212 replies to this topic

[Tarogato]

Kaeb Odellas, on 17 June 2017 - 02:31 AM, said:

Fair, but that's apparently how big they're supposed to be according to PGI's volume/tonnage formula. And it's not like they were very hard to hit before the rescale either. Increasing size and toughness makes them less susceptible to getting instagibbed by streaks, at the cost of being easier to hit by everything else.

I would have liked to see them get more speed per engine rating. Actually, I'd like to see individualized speed/engine formulas for each mech.

Yeah, I'm never going to let up on this... but PGI's "volume/tonnage formula" is wrong. Very wrong. They picked the wrong mechs to scale by.

If you want more "speed per engine rating", then you make them smaller. That's how things work. In Battletech, mechs travel a certain speed, defined in kilometers per hour. In a game engine, you can measure distances in meters, so mechs will always travel at a certain rate relative to the ground (and relative to the environment), it's not just some arbitrary made up amount. Now here's the thing, if something is 18 meters tall and travels 48kph, we consider that to be rather slow. As a target, very easy to hit. But what if it was 2 meters tall? That's a human traveling faster than Usain Bolt. That's very fast, and as a target, very hard to hit. At a constant speed, the smaller you go, the faster you appear to travel.

Now, in MWO we complain about pinpoint alphas all the time, having mechs getting deleted off the battlefield left and right. What if I told you... that the Atlas isn't supposed to be 18m tall like it appears in MWO? In Battletech... an Atlas is somewhere between 12m and 15m at most. What if you scaled alllllllll of the mechs down in MWO, so that they now appear to travel slightly faster relative to their dimensions? They'd spread damage a liiiiiittle bit more. And what if I told you, that 35-ton lights were just fine the way they were before PGI made them larger, and that by making them bigger, PGI ensured that they traveled too slowly relative to their dimensions, and thus were made easier targets on the battlefield and needed to have their durability artificially inflated to counteract this mistake? And same was true of the Locust on the other extreme. Mostly fine before the rescale, and now too small post-rescale. The way PGI went about approaching scale really effed this game in a way most people don't think about. The mechs that suffer most are in the 35-to-60-ton region - many just being too easy to shoot at, and not having the durability and offensive capability to withstand it like the heavier mechs do.

[Ced Riggs]

Let's not forget that 48kph for an Atlas and 48kph for a Locust aren't just different for relative speed to size, it also means that the Atlas has relatively shorter strides, too. If something becomes larger, it's ground pace increases if applied force scales, too. Essentially, in MWO/BT, larger mechs use larger engines to move slower, because the strides get shorter and shorter. Compare the springy bounce of a Raven to the hobble of a Direwhale.

[Kaeb Odellas]

There's no reason a Jenner and a Firestarter both have to run at the same top speed with a 295 engine. There could be room for variation there, I think.

[El Bandito]

Kaeb Odellas, on 17 June 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

There's no reason a Jenner and a Firestarter both have to run at the same top speed with a 295 engine. There could be room for variation there, I think.

At least give the Firestarter better hill climb, cause of useless hand actuator taking up space.

[CanadianCyrus]

Damnit! They just had to nerf the ENF-4R. Guess it had it coming eventually, it was the best LL boat and only got better with the Skill Tree. But please, don't call it a buff for "diversity", those energy/LL quirks are what made the ENF stand out compared to the other 50T mechs. It didn't have Energy Hardpoint numbers to rival the HBK in energy weapon boating, nor did it have the weapon locations in high spots for effective hill peaking like the HBK. Sure it had a ballistic HP, but to utilize it meant losing at least 2 LLs. Mobility buffs are completely redundant with the ENF 4R, which had zero issue pre and post Skill Tree being able to peak. Again, I knew it had to be coming, but this isn't a positive towards pushing the ENF towards any sort of "diversity".
As it is, the one needing any sort of buff to mobility is the Centurion. With its CT usually having 2 Energy HPs, it forces either low range medium (pulse) lasers or losing a HP for a larger energy weapon. Then it also has a number of Missile HPs that when not being used for LRMS, again forces the mech to use low range SRMS. Until ER Mediums and MRMs show up next month, the CN9 is pigeon holed into closer range builds than the other 50T mechs if it wants to fill out it's HPs.

