189 replies to this topic

[Prototelis]

A light mech that can be taken out with some ermeds....

For real, myst lynx is so fragile.

Nothing here has really changed, open back is still open back.

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

And I think mgs do sand paper off armor but I haven't really tested it. Otherwise I don't know how a 2 spl and 8 mg mech takes out torsos in less than 8 seconds. MGs were supposed to be an anti personnel weapon - the damage they are doing is ridiculous and strangely enough - they keep getting buffed.

They do seem to be good at killing people, eh?

And MGs can and do maul 'Mechs in TT, in large enough numbers.

8 LMGs is like a large laser hit in terms of damage- 8 MG's being like a pair of LL's. 8 seconds of MG fire in TT with their rate of fire (MGs fire every 2.5 second "turn") is easily three such lasers. Six, if MG's rather than LMGs.

Add in the SPL fire and if they get back armor off, you don't have a side torso soon after. Without the SPLs opening a hole though, even that much MG fire won't seriously degrade armor.

[Trissila]

Novakaine, on 05 September 2017 - 06:52 AM, said:

Crotch crunching crit lynx are a serious issue.
Anyone denying this is just being disingenuous.

Heavens forbid anything present a natural problem for your 100-ton derpfortress.

Critlynxes are a serious issue for fools that fail to bring means to deal with lights in their midst and wearing nothing on their backplates.

[MechWarrior5152251]

Machine guns are fun. they are far less effective than 2 heavy PPCs though.

[Ruar]

Trissila, on 05 September 2017 - 04:44 PM, said:

Heavens forbid anything present a natural problem for your 100-ton derpfortress.

Critlynxes are a serious issue for fools that fail to bring means to deal with lights in their midst and wearing nothing on their backplates.

Not true. My standard weaponry is MPL and SRMs, and back armor. Yet a light can pick and choose it's time to fight due to speed. Then when armor is opened a LMG light can kill a torso in a matter of seconds. No amount of twisting can compensate because if you try to aim the high crit rate simply strips you out.

Which kind of boils down to whether or not you think a mech should be able to continue to fight once it's armor is stripped or whether it should simply be considered an easy target.

Personally I think having armor stripped shouldn't turn a mech into LMG fodder. I much prefer being able to fight on without armor than having to resign myself to losing weapons and whatever area is being targeted regardless of how smart I play.

I don't even see the point of having weapons with high internal and critical damage. They just make the game boring to play and remove a lot of fun. Which is probably why I haven't even bothered to play the last two weeks. Hoping the upcoming balance changes fix the problem.

[Brain Cancer]

A robot without armor is an exposed, fragile target.

As it should be. Structure should be nowhere as effective a damage sink as armor is, that's what the armor is for. To protect your delicate, fragile, and frequently explosive insides.

[Mcgral18]

Ruar, on 05 September 2017 - 05:48 PM, said:

Not true. My standard weaponry is MPL and SRMs, and back armor. Yet a light can pick and choose it's time to fight due to speed. Then when armor is opened a LMG light can kill a torso in a matter of seconds. No amount of twisting can compensate because if you try to aim the high crit rate simply strips you out.

Which kind of boils down to whether or not you think a mech should be able to continue to fight once it's armor is stripped or whether it should simply be considered an easy target.

Personally I think having armor stripped shouldn't turn a mech into LMG fodder. I much prefer being able to fight on without armor than having to resign myself to losing weapons and whatever area is being targeted regardless of how smart I play.

I don't even see the point of having weapons with high internal and critical damage. They just make the game boring to play and remove a lot of fun. Which is probably why I haven't even bothered to play the last two weeks. Hoping the upcoming balance changes fix the problem.

Then increase MG damage, and remove the Crits


Right now, they average double damage against structure
Change it around if you want fewer Crits, but they'll need a damage buff (to the whining of many Terribads)

[Ruar]

Brain Cancer, on 05 September 2017 - 06:04 PM, said:

A robot without armor is an exposed, fragile target.

As it should be. Structure should be nowhere as effective a damage sink as armor is, that's what the armor is for. To protect your delicate, fragile, and frequently explosive insides.

And there is the crux of the debate. Two separate philosophies on how the game mechanics should function which directly result in whether someone feels MGs are OP or just fine.

Mcgral18, on 05 September 2017 - 06:10 PM, said:

Then increase MG damage, and remove the Crits


Right now, they average double damage against structure
Change it around if you want fewer Crits, but they'll need a damage buff (to the whining of many Terribads)

I'd leave the damage as is and simply increase total number of rounds per ton of ammunition. Then you have a lightweight, high DPS, no heat support weapon that pairs well with energy builds.

