675 replies to this topic

[Gas Guzzler]

Arkhangel, on 15 July 2017 - 01:49 AM, said:

because, you know, listening to a vocal minority (people like you) instead of the Majority (who were the ones who asked for this) helps so much.

Interested to see your stats there (as in stats proving I'm the vocal minority as opposed to you). I mean who the hell asked for this? A handful of people on the forums who have a questionable understanding of the game?

But regardless, balance by potato is not balance.

Kaptain, on 15 July 2017 - 01:55 AM, said:

I love how POed some people are getting about guass/PPC.

I do hope they get NGR mobility back after this though. I feel for them there.

Any time an option is taken away instead of balanced its a net loss of the game. Contrary to popular belief, gauss/PPC wasn't that overbearing compared to other effective loadouts. That's the truth of it, and kicking and screaming about PPFLD and not being able to spread it is not going to change that fact.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 15 July 2017 - 02:06 AM.

[Alienized]

Arkhangel, on 15 July 2017 - 01:57 AM, said:

it doesn't help that there's a fair-sized amount of bittervet elitists on the other side of the spectrum who treat newbies or lower-tiered players like **** too.

someone using the Arguement "You don't know what the hell you're talking about because you're tier X" gets old fast, especially given the fact the only way someone really stays Tier 1 is either being too much of a ***** to drop solo and getting carried, or they just got there and stopped playing altogether, which actually means in both cases, they're really LESS qualified to know better than people in lower tiers.

Just because you're a good pilot doesn't give you the right to piss all over other pilots. Prove your skill with your mech, Not your mouth.

quite funny thing is that i try to lead and get my team to push with me so many times...
and what you just wrote is the answer I get. i dunno if i should cry or laugh about it because in the end, those that talk the most against me are those that done the worst and disconnect immediatly like cowards.

i dont care what tier you are, i dont care how new you are or old, i go up front and do charges. i try to give commands whenever i have time to do so. you can imagine how hard it is to torso twist, shoot, get out of enemy fire and give commands at the same time.
IF i do then you get the dull *salt* or *whine more* comments. so tell me, why should i actually bother giving commands to anyone anymore. no one appreciates the pushes, the trying to command or anything. in fact, all you should do in a game is rage and flame constantly because of it.

all you get even when trying to help is a butthurt teammate. cant care less about feelings when players act n play like you never played a game like this before and then get told what they can do better next time. if they gonna be full butthurt then they shall be but dont expect me to go easy on someone like that.

[MarsThunder]

No important bug fixes again... *sigh*

[Arkhangel]

Alienized, on 15 July 2017 - 02:06 AM, said:

quite funny thing is that i try to lead and get my team to push with me so many times...
and what you just wrote is the answer I get. i dunno if i should cry or laugh about it because in the end, those that talk the most against me are those that done the worst and disconnect immediatly like cowards.

i dont care what tier you are, i dont care how new you are or old, i go up front and do charges. i try to give commands whenever i have time to do so. you can imagine how hard it is to torso twist, shoot, get out of enemy fire and give commands at the same time.
IF i do then you get the dull *salt* or *whine more* comments. so tell me, why should i actually bother giving commands to anyone anymore. no one appreciates the pushes, the trying to command or anything. in fact, all you should do in a game is rage and flame constantly because of it.

all you get even when trying to help is a butthurt teammate. cant care less about feelings when players act n play like you never played a game like this before and then get told what they can do better next time. if they gonna be full butthurt then they shall be but dont expect me to go easy on someone like that.

don't get me wrong, i completely agree with you, but there's also those guys who act like they're all that simply BECAUSE they're tier 1, that obviously even their **** is golden.

I drop call plenty myself. in fact, out of irony, one of the guys who acted exactly as you mentioned was Gas Guzzler, a guy not too far up this page, because apparently calling for getting in the circle on a domination match, and being the first person into it and taking fire to prevent the enemy team from a bloodless win is "stupid."

Edited by Arkhangel, 15 July 2017 - 02:33 AM.

[anfadern]

This will be soo fun!!

[meteorol]

DGTLDaemon, on 15 July 2017 - 01:52 AM, said:

The problem with combined goose-pepsi builds was that they were able to produce pinpoint alphas comparable to those of laser vomit builds with zero duration at sniping ranges.

