17 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

In response to the skill tree pod cast I just want to say fine to most of the stuff regarding economy and nodes etc. I can live with it. It's not the way I would have preferred it, but fine. It's not my game.

About balance though. When they say that the want to reduce the offensive quirks and establish a tech baseline that's very much agreeable. However, you can't just nerf the poor mechs that needs nerf and not at the same time reduce the power-level of the best mechs. If you want to adjust techs in the future, then also nerf the quirked mechs in the future. All you achieve by doing this now and balance it later is to ruin the balance we have while we are waiting for the improved future balance. Doing nothing would have been better.

The other statement: Clans will be hurt more by the engine agility decoupling. That's not true. The perhaps strongest mech in the game, the NGR, will be hurt much less by this than many other mechs because it already has an engine on the lower end and it's agility will not change that much. A few mechs with locked large engines will suffer, like the TBR. However, in terms of establishing a new base line it's not an argument that a few of the non-best clan mechs will be nerfed for nerfing other mechs that are also non-best mechs. As long as the NGR is the best mech, that's the scale by which every other mech will be measured. One also has to consider that there are many IS mechs that carry a large IS XL as their means to be viable, and these will be destroyed by engine decoupling much worse than any clan mech because these mechs will die on a side torso destruction with a slow twist speed for defense. Large IS XL will be a non-viable build unless chassi like BLR, BNC, BL-KNT etc gets agility buffs.

Looking at the quirks, they include nerfs to heat generation, weapons cooldown etc for mechs like: Locusts, Firestarters, Urbanmechs, Commandos, Spiders, Jenners, Raven, Cicadas, Blackjacks, Vindicators... I could go on and on and on. Vindicators.,.. enough said.

There's absolutely no reason to make balance worse while we wait for the new tech, or future possible tech balance passes. Please, save your nerfs to the under-performers until you intend to fix it.

I know others have said this as well, now I have said it too... can't be said enough.

Peace.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 11 March 2017 - 09:56 AM.

[El Bandito]

I just do not understand why PGI wanted to nerf a lot of IS mechs' offensive quirks when the new skill tree barely refunds those lost quirks, and serve to make Clan mechs even deadlier.

What did Rifleman-5D ever do to the PGI staff, to have its PPC velocity quirk reduced by 30%, and get only 10% refunded back through the new skill tree, for example?

The engine decoupling further affirms the need for XL normalization between factions. What use is large IS XL engine if the mech can't twist fast enough to save itself?

Edited by El Bandito, 11 March 2017 - 10:06 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

There's one thing that could do it slightly better, that's if there is a hidden agility nerf to NGRs in their base stat agility compared to other non-quirked heavies. I didn't have time to check that before the PTS went down.... anyone know if this is so? Could have sounded like it was implied in that pod-cast...

[WolvesX]

No worries bros.

PGI just choose to IGNORE the biggest feedback thread with the most participants:

https://mwomercs.com...erformers-pts3/

[Duke Nedo]

WolvesX, on 11 March 2017 - 10:03 AM, said:

No worries bros.

PGI just choose to IGNORE the biggest feedback thread with the most participants:

https://mwomercs.com...erformers-pts3/

Aye, I have participated in there as well. Just felt the need to voice this again in response to the pod-cast. It sounds like they think they are addressing this issue, but they really don't. Even if, and it isn't, but even if engine agility decoupling was only hitting clan mechs and left IS mechs untouched, it would still not justify nerfs to vindicators and orions, while leaving cyclops for example nearly untouched. Or nerfing KDK-2 while leaving KDK-3 untouched as another weird example. Why?

The nerf-list is really inconsistent and does about everything except addressing the most OP mechs.

[MechaBattler]

I think the thought process seems to be. "We're reducing overall cooldown bonus, so we need to scale back IS quirks." Meanwhile. Top tier Clan mechs don't really need quirks. But they're not ballsy enough to actually give over performers negative quirks. So they're just increasing the gap, again.

