1125 replies to this topic

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 04:30 PM.

[Prototelis]

Looks cool.

Would rather see damage lowered across the board and lower cool downs.

Shooting more often is always more fun.

[Scyther]

So here's a thought:

I'm a pretty average player, maybe less than average, I haven't really checked. I run around in QP poking at things with my weapons. I'm generally expecting to run into other casual averages, and I generally do. If I poke over a hill and see 3 guys in front of me, I can generally expect to twist while turning away/down and survive. If I come around a building and run into a heavy and an assault, I can generally expect to dump an alpha on them, turn, get back around my corner, run for cover or call for support.

The game (for me) is about having the time and the ability to survive these occurrences and stay in the match a little longer. If any time I make a positioning error I am met by a more focused, more in-effective-range, less-heat volley of fire, then I will end up doing less in matches because the first 2 mistakes will kill me. Or maybe the first one.

I support the portion of this set of changes that, in essence, makes weapons more balanced against each other. I am less supportive of the potential impact that 'make all these weapons the way we'd like them to be' (ie, more effective), when taken together, would have on TTK and on the gap between more skilled pilots/builders and less skilled.

Particularly since we all live with a matchmaker that, on any given day, has no problem tossing the potatoes into a match with the peelers.

[Khobai]

Quote

Splitting that difference would result in a 29% Artemis bonus. Unless my math is broken.

does it matter? buffing artemis by 3%-4% isnt going to fix whats wrong with missiles lmao

if youre going to fix something, then actually fix it, dont let the fear of creating the next lrmpocalypse petrify you from making the necessary changes to the game.

because thats why PGI hasnt touched LRMs in years.


what are the three biggest problems with LRMs?
-low skill ceiling
-too effective against unskilled players
-too ineffective against skilled players


Heres some ideas on how to fix those problems:

1) decrease the cooldown but increase the damage per missile. This would have the effect of making LRMs less spammy. Instead of just mindlessly spamming volley after volley you would have to strategically insert your volleys but each volley would do more damage. That also gives LRMs better armor penetration so they can compete with direct fire weapons better.

2) buff artemis so direct fire missiles can compete better with other direct fire weapons. artemis should go back to 33% and artemis should also give +5% crit chance to missiles. Who cares if people always take artemis, at least theyre actually using missiles now, which is more important.

3) buff the high explosive nodes in the skill tree. they are terrible. at least double them if not triple them.

4) higher velocity so theres less time to dodge the missiles and so the missiles have a longer effective range

5) make indirect LRMs less effective without TAG/NARC but more effective with TAG/NARC.

6) ECM no longer grants stealth (it never shouldve in the first place)

7) LRMs no longer give a missile warning unless you have AMS equipped (other weapons dont warn you why should LRMs?)

8) destructible terrain. allow missile weapons to destroy terrain/buildings so theres a reason to use them over energy and ballistic weapons. no more hiding behind BS invincible cover to get away from LRMs.


These are just ideas. im not saying they should all be implemented.

Edited by Khobai, 08 February 2018 - 01:42 PM.

[Lt Blackthorn]

I spent quite a bit of time looking over the overall proposals and numbers. I could probably spill too much digital ink over the few minor things I think could be adjusted, but I agree with so much of these proposed changes that it behooves me keep this short and sweet:

These changes are by-and-large excellent. Combined with mobility tweaks for mechs like 100-tonners and some clan omnimech, it could go a long, long way with revitalizing the state of this game and viability of numerous chassis and playstyles. So much so, given the milquetoast state of game balance, that PGI would be foolish to ignore or dismiss these proposals.

[R Valentine]

Dont LRM me please, on 08 February 2018 - 10:24 AM, said:

No.

Yes.

IS XL engines, and IS engines in general, should be looked at long before any weapon changes. Heat sinks and endo/ferro also. Being able to fit your mech with enough guns to be relevant shouldn't come at the cost of dying to a shoulder loss, which is just absolutely stupid.

Then the biggest offender on the weapons list is clan laser vomit and clan gauss vomit, both with stupidly high alphas and pinpoint damage. Missiles can come later, along with machine guns, but the most basic and monstrous underlying balance issues should definitely supersede weapons.

[MisterSomaru]

I will say this: PPCGauss needs to stay dead. I could explain myself about exactly WHY, and it is not due to being skill related. Long story short: Very low risk, high reward playstyle for 35 or 40 pinpoint damage at 600+ meters. please take into account, "VERY LOW RISK." i.e., hard to counter now. Please use your heads.

[Sunstruck]

I pretty much agree with all the weapon changes, though I feel the ammo changes should be standardized to 150 dmg per ton instead of 200. The weapons that get 200 dmg per ton right now (the ac/lb10s) are more of the outliers, most other weapons give you 150 per ton of ammo.

The stock loadout on the Bounty Hunter has a gauss and two PPCs, I agree that you should be able to at least run a gauss and 2 PPCs without ghost heat.

[Johnathan Von Tanner]

Hey I just went and reread the proposed change list. All the good stuff about de linking gauss ppcs is lined out? Whats up with that?

[panzer1b]

One more small thing i though would be really neat for UACs, would be to have a variable jam chance which depends on how many of them you have on the mech. The biggest issue with ballistics (and why so few mechs can use them well), is that they need to be boated in massive quantities to make the jam chance fairly unlikely to knock out all of your guns simultaneously. If you mount 1 UAC10 and have a jam, you are done for the next 8 seconds, if you bring 4, well its virtually impossible to jam more then 2 on the 1st double tap, and 2 unjammed guns are still very lethal.

Again, i doubt that PGI can implement such a thing (they have proven time and time again that advanced features are impossible to code for them), but if its possible a variable jam chance that starts lowish and increases as you add more weapons would go a long way to make single UAC mechs playable, and also keep the quads from becoming the kings of the battlefield if jam chances drop by too much and remain applied as a flat chance to every gun you have.

[ROSS-128]

Considering a single AC20 can one-shot a Locust from the rear, I don't think "no weapon combination can one-shot any mech" is an achievable goal. Capping maximum possible damage to about 15 would be silly.

[Khobai]

Quote

Considering a single AC20 can one-shot a Locust from the rear, I don't think "no weapon combination can one-shot any mech" is an achievable goal. Capping maximum possible damage to about 15 would be silly.

its an easy fix

you put one hit protection into the game

no weapon can kill a mech in one hit, at most it can reduce it to 1 health. and a second hit is required to kill it.

fixes the problem with dual HGR headshotting people too. it would require two hits to the head to kill someone then.

mechwarrior 4 had something like that to prevent murdering people with lucky headshots

Edited by Khobai, 08 February 2018 - 02:01 PM.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 08 February 2018 - 01:59 PM, said:

its an easy fix

you put one hit protection into the game

no weapon can kill a mech in one hit, at most it can reduce it to 1 health. and a second hit is required to kill it.

1. Hit enemy with a single Small or Medium Laser at max range just to scratch the paint a little bit
2. Fire huge lolpa
3. ???
4. Profit!

[Khobai]

Quote

1. Hit enemy with a single Small or Medium Laser at max range just to scratch the paint a little bit
2. Fire huge lolpa
3. ???
4. Profit!

thats still better than getting killed in one hit

it makes you take the extra step

id rather someone have to go the extra step and shoot me in the head with a laser before/after they headshot me with dual HGR than just be able to kill me outright with dual HGR.

it worked in mechwarrior 4

Edited by Khobai, 08 February 2018 - 02:06 PM.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 08 February 2018 - 02:02 PM, said:

thats still better than killing them in one hit

it makes you take the extra step

Someone else on your team might end up dealing that 1% paint scratch damage for you ahead of time, so it might not actually require an extra step.

Also how do you even program it given that there are multiple ways to kill a mech? CT, Head, IS XL ST, double leg. Is the protection per hitbox or only once total? Like, if I fire one MG bullet on the left arm of an enemy mech, then fire a huge lolpa at their undamaged right torso with IS XL, does that still get the immediate kill?

Edited by FupDup, 08 February 2018 - 02:05 PM.

[Evogenesis]

The skill tree is what finally killed this game for me. I love the IP and have played since closed beta. I wrote lore fan fiction and had a great time RPing with friends. Much fun has been had. Nevertheless skill tree revamp is what finally killed the game for me. Anytime I wanted to dust off an old mech going thru all the clicking became way too prohibitive for marginal benefit. Longtime friends left the game. The unfunning had begun. Like Dane says trim it down to 1/3 and balance it so the mobility quirks can compete against firepower. Address the powercreep that has made my IS loyalist mechs obsolete. I really want this game to succeed and there is still time to turn it around. PGI needs to take an honest look at everything and make a decision or 2018 will be the last year of MWO.

[ROSS-128]

Khobai, on 08 February 2018 - 01:59 PM, said:

its an easy fix

you put one hit protection into the game

no weapon can kill a mech in one hit, at most it can reduce it to 1 health. and a second hit is required to kill it.

fixes the problem with dual HGR headshotting people too. it would require two hits to the head to kill someone then.

mechwarrior 4 had something like that to prevent murdering people with lucky headshots

One-hit protection would be unlikely to work against anything that isn't a single AC/20, since most other things get above 20 damage by hitting multiple times in a short window. To compound the uselessness, "one-hit kills" on things larger than a Locust are typically the result of several mechs focusing fire, rather than a single alpha. And I-frames would be a silly mechanic to have on giant stompy robots.

Headshots aren't really a thing most people have to worry about either, if headshots were actually strong enough to be a balance problem, there are weapons much lighter and smaller than the HGR that would be taking advantage of it.

[Khobai]

Quote

Also how do you even program it given that there are multiple ways to kill a mech? CT, Head, IS XL ST, double leg. Is the protection per hitbox or only once total? Like, if I fire one MG bullet on the left arm of an enemy mech, then fire a huge lolpa at their undamaged right torso with IS XL, does that still get the immediate kill?

you just program it so if any hit to a location would destroy an undamaged mech it instead takes that location to 1 health.

but the one hit protection would be disabled once the location is already damaged.

so yeah you could offset your HGRs by a split second to circumvent it for example. but that would also make it harder for both HGRs to hit the cockpit against a moving target.

Quote

One-hit protection would be unlikely to work against anything that isn't a single AC/20, since most other things get above 20 damage by hitting multiple times in a short window.

thats fine.

its only meant to help protect against things like dual HGR headshotting people in one hit

or a locust getting killed by a single AC20.

I dont believe one shot kills should exist in the game. Its not call of duty.

Edited by Khobai, 08 February 2018 - 02:17 PM.

[ROSS-128]

Khobai, on 08 February 2018 - 02:10 PM, said:

you just program it so if any hit to a location would destroy an undamaged mech it instead takes that location to 1 health.

but the one hit protection would be disabled once the location is already damaged.



thats fine.

its only meant to protect against things like dual HGR headshotting people in one hit

Actually a dual HGR is two hits. There is no "twin-linked HGR" weapon, it's two weapons, that fire two shells, for two hits. Two hits that are not necessarily simultaneous, since if they are fired at an angle convergence may cause one shell to arrive a few frames before the other.

Therefore one-shot protection doesn't apply.

[Draven Knightfall]

I may have skimmed over it, but I don't really see where this addresses the "lasers have an answer to every problem" problem. Lasers have less drawbacks of other weapon systems, but more advantages. We've tried heat, but that didn't work. We've tried damage, but that also didn't work.

Med and large lasers need at least 30% range reduction overall. It's near-instant, pinpoint damage that can be used for as long as the game goes on, and the ranges that lasers are effective are overshadowing other weapon systems. Reduce the ranges, and that'll give light ballistics and LRM's a greater niche use while maintaining heavy ballistics and SRM's close range uses. It'll also leave the long-range poke game ammo-limited while allowing movement oriented counterplay from projectile travel time. Light mechs serve a greater purpose scouting and are harder to take down with point and click damage.

Laser damage isn't really that far off. It's the range for all occasions issue that is creating the nightmare. There's the least counterplay to the weapon, something ballistic and missiles have going against them. The damage per exposure window is whatever is convenient, and vomit builds make even brief exposure windows damaging. With the current long ranges, it's just too good. We need to fundamentally start there.

This isn't something anyone's gonna like. I don't even like bringing it up. But I don't see anything in the spreadsheet that will address this underlying problem. It will bring a couple weapons into a few more mechs, but the underlying balancing issue will remain.

I understand light/med scout sniper mechs will be hurt, or at minimum forced to PPC, but PGI can always quirk around that for the few variants that depend on it.

Other thing that needs a pass is mech speeds overall. Light to heavy is just too fast, and even most assaults are a bit quick. I'll be looking for that thread . And for the love of god, reduce engine upgrade costs! I've had 3 friends quit once they saw the cost of upgrading the first mech's engines.

Another thing for another thread, old outdated tech should be removed from the store to buy, and anything owned should be upgradable, but not available to put on mechs once a new tech patch has happened. There's just too much competing tech, and it's only exacerbating the weapon balance problem. There's really no reason ISMedLas should still exist in today's timeline. Make weapon systems binary (IS/Clan counterpart) and give them different advantages/drawbacks to fit the lore(balance), or make completely different, unique weapon systems that are only available for Clan or IS. The halfway that are medium lasers only make more unnecessary work for yourselves.