56 replies to this topic

[FunkyT]

I'm probably making the 236th thread about this topic, but the state of the game right now is just ridiculous.

Just had a match on Polar Highlands and before the peeking phase even really started, Arty Strike Nr.8 dropped on top of our heads. The enemy team had us weakened and crippled without ever needing to expose themselves.
One of the enemy Lights, a Wolfhound in this case, ended the match with close to 1300 damage. I lived pretty long this match and I can safely say, that he barely engaged in any actual fighting. Pretty sure he didn't break 300 damage with his weapons alone. That was all strikes.

The way it is now, with everyone being able to carry 2 (or is it even 4?) strikes into battle and pop them every couple seconds, the somewhat coordinated games in group queue just devolve into lazy damage farming with strikes, barely any actual fighting needed to end the match.
And I dare say: This isn't what Mechwarrior is supposed to be.

I understand the tactical role of strikes, being good weapons to scatter a deathball or entrenched firing lines, but right now it's just stupid.


I don't know what to do exactly about it, but here's some suggestions on how to start about it:

- Limit Strikes to one per type, or even only one in general on a mech to mech basis. This would still allow a maximum of 12 strikes, one for each player, but I'm pretty sure that would cut down on the overall strike rate considerably. Taking the +1 Strike nodes out of the skilltree shouldn't be too hard to implement

- Nerf strikes back to the old C-Bill strike level. Now I could be wrong about this, but if I remember correctly, back with the skilltree patch all the consumables got brought up to the level of the old MC-Consumables. It's the case with UAVs and Coolshots, so it would only make sense to be true for strikes aswell. Nerfing them back to the old C-Bill-Consumable level may already lower the pain

- Greatly Increase the global cooldown in between strikes. Right now they can just be spammed, with only a couple seconds downtime in between. Greatly increasing this global cooldown would take away the spammable character it has right now and would focus them towards their role as a tactical weapon


That's my 2 Cents on the topic. What are your thoughts? Agree with my suggestions, or got better ones?
Share your thoughts.

[Angel of Annihilation]

I totally agree. They just aren't a fun mechanic, not with the frequency upon which they occur. I mean we already had this situation at one point and they nerfed the amount of strikes you could carry on your mech but for some reason decided it was ok to bring thinks back to the way it was before the nerf. Lets face it, the reason they nerfed it in the first place was because just like now, no one enjoyed being the recipient of a dozen strikes each and every match.

Also, this purpose of being used to scatter a deathball or entrenched firing lines is just total BS. The deathball is still the best tactic with or without strikes and why should defensive play be punished? I mean what the hell, so your saying I should go stand out in the open where everyone can shoot me? Yeah that is fun. Maybe people would stop NASCAR'ing like idiots if creating a firing line and playing defensively wasn't punished by dozens of no-skill required, strikes falling on peoples heads.

[Appogee]

Working as intended as a CBill sink.

Yes, they make the game less fun. But PGI's priority appears to be incenting you to buy Mech Packs.

Edited by Appogee, 27 August 2017 - 08:39 AM.

[DrSaphron]

The key to minimizing strike damage is to not cluster together, ie butt-cuddle, watch for smoke AND UAVs, and when you DO see smoke call out to your team mates. With air strikes you can usually see the jet coming in from the map edge, especially on maps like Polar. Lastly, if you have a mech that can jump then it's time to get airborne in a very real way. Strikes are meant to deny territory and break up death balls/pain trains.

I'd say GET GUD but that doesn't actually help. Learn your positioning, know the maps, know your mechs, and communicate with your team!

[Appogee]

DrSaphron, on 27 August 2017 - 08:40 AM, said:

and when you DO see smoke call out to your team mates.

I just play a recording of myself saying "incoming strike" at 15 second intervals, 48 times in a row, over VOIP.

It syncs up perfectly with the current frequency of strikes.

[HammerMaster]

More trash mode exploits. But here's the thing. I've said from it's inception: you get ZERO credit for strike damage. YOU didn't cause it. You don't get it. Artilleryman Jones or pilot Smith are the responsible party. People have been bloating their scores with this atrocity for FAR TOO LONG. Fix it!

[DivineTomatoes]

Just give more warning.

A sound notification for arty, something akin to "arty fire inbound at (grid D4) for instance. Along with a minimap location.

And a sound notification for a airstrike with a minimap ping and the direction of the strike. Maybe also include the ability to shoot down the plane as well. It'll take a fair bit of skill to shoot down a tiny plane.

Or.

Force strikes to use TAG to pinpoint where they go.

You can either place a strike without TAG but it will be very inaccurate. So give it much more spread than it has now.

Or you can keep a TAG laser pointed at where you want to strike for the full time it takes until the first bomb drops. It will be very accurate and concentrated at that location. But you run the risk of actually having to expose yourself to getting shot. And the enemy team can follow your TAG laser back to you.

