96 replies to this topic

[LordBraxton]

Toothless, on 20 May 2018 - 01:52 PM, said:

It really wasnt that big of a deal, but reading this thread you'd imagine it was an entirely different game before.

Depends on the mech. I used to pilot heavy and assault brawlers. Banshee, Zeus, Awesome, all became crap overnight, my Battlemasters were still fine after the desync, but I used to play them as brawlers, and they became hillhumpiing snipers instead.

Desync was a skill nerf because being able to twist and quickly reacquire targets was pretty much removed as an ability for mechs of a certain weight.

I just bought a cyclops because everyone was telling me how agile it is, and it's OK, but it handles like a pig compared to my old xl380 Banshees.

PGI why?

Oh well, back to one-shotting side torsos in my HBKIIC or HBR

Edited by LordBraxton, 20 May 2018 - 04:25 PM.

[vibrant]

From what I saw, the engine desync was heralded as a way to reduce impact of engine on mech agility, so that we could have more freedom to choose to down-size the engine (to pack more weapons / armour), without sacrificing ability to turn & shield, etc.

However, in the end, like with almost change PGI makes, it was mostly used as a tool to nerf mechs PGI spontaneously decided it didn't like. Like the aforementioned Tibie, or my Spirit Bear which has never been used since. ^^

[Vonbach]

vibrant, on 20 May 2018 - 06:05 PM, said:

From what I saw, the engine desync was heralded as a way to reduce impact of engine on mech agility, so that we could have more freedom to choose to down-size the engine (to pack more weapons / armour), without sacrificing ability to turn & shield, etc.

However, in the end, like with almost change PGI makes, it was mostly used as a tool to nerf mechs PGI spontaneously decided it didn't like. Like the aforementioned Tibie, or my Spirit Bear which has never been used since. ^^

Basically it killed brawling especially assault brawling pretty much instantly.
Sure you can do it but poking or sniping is more effective. The Atlas to name
one mech is totally pointless. It cant twist fast enough to spread damage so
it sits gathering dust.

[ShiverMeRivets]

vibrant, on 20 May 2018 - 06:05 PM, said:

From what I saw, the engine desync was heralded as a way to reduce impact of engine on mech agility, so that we could have more freedom to choose to down-size the engine (to pack more weapons / armour), without sacrificing ability to turn & shield, etc.

However, in the end, like with almost change PGI makes, it was mostly used as a tool to nerf mechs PGI spontaneously decided it didn't like. Like the aforementioned Tibie, or my Spirit Bear which has never been used since. ^^

I did not play MWO before the desync, but to me giving more incentive to equip larger engines is a good thing. That way you have to sucrifice something (likely firepower) for mobility. This is a good way to push firepower down and increase typical TTK. I suppose that clan mechs will enjoy this more because of their XL engines, so you'd need to give IS a little something to compensate - for example, give IS engines more than 10 internal heat sinks as they scale up in size.

IS standard engines will suck really bad, so they will need something extra as well - again, I'd go with extra cooling.

[lazorbeamz]

Engine desync makes sure that the Atlas, Annihilator and the likes do not spin like ballerinas. if you want to spin you probably want to play in the 55-70 ton range and then level up torso twist, too.

It is a very good thing to balance the mech classes.

Edited by lazorbeamz, 21 May 2018 - 03:00 AM.

[Khobai]

lazorbeamz, on 21 May 2018 - 02:58 AM, said:

Engine desync makes sure that the Atlas, Annihilator and the likes do not spin like ballerinas. if you want to spin you probably want to play in the 55-70 ton range and then level up torso twist, too.

It is a very good thing to balance the mech classes.

the problem is theres absolutely no reason to play an atlas when you can play something in the 55-70 ton range instead.

because heavies are faster, more agile, spread damage better, have overall better survivability, and still have roughly the same firepower cap as the atlas. the atlas is totally obsolete now.

so no it doesnt really balance the mech classes. it just makes atlases awful. there is no point in having more armor when your huge hitboxes and inability to spread damage evenly across hitboxes completely contradicts the point of having more armor, which is to be more survivable, which the atlas is not.

im glad that taking bigger engines no longer increases torso twist speed. but assault baseline agility is now waaaay too low. assaults need a significant baseline agility buff and the mobility skill tree needs to be buffed so its worth at least considering putting points into.

Vonbach, on 20 May 2018 - 10:23 PM, said:

Basically it killed brawling especially assault brawling pretty much instantly.
Sure you can do it but poking or sniping is more effective. The Atlas to name
one mech is totally pointless. It cant twist fast enough to spread damage so
it sits gathering dust.

^this exactly

Edited by Khobai, 21 May 2018 - 03:12 AM.

[Elizander]

In the end it makes bringing the max engine not as important since it won't make your mech more agile. Engine is mostly for getting the speed you want, which allows some people to just lower the engine rating on some builds.

It also took a big bite out of clan agility considering a lot of clan mechs have high engine ratings.

Edited by Elizander, 21 May 2018 - 03:07 AM.

[DGTLDaemon]

vibrant, on 20 May 2018 - 06:05 PM, said:

From what I saw, the engine desync was heralded as a way to reduce impact of engine on mech agility, so that we could have more freedom to choose to down-size the engine (to pack more weapons / armour), without sacrificing ability to turn & shield, etc.