They really weren't though.

At "sniping" ranges (what i consider 800-1000+m), you were actually already forced to shoot gauss and ppc seperately due to the different velocity. Gauss and PPC only hit the same area at this range if the target is standing perfectly still, which it shouldn't do anyway. If a faster target is moving laterally, you had to use your weapons seperately if you didn't want to miss either the PPCs or the Gauss (not even talking about missing the torso section, but missing the target completely).

The much cried about 50 pinpoint alpha was more of a mid-long range weapon, where it already competed with laservomit. It is most dangerous at ranges at which the velocity difference isn't affecting the ability to hit moving targets to the same torso area with both PPCs and Gauss . This area has a large overlap with laservomit, which is getting even larger now due to 800m maxrange ER ML.

The "sniping" ability of the Gauss/PPC combo pretty much isn't affected by this. Most people didn't use it to snipe though. Which is why we will see a massive increase in laservomit/gaussvomit usage, and a harsh dropoff of Gauss/PPC. We have seen it happening in the past, and we will see it happening again. It's just history repeating.

In the end of the day, the change just hurts diversity by drastically reducing the number of Gauss/PPC mechs and increasing the number of laservomit/gaussvomit mechs. Until the forum is full of threads crying about this game being nothing but laservomit.

[FunkyT]

I think all the people trying to defend Gauss/PPC and raging against the nerf are missing the most important part of all of this:

Gauss/PPC is the by far safest loadout in the entire game.

You have next to no exposure. You charge your Gauss, move up the ridge, fire everything at once and get back into cover about the same time your target gets hit, leaving them no option to return fire. And even if they are waiting for you to pop back up to shoot you, you deal about 40 points of pinpoint damage (2x Gauss, 1x PPC) within one second. There is just no other combination of weapons that can trade well in this short time window.

This is also probably the reason why poptarting works so well. Because you have next to no exposure. You jump up, unleash the fire you held from the start of your jump, and drop back down, leaving no time for return fire. And if that wasn't bad enough, you just do that from the other end of the map, leaving even less opportunities to retaliate.

The only other weapon system I can think of that requires equally low, or even less face time, is LRMs. And there is several countermeasures against that, the low velocity of the missiles already being one of them.
There is no counter to direct fire. And no, I don't regard hiding in cover as a counter to this specific combination, since it's the counter to every weapon. An unfun counter, leading to teams hiding cowardly the entire game and getting picked off by circling fast mechs.


Plus, as was already stated countless times in this thread, Gauss/PPC as a combination isn't dead. You can still full well run it. The ONLY difference is, that you will want to avoid the newly implemented ghost heat for your combination, meaning that you don't fire everything at once but instead stagger your fire. That in turn does nothing else, but to increase your required facetime and open up a window for your enemies to actually return fire, which was not possible before.

Linking Gauss/PPC ghost heat implemented a counter to a loadout, which had no counter before.

[Zergling]

Why the hell did they make ER Micro Laser damage/heat ratio even worse?

It was previously 2.6 damage for 1.7 heat, for a 1.53 damage/heat, now the damage has been reduced from PTS to 2.4, resulting in a 1.41 damage/heat ratio.

ER Small was at 5.0 damage for 3.0 heat previously, for a 1.67 damage/heat ratio, so ER Micro Laser was obviously worse in damage/heat ratio; now the heat has been increased to 3.5, which has reduced the ER Small's damage/heat ratio to 1.43, so ER Micro is still worse than ER Small damage/heat ratio.

Damage/heat ratio is the primary factor of sustained DPS for energy weapons, so the ER Micro Laser is going to be worse at both sustained DPS and alpha damage than the Clan ER Small Laser.

Edited by Zergling, 15 July 2017 - 03:39 AM.

[Arkhangel]

FunkyT, on 15 July 2017 - 03:14 AM, said:

I think all the people trying to defend Gauss/PPC and raging against the nerf are missing the most important part of all of this:

Gauss/PPC is the by far safest loadout in the entire game.

You have next to no exposure. You charge your Gauss, move up the ridge, fire everything at once and get back into cover about the same time your target gets hit, leaving them no option to return fire. And even if they are waiting for you to pop back up to shoot you, you deal about 40 points of pinpoint damage (2x Gauss, 1x PPC) within one second. There is just no other combination of weapons that can trade well in this short time window.

