28 replies to this topic

[Kalimaster]

In general, the weapons in this game have become over nerfed. It seems that perhaps the developers are more worried about DPS scores than if a weapon actually works, not realizing that a few over performers may balance each other out. At this rate I'm surprised members of PGI haven't been elected to positions in the U.S. Congress. Players want to have a few "Can Kickers" at their disposal.

As a result, the Atlas the King of the Battlefeild is little more than a target, and other Mechs like my SNV-1(S) which has only 4 kills to it's name while being blasted to bits 55 times now are jokes. Assult Mechs can't take the punishment from even these nerfed weapons.

So how to make MWO better. There are several way.

1. Top of the list. Un-nerf the weapons. Stop Nerfing. Make things better.

2. Fix Faction Play.
--This can be done in some easy steps. Return bonuses for play (linked to Match score for kills, kill assists, and damage to play). Grinding out 25 points from repetitive losses upon IS players makes IS players less likely to play FW. The current system is counter productive.

--Hunt down and fix the issue where players find themselves stuck on the drop screen and unable to play.

3. Make the Drop ship is to a vital part of the game. Players can name their Drop Ship for 250,000 C-Bills turning it into their command drop ship. Once that is done their drop ship in screen can be painted with paint tones and decals added.

--For 250 MC each, for either Clan or IS, players can put Clan or IS Mechs into these unlocked bays (applies to drop Deck 1 or that Command Drop Ship only). This will help balance battles and bring FW into Lore as both sides used Captured Mechs.

4. Adapt an assortment of Front Page or Home page backgrounds for our Mechs.
#A lava lake overseen by a rocky ledge that Mechs stand on.
#A spooky tree stands next to our Mech with a haunted Mansion in the background.
#An ice cave

5. More in-game Titles not just for Mechs we purchase

6. Cockpit Item
--Items that do something such as a pair of hanging ammo belts (Mounted) that add 200 rounds of machine gun ammo to said Mech.
--Items that are unlocked and won for performing a specific deed in play.
--One of a kind items that can't be purchased but earned.

7. Decals
--Decals that when equipped earn bonus points such as a 1% increase in C-Bill or XP earnings.
--Decals linked to map play
--Decals that have to be earned that can't simply be purchased.

8. Bolt on Items
--Some of these should have in-game effects

9. Pilots for Mechs. A select number of Mech Pilots could be added to the game designed to give Mechs some bonuses with pilots granting various abilities to Mechs such as a +1 or +2 bonus to jump jets, armor, or increased weapon abilities (range, cooldown, jam chance, etc). Each pilot could be given a name, with a portrait upon he left side of the screen with some background information. Pilots could advance in level (0-10) adding various bonuses as they advance. The game MechCommander 2 used a similar system.

[Asym]

Many of us have been against this illogical and as some call it "dart board" nerfing for a long time and have said so well before me....

But, there is a large elephant in the room: Solaris. FP is dead. QP is a place to "hang out" and has no in-game value.

Solaris is where this game is going: like it or not. To get Solaris to actually work, inside of the matches, all weapons at some point must be degraded and armor and survivability increased to make the matches last.....

WHY? To make Solaris actually play long enough to keep players interested.... TTK must be extended to make matches last more that 1 minute and 30 seconds.... Lethality is a major issue; especially, with the many talented players MWO has grown over the last 4 years or so ! Look at the championships.... Imagine a match where the buzzer sounds and you turn around and take an Alpha to the head immediately; you are 80% dead in the first 15 seconds.... That does not sell products. That does not encourage players to "try again"..... That does not sell "improvement" packages to the mech lines to extend arena longevity.... Retention will fall and soon, the game has population issues even at 1x1. Average players will be disenfranchised and will leave.