[Bud Crue]

Deathlike, on 16 June 2017 - 08:40 PM, said:

So... new balance overlord... same as the old balance overlord?

Thy spreadsheet doth protest too much?

Chances are no real comp player was consulted... instead it was super potato. I don't even remember the last time IS SL was a thing (IS SPL was a brief thing when Firestarters weren't huge and 8 SPL FS9-A was kind of the only good option w/o quirks for IS SPL).

Well, if I may be so bold as to type for the potato-ish part of the community...I am not seeing how this helps us/them. Nerf to the LRM 5, the most potato-y of potato weapons. In considering the energy weapon changes, think about what all those duration and cooldown changes are going to do to the potato players. Think its going to help them, or make them worse? I feel pretty confident...no, I KNOW...that these changes are going to hurt the lower level players FAR more than they will those of you at the upper echelons. You think you have seen some rotten potatoes? You aint seen nuthin.

[oldradagast]

Well, that should kill laser vomit - not that doing so is a good thing - and light mechs since most of them could only laser vomit anyway because of their low tonnage. Good thing this happened - I recently saw the light queue get to 10%, and we just can't have it that high?!

Honestly, the only change I wanted was to give the IS a reason to take the IS PPC over the large pulse laser. The PPC has hit-reg issues, more heat, a totally stupid minimum range that is NOT reflected in tabletop as a 0-damage cutoff limit, and takes 3 crit slots. They still have done anything to fix those issues with the PPC; instead, they just knock 1 point of damage off the large pulse laser... ugh.

[razenWing]

Tarogato, on 17 June 2017 - 03:19 AM, said:

Yeah, I'm never going to let up on this... but PGI's "volume/tonnage formula" is wrong. Very wrong. They picked the wrong mechs to scale by.

If you want more "speed per engine rating", then you make them smaller. That's how things work. In Battletech, mechs travel a certain speed, defined in kilometers per hour. In a game engine, you can measure distances in meters, so mechs will always travel at a certain rate relative to the ground (and relative to the environment), it's not just some arbitrary made up amount. Now here's the thing, if something is 18 meters tall and travels 48kph, we consider that to be rather slow. As a target, very easy to hit. But what if it was 2 meters tall? That's a human traveling faster than Usain Bolt. That's very fast, and as a target, very hard to hit. At a constant speed, the smaller you go, the faster you appear to travel.

Now, in MWO we complain about pinpoint alphas all the time, having mechs getting deleted off the battlefield left and right. What if I told you... that the Atlas isn't supposed to be 18m tall like it appears in MWO? In Battletech... an Atlas is somewhere between 12m and 15m at most. What if you scaled alllllllll of the mechs down in MWO, so that they now appear to travel slightly faster relative to their dimensions? They'd spread damage a liiiiiittle bit more. And what if I told you, that 35-ton lights were just fine the way they were before PGI made them larger, and that by making them bigger, PGI ensured that they traveled too slowly relative to their dimensions, and thus were made easier targets on the battlefield and needed to have their durability artificially inflated to counteract this mistake? And same was true of the Locust on the other extreme. Mostly fine before the rescale, and now too small post-rescale. The way PGI went about approaching scale really effed this game in a way most people don't think about. The mechs that suffer most are in the 35-to-60-ton region - many just being too easy to shoot at, and not having the durability and offensive capability to withstand it like the heavier mechs do.

I don't know, do you feel fast in a stock urbie?

--------

Let's understand what 48 kph REALLY means. That's ~28 mph. In most US neighborhood, you are going under the speed limit. M1 battle tank is ~68 tons and go 74 kph. Still really f-ing slow if you ask me, but we fight on planet Earth.

These battlemechs fight in the stars... The one issue I've never been able to resolve of this entire franchise is how a few mechs can possibly occupy a city, let alone a planet. And those mechs are slow as dirt. You can literally outbike your Atlas. Of course... this is not an easy issue to resolve for a game that craps out with physics and hit reg. over 150 kph.

