352 replies to this topic

[Dee Eight]

N0MAD, on 08 April 2018 - 06:36 PM, said:

umm what rubbish are you refering to? delusional? why? just curious..

I knew exactly WHO he was referring to in this thread without needing to go back in the pages to find the post he had responded to.

[Johnathan Tanner]

GamerPro4000, on 08 April 2018 - 06:06 PM, said:

My spider 5k is already hurting with crappy hard points. It has 1 snub ppc and 4 light machine guns. I don't see anyone piloting them anymore in quickplay. PGI should might as well kill off the spider 5k in the game at this rate.

They are lol.

[Grus]

The change has me so miffed I'm thinking of making an alt, buy a PIR and MURDER at tier 5 just for spite....

[Dogstar]

Grus, on 08 April 2018 - 08:42 PM, said:

The change has me so miffed I'm thinking of making an alt, buy a PIR and MURDER at tier 5 just for spite....

You'll be in teir 3 in 5 matches unless you play to lose, but hey it's a good way to make money for PGI and encourage them to produce more badly designed exploit mechs.

Edited by Dogstar, 08 April 2018 - 11:40 PM.

[The Lighthouse]

Some thoughts.


1) It is obvious that some people do want MG to be nerfed, and if you follow their logic, what they actually want is nerfing light mechs in general because they are 'hard' to deal with it.

Sometimes, I think it's better to make light mechs as non-direct-combat roles to avoid this issue that inevitably leads to 'good player vs bad player' attitude. Things like ECM, stealth and other intel-related stuffs are so underused and under-developed.

Intel system needs to be re-implemented, starting with lightweight implementation of C3 master & slave. Like, for instance, you cannot get indirect lock-on without an light mech with right equipment, and/or minimap. A team without an light should be literally blind except visual contacts IMO.

And/or make arty/air strikes exclusive to light mechs. Make those strike very powerful and easy to use, but limited only to light mechs.

And/or give light mechs able to sense mechs hidden by obstacles similar to how it worked on previous games, but for light mechs only and heavier mechs which are able to accept intel info from those light mechs.

.....god, this game is really too simple-dimensional if you think about it.



2) If those goals above are too much, well. I don't want options to be removed at least. All I see is ever-diminishing light mech choices for us. With machinegun removed as viable weapons for light mechs, all we left is really IS medium pulse laser, and currently viable chassis for ISMPL are wolfhound and urbie.

Medium lasers have been suffering from cooldown nerf.
Clan version of medium lasers are ridiculously hot.
SPL are basically worthless.
Micro lasers are also worthless.
ER Smalls are just nerfed again.
Small lasers are... well, small lasers.
Small heavy lasers are more like worse version of ER Small.

....you know, it is obvious that PGI is not handling into the direction that favors light mechs. The balance patch history tells. Bit by bit the number of weapons could be used by light mechs has been diminishing for a while.

And the truth is, there are (actually, a lot of) people who want lights to be nerfed more, and PGI does listen to these plea, whether other people like it or not.

Thus my first suggestion. Since there are tons of people who cannot aim and cannot handle light mechs, and asking for nerfs for so long time. And it is obvious that PGI just cannot follow what competitive players want (better light mech performance) so we have this problem of skill gap.

We can completely avoid this problem by making light mechs something different, like giving them their supposed-to-be primary function; intel warfare.

[Mcgral18]

OrmsbyGore, on 08 April 2018 - 10:32 AM, said:

OK, but history shows us that as weapon systems advance, so do defenses against it, so it is entirely possible that the futuristic sci-fi armor may very well make giant machine guns ineffective against armor.

I'm not telling you which weapon would have which value, I'm just saying that it's silly to base balancing decisions for a video game based on a FICTIONAL universe on what current technology can do.

Battlemech armor is specifically called out as Ablative
Any concentrated damage against it will remove some (but nothing will ever penetrate)

That's the Advanced Armor mechs are using; instead of Lasers easily melting plates, or Ballistics shattering mirror'd coatings
Some protection from all, rather than none from some

Nightbird, on 08 April 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

Huginn had 50% missile cooldown quirks, 62.5% with the cooldown module. No one ran them with MGs.

Firestarter was the 8 SPL variant, not the Ember.

Stock is stock, people do change the builds up?

67%
50+12+2.5+2.5

AKA, 3x RoF, from the 2x quirk+17%

[Bud Crue]

GamerPro4000, on 08 April 2018 - 06:06 PM, said:

My spider 5k is already hurting with crappy hard points. It has 1 snub ppc and 4 light machine guns. I don't see anyone piloting them anymore in quickplay. PGI should might as well kill off the spider 5k in the game at this rate.

No worries. It sounds like the incoming nerf is just to clan MGs. The pathetic 5K might even be made relatively less crappy as result!



Per Chris:
"what is being targeted is it's performance against alternative weapons within a similar tonnage range, while also minding the baseline balance between the Clan version of the weapon compared to its IS counterpart that comes in at double the tonnage."

WHOO HOOO IS MGs will be slightly less UP than they were relative to some imaginary PGI determined baseline! 5K, Huggin, PB, etc. REJOICE!

