242 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Steve Pryde, on 14 October 2017 - 07:48 AM, said:

I think the Summoners where all ppc-nipple Summoners? I didn't watch any of the tournament matches.

Probably

They brawl okay too, but far more situational
I didn't have a look at the loadouts, just robots

[Lightfoot]

The missile imbalances are nothing new and Artemis has always underperformed, so much so there is no reason to use Artemis already unless you are a 90-100 ton Assault since you might as well. The imbalance with LRM, ATM, MRM is that they are balanced around 100 ton missile-boats and so they don't function for any mechs except 90-100 tonners running 4xLRM20 with Artemis. The fix is to make 4xLRM20, etc less efficient due to the number of missiles being fired than a normal missile loadout of 2xLRM20 or 3xLRM10 etc. Same for ATM and MRM.

Because right now MWO only supports missile use for the largest missile boats. Normal use of missiles is just not worth bothering with, they are so heavily nerfed. That's my take on it. I love mixing some LRMs into my attacks, but with MWO it's a waste of time so I have just given up on MWO ever doing missiles right.

PGI tries too hard to balance everything and that, in and of itself creates boats. See if LRMs were deadly at 40 missiles then it would be irrelevant to carry LRM80 on a slow assault. It might even be a deficit due to low mobility.

So stop balancing this stuff for boats, make it work for average load-outs of the weapons and smart players would switch to a variety of weapons for multiple situations and the balance would switch to boats vs multi-type. Can you see that? The balance would switch from just raw numbers (boats) what we have now, to raw numbers of same weapons vs mechs with multiple attack abilities.

Anyway, MWO has devolved into 4xLRM20 or don't even bother. Take something that is worth the payload space.

[Johnny Z]

Its easy to balance the CERML, just put a delay before it fires like the Inner Sphere rotary cannons.

To bad Guass rifles didn't have auto fire after delay by the way.

[TheMadTypist]

I'll wait to pass judgement on the majority of changes till after they drop, but there is one thing I don't like:

They treated Pulse lasers just as they treated the other variants. This pushes energy hardpoints more into the territory of being focused on delivering alpha rather than DPS, which in turn pushes the majority of designs into alpha over dps (which I might argue was the direction things were leaning already).

If they'd cut Pulse front-end damage and reduced the cooldown, instead of just increasing the cooldown, we might have gotten a DPS option out of our energy hardpoints that actually had a varied flavor from our alternatives. Now it's just going to be varying flavors of alpha-and-duck.

And yes, I know they already did that a bit before, which is why I'm confused why they didn't go further in that direction to define the weapon if they wanted to tune balance. This just puts more emphasis on the importance of alpha.

Edited by TheMadTypist, 14 October 2017 - 08:46 AM.

[FireStoat]

As others have mentioned previously, the Artemis spread nerf is yet another case of PGI's balance team (it's still one guy, right?) being influenced by the Skill Tree design team on post release. Missile spread skill picks weren't an entirely useless choice, but they were entirely optional and mostly considered by MRM users at best. Because something on the tree was seen as an optional pick at most, the solution was to nerf the baseline of a mech to make the skill tree choice more attractive.

Hold on to your hats when there's a blanket nerf to Hill Climb in all mech agility profiles so that Hill Climb as a skill choice is made attractive too.

tldr; arty strike / air strike nerfs = example of a properly needed nerf. Artemis nerf = someone's on drugs again.

[The Lurm Wurm]

Lightfoot, on 14 October 2017 - 08:27 AM, said:

The missile imbalances are nothing new and Artemis has always underperformed, so much so there is no reason to use Artemis already unless you are a 90-100 ton Assault since you might as well. The imbalance with LRM, ATM, MRM is that they are balanced around 100 ton missile-boats and so they don't function for any mechs except 90-100 tonners running 4xLRM20 with Artemis. The fix is to make 4xLRM20, etc less efficient due to the number of missiles being fired than a normal missile loadout of 2xLRM20 or 3xLRM10 etc. Same for ATM and MRM.

