41 replies to this topic

[Weeny Machine]

Savage Wolf, on 30 May 2017 - 07:48 AM, said:

Positioning and Map Awareness. Yes, every weapon benefits from it, but LRMs more so.

And why does the solution always have to be more aiming? Is it so terrible that some weapons are based on other skills? Just fix them without making them like all the rest of the weapons. There are plenty point and click options already.


Yes, indeed a "Get gud" comment comming from T3. If I can handle it here, you should have learned already.

Once more, it is a stupid supression weapon which curbs more variety in gameplay.
As for "more aiming", yes, you should aim because this is *drumroll* a shooter. If you have problems with that, maybe that's not your genre or should use less LRMs so you learn it. And heck, because your reading comprehension is equally lacking: the problem in itself is not the lock mechanic per se but the easy access to it. If it were through NARC/TAG, then please, have it. I even would vote for a flight speed increase then.

[PyckenZot]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 07:23 AM, said:

I think you do not understand why people complain. It is not about a weapon system being over- or underpowered. It is about a silly lock mechanic which is too easy to access. Silly because is curbs diverse gameplay, e.g. it prevents brawling because as soon as you brawl you get a "missiles incoming" message and you have to disengage while taking shots and if unlucky a missile hit in the back. The result is that the peek-a-boo gameplay gets even more pronounced as it already is.

Personally I find missile boating boring. I take a lurm boat now and then for breaking the routine but that's it. It also feels like playing with a steering wheel. Also, as you implied, being not able to make "aimed" shots gets me annoyed pretty quickly.

Novo has been around long enough to know why people complain.

Most vets I talk to don't agree with complainers. The only thing they and I find annoying about lurm boats is when they're on our side and don't contribute (99% of the case that is, simply due to the weapon being so incredibly underpowered and easily countered). The lock mechanic helps nothing. See how usefull streaks are over normal SRMs, it only prevents brawling in the open on when you're on your own. It doesn't if you know what you're doing. The link with peek-a-boo is even more lost to me. Sniper meta does that way more than lurms, wouldn't you reckon? And how do lurms curb varried gameplay? If anything, they bring more variation to the game.

And yes, I drive lurms for a laugh as well. As stated earlier, if your team boats lurms it's a true laugh.

[Weeny Machine]

PyckenZot, on 30 May 2017 - 08:02 AM, said:

Novo has been around long enough to know why people complain.

Most vets I talk to don't agree with complainers. The only thing they and I find annoying about lurm boats is when they're on our side and don't contribute (99% of the case that is, simply due to the weapon being so incredibly underpowered and easily countered). The lock mechanic helps nothing. See how usefull streaks are over normal SRMs, it only prevents brawling in the open on when you're on your own. It doesn't if you know what you're doing. The link with peek-a-boo is even more lost to me. Sniper meta does that way more than lurms, wouldn't you reckon? And how do lurms curb varried gameplay? If anything, they bring more variation to the game.

And yes, I drive lurms for a laugh as well. As stated earlier, if your team boats lurms it's a true laugh.

Once more: I am NOT talking about OP or Upness of the weapon.
As I said: LRMs just support the sniper meta. So, I agree there with you. However, see it that way (an example): you get a sniper with his trousers down and want to kill him with your brawler. As soon as you engage "missile incoming" - from a dude which has not even LoS. Now you have to disengage...

Edited by Bush Hopper, 30 May 2017 - 08:08 AM.

[Ruccus]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

you get a sniper with his trousers down and want to kill him with your brawler. As soon as you engage "missile incoming" - from a dude which has not even LoS. Now you have to disengage...

Remember that when you kill the sniper the LRM boat loses LOS lock. High risk, high reward, but that's why I fit double or triple AMS on my brawlers when I can to lessen the LRM rain. Just 20 minutes ago I finished a match with my 12 Small Laser, triple AMS Nova and got 2 kills, 8 assists, 560-something damage, and shot down 944 missiles. There were so many LRMs flying overhead I ran out of AMS ammo (2 1/2 tons worth) halfway through the match.

[Savage Wolf]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 07:52 AM, said:

Once more, it is a stupid supression weapon which curbs more variety in gameplay.
As for "more aiming", yes, you should aim because this is *drumroll* a shooter. If you have problems with that, maybe that's not your genre or should use less LRMs so you learn it. And heck, because your reading comprehension is equally lacking: the problem in itself is not the lock mechanic per se but the easy access to it. If it were through NARC/TAG, then please, have it. I even would vote for a flight speed increase then.

