426 replies to this topic

[cougurt]

i don't know what kind of quirks the warhammer has currently, but i've never found them to be particularly tanky. same with the shadow cat.

summoners on the other hand i felt were pretty tanky even before they got superquirked.

[Elizander]

Kali Rinpoche, on 20 January 2017 - 01:45 PM, said:

So the oh so powerful SMN Prime (in base omnipod loadout) is OP and deserves to be nerfed? I play my SMN-Prime in stock omnipods, which basically means 3 weapons, and it deserved a nerf? Unfortunately ERPPC have become the meta again b/c of the lack of burst damage in other weapon systems. Jump sniping ppc meta is back. A better solution might be to undue recent PPC buffs.

I actually feel that PPCs are in a good place right now. I don't feel as dumb using them over lasers and I swap between both types of energy weapons regularly.

[Steinkrieg]

Given that the IS has access to ClanTech in 3060, why not just let IS mechs run ClanTech after the fastforward? Sure, the IS mechs would have to buy the more expensive ClanTech, but that would inherently add to balance in the game between the IS and Clans since they would be running the same weapons systems, engines, DHS, probes, etc.

[-Ramrod-]

I agree with the Shadow Cat and Summoner nerfs. I'm sick of seeing those 2 mechs in EVERY freakin' match. Last mech is always a Shadow Cat running around for 5 minutes. ER PPC's need another nerf as well. Yes another one! Meta is getting out of hand. Really out of hand. To the point to where it's not nearly as fun to play now. In the canon and TABLETOP the PPC is supposed to have LESS range than the Gauss Rifle. And by a good margin! So Gauss Rifles at 600 meters. Make the ER PPC at 540 meters. With an effective range of 700 or 800. Seems reasonable to me. Maybe make pilots you know...use other weapons. Perhaps even get skilled at other weapon systems instead of hiding behind the crutch of meta. Meta...the mask over the average player portraying an elite pilot. I'm sure I'm gonna get flamed for this but...you people are making others quit. This game can't afford to lose more and more people. Abundant overuse of meta is toxic to the community whether you want to agree with it or not. So **** your high horses.

Edited by Ramrod AI, 20 January 2017 - 08:25 PM.

[Tiantara]

- It's not about make IS XL same as Clan XL... IS XL must have higher penalty in speed than Clan, but not death penalty.
What about XL better that STD and noone use STD than - that's no true.
I can explain:

1. STD engine have no any penalty to speed or heatmanagement. They more compact and allow put more weapon, ammo and such thing as AC20 in heavy\assault mech. In many mech you cant put bigger gun because of no room after you put DHS and Endo-Steel mode. So - they use SDT anyway and some builds on XL become mostly hot laserboat, which become slower after loosing side torso
2. IS XL engine without death penalty must have great speed penalty. Nearly 35% (or even 50%). Even that better than instant death. All who don't want loose speed - place STD (as many pilots do on Clan mech like - Hunchback, Highlinder and any other IIC. Anyway anyone who put XL to any mech soon realize that its firepower go down because of lack of free slots and go back to STD or have less firepower (what is good because you pointed as main goal = make TTK higher and battle longer).
3. In same time Clan XL still better and you can bring back old heat (maybe not 20% but 25-30% instead of 40%)
Put that for a week on PTS and you'll see how much better whole gameplay become especially for tier 5-3 gamers who make population in FP. That make unnecessary make tonnage balance in future because both side Clan and IS will have enough players to play.
At least try to make that before implementing LFE engines (if you planning to do that).

Edited by Tiantara, 20 January 2017 - 08:32 PM.

[Duke Nedo]

OK, that's it. You ******* nerfed Warhammers, the only IS mech that was anywhere near the performance of the: NGR, TBR, MAD-IIc, KDK, HBK-IIc, ACH, etc. Are you out of your ******* minds?

I am literally not login in again until that is reverted. If anything, the WHMs needed like +2 structure, not -7.

Bye.