If we lost around 5-6% cooldown. And we're getting 15% velocity from the skill tree. Then shouldn't the most they reduce the quirks be 6% less cooldown to quirks and 15% velocity? Even if they can justify reductions in general. Some more specific cases are left with rather underwhelming and possibly useless quirks.

In the case of some really bad under performers, should they even have been touched? Like anyone runs the loyalty Wolverine. Aside from me when I'm in a masochistic mood.

[Lupis Volk]

At this point i honestly think with out of a shadow of a doubt that PGI are Clanner scum sent back in time to smear the IS so no one likes them and they're invasions will have a smoother run because of it.

Still can't fathom how the underpowered faction always get's the worst nerfs.

Buuuut i think that's the lack of blood talking. my tinfoil hat seems to have cut off the blood supply............

Edited by Lupis Volk, 11 March 2017 - 02:10 PM.

[Alan Davion]

El Bandito, on 11 March 2017 - 10:01 AM, said:

I just do not understand why PGI wanted to nerf a lot of IS mechs' offensive quirks when the new skill tree barely refunds those lost quirks, and serve to make Clan mechs even deadlier.

Got to keep those Clam players happy and superior yo.

Remember the last time they tried nerfing the Timber Wolf and Storm Crow back during the Phoenix Rising event and the poll to see whether they could sell them again?

People flipped their f***ing shite over what was honestly a minor nerf to the top 2 clan mechs. And many people voted No on the re-sale poll purely out of spite over those nerfs.

[Duke Nedo]

I just looked over the quirk nerf list again and tbh it just looks like someone went over the quirks with a hedge saw cutting off all high values without any insight as to why they were put there in the first place. Big value spotted, no we can't have that. Here's a mech with smaller quirks, we can probably leave that one alone, good. Seriously?

Pro tip: big numbers were there for a reason, mostly having to do with hardpoints and hitboxes. Nothing, absolutely nothing with the skill tree has changed any of that, the bad bots are still geometrically challenged. If you want to reduce the more extreme values because of policy or limitations or whatever (fair enough), then you need to compensate with something else.

[Paigan]

I guess some Mechs have to be nerfed to "quirk-counter-finance" all the buffs to Mechs like my beloved laser-vomit MADIIC.
"Balance", you know.


(it will be GREAT! )

Edited by Paigan, 11 March 2017 - 03:17 PM.

[FupDup]

It really doesn't make sense since the new skill tree skills apply equally across the board. Thus, the "relative" balance between all mechs in the game would remain roughly the same if the base quirks were left 100% unchanged. Reducing the base quirks to "compensate" for the global skill tree increases the relative power gap.

I've had musings with the idea of a "skill multiplier" of sorts to fix this. Basically, it's an XML variable per mech that increases (or decreases) the effectiveness of each skill node. Thus, bad mechs get stronger skills for the same SP while good mechs get weaker skills. That's the only way it would make sense to make innate quirks weaker.

[Alan Davion]

FupDup, on 11 March 2017 - 03:20 PM, said:

It really doesn't make sense since the new skill tree skills apply equally across the board. Thus, the "relative" balance between all mechs in the game would remain roughly the same if the base quirks were left 100% unchanged. Reducing the base quirks to "compensate" for the global skill tree increases the relative power gap.

I've had musings with the idea of a "skill multiplier" of sorts to fix this. Basically, it's an XML variable per mech that increases (or decreases) the effectiveness of each skill node. Thus, bad mechs get stronger skills for the same SP while good mechs get weaker skills. That's the only way it would make sense to make innate quirks weaker.

Yeah, except for the fact that, you know, that would be "sensible" and "logical".

Two words that are clearly not part of PGI's vocabulary.

[Dryderian]

What I wonder is, why they introduced clans and the balancing issue so early in the first place. There are 600+ years of conflict between the Inner Sphere houses and a ton of IS mechs that are not here, also it would have been an opportunity to set up a decent IS faction warfare system without splitting the player base so hard and having time wokring on how to introduce the clans..