Ah, yes. Lets not innovate a genre. A shooter can only be about shooting. Or more specificly shooting weapons you aim. Shooting in any other fashion is not shooting. Despite the name. Wouldn't have you need to expect being opposed by enemies that do other things than... aim. That would be... too complex.
I suppose you despise Lights as well. They have all that movement and mobility. That's not aiming or shooting.
Or objectives? Why bother with that? Just distractions from more aiming.

Why do you have to earn lock on? There is no real advantage to it or the weapon would be OP. If direct fire is so much better, I suggest you can only fire directly at target you have TAG'ed or NARC'ed. You need to earn that OP firing mode.

But maybe you are right. I do like games that include the use of more than one skill. And PGI do have problems creating mechanics that reward anything but more aiming. Despite promising otherwise.

[R Valentine]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 07:48 AM, said:

You can do that...when the missile boat is alone

You shouldn't be pushing alone no matter what you're playing, but moving towards LRM mechs negates their damage. Even if the LRM mech isn't alone, if you're under 200m you take less or no damage from them even when you're shooting at someone else. Get closer. That's how it works. If your team can't be bothered to move from behind their rocks then they deserve to die. Laugh at them, take your defeat and get on with your life. You can't fix stupid. When you find a team that closes the gap on LRM mechs you'll see just how pitiful they are. They only work against cowards.

[Pjwned]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 07:23 AM, said:

I think you do not understand why people complain. It is not about a weapon system being over- or underpowered. It is about a silly lock mechanic which is too easy to access. Silly because is curbs diverse gameplay, e.g. it prevents brawling because as soon as you brawl you get a "missiles incoming" message and you have to disengage while taking shots and if unlucky a missile hit in the back. The result is that the peek-a-boo gameplay gets even more pronounced as it already is.

If you have a hard time brawling because of getting hit by LRMs then you make terrible engagements; there's really no other conclusion to reach.

Quote

Personally I find missile boating boring. I take a lurm boat now and then for breaking the routine but that's it. It also feels like playing with a steering wheel. Also, as you implied, being not able to make "aimed" shots gets me annoyed pretty quickly.

I'm sure there's a lot of LRM pilots who feel similarly because LRMs are too unreliable to bring in mixed builds, so it's almost always either boat LRMs or nothing and that does actually get annoying.

[Savage Wolf]

Pjwned, on 30 May 2017 - 11:16 AM, said:

I'm sure there's a lot of LRM pilots who feel similarly because LRMs are too unreliable to bring in mixed builds, so it's almost always either boat LRMs or nothing and that does actually get annoying.

Wut!? All my good LRM mechs are mixed builds. You bring them in mixed builds because they are unreliable. All LRM boats are way too fragile.

[Pjwned]

Savage Wolf, on 30 May 2017 - 11:23 AM, said:

Wut!? All my good LRM mechs are mixed builds.

I'm aware that people do bring LRMs in mixed builds, but a few exceptions here and there doesn't say much.

Quote

You bring them in mixed builds because they are unreliable.

That's really not how it works most of the time. If a weapon is unreliable then generally it's boated nearly to the exclusion of everything else, because when you can make it work then you need to capitalize on it as much as possible by either having a lot of sustained firepower or a big alpha strike; PPCs and (less so) AC2 & AC5 are also somewhat similar in this way.

Quote

All LRM boats are way too fragile.

I don't think you're wrong but I don't think you're correct for quite the right reasons.

[Joshua Obrien]

PyckenZot, on 30 May 2017 - 06:14 AM, said:

AMS picks the missiles out of the sky,
ECM provides a magic hide bubble,
ECM makes getting a lock take forever,
Radar deprivation breaks locks instantaniously,
LRMs dumb damage all over the place.
Lurmboats are juicy targets.

As you can see, the lurmer's life isn't an easy one. Give him/her a break. If you recently got beaten into pulp by lurms,... you've done something wrong. Same as for any weapon type. If you recently got beaten into pulp because you had lurmers in the back that didn't push with you, you've done something wrong. Lurms are perfectly fine as they are: ie. useless but fun when used en masse.

I didn't say they needed to be nerfed, I said they should be reworked into a more skill intensive and rewarding weapon system. And no they're not okay as they are now.