[Hawk819]

I like the I.S. Orion, and I am glad to see the structure quirks being switched over to armor. In my opinion, the Orion has a great need for armor quirks to shore of its defense value. Cause too often than not, it's getting killed too quickly for my taste. For some players like myself, it makes us not want to use the Orion, and instead play its counterpart the IIC over the I.S. version. I applaud the move, PGI. Excellent choice in quirks change.

[Tarl Cabot]

I_AM_ZUUL, on 20 January 2017 - 07:18 PM, said:

isXL=Death < cXL=Alive

Any talk of "balance" is utter bullsh1t until that is addressed... no matter how much makeup you put on Ms Piggy, she is still a pig.

On the other hand, as long as PGI keeps the isXL fragile without introducing an actual engine crit system, it gives them all the reasons to frak with the quirks to balance instead of flavor, giveth and taketh away by putting to good use the Dartboard of Not Destiny....

[ball0fire]

lol all this crying over 5 - 7 points of structure quirk on the warhammers

whoop dee ******* doo


noone has said anything aboot how the atlas's are getting a huge armour buff tho 17 points in the arms 21 in the side torsos AND legs and a huge 31 points in the CT wow


edit: typos

Edited by ball0fire, 20 January 2017 - 08:38 PM.

[Wuldain]

I_AM_ZUUL, on 20 January 2017 - 07:39 PM, said:

Sure... I will totally agree with that trade, Omnimechs are demolished and you cant change Omnipods but can use a STD, isXL is not insta-death. oh wait... your entire premise is garbage and you did not think it out at all, did you?

No, you keep forgetting. WE DONT HAVE A CHOICE. It's simple. You have a choice. You exchange speed for survivability. You want your speed, but not the downsides. Imagine the river of tears if it's announced that IS XL wont kill you, but you have a 40 percent heat penalty and a movement penalty as well. You already have weapon quirks to make you more offensive, defensive quirks to make you more tanky, now you want speed and not dying to an xl check. Where do you draw the line, unless you want it back to blackjacks being equivalent to an atlas in the tanking department?

[Tiantara]

- Yeah... At least I have my "slow death" atlas to play normally besides any whining from team about my slow speed. Now I can walk a bit longer under enemy fire... maybe... or maybe not.

[Tiantara]

Wuldain, on 20 January 2017 - 08:38 PM, said:

No, you keep forgetting. WE DONT HAVE A CHOICE. It's simple. You have a choice. You exchange speed for survivability. You want your speed, but not the downsides. Imagine the river of tears if it's announced that IS XL wont kill you, but you have a 40 percent heat penalty and a movement penalty as well. You already have weapon quirks to make you more offensive, defensive quirks to make you more tanky, now you want speed and not dying to an xl check. Where do you draw the line, unless you want it back to blackjacks being equivalent to an atlas in the tanking department?

- Quite not right... We have choice between survivability and bigger firepower vs speed and much less firepower + death penalty if we choose second. STD provide less speed and any clan just can unload all their weapon to slow walking target (because teammate often too unskilled to play any other strategy except "run nascar or run in close combat" forgetting about ambush or taking strategically good places on map).
You forget one major point of XL problem... tier 5-3 players who make mass of population in FP and can be in team. They don't know how to twist torso, they use Clan mech and think that IS play the same - in result they die in first min of battle. 4-5 such players on IS XL mech in FP team - and you loose even if you skilled player and great pilot. That a big problem from time when no tier check in FP! Stop mention only top tier player... where each move is teamwork counted by each shot and second. Think about low tier players who doesn't learn anything from Clam mech and cant play on IS XL because of bad experience from battle to battle. They die so often that even cant achieve skills to pilot better in future! Just go to clan mech and stick with Clans making population dis-balance and such "great changes" as tonnage tweak every month.

[GweNTLeR]

The bushwaker quirks are strange. Why would you need energy cooldown quirk with a single energy weapon? Better bring some missile quirks...

[Ruar]

I don't understand the reasoning that IS standard engines have to be used while Clan can just ignore standard engines for 95% of their builds.

So for some reason the ISXL has to be so much of a weakness that you die while the CXL weakness is more heat.

Because firing slower is somehow equal to being dead.

Yep, logic.

