279 replies to this topic

[Wil McCullough]

oldradagast, on 10 August 2017 - 06:45 PM, said:

Eh, whatever.

You could probably play a laser boat with your foot and do well, too, and maybe even Gauss + PPC back when that was more viable, assuming you could macro the charge somehow to work with your foot. Anyone can fire a billion LRM's and do decent damage with them if their team guards them well and the enemy team is dopey enough to get killed that way, but that holds true of laser vomit, dakka, Gauss, etc.

Long story short, don't try to pretend that wielding hit-scan or near hitscan weapons is somehow "much higher skill" than tossing slow, guided missiles. Hell, I strongly suspect most people have a higher hit rate with their direct fire weapons than LRM's, which one could argue means LRM's require more skill.

None of that makes LRM's particularly GOOD, but I am tired of the lunacy of pretending they are "no skill" and hitscan weapons are "high skill." It's utter BS and easily disproven.

i look forward to the video of you doing well playing with your foot and hit scan/ppfld weapons.

when can we expect it?

[MischiefSC]

Direct fire takes more position skill than LRMs. Plus more skill to aim, plus more skill around situational awareness.

That's why they are the tool of choice for high skill players - higher skill cap. LRMs have a low skill cap and provide a means for low skill players to at least do damage, even if the damage is less efficient.

This thread reminds me why PGI tends to ignore player input. Most players lack even a basic understanding of the mechanics and gameplay. Ironically thats the product of the matchmaker and weapons lime LRMs that inflate damage values while providing minimal functional value and erroneously teach players to play poorly but think that because their damage numbers are high they're doing well.

We have removed all the factors that would pressure someone to get good at the game in return for creating the illusion of everyone's a winner.

[Thorqemada]

MischiefSC, on 10 August 2017 - 08:58 PM, said:

Direct fire takes more position skill than LRMs. Plus more skill to aim, plus more skill around situational awareness.

That's why they are the tool of choice for high skill players - higher skill cap. LRMs have a low skill cap and provide a means for low skill players to at least do damage, even if the damage is less efficient.

This thread reminds me why PGI tends to ignore player input. Most players lack even a basic understanding of the mechanics and gameplay. Ironically thats the product of the matchmaker and weapons lime LRMs that inflate damage values while providing minimal functional value and erroneously teach players to play poorly but think that because their damage numbers are high they're doing well.

We have removed all the factors that would pressure someone to get good at the game in return for creating the illusion of everyone's a winner.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

The Weapon with the most counters needs the least Skill - SURE!

Top Dog Players use Direct Fire Weapons bcs they have the better Weapon Characteristic:
They use Pinpoint Damage Weapons bcs all damage goes to one Location.
They use them bcs they can Fire and Forget as these Weapons dont need an active Lock on the Target and that reduces their exposure to enemie incoming fire.
The superior positioning skills are nothing than memorized map Locations that some of the their group tacticians or simple experience showed them to be the best places to use these weapons.
They use them bcs that way they get more success from a Way Superior Weapon System which they than claim shows their superior skill.

It is sad that the folk dont understanding balancing and skill are the folk on the top of the fppd chain and the helm of the game which they Show again and agian and again!

Edited by Thorqemada, 10 August 2017 - 09:21 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

Direct fire takes more position skill than LRMs. Plus more skill to aim, plus more skill around situational awareness.

I wouldn't even say LRMs have a low skill cap. They have a lower point of diminishing returns: X level of skill with missiles gets you considerably less results than the same level of skill with direct fire weapons, because LRMs are quite simply built to be inferior weapons, beyond even the point of "they're guided missiles so they should be worse". And you get to the point where any increase in effectiveness becomes statistically meaningless far sooner.

And I'd beg to disagree on the whole situational awareness thing. I've got to keep track of the entire battlefield (friendlies and hostiles), constantly looking for my shot, if not my shot than a shot at someone else's target so I don't waste time or ammo, look through all available targets for optimal use of my limited and impossible to focus ammo, find a firing lane that allows me to successfully thread a slowpoke pack of missiles through terrain, AMS, ECM and do it all in time for my shot to accurately reach the target.

Oh, and worry about incoming fire and the inevitable attention from anyone who wants an easy close target because minimum ranges, damage reduction, etc.. Oh, and with ATMs I add in an entirely new set of velocity, fire angle, and a deadzone to manage on top of insuring I'm making shots at ranges that are worth the ammo.

And constantly have to recalculate your best or even available targets, because you've got to commit to any given target for huge chunks of time (in battle terms) to deliver. Highlight, lock, fire, travel time, hit and all the while, consider whether it's worth tossing more ammo the same way because your target breaks LOS or just finds a random rock to soak up your fire before it arrives, seconds later.

