196 replies to this topic

[WolvesX]

Andi Nagasia, on 04 March 2017 - 02:42 PM, said:

sorry it does have lots of Structure Quirks, 149Structure more to be Exact, thats alot of extra Structure,
its also this that helps balance the AS7-D-DC to a KDK, not just agility(which is mostly the same) AS7 has better Yaw,

1) Structure =/= Armor
2) Yaw 22° isn't decisive

Why do you only see KDK-3s in competitive lineups? Because I guess 22° yaw isn't that important after all.

Edited by WolvesX, 04 March 2017 - 03:18 PM.

[MicalMikalMoto]

It is my understanding that certain mechs (ie. the Orion) that needed mobility quirks to make them viable will simply have their base stats increased equal to the quirk values. In this way they will not lose out when the quirks are taken away.

[Andi Nagasia]

WolvesX, on 04 March 2017 - 03:16 PM, said:

1) Structure =/= Armor
2) Yaw 22° isn't decisive

Why do you only see KDK-3s in competitive lineups? Because I guess 22° yaw isn't that important after all.

i agree, but ive always thought IS should always get Armor adn Clan should always get Structure,
as you cant Crit past Armor it helps more than Structure so IS have more in the way of Crit Protection,
as more Structure allows more of a chance to get your internals Crit, IS weapons crit more,

but ya, if the D-DC got all its structure converted into Armor, then it would be completely in the D-DCs favor,

Edited by Andi Nagasia, 04 March 2017 - 03:41 PM.

[WolvesX]

Chantofthesilent, on 04 March 2017 - 03:18 PM, said:

It is my understanding that certain mechs (ie. the Orion) that needed mobility quirks to make them viable will simply have their base stats increased equal to the quirk values. In this way they will not lose out when the quirks are taken away.

If you read my opening post and look into the PDFs provided by PGI you would see they not only mobility ones have been nerfed / removed.

The point of this thread here is to make aware of the fact that PGI will make many underperformers even worse than now by nerfing them further without reason to do so.

[Chound]

WolvesX, on 04 March 2017 - 03:16 PM, said:

1) Structure =/= Armor
2) Yaw 22° isn't decisive

Why do you only see KDK-3s in competitive lineups? Because I guess 22° yaw isn't that important after all.

Yaw is the ability to move left and right. So thge mech can torso twist 22 degrees left or right. that doesn' t matter as much if you peek and poptart a lot.

[SuperFunkTron]

I voted no to the survey for a simple reason. PGI stated in the PTS 2 explanation that there goal was to make a broad and general foundation on PTS 2. They made no hint to this being the final balance, and even mentioned that continued balancing would follow the release of the system.

The part where I get lost is figuring out what quirks have been "absorbed" into the base mech chassis, thus not showing up as a buff, and how much is marked up as a clear buff on top of that. And didn't they mention that in many cases, IS nodes will provided a bigger boost than clan nodes or did I misread that?

Another thing reason that I don't see setting a base line as all bad is the fact that they significantly reduced the health of clan weapons to account for clan mechs being able to carry more. To me, it makes more sense to create a fresh baseline with minimal quirks to have a clear idea where the two technologies stand in relation to each other after the massive changes to the weapon and mech health, movement, critical hit, and and upgrade systems. This is essentially a new iteration of the game, and rather than rushing to an assumed balance, It makes more sense to examine the baseline first.

I want it to balance in the end, but a little scientific method helps us achieve a more objective balance than trying to recreate the old system in the new.

[JC Daxion]

How many times does this thread need to be made?


They have removed quirks on EVERY major balance PTS so far.. They add them back after they get baseline..

That is how they should be balancing this..

[Wintersdark]

WolvesX, on 04 March 2017 - 10:48 AM, said:

So thanks for the replays. Here is my test.

Two 100 Tonners.

ATLAS-D-DC vs KDK-3

So this mech got no better movment and just lost boni it had in the first place because it is considered worse in comparison.