There is no way to keep perfect convergence and pinpoint aiming from the FPS game and make it compatible with TT lore about randomly distributed damage. Which means the ST weakness of ISXL engines is a HUGE problem.

Dump the lore, balance the critical slots of both ISXL and CXL and use some other factor for balancing. Because in the end you are never going to convince us that death is somehow equal to more heat, slower speed, or any other drawback that still leaves one mech capable of fighting and the other spectating.

[Tarl Cabot]

Wuldain, on 20 January 2017 - 08:38 PM, said:

No, you keep forgetting. WE DONT HAVE A CHOICE. It's simple. You have a choice. You exchange speed for survivability. You want your speed, but not the downsides. Imagine the river of tears if it's announced that IS XL wont kill you, but you have a 40 percent heat penalty and a movement penalty as well. You already have weapon quirks to make you more offensive, defensive quirks to make you more tanky, now you want speed and not dying to an xl check. Where do you draw the line, unless you want it back to blackjacks being equivalent to an atlas in the tanking department?

Compare Clan battlemech to IS battlemech. And many have no illusions that quirks would be reduced, they keep being reduced. The offensive quirks only cover up the issue while giving PGI something to play with, like strings to one's heart. PGI is adding positive quirks to Clan omni and battlemechs that do run cXL except for the few battlemechs due to space restriction in the side torsos.

And due components being lighter and smaller, there are a number of omnimechs that could run STD with a slight loss in speed and no penalties when severely damaged using primarily energy/srm builds. IS components though are bulkier and heavier but their choice is no penalties or death vs Clan's no penalties or 20%-40% penalty. You have noticed that even IS pilots were not happy that PGI went the route of a 40% heat penalty for cXL, even though this game has yet to see actual engine crits as PGI has noted it wanted to do.

And if PGI keeps telling itself it will eventually add engine crits /chuckles..

If they did though, I believe it would be setup so each engine critical SLOT has is own hitpoints instead of an overall HP for each torso subset. PGI could play with the HP to determine how quickly a slot is destroyed, to have it count towards the 3 strikes/out as per BOARDGAME rules where everything is done with dice........

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 20 January 2017 - 09:16 PM.

[Wintersdark]

YUyahoo, on 20 January 2017 - 03:14 PM, said:

But how do we know its the strongest, thats the point I'm trying to make...by what criteria is it determined to be the strongest, or better still the strongest because it has too many quirks or quirks that are too big of a boost?

Neither here nor there, really. The Whammy in question is having a very minor quirk reduction - reducing it's +Structure quirks by roughly 6 points of structure in each segment. That's a really minor knock.

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Not everyone performs consistently in every mech they pilot and not everyone pilots only the mechs they do best in (sometimes we cant drop in our favorite mechs because of tonnage limits). Personally I don't even do THAT well in warhammers or summoners (for IS I do much better in Marauders, Riflemen and Grashoppers than I have ever done in warhammers...and for clan I do far better in ebon jags and hellbringers than I do in summoners or timberwolves).

People who've been playing a while, and understand the game (and who aren't useless, anyways) can readily identify which mechs are better and which are worse, even without player ability in that mech being counted. There's good mechs I'm terrible in, and bad mechs I'm pretty good in, but I still absolutely understand the relative power of the chassis in question.

How does PGI determine it? Well, PGI's methods are highly suspect, but leaving PGI specifics aside it'd be fairly easy to ascertain which mechs are strongest: The ones that get used the most. Further, PGI has easy access to metrics - how much damage on average mechs do, etc, and by doing this over a large sample size you help eliminate the player skill impact.

Quote

I do get what you're saying about it being easier to weaken the top than improve the multitude of bottom mechs but every time the top gets weakened all it does is create a new top that will need weakening again...its balancing to the lowest common denominator and I'm sorry but I'm just not a fan of that form of balancing

No, you clearly don't get it. It's not about it being easier, and no, it's not "balancing to the lowest common denominator". It's simply avoiding power creep.

If you only ever buff weak mechs (not to say you SHOULDN'T buff weak mechs) then you end up with power creep as no matter what, in a game like this, you'll NEVER achieve perfect balance.