Meanwhile, you've often finished up a target-fire-hit-decide for direct fire weapons before you can count to three and even are back behind cover. By three, the missile boat is usually just getting their opening shots in the air.

This is a weapon that made people so salty that it was considered needed to take away 15 velocity from it, because 175 velocity made them "too effective". And then nerfed some more by beefing up AMS, just in case the lurms touched Bobby Tater in a no-no place.

Fifteen velocity. Not one hundred fifty. Fifteen (coincidentally, about how much it gets back from the skill tree for velocity buffs, which was a range clearly told to missile boats was too much and would make another lurmageddon).

LRMs are third-rate weapons "for bads", because the second anyone suggests making them even marginally better weapons, it's shouted down because that would make LRMs "too good". And of course, nobody should use LRMs because they're bad, but nobody should improve LRMs because they'd might even be good sometimes, and that'd be even worse.

How does that make sense? Why on earth would we want weapons to be deliberately underpowered in play to the point of being so exceptionally countered, nerfed, and otherwise downgraded as to be barely considered "OK" only in the most advantageous of conditions by comp-skill level people? How does this make the game less shallow or improve play?

[Wil McCullough]

Thorqemada, on 10 August 2017 - 09:20 PM, said:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

The Weapon with the most counters needs the least Skill - SURE!

Top Dog Players use Direct Fire Weapons bcs they have the better Weapon Characteristic:
They use Pinpoint Damage Weapons bcs all damage goes to one Location.
They use them bcs they can Fire and Forget as these Weapons dont need an active Lock on the Target and that reduces their exposure to enemie incoming fire.
The superior positioning skills are nothing than memorized map Locations that some of the their group tacticians or simple experience showed them to be the best places to use these weapons.
They use them bcs that way they get more success from a Way Superior Weapon System which they than claim shows their superior skill.

It is sad that the folk dont understanding balancing and skill are the folk on the top of the fppd chain and the helm of the game which they Show again and agian and again!

Just because you choose to bring a nerf gun to a gun fight doesn't make you skillful. It makes you a special snowflake. And a silly one at that.

Choosing to bring an ineffective weapon system doesn't make you cool.

No one's saying you can't bring lurms. Cos i can already tell that strawman is going to be briught up. Lurms are fun. But they are also objectively a terrible weapon with a low skill floor.

You seem to be getting awfully worked up about people debating about lurms. Lurms don't have feelings. You're not a lurm. Don't take things so personally. You're acting as if we called your kid ugly or something.

[Carl Vickers]

Thorqemada, on 10 August 2017 - 09:20 PM, said:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

The Weapon with the most counters needs the least Skill - SURE!

Top Dog Players use Direct Fire Weapons bcs they have the better Weapon Characteristic:
They use Pinpoint Damage Weapons bcs all damage goes to one Location.
They use them bcs they can Fire and Forget as these Weapons dont need an active Lock on the Target and that reduces their exposure to enemie incoming fire.
The superior positioning skills are nothing than memorized map Locations that some of the their group tacticians or simple experience showed them to be the best places to use these weapons.
They use them bcs that way they get more success from a Way Superior Weapon System which they than claim shows their superior skill.

It is sad that the folk dont understanding balancing and skill are the folk on the top of the fppd chain and the helm of the game which they Show again and agian and again!

Of which any one of those comp players using the above skills you typed in would completely and utterly murder ANY lurmer.

Name us all 1 unit that won a comp season using lurms.

Edited by Carl Vickers, 10 August 2017 - 09:45 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Wil McCullough, on 10 August 2017 - 09:36 PM, said:

Just because you choose to bring a nerf gun to a gun fight doesn't make you skillful. It makes you a special snowflake. And a silly one at that.

Choosing to bring an ineffective weapon system doesn't make you cool.

And yet, asking to make an ineffective weapon effective inevitably begets pages of "LURMAGEDDON" or frothy whipped potatoes complaining about how dead they are sitting in the open for a minute or two being shot at by the dreaded scatter damage of lurmy doom.

That too isn't cool.

[Wil McCullough]

Brain Cancer, on 10 August 2017 - 09:47 PM, said:

And yet, asking to make an ineffective weapon effective inevitably begets pages of "LURMAGEDDON" or frothy whipped potatoes complaining about how dead they are sitting in the open for a minute or two being shot at by the dreaded scatter damage of lurmy doom.

That too isn't cool.

Nope it's not.