[Savage Wolf]

Pjwned, on 30 May 2017 - 11:33 AM, said:

I'm aware that people do bring LRMs in mixed builds, but a few exceptions here and there doesn't say much.

I see them as often as the full lrm boats. *shrugs*

Pjwned, on 30 May 2017 - 11:33 AM, said:

That's really not how it works most of the time. If a weapon is unreliable then generally it's boated nearly to the exclusion of everything else, because when you can make it work then you need to capitalize on it as much as possible by either having a lot of sustained firepower or a big alpha strike; PPCs and (less so) AC2 & AC5 are also somewhat similar in this way.

That's mostly because these weapons often needs to be lead differently and makes them difficult to mix. However with a weapon that has locks, it's not hard to mix them. I also mix in mobility so that I can more easily find the favorable situations where LRMs work.
So I guess with unreliable weapons you can either gamble on them all the way or you can try and lessen the unreliability.

Pjwned, on 30 May 2017 - 11:33 AM, said:

I don't think you're wrong but I don't think you're correct for quite the right reasons.

Maybe.

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

Bush Hopper, on 30 May 2017 - 07:52 AM, said:

Once more, it is a stupid supression weapon which curbs more variety in gameplay.
As for "more aiming", yes, you should aim because this is *drumroll* a shooter. If you have problems with that, maybe that's not your genre or should use less LRMs so you learn it. And heck, because your reading comprehension is equally lacking: the problem in itself is not the lock mechanic per se but the easy access to it. If it were through NARC/TAG, then please, have it. I even would vote for a flight speed increase then.

Not sure I agree with this. What hinders gameplay is the fact that as soon as we step out from behind a rock we get spammed by Gauss and ERPPC. No possibly to roll the damage. At least LRM fire let's us twist and spread the damage across the armour.

As for "aiming", well there really should be more to a mech game than just aiming. Otherwise monkeys will be the best players

[Ced Riggs]

The Amazing Atomic Spaniel, on 31 May 2017 - 05:54 AM, said:

As for "aiming", well there really should be more to a mech game than just aiming.

I've seen this come up a couple of times now, and I am curious as to what skills other than aiming you deem worthy of reward (as in, dealing damage etc.). Not even being an *** now, I am geniunely interested in the perspective I seem to miss there.

[R Valentine]

Still no idea why everyone hates LRMs so much more than gauss/ppc, when one is clearly much stronger than the other. Gauss fire doesn't even do you the courtesy of showing you where the shot came from. You just take damage. LRMs you can track to their source, and you usually have more than enough time to seek cover or break the lock. Not true with gauss rifles. PPCs you can see coming, but are often still way too fast to dodge, and gauss fire is practically invisible to the intended target.

[Savage Wolf]

Ced Riggs, on 31 May 2017 - 06:12 AM, said:

I've seen this come up a couple of times now, and I am curious as to what skills other than aiming you deem worthy of reward (as in, dealing damage etc.). Not even being an *** now, I am geniunely interested in the perspective I seem to miss there.

• Positioning
  
• Map Awareness
  
• Scouting
  
• Team Play
  
• Strategy
  
• Leadership
  
• Influencing/Tricking enemies
  
• Circumventing enemy defenses
  
• Improvisation
  
• Tanking
  
• ECM/AMS support
  
• Winning

Right now, rewards mostly go to the ones that apply aiming above all else which is translated to damage and kills. Every function that supports this is rarely rewarded unless you yourself can capitalize on it. It's like an MMO where the DPS class get all the XP, but the Tank and the Healer get barely anything.

[Ced Riggs]

Savage Wolf, on 31 May 2017 - 06:28 AM, said:

• Positioning
  
• Map Awareness
  
• Scouting
  
• Team Play
  
• Strategy
  
• Leadership
  
• Influencing/Tricking enemies
  
• Circumventing enemy defenses
  
• Improvisation
  
• Tanking
  
• ECM/AMS support
  
• Winning

Right now, rewards mostly go to the ones that apply aiming above all else which is translated to damage and kills. Every function that supports this is rarely rewarded unless you yourself can capitalize on it. It's like an MMO where the DPS class get all the XP, but the Tank and the Healer get barely anything.

Then let's be fair here. Most if not all of these are already rewarded - implicitly or explicitly.