If you want to prevent the overall "power level" of mechs (and thus Time To Kill) at a constant level or even decrease it, you must nerf the strong mechs as well as buff weak mechs.

Duke Nedo, on 20 January 2017 - 08:25 PM, said:

OK, that's it. You ******* nerfed Warhammers, the only IS mech that was anywhere near the performance of the: NGR, TBR, MAD-IIc, KDK, HBK-IIc, ACH, etc. Are you out of your ******* minds?

I am literally not login in again until that is reverted. If anything, the WHMs needed like +2 structure, not -7.

Bye.

Really?

Really?

Cry me a river.

I don't think the Whammyhammer needed to be nerfed, but this is a tiny, TINY nerf. It's not going to suddenly ruin the chassis.

What the heck is wrong with people.

[Wintersdark]

Mcgral18, on 20 January 2017 - 06:25 PM, said:

I'm all for 100% boost

Double structure (or structure=armour) for STD engines, along the Torso

I'd be fine with that. *shrugs* I think STD engines should be a hard choice compared to XL's. Hell, I want to have to consider whether I want to use a STD engine on my Clam battlemechs as well as my IS mechs.

Quote

Of course, that doesn't help Comp matches or Duels(Legs for Days)...but the PUG LIFE is by far torso deaths.

That's ultimately the bulk of the gameplay that happens, too, so as much as it may irk some, that's a very important demographic.

Quote

The quirk armour is free

It now appears in the mechlab, which is nice, but costs nothing.
It's the same as Structure Quirks, but cannot be Crit. It will also prevent the annoying AF Crimson red Structure paperdolls taking 20 damage, because quirks don't seem to appear on Paperdolls

mmhmm.

Armor quirks are quite substantially better than structure.

When they implemented structural quirks initially, that was one of my first observations: My IS mechs last noticably longer, but it's a mixed bag because they're stripped of weapons at the time.

Moving to Armor prevents that - you keep firing till the end - which allows your overall damage output to rise (and this is the goal, given the sturdiness vs. firepower balance goal for IS vs. Clan. Extra sturdiness is of little value when you can't keep firing =/

[Duke Nedo]

Wintersdark, on 20 January 2017 - 09:17 PM, said:

Really?

Really?

Cry me a river.

I don't think the Whammyhammer needed to be nerfed, but this is a tiny, TINY nerf. It's not going to suddenly ruin the chassis.

What the heck is wrong with people.

But it will, and it's not tiny. It completely removes Gauss-whammys from the game.

What's more importantly tho, it shows how clueless PGI are when it comes to faction balance. IS needed buffs across the line, and what do they do? Nerf the only contender IS has, and don't touch NGR and TBR which are the two best heavies in the game. Before this nerf, and even more after the nerf. Just ******* clueless.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Duke Nedo, on 20 January 2017 - 09:50 PM, said:

But it will, and it's not tiny. It completely removes Gauss-whammys from the game.

What's more importantly tho, it shows how clueless PGI are when it comes to faction balance. IS needed buffs across the line, and what do they do? Nerf the only contender IS has, and don't touch NGR and TBR which are the two best heavies in the game. Before this nerf, and even more after the nerf. Just ******* clueless.

The issue with IS vs Clan balance is the Clan equipment, IS quirks are only a band-aid fix that needs to be reduced when equipment gets rebalanced. There's no point in trying to super-buff IS mechs right now when PGI will be looking into balance after the new skill tree drops. The Warhammer got nerfed not because it's over-performing vs Clan mechs, but because it's over-performing vs the other IS mechs.

[DGTLDaemon]

Another moronic "balance pass" from PGI. First they reduce the Clans' dropdeck tonnage so that Stormcrows are no longer allowed in scouting, and now they're killing Hunchback IIC - one of the few scouting-viable mechs the Clans have remaining, all based on some bullsh*t argument about jump sniping. Frankly, I can't remember when I last saw a Hunchie IIC poptarting, and in any event a Nova or a Shadowcat can poptart at least as good if not better. But hell, PGI knows better, as usual...

Edited by DGTLDaemon, 20 January 2017 - 10:57 PM.