But let's be frank, the lore setting is pure shat. It's done by people that know how to steal from other people, but have no real life imagination or understanding of how things should work. And that's a real shame.

-----------

anyways, I digress... DOWN WITH THE MARAUDER AND NIGHT GYR NERF! More mechs under consideration for refund. How fun!

Edited by razenWing, 17 June 2017 - 05:15 AM.

[Bigbacon]

Kaeb Odellas, on 17 June 2017 - 01:05 AM, said:

12 CSPL Nova is just hilariously OP in quick play and scouting though. It needed a nerf.

I'm not sure about the extent of the nerf though. Holy cow.

its not really OP, fun, but not op... Nova is a pretty 'soft' and wide target. unless people are completely blind to you, you can get melted pretty damn fast or lose a arm and your toast anyway.

Edited by Bigbacon, 17 June 2017 - 05:07 AM.

[oldradagast]

I just love the missile quirks on the Grasshoppers... yeah, because that's going to be a thing... using that one head missile slot. Come on... Just another incentive for potato play.

And they still haven't converted all the stupid structure quirks over to armor quirks yet. Ugh - nobody cares about structure when your weapons all fall off the moment the armor is breached!

[Bigbacon]

Deathlike, on 16 June 2017 - 11:45 PM, said:

The only reason duration nerfs exist is because of the skill tree.

If you don't get the duration nodes when you are using lasers, prepared to get rekt.

Sucks even more if you are using a Trial Mech. Congrats at improving the non-existent NPE PGI!

and this.. I thought of this last night as well. This was a way to force you into weapons tree.

[Scyther]

Before the Skill Tree arrived, there was a ton of 'ZOMG this will be horrible!' posts, especially regarding quirk loss.

After the Skill Tree arrived, there was a ton of 'Ok, I guess this isn't really so bad. Maybe even good.' posts.

I'll be honest, I look at the Jun 20 notes and while in a few places I scratch my head and wonder why, mostly I don't see anything that will make a big change. For me, at least.

A couple things to keep in mind:
-Your 'weapon X' got nerfed/changed/buffed. So did every other 'weapon X' in the game.
-Your 'weapon X' got nerfed buffed, changing it's relative position to weapons W, Y and Z. However weapons W, Y and Z also received similar nerfs/buffs, so the actual relative position didn't change that much.
-Your 'loadout A' on 'mech B' won't work any more. Fine, there are other builds. Plus, all other 'mech B/loadout A' and similar mechs were similarly affected.
-Your quirks/base stats, which your build kinda relied on, were nerfed. Well, this one is a bit harder to deal with, but it really mostly affected actually OP mechs. So something was needed. Also, again, everyone else using that mech has the same issue.

When you stop thinking of changes as affecting 'just your mech/build', they get a little less harsh. Because every effective mech/build you have is also out there on the field shooting back at you.

That's not to say these changes are positive, only that we should probably give them a little shakeout time before tearing our hair out in frustration.

[Bud Crue]

MadBadger, on 17 June 2017 - 05:46 AM, said:

Before the Skill Tree arrived, there was a ton of 'ZOMG this will be horrible!' posts, especially regarding quirk loss.

After the Skill Tree arrived, there was a ton of 'Ok, I guess this isn't really so bad. Maybe even good.' posts.

I'll be honest, I look at the Jun 20 notes and while in a few places I scratch my head and wonder why, mostly I don't see anything that will make a big change. For me, at least.

A couple things to keep in mind:
-Your 'weapon X' got nerfed/changed/buffed. So did every other 'weapon X' in the game.
-Your 'weapon X' got nerfed buffed, changing it's relative position to weapons W, Y and Z. However weapons W, Y and Z also received similar nerfs/buffs, so the actual relative position didn't change that much.
-Your 'loadout A' on 'mech B' won't work any more. Fine, there are other builds. Plus, all other 'mech B/loadout A' and similar mechs were similarly affected.
-Your quirks/base stats, which your build kinda relied on, were nerfed. Well, this one is a bit harder to deal with, but it really mostly affected actually OP mechs. So something was needed. Also, again, everyone else using that mech has the same issue.