Because right now MWO only supports missile use for the largest missile boats. Normal use of missiles is just not worth bothering with, they are so heavily nerfed. That's my take on it. I love mixing some LRMs into my attacks, but with MWO it's a waste of time so I have just given up on MWO ever doing missiles right.

PGI tries too hard to balance everything and that, in and of itself creates boats. See if LRMs were deadly at 40 missiles then it would be irrelevant to carry LRM80 on a slow assault. It might even be a deficit due to low mobility.

So stop balancing this stuff for boats, make it work for average load-outs of the weapons and smart players would switch to a variety of weapons for multiple situations and the balance would switch to boats vs multi-type. Can you see that? The balance would switch from just raw numbers (boats) what we have now, to raw numbers of same weapons vs mechs with multiple attack abilities.

Anyway, MWO has devolved into 4xLRM20 or don't even bother. Take something that is worth the payload space.

Let me preface by saying that the Artemis nerf is quite silly; even with Artemis, TAG, and all the spread nodes, LRMs are still one of the worst direct-fire options you have. They're not unusable, but they're objectively worse than ACs and lasers.

That being said, you can absolutely make non-Assault LRM 'mechs work. I get a ton of work done on an ALRM40 ARC-2R with a personal TAG unit and 5 medium lasers as backup (too bad PGI's nerfing the hell out of those too, kek).




(And before I get accused of seal clubbing: T3 isn't exactly seal territory, and come on, it's an ARC-2R -- not even remotely a meta 'mech, nor a meta build).

You've gotta work for it -- lots of personal TAG and Artemis LoS locks involving delicate ridge-humping with that super-high energy mount, and intelligent use of the bay doors for more damage resistance when you get into laser range. But it's workable, is the point, as long as you're not playing at a super-competitive level.

Too bad that PGI's nerfs, supposedly intended to sort out the laser vomit meta and do... something... with missiles, actually directly target builds like this in every possible way to just make them outright worse in every way for no good reason.

[Khobai]

Quote

PGI tries too hard to balance everything and that, in and of itself creates boats. See if LRMs were deadly at 40 missiles then it would be irrelevant to carry LRM80 on a slow assault. It might even be a deficit due to low mobility.

this is the problem IMO

they need to make taking smaller quantities of LRMs more worthwhile and boating LRMs less worthwhile

a lot of mechs in battletech just use a single LRM launcher. a single launcher should be an effective choice.

[Johnny Z]

No one likes my idea of adding a delay before the CERML fires like the rotary cannon?? I think its funny but I am not really kidding.

Edited by Johnny Z, 14 October 2017 - 09:28 AM.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

Lightfoot, on 14 October 2017 - 08:27 AM, said:

PGI tries too hard to balance everything and that, in and of itself creates boats. See if LRMs were deadly at 40 missiles then it would be irrelevant to carry LRM80 on a slow assault. It might even be a deficit due to low mobility.

they need a mechanic that turns lrm assaults into electromagnets where every piece of metal in a match strikes them.

[Asym]

This thread is like watching a tennis match !

Nerf -- whine -- Nerf --- Whine -- Buff --Whine --nerf --- whine....

Ok, so we all lost something yet again in the quest to become a "Rock-and-Sock'em" robot game....that will require 0 intelligence to play because nothing will work beyond 100 meters (at the rate we're going it seems.)

Abandon all Joy.

[The Mysterious Fox]

Asym, on 14 October 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

This thread is like watching a tennis match !

Nerf -- whine -- Nerf --- Whine -- Buff --Whine --nerf --- whine....

Ok, so we all lost something yet again in the quest to become a "Rock-and-Sock'em" robot game....that will require 0 intelligence to play because nothing will work beyond 100 meters (at the rate we're going it seems.)