Unfortunately, it's a problem with the weapon. It's designed that way. Too powerful against potatoes, too useless against anyone else. I swear the only thing keeping lurms on the field now are airstrikes. Because they can flush pokers from cover.

[Brain Cancer]

Wil McCullough, on 10 August 2017 - 09:50 PM, said:

Nope it's not.

Unfortunately, it's a problem with the weapon. It's designed that way. Too powerful against potatoes, too useless against anyone else. I swear the only thing keeping lurms on the field now are airstrikes. Because they can flush pokers from cover.

I've always said that a weapon should never be balanced based on it's effectiveness against people who cannot into basic gameplay, but yet we do that with LRMs constantly. LRMs kill potatoes, sure. But other weapons do so far faster, far more efficiently, and generally with far more accuracy. Should we nerf lasers because that sealclubbing 2 HLL/4 ERML Hellbringer killed two spudbots in under a minute because lol, pinpoint damage alpha? No. Honestly, no. What killed them was being an unskilled vegetable product being hit by the normal, efficient process of the potato peelers battlefield.

But heaven help us if the weapon system with multiple hard and soft counters kills that same spud, because he failed to use any of them or learn how. That weapon is clearly OP and cannot possibly be improved, lest it become Lurmzilla and destroy the Innersphere like some kind of Galactic Kaiju.

[Wil McCullough]

Brain Cancer, on 10 August 2017 - 09:59 PM, said:

I've always said that a weapon should never be balanced based on it's effectiveness against people who cannot into basic gameplay, but yet we do that with LRMs constantly. LRMs kill potatoes, sure. But other weapons do so far faster, far more efficiently, and generally with far more accuracy. Should we nerf lasers because that sealclubbing 2 HLL/4 ERML Hellbringer killed two spudbots in under a minute because lol, pinpoint damage alpha? No. Honestly, no. What killed them was being an unskilled vegetable product being hit by the normal, efficient process of the potato peelers battlefield.

But heaven help us if the weapon system with multiple hard and soft counters kills that same spud, because he failed to use any of them or learn how. That weapon is clearly OP and cannot possibly be improved, lest it become Lurmzilla and destroy the Innersphere like some kind of Galactic Kaiju.

?

You're preaching to the choir here. I'm a pretty firm advocate of buffing lurms. Precisely because they're so ineffective.

The guys holding lurms back are actually the ones who keep insisting lurms are good and have high skill ceiling. Reminds me of hipsters who are fans of a terrible band because they're indie. And god forbid the band gets a good drummer or lead and becomes good enough to become mainstream.

I see the same warped sense of "ownership" in lurm advocates. They love the weapon because it is bad and would defend it against all naysayers with religious fervor. But make it better and they'll lose all interest in it. People like broken things

[justcallme A S H]

11 pages in 2 days and all this LRM thread turned into is just what all the LRM threads turn into... Bad players defending LRMs and trumpeting the apparent "level of skill" that is required to use them.

lol. Please. Just stop.

Pity I couldn't reply sooner and end up on JuJu's latest video, about his first video and this thread...

Edited by United Airlines Security, 11 August 2017 - 03:17 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Templar Dane, on 09 August 2017 - 05:48 AM, said:

Paging Ted Wayz.

https://mwomercs.com...vidence-inside/

Comment of the thread bar none.

[Wil McCullough]

justcallme A S H, on 10 August 2017 - 10:36 PM, said:

11 pages in 2 days and all this LRM thread turned into is just what all the LRM threads turn into... Bad players defending LRMs and trumpeting the apparent "level of skill" that is required to use them.

i'm honestly quite surprised with the reaction. like what aeries said on the first page:

Aeries, on 09 August 2017 - 06:26 AM, said:

Rofl, great video. Pretty much settles the lurm "skill" debate.

it's fascinating how far some people go to continue defending the supposed "high skill" required for lurms to the extent of accusing juju of faking it, pointing out his mistakes, posting (timed out) screenshots of their own better game performances with lurms etc.

it's quite an open-and-shut case.

guy did 750 damage, 2 kmdds, 1 kill with lurms while aiming with his foot. on the table.

no one can do that with any other weapon system. therefore, the skill floor for lurms is way lower than any other weapon system.

i have no idea how people are still grasping at straws trying to justify the inverse, especially with a video like that in their face.

[meteorol]

oldradagast, on 10 August 2017 - 06:50 PM, said:

And you expect me to believe that peeking out from behind a rock, pressing 1 button to drop a mountain of instant, pinpoint damage on 1 component, and then shuffling back behind that rock requires skill? Lol, don't make me laugh. At least the LRM player has to account for the slow missile speed and not die during the exchange.

