242 replies to this topic

[Thora Albescu]

Appogee, on 15 October 2017 - 01:58 AM, said:

Instead they are cancelling pre-orders because they want their Night Star's arms to be straight instead of slightly angled down.

Kind of pathetic, really. #AestheticsBeDamned #HardpointViagra

While aesthetics are a factor in that, you also have to think that the art portrayed them as straight, and therefore the hardpoints level to the cockpit. Unfortunately, IS mechs are made or broken with hardpoint placements.

[Appogee]

Thora Albescu, on 15 October 2017 - 03:02 AM, said:

While aesthetics are a factor in that, you also have to think that the art portrayed them as straight, and therefore the hardpoints level to the cockpit. Unfortunately, IS mechs are made or broken with hardpoint placements.

I totally understand how pilots want their hardpoints high, and I agree PGI shouldn't have made the mistake of showing them as being higher in the original art than they ended up.

But the modeled hardpoints aren't very much lower than the original art. It didn't bother me that they were slightly lower.

But anyway, a new era of Pre-order Cancellation-Led Design has begun. Let's fast forward to its inevitable conclusion!




Meantime, the Nightstar cancellations are handily distracting Russ from the bigger issue that his new Balance Underling, who was supplosed to fi><or balance, is about to fu><or it instead.

I guess I will have to order something new so I can then cancel it in protest

Edited by Appogee, 15 October 2017 - 03:23 AM.

[Lupis Volk]

Kali Rinpoche, on 14 October 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

Put these changes on test server first. We will play it and vote/flame them down, and you want have to be embarrassed to pull these nerfs off live.

Not to sure if i'm remembering this correctly but every time they put up the Test server people made all kind of excuses to not try it. Kinda hard to gather viable data in a test server when your player base refuses to give it outside of the live server.

Edited by Lupis Volk, 15 October 2017 - 03:18 AM.

[Daggett]

Hmm, what if the laser changes were not targeting the perceived HLL-based-vomit meta?
PGI never wrote that, you all assumed that laser-nerfs MUST be adressing laser-vomit.

But what if laser-vomit may not have been the strongest you can do with lasers in QP?

For instance my best perfoming QP mechs used simple 6x C-ER-Meds with 29+ DHS and good agility. Sure, the alpha is lower. But when you aim poorly or the target twists well, you are not at 60-80% heat and you can try again for ages.

In fact such builds can actually brawl and support a push quite nice where traditional laser-vomit overheats after a maximum of 2 alphas. Clan Medium lasers are highly versatile, boating them with enough DHS allows you to perform well in almost any situation. So maybe they indeed had too much DPS for being that versatile for their low tonnage?

True, in competitive play laser-vomit is better because you are coordinated and less prone to being forced into a brawl you don't want. But in QP this ain't as easy, and because QP is the heartblood of MWO PGI has the almost impossible task to both balance for competitive and QP which are quite different.

So from my perspective PGI nerfed/killed my most powerful builds which is a sign they probably did something right here. Of cause i don't like my babies being nerfed and i also think they nerfed the cooldown too much, forcing me to join all those other HLL-vomit users to remain successful in QP when using clan laser-builds.
And i'm also skeptical if IS lasers needed that nerf too.

Of cause i may be wrong and PGI indeed wanted to adress laser-vomit and failed. But i guess it's only fair to keep the possibility in mind that agile, extremely heat-efficient 6xC-ER-Meds and similar builds could have been more imbalanced than we thought. Maybe laser-vomit just feels more powerful because as a vicim you are likely to lose a component when getting hit by those while constant smaller alphas may not feel that devastating...

TLDR: PGI never said that the nerfs adress laser-vomit, maybe there have been other balance-problems with lasers?

Edited by Daggett, 15 October 2017 - 03:30 AM.

[The6thMessenger]

Remember when the tooltip stays open after examining a component on mechlab? I think that's fixed. Took them long enough.

[Sjorpha]

They managed to nerf lasers in a way that actually is a relative buff to clan laser vomit and gaussvomit, encourage high alpha boating even more, completely avoid any kind of improvement to IS tech and make sure to reduce the narrow niche of the only IS mechs used in the WC semis.

It's actually kind of impressive, incompetence perfected. If PGi wants me to give them more money they should livestream their balance meetings for a fee, I'd pay premium to hear the conversation behind this madness.

[Sigmar Sich]

Lupis Volk, on 15 October 2017 - 03:18 AM, said:

Not to sure if i'm remembering this correctly but every time they put up the Test server people made all kind of excuses to not try it. Kinda hard to gather viable data in a test server when your player base refuses to give it outside of the live server.

Rewards should solve this problem. Play X games on test server - get shiny things for live server. Deal Y damage from rebalanced weapon - get another reward. And so on.

[poltergoost]

Daggett, on 15 October 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

TLDR: PGI never said that the nerfs adress laser-vomit, maybe there have been other balance-problems with lasers?

In what alternate reality do these balance problems involve IS MLs and SLs being too powerful!?!?

Because it is the IS lights/mediums which rely on close-range lasers that are being nerfed far harder than anything else I own

Edited by poltergoost, 15 October 2017 - 03:51 AM.

[The Mysterious Fox]

Daggett, on 15 October 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

TLDR: PGI never said that the nerfs adress laser-vomit, maybe there have been other balance-problems with lasers?

the entire playerbase quaked in fear of my micro lasers

[Sjorpha]

Also funny how they nerf LRMs when they aready very underpowered and would need big buffs to be viable.

