230 replies to this topic

[Gas Guzzler]

DAYLEET, on 22 March 2017 - 11:40 AM, said:

You realise how ridiculous it is that we have to compare plain srm4 to Artemis'd Srm6? A Launcher that is twice as heavy, requires half as much critspace with a cooldown that puts you into defensive mode for one second longer, an eternity in a turning fight and for what? for half more missile that gets to spread more the more you add. Mech that can boat asrm6 should be clear winner versus a plain srm4, not this 4 point more damage for all that drawback.

I'm not comparing weapon to weapon, I'm comparing loadout to loadout. aSRM6 loadouts are more powerful, 4 aSRM6 GRF > 6 SRM4 Bushwacker for example, despite them both having 24 tubes.

[Deathlike]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 March 2017 - 01:59 PM, said:

Well I ended up just using that.

See how simple that was?

It's the solution to everything that you cannot comprehend in MWO.

[DAYLEET]

Gas Guzzler, on 22 March 2017 - 02:08 PM, said:

I'm not comparing weapon to weapon, I'm comparing loadout to loadout. aSRM6 loadouts are more powerful, 4 aSRM6 GRF > 6 SRM4 Bushwacker for example, despite them both having 24 tubes.

But is it something you experienced and tested yourself? Could it be tied to the mech? I dont own bushwacker and in my latest 200 match ive only noticed 2 of them. I really dont feel like they could dance with a GRF. Their agility is worse than a GRF and their silhouette isnt great either. 6srm4 on a med is starting be be limiting in a lot of ways and the mech is the problem here.

[L1f3H4ck]

It used to be the convetional wisdom that you dont need Artemis for SRM4s and LRM5s. That wasn't a nerf, their spread was slightly op, and they got adjusted accordinly. Now Arti actually makes sense for them. But my Splatwacker sans Artemis still works just fine, so this one is a total non-issue for me.

Edited by Frechdachs, 22 March 2017 - 02:38 PM.

[Weeny Machine]

Bishop Steiner, on 21 March 2017 - 06:12 AM, said:

So...OMG..they are trying reduce the amount of alpha damage out there.... END OF DAYS!

Ummm...what? The alphas of the peek-a-boo boats are the problem. Brawlers are currently our least problems.

[FupDup]

Bush Hopper, on 23 March 2017 - 12:45 PM, said:

Ummm...what? The alphas of the peek-a-boo boats are the problem. Brawlers are currently our least problems.

Another thing...this nerf will likely encourage more use of the (A)SRM6 instead of the (A)SRM4. The former has a higher alpha strike than the latter. Nerfing the latter therefore increases the alpha strike of SRM builds, not decrease.

[Athom83]

FupDup, on 23 March 2017 - 12:51 PM, said:

Another thing...this nerf will likely encourage more use of the (A)SRM6 instead of the (A)SRM4. The former has a higher alpha strike than the latter. Nerfing the latter therefore increases the alpha strike of SRM builds, not decrease.

Again, SRM4s are half the tonnage as the aSRM6s, so ton for ton the SRM4s have the higher alpha as you get 8 tubes not 6. Yes, the aSRM6 will be more accurate, but that is as designed. You lose some outright alpha and DPS capability for improved accuracy. The reason for the nerf was the 4 was not a great enough step between the 2 and 6, making the 4 the obvious choice for standard SRMs.

[Bishop Steiner]

FupDup, on 23 March 2017 - 12:51 PM, said:

Another thing...this nerf will likely encourage more use of the (A)SRM6 instead of the (A)SRM4. The former has a higher alpha strike than the latter. Nerfing the latter therefore increases the alpha strike of SRM builds, not decrease.

if these builds had that spare tonnage just laying around to do that, I think we would have seen it already.... .3 tighter grouping, 4.3 more damage..... hmmmmmm.

And that means, to add 2 tons per launcher... we are now going to see it at the expense of something else.

More likely, we'll see a single ton added, and see more aSRM4s, which will also come at the expense of something else.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 23 March 2017 - 01:02 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Athom83, on 23 March 2017 - 12:59 PM, said:

The reason for the nerf was the 4 was not a great enough step between the 2 and 6, making the 4 the obvious choice for standard SRMs.

That indicates the issue with how SRM2s and aSRM2s are bad overall and how bad the standard SRM6 is compared to both SRM4s and the aSRM6.

Understanding the context is pretty important. All they did was removed another SRM from the meta leaving only the aSRM4 and aSRM6 as the clear choices to do splat.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 23 March 2017 - 01:03 PM.