This is also probably the reason why poptarting works so well. Because you have next to no exposure. You jump up, unleash the fire you held from the start of your jump, and drop back down, leaving no time for return fire. And if that wasn't bad enough, you just do that from the other end of the map, leaving even less opportunities to retaliate.

The only other weapon system I can think of that requires equally low, or even less face time, is LRMs. And there is several countermeasures against that, the low velocity of the missiles already being one of them.
There is no counter to direct fire. And no, I don't regard hiding in cover as a counter to this specific combination, since it's the counter to every weapon. An unfun counter, leading to teams hiding cowardly the entire game and getting picked off by circling fast mechs.


Plus, as was already stated countless times in this thread, Gauss/PPC as a combination isn't dead. You can still full well run it. The ONLY difference is, that you will want to avoid the newly implemented ghost heat for your combination, meaning that you don't fire everything at once but instead stagger your fire. That in turn does nothing else, but to increase your required facetime and open up a window for your enemies to actually return fire, which was not possible before.

Linking Gauss/PPC ghost heat implemented a counter to a loadout, which had no counter before.

THANK YOU.
and this therein links into what i was saying about Clans winning as much as they did in previous CW seasons. Clan ERPPC/Gauss comboes just performed that much better in trade fights, which is what the vast majority of CW ends up boiling down to without people listening to drop calls. People want to shoot stuff, but they don't want to be shot at. while this is a valid concern, yes, the fact remains, in a wargame, you're GOING TO BE SHOT AT.

You should minimize the amount it happens to you, yes, but that doesn't mean you should game the system to make it im-freaking-possible to get return fire on you while hitting with a ridiculous pinpoint alpha. At least with Laser Boats they need to stay on target for burn times, thus giving the guy on the recieving end a chance in hell to pay it back.

honestly though... you know the best way not to get shot which some people should really learn? Tactical maneuvers! like flanking! where you come in on the side or rear WHERE MECHS DON'T HAVE WEAPONS! what a concept!

Edited by Arkhangel, 15 July 2017 - 03:43 AM.

[Alienized]

Arkhangel, on 15 July 2017 - 02:32 AM, said:

don't get me wrong, i completely agree with you, but there's also those guys who act like they're all that simply BECAUSE they're tier 1, that obviously even their **** is golden.

and therefor PGI's PSR is completely garbage.
there are so many players that shouldnt be T1 at all. or t2.
those are the ones bragging the most that they are while having the worst display of teamplay.
its too easy to rack up dmg by just camping behind and then tell others they been bad simply because they had to take the beating for the backstander to get to t1.

PSR needs to be removed or fixed in a way where teamplay and tanking stuff actually matters.

cant see that happening tho.

[Zergling]

Oh god dangit, they messed up the Micro Pulse damage/heat too.

Micro Pulse got dropped from 3.0 to 2.7 damage, with no decrease in heat, while Clan Small Pulse Laser heat got lowered from 2.7 to 2.4.

End result: Small Pulse has better damage/heat than Micro Pulse.

[SQW]

Wait, the IS won at Tukayyid?

[Saint Atlas and the Commando Elf]

Gas Guzzler, on 15 July 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

Contrary to popular belief, gauss/PPC wasn't that overbearing compared to other effective loadouts. That's the truth of it, and kicking and screaming about PPFLD and not being able to spread it is not going to change that fact.

There is another side to this, that people who've been playing this game for years tend to overlook.

Being shot by 45 pts PPFLD from 500m away by a mech that they can't see because he just exposed himself for a couple of seconds is just a bad and frustrating experience for new players.
It is even beyond the point that a new(ish) player could grasp, what it was exactly that he did wrong there. And it is very hard to learn from this, if you can't tell who and what just killed you.

On the other hand, imagine you get killed by a full spectrum rainbow of lasers. Then -as a new player- you can clearly tell where the enemy was standing and subsequently where you should not have gone yourself. You can learn from this. And this is much less frustrating than "getting killed out of nowhere".

That's why i like the Gauss/PPC nerf. ( I may take that back in a couple of weeks if the meta gets replaced by something even more annoying...)

[Reno Blade]

meteorol, on 15 July 2017 - 03:11 AM, said:

They really weren't though.