/s

[Yondu Udonta]

Bud Crue, on 09 April 2018 - 03:09 AM, said:

Per Chris:
"what is being targeted is it's performance against alternative weapons within a similar tonnage range, while also minding the baseline balance between the Clan version of the weapon compared to its IS counterpart that comes in at double the tonnage."

WHOO HOOO IS MGs will be slightly less UP than they were relative to some imaginary PGI determined baseline! 5K, Huggin, PB, etc. REJOICE!

/s

Maybe I can finally use my Arrow that I bought for my namesake

[Bud Crue]

Yondu the Ravager, on 09 April 2018 - 03:13 AM, said:

Maybe I can finally use my Arrow that I bought for my namesake

Well, as far as we know atm, the nerf is just to clan machine guns. If that is the case, any difference in performance between IS and clan MGs or HMGs will be a change in relative performance to that unknown baseline. So your Arrow or any other IS mech, will still suck with IS MGs or HMGs, but slightly less so relative to the current performance of the Clan equivelants (where such equivelants exist). Chris also stressed that the change to cMGs will be slight, so assuming that is the case and thre is no buff to the IS side, there is no reason to think ANY IS mg carrying mech will be any better off than it is now...other than in the relative sense.

In short, the Arrow is still going to be crap.

[Zergling]

Oh, I fully expect there to be a nerf to isMGs too, because PGI just loves doing stupid things like that.

[Dee Eight]

And the thing isn't even in cbills yet.

[Nightbird]

Grus, on 08 April 2018 - 08:42 PM, said:

The change has me so miffed I'm thinking of making an alt, buy a PIR and MURDER at tier 5 just for spite....

To be fair, people do this all the time, for no reason, and without spending money.

What I do is get refunds, I have 110$ of pre-orders I can cancel.

[Remover of Obstacles]

JackalBeast, on 06 April 2018 - 05:09 PM, said:

JUST. ADJUST. THE. CRIT. SYSTEM. FOR. MGS.

good lord.

That would seem to be the smart way to do it.

Can't wait to test the MG changes on the PTR myself . . .

[Rhaythe]

Just came back to lurk the forums after probably a good year and a half, two years off. And the first thing I see on the forum is "nerf the MGs". Couldn't help but laugh hysterically.

[Variant1]

GamerPro4000, on 08 April 2018 - 06:06 PM, said:

My spider 5k is already hurting with crappy hard points. It has 1 snub ppc and 4 light machine guns. I don't see anyone piloting them anymore in quickplay. PGI should might as well kill off the spider 5k in the game at this rate.

The spiders harpoints arent a problem. Its gigantic leg hitboxes are. If so much as a shot lands 2 feet away from a spider its legs will explode. I tried them and asked why the leg hitboxes were so ridiculous and one guy replied with "its cause they have 8 legs" it made me chuckle and at the same time it made sense why its so damn easy to leg, its got 6 invisible leg hitboxes making its leg hitboxes as large as an atlas
edit:but yeah i raged and sold my spiders because of teh terrible leg hitboxes

Edited by Variant1, 09 April 2018 - 09:52 AM.

[JediPanther]

Alexander of Macedon, on 08 April 2018 - 04:24 PM, said:

So just in case anyone was thinking about taking this joker seriously, he appears to believe that people leave 'mechs on their stock loadouts and that the Huginn and PB were good because they could carry MGs.

I believe I'll have another beer. And the joker has the highest kill count out of all the rouges. You're too dumb to see the point of the post so I'm not going to bother typing you it. Perhaps google and read why those nerfs were called for in the first place. Enjoy the repeat of history Morty. McFly you ain't.

[Sniper09121986]

Dee Eight, on 09 April 2018 - 05:52 AM, said:

And the thing isn't even in cbills yet.

Hell, it is not even for MC which is when a nerf is even considered (totally legit business practice y'all). And now that we have this here precedent there is an even more exploitable (and also Clan) mech announced that can pack the loadout of, say, Spirit Bear and be potentially even more effective in that same role. I wanted to preorder after theorycrafting some builds, but now... I just do not know.

[ApexSun]

Gee, my money was well spent on the PIR. First the Thanatos and now this. Hey PGI, do you understand why mechpack sales are likely going to ****?

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

ApexSun, on 09 April 2018 - 12:17 PM, said:

Gee, my money was well spent on the PIR. First the Thanatos and now this. Hey PGI, do you understand why mechpack sales are likely going to ****?

I've said it before, I'll say it again, powercreep is required for a healthy free to play game. You come out with new mechs that do good things and people buy them, but the trick is to also buff up older things as time goes on so they can keep up.

If a company goes out and puts out a new thing that looks like it can do good then nerfs it right after then you have a bunch of angry customers. If the company tries to sell something that does nothing new or is obviously bad then no one buys it in the first place.

PGI not only nerfs the mech they just put out in particular, but they nerf entire weight classes, so that even people who hadn't recently bought the new mech are also now angry that their mech that wasn't even meta just took a big nerf, see Executioner and Gargoyle that used to use CSPLs, see Mist Lynx when it was running SRMs, see every clan UAC build.

After you piss customers off enough they stop spending money on the product, especially when after the nerfs are all said and done balance wasn't even achieved, so the ends didn't justify the means.

[Nightbird]

I said it last page, I'll say it again. Balance based on performance. If stats say the Piranha is overperforming the Cheeta, nerf it. If not, don't.