Or, to put it another way, if LRM's are "soooo easy you can win games playing with your foot," then why don't we see more high-tier players playing them? Because competitive players are not going to play a weapon system like LRM's that are neither effective nor easy to use properly - they are going to stick with direct fire weapons which are both more dangerous AND easier to use.

Ah, the MWO forums, where people write long tactical books on the right way to use LRM's, and then turn around and pretend they require no skill - ignoring the book just written - but clicking one button for a hitscan alpha is "high skill." Laughable lunacy.

Sorry to be blunt, but your overall stats just confirmed my post.

I won't get into long discussions here.
If someone can't grasp how incredibly easy it is to use lrms (not saying other weapons are very hard to use... this game has a stupidly low skill floor, which makes it even more shocking how outstandingly bad large parts of this community are) he is most likely utterly terrible at playing any PVP arena shooter.

[Kin3ticX]

The way i look at this issue is this

LRMs are a whole swath of lore based weapons that come stock on many mechs. However, they only have decent power if you boat them provided nothing goes wrong. They arnt worth adding into bracket builds because its not worth staring at mechs to shoot a couple launchers. People also seem to like to include weak ammounts of LRMs for the sake of LRMs themselves, as if a dash of LRMs make any mech complete.

On the other hand, LRMs are better suited in this game as a FOOS strategy. Thats a complicated way of saying something is a new player weapon. You can choose to use a FOOS strategy forever or move on to other stuff as you learn.

It runs counter intuitive to battetech but battletech is a board game and this is a videogame shooter adaptation.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 10 August 2017 - 11:58 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

justcallme A S H, on 10 August 2017 - 10:36 PM, said:

11 pages in 2 days and all this LRM thread turned into is just what all the LRM threads turn into... Bad players defending LRMs and trumpeting the apparent "level of skill" that is required to use them.

lol. Please. Just stop.

Pity I couldn't reply sooner and end up on JuJu's latest video, about his first video and this thread...

this is gold

Edited by United Airlines Security, 11 August 2017 - 03:18 AM.

[Zergling]

justcallme A S H, on 10 August 2017 - 10:36 PM, said:

11 pages in 2 days and all this LRM thread turned into is just what all the LRM threads turn into... Bad players defending LRMs and trumpeting the apparent "level of skill" that is required to use them.

lol. Please. Just stop.

Pity I couldn't reply sooner and end up on JuJu's latest video, about his first video and this thread...

JuJu for President.

Edited by United Airlines Security, 11 August 2017 - 03:18 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

oldradagast, on 10 August 2017 - 06:45 PM, said:

Eh, whatever.

You could probably play a laser boat with your foot and do well, too, and maybe even Gauss + PPC back when that was more viable,

I had to do a double check when I read that. Does anyone actually believe this?

[Wil McCullough]

Kin3ticX, on 11 August 2017 - 01:03 AM, said:

I had to do a double check when I read that. Does anyone actually believe this?

i don't believe it. then again, i also didn't believe the skill floor for lurms was so low that someone could do well with them using his/her feet.

juju's video proved me wrong. so i'm waiting for oldradagast's video now.

i highly suspect that video wouldn't happen though i'll be very happy to be proven wrong.

Edited by Wil McCullough, 11 August 2017 - 01:12 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

justcallme A S H, on 10 August 2017 - 10:36 PM, said:

11 pages in 2 days and all this LRM thread turned into is just what all the LRM threads turn into... Bad players defending LRMs and trumpeting the apparent "level of skill" that is required to use them.

lol. Please. Just stop.

Pity I couldn't reply sooner and end up on JuJu's latest video, about his first video and this thread...

LoL he got pretty upset at my comment because he didn't get it. The fact he died so early and still dealt so much damage AND because he pretty much couldn't even twist damage AND the fact he dealt 750 damage with a kill and 2 KMDD, all combine to silliness. Bare minimum foot level effort should never result in this kind of rewarding, but he did it pretty easily and probably could do again, those were the points of my "trained foot joke" and bringing up the fact he died so early in that instance.

IDK that second video was definitely my last Juju video, the foot video was legitimately funny, this one was more of just an ad hominem-palooza, I mean we get it, you think the LRM lovers are brain damaged... I never use LRMs and constantly smh in game at LRM boat assaults I get put with in QP, but jeeez, Juju straight up hates them with a fury.

If you played a drinking game for every time he asserts brain issues I think it would turn your liver toxic.

Edited by United Airlines Security, 11 August 2017 - 03:18 AM.