At the moment strikes are pretty much 0 risk for massive rewards. You simply put the smoke down and that's it, you can even hide the smoke behind things for airstrikes or launch a uav and put a arty strike on the uav (that needs to go).

Mwo is meant to be about shooting other battlemechs, not air/arty strike online. The amount of them lately has become ridiculous.

[GrimRiver]

A simple fix really, just nerf global cooldown so nobody on either side can drop a strike every few seconds.

1 minute long cooldown might be enough.

Besides strikes are free damage, you pay a small fee of 40,000(which is nothing since match rewards overcome that cost) and they cost no tonnage and no slots.

They are undeniably being spammed far too often.

[panzer1b]

Completely agree, although id start out by giving a much higher global cooldown so you cant get hit by 4+ strikes in less then a minute (and ive seen this happen many times).

Damage could be lowered a little bit and most of all airstrike distance when its maxed out, thats utterly BS that you can hit mechs like 200m away from the smoke and there is no way for the enemy to be certain what direction its coming from. Arty itself is pretty fair imo, its RNG and its over a fairly large area so its very unlikely that you will take that much damage. Airtsrikes are total BS though, one well placed strike (most of the time with smoke behind something so no warning) is going to hit 2-3 mechs easily. Both strikes need to stay in game since they are a very useful addition and it does help deal with excessive deathballs, but it shouldnt let you do ~500 damage per strike (thats roughly what it does when hitting like 3 mechs that are properly lined up).

And yeah, im all for nerfing at least air strikes (arty is meh at best), the damn things are everywhere, cost you absolutely no tonnage to utilize (and often pay for themselves if you hit 2+ mechs with em not to mention are basically free if you have 100million+ sitting around), and are just too deadly to mechs, especially lighter mechs that simply do not have the HP to afford taking but 1 hit from the things.

[HammerMaster]

Also. Remember command console playing a role in even getting to do strikes? IRL you also may not even be allotted more than a few on your grid. Ask your RTOs out there.

[Thorqemada]

FunkyT, on 27 August 2017 - 08:05 AM, said:

And I dare say: This isn't what Mechwarrior is supposed to be.

I wholeheartedly agree!

[Andi Nagasia]

i dont think reducing the number of strikes will turn out well,
some players mostly lights take 2 strikes to get more damage in,
where as players that run heavier mechs may not even have a strike,

i would say it be better if they doubled the cooldown between strikes,
having 45seconds to 60seconds between strikes would lead to only a max of 15-20 strikes,
and as the fight usually does start till 2-3 minutes in thats 12-16 strikes,

also the Spool up time for strikes could be extended,
right now its about 8 seconds of reed smoke before the strike hits,
if extended to 10 seconds it could help those who are more perspective in dodging a strike,

[FunkyT]

DrSaphron, on 27 August 2017 - 08:40 AM, said:

The key to minimizing strike damage is to not cluster together, ie butt-cuddle, watch for smoke AND UAVs, and when you DO see smoke call out to your team mates. With air strikes you can usually see the jet coming in from the map edge, especially on maps like Polar. Lastly, if you have a mech that can jump then it's time to get airborne in a very real way. Strikes are meant to deny territory and break up death balls/pain trains.

I'd say GET GUD but that doesn't actually help. Learn your positioning, know the maps, know your mechs, and communicate with your team!

I would agree with you, but you can only avoid the strike marker if you can see it, if it's within your field of view. If the marker lands outside your peripheral vision or even behind you, you just can't try to run out of it.
Even if you see it, some mechs and builds just aren't necessarily fast enough to get out of the target area. How would an Annihilator, or any other 100tonner at that, run out of it?

If you see the marker, sure you can try and run away from it. But that's just not always the case, especially since the more experienced light pilots usually try to land those strikes behind the enemies' backs.

As someone in here already suggested, an Audio queue alongside a short chat message like with the command wheel could already help. Could be something short, like "Strike incoming, heads up!" or whatever.


And yeah, simply increasing the global cooldown between strikes would likely be the best idea. That way lights and mediums can still field several strikes for prolonged battles, like in FW, while at the same time making the situation a lot more bearable for QP.

[Mister Blastman]

Andi Nagasia, on 27 August 2017 - 09:33 AM, said:

i dont think reducing the number of strikes will turn out well,
some players mostly lights take 2 strikes to get more damage in,
where as players that run heavier mechs may not even have a strike,

Solution: Only let light 'mechs carry strikes. Role warfare and stuff...

[XDevilsChariotX]

1 arty or airstrike is more than enough for anyone to carry imo. I think they should also cost 80k and the global timer increased to a minute or so and the enhanced spotting node removed. This is getting ridiculous now.