At "sniping" ranges (what i consider 800-1000+m), you were actually already forced to shoot gauss and ppc seperately due to the different velocity. Gauss and PPC only hit the same area at this range if the target is standing perfectly still, which it shouldn't do anyway. If a faster target is moving laterally, you had to use your weapons seperately if you didn't want to miss either the PPCs or the Gauss (not even talking about missing the torso section, but missing the target completely).

The much cried about 50 pinpoint alpha was more of a mid-long range weapon, where it already competed with laservomit. It is most dangerous at ranges at which the velocity difference isn't affecting the ability to hit moving targets to the same torso area with both PPCs and Gauss . This area has a large overlap with laservomit, which is getting even larger now due to 800m maxrange ER ML.

The "sniping" ability of the Gauss/PPC combo pretty much isn't affected by this. Most people didn't use it to snipe though. Which is why we will see a massive increase in laservomit/gaussvomit usage, and a harsh dropoff of Gauss/PPC. We have seen it happening in the past, and we will see it happening again. It's just history repeating.

In the end of the day, the change just hurts diversity by drastically reducing the number of Gauss/PPC mechs and increasing the number of laservomit/gaussvomit mechs. Until the forum is full of threads crying about this game being nothing but laservomit.

and now we finally can snipe with ERPPC + Gauss combo.
We effectively traded a high-dmg (40-60dmg) mid-range PPFLD alpha (1/2PPC+1/2 Gauss) for a mid-dmg high-range PPFLD sniper volley (25-30dmg) with 1x ERPPC(1500-1900m/s velocity) + 1x Gauss (2000m/s velocity)

[Kaptain]

Arkhangel, on 15 July 2017 - 01:57 AM, said:

given the fact the only way someone really stays Tier 1 is either being too much of a ***** to drop solo and getting carried, or they just got there and stopped playing altogether, which actually means in both cases, they're really LESS qualified to know better than people in lower tiers.

This is not a factual statement. 95% of my drops are in sqqp and I play pretty regularly these days. I don't think tier is a good indicator of skill, I agree with you there, but its quite easy to stay in T1 in spqq.

[Bud Crue]

More I think about the more I am convinced that the weapons changes (specifically the clan energy) are simply being done not to balance, but to encourage players to buy new tech weapons.

Clan ERSL and ERML are already hot as hell. Clan MPL are mediocre. Making them all worse is not about balancing anything.
Oh. Look at that. Heavy energy weapons just dropped. What a shocking coincidence.

[Kaptain]

Gas Guzzler, on 15 July 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

Any time an option is taken away instead of balanced its a net loss of the game.

I don't see it as being taken away though. All I see is that people are now going to fire their GRs and PPCs separately, somethign they were already doing, more often.

[Peter Overheater]

So i was really in a thrill of anticipation for the new mechs, every night i waited for the new updates on the countdown post, and seeing the MC MKII really filled me with joy. I was really looking forward for the MC MKII as much as i did back when the KDK was announced.

I preordered the MC MKII and Cougar Ultimate Package as well as Annihilator standard and Nightstar Standard+reinforcements, but reading the patch notes (especially the Gauss-PPC Nerf) made me so p*553d i cancelled all my preorders this morning. So sorry, 175$ less for you.

I don't want to support a staff that is constantly nerfing mechs and loadouts i prefer and punishes my personal choices for this equipment instead of finding a solution for the real problem. I sometimes have the feeling your game balance designer is not even playing the game.

Your problem PGI is that you are not able to make a good matchmaker, throwing good players and newbees in one pool, not the "OP-ness" some weapons and Mechs have.

You can look at all your stats and do "eay-peasy"-excel-sheet-mikro adjustments, but the true problem is that with your one-way-Tier system and horrible matchmaker you cause those problems.

Wich player is for example piloting a NTG with dual gauss+1/2ERPPC's and is doing an above-average-performance? Mr. "I threw some dices back in the days and now i'm piloting my big stompy LRM-Robot on weekends" or Mr. "i play several times a week and want to get good at the game and comp scene?"

Don't get me wrong, i don't judge people for their playstyle and skill, everyone has it's own aspiration to the game, and in my current Unit there are a lot of players of the first type i mentioned. No problem with them, i met some of those guys in Real Life and have a good friendship with them.