[Tordin]

Indirect nerf of all missiles in general by nerfing their aiding system is just mindboggling. They should compensate by increasing the missile spread reduction nodes with 10% each, at least.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

On the Clan-side this was more of a attempt to nerf gauss/laser platforms like the Deathstrike than it was to high-alpha pure laser vomit....which as I said before didn't have the heat to alpha frequently anyway. Gauss/erml could (if exposed or closed in on) more often recycle those lasers upon cooldown because the gauss didn't jack the heat up on those platforms. On many high-alpha laser-vomit traders you (most) often didn't have the heat to do that and had to wait beyond your cooldown time to fully alpha again anyway. Personally, I will be adding yet another erml to my ebon's. I figure I might as well hit even harder if they won't let me recycle my weapons as fast anyway. So, I will be going even higher alpha....I'm sure that is what PGI intended in this change, for players to go even higher alpha laser vomit as PGI's cooldown time increase will make that firepower increase make sense. So, I am just doing what they wanted me to do, right???

Edited by Marquis De Lafayette, 15 October 2017 - 05:58 AM.

[Nightmare1]

Shadowomega1, on 14 October 2017 - 07:32 PM, said:

Not like IS players used Artemis in the first place, but hey I dropped SRM6s for MRMs 10 the day they were added into the game.

I used Artemis, lol.

Personally, I dislike MRMs. The only thing I use them for is taking out O-Gens in FW.

All that aside, Artemis did not need a nerf. It's like the devs got bored and started mucking around again like they used to do.

[Shifty McSwift]

Lupis Volk, on 15 October 2017 - 03:18 AM, said:

Not to sure if i'm remembering this correctly but every time they put up the Test server people made all kind of excuses to not try it. Kinda hard to gather viable data in a test server when your player base refuses to give it outside of the live server.

It is also kind of hard to "test" something that is only open a couple of days and requires a near 20gb download each time, also this is why you hire testers right? For accurate info reporting on top of data accumulation?

[oldradagast]

Lupis Volk, on 15 October 2017 - 03:18 AM, said:

Not to sure if i'm remembering this correctly but every time they put up the Test server people made all kind of excuses to not try it. Kinda hard to gather viable data in a test server when your player base refuses to give it outside of the live server.

The most common "excuse" was the need to basically download the ENTIRE GAME a second time, which is perfectly valid criticism, particularly for those of us not on super fast internet. And even if you did successfully download the test version of the game, it was only open for play for short intervals during which many people had other things to do. I'm not sure if these problems still exist, but PGI has neither a particularly good track record with listening to its customers or writing good code, so who knows.

Tordin, on 15 October 2017 - 05:05 AM, said:

Indirect nerf of all missiles in general by nerfing their aiding system is just mindboggling. They should compensate by increasing the missile spread reduction nodes with 10% each, at least.

It's particularly hilarious since missiles are in no way meta, but they are going to nerf them anyway. Same idea as with the small and medium lasers - not meta, but some mechs use them, so they must be nerfed. It's rather clear at this point that PGI has no clue about balance.

Edited by oldradagast, 15 October 2017 - 05:36 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

oldradagast, on 15 October 2017 - 05:36 AM, said:

It's particularly hilarious since missiles are in no way meta, but they are going to nerf them anyway. Same idea as with the small and medium lasers - not meta, but some mechs use them, so they must be nerfed. It's rather clear at this point that PGI has no clue about balance.

Like suggested in the OP here, many of the changes don't seem to be based off anything players have asked for, they are based on something else, potentially the balance devs ideals of normality or baseline expectations (which is a good thing in some ways, some people complain about forum whiners making the game change while in the same breath complaining about how they aren't being listened to).

What is strange about that mostly is how the last patch (before this) was specifically an "energy rebalance" patch, or an energy pass, which suggested that the proceeding patches might take a ballistic and/or missile pass focus, instead we ended up with a mess of changes to many systems, and no idea if these are in any way final or test rates or anything.

[oldradagast]

Shifty McSwift, on 15 October 2017 - 05:49 AM, said:

What is strange about that mostly is how the last patch (before this) was specifically an "energy rebalance" patch, or an energy pass, which suggested that the proceeding patches might take a ballistic and/or missile pass focus, instead we ended up with a mess of changes to many systems, and no idea if these are in any way final or test rates or anything.

Which is why I strongly suspect some horribly written automatic system that tells the devs what is "overperforming" - leading to lunacy such as because medium lasers are the most commonly used weapon in the game, they must be "broken" or some nonsense. Then, they get together in a thrown-together meeting and toss out random, silly ideas to create the patch. That's how we're going to end up with medium lasers with a long cycle time than large lasers... as if "medium laser vomit" was the actual meta, lol... Ugh, it's just so stupid!

[oldradagast]

Kin3ticX, on 15 October 2017 - 12:59 AM, said:

did everyone miss the nerf to muh LRMs from 45 degrees down to 25?

This is oppressive to joystick and steering wheel players.

PGI plz.

That's actually hilarious. You'd think after watching the MWO World Championship they might have noticed that LRM's are not used in high-level play... OK, I assume that they were not used - I don't have hours of time to blow watching those videos, but traditionally, LRM's are absent from high-level play.

So, they nerf LRM's. Ok... sure...

[Mister Blastman]

This patch. This patch! It reminds me of a song that's too explicit for this place, so here's the G-rated version, dedicated to the balance whatever:

[Redacted]

Worst balance decisions ever. This game...

Edited by McValium, 15 October 2017 - 01:08 PM.
Still inappropriate

[Novakaine]

The most astounding part of this debacle is the fact that they actually astounded me yet again.