[Mcgral18]

Ruar, on 05 September 2017 - 06:12 PM, said:

And there is the crux of the debate. Two separate philosophies on how the game mechanics should function which directly result in whether someone feels MGs are OP or just fine.



I'd leave the damage as is and simply increase total number of rounds per ton of ammunition. Then you have a lightweight, high DPS, no heat support weapon that pairs well with energy builds.

No, then you have a Terrible weapon system

GGclose, MGs
At least this time they lasted more than 2 weeks

[Y E O N N E]

I, personally, do not care one iota for equipment crits. Getting all your weapons destroyed from getting butt-diddled by Lights while remaining at 70 or 80+ % is not fun. Never was, never will be. Especially bad for big guns which are not only the bulk of your firepower, but also the most vulnerable to rolling a crit.

What I do like, though, is that MGs deal the damage they do against armor and deal more raw damage to structure. I don't want that to change. I also don't want to see any sort of stupid Flamer- or RAC-like limiter to how long you can keep the trigger depressed. Ditto adding heat to the weapon. Those solutions do nothing except make the gun only good at back-assassinations, just like nerfing agility on the Night Gyr made it good only at Gauss pop-tarting...not that the assassinations are a problem; it's just as fair as getting blown away by a high-vomit or Gauss blast from 500 meters away simply for making one wrong move.

So that's my stance. Remove or reduce equipment crits, but let MGs continue to be useful as a consistent damage dealing weapon.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 05 September 2017 - 06:25 PM.

[qS Sachiel]

Lol wha about mechs that boast the majority of their output from their arms? Take off an arm it loses 40% output and sits at 90%hp. Buff mah arm armour, targeted attacks op.

And another poster complaining that having no armour and getting critted out\destroyed is a mechanic they don't agree with... Just stop please lol this is entering the realm of satire.

[Y E O N N E]

qS Sachiel, on 05 September 2017 - 06:44 PM, said:

Lol wha about mechs that boast the majority of their output from their arms? Take off an arm it loses 40% output and sits at 90%hp. Buff mah arm armour, targeted attacks op.

And another poster complaining that having no armour and getting critted out\destroyed is a mechanic they don't agree with... Just stop please lol this is entering the realm of satire.

Uh, no. I'm not complaining. I'm stating a preference because Chris is watching the thread and, if PGI is going to change something, I want my preference known.

Throughout this whole thing, I've been on the "Leave the MGs alone" train.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 05 September 2017 - 07:00 PM.

[qS Sachiel]

Yeonne Greene, on 05 September 2017 - 06:59 PM, said:

Uh, no. I'm not complaining. I'm stating a preference because Chris is watching the thread and, if PGI is going to change something, I want my preference known.

Throughout this whole thing, I've been on the "Leave the MGs alone" train.

Of course it's your opinion. I was poking holes in the logic though, where you *stated* losing significant damage output while retaining significant amounts of hp is 'not fun'.
Getting cored from the rear and having 85%+ hp is not fun
Losing arms when your weapons are all in one/arms is not fun.
Having an xl explosion when only 1 torso open or rear xl shot is not fun
Resonance cascade scenario from leg ammo explosion is not fun
Getting headshot is not fun

These are all elements of the game with a common factor being player death or being crippled. By. Another. Player.

Nobody likes getting knocked out of the game but that's the ultimate purpose: to remove players from the match. You kill, someone dies. You die, someone kills.

None of this comes close to providing a basis for mg being overpowered beyond you were distracted or absent minded or outmanoeuvred (you in general sense please) other than 'mg can do the thing it's meant to be doing, I got killed'

[Trissila]

Ruar, on 05 September 2017 - 06:12 PM, said:

I'd leave the damage as is and simply increase total number of rounds per ton of ammunition. Then you have a lightweight, high DPS, no heat support weapon that pairs well with energy builds.

Nobody uses MG/HMG. Do you know why?

Because the damage is complete trash without the crit multiplier, which is what the LMG has over the other two.

So you take out the crit multiplier and "leave the damage as is", what you have is complete trash with no redeeming qualities.

Carrying more trash per wasted ton on your mech doesn't mean anything.

MGs do 1 DPS, just barely beating out cERSLs -- except that their MAX range is about the same as cERSL OPTIMAL. You're only actually getting that garbage 1dps at 160 meters. MGs are about on par with Micro Lasers, and we all know how popular those are.

[Y E O N N E]

qS Sachiel, on 05 September 2017 - 07:10 PM, said:

Of course it's your opinion. I was poking holes in the logic though, where you *stated* losing significant damage output while retaining significant amounts of hp is 'not fun'.
Getting cored from the rear and having 85%+ hp is not fun
Losing arms when your weapons are all in one/arms is not fun.
Having an xl explosion when only 1 torso open or rear xl shot is not fun
Resonance cascade scenario from leg ammo explosion is not fun
Getting headshot is not fun

These are all elements of the game with a common factor being player death or being crippled. By. Another. Player.