[Splatshot]

Athom83, on 22 March 2017 - 11:28 AM, said:

Man, forgot my tinfoil hat. Give me a second. Ah, got it. OMG no balance change never balance nerf nerf nerf nerf buff PGI fault!
Seriously though, the reasons for the appearance of being unable to balance are as follows;
1) Data collected can be skewed by extremes and bugs. Take the B33f video from quite a while ago where there was a bug with the missile cooldown on a mech, setting it to 1000%. Things like that can artificially inflate statistics of certain things. Or take a very skilled player who plays "bad" mechs against very new players with "meta/op" mechs. The skilled player gets many kills and **** tons of damage and points, while the newer players did **** all. Does this mean that the mechs were to blame for the performances shown?
2) Everything new added or changed invalidates previously collected data as a whole new set of data is then required to be built. Not only for the thing changed, but everything else as well as all of that data was collected and built with the basis of the original statistics.
3) Comparing things for balance is difficult to do as they all have their own statistics that are dependent and independent to other things.
4) The variety of views that can come out of a source because of the truly massive amounts of variables involved. Figuring out the variables in something like y = ax+b is easy if you have your x and/or y. But then given something else like f(yn) = (ax^n - bx^(c-n / x) + d) / n^e - x^n, what does a and b equal now?

All those work for reasons for me.

But there are others, in the TT did really matter if weapon was mounted high or low, no they all would be able to fire over the hill. Here not so much. So with mechs having different locations of weapons, how do you balance that.

There will always be mechs that cannot compete. That would mean unbalanced right?

Name one MechWarrior multiplayer video game title that has been able to be successfully balanced.

I agree, Regarding mechs in general, how do you actually get viable data, as i would guess not all mech builds or player skill levels are the same so that data would not be. So even if you drop the top level and bottom level scores is that a true
representative value for that mech? Then you have play style to deal with. Let alone different armor level, engines, modules, and skills.

So what do you do, just adjust the balance to the meta, and go from there, or do you adjust from the middle were most players are?

There are no good answers as there are too many things to balance, regardless of it being PGI or someone else.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Kiran Yagami, on 21 March 2017 - 05:32 AM, said:

To deserve a nerf? As an IS pilot, I only use SRM 4 if I can fit at least 6 of them, and even then only if I'm taking another weapon as a finisher. The whole point of them is that they're just tight enough to not make Artemis mandatory, but not so tight as to be able to finish off a mech with SRM 4s alone. I'd almost always take 4 x ASRM 6 over 6 x SRM 4 if I could afford the weight, since 6 x ASRM 4 is way too heavy, but on some mechs that extra weight Artemis tags on to the SRM 6 pack gimps your ammo stores, hence the SRM 4 sans Artemis option. So which mechs were so OP with non-Artemis SRM 4s that caused it to get the nerf bat? Why take SRM 4 over SRM 6 + Artemis now? The spread nerf was pretty significant, so it's questionable if I can even get all missiles on target, let alone in the general area I point them at.

What did it do?

It was a better missile platform than SRM6+Artemis. So, that should raise a red flag to anyone who understands that weight and crit slots are the Balance Anchors in this game.

[Scout Derek]

Prosperity Park, on 23 March 2017 - 04:33 PM, said:

What did it do?

It was a better missile platform than SRM6+Artemis. So, that should raise a red flag to anyone who understands that weight and crit slots are the Balance Anchors in this game.

better crit slot usage, better tonnage per item, better CoF.

[Dee Eight]

In classic battletech tabletop all missile and LBX autocannons were treated as cluster-hit weapons, and they all rolled on the cluster hits table to determine how MANY missiles/sub-munitions actually struck the mech, and they all had a chance, regardless of range (whether it was 1 hex away or 9 hexes or whatever) of striking every location facing them determined either 1d6 (if the legs were hidden you used the punch location table, or the torso was hidden you used the kick table) or 2d6 (full mech).

The fairest way to extrapolate that to MWO would have been to make them all have an identical spread regardless of missile launcher or LBX size and thus artemis on the missile clusters simply applies the same improvement to their spreads. Then as it was in CBT, the "balance" between particular launchers came down to their other stats of weight, crit spaces, heat, ammo, etc. Instead PGI gave us these variable spreads for the different launcher sizes and LB sizes...and the players have gotten complacent in thinking that is the only way it could ever be.

[FupDup]

Dee Eight, on 23 March 2017 - 04:56 PM, said:

In classic battletech tabletop all missile and LBX autocannons were treated as cluster-hit weapons, and they all rolled on the cluster hits table to determine how MANY missiles/sub-munitions actually struck the mech, and they all had a chance, regardless of range (whether it was 1 hex away or 9 hexes or whatever) of striking every location facing them determined either 1d6 (if the legs were hidden you used the punch location table, or the torso was hidden you used the kick table) or 2d6 (full mech).

The fairest way to extrapolate that to MWO would have been to make them all have an identical spread regardless of missile launcher or LBX size and thus artemis on the missile clusters simply applies the same improvement to their spreads. Then as it was in CBT, the "balance" between particular launchers came down to their other stats of weight, crit spaces, heat, ammo, etc. Instead PGI gave us these variable spreads for the different launcher sizes and LB sizes...and the players have gotten complacent in thinking that is the only way it could ever be.

