28 replies to this topic

[SOL Ranger]

I would simply want to ask if PGI could inform us on their opinions on the RAC weapons right now and how if at all they are looking into changing them and what design directions and possibilities are realistically open, also under what specific unalterable properties the weapon must function under in terms of the vision for the weapon.

We in the community all have our opinions and biases on the weapon systems but for this thread lets try to disregard those opinions for a moment and instead focus on where PGI stands officially and where they identify wiggle room if any, if we can get that response that is.

I believe largely if PGI doesn't agree with the identified problematic areas we are attempting to solve our efforts are largely futile and wasted, so it is in our interest to get to know the boundaries for the weapon design process as it stands.

This is notable because we've been posting feedback of varying quality and bias since PTS in mass amounts about this in all fairness controversial implementation of the weapon system, where much of that feedback has more or less been directed at the more elaborate mechanics of the weapon rather than minor properties as PGI identified issues in.

There I can somewhat identify a discrepancy between the community and PGI's view on the weapon more or less. As such it would be interesting to have a fundamental disclosure for its state, a clear cut reasoning from official sources as to where the weapon can possibly go from here. This cutting off the speculation, unwarranted hopes and other unrealistic suggestions that do not fit that official vision for the weapon and have no chance of being adopted in any case.

I am in earnest asking what your opinion on the weapons are PGI so we can analyse, suggest and make the improvements that can subsequently be made realistically. Only then can we discuss potential use cases and changes seriously that you are honestly open to.

While I understand you are likely thinking you are open to all kinds of interesting suggestions, but that isn't really the case in a pragmatic sense as we see a rather systematic unwillingness to change weapons mechanically when your vision is seemingly hard set regardless of them being controversial solutions on your part. Also we've seen weapons remain dysfunctional and problematic since forever without changes being even at least to our knowledge considered while often being highlighted as problematic regardless of POV.

To that effect I believe this request for disclosure is the better course of action. Essentially you tell us where the realistic boundaries and visions for the weapons exist and we then work with that which you are actually prepared to change or work with.

The alternative is that we can keep making threads about our more or less fantastical and often biased views and complaints for years and years without seeing any progress in those areas, as has been the case with all kinds of other weapons with similar issues. I do not believe that is a format we should engage in if at all possible to avoid.

If there is top down resistance and design limitations to changes that can easily be divulged and narrow down potential suggested solutions then that would be a good thing indeed to reveal.

I am simply making an appeal to meaningful design transparency to inform us on the status of your reasoning for the RAC weapon state in this case.

• Where do you see RAC's right now in terms of fun, functionality, drawbacks and performance and the strengths and weaknesses of the inherent weapon type itself compared to the meta?
  
• Is the weapon working as intended, is the vision set in stone and what exactly is the vision in detail?
  
• Is there potential for change of the RAC, to what extent and in what manner, explaining why or why not?

I do believe many people invested in this topic would certainly appreciate additional openness in the current design process even if it shuts down various hopes and possibilities for change.

Thank you.

Reserved for all the human things.

[Lucian Nostra]

Honestly besides not having the bar heat up when the barrels are just starting to spin up what more can they really do for RACs?

Their DPS is almost double what an ultra 5 produces, it's jam free till you push it into overheat and it starts rolling the dice for you. (unlike the ultra's that you can't control if it's gonna jam while double tapping at all)

They have a lotta disadvantages like the spool up time and lengthy cooldown but when you pop out and start to lay down the DPS they are pretty damn rude.

Maybe after removing the heat up during spool up they could look at shot spread but this a weapon that can easily become OP with just a few minor tweaks

Edited by Lucian Nostra, 30 July 2017 - 07:36 AM.

[Kiiyor]

Dunno what PGI thinks about them, and I can absolutely guarantee they won't answer this thread (you'd be better off pestering them on twitter), but from my perspective...



I think they're mostly a disappointment. After rolling with them for a while, I can see their appeal (they're fun to use), and they can be useful in the right situation, but IMHO pretty much all 'sphere alternative dakka is better.

[El Bandito]

RACs do good amount of suppression once spooled up, but otherwise they suffer in the current poke based meta.

[RoadblockXL]

PGI wont respond to posts calling them out.

And, just to be clear, this is from the CoC:

STAFF ABUSE

Engaging in any of the following actions is forbidden:

• Impersonating members of PGI staff or the volunteer moderator team.
  
• Griefing or violating the Code of Conduct when engaging with or referencing members of PGI staff or the volunteer moderator team.
  
• Negatively calling out members of PGI staff or volunteer moderator team, either as a group or individually, in topics, comments, or other communications.
  
• Demanding a public response or acknowledgement of topics, comments, or other communications.