Nobody likes getting knocked out of the game but that's the ultimate purpose: to remove players from the match. You kill, someone dies. You die, someone kills.

None of this comes close to providing a basis for mg being overpowered beyond you were distracted or absent minded or outmanoeuvred (you in general sense please) other than 'mg can do the thing it's meant to be doing, I got killed'

Nah, it's none of that. With MGs, there's an empirical, mechanical incongruity to everything else on that list.

When you stack the weapons in an arm and then lose the arm, the enemy still had to remove all the hit points of that arm. Ditto the XL side torso and the rear-core, from one of the two directions you can choose to control for.

Conversely, having all the equipment blown out while remaining intact does not require the enemy to run through all of that section's hitpoints from any direction. The entire purpose of having hit-points in a section is to allow you to retain the stuff in it longer. You should reasonably expect that you can keep things at least that long. There is zero utility in having 20, 30, 40, 60, etc. structure, though, if it only takes 5-10 damage to make that entire section useless. You can say "armor it up!", but nothing with MGs is bringing just MGs; they can all hit you for at least 20 points of non-MG fire. It is unrealistic to move that much armor from front to rear; you still get screwed immediately from behind and now you get flattened even faster from the front. It's also disproportionately rewarding the use of small weapons while overly punishing the use of big weapons...especially those that are rigged to explode when you look at them funny.

But what makes it truly unfun is the consistency. The ammo cook-off is so rare that it actually is kinda fun when it happens. Sporadic RNG is entertaining. Knowing that all your guns are fodder the instant the armor is breached? And you can't do anything to mitigate it? And yet that section is in decent shape considering? As I said above, why even have structure points any more? Is it really RNG if it's so consistent?

Now, I haven't had too many problems getting diddled in the rear with MGs, but I also don't play Assaults much. I'm usually the one doing the diddling. I think being able to do the damage is fine. In fact, I personally prefer the damage to the equipment destruction capabilities, which is why I stick to standard MG rather than LMG on my MLX. I don't think it's fair, though, that if I want to I can consistently disarm half of a 100 ton 'Mech from 300 meters away in one shot for just 5 tons of weapons and ammo. This isn't even a Lights thing, this is an anybody-with-ballistics-slots thing. If you can deal at least 12 damage with other weapons and have a smattering of LMGs, you can cripple almost any 'Mech from even as far away as 400-450 meters. Mechanically, that's just not consistent with how the game has worked up to this point.

TL;DR: the risk-reward equation is unbalanced.

[J0anna]

ShaneoftheDead, on 03 September 2017 - 07:48 PM, said:

Machine Guns are everywhere. MG boat Mechs are owning close range, or so it would seem.

Is this good for the game? Is this what we, the players, want?

Yes, it's exactly what we want. If lights boating MG's become a real problem, a few things will happen:

1) People will learn to shoot lights more often.

and

2) People will bring light-hunting mediums more often.

If the light and medium que's get larger, that can only help the game. That is something everyone should want. The more lights I see, the more I want to set up a stormcrow to eat lights and the more I want to keep the few assaults on my team alive since losing one hurts more. Besides slow Assaults draw in lights like bees to a flower, thus making a light hunting medium's job even easier.....

[qS Sachiel]

Yeonne Greene, on 05 September 2017 - 08:00 PM, said:

Nah, it's none of that. With MGs, there's an empirical, mechanical incongruity to everything else on that list.

When you stack the weapons in an arm and then lose the arm, the enemy still had to remove all the hit points of that arm. Ditto the XL side torso and the rear-core, from one of the two directions you can choose to control for.

Conversely, having all the equipment blown out while remaining intact does not require the enemy to run through all of that section's hitpoints from any direction. The entire purpose of having hit-points in a section is to allow you to retain the stuff in it longer. You should reasonably expect that you can keep things at least that long. There is zero utility in having 20, 30, 40, 60, etc. structure, though, if it only takes 5-10 damage to make that entire section useless. You can say "armor it up!", but nothing with MGs is bringing just MGs; they can all hit you for at least 20 points of non-MG fire. It is unrealistic to move that much armor from front to rear; you still get screwed immediately from behind and now you get flattened even faster from the front. It's also disproportionately rewarding the use of small weapons while overly punishing the use of big weapons...especially those that are rigged to explode when you look at them funny.

But what makes it truly unfun is the consistency. The ammo cook-off is so rare that it actually is kinda fun when it happens. Sporadic RNG is entertaining. Knowing that all your guns are fodder the instant the armor is breached? And you can't do anything to mitigate it? And yet that section is in decent shape considering? As I said above, why even have structure points any more?

