426 replies to this topic

[Brain Cancer]

Fleeb the Mad, on 18 February 2018 - 01:40 PM, said:

I'm afraid the point still stands. The reason why LRMs have spread and poor damage is because they presently lack a means for a more skilled player to get more out of them. It's also the reason they just can't be made better without a serious change in mechanics for maintaining LOS. Making them stronger in ways that buff their indirect fire is anathema to good gameplay.

My response to that is that indirect fire is currently "balanced" while ignoring AMS completely. And that means that currently, IDF (and LRMs in general) are actually worse than they should be, as a weapon should be balanced between it's benefits and it's countermeasures. How can we actually see how effective indirect fire is when the almost universal piece of gear designed to thwart it simply isn't used? Heck, we can't even see what point direct fire should be at, simply because the current reality of MWO is that adding that 1.5 tons of gear on your chassis is logically a waste, as "reduces LRM effectiveness" is already managed by everything else, and better by tonnage-free options like the nearest building.

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That's simply because indirect fire is fairly ******** as far as game mechanics go. People hate on it so much because there's nothing more frustrating than getting shot by someone (or several someones) outside of LOS who you can't shoot back and who can also focus fire with impunity. It pretty much has to be massively inefficient by design. Go figure that it is.

And yet, we laugh at lurmboats as the local light pilot gets their ez-kills...or else it's a missile boat that's with the team and hence not out of reach anyway. This isn't WoT where arty can hide without a hint of their position, screened completely by the rest of the team as they cower on a map edge burping stunning shellfire onto whatever. We even give people a huge, blaring INCOMING MISSILES in case the massive trail of fire isn't a dead giveaway.

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Stepping behind cover is a solution for every single weapon system, though LRMs and ATMs are the only ones that can deal damage when the target is outside LOS from the shooter. People say cover is a hard counter for LRMs like standing behind a rock doesn't work for gauss rifles. You can dodge long range PPC fire by rocking in place. That doesn't make the weapon broken. If you fire on a target that can easily break your lock by stepping out of LOS that's the shooter's problem. LRMs defeat more forms of cover than any other weapon.

Funny about that. I can easily tell dozens of cases where a target could pop in and out of cover with impunity to my LRMs, popping off lasers and ACs all day while either breaking lock before I launched, or being gone before my oh-so-slow missiles got there. Meanwhile, I could hit them with the slowest of ballistics, never mind the usual laser secondaries.

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Making them 'challenging' to the average player is going to be about giving the shooter more things to do to improve their performance, not about making the current mechanics harder to avoid. ECM and AMS shouldn't be mandatory, or even neccessarily full counters. That's simply because ECM only exists on a small minority of chassis. It would be a terrible decision to make a standard countermeasure one that 95% of mechs don't have. AMS has also always been a damage mitiigation measure, not a hard counter.

That's because AMS isn't used broadly, despite the fact that PGI adds AMS hardpoints to virtually every chassis. In fact, even if it has AMS stock, they'll add another one. One AMS reduces damage. A "boat" will disable the largest LRM launcher around. A team of AMS will neuter the weapon system entirely without trying. And I'm OK with that, if it means LRMs get to be good. Mindless firing will be rewarded with missile confetti.

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Well uh, I'm going to say that if you rely entirely on another player to make your weapons effective you're doing something wrong. There's no reason why an LRM boat can't TAG and NARC their own targets, or maintain locks. It's just harder and carries much more risk than getting someone else to do it. That's exactly why I said that most people who can do these things just use other weapons, because if you can poke and land a hit with a NARC or can train a TAG on a target reliably you can also be shooting people with weapons that work the same way.

OK, let's mount those on the LRM boat.

Grats, you're now paying more tonnage and hardpoints to have your effective weapon. That's on top of the usual Artemis tax. A good missile boat is -already- getting their own locks, which means exposure and for longer periods than other weapons regardless. TAG requires total facetime focus. NARC, ironically enough is also vulnerable to AMS and sucks up a missile hardpoint and a considerable amount of tonnage.

I mean, imagine if you had to have a TC3 on your PPC build to have it working properly or something? Does that sound reasonable? Let's lobby Paul for that.

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I'd also argue that launching from behind cover should always result in mediocre results, no matter how it's done. You're still removing the risk of exposing yourself to return fire and relying on someone else for the lock. Most people seem to agree that granting some sort of bonus for maintaining LOS and keeping the reticle on the target is reasonable and warranted, though. Putting some of the old artemis bonus back in seems like it'd be just fine.