Yes, I said this in my post. The AS7/kdk/kgc was one of my examples where that happened.

I'm not arguing against you here. I'm not some silly clammer pushing for clan superiority - that's meaningless to me, with over a hundred IS Mechs and not playing FW at all.

Just saying it's complicated, because there are a lot of examples where IS ended up with a substantial buff relative to comparable clan Mechs as well.

This isn't a flat nerf to IS. It's not a flat nerf to clans either. There are winners and losers, and further balancing will be required.

Remember, the engine decoupling fundamentally is much better for IS overall vs. Clans overall. Not making any assumptions about how much impact that has, just that there are MANY changes happening.

[SuperFunkTron]

I just saw a video that Snuggles time released today and it showed a huge difference between armor node buffs in IS and Clan mechs (IS gets much larger buffs).

If what he shows in his video is consistent across all the mechs, it looks like the IS will get a huge bump in durability which would do a lot in terms of balancing the clan weapons range benefits.

[oldradagast]

JC Daxion, on 04 March 2017 - 04:55 PM, said:

How many times does this thread need to be made?

They have removed quirks on EVERY major balance PTS so far.. They add them back after they get baseline..

That is how they should be balancing this..

Except how can you balance something if a good chunk of it is missing - the quirks?

Also, given that no major changes have come out of their PTS adventures in the past (info tech, energy draw, etc.), we can't really say that their proposed system works.

[Gas Guzzler]

Wintersdark, on 04 March 2017 - 05:01 PM, said:

Remember, the engine decoupling fundamentally is much better for IS overall vs. Clans overall. Not making any assumptions about how much impact that has, just that there are MANY changes happening.

Just noticed Russ's retweets of you saying light mobility is good on the PTS? REALLY?? Lights are death traps still on the PTS.. with garbage turning radii.

[Wintersdark]

Gas Guzzler, on 04 March 2017 - 09:23 PM, said:

Just noticed Russ's retweets of you saying light mobility is good on the PTS? REALLY?? Lights are death traps still on the PTS.. with garbage turning radii.

Ones I tried felt pretty good to me, had a blast tearing around with them.

Are you feathering the throttle?

Play with throttle decay on, let it off for the first half a turn then hit it again. This applies for other classes too, of course. You only slow a little bit but it practically doubles your turning speed. Torso twisting is if anything maybe too fast - you can swap from stop to stop in a fraction of a second.

Edited by Wintersdark, 04 March 2017 - 11:29 PM.

[Kmieciu]

Light mechs are the least popular weight group on live server.
Decreasing their agility is a mistake.
It does not matter whether other weight classes were also nerfed.
Gauss and PPC velocity remain the same. In fact, top performing clan mechs will get increased velocity from the skill tree.
That means one-shoting light mechs becomes even easier.

[Wintersdark]

I certainly didn't try all light Mechs, or even a representative sample. I bought a spider purely to test the extremes of JJ silliness (and it's utterly outrageous) but it certainly felt extremely twisty and turny.

I've always feathered the throttle when turning, though, if your just turning at max speed your experience will differ.

[Aramuside]

Wintersdark, on 02 March 2017 - 10:47 AM, said:

Both sides "gained" the same amount of buffs. The gap between both is the same. If the totals in the PTS are higher than live, then IS gained less.

Consider for a silly numerical explaination:

Live: IS strength 10, Clan strength 15. IS = 66.7% of clan.

Give both sides +3 buff equally. IS = 13, Clan = 18. IS = 72.2% of clan.

THUS, the gap is now closer, by your logic.

Not sure if you're trying to be disingenuous here but lets be honest some Clan mechs get much better under the new system. Rather baffling as they were considered too powerful to get quirks before. Some IS mediums which survived on agility and speed are also much worse. The Op just picked the wrong examples in some cases. Hoping PGI remedy that as they did with the current patch for most lights.

[xe N on]

Wintersdark, on 02 March 2017 - 10:47 AM, said:

Both sides "gained" the same amount of buffs. The gap between both is the same. If the totals in the PTS are higher than live, then IS gained less.