I know, I'll hear the "oh what pitiful stuff" and there will be a dose of salt for writing this..... If you doubt what I have said consider the: medium laser nerf; the ARTEMIS nerf; the small pulse laser nerf; and, add the destruction of the mobility/agility of some of the finest heavy fighting mechs conceived and the constant fear of buying another new mechs for the immediate nerf's that follow...... Coincidence? No, it's the only way Solaris will work..... Even the 1960's "Rock-and-Sock'em-Robots" were designed to last a few minutes.......because kids needed to enjoy the game then, try again.....

[Tarl Cabot]

There is overnerf and there is that this is an ever changing organism. The initiate setup may have been too extreme to start with, and over time the need to rein things in once there are fresh set of eyes on it.

[El Bandito]

Kalimaster, on 14 December 2017 - 09:31 AM, said:

As a result, the Atlas the King of the Battlefeild is little more than a target, and other Mechs like my SNV-1(S) which has only 4 kills to it's name while being blasted to bits 55 times now are jokes.

You are playing your Supernova wrong...

[kuma8877]

Yeah, at this point it should be fairly obvious that the dartboard is being used less and a general direction has been chosen, to slow things down a bit. Probably for Solaris, but also because many have been asking for longer TTK (mechs to feel like warmachines). The process is just coming across as disjointed and inefficiently communicated. System by system things are being slowed down. Let your muscle memory adjust and it's fine.

[LowSubmarino]

I perceive it differently.

Mechs take insane punishment it seems.

[FupDup]

kuma8877, on 14 December 2017 - 11:27 AM, said:

Yeah, at this point it should be fairly obvious that the dartboard is being used less and a general direction has been chosen, to slow things down a bit. Probably for Solaris, but also because many have been asking for longer TTK (mechs to feel like warmachines). The process is just coming across as disjointed and inefficiently communicated. System by system things are being slowed down. Let your muscle memory adjust and it's fine.

If Solaris is the baseline, that's going to massively screw up balance since tiny 1v1 or 2v2 matches are going to have a drastically different meta than 12v12 or 8v8.

Specifically, guns like the ER Large Laser (nerfed or unnerfed) are going to suck hard in Solaris because you can't have a firing line of mechs focusing into the advancing red team. You've only got one guy, who can't put enough pressure on a target by himself to prevent it from getting close with its splat brawler loadout and facerolling him.

[Tarl Cabot]

FupDup, on 14 December 2017 - 11:33 AM, said:

If Solaris is the baseline, that's going to massively screw up balance since tiny 1v1 or 2v2 matches are going to have a drastically different meta than 12v12 or 8v8.

Specifically, guns like the ER Large Laser (nerfed or unnerfed) are going to suck hard in Solaris because you can't have a firing line of mechs focusing into the advancing red team. You've only got one guy, who can't put enough pressure on a target by himself to prevent it from getting close with its splat brawler loadout and facerolling him.

And that is how it was when Solaris VII boardgame was introduced with its 2.5sec turns, weapon delays (cooldowns). Machine guns became the weapon of choice. Similar to FP Scouting, or even the PTS with 4vs4 or 2vs2 people eventually dropped with brawling mechs.

[Christophe Ivanov]

If Nerfing has to be part of this, then lets get this under control. I propose PGI should update the game weapons, mechs, etc only once every quarter. I am aware some do not agree and that's your opinion and respected. But for the life of this game, updating every month with so many changes is just NUTS! No time to get used to all the changes, and when we do, you change them again...
Stop the knee-jerking responses. Make pubic testing common once again to give us players a chance to try the changes out and weigh in on the results. I mean, we care too ya know?

Edited by Christophe Ivanov, 14 December 2017 - 11:45 AM.

[Khobai]

cant make weapons better because of solaris

1v1 isnt gonna work with better weapons

they have to massively nerf weapons to make solaris work lol

[RickySpanish]

Arena style combat is always going to be faster and more brutal than team based combat. There's no way that's going to be changed by nerfing weapon damage without making the fights extremely boring. IMO the easiest way would be to make matches based on best of X battles, which isn't exactly a "fight to the death" scenario since you're re-spawning, but short of adding in-game repair, I don't see how else it would work.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 14 December 2017 - 11:48 AM, said:

cant make weapons better because of solaris

1v1 isnt gonna work with better weapons

they have to massively nerf weapons to make solaris work lol

So far the guns they're nerfing are the ones that would suck in Solaris anyways.