Positioning allows you to inflict damage at all/longer/better than the enemy. Poor positioning is punished, good positioning rewarded. Map Awareness is positioning in relation to enemy positioning and/or terrain, so, same deal. Scouting is currently rewarded with spot assists, CBill bonuses for targetting, UAV damage locks, etc. pp. - could be more, but it is awarded. Team Play is rewarded - teams that spread out and don't focus their fire lose to teams that form firing lines and have drop callers. Strategy/Leadership/Tactics are just fancy words for drop calling and positioning, so, dealth with. Influencing/Tricking the enemy/squirreling/PsyOps are already rewarded by having an enemy team turn incorrectly, resulting in superior positioning. Dealt with. Circumventing ... so, positioning. Improvisation, so ... map awareness/positioning/drop calling/scouting again. Tanking is implicitly rewarded by A soaking damage so B can deliver damage better/longer. AMS is rewarded in CBills/Match Score, ECM could use some mechanic to do that, too. Winning isn't much of a skill - and even then, already rewarded by more shekels/XP.

There are no healers in MWO. And tanks do need some sort of damage mitigation reward, agreed. Soaking damage should get rewarded to some degree, if you are within X of allies, to prevent yoloing into enemies for shekels. My already "IF THEN" statements might show how hard rewarding tanking could be.

Nevertheless, MWO is a combat game, and dealing damage and defeating the enemy is the prime goal. Anything you mentioned is a set of skills the damage dealer requires, and nothing new. You need to be in the right spot, with the right map awareness, and teamwork, and someone calling the drops, to deal more damage than the enemy and survive the punishment of returnfire better than them. LRMs have no skills outside of that what direct-fire already requires to be good. And aiming is the difference between being a warm body in a firing line or putting the enemy down faster. If you walk in a firing line and soak damage, cool. You are supporting your team. But if you can't land your shots, you are just a time/hitpoints buffer.

Enablers should be rewarded. But the executers are still doing most of the work. It takes little skill to walk with a deathball. Just like it takes little skill to fire off LRMs. It takes a lot more skill to land a tricky shot and take out a crucial component to soften an enemy team so you can run them over faster.

I don't even want to sing any elitist tirades here, but this reminds me of a tangentially related debate I experienced way back during Neverwinter Nights 2 times. People assumed that character builds optimised for combat could not roleplay, and characters misspecced and clicked together willy nilly were "more roleplay", and thus "bad at combat". The truth of the matter was that either build had to perform in roleplay, the prior just didn't suck at fighting. But, explaining that to the "roleplayers" was like talking to a wall, because they would not accept that their builds were simply unneccessarily weak - not because they had to be, but because they deliberately made them weaker - and they had no gains, because the perceived "powergamers" had to roleplay just the same.

And that's what I see when this topic comes up between LRM and direct-fire camps. Direct-fire requires any skill LRMs need to be at their peak potential, just that direct-fire additionally requires you to 1.) know, see, guess or remember what components are carrying what loadout 2;) know, see, guess or remember what components are weakened and 3,) be able to concentrate your damage into those components, whilst communicating your knowledge/observations with the team. "Atlas open CT, one-touch.", etc. - LRMs don't require any addtional skills other than hopefully focussing with the group as the drop caller projects. Direct-fire needs to know more about the target in general (chassis, hardpoints, quirked armor) and in specific (current damage state, XL engine yay/nay) and then captialize on that knowledge.

So, repeating myself: What other skill than aiming do you want to see rewarded - and how? Almost all the things you mentioned are implicitly rewarded, or outright result in higher matchscore and XP/cbills. The implict reward is getting a shot at a target. And that shot is gated by your aiming skills. Potentially hitting the target has no rewards, because it's an enabler not being executed upon.

Personally, I would like to see AMS, ECM, Scouting, Sensor Boost (Cyclops), UAV et.al. have a better payout/impact. But at the end of the day, this is a game where you need to kill the enemy team. And until we get proper UT-style Domination/BF-style Conquest, it will always be about that. Which sucks - I like myself a little more involved gameplay, such as Titanfall#s Attrition, or bespoke Conquest of Battlefield, but ... eh. (On that note, screw Incursion. Good idea, poor execution.)

Edited by Ced Riggs, 31 May 2017 - 07:07 AM.

[The Lobsters]

Reducing or removing the artemis lock speed bonus for indirect target locks would greatly reduce the potato play.
.
Make it so that only los artemis, tag, and narc offer lock speed bonuses. That way it won't really affect the aggressive lrm'rs.