Generally, it already does because no LOS = no Artemis bonus. The penalty for indirect fire is multiples- team locks are always less reliable than your own, spread is wider without Artemis so damage becomes even more ineffective than it is now.

The saddest thing about the Artemis nerf (and corresponding ATM spread nerf) is that I really, really don't know if it was some sad attempt to make SRMs worse, or that they just didn't care if it kicked proper LRM play in the jimmy.

[Y E O N N E]

Artemis nerf was because the non-Artemis versions of SRMs weren't being used much which, if you put 2+2 together and realize that if you are going to do something well you'll take the best version regardless, should have been a "no duh" moment.

I would wager non-Artemis SRMs haven't seen much of an uptick in usage since the nerf, since the flat bonus provided by Artemis is still better than no bonus.

Burke IV, on 18 February 2018 - 01:46 PM, said:

Anything with JJ can at least mitigate LRMs. The lighter you are the easier. In a huntsman dodging a big LRM volly is easy, even with no cover at all.

No, movement tends to just dump the missile damage into the legs. A few missiles may miss, but it's still a hit. If you juked an AC/20 round, you juked the entire thing.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 18 February 2018 - 02:06 PM.

[Burke IV]

It breaks my heart to have to tell people stuff like this. Im sure some must have worked it out, but seeing as im not playing anymore i dont suppose it matters.

*incomming missile* hit the jets, up, up, missiles arcing, missiles arcing right on top of you... cut the jets go straight down they all go over your head.

Maybe thats not always practical in battle but with jj you can practically sidestep vollys and easily avoid 60% or more. Charge down assult LRM boats like that.

Edited by Burke IV, 18 February 2018 - 02:08 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

They do not all go over your head or under your 'Mech just because you jumped up.Some always hit unless you have cover or sufficient AMS screen. Side-stepping is even less effective. What does happen is that the damage goes from being spread on the upper body to mostly legs, especially on leggy 'Mechs like the Marauder or Cicada.

I play this game at least once a week, and usually a binge session. I am not wrong.

[Burke IV]

Well i can do it. Repeatedly probably without even practiing. Im nto going to update my client to prove it but i bet you could do it too

[Kin3ticX]

Well thats odd, I have barely used LRMs. I bring shame whole LRM famry

I guess I better leave it up to the experts

[Burke IV]

Im talking about a huntsman tho. Marauder i dont know. Im sure heavier mechs could terain drops to their advantage. Even small movements help its getting it in right at the last minute and at the correct angle. You just have to move beyond their tracking over a very small distance

PGI did make them nice and slow for you

[Khobai]

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Artemis nerf was because the non-Artemis versions of SRMs weren't being used much which, if you put 2+2 together and realize that if you are going to do something well you'll take the best version regardless, should have been a "no duh" moment.

I would wager non-Artemis SRMs haven't seen much of an uptick in usage since the nerf, since the flat bonus provided by Artemis is still better than no bonus.

which has nothing to do with LRMs at all.

artemis should not have been nerfed for LRMs because too many people were taking artemis with SRMs.

instead they shouldve changed artemis so it buffs SRMs and LRMs separately.

that way they could decrease the spread bonus it gives to one without affecting the other.

artemis was always pretty crappy for LRMs. and they made it worse for no good reason.

Edited by Khobai, 18 February 2018 - 02:27 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Kin3ticX, on 18 February 2018 - 02:13 PM, said:

Well thats odd, I have barely used LRMs. I bring shame whole LRM famry

I guess I better leave it up to the experts

Meanwhile, you've used Gauss rifles longer than I've even used ER mediums, much less LRMs. It's almost as if you like-like them or something.

Edit: Nine hours with un-Artemised LRM 10s....Hunchback?

Edited by Brain Cancer, 18 February 2018 - 02:26 PM.

[Havyek]

Why the hell is basing a weapon's usability on the lowest common denominator even a discussion?? That's how we got to where we are in now most places.

[Havyek]

Kin3ticX, on 18 February 2018 - 02:13 PM, said:

Well thats odd, I have barely used LRMs. I bring shame whole LRM famry

I guess I better leave it up to the experts

Damnit Kin, how can you have 50% accuracy in a lock on weapon!?!



FOR SHAME

[Fleeb the Mad]

Brain Cancer, on 18 February 2018 - 02:02 PM, said:

My response to that is that indirect fire is currently "balanced" while ignoring AMS completely. And that means that currently, IDF (and LRMs in general) are actually worse than they should be, as a weapon should be balanced between it's benefits and it's countermeasures. How can we actually see how effective indirect fire is when the almost universal piece of gear designed to thwart it simply isn't used? Heck, we can't even see what point direct fire should be at, simply because the current reality of MWO is that adding that 1.5 tons of gear on your chassis is logically a waste, as "reduces LRM effectiveness" is already managed by everything else, and better by tonnage-free options like the nearest building.