[FupDup]

I think people should have to carry some kind of artillery beacon weapon on their mech that costs tonnage and slots, then I bet we'd see a lot less of the spamming...

[TheArisen]

Incomming deluded ppl who think it's fine.

[MischiefSC]

If I can farm 600 damage from consumables from over 1K away in 30 seconds that's pretty broken.

Saying "just move when you see the smoke" is the same logic as "just brawl them" when people were complaining about the uber quirked Thud from 2 years ago or any other broken mechanic.

If 8 nodes in Firepower gave me the same return as 8 nodes in Aux strike buffs the skill tree would be broke as ****.

I get that PGI wants to perpetually nerf income and make cbill sinks but this is a bad one for game experience.

If you want a few hundred damage you need to actually do it by out-shooting the enemy. Not blow 80k in cbills and click near the enemy.

It's a terrible mechanic and always has been.

[ManOfAthens]

If you are trying to take away static play, even just having the red-smoke is enough to accomplish that. The fact that many assaults simply can't move fast enough to avoid should be evidence enough that the time from smoke to impact is too short. Hell, make it 15 seconds to impact if you have to... it's more realistic.

[Xorkrath]

TheArisen, on 27 August 2017 - 12:08 PM, said:

Incomming deluded ppl who think it's fine.

It's fine.

Okay, joking aside, I should preface this with "I haven't been playing as much lately", but I have played plenty since the skill tree dropped. Yes, there's a ton of strikes. And yes, sometimes it gets out of hand. But, I'd say a healthy majority of the matches I drop into (quickplay only) aren't overcome by strikes. I tend to see about 4-6 per patch on average.

There can be some fun had with them, even on the receiving end. Like, a month ago I was in a light mech when my team, in a decent firing line, started getting hammered by just about everything, including strikes. I was weaving in and out of our mechs, heading up and down the line, lending my AMS to friendly mechs under LRM fire, while PPC and laser fire streaked by (sometimes directly over my head), and a smattering of air/arty strikes along with it. It was like an epic escape scene from a Michael Bay movie, I swear. I damn near put on a cowboy hat just so I could wave it around and call out "YEE-HAW!!!" because I was having such a blast.

Life gives you lemons. Just make the best of it. It's all a matter of mindspace.

But I suppose that isn't very practical, now is it?

I suppose I could supplement my post by being a bit more on topic. I hear a lot from these threads about how deadly strikes are, but I wonder how accurate their damage estimates are. I got steamrolled in a match about three weeks ago...my own fault I died. Bad positioning. But the one thing I did was drop an arty strike directly on an IS marauder. It was the only damage I did that round, and my skill tree gives me all the arty upgrades. And I managed to mark him right at his feet, he never saw it coming. He never moved out of the way, nothing. It did very low 100's damage, like around 110. And he was right in the center of it when it hit.

Sure that's one anecdotal story, but I cite it because it's the easiest to isolate the damage caused by the airstrike because it was the only shot I got that round. I've had dozens of matches where I drop a strike right on an enemy, exchange some fire, then die, only having done about 200 damage (yes, I'm a bad, not claiming otherwise). And yes, I'm certain these strikes are hitting my target directly. Usually, yes, I do end up targeting single mechs because I have the cbills to burn anyway and I don't frequently have the support of teammates, so I use what I have immediately to leverage advantage (either to boost early damage, or just drive them out from cover). These strikes just aren't doing the sort of damage people claim. Unless the secret is to *not* have the skill node for reduced spread? I can imagine that helps in certain situations, but I am pretty good about hitting the one mech I'm targeting, at the very least.

So call me a skeptic, but I doubt you can get really high numbers off airstrikes unless you're consistently hitting clusters of enemies. If you are, I think that's a good thing. Maybe the part where they have no real requirements to carry into battle is a bit of a mess, but the mechanic itself is solid. It provides more gameplay than simply the big robots shooting at one-another. This is still a very tactical game and choices matter, and every gameplay mechanic that adds to that core philosophy is a good thing.

I will say this though. The short "fuse" on them and the absurd "smoke trail" mechanic makes it very hard to avoid if used even semi-competently. I killed a *locust* with an airstrike a few days ago on Tourmaline. All you have to do is land it near someone but out of their sight, whether that be behind cover, behind them, under their feet, or whatever. Speaking as someone who gets hit with these things constantly, oftentimes the smoke trail won't waft high enough into the air to see it until the strike's already done and over, so the slightest cover can often work.

Maybe the answer is making it slightly harder to use (TAG/NARC?) or carry into battle (tonnage/slots?). Maybe the answer is making it more prominent to everyone that a strike has been called in (audio cue/minimap ping?). Maybe the answer is simply "working as intended". The issue is complicated and I think it's worthwhile to discuss, even if ultimately the answer we come back to is "use 'em if you got 'em".