[Cy Mitchell]

FupDup, on 14 December 2017 - 12:13 PM, said:

So far the guns they're nerfing are the ones that would suck in Solaris anyways.

except for the cSPL and Clan machine guns.

Although I do believe that both needed adjustments.

Edited by Rampage, 14 December 2017 - 12:20 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

So far the guns they're nerfing are the ones that would suck in Solaris anyways.

theyre not nerfing for solaris yet

solaris isnt going to be until next summer at the earliest probably (russ said "soon but not as soon as people would like", which implies sometime around summer or fall 2018)

but yeah theyre gonna have to implement something like energy draw for solaris. I dont see how they can do solaris without energy draw. it would be over too quickly.

I mean if theyre gonna start linking different weapons in the same ghost heat group... thats basically energy draw anyway. so why not just give us energy draw?

Edited by Khobai, 14 December 2017 - 12:26 PM.

[FupDup]

Rampage, on 14 December 2017 - 12:18 PM, said:

except for the cSPL and Clan machine guns.

Although I do believe that both needed adjustments.

The SPL was quite a long time ago, I actually forgot about that one somehow (its current state makes it a very forgettable weapon). It got more than just adjusted...

MGs I suspect were more about the Piranha being released next month, but I'll give you that one anyways.

[Ovion]

You encourage Pay to Win behaviour, that's a no.

Also, from the source material, weapons are 2.5-4 times more damaging for the armour levels we have, so really, they should be worse.

[Cy Mitchell]

They have been doing the 1V1 Master's Challenge almost every Tuesday night for a good portion of a year now. I think that has provided a lot of information about how Solaris is going to work. It does work but the matches are fast and brutal with most lasting less than a minute or two.

[Cy Mitchell]

FupDup, on 14 December 2017 - 12:23 PM, said:

The SPL was quite a long time ago, I actually forgot about that one somehow (its current state makes it a very forgettable weapon). It got more than just adjusted...

MGs I suspect were more about the Piranha being released next month, but I'll give you that one anyways.

I agree with you. I was just pointing out that those two weapon systems have been toned down and they are top weapon systems for 1V1 or 2V2. Add to them the SRMs, LBXs, AC20, UAC20, IS small and medium lasers, Clan small heavy laser and you get the bulk of the primary arena weapon systems. I really do not think that there will be a lot of tuning just for Solaris. Mid range and long range weapons that are so common in QP and essential in FP will not be used in Solaris.

[Tiewolf]

You experienced the assault survivability problem first hand that is caused by the pinpoint damage power creep and mobility nerf. And your solution to this issue is even more damage???
Sorry to say that, but you contradict yourself a bit. Btw. the Atlas is sadly really broken but if you have problems with a SNV you might doing it wrong.


But i am in for yourpilots for mechs idea. Link the skill tree to pilots and let us swap IS and clan pilots between mechs like modules. This would be awesome!

Edited by Tiewolf, 14 December 2017 - 12:39 PM.

[blood4blood]

Any idea what Solaris maps will look like? How far apart mechs will drop? How much cover, if any, there will be? Will terrain/environments prevent mechs from encountering each other in certain places? Funnel to the center as most current maps do? Etc.

It's entirely possible to control range and survival based on map features and pilot skill using them, rather than nerfing any weapons at all. Anyone who remembers MW4 after the heat bug was removed knows that map dictates range, not game type, unless the weapons are just horribly unbalanced.

EDIT: I say this tongue-in-cheek as most MWO maps either favor or at least allow any mech with brawling weapons to close distance and use them unless that mech gets horribly out of position relative to the other team. That would probably be more true in an FFA, unless MWO starts getting some radically, fundamentally different map designs.

Edited by blood4blood, 14 December 2017 - 01:12 PM.