20 replies to this topic

[Parashurama]

Would you be more inclined to use to the PTS if there was a mini bounty event?

Say Chris, Paul and Russ drop in bright yellow and black Blood Asps during the PTS and have a 100 MC bounty for who ever gets can get a dev kill. Big old PGI logos on the sides of the shoulder pods. It could be fun.

Maybe stock Primes or something like this:
https://mwo.smurfy-n...21c886bf9d28ecd

[HGAK47]

How would this community not enjoy blowing up devs! Would we not relish the opportunity to blap Russ in a PGI livery mech?

[Spheroid]

The proposed ideas seem moronic though, so why promote a venue that will validate their approach?

Reducing individual weapon damage output as opposed the total alpha?! That is whole point of heavy lasers!

[El Bandito]

Spheroid, on 27 June 2018 - 07:24 AM, said:

The proposed ideas seem moronic though, so why promote a venue that will validate their approach?

Reducing individual weapon damage output as opposed the total alpha?! That is whole point of heavy lasers!

HLL is too over the top in that regard though. CERSL has 5 damage while HSL has 6.5 damage--that's 30% damage improvement. CERML has 7 damage while HML has 10 damage--that's 42% damage improvement. CERLL has 11 damage while HLL has eighteen damage--that's whopping 63% damage improvement!

From the beginning of new tech I wrote that 18 damage for 4 tons of weapon is insane. I still stand by my comment.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 June 2018 - 08:39 AM.

[Spheroid]

All they needed to do was increase the heat penalty of the heavy lasers linked with ER mediums. Making heavy large individually weaker just hurts mechs like the Shadowcat.

Edited by Spheroid, 27 June 2018 - 08:01 AM.

[El Bandito]

Spheroid, on 27 June 2018 - 08:00 AM, said:

All they needed to do was increase the heat penalty of the heavy lasers linked with ER mediums. Making heavy large individually weaker just hurts mechs like the Shadowcat.

That is mech issue. No sane developer should balance weapons based on some mech chassis, it should be the other way around. Otherwise, we would get the same *********** that resulted from KDK-3's implementation. RIP Clan UACs.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 June 2018 - 08:04 AM.

[Agent of Change]

Honestly I think the OP had a point... I don't like teh Bounty idea per se, but i think having participation in the PTS being linked to an event of some sort, especially one that encourages a number of matches played to get a decent population and large data set to test the changes.

Before someone else says something silly like "why would you want to validate their approach?" Participation in the PTS is in everyone's interest because the more data they have and the more INFORMED feedback they get teh better the changes can be fairly evaluated and adjusted. If you don't like them this is the chance to see how bad it is and give reasonable feedback based on actually trying them, if you do like them then now is you chance to see if it is actually better.

And even better it's temporary because that's teh point of a test server... to test things. And I would add a request to PGI to further encourage participation do something that separates performance stats in the PTS from teh normal Statistical totals so that the Stat Primadonnas can't argue that testing the changes will ruin their KDR.

[Remover of Obstacles]

If we don't get a good showing for the PTS, it will be an excuse for PGI to ignore PTS in the future and just push $4!7 to the live server for testing.

We don't need more nauseating mini-maps, long tom genocides, or other half-baked interpretations of what PGI thinks the community asked for (ie, what PGI can do with the resources on hand this week and limitations of game engine and coding skills).

[Remover of Obstacles]

Agent of Change, on 27 June 2018 - 08:55 AM, said:

And I would add a request to PGI to further encourage participation do something that separates performance stats in the PTS from the normal Statistical totals so that the Stat Primadonnas can't argue that testing the changes will ruin their KDR.

Good point.

Would be nice to see a variety of builds.

I would assume that PGI has already tested some of the popular builds (especially high pinpoint damage dual heavy gauss) well before getting the proposed new values finalized and going to a PTS.

Or lean heavily (exactly) on the community (at least the consensus of a handful of players) provided spreadsheet.