More to the topic, you really shouldn't expect any big changes to RACs aside from some of the numbers changing. I think we can always expect them to basically be gattling guns with a spool-up time and high-rate of fire, with individual shells doing relatively small amounts of damage.

What role do they serve in the game? They add variety. They really don't fit into the meta because instant, pinpoint damage will always be better than high dps, but does every weapon need to chase the meta?

[SOL Ranger]

RoadblockXL, on 30 July 2017 - 08:30 AM, said:

PGI wont respond to posts calling them out.

And, just to be clear, this is from the CoC:

STAFF ABUSE

Engaging in any of the following actions is forbidden:

• Impersonating members of PGI staff or the volunteer moderator team.
  
• Griefing or violating the Code of Conduct when engaging with or referencing members of PGI staff or the volunteer moderator team.
  
• Negatively calling out members of PGI staff or volunteer moderator team, either as a group or individually, in topics, comments, or other communications.
  
• Demanding a public response or acknowledgement of topics, comments, or other communications.

More to the topic, you really shouldn't expect any big changes to RACs aside from some of the numbers changing. I think we can always expect them to basically be gattling guns with a spool-up time and high-rate of fire, with individual shells doing relatively small amounts of damage.


What role do they serve in the game? They add variety. They really don't fit into the meta because instant, pinpoint damage will always be better than high dps, but does every weapon need to chase the meta?

If my notably neutral thread in the interest of having more reasonable and realistic discourse within a popular topic, a topic that right now degenerates itself into "RAC's are OP"/"RAC's are LRM's" threads and comments, is considered staff abuse then that's the last time I post here, ever. Because that would be some heavy handed unreasonable moderation if I've ever seen some.

I "call out" nobody and "demand" absolutely nothing, anyone who knows what the expressions entail realises that. I quite politely request design vision information for a weapon so we can better improve the quality of the discussion and likelihood of more PGI compatible change suggestions being made rather than seeing endless unreasonably diverging suggestions being made that will never seriously be considered.

Furthermore the second paragraph in the OP clearly states to not share our own opinions and biases of the weapon in this thread, this thread is solely intended for discussing the constraints that PGI have decided upon in terms of vision for the weapon to make it clearer for us what we and PGI have to work with to improve them within that context, what properties are flexible and which ones are not if at all possible.

We can have a million threads about say making linear jam mechanics, but if PGI has decided they do not want that all that effort is meaningless and a waste of everyone's time to read and write them. As such more information about the subject would be of immense interest to anyone partaking in the perpetual discussion.

If you want a thread to discuss your opinions on why and what RAC's should or should not do, make a thread about it, this is not that thread. Again to reiterate, this is not a thread asking you to speculate about the weapon at all nor what I think, hope, feel or otherwise speculate. Instead this is a thread to clarify what more or less unalterable or otherwise more decisive constraints we are working with to serve as a better foundation for suggestions, to better see the PGI vision and design process for the weapon as they see it and where it possibly goes from here.

Where else am I going to better request such informative things other than the official MWO forums where such topics belong? Reddit? Twitter? No, it belongs here in the official forums for the game.

If anything divulging some basic design vision information making any discussion more down to earth would be a good thing around these parts.

[Trev Firestorm]

RoadblockXL, on 30 July 2017 - 08:30 AM, said:

• Demanding a public response or acknowledgement of topics, comments, or other communications

Demanding... right so request means demand in your mind... ok buddy.

Edited by Trev Firestorm, 30 July 2017 - 10:42 AM.

[Vellron2005]

Short answer to OP's post: No.

Long answer to OP's post: RACs are working as intended, and PGI is not working on reworking RACs, or any other weapon in game at this time. If we see that RACs are overperforming, we will nerf all the mechs that can mount them so to bring them in line with all the non-RAC mechs. Otherwise, no, we will not touch RACs.

Would you like to buy a Mechpack?

Edited by Vellron2005, 31 July 2017 - 03:02 AM.

[Bandilly]

I like racs where they are at, no need for change.

[kesmai]

So sad.

[Kroete]

Just let the rac-nodes also reduce spooltime or increase the "heatmeter" and they are ok.

[The6thMessenger]

It would be nice to know if they wanted it to stay as a bad weapon. I get that peppering people to death might be fun and so they wanted to make stares as long as possible, but also incorporate jam-based balance. But that's just stupidly unhealthy with the nature of the game.

It should have jammed at 100% gauge, and then balanced from there.

RoadblockXL, on 30 July 2017 - 08:30 AM, said:

What role do they serve in the game? They add variety. They really don't fit into the meta because instant, pinpoint damage will always be better than high dps, but does every weapon need to chase the meta?

It doesn't need to chase after the meta. But it also shouldn't go full ******.