This could have been achieved by making the impact of engine size on agility:
- non-linear (i.e. diminishing returns from larger engines)
- dependent on mech weight (i.e. heavier mechs = lower baseline agility = less agility gain from increasing engine size)

But then PGI wouldn't be able to apply direct agility nerfs to Clan mechs and make them handle like garbage trucks. Which, apparently, was the underlying goal of engine desync.

[PocketYoda]

They wanted to make the game boring..

[Mystere]

Khobai, on 21 May 2018 - 03:05 AM, said:

im glad that taking bigger engines no longer increases torso twist speed. but assault baseline agility is now waaaay too low. assaults need a significant baseline agility buff ...

So in other words, you now want your assaults to get for free what used to cost something before.

I'd rather engine size once again determined agility, if not to the same level as before. There is this thing called "power-to-weight ratio", you know.

[ShiverMeRivets]

lazorbeamz, on 21 May 2018 - 02:58 AM, said:

Engine desync makes sure that the Atlas, Annihilator and the likes do not spin like ballerinas. if you want to spin you probably want to play in the 55-70 ton range and then level up torso twist, too.

It is a very good thing to balance the mech classes.

I dont know how they used to calculate it, but it should have been dependent on engine power to chassis weight ratio. If that was still too much agility for assults, this could be scaled down non linearly like some power/(mass^a) with a>1, or set a different proportionality factor to every chassis weight (almost the same thing). Not so difficult to keep the assults within bounds and encorage mobility to firepower transfer in builds.

[Vonbach]

How hard would it be to simply reverse the changes? Theres no special solutions needed here.
Just reverse the changes and if you want to go down the mobility tree more power to you.
But as it is whole slews of mechs sit in their bays never used because its pointless to bother with them.
Agile Assaults just meant assaults were actually somewhat dangerous. Instead of pointless like they
are now.

[R Valentine]

Mech viability is still determined almost 100% by hit boxes and hardpoints. Just look at the Piranha. It's viable based purely on its obnoxious access to machine guns. All variants without 12 machine guns are garbage. They had to ultra-mega-hyper nerf the KDK-3s mobility in order to pull it out of the #1 clan assault slot, far beyond what engine desync did. Then, they released a mech that did the exact same thing, only with arm guns instead of shoulders so you can track left and right. So they just replaced the KDK-3 with something else. Meanwhile, every IS mech they've released since has garbage hit boxes or hardpoints or both. See Hellspawn, Thanatos, Nightstar, Uziel, Fafnir, even the Annihilator. The Anni survives on quirks alone, and they're already rushing to pull those as quick as they can without ruining sales. All of the other mechs on that list are straight garbage. Who needs a Fafnir when the Sleipnir can do the same thing, only not have a CT hit box you can hit from almost any angle. There is no upside to all these new IS mechs. They gave IS all these shiney new weapons and only a small host of mechs that can use them effectively. Meanwhile, clan laser vomit actually got stronger, especially in light of the gauss/PPC de-sync. Engine de-sync didn't do anything do make certain mechs viable or not. It just made everyone a bit slower and less mobile, but in the end we're playing the exact same mechs we were before.

[Vonbach]

The inner sphere's shiny new toys weren't really that good anyway. MRM's spray damage all over the place with the
streamer fire and are insanely hot to boot. Rac's are good for spraying shells all over the place and blinding people
and not much else. While clans got the Heavy Lasers of death leading to the laser vomit hell we have now.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Vonbach, on 21 May 2018 - 06:46 AM, said:

The inner sphere's shiny new toys weren't really that good anyway. MRM's spray damage all over the place with the
streamer fire and are insanely hot to boot. Rac's are good for spraying shells all over the place and blinding people
and not much else. While clans got the Heavy Lasers of death leading to the laser vomit hell we have now.

To be fair, heavy lasers spread about as much as RACs do. That said, both demolish assaults now with them being all untwistable and stuff.

[Vonbach]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 21 May 2018 - 06:52 AM, said:

To be fair, heavy lasers spread about as much as RACs do. That said, both demolish assaults now with them being all untwistable and stuff.

If theres any one thing I'm sick of its Clan players trying to pretend H lasers are in some way balanced. They are not.
There burn is not that extreme especially with the skill tree. And heat doesn't matter in the great peek a boo hell.
Most of the new IS were designed with brawling in mind then PGI nuked brawling with the de sync.

[R Valentine]

Vonbach, on 21 May 2018 - 06:46 AM, said:

The inner sphere's shiny new toys weren't really that good anyway. MRM's spray damage all over the place with the
streamer fire and are insanely hot to boot. Rac's are good for spraying shells all over the place and blinding people
and not much else. While clans got the Heavy Lasers of death leading to the laser vomit hell we have now.

I like MRMs, but you do need strong backup weapons to make use of all the armor they blast off, and you need at least 60 damage in MRMs to make sure you get enough in any single spot. But there's like 3 mechs that make use of that kind of setup. Anything else and you're just smoothing out everyone's rough edges. Meanwhile, HLL boils off an entire component's worth of armor, and you can even get that on a mech with dual gauss.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Vonbach, on 21 May 2018 - 07:01 AM, said:

If theres any one thing I'm sick of its Clan players trying to pretend H lasers are in some way balanced. They are not.
There burn is not that extreme especially with the skill tree. And heat doesn't matter in the great peek a boo hell.
Most of the new IS were designed with brawling in mind then PGI nuked brawling with the de sync.

Just do the math yourself if you want. RAC5 has 10.91 DPS, HLL's burn