Edited by Dryderian, 11 March 2017 - 03:56 PM.

[Alan Davion]

Dryderian, on 11 March 2017 - 03:49 PM, said:

What I wonder is, why they introduced clans and the balancing issue in the first place so early.

IGP, the company PGI was paired up with for the first year or so of MWO's life.

Pretty much all the bad decisions made in MWO for the first year or two, the Clans included, were made because of IGP, and some of the bad decisions made by PGI in recent years literally PALE in comparison to some of the crap that IGP pulled on the MWO community.

[Elizander]

PGI could be jumping the gun and nerfing mechs based on the new weapons coming out. Doesn't make any sense otherwise. They could actually just wait until the new tech comes out before nerfing stuff or they just want to get the negative press out of the way early so that the new weapons patch doesn't have a lot of bad feelings coming with it if they nerf at the same time.

[Monkey Lover]

Elizander, on 11 March 2017 - 04:03 PM, said:

PGI could be jumping the gun and nerfing mechs based on the new weapons coming out. Doesn't make any sense otherwise. They could actually just wait until the new tech comes out before nerfing stuff or they just want to get the negative press out of the way early so that the new weapons patch doesn't have a lot of bad feelings coming with it if they nerf at the same time.

I was thinking maybe this too but then I see mechs get huge ballistic nerfs and then the Jager DD with a small "laser" duration nerf haha. I have no idea what they're doing. It looks like they want to remove anything with lots of quirks but this happens to be the worst mechs...

Edited by Monkey Lover, 11 March 2017 - 04:24 PM.

[Elizander]

Monkey Lover, on 11 March 2017 - 04:23 PM, said:

I was thinking maybe this too but then I see mechs get huge ballistic nerfs and then the Jager DD with a small "laser" duration nerf haha. I have no idea what they're doing. It looks like they want to remove anything with lots of quirks but this happens to be the worst mechs...

It makes no sense to me either. What I suggested before was +20% velocity to weapons like PPC and shave 20% quirks from the mechs overall, but the changes have not been consistent with this. Some mechs were hit harder than others for no particular reason that we can see right now and they did not explain in detail why they nerfed certain mechs more than others.

I'm not gonna worry about it right now though. I'm gonna go make some delicious split pea soup with sweet potato. :3

[Duke Nedo]

FupDup, on 11 March 2017 - 03:20 PM, said:

It really doesn't make sense since the new skill tree skills apply equally across the board. Thus, the "relative" balance between all mechs in the game would remain roughly the same if the base quirks were left 100% unchanged. Reducing the base quirks to "compensate" for the global skill tree increases the relative power gap.

I've had musings with the idea of a "skill multiplier" of sorts to fix this. Basically, it's an XML variable per mech that increases (or decreases) the effectiveness of each skill node. Thus, bad mechs get stronger skills for the same SP while good mechs get weaker skills. That's the only way it would make sense to make innate quirks weaker.

Aye, I have made that suggestion too, got shot down because unskilled mechs would be too horrible. At this point it wouldn't bother me too much though... There just needs to exist a mechanism for helping the weak mechs, even if techs are perfectly balanced. There will always be awesomes, warhawks, mist lynxes and dragons. Multipliers between 0.5 and 3.0 or something like that could perhaps be interesting. Balance by a single number is a bit scary in it self, but easy to manage.

Guess we'll just have to wait a few more days and find out. I am not at all worried about the economy of node costs any more. I only worry about how much worse balance will be and how badly this will become Night Gyrs Online. If that happens, node cost doesn't matter because my favorite game for the last years will be gone. Considering how long it usually takes PGI to recover from a balance flustercuck I won't be holding my breath. Especially since this coincides pretty well with the launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda and the battletech beta. I have a feeling the steam charts will be ugly. I didn't play for like the two last weeks just in anticipation of this. Can't find the motivation to log in.