Variety is one thing. But when you can nuke people at Terra Therma from Polar Highlands via Arrow IV, it's probably time to rethink the whole thing.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 31 July 2017 - 05:42 AM.

[PyckenZot]

Kiiyor, on 30 July 2017 - 07:35 AM, said:

Dunno what PGI thinks about them, and I can absolutely guarantee they won't answer this thread (you'd be better off pestering them on twitter), but from my perspective...



I think they're mostly a disappointment. After rolling with them for a while, I can see their appeal (they're fun to use), and they can be useful in the right situation, but IMHO pretty much all 'sphere alternative dakka is better.

You sir, have just won this thread!

[MechaBattler]

Doesn't matter how 'neutral' your thread is, you don't call out devs. Everyone thinks their opinion and thread warrants a dev response. But that's not realistic. Chris has actually chimed in on a few threads to clear up misconceptions. But you can't expect them to respond to a thread specifically calling them out. Because then everyone would start doing it.

You wanna raise RAC awareness, then just make it about RACs without calling out the devs to respond.

[DaZur]

Sorry OP but a cleverly crafted plight to mask your biased opinion with an equally masked call-out is neither unbiased nor a benign request for affirmation of their official stance.

That said and more to the point, RACs have enough inherent downside to mitigate any strengths they might exhibit. In fact they might be the best example of a balanced weapon offset to date.

[SOL Ranger]

DaZur, on 31 July 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

Sorry OP but a cleverly crafted plight to mask your biased opinion with an equally masked call-out is neither unbiased nor a benign request for affirmation of their official stance.

That said and more to the point, RACs have enough inherent downside to mitigate any strengths they might exhibit. In fact they might be the best example of a balanced weapon offset to date.

Why are you sorry, you jump in here head first insulting me of having some elaborate plan of pushing my bias when I am trying to ask PGI for their official stance on the state of the RAC so we don't have to keep iterating endless threads with suggestions they will never adhere to in any way.

Yet you are then here pushing your own subjective opinion blatantly in our faces as if it were law, where I have said nothing of it. How about you step back and rethink that one.

Read paragraph two if you are confused further.

[The6thMessenger]

DaZur, on 31 July 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

That said and more to the point, RACs have enough inherent downside to mitigate any strengths they might exhibit. In fact they might be the best example of a balanced weapon offset to date.

Lol no. Their downsides aren't worth their upsides right now. They are an example of those weapons that failed to live up to expectation, pretty much a lot of other Civil War tech.

SOL Ranger, on 31 July 2017 - 03:30 PM, said:

Why are you sorry, you jump in here head first insulting me of having some elaborate plan of pushing my bias when I am trying to ask PGI for their official stance on the state of the RAC so we don't have to keep iterating endless threads with suggestions they will never adhere to in any way.

To be fair, that's what they wanted -- the endless threads why RAC sucks. Chris precisely did say that they didn't want to jump in so they don't just shut down discussions. I can respect that, they are doing things for a lot of people.

So why not acknowledge what they want, and lets tell them over and over again what needs to be done for the RACs?

Edited by The6thMessenger, 31 July 2017 - 03:35 PM.

[ForceUser]

No matter how rosy your prose or how earnest your claims to the contrary sound, the objective of this thread is as transparent as your feign of innocense. You are trying to call out a dev response and thats against the rules of the forum and it wont result in a response. Heck, that might even be the aim, nicely 'ask' for a reply from the devs and get indignant when a mod 'unjustly' closes it down.

Fo' shame.

To the point however, a weapon system that has a wide and mixed reception across the community, as most of the civil war weapons have had, is exactly what should happen and i honestly did not expect. I expected at least some universally trash or universally op weapons but overall they have been remarkably balanced. There are weapons that are slightly better but for the most part those are the fill in weapons like erml and uacs and thats expected because parity. however the new mechanic weapons or unique variants are all extremely balanced in that there are builds or playstyles that make them perform very well without invalidating existing weapon systems. That is the single most surprising thing about the update, that and the fact that many trash tier mechs are suddenly very viable without pushing previously viable mechs into OP territory.

tldr; you just dont know how to use racs.

[Wildstreak]

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[The6thMessenger]

ForceUser, on 31 July 2017 - 03:54 PM, said:

tldr; you just dont know how to use racs.

That's not nice, they disapprove of RACs, and automatically they just don't know how to use it?

I use RACs constantly, even tried it on the PTS, even with the given stats I analyzed it mathematically. I get that it's not another UAC, it's RAC.

But i am well within my grounds to say that the RACs are lacking, and poorly implemented. I get that we shouldn't balance by potato, nor make the game just another poke-fest. But realistically that is what RACs are up against, and has to be adjusted to if they were supposed to be viable at all.