I'll start off to affirm that I'm not focussing on you specifically in so far as I want to burn you, more that your discussions appear well worded and thought out, not generally just knee jerk. The second paragraph to my first post you replied to was aimed more at Ruar.

Your final point I most interesting to me. If a light crits put your weapons you lose that damage potential, but you can still keep up speed or live, if you're running a cxl/lfe, or xl respectively. Mg do less damage bi more crit. Most other weapons do less crit but have overwhelming damage. What is the difference between having your st taken off by a second Alpha following armour failure vs leaving the torso on and having it critted out. Your point I feel seems to focus on that mg makes it less fun because of the lingering perception of having 100% of nothing (component remains but is crippled) vs having 0% of something (component destroyed). As others have suggested, if we take away crit multiplier and add damage you will just end up losing the component anyway. Against most mediums and above that shoulder would my be there to lament te lack of functioning internals. I still see a disconnect in logic. Really, I only see the argument approaching validity in high structure assaults where they continue to function long after armour failure, discounting xl check.

[CraneArmy]

MG's were in a great place right before and right after Civil war.

4 MG lights and 6 MG mediums were great.

Throwing 2 MG's on a lot of other things for support weapons was great.

Putting 6-8 MG's + 26-40 laser alphas together on one light mech was the mistake.

Its strong with high level solo queue, its strong with pugs, its strong in FW and its strong in group queue. I dont know about competitive / private lobbies yet, but its possible that it's strong there too.

There are a lot of people in this thread saying "dont take my MG mysty away, it has drawbacks", sure it doesnt have structure quirks like a spider 5k, or an ember, or armor quirks like an urbie.
But, honestly tell me if you think one of those mechs is outperforming the ach or mlx-g. Double down and tell me that you think the structure quirks on those other mechs actually matters any more with 6-8 mg lights in every game.

Cat is out of the bag and honestly, unless PGI wants to simply refund those new MLX and ACH, they are absolutely ****** on balance for a loooooong time. They should just refund the mechs and delete them. They could possibly change the hardpoints to the 4mg limit which has been the precedent for lights until this point. They wont because both of these things are too risky.

The second most reasonable thing they could do is nerf them with quirks, or do something incredibly dumb like putting ghost heat on more than 4 to 6 machine guns (yes I did say that would be dumb. Yet in the aftermath of the supremely dumb 8 mg light idea, doing something only kinda dumb is still your second best option).

The third option is buff the crap out of every other light until people want to play them again. also change everything with now useless structure quirks into armor quirks and double the effect of structure skills in the skill tree so at least you can use structure as bonus heat capacity while you have armor (this is the only real perk of structure bonuses atm). This option is a painfully huge amount of work, but might bring lights and the rest of tanky IS mechs to where they should be within this meta, it also avoids total eclipse of armor nodes over structure nodes in the skill tree.

Probably the worst option is the blanket band aid MG's nerf. This has the effect of ruining dozens of viable mech builds in order to put exactly two back in line. Would you kill 100 people to save 2? I wouldnt. Sux, but its easy, and those old mechs wernt selling that well anyway.

WHAT SHOULD PLAYERS DO?
If you are watching this thread and undecided, wait until the 15th and watch for the patch notes. If they were going to nerf just the two mechs with quirks or btfo MG's completely, they can do it on the first run. If they dont, buy both of the mechs. All of the other options are going to take the rest of the year to sort out.

---
I would love to be able to get match scores in a light, like I can in a heavy on a more consistent basis. The new Cheetah's and MLX-G do that.
I lack the confidence that there exists the willpower to do a total overhaul of the class to match these two mechs.

[Trissila]

CraneArmy, on 05 September 2017 - 10:19 PM, said:

But, honestly tell me if you think one of those mechs is outperforming the ach or mlx-g. Double down and tell me that you think the structure quirks on those other mechs actually matters any more with 6-8 mg lights in every game.

They're not. Because Light Mechs, as an entire weight class, are so trashy and worthless. MG Cheetahs and Lynxes are Actually Halfway Decent, which puts them head and shoulders above the roaring dumpster fire that is the rest of the class.

Speed is supposed to be their Thing, except that Mediums are almost as fast while having WAY more firepower and armor.

Quote

I would love to be able to get match scores in a light, like I can in a heavy on a more consistent basis. The new Cheetah's and MLX-G do that.
I lack the confidence that there exists the willpower to do a total overhaul of the class to match these two mechs.

Exactly. ACH and MLX are not OP, they're just Not Terrible. The rest of the class should be elevated to their level, rather than nerfing the ACH and MLX so that derps can go back to stomping around without giving a crap that they're taking hits to the rear armor from a light mech.

[qS Sachiel]

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***
Ah if only it were true....