[Savage Wolf]

@Ced Riggs
On many points we agree. The differences are mostly details. So let me try and elaborate upon them.

The reason for the MMO analogy of Healers and Tanks was that these are roles put in place to compliment and amplify eachother together with DPS. While it's the DPS that deals the most damage, they all contribute equally to victory. You agreed with me that Tanking should be rewarded more and I'd like to add squirrels and spotters to the list. Most support roles in the game give up dealing damage to enable others to do so and is rarely rewarded sufficiently for it.

And yes some of these skills are also very important to give you better chances at aiming and dealing damage so they do get rewarded if used for that purpose. But if used to support or going for objectives then if you are rewarded at all, then it's still less than just focusing on kills.

And that's really the center of this. Rewards are focused on damage and kills and while that fits well in Skirmish it's also part of why all other gamemodes desolves into Skirmish. Even in a good game mode like Conquest, many players entirely ignore the caps because killing is rewarded more. I can count many matches lost because of this. But it doesn't matter, because losing while doing kills is often rewarded better than playing the objective and winning.

Where the focus should be should be rewarding winning. All the skills I mentioned factors into winning. And the ones that already helped dealing damage still apply or can even be used more broadly since there are ways that deals less damage, but wins.

And relax, I know we are also here for combat. Also combat. But it's not up to the rewards to encourage that, it's the game modes. If winning requires combat, then we will have combat. A good example is again conquest, especially in faction play. You can cap and fight or fight to cap. You do not win in conquest without combat. Assault however can be won without combat. That's boring. I like objective play but I too want to fight while doing so. Same with Incursion and running with fuel cells.

And how do we accomplish this? My suggestion is simple. There is only one thing that grants you any extra reward: Winning. It shouldn't matter how you got there, you won. Congratulations. Same with PSR. The best at winning shall be Tier 1.

And then let me return to LRMs for a second. What skills do they require? Not aiming, that's true. But to ensure that you hit with LRMs you need to have time to get a lock, you need enough map awareness to predict if the lock hold long enough for the missiles to arrive and that the target wont find cover or another counter by the time the missiles arrive. To achieve this you require even better positioning for getting good arcs and circumventing cover while not being shot while the missiles fly. Also the potential for psyching the enemy is greater with LRMs.

So the skills needed for LRMs are also needed for regular direct fire weapons. But to compensate for the lack of the need to aim, the rest of the skills are required more and with a greater skill ceiling.

[Ced Riggs]

Savage Wolf, on 31 May 2017 - 09:13 AM, said:

@Ced Riggs

The game mode that has always seen the highest participation (where seperate queues or servers existed) was either UT's domination or Titanfall's attrition. Quick excourse:

UT Domination:
- Odd amount of "cap zones" (Usually 5 to 7)
- Even amount of "tickets" per team
- Imbalance in held cap zones results in ticket bleed.
- Respawning costs tickets.
- Capping goes fast and is based on "who has more dudes on point"
- Addendum from Battlefield: Holding certain zones adds some gimmicks.

TF Attrition:
- Odd amount of cap zone (usually 3)
- Same ticket thing as above, incl. fast capping, majority based.
- Each side has NPCs assisting (think 1 ML tanks/turrets), which are awarded at 10% less than player kills
- Ticket bleed, killing players and killing NPCs to reach victory.
- Bad players farm bots.
- Good players farm players.
- Both cap zones.

As a result, both of these game modes have a longer play time, losing your first mech isn't the end of the world, ticket amount can be adjusted for events/game length, bad players can contribute by capping (as capping, defending, attacking and holding is awarded with points), and good players can still murder to their heart's content.

These two game modes allow for lots and lots of secondary skills to come into play. They give a company commander the chance to actually maneuver forces. They give a lance commander the option to plan for his lance. Lance mates that stick with their lance and execute orders are awarded. Orders that are followed award commanders. Everyone has incentive to play together, and as a result, both BF's Conquest and TF's attrition had major resonance with either communities. TF 1's attrition lasted until the release of TF 2 - 2.5 years, without major updates or game mode changes, let alone additional content relevant to Attrition.

I know it's optimisitc to speak of such things, especially since we just witnessed Incursion, and how that failed... but... a man can dream.

[Rackminster]

LRM's are badly in need of a nerf.

Equip an AMS and 1 ton of ammo on every build. LRM's are never a problem again.