13 replies to this topic

[gloowa]

Few weeks have passed since the patch, and i feel i played enough to make some kind of judgement on new tech.

I'd like to disconnect this disussion from IS/Clan balance, as i don't really care about that. What i do care about, is the feeling of piloting a mech, which was disappearing over the years, more and more.

When i joined MWO it was just out of beta, and i still remember the ttk's back then. Right now, we are to around 1/3th to 1/4th of those ttks. And they were on a short side to begin with, as far as Mehwarrior games go.

What i mean is: over the years, ttk went down significantly, across the board, for all techbases.

So my question is this: at this point, would anyone mind if ttk was doubled in one broad stroke by, say, doubling (again) armor and structure or cutting weapon damage in half, etc? (all across the board, all mechs, all techs, so overall balance is the same)

I know standard counter-argument for this: "but 1v1 ttk is fine/too long/etc". ********. I can kill any fresh assault under 3 seconds with
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...728a0ac5bd4d0f4
(asumming i get into cqb).
And above isnt even a meta build.

Thoughts?

[tokumboh]

If you get close: On many of the maps you could have half your armour lost in closing into range whi had much of your armour stripped in closing which is one reason I think that TTK is not coming down in spite of some builds which have good firepower and mobility

Take Frozen city, Polar Highland Grim Plexus Tourmaline Desert you are looking at an initial long range poke in PUG queues. in th lower tiers even with aggressive pushes it feels like there is enough armour on some mechs such a CTFs ONs some maps are good for brawling

[CraneArmy]

I think you kinda nailed and skirted the real question you could ask here.

Is 1v1 ttk really too slow? is it too fast? I think thats a perfectly valid question to ask and I think the answer is much more important.

because ofc the ttk 3v1 or 4v1 is going to be 1/3 or 1/4 the time it is to kill 1v1. I also know you are right that there is some power creep that has been going on.

However a big part of power creep is going to be endemic to weapon balance AND (maybe more importantly) mech speed. In many respects Micro Pulse Lasers are the strongest weapon in the game if you are at 100m. So in order to make weapons other than micro pulse viable in the game you need to make longer range weapons capable of punishing an enemy and getting in unanswered damage before the enemy can close to micro pulse optimal. I understand that you are talking about taking down the ability to kill quickly with BOTH long range and short range weapons, but short range weapons will get hugely disproportionate increase in relative power if you across the board if you simply doubled armor, or halved all weapon damage without also looking at mech speed.

I think you could reasonably increase ttk if you could essentially slow down the speed that time elapsed in game, and you could do that without effecting weapon balance, but would that be fun? would it be what most players want?
I dont know, it might be cool, it might suck. It would definitely upset a lot of people, and probably make some happy....

[gloowa]

You make valid points, but i feel like even the 1v1 ttk got so low as to be too short for an mechwarrior game. Then again, it's my "feeling", hence my question - i wanna "feel up" the crowd if anyone else is thinking that, or is it just me.

[CraneArmy]

gloowa, on 01 August 2017 - 10:12 AM, said:

You make valid points, but i feel like even the 1v1 ttk got so low as to be too short for an mechwarrior game. Then again, it's my "feeling", hence my question - i wanna "feel up" the crowd if anyone else is thinking that, or is it just me.

I dont think its vastly wrong, a straight up 1v1 duel between two good pilots can either be near instant or last way longer than it needs to depending of whether the players are playing very protective of their components, or very aggressive about making frequent strong, accurate strikes.

this is just my opinion here, but I think the consumables, specifically the coolshots and strikes are the worst. Dont get me wrong, I abuse the crap out of them, I can run a 50+ alpha mech, alpha twice, coolshot alpha again and nearly always get a kill in under 10 seconds on a fresh heavy, sometimes an assault if they dont twist.

Airstrikes and arty's are the same way, drop it right and its 150-400 free damage, 200 damage per game with 2 strikes is probably conservative. And there is no exposure time, no negitive aspects to using one.

New players dont really get how useful consumables are, so its not really hurting the game in that sense, and experienced players usually have enough money so they dont care about dropping 100k+ / match on consumables so its not really hurting the game there either, but consumables are basically a free lunch.

Its like guaranteeing yourself at least one Ace in every hand of a poker game, everyone can do it so its not cheating, but it does make the game a little less interesting.

Just removing those all together would probably address many questions of power creep. I think many players that use consumables would be fine with it if they were removed, everyone knows its cheeze, its meta and its the most efficient way to run atm, but its still cheeze.

[Thorqemada]

I liked the durability of my Beta-Centurion - that was how a heavily armored combat vehicle should feel - fights that went on for minutes and disabling/destroying a Location had more importance - Single Heatsinks and no Coolshots made the game way more skillful and ECM was not yet intrduced as wasnt the Wall-Hack-Sensor which both do no good for the games depth of play as they on the oposite take away options of gameplay instead of enriching them.

[Bishop Six]

I would be fine with all mechs having double armor but same damage output of the weapons. I think gameplay could become more interesting when our mechs would live longer and not that for example an atlas is going down in a few seconds.

Most QP matches are over in about 5 minutes, 2 minutes of this time is walking to the enemy. I mean that's really QUICK Play...

