482 replies to this topic

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

My big thing is what about Energy based assaults and heavies like the Awesome and Hopper? How will this affect them?

That's what I'm most worried about. Promoting mixed builds with varied hardpoints and weapon groups like the Higs, Vics, and Orions is great. But gimping mechs that have a large volume of Energy isn't balance, it's just meta shifting.

[Gas Guzzler]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 04:32 PM, said:

What would YOU like to see change, if anything, regarding how the meta works?

I'm honestly asking and am not trying to pick a fight. I want to know where you play in the game what is stale or needs work since we're almost playing different games based on the environments in which we play.

I don't like how LRMs are implemented. I would rather their direct fire attributes be buffed, but indirect fire be nerfed and limited to TAG/NARC/UAV.

I think IS LPL should have its duration increased, with maybe a slight buff to range to compensate, nothing major, maybe just from 365 to 385m or so, with a duration of 0.8 or so, maybe 0.85. The duration is huge, if its a bit longer, its easier to mitigate.

Another thing they could do to cut down on super high damage laser alphas, is take mechs with 7-9 energy hardpoints with the energy heat gen quirk and cut it down to 5% from 10% or maybe remove it entirely. You will see people alpha less often and likely remove a medium laser or 2.

Also, any mech with more than 3 energy hardpoints doesn't need a duration quirk.

In my experience from the couple of seasons of MRBC that I have played in, is that balance is actually pretty diverse, and I'm not really worried about TTK, but those changes I suggested will help that a bit, and make laser vomit not quite as good at sustaining fire. The TTK thing, new players will struggle, but any new player at any game is going to struggle, that's not a new thing. The spreading damage skill is acquired from experience.. as is the positioning and decision making.

I actually think that knowing the map before you drop would actually see LESS mid range laser vomit in the solo queue. As funny on that sounds. If people know they are dropping on bog or frozen city night, you will see more brawling. Grim Plexus, Canyon Network, more mid-long range poke, etc. Knowing the map would actually make things more diverse, but Russ doesn't want people picking mechs based on the map, so we have the jack-of-all-trades mid-range laser vomit mechs being the popular option.

Saint Scarlett Johan, on 02 May 2016 - 04:46 PM, said:

My big thing is what about Energy based assaults and heavies like the Awesome and Hopper? How will this affect them?

That's what I'm most worried about. Promoting mixed builds with varied hardpoints and weapon groups like the Higs, Vics, and Orions is great. But gimping mechs that have a large volume of Energy isn't balance, it's just meta shifting.

This is my primary concern. If you could boil all my issues down, this is it. I like my mechs, I want them all viable.

[DrxAbstract]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

That's because too many people think instant convergence is skill and if you don't like the current system you're "a bad and bad at the game." This usually stems from a lack of any coherent argument against the facts, so they simply lash out.

Convergence is not skill. The most skilled and least skilled players in this game will, if they fire 3 pinpoint weapons of the same type at the same time have all their shots hit the exact same point. Therefore, by definition, convergence is not skill.

You've been prattling on inaccurately about a certain game mechanic for a while now (Convergence). It may be fast, but definitely not 'instant'. It's also unequivocally true that 3 identical weapons fired at the same time will hit the same exact spot... If both the shooter and target are completely stationary and remain so for the entirety of the duration. That's to be expected. However it's unequivocally false if they're moving... Which is also to be expected.

If you play MWO with a modicum of awareness, you'd already know convergence is not instantaneous and does have to be accounted for, more so at higher speeds of movement and distance variation.

I think most people recognize that "convergence is not skill", except the only person arguing that is you, because it's irrelevant. Your weapons go where you tell them to with relative accuracy, so what? You're the one determining where they land; The ability to hit your target, moving or otherwise, factoring all the variables of distance, direction, speed, elevation and if applicable, travel times, precisely where you intended to is skill... THAT is the actual point to be made/refuted. You're blaming the stick for constantly beating the same spot on a dead horse.

Quote

Those opposed to the ideas suggested simply don't get it: Nearly every balance problem caused in this game can be traced back to pinpoint, long-range damage:
- The peek-a-boo meta
- Laser vomit
- Ghost heat
- Ghost heat 2.0 (power draw)
- Hover jets (to stop the application of pinpoint long-range damage from mid-air)
- Gauss charge up
- PPC's sucking
- Mech viability depending to an absurd degree on hitboxes and hardpoint placement.

Everything on this list can also be attributed to... everything on this list. 'Pinpoint' damage has existed since the beginning of the game, so it makes for a convenient scapegoat merely by it existing during all of those phases - Guilty by association. Armor has also existed since day one, and these problems can all be more accurately and sensibly traced back to Armor insufficiency than they can be to 'Pinpoint' damage... So the real culprit here is, in fact, Armor. (See what I did there)

Quote

It should be obvious to anyone at this point that the idiotic ease with which one can apply insane amounts of damage at long-ranges to a single pixel is the noose around this game's neck. It defines everything - viable mechs, loadouts, the maps people want to play on, and all the nutty band-aid mechanics we're enduring. This has nothing to do with "git gud" because instance convergence has nothing to do with skill. It is simply a crutch that leads to low TTK and stale game play.

Actually - Hard point inflation, weapon stat alterations, quirks, HSR, the release of various Mechs, etc. lead to the low TTK we have today. It should be pretty obvious to anyone who's been around for a while that Pinpoint has always been here and TTK used to be pretty high... So maybe it's the variables and not the constants? /shrug

[oldradagast]

Mister Blastman, on 02 May 2016 - 04:41 PM, said:

Nah what he's talking about is how convergence is calculated not by what you are targeting (i.e. "r") but where your crosshair is, and when you lead ahead of a moving target, the shots converge to whatever your crosshair is over which often is far more distant than the moving 'mech you are leading, thus creating spread upon impact.

This DOES happen, and happens all the time with projectiles.

edit: This is also why the top tier jump sniping robits had their projectile hardpoints as close together as possible--why the VTR DS was superior to all other VTRs and why the HGN 733C was dominant.

Fair enough - I can admit when I'm wrong, and there must still be more convergence in the game than was apparent. I was under the impression that the close hardpoint placement was more to minimize the amount of the mech that had to be exposed to put all weapons on target.

That would also explain the laser vomit even more since at hit-scan speed, there's not much scatter away from the target point, though obviously there's scatter as the target moves or torso twists unless the beam is held.

Anyway, my bad on this, and I apologize to Gas Guzzler in particular. While I still do feel that there's too much pixel-perfect pinpoint long-range meta, in particular in uncoordinated games (PUG queue and in small team drops, where I spend all my time), the mechanics clearly aren't as cut and dry as I thought there were, and it certainly wasn't worth all the crud-flinging.

The internet can make us all bad people, and apparently I walked into that one today. My apologies to those I snarled at.

Edited by oldradagast, 02 May 2016 - 04:56 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

The internet can make us all bad people, and apparently I walked into that one today. My apologies.

Yeah.. I am guilty of this as well. Its the spirit of the MWO forums really, par for the course.

[oldradagast]

Gas Guzzler, on 02 May 2016 - 04:49 PM, said:

I actually think that knowing the map before you drop would actually see LESS mid range laser vomit in the solo queue. As funny on that sounds. If people know they are dropping on bog or frozen city night, you will see more brawling. Grim Plexus, Canyon Network, more mid-long range poke, etc. Knowing the map would actually make things more diverse, but Russ doesn't want people picking mechs based on the map, so we have the jack-of-all-trades mid-range laser vomit mechs being the popular option.

This is my primary concern. If you could boil all my issues down, this is it. I like my mechs, I want them all viable.

Me too, on that last line.

I did hear the idea floated by the community to allow people to send, say, 2 mechs into battle, then pick the map, then pick the mech from the list they sent into the fight (this is not respawns - you only get 1 mech for the fight.) That would allow some level of tailoring the mech to the map, while not going overboard.

I'd love to see PGI TRY some of these ideas - heck, something like that can't possible take forever to code, and it would be interesting to see what effect it had. If it failed horrible (and I agree with you in that it would encourage the use of builds other than "whatever works well enough on all maps") it could be patched out later if needed. It's not game-breaking.

Edited by oldradagast, 02 May 2016 - 05:01 PM.

[oldradagast]

DrxAbstract, on 02 May 2016 - 04:52 PM, said:

I think most people recognize that "convergence is not skill", except the only person arguing that is you, because it's irrelevant. Your weapons go where you tell them to with relative accuracy, so what? You're the one determining where they land; The ability to hit your target, moving or otherwise, factoring all the variables of distance, direction, speed, elevation and if applicable, travel times, precisely where you intended to is skill... THAT is the actual point to be made/refuted. You're blaming the stick for constantly beating the same spot on a dead horse.

I admit I was wrong on the game mechanics, and I admit that publicly. Nobody is perfect, and I freely also admit that when a target is moving, I'm trying to get hits in - I have no way of telling if all the shots hit at long range most of the time. It's not like World of Warships where you get a number of hits counter. The red flash of the targeting site can represent 1 damage or 3 PPC hits. Anyway, my bad on that, and I am sorry.

That being said, my frustration stems from a community attitude that tends to be "if you want to change anything about the game, you must suck at it and be unskilled," While I admit I goofed on how convergence works in MWO, I didn't goof on how heavily long range, pixel perfect, "as fast as the game engine can converge" meta is dominate to the point of stagnating the game in the PUG queue. I'm not saying nerf lasers, make all pinpoint weapons into LBX's, or turn the game into something where mechs never die and good play is punished, but I also feel that if ideas can't be discussed intelligently with something more than "if you don't like it how it is, you must suck," the game will never improve and we may as well not have these forums.

Still, I should not have taken that frustration out on Gas Guzzler - my bad. Still, I wish that "you must suck!" was not always in the first three replies to almost any statement, concern, or suggestion posted around here. We're better than that, I'd like to think, even though all of us - myself included - can allow the nature of the internet to lead us to be disagreeable for no good reason.

Edited by oldradagast, 02 May 2016 - 05:10 PM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

Casual observation: Things don't change when everything is going great, thing change when there is a problem. For instance a stagnant meta-game that drives players from the game instead of attracting them.
One thing is certain, no matter what the rules set, someone will always be 'teh best', survive or die.

[Carl Vickers]

Gas Guzzler, on 02 May 2016 - 06:15 AM, said:

Wasn't here for CB.

And yeah, good luck with brawling, can't wait for people to realize how low TTK is with the brawling meta in place right now that no one seems to no about.

Thats because of the laser peak and poke method of fighting. Too many peeps doing that scared to get within 200m. Brawling is a skill that a good chunk of players do not have anymore. Shame, it is a lot of fun.

[DrxAbstract]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

I admit I was wrong on the game mechanics, and I admit that publicly. Nobody is perfect, and I freely also admit that when a target is moving, I'm trying to get hits in - I have no way of telling if all the shots hit at long range most of the time. It's not like World of Warships where you get a number of hits counter. The red flash of the targeting site can represent 1 damage or 3 PPC hits. Anyway, my bad on that, and I am sorry.

That being said, my frustration stems from a community attitude that tends to be "if you want to change anything about the game, you must suck at it and be unskilled," While I admit I goofed on how convergence works in MWO, I didn't goof on how heavily long range, pixel perfect, "as fast as the game engine can converge" meta is dominate to the point of stagnating the game in the PUG queue. I'm not saying nerf lasers, make all pinpoint weapons into LBX's, or turn the game into something where mechs never die and good play is punished, but I also feel that if ideas can't be discussed intelligently with something more than "if you don't like it how it is, you must suck," the game will never improve and we may as well not have these forums.

Still, I should not have taken that frustration out on Gas Guzzler - my bad. Still, I wish that "you must suck!" was not always in the first three replies to almost any statement, concern, or suggestion posted around here. We're better than that, I'd like to think, even though all of us - myself included - can allow the nature of the internet to lead us to be disagreeable for no good reason.

Do you want TTK to increase dramatically, high-alpha builds to disappear, Lights to be a fun and equally viable option rather than a foot note, LRMs to be meaningful, long-distance sniping to require more effort, the disappearance of stagnant peek n poke and the prominent emergence of brawling? Then remove HSR...

And just watch.

[oldradagast]

DrxAbstract, on 02 May 2016 - 05:42 PM, said:

Do you want TTK to increase dramatically, high-alpha builds to disappear, Lights to be a fun and equally viable option rather than a foot note, LRMs to be meaningful, long-distance sniping to require more effort, the disappearance of stagnant peek n poke and the prominent emergence of brawling? Then remove HSR...

And just watch.

Interesting proposal. I thought - though I could be wrong - that host-state rewind was required to prevent mechs from basically lagging all over the place and the game turning into having to guess where to aim because the mech as displayed from your perspective was not where the server actually considered the mech to be located. Then again, today is clearly not one of my better days for getting technical details about MWO right, so I could be wrong on that.

That being said, I can say that the meta-game you propose is the one I'd like to see. I'm just not exactly sure how to get there from here at this point.

[Carl Vickers]

DrxAbstract, on 02 May 2016 - 05:42 PM, said:

Do you want TTK to increase dramatically, high-alpha builds to disappear, Lights to be a fun and equally viable option rather than a foot note, LRMs to be meaningful, long-distance sniping to require more effort, the disappearance of stagnant peek n poke and the prominent emergence of brawling? Then remove HSR...

And just watch.

Be interesting to see what happens to players in OZ with HSR turned off, would we be able to get a hit in lol

[DrxAbstract]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 05:49 PM, said:

Interesting proposal. I thought - though I could be wrong - that host-state rewind was required to prevent mechs from basically lagging all over the place and the game turning into having to guess where to aim because the mech as displayed from your perspective was not where the server actually considered the mech to be located. Then again, today is clearly not one of my better days for getting technical details about MWO right, so I could be wrong on that.

That being said, I can say that the meta-game you propose is the one I'd like to see. I'm just not exactly sure how to get there from here at this point.

Well it doesnt prevent lagging and how people appear to each other in-game would not change. All it does is attempt to compensate for latency and it has a pretty decent percentage of successfully determining whether or not hits actually land, but how accurately it determines where they hit is up in the air.

Fundamentally, it's the root of all evil in the game to date because HSR implementation is when things really started going down hill. Its removal would signal the return of the long lost art of Lag Shooting, likely resulting in what I mentioned earlier especially for LRMs because in the land of Lag, locking weapons are king.

And why build a 2-shot, overheating Alpha Wonder? Wouldn't be cost-effective. Heavies suddenly become the red-headed stepchild because they have neither the speed to utilize latency nor the armor and firepower longevity to compensate. Assaults suddenly become more viable as the long distance and poking shots that exploit their low mobility become harder to land and XL-Assaults are less susceptible to the precision damage that can kill them! Lights gain a marked improvement in longevity as they are infinitely harder to insta-gib or leg and self-regulate their own damage output because inaccuracy from latency and lack of heat sinks! Mediums get a survival boost and become the new Heavies! Oh glory days!

Carl Vickers, on 02 May 2016 - 06:01 PM, said:

Be interesting to see what happens to players in OZ with HSR turned off, would we be able to get a hit in lol

Trying to explain the concept of lag shooting to people these days all hopped up on their COD/BF/Halo automatic latency compensation... Talk about crutches, yeesh. Thanks to modern data transfer speeds, Lag went from a skill requirement to an excuse!

[Ultimax]

oldradagast, on 02 May 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

While I still do feel that there's too much pixel-perfect pinpoint long-range meta

My problem with your posts is how unrealistic statements like these are.


Unless your enemies are complete terribads, good luck keeping lasers at long range "pixel perfect" on a target with a pulse, much less one who actually is good at the game.

Edited by Ultimax, 02 May 2016 - 06:41 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Carl Vickers, on 02 May 2016 - 05:32 PM, said:

Thats because of the laser peak and poke method of fighting. Too many peeps doing that scared to get within 200m. Brawling is a skill that a good chunk of players do not have anymore. Shame, it is a lot of fun.

What are you talking about? Every other MRBC match at least is a full on brawl. It is an integrated part of the meta game right now. Brawling is a great counter to laser vomit on many maps.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 02 May 2016 - 06:53 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Power Draw won't work. Battle Tech works fine with it's heat system controlling Energy and weight/size controlling Ballistic. All PGI has to do is make the mechs tougher and let Battle Tech balancing do the rest. It's obvious that MWO's mechs fold about twice as fast as mechs did in previous MechWarrior games. Power Draw is just convoluted logic to address overly weak mechs.

[Targetloc]

The universal constant in 'improving' a mech from stock is to drop out weapons and jack up the engine (and collect free heatsinks).

Mechs on average, have less weapons than intended and larger engines. Dropping the heat cap significantly and upping the cooldown time on weapons across the board would lower PPFLD and make the choice between more weapons over more engine an interesting choice again.

[Clownwarlord]

Saint Scarlett Johan, on 02 May 2016 - 04:46 PM, said:

My big thing is what about Energy based assaults and heavies like the Awesome and Hopper? How will this affect them?

That's what I'm most worried about. Promoting mixed builds with varied hardpoints and weapon groups like the Higs, Vics, and Orions is great. But gimping mechs that have a large volume of Energy isn't balance, it's just meta shifting.

Well with the removal of ghost heat it and then group firing groups of lasers (instead of alpha). You should still be able to maintain a decent dps. Also unlike missiles and some ballistics every group of lasers you fired will still be pin point.

So a Hopper might have 2 groups of 3 medium lasers and then a group of large lasers. You just cycle through your groups keeping under the power drain, and still doing a good chunk of damage.

[Gas Guzzler]

Captain Luffy, on 02 May 2016 - 07:15 PM, said:

Well with the removal of ghost heat it and then group firing groups of lasers (instead of alpha). You should still be able to maintain a decent dps. Also unlike missiles and some ballistics every group of lasers you fired will still be pin point.

So a Hopper might have 2 groups of 3 medium lasers and then a group of large lasers. You just cycle through your groups keeping under the power drain, and still doing a good chunk of damage.

Meanwhile getting ripped to shreds by someone with UAC5s.

GG.

[Carl Vickers]

Gas Guzzler, on 02 May 2016 - 06:53 PM, said:

What are you talking about? Every other MRBC match at least is a full on brawl. It is an integrated part of the meta game right now. Brawling is a great counter to laser vomit on many maps.

For those who play MRBC, only real taste we get in MWO proper is 4v4.

Edited by Carl Vickers, 02 May 2016 - 07:31 PM.