Because the SRM2 and LB 2-X just aren't useless enough as it is.

[Scout Derek]

FupDup, on 23 March 2017 - 05:18 PM, said:

Because the SRM2 and LB 2-X just aren't useless enough as it is.

and the IS LB 2-x will be just as useless lol.

[Dee Eight]

FupDup, on 23 March 2017 - 05:18 PM, said:

Because the SRM2 and LB 2-X just aren't useless enough as it is.

The advantage of the SRM2 is that its a SRM launcher that only weighs 1 ton... Remember in the CBT environment... a mech used whatever launcher size for the role they were intended for in the lore... a wasp had a single SRM2 and a single medium laser... because as a harasser / scout light mech...that's all it needed to take on other light mechs. An LB-2X's use was for long range shooting...and the cluster rounds helped you at least achieve a hit, even if the hit was only for one of the two sub-munitions. An LB-2X out ranges a gauss rifle by 240 meters in CBT. Again look at the context of how they were designed i CBT... assault mechs didn't BOAT a half dozen of the things because that's not the job of such class autocannons... they were meant for light mechs for harassing and scouting roles.

[Deathlike]

Dee Eight, on 23 March 2017 - 05:32 PM, said:

The advantage of the SRM2 is that its a SRM launcher that only weighs 1 ton... Remember in the CBT environment... a mech used whatever launcher size for the role they were intended for in the lore... a wasp had a single SRM2 and a single medium laser... because as a harasser / scout light mech...that's all it needed to take on other light mechs. An LB-2X's use was for long range shooting...and the cluster rounds helped you at least achieve a hit, even if the hit was only for one of the two sub-munitions. An LB-2X out ranges a gauss rifle by 240 meters in CBT. Again look at the context of how they were designed i CBT... assault mechs didn't BOAT a half dozen of the things because that's not the job of such class autocannons... they were meant for light mechs for harassing and scouting roles.

There's a difference between practical in TT, and practical in MWO.

The only time you'd even see an SRM2 is in a Lolcust SRM spamboat. In every other instance, the best and effective use of SRMs are with SRM6s with Artemis with the occasional use of SRM4s in tonnage considerations.

Trying to use bad weapons for ineffective roles is still ineffective and bad.

[Dee Eight]

Deathlike, on 23 March 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

There's a difference between practical in TT, and practical in MWO.

There is, but using variable spreads is NOT a practical way to balance the different sizes of launchers and autocannons.

[FupDup]

Dee Eight, on 23 March 2017 - 05:32 PM, said:

The advantage of the SRM2 is that its a SRM launcher that only weighs 1 ton... Remember in the CBT environment... a mech used whatever launcher size for the role they were intended for in the lore... a wasp had a single SRM2 and a single medium laser... because as a harasser / scout light mech...that's all it needed to take on other light mechs. An LB-2X's use was for long range shooting...and the cluster rounds helped you at least achieve a hit, even if the hit was only for one of the two sub-munitions. An LB-2X out ranges a gauss rifle by 240 meters in CBT. Again look at the context of how they were designed i CBT... assault mechs didn't BOAT a half dozen of the things because that's not the job of such class autocannons... they were meant for light mechs for harassing and scouting roles.

The Bane and Mauler assault mechs do in fact boat class-2 Autocannons. Get rekt.

How many light mechs even use the LB 2-X or other class-2 ACs, anyways? It's a pretty damn tiny list. There are probably just as many big mechs using them as there are small mechs.

Edited by FupDup, 23 March 2017 - 05:41 PM.

[Deathlike]

Dee Eight, on 23 March 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

There is, but using variable spreads is NOT a practical way to balance the different sizes of launchers and autocannons.

I would tend to agree with LRMs than SRMs in this instance. LRMs are already affected by missile volley size... and adding spread would make more sense as a penalty if it were Clans due to compactness... which is the biggest natural advantage of the weapon system. PGI already had a specific change in mind anyways (streaming vs volley group size).

For SRMs, spread is actually more of a definable change so that the larger volley isn't automatically better. While the same logic was applied to LRMs, it's actually detrimental to the principle LRM mechanic. SRMs are pretty much straight forward in usage compared to LRMs, so unless you can find something better... SRM spread is probably more logical than LRM spread.


LBX as a system should always have variable spread in the first place... although the problem it actually has currently is that it's too condensed over a certain range (like super-close hump range instead of brawl range). It's been a consistent mechanic in the MW series... although I'd say the MWO version is way inferior to the MW4 version, and probably WORSE than the MW3 version (didn't care to use that garbage in MW2 since energy weapons tended to be a superior option there).