It is not the case that Gauss-PPC Combo is an "easy-peasy" loadout, i would assume that most pilots playing this game would have a lot of trouble doing more that 200dmg if they were forced to play with his loadout, not only because of the aiming-problem but as well because of the required awareness to get proper positioning and timing.

So what happens if both types of players get thrown into a match? Of course the Gauss-PPC is dominating in most of the cases, when targets stand in the open or constantly poke on the same spot because players don't know how to behave in a T1- or competetive-surrounding. But your stats show only "Gauss/PPC OP" or "NTG OP", and you go nerf them (and with that also close the door for Normal or below-average Pilots wich want to try those mechs/loadouts).

So what would be the solution to this problem? Install a Tier system wich is not leading to everyone grinding enough ending up in tier 1 at some point, but make it harder for players to go above tier 3 and even harder above tier 2. So instead of making a linear slightly steep ramp like you have now make it more like a bowel, relatively easy to go out of T5, a little bit less easy to go out of T4, and on the other side harder to go to T2 and T1.

With that you can ensure games are a lot more balanced and enjoyable for all groups of players and i am sure your mech and weapons stats show something different.


Oh yes, and also wtf with ATM's? Min range, no indirect fire (those two aspects would have benn fine for me), but only 2 damage per rocket??? Sorry, can't really understand this.

Edited by Peter Overheater, 15 July 2017 - 04:11 AM.

[Sucy Manbavaran]

Bud Crue, on 15 July 2017 - 04:07 AM, said:

More I think about the more I am convinced that the weapons changes (specifically the clan energy) are simply being done not to balance, but to encourage players to buy new tech weapons.

Clan ERSL and ERML are already hot as hell. Clan MPL are mediocre. Making them all worse is not about balancing anything.
Oh. Look at that. Heavy energy weapons just dropped. What a shocking coincidence.

The problem is : HeaveLaz ( except maybe small ) are total garbage
ATM > bad
- but CSRM spread = MEH
- CLRM > Spread/Volley = MEH
- CSSRM > niche

Clan ballistics ? Well Regular AC are still garbage unless they got single bullet like IS
C-UAC // LBX > cause we don"t get something we can use
CGauss > Nerf the "only" good Build Clan can Do, BUT won't put off the nerf on Mech nerfed cause of this build .. na

Lazor > ER > hotter and hotter and hotter every week
Pulse > nerf + nerf + nerf + nerf
Heavy > maybe in Tier6 you can use them at full potential, but vs OverArmored IS mech > useless

so ... if you wanna spend money IG, go IS, cause they are going to rekt everything for at least 2 years ( time needed for PGI to understand )

[meteorol]

Reno Blade, on 15 July 2017 - 03:57 AM, said:

and now we finally can snipe with ERPPC + Gauss combo.
We effectively traded a high-dmg (40-60dmg) mid-range PPFLD alpha (1/2PPC+1/2 Gauss) for a mid-dmg high-range PPFLD sniper volley (25-30dmg) with 1x ERPPC(1500-1900m/s velocity) + 1x Gauss (2000m/s velocity)

We could snipe with the 2 GR, 2PPC mechs before, we just had to use split up between GR and PPC and learn how to handle the different velocities. Now we have to split aswell, but for other reasons than velocity. As tradeoff, the combo has a massive loss in midrange viability. Right now, it's brutal in mid-longrange and OK at sniper ranges, after the change it will be mediocre at midrange and a bit better than before at sniping ranges.

This is a tradeoff the majority of Gauss/PPC users will not accept. For QP, where the vast majority of this games players play, mid-longrange is the best thing to bring, because it's versatile and works on the vast majority of maps. Mid-longrange is were the majority of trades happen. Both brawling and sniping is subpar compared to mid-longrage for QP, because it's situational.

Even now, where Gauss/PPC is very strong in the midrange game, we easily have as many laservomit mechs as we have Gauss/PPC. With the upcoming change, you will see all those players who used Gauss/PPC as a mid-longrange combo simply switch to Laservomit/Gaussvomit.

The last time PGI tried to curbstomp the high FLPPD alphas it resulted in basically nothing bot laservomit for like two years. Be prepared for another iteration it.

Edited by meteorol, 15 July 2017 - 04:21 AM.