Abandon all Joy.

lol its basically mwo 2017 in a nutshell

[Johnny Z]

Khobai, on 14 October 2017 - 09:18 AM, said:

this is the problem IMO

they need to make taking smaller quantities of LRMs more worthwhile and boating LRMs less worthwhile

a lot of mechs in battletech just use a single LRM launcher. a single launcher should be an effective choice.

The dynamic is quite good now. But I hear ya.

[Y E O N N E]

Asym, on 14 October 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

This thread is like watching a tennis match !

Nerf -- whine -- Nerf --- Whine -- Buff --Whine --nerf --- whine....

Ok, so we all lost something yet again in the quest to become a "Rock-and-Sock'em" robot game....that will require 0 intelligence to play because nothing will work beyond 100 meters (at the rate we're going it seems.)

Abandon all Joy.

Funny you say that, because the weapons that work well at and above 1000 m are the ones that came out ahead in this pass...

[Jay Leon Hart]

Asym, on 14 October 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

Ok, so we all lost something yet again in the quest to become a "Rock-and-Sock'em" robot game....that will require 0 intelligence to play because nothing will work beyond 100 meters (at the rate we're going it seems.)

Did you miss the part where (almost) all the short ranged weapons were nerfed and a good number of lang ranged weapons were buffed? If anything we're working towards longer ranged fights, not shorter.

[InspectorG]

Appogee, on 14 October 2017 - 01:02 AM, said:

Gotta say, these are some of the worst balancing decisions I have ever seen from PGI.

And that's saying something.

Close 2nd to the Rescale, IMO. One would think, that after this many years, they would be getting better at this.

[Tlords]

ForceUser, on 14 October 2017 - 05:51 AM, said:

Typical MWO community, Complains about laser vomit being the go to and strongest meta for months. When it gets addressed they collectively lose their ****.

Amen - laser vomit is too strong in the current game. Increasing heat, reducing damage, and/or increasing cooldown are ways to address it. PGI chose cool down. Well done!

[poopenshire]

[mod]

Locking temporarily to clean up.

I will unlock when I am done.


Edit: Unlocking this thread. Have at it. But remember, posting the same thing over and over and over is not considered advancing the discussion.


[/mod]

Edited by poopenshire, 14 October 2017 - 10:05 AM.

[Lux Monolithic]

Nerfing the Annihilator because no one plays the Atlas... Are you joking? No one plays the Atlas because they suck... so reduce the fun of a mech that actually performs. Breathtaking work once again.

Edited by Illuminous Owl, 14 October 2017 - 10:07 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Illuminous Owl, on 14 October 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

Nerfing the Annihilator because no one plays the Atlas... Are you joking? No one plays the Atlas because they suck... so reduce the fun of a mech that actually performs. Breathtaking work once again.

Right. The ANH isn't superceding the Atlas because it has too much armor, it's superceding it because the Atlas hardpoints and placement make it extremely niche and because the Atlas lost the torso twisting it used previously to survive closing on the target.

[CFC Conky]

I remember a coupe of patches ago, PGI saying it wanted to increase time-to-kill so I think the laser nerf will help in this regard although it will take some of my builds a lot less fun to play.

The changes will affect the way the game is played, a pain if you're used to a particular play style, but a challenge to others. Until very recently I mostly used builds that leaned heavily on ballistics and I was starting to use more laser builds so I could round out my fp drop decks (IS). I was just starting to get used to the current cd durations and now it's all going to change. Inconvenient but I suppose I'll just have to adapt (but wouldn't mind a dilution to the nerfs )

Also unfortunate is the reduction in armour buffs for the Anni, I don't own any of them but it would have been fun to go up against one that has the same armour and more mobility. They still wouldn't be op imo, but entertaining in qp.

Looking on the bright side, it looks like I will be saving some c-bills by not having to take Artemis for my srm builds now...

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 14 October 2017 - 10:36 AM.