Consider for a silly numerical explaination:

Live: IS strength 10, Clan strength 15. IS = 66.7% of clan.

Give both sides +3 buff equally. IS = 13, Clan = 18. IS = 72.2% of clan.

THUS, the gap is now closer, by your logic.

Nice simple model, but you got some mistakes:

Lets take your numbers:

Live:
IS 10 - Clan 15
IS = 66.7% of clan.

PTS without skill tree
IS 7 - Clan 15 (-3 for IS because IS loosing quirks)
IS = 53,3% of clan.

PTS with skill tree
IS 10 - clan 18
IS = 55,6% of clan.

Beside the fact that this model is quite oversimplicate things alot ...

Edited by xe N on, 05 March 2017 - 12:19 AM.

[Weeny Machine]

Kmieciu, on 04 March 2017 - 11:18 PM, said:

Light mechs are the least popular weight group on live server.
Decreasing their agility is a mistake.
It does not matter whether other weight classes were also nerfed.
Gauss and PPC velocity remain the same. In fact, top performing clan mechs will get increased velocity from the skill tree.
That means one-shoting light mechs becomes even easier.

Sums it up nicely.

I cannot understand why the agility of lights has to suck (compared to other classes). I mean the class is all about speed and agility. It is their only defense and weapon because of their lighter weight they usually lose range, armour, structure, heat dissipation, alpha strike etc

The problem is that most of the lights are easy to hit now because of the re-sizing. Just look which lights do well. Locust and ACH. Both mechs weren't affected or even profited from their new size. PGI doesn't realize that it seems. Heck, I am no good shot but I have no problems at all to get shots into a Jenner nowadays.

Instead of taking a step back and considering why lights are by a good margin the least played class and heavies the most played class, PGI just seems to keep the status quo from the live servers. Wait, that's no entirely true. The quirks from the skill tree will help overperformers even more so heavies will have it even easier to blow up lights.

I wrote Russ on Twitter. I suggest someone who also likes light and medium mechs should do the same or it is likely that two queues will be soon pretty depopulated

[Mad Dog Morgan]

Mechs will definitely need a re-evaluation of the bonuses that they receive on a case-by-case basis. This is a good foundation, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired in its current state.

A lot of the outliers and underperformers will need to be looked at with a good, healthy level of scrutiny and rebalancing to ensure that they are (reasonably) competitive in some regards and bring something to the table that other variants or chassis don't.

Balance isn't about making everything equal. It's about making the differences between things meaningful.

[WolvesX]

SuperFunkTron, on 04 March 2017 - 07:53 PM, said:

I just saw a video that Snuggles time released today and it showed a huge difference between armor node buffs in IS and Clan mechs (IS gets much larger buffs).

If what he shows in his video is consistent across all the mechs, it looks like the IS will get a huge bump in durability which would do a lot in terms of balancing the clan weapons range benefits.

Have you looked at the screenshots I posted from the PTS2.1?

They show that the bonus on the AS7-D-DC and the KDK-3 are exactly the same.

E/fixed typos

Edited by WolvesX, 05 March 2017 - 07:09 AM.

[Widowmaker1981]

The quirks arent right in several cases (IS 100 tonners are the best example), but there are a few things to note here:

1) Stacking weapon quirks with firewpower tree is powerful. very powerful. Go check the crazy schitt you can do with the Enforcer-5R - 35% LL range along with 25% laser duration. Weapon quirks are something to be careful with here. Weapon quirks need to be kept small on most mechs or we will have crazyness.

2) IS mechs are getting considerably higher base agility stats as a general rule - especially the good Clan Battlemechs (KDK, MAD-IIC, HBK-IIC) are getting BAD agility. (apart from previously mentioned screwed up 100 tonners being equal on agility to KDKs and Dires.. WTF) where they used to have worse agility due to generally smaller engines. Thats going to make a big difference to overall faction balance.