When you stop thinking of changes as affecting 'just your mech/build', they get a little less harsh. Because every effective mech/build you have is also out there on the field shooting back at you.

That's not to say these changes are positive, only that we should probably give them a little shakeout time before tearing our hair out in frustration.

Perhaps your right, but positive or negative, get used to this sort of thing. You mentioned the skills tree and its impact. Now consider that in the context of your main point (that all of us are affected by these changes). How many players are going to be changing up builds in light of these changes? Changing their nodes to compensate? Spending lots of their excess GSP and other currencies to better adapt...some perhaps fairly extensive respecs? Now consider in two or three months when they change them again; when the nerf to the CSPL for example is backed off a bit.

The point is, is that this is the game we now play. They are going to be changing this stuff at intervals in order to force, at least those who care about performance, into spending their currencies in a never ending struggle to adapt their mechs to the fluid state of of performance that PGI dictates. Get used to it. I guarantee that in 6 months time many if not all of these values will be different, likely with a variety of changes along the way. This isn't about balance. Its about sucking up the excesses that they have created so as to keep you c-bill poor and thus more likely to buy mechs with real money. That's all this is.

[Mister Blastman]

El Bandito, on 16 June 2017 - 11:49 PM, said:

But weight classes have to be taken into account, cause MWO includes GQ tonnage limits. Buff Lights too much by making Small class lasers do more DPS than Medium class lasers, and large groups would run even more wild.

Perhaps they need to address light 'mechs themselves if it is an issue, which I doubt they are. I remember clearly the last time they were--I'm sure you do, too. The Raven 3L in closed beta with streaks and mediums... beast packs. The screen blur from the streaks made it impossible to retaliate and was easy mode a la quad ac/10 kodiaks. But the main reason they excelled was their lag shield. Which we don't have anymore.

This change hurts heavier 'mech diversity extensively, particularly ones with large amounts of hardpoints but small amounts of tonnage.

It needs to be reverted for the sake of game quality.

[Mystere]

Rampage, on 16 June 2017 - 09:32 PM, said:

You have to look at all the energy weapon changes in the context of making the new Civil War weapons have a place to slot into.

IS gets erSL and erML, Light and Heavy PPC and Snub Nose PPC.

Clan gets erMicro Lasers and Micro pulse lasers plus Heavy small, medium and large lasers.

They have to slot those in somewhere. I will wait and see how this all plays out.

As I said earlier, their utter lack of foresight is what leads to these disruptive "balance" changes that mainly just upset people.

[Bud Crue]

Mystere, on 17 June 2017 - 06:17 AM, said:

As I said earlier, their utter lack of foresight is what leads to these disruptive "balance" changes that mainly just upset people.

Lack of foresight?

I think they have shown great foresight. Consider the meta sale they did? How many used their c-bill refunds to buy some of those meta mechs? I'd guess a LOT of folks did. Now consider the nerfs presented today, consider the changes to energy weapons. Did many of those mechs get hit with the bat? Are players going to shelve one or two of those mechs and consider buying something else, or maybe at least respecing toward new weapons? Yes they will.

PGI knows exactly what they are doing at least in regards to having some foresight in how to milk the new model.

[Burke IV]

Seems like ever patch brings a new salty sting these days. PGI obviously thinks that a medium missile skirmisher is not a role that should be in this game

Edited by Burke IV, 17 June 2017 - 06:28 AM.

[Mystere]

Aggravated Assault Mech, on 17 June 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

My autocannons are ready.

Well, my light suicide bombers are being primed and ready: dump an entire alpha -- preferably all SRMs -- plus artillery, and die. Then drop in a new game.

If I fail to kill an enemy Mech, too bad for my team. They'll have to deal with playing with just 11.

That's how pissed I am at the moment.

Edited by Mystere, 17 June 2017 - 06:32 AM.

[Gwahlur]

So... The sky's falling? :'(

[GrimReaper74]

Funny thing is... now they nerfed the clan lasers close to their IS counterparts... but do they adjust the ghost heat accordingly? Noooo. Also... I wonder, how the upcoming IS ER Lasers will fit into this scheme.

Edited by GrimReaper74, 17 June 2017 - 09:16 AM.