do you think a new player feels, peeking out from a corner to fire at the enemy and getting 25% of his armor bursted off before he can even begin backing his mech up?

The obvious part here is the standard "Super low TTK and Convergence make this game crap", to which I would agree to some extent, sadly. low TTK, as a result of various balancing 'fixes' and the absolutely broken convergence mechanic only encourage people to run these bursty, peekaboo builds that are killing brawling as a style of play. This wouldn't be so bad if PGI gave some buffs to the brawlers and the ways in which they cover from the rain or vomit, but we haven't seen a significant boost to brawler's power since Ilya Muromets, in my opinion.

Do I think the game sucks? No. I love MWO and I've been playing for over three years now, and I won't stop anytime soon. I do however feel as though some changes need to be made to the long range/peekaboo/alpha-only style of gameplay that is, at least in tier two, ruining the game for me and many others from what I've witnessed.

Hell, even if you don't re-balance anything PGI, at least give me the god damn option to lower my tier.

I would gladly manually lower myself to tier 3 or 4 to experience more brawls and balanced, mixed-loadout gameplay, because that's what made me fall in love with this game.



Thoughts?



******************************* Adding this to make my point more clear:


And let's be clear, I really don't care about tier or rank in any video game for that matter. I am a Nova 4 in CSGO, which isn't a particularly high rank, but I don't pay attention to it because I have fun in the matches I'm placed in.

My point isn't "Wah Wah I wanna be tier 1 PGI change the game for me", it's "I'm having a kinda crappy experience and I think it has mostly to do with the tier system and the ways in which it brings out the most meta/frustrating parts of the game"

you are not alone. nothing has really changed in this game... a lot of old school players are quitting and getting bored because nothing has really changed... the meta...the game play.... the game is still pretty much the same thing from years ago. a lot of players just playing mwo out of nostalgia, the players who dont care about lore are sick of the meta and stale repetitive play. all these people who spend hundreds on mechs could easily demand some kind of change but they dont care because they arnt gamers,, they old doods getting off on nostalgia who cant really compete unless meta is easy mode. nothing is on the radar for real change.. u just gonna have to like it or dry up while they polish up cw ,could take another 100 years.

[Y E O N N E]

bLeeat, on 27 April 2016 - 03:06 PM, said:

you are not alone. nothing has really changed in this game... a lot of old school players are quitting and getting bored because nothing has really changed... the meta...the game play.... the game is still pretty much the same thing from years ago. a lot of players just playing mwo out of nostalgia, the players who dont care about lore are sick of the meta and stale repetitive play. all these people who spend hundreds on mechs could easily demand some kind of change but they dont care because they arnt gamers,, they old doods getting off on nostalgia who cant really compete unless meta is easy mode. nothing is on the radar for real change.. u just gonna have to like it or dry up while they polish up cw ,could take another 100 years.

Name one game where the game-play changes significantly as a normal progression of its life-cycle.

Also, the meta is always about maximizing damage out and minimizing damage in. How you achieve that in MWO has actually shifted around quite a bit. At one point it was massed small lasers on super-speed Hunchbacks. Then it was PPFLD pop-tarting. Then it was laser vomit. Now it's SRM brawl, but not so dominant that AC fire support and laser overwatch aren't still useful at the highest levels of play.

The game has improved a lot.

[bLeeat]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 April 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

Name one game where the game-play changes significantly as a normal progression of its life-cycle.

Also, the meta is always about maximizing damage out and minimizing damage in. How you achieve that in MWO has actually shifted around quite a bit. At one point it was massed small lasers on super-speed Hunchbacks. Then it was PPFLD pop-tarting. Then it was laser vomit. Now it's SRM brawl, but not so dominant that AC fire support and laser overwatch aren't still useful at the highest levels of play.

The game has improved a lot.

laser vomit is still meta like it always has been. hunchies with small lasers is now cheetah with small lasers... still laser vomit...pop tarting had a very short life time and now its just peekabooing with out the jj's. srm's have been buffed before. remember scat cats?

[Tarl Cabot]

Why is the laser vomit the way it is?

No real heavy/assault meds with lots of energy builds.
Ballistics had both 3x instead of 2x the range + veloctiy
The pop-tart with Gauss Rifle/ERppcs (highlander/victor) That is a laugh though on how they went about trying to cripple that, and end up ruining things for all other mechs.
No Clans with their ERLL/LPL/ERML and omnipods and no CW/FW and no real quirks.


And the later IS mechs that were energy builds such as the stalker brought us ghost heat. Why? No real fraking actual heatscale and when it was abused all PGI could think of was Ghost heat that went into effect after x-amount specific weapons are fired AND added the damage when going over the cap. Shortly later they improved the override mechanism to stay active permanently instead of for 10 secs or such (forgot the actual time).

And cooldown timer for the ERLL/LPL/ERPPC are too short - should be increased to be closer to current GR cooldown - all are a big power draw. That would be closer to the Solaris bg rules. (2.5sec turns - 5-7.5sec delay=cooldown)

Heat penalties with 2-3 thresholds that forces a mech to slowdown/lose agility - similar fashion as the current movement penalty the Clan mechs are hit with when they lose one side torso w/cXL.

Ghost Heat - Heavily modify it so it is micro-ghost heat. Firing more than one weapon generates small amount of excessive heat. The percentage could be different for each weapon.

Spoiler

It was in the original game and Solaris boardgames, as well as the MPBT versions of the game, as well as the original MW, which was also used as the combat engine for the 1st MPBT on GEnie. And yeap, it would apply to all mechs. I did not note how much of a percentage it should be there, and due to how PGI has full heatsinks ADD to the base heatscale, it should be done as a percentage. I do not see using a hard set number off based off the original heatscale would work. Currently the Clans are hit with a 20% movement penalty with a loss of a cXL side torso. That would be removed.

Example Set it at 33%/66% of the heatscale, with a 20%/40% penalty. 1st soft override at 80/85%, 2nd hard override at 100%/105%. Or 25/50/75% thresholds causing 10/20/30% slowdown, similar override thresholds already listed. This would also make more sense to newcomers of how the mech is affected by heat. Heat, as it increases, negative affects the reaction times of the myomer bundles that actually moves the mech.

Brawler? They would adjust. Those running hot builds such as multiple ERPPC will become sitting ducks when the fights get into brawling range. As for "sniping" firing all of those weapons would also mean their reverse speed has also slowed down. They will either have to accept it or change their builds to reduce the long range hit while equipping cooler, close range weapons.

Edit - just to add - This is also where Ghost Heat system would be re-evaluated and changed from the no-ghost > big hit to micro-Ghost Heat, dependent on the number of every weapons being fired. On top of that reining in the fast recycle/cooldown timers on the larger energy weapons, the LPL, ERLL, ERPPC. Those weapons, besides the heat itself that could damage the weapons, is also drawing lots of power off the engine.

If all were to be done, I would suggest not do it all at the same time. HeatScale first then followed by micro-GH/cooldown timers, or micro-GH/cooldown timers then HeatScale, especially with the 1/month patching.

It keeps it with the flavor of the BT universe without making keeping it exactly to the rules.