[BTGbullseye]

Bishop Six, on 01 August 2017 - 11:11 PM, said:

Most QP matches are over in about 5 minutes, 2 minutes of this time is walking to the enemy.

Your teams must really suck if they all die in just 3 minutes... Usually takes 8-10 minutes of constant combat to get rid of my teams. (never been rolled in 3 minutes)

[Bishop Six]

BTGbullseye, on 01 August 2017 - 11:24 PM, said:

Your teams must really suck if they all die in just 3 minutes... Usually takes 8-10 minutes of constant combat to get rid of my teams. (never been rolled in 3 minutes)

Perhaps that's right for solo pugs, but not for group queue. It is funny how you try to provoke me since some posts. But i guess you dont know me or my my unit, because then you would not talk like that...

I hope your shown Tier is for your 2nd account...

[The Basilisk]

gloowa, on 01 August 2017 - 04:00 AM, said:

Few weeks have passed since the patch, and i feel i played enough to make some kind of judgement on new tech.

I'd like to disconnect this disussion from IS/Clan balance, as i don't really care about that. What i do care about, is the feeling of piloting a mech, which was disappearing over the years, more and more.

When i joined MWO it was just out of beta, and i still remember the ttk's back then. Right now, we are to around 1/3th to 1/4th of those ttks. And they were on a short side to begin with, as far as Mehwarrior games go.

What i mean is: over the years, ttk went down significantly, across the board, for all techbases.

So my question is this: at this point, would anyone mind if ttk was doubled in one broad stroke by, say, doubling (again) armor and structure or cutting weapon damage in half, etc? (all across the board, all mechs, all techs, so overall balance is the same)

I know standard counter-argument for this: "but 1v1 ttk is fine/too long/etc". ********. I can kill any fresh assault under 3 seconds with
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...728a0ac5bd4d0f4
(asumming i get into cqb).
And above isnt even a meta build.

Thoughts?

While I agree with your statement that the "piloting a Mech not an effin armed racing car" feeling lacks somewhat (congrats to PGI on the Annihilator in that hinsight this thing feels about right) I do not see the problem with shortened TTK through tech.

The TTK problem is caused by ppl getting better after the CB, much better than the devs belived it to be possible, and the earth f***ing stupid notion that a pinpoint/instaconvergence/no targetaquisition time for non lurms shooter mechanik would be a good thing for a mech sim.
I mean...realy... you insta aim a 15t Gauss rifle just like a waterpistol and if you got two, there is no tuning time, no delay to compute the leading angle or barrel convergence....nothing.
No focus/adjustment time for lasers, no charge up time for PPCs.

Also the ability of some mechs to just turn on the spot while running a hundred kph is a problem as well as next to no terrain movement interaction.
(Locust running into deep water or over rubble without loosing its leggs, BlackKnight running 85kp and U-turning in under 10 secs with out slipping and skidding for the next 30secs, heavy mechs accelerating from 0 to over 80kph in under 10 secs .... and so on and so on)

The whole game plays like if you are a normal guy running around in a suite of armor with different guns.

[Thrudvangar]

Thats almost exactly what i wrote here more than just once... doubling the armor again plus
lowering the damage, so that MWO may feel like a mech game (again) ...

Totally with you OP.

I like long lasting, hard fought matches.

[Thrudvangar]

Or add a "cone of fire" system and make high pinpoint alphas impossible.

[gloowa]

The Basilisk, on 01 August 2017 - 11:47 PM, said:

While I agree with your statement that the "piloting a Mech not an effin armed racing car" feeling lacks somewhat (congrats to PGI on the Annihilator in that hinsight this thing feels about right) I do not see the problem with shortened TTK through tech.

The TTK problem is caused by ppl getting better after the CB, much better than the devs belived it to be possible, and the earth f***ing stupid notion that a pinpoint/instaconvergence/no targetaquisition time for non lurms shooter mechanik would be a good thing for a mech sim.
I mean...realy... you insta aim a 15t Gauss rifle just like a waterpistol and if you got two, there is no tuning time, no delay to compute the leading angle or barrel convergence....nothing.
No focus/adjustment time for lasers, no charge up time for PPCs.

Also the ability of some mechs to just turn on the spot while running a hundred kph is a problem as well as next to no terrain movement interaction.
(Locust running into deep water or over rubble without loosing its leggs, BlackKnight running 85kp and U-turning in under 10 secs with out slipping and skidding for the next 30secs, heavy mechs accelerating from 0 to over 80kph in under 10 secs .... and so on and so on)

The whole game plays like if you are a normal guy running around in a suite of armor with different guns.

I slightly agree with you on the "too agile" angle, but that's only periferal to ttk

As for ttk, I didn't specify what i percieve to be the reason for low ttk, because for the context of this discussion it's irrelavant: whatever the cause might be (skill, power creep, cosmic radiation), i can't see raising ttk as a bad thing to do.

I'm not going into HOW to do that, because i can think of 10 completely different ways off the top of my head and doesn't factor into validity of end goal.

[Dibster]

I noticed a huge difference in TTK when the game went from 8vs8 to 12vs12. It hasn't really recovered since. The problem isn't 1vs1 TTK, it's just that with these player numbers, anyone who takes a bad poke pays too hard for it.