AMS isn't used at higher tiers because most people prefer to use that extra bit of payload for offensive rather than defensive purposes I've stripped it from some mechs altogether because of frequently finding nobody uses missiles at all. I've been using it more on my slower assaults since ATMs became common.

I think you still need to recognize that LRM effectiveness dies off at higher tiers because there's no skill-based mechanism to improve their usefulness. That doesn't make LRMs garbage for what they are. That's just what you get when you have to settle for the metric by which it does your aiming for you being based on the low end of players rather than the high end. You're not going to win trying to argue they should be balanced for anything other than the bottom with their present mechanics because it would legit make gameplay vastly worse at the lower tiers, while not changing much in the upper tiers.

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And yet, we laugh at lurmboats as the local light pilot gets their ez-kills...or else it's a missile boat that's with the team and hence not out of reach anyway. This isn't WoT where arty can hide without a hint of their position, screened completely by the rest of the team as they cower on a map edge burping stunning shellfire onto whatever. We even give people a huge, blaring INCOMING MISSILES in case the massive trail of fire isn't a dead giveaway.

Missile boats that carry no backup weapons or allow themselves to be isolated sorta deserve to be eaten by lights. Nobody sheds much sympathy for a slow assault mech that suffers the same no matter what it's carrying. That's not some unique form of persecution.

The blaring incoming missiles warning is exactly because the target frequently can't see the missiles or where they're coming from, because they can be targeted on them outside LOS of the firing mech. It would have been an awful decision allowing people to get smacked with swarms of missiles from beyond their line of sight with no warning at all, particularly when a boat will blind them with continuous fire. That sort of junk is needlessly frustrating.

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[Funny about that. I can easily tell dozens of cases where a target could pop in and out of cover with impunity to my LRMs, popping off lasers and ACs all day while either breaking lock before I launched, or being gone before my oh-so-slow missiles got there. Meanwhile, I could hit them with the slowest of ballistics, never mind the usual laser secondaries.

As I said, that's the shooter's problem. If poke-trading doesn't work, don't do it. It's not like a brawler isn't also confronted with being ineffective at doing the same thing.

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That's because AMS isn't used broadly, despite the fact that PGI adds AMS hardpoints to virtually every chassis. In fact, even if it has AMS stock, they'll add another one. One AMS reduces damage. A "boat" will disable the largest LRM launcher around. A team of AMS will neuter the weapon system entirely without trying. And I'm OK with that, if it means LRMs get to be good. Mindless firing will be rewarded with missile confetti.

An AMS 'boat' is a dedicated support mech in the same vein as a NARC/TAG light mech. It's situationally useful and doesn't have much of a role in doing much in the way of direct damage. Outside of that, AMS only has overlapping coverage inside 150 meters, it's still not effective in stopping massed LRM fire. A whole team fitted with AMS will defeat one missile boat, but not several. Which one you wind up with is the luck of the draw.

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OK, let's mount those on the LRM boat.

Grats, you're now paying more tonnage and hardpoints to have your effective weapon. That's on top of the usual Artemis tax. A good missile boat is -already- getting their own locks, which means exposure and for longer periods than other weapons regardless. TAG requires total facetime focus. NARC, ironically enough is also vulnerable to AMS and sucks up a missile hardpoint and a considerable amount of tonnage.

I mean, imagine if you had to have a TC3 on your PPC build to have it working properly or something? Does that sound reasonable? Let's lobby Paul for that.

Uh, actually yeah. PPC velocity on any mech without quirks for years was terrible. In many cases it's still desirable to put on a big targeting computer to increase the velocity to make it better for long range fire, particularly since the skill tree killed a lot of the velocity quirks on energy mechs that made PPCs somewhat competitive with lasers.

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Generally, it already does because no LOS = no Artemis bonus. The penalty for indirect fire is multiples- team locks are always less reliable than your own, spread is wider without Artemis so damage becomes even more ineffective than it is now.

The saddest thing about the Artemis nerf (and corresponding ATM spread nerf) is that I really, really don't know if it was some sad attempt to make SRMs worse, or that they just didn't care if it kicked proper LRM play in the jimmy.

I'd be just fine with bringing the artemis bonus back. I think it would have knock-on problems though, because of the tonnage gap between IS and Clan launchers making it a total gimmie on Clan mechs unless their default spread suffers massive nerfs. By default every single Clan launcher can be fitted with Artemis for as much or less tonnage than any stock IS launcher without.