[MechaBattler]

Considering that people have to download a separate thing just play on the PTS. They're gonna need an incentive. Especially if you consider how many people will not participate out of spite because they want to continue 'feeling powerful'. Additional loot grabs from the event would be a good idea. It would incentivize people to play more than once. But I imagine PGI has issues tracking across both clients to the main account. Otherwise they would have incentivized PTS play a long time ago. But it's not like our population is so big that we can just expect enough people to show up.

[VonBruinwald]

MechaBattler, on 27 June 2018 - 11:57 AM, said:

Considering that people have to download a separate thing just play on the PTS. They're gonna need an incentive.

The incentive is it gives PGI a chance to analyse and balance their proposed changes in a live environment before implementing them.

If you're going to skip out on the PTS you have no right to complain when the changes implemented aren't to your liking.

[Ripper X]

If PGI implimented an event in the PTS that carried over the rewards to the live server, people would show up in numbers instead of just a handful.

[MechaBattler]

@VonBruinwald. In an ideal world that's how it would work out. But people still complain and loud. They'll even rationalize why they didn't test it . Usually because they're so right and PGI so wrong, that they don't need to test. That exact argument has been had in past PTS. They're even proud of it.

[Grus]

El Bandito, on 27 June 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

HLL is too over the top in that regard though. CERSL has 5 damage while HSL has 6.5 damage--that's 30% damage improvement. CERML has 7 damage while HML has 10 damage--that's 42% damage improvement. CERLL has 11 damage while HLL has eighteen damage--that's whopping 63% damage improvement!

From the beginning of new tech I wrote that 18 damage for 4 tons of weapon is insane. I still stand by my comment.

don't forget about the heat and range and burn duration diffrence...

[El Bandito]

Grus, on 27 June 2018 - 03:58 PM, said:

don't forget about the heat and range and burn duration diffrence...

Factoring those will only make HLL even more advantageous compared to HML and HSL, considering Clan engagement range. And heat is very manageable thanks to Clan 2-slot DHS, and 7 slot Endo/Ferro, and superior Clan XL. PGI must realize that HLL is benefiting from damage too much, compared to others in the heavy laser family, and tone it down appropriately. Other attributes such as heat can be reduced as compensation.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 June 2018 - 05:44 PM.

[LordNothing]

Spheroid, on 27 June 2018 - 08:00 AM, said:

All they needed to do was increase the heat penalty of the heavy lasers linked with ER mediums. Making heavy large individually weaker just hurts mechs like the Shadowcat.

again the arbitrariness of gh groups bites us in the buttocks. penalties should be based on how you use your loadout, not what weapons you choose.

[BrunoSSace]

No point for me using the test server. Since I live in Australia, my competition is normally sleeping once I get home from work. I would use it, if I got bribed, say 5mill c-bills and a mechbay.

Edited by BrunoSSace, 27 June 2018 - 07:22 PM.

[Imperius]

I use steam. I’m not installing MWO twice to test out this bad idea that should come across as a bad idea when just a tiny bit of common sense is applied.

Edited by Imperius, 27 June 2018 - 11:23 PM.

[LordNothing]

i dont think im going to hop on. thats a huge download to play around with nerfed lasers. i know theres an unoffitial way to spawn a pts instance off your main instance, pretty much copy files and patch, but i dont think i have the drive space for that.

its probibly going to be full of ballistics boats trying to prey on the now hopeless laser vomiteers. i do not think the changes they have announced will have any positive effect on the game. you have a penalty system full of high alpha loopholes that also breaks a lot of sensible sub-meta builds. i also think its a mistake to target gauss+energy mixed builds as the main problem. the problem is you can fire 60+ damage erml and hll alphas, repeatedly, while 30 points of cspl gets you penalized. and im not targeting those specifically there are many such loopholes. nerfing to close up one loophole hurts both sane builds and is simply going to push the meta seekers to other loopholes.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 June 2018 - 10:41 PM.

[HammerMaster]

Opening PTS during event disincentives an already light PTS population.