776 replies to this topic

[Lord0fHats]

I think Lt. Hardcase nailed my thoughts on this. The rescale was supposed to fix something that's always been kind of out of whack in the game, but it seems to have resulted in more good/bad mechs getting worse and very few mechs getting better. The Nova, Catapult, Dragon, and ironically, Artic Cheetah are the real winners here XD

[Hit the Deck]

Lord0fHats, on 18 June 2016 - 04:03 AM, said:

I think Lt. Hardcase nailed my thoughts on this. The rescale was supposed to fix something that's always been kind of out of whack in the game, but it seems to have resulted in more good/bad mechs getting worse and very few mechs getting better. The Nova, Catapult, Dragon, and ironically, Artic Cheetah are the real winners here XD

I don't think that it was meant to fix the bads, maybe some players and even PGI initially thought that way. In the current form, this rescaling is just PGI's way to establish a baseline or normalize all 'Mech sizes.

[Lord0fHats]

Hit the Deck, on 18 June 2016 - 04:08 AM, said:

I don't think that it was meant to fix the bads, maybe some players and even PGI initially thought that way. In the current form, this rescaling is just PGI's way to establish a baseline or normalize all 'Mech sizes.

I expected a baselining, but I was expecting it to be fuzzier than this. The Panther has doubled in size. The Victor and Gargoyle, two mechs that desperately need to be smaller, are still huge (smaller in relative terms they be now, but not by much). I was expecting pragmatism to be the dominant consideration in the rescale, but it seems to have taken a back seat to a very rigorous scale lock. One of PGI's biggest problems is that they fix things that don't need fixing, and somehow it seems like they turned the rescale into just that with how hardcore they're sticking to it even for mechs where it makes zero sense (RIP Executioner...)

On the bright side, Locusts might actually not be trash anymore! So there's that XD

[Corrado]

overall? some 50 tonners share the same size of 35 tonners. there is a "cough" 60 tons mech with a brand new hero chassis just a tiny bit bigger than a infamous SRM light. the grasshopper must be made of plastic material since is taller than an atlas with 25 tons less.

the victor totally skipped...

well at least the playerbase will have something else to complain rather than the four UAC10s on the kodiak.

[Red Shrike]

Lord0fHats, on 18 June 2016 - 04:18 AM, said:

for mechs where it makes zero sense

From what perspective?

[Lord0fHats]

From the perspective that they're already bad and getting bigger just makes them bAdder (get it ).

[Red Shrike]

Lord0fHats, on 18 June 2016 - 04:30 AM, said:

From the perspective that they're already bad and getting bigger just makes them bAdder (get it ).

Badder how? You mean being a bigger target? Just play the cards you're dealt.

Edited by Red Shrike, 18 June 2016 - 04:43 AM.

[Lord0fHats]

bAdder

It's a pun

ANd obviously we play the cards we're dealt. Doesn't mean that the card god (read devs) should have dealt them the way they did.

[CK16]

The size of the Locust does make me wonder how big a Firemoth would be o.O

[oldradagast]

Underwhelmed.

IS Lights: All of them that grew are basically trash now. The light queue was already the smallest, so it should go to 1% at this point (people playing Locusts and maybe Commandos.)
IS Mediums: Mixed bag. Centurion got a bit smaller, Griffin got a bit larger, Crab is now big and probably junk, etc.
IS Heavies: Catapult no longer an 80-ton mech; one of few real improvements. Black Knight and Grasshopper bloated up and nerfed into the ground. Thuds will be the new laser vomit mech since they shrank.
IS Assaults: Where to begin... The one IS 80 tonner that was not a bloated target (Zeus) is now a bloated target. Meanwhile, the laser vomit meta mechs (Battlemaster and Stalker) will be getting smaller because... whatever. Highlander growing a noticeable amount, just in case anyone was still playing them, and I thought we all agreed that the Atlas was the right size or, if anything, too large. So, now it's bigger.

Clan mechs:
Clan Lights: Well... ok, people may be playing Kitfoxes, too in the light queue. So that, Arctic Cheaters, and the occasional Locust will be it. Nice
Clan Mediums: Nova is finally not a 65 ton mech, One of few actual improvements.
Clan Heavies: Lower stances should strengthen these underpowered mechs, except for the brokenly powerful Orion 2c, which gets nothing
Clan Assaults: Undepowered and never played Dire Wolf gets smaller. Overpowered Executioner balloons so large that it can't even fit in the picture. Yep, that makes sense.

Yeah. I get it - using volume normalization is a good place to start, but there are two annoying things about this:
- It's late in the game to tell people, "Oh, we made all your favorite mechs a lot bigger to nerf them... and made some powerful mechs smaller to make them more powerful."
- We're back to depending upon a massive quirk pass to clean up the new imbalances, and the quirk changes we've seen so far don't do anything to fix the new issues introduced.

Edited by oldradagast, 18 June 2016 - 05:26 AM.

[TercieI]

oldradagast, on 18 June 2016 - 05:25 AM, said:

Clan Heavies: Lower stances should strengthen these underpowered mechs, except for the brokenly powerful Orion 2c, which gets nothing

In other news in this patch, it actually got some structure buffs which should help it.

[oldradagast]

Ryllen Kriel, on 17 June 2016 - 10:06 PM, said:

I already mentioned earlier in this thread that I'm not terribly disappointed in the rescale so far. I'm tempted to go further with all the talk about quirks and say I just hope quirks are universally removed. I'm tired if the "balance" game going on for the past couple of years. Just hop in a mech you like and shoot something!

Nope. Quirks are required to balance out things like horrible geometry. Geometry is not the same as scale. Both the Awesome and the Stalker are now (supposedly) the right scale, but without quirks or some other mechanic, the Stalker - thanks to its many high weapon points and narrow frontal profile - will destroy the flat, low-weaponed Awesome in nearly all cases. That's why PGI's dangerous leanings towards "proper volume alone = balance" is simply not right.

TercieI, on 18 June 2016 - 05:28 AM, said:

In other news in this patch, it actually got some structure buffs which should help it.

My bad - I missed that. Hopefully it will keep them.

Alistair Winter, on 17 June 2016 - 04:35 PM, said:

The Oxide and Jenner IIC were still among the most popular light mechs in the game though, despite their weakness. It's not like the poor Oxide pilots were struggling to stay alive with their CT hitboxes. They were doing just fine. Yes, it was a weakness, but they were still arguably the most popular light mechs in the game.

<shrug>

Except the only reason those mechs were so popular is because of Quirks, and quirks change more often than the mech's model changes (unless we've entered a horrible new world where mech's size may change as often as quirks.) In other words, when PGI finally gets around to nerfing those mechs' quirks, they'll be double-nerfing them because they also bloated up in size.

[TercieI]

oldradagast, on 18 June 2016 - 05:33 AM, said:

My bad - I missed that. Hopefully it will keep them.

Wasn't meant as a correction, just an observation. Your comments on the scaling are bang-on. It's stupid.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Just had an off-hand idea, they could take this whole normalized scale (normalization, in and of itself, is good) and reduce ALL 'Mech by 10%

Smaller targets = harder to hit = increased TTK!!!

[Red Shrike]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 18 June 2016 - 05:37 AM, said:

Just had an off-hand idea, they could take this whole normalized scale (normalization, in and of itself, is good) and reduce ALL 'Mech by 10%

Smaller targets = harder to hit = increased TTK!!!

Or we could just get out of our mechs and go at it with small arms.

[Clownwarlord]

Alistair Winter, on 17 June 2016 - 04:03 PM, said:

Instead of doing 1 thread per mech, why not discuss them all at once?

Personally, I think they've fixed a lot more than they've broken.

IS lights: I like it, actually. The only problem is that light mechs were already unpopular (3% light mech queue today) and they will now effectively be worse than ever. *
IS mediums: Looks good overall. I for one welcome our new Hunchback overlords.
IS heavies: Looks good overall. Thunderbolt meta is back now, I guess. **
IS assaults: Looks good overall. The Awesome redesign isn't as bad as I had feared. Too bad about the Victor.

Clan lights: Looks good, but ACH is probably going to be the only Clan light mech choice for a while.
Clan mediums: Looks good. Not sure why they did that to the Hunchie arms.
Clan heavies: Looks good. But... while the MDD and TBR do look better, I'm not sure it was worth it to effectively buff the TBR. Time will tell.
Clan assaults: Looks good. Do my eyes deceive me, or did they actually improve the DW aesthetically by shrinking the Boeing 747 nose?

* - Now the Raven is actually buffed without weapon quirks, which I like. And this may sound silly to you, but I like that light mechs are bigger now, because light mechs in Battletech were never supposed to be so tiny. They were mostly just... thinner, and somewhat shorter. I like that the Wolfhound now is kind of like the Wolfhound in the Battletech cartoons, instead of only reaching the knees of the daddy mechs.
** - Cataphract is now buffed by virtue of being relatively small. Black Knight and Grasshopper have effectively been nerfed. They gave the Jagermech its pooping stance back, unfortunately. And the Quickdraw retains its pooping stance. I like what they did with the Rifleman.

I like the rescale, I like how it took the lighter of the lights and actually made them different in size to the heavier of light mechs. Now you can clearly see a difference between 20 tons and 35 tons. The clan lights will still be usable including the Mist Lynx which has been sorta not considering ACH. But now both of them wills till be usable, and the other two lights barely changed, Kit Fox got smaller and Adder got slightly longer legs which will actually help with hill humping.

Then lets look at the mediums ... well some of the 50 tonners got shrunk, a lot. Everything else got slightly bigger for the mediums.

The heavies had the most drastic changes, mostly in part because of the Catapult which had a complete redesign. Then you also have some heavies that are now as tall as an Atlas (Black Knight is one) but they are still skinny.

Then Assaults, Highlanders and Highlander IICs got bigger, and by bigger I mean BIGGER. How does a 90 ton mech get bigger when it was huge to begin with? The Exe also got bigger ... so much so you might need to talk to Donald Trump to get an elevator built for that sky scraper. Then there is the Warhawk and Dire Wolf which got a shrinking going on that makes them look cooler.

** Just posting here to help Alistar Winter's thread.

Edited by Captain Luffy, 18 June 2016 - 05:40 AM.

[TercieI]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 18 June 2016 - 05:37 AM, said:

Just had an off-hand idea, they could take this whole normalized scale (normalization, in and of itself, is good) and reduce ALL 'Mech by 10%

Smaller targets = harder to hit = increased TTK!!!

I'm not sure about your final sentence, but given how much bigger lots of stuff got, 10% off the top would be a less stark and arbitrary feeling change.

[The Iron Chancellor]

While I will have to see how the rescale affects things in real-time, there are some things I don't quite understand so far as first impressions are concerned.

1.Some of the mechs were reduced in size/scope substantially, and so far as I can tell, have had their quirks reduced/tweaked slightly, this makes sense, however certain mechs have been made both bigger and taller, while having their quirks reduced, some moreso than others, this I don't understand, size and height directly relate to survivability in this game, therefore I assumed that mechs that got larger/taller/both would for the moment have their quirks unchanged.

For example, take the Oxide, yes I'm aware its currently one of the top lights, hell I've piloted it, but being made that much larger, having its movement archetype increased, and its quirks reduced all at once?, only time will say where it'll end up, but I prefer small changes made step by step, this seems like a big swing instead.

Alternatively, observe the grasshopers/black-knights, I'll admit openly that I've played these quite a bit, I've played them when people called them rubbish, I've played them when they were considered average, and I've played them (although far less so) when those mechs were defined as 'meta', I'd hate to see both of these rendered 'obsolete' on account of being taller and wider. (switching them out for some of the 'winners' of this rescale, i.e. thds/tbr etc)

2. Some mechs have had their size increase overall as a result of the rescale, mechs which struggle currently, for instance observe the Zeus, not particularly amazing but not exceptionally horrendous either, it is hard for me to see why would anyone have a real motivation to pilot it once it goes live, having piloted it myself, it was mostly a heavy stuck in an assault frame, relying on small size and mobility to get things done, now? who knows if it'll be able to get anything done.

3.Certain mechs seem to have been skimmed/gimped over entirely, note that the victor is missing from this list, sad considering this was a chance to make it relevant, likewise the vindicator have had its armor replaced with structure?, I do not own vindicators, but I do believe that if it exists in the game, it ought to have its place, this just makes it look like it has even LESS of a reason to exist (I apologize vindicator enthusiasts, these are my impressions).

4.Various inconsistencies - Zeus got larger and wider and the victor untouched, but the battlemaster and stalker got shrunk, the adder got larger (why?), and a few others.

Overall...........A very mixed bag.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Red Shrike, on 18 June 2016 - 05:38 AM, said:

Or we could just get out of our mechs and go at it with small arms.

Considering that the major complaints we're seeing are about 'Mechs being too big, I think reducing their size across the board is reasonable.

I would like to point out that -10% size in no way makes them comparable to infantry.

I would also like to point out that our 'Mechs are WAY oversized as it is. An M1A2 Abrams tank weighs 65 tons and is only 7.93 meters long. (https://en.wikipedia.../wiki/M1_Abrams)

[Hit the Deck]

Amusingly, this rescale shows why you don't make giant size mechanical human aka humanoid robots as weapons of war - they get unnecessarily tall and have greater surface area to catch bullets