[Y E O N N E]

I have a TC on 'Mechs that I use PPCs with that don't have quirks, usually a TC2 and up to a TC4.

AC/10, even, I usually bring a TC with.

Fleeb the Mad, on 18 February 2018 - 02:50 PM, said:

You're not going to win trying to argue they should be balanced for anything other than the bottom with their present mechanics because it would legit make gameplay vastly worse at the lower tiers, while not changing much in the upper tiers.

If you buff them enough while keeping current mechanics in place, a binary switch is going to flip and LRMs will be the only thing you see in the upper tiers. That's really the heart of it; there is no in-between without a mechanics change.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 18 February 2018 - 03:09 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

Brain Cancer, on 18 February 2018 - 02:23 PM, said:

Meanwhile, you've used Gauss rifles longer than I've even used ER mediums, much less LRMs. It's almost as if you like-like them or something.

Edit: Nine hours with un-Artemised LRM 10s....Hunchback?

Yeah thats probably from the old superquirked hunchback.

Havyek, on 18 February 2018 - 02:38 PM, said:

Damnit Kin, how can you have 50% accuracy in a lock on weapon!?!



FOR SHAME

Simple answer, teamates wont stand in the open and hold locks for me, buildings OP

[Brain Cancer]

Fleeb the Mad, on 18 February 2018 - 02:50 PM, said:

AMS isn't used at higher tiers because most people prefer to use that extra bit of payload for offensive rather than defensive purposes I've stripped it from some mechs altogether because of frequently finding nobody uses missiles at all. I've been using it more on my slower assaults since ATMs became common.

I think you still need to recognize that LRM effectiveness dies off at higher tiers because there's no skill-based mechanism to improve their usefulness. That doesn't make LRMs garbage for what they are. That's just what you get when you have to settle for the metric by which it does your aiming for you being based on the low end of players rather than the high end. You're not going to win trying to argue they should be balanced for anything other than the bottom with their present mechanics because it would legit make gameplay vastly worse at the lower tiers, while not changing much in the upper tiers.

I'm saying that right now, they're not even balanced for bottom-tier play. When a weapon slips far enough past mediocre that it's an endangered species outside of the underhive...it's just plain bad. That you could make it worse if people actually used AMS, but there's no reason to do so is just adding a neon sign to point out LRMS ARE OVERNERFED TO HECK AND BACK..

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Missile boats that carry no backup weapons or allow themselves to be isolated sorta deserve to be eaten by lights. Nobody sheds much sympathy for a slow assault mech that suffers the same no matter what it's carrying. That's not some unique form of persecution.

The blaring incoming missiles warning is exactly because the target frequently can't see the missiles or where they're coming from, because they can be targeted on them outside LOS of the firing mech. It would have been an awful decision allowing people to get smacked with swarms of missiles from beyond their line of sight with no warning at all, particularly when a boat will blind them with continuous fire. That sort of junk is needlessly frustrating.

And I'll also say that missile spam is also a bad design decision on PGI's end. But the light-smackdown is just to show that missile boats are rarely as "safe" as people think they are.

If they're hiding off in the boonies, they're easily beaten down by an observant light or fast medium. If they're in with the pack, they're not hiding off in a safe spot, unable to be easily found, flanked, and or just plain shot at. Either way, LRMs are not a safety measure for the user.

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As I said, that's the shooter's problem. If poke-trading doesn't work, don't do it. It's not like a brawler isn't also confronted with being ineffective at doing the same thing.

The brawler not being in effective range is one thing. The missile boat not being able to do jack squat even in effective range is another. Heck, I've done it to missile boats at 200 meters in assaults- cornered, fired while reversing, reversed and listen to the explosions hitting invulnerable terrain because by the time they locked and fired, I was already gone.

(Yes, I know you can dumbfire but this is an extreme example here.)

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An AMS 'boat' is a dedicated support mech in the same vein as a NARC/TAG light mech. It's situationally useful and doesn't have much of a role in doing much in the way of direct damage. Outside of that, AMS only has overlapping coverage inside 150 meters, it's still not effective in stopping massed LRM fire. A whole team fitted with AMS will defeat one missile boat, but not several. Which one you wind up with is the luck of the draw.

I've watched two AMS Kit Foxes reduce an LRM 80 Supernova to single digit damage. That's six AMS.

Twelve+ AMS should be quite enough to neuter a rather large amount of incoming missiles these days, given the buffs. Again, AMS is rare because LRMs are trash weapons that don't merit the investment, and LRMs are trash because they're understatted despite the existence of AMS....because nobody uses AMS since LRMs are trash. Circular logic, and that's pathetic reasoning for balancing a weapon.

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Uh, actually yeah. PPC velocity on any mech without quirks for years was terrible. In many cases it's still desirable to put on a big targeting computer to increase the velocity to make it better for long range fire, particularly since the skill tree killed a lot of the velocity quirks on energy mechs that made PPCs somewhat competitive with lasers.

And yet, PPC velocity isn't terrible anymore, so you don't have to strap that TC on. It's almost as if rather than a weapon being nerfed because it might be good enough to maul poor players, it was improved so that players could use it without strapping extra stuff on just to make it average or something.

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I'd be just fine with bringing the artemis bonus back. I think it would have knock-on problems though, because of the tonnage gap between IS and Clan launchers making it a total gimmie on Clan mechs unless their default spread suffers massive nerfs. By default every single Clan launcher can be fitted with Artemis for as much or less tonnage than any stock IS launcher without.

Clan launchers actually get an innate spread penalty thanks to "streaming" their missile fire, which means more scatter (especially over mobile targets).

[Deathlike]

Brain Cancer, on 18 February 2018 - 03:24 PM, said:

And yet, PPC velocity isn't terrible anymore, so you don't have to strap that TC on. It's almost as if rather than a weapon being nerfed because it might be good enough to maul poor players, it was improved so that players could use it without strapping extra stuff on just to make it average or something.

Default PPC velocity is generally good enough for mid-range, which is where most battles are fought. However, it's really woefully insufficient for long range which is what they are supposed to be for and you'd be losing trades vs most (clan) laservomit at midrange. It's much easier to add TC for Clans than IS considering general mech building (pretty much any IS mech needs some level of PPC quirks, particularly velocity, cooldown, and heat to realistically be competitive).

Edited by Deathlike, 18 February 2018 - 03:30 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Deathlike, on 18 February 2018 - 03:28 PM, said:

Default PPC velocity is generally good enough for mid-range, which is where most battles are fought. However, it's really woefully insufficient for long range which is what they are supposed to be for and you'd be losing trades vs most (clan) laservomit at midrange. It's much easier to add TC for Clans than IS considering general mech building (pretty much any IS mech needs some level of PPC quirks, particularly velocity, cooldown, and heat to realistically be competitive).

Right. So PPCs are currently at least "average" and functional without help, but you add TCs to make them exceptional (or quirkage as well in the case of IS units). And that's cool.

Having to invest like that to bring a well-below average weapon up to mediocre to me is less cool.

[Khobai]

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If you buff them enough while keeping current mechanics in place, a binary switch is going to flip and LRMs will be the only thing you see in the upper tiers. That's really the heart of it; there is no in-between without a mechanics change.

no lol

lrms are not suddenly going to dominate the upper tiers just because you increased their velocity slightly

while also buffing ams to compensate (people not using ams is part of the problem too)

and decreasing their rate of fire but increasing their damage per missile so theyre less spammy and require slightly more skill to use

and also nerfing spread/tracking on indirect fire and buffing tag/narc by the same amount


one things for sure though, if nothing changes, lrms will continue to be useless at higher level play. letting irrational fears paralyze you from even trying to change things is just as bad as being reckless with balance changes. PGI should put the changes on a test server at the very least.

Edited by Khobai, 18 February 2018 - 03:45 PM.

[naterist]

you could buff lrms, but then new players are going to just stay behind covr and spam lrms all day and night, which isnt a fun new player experience. if you nerf the hell out of indirect fire (without narq or tag, the teamwork required for narq and tag means that you should be rewarded with appreciable inderect fire abilities) then you can buff direct fire.

the problem stems from teir 5s only understanding lrm indirect fire because its one of the few, relatively complex, mechanics that are explained in the tool tips. nerf the hell out of it so it doesnt become the go to in teir 5, so you can buff lrms in general for use in a LOS engagement in teir 1.

pgi's inability to differentiate the mechanics from their LOS role and their inderct fire role is whats forcing them to blanket nerf the system, because teir 5 abuses the **** out of its ability to put fire downrange without taking fire back.

[Deathlike]

Brain Cancer, on 18 February 2018 - 03:34 PM, said:

Right. So PPCs are currently at least "average" and functional without help, but you add TCs to make them exceptional (or quirkage as well in the case of IS units). And that's cool.

Having to invest like that to bring a well-below average weapon up to mediocre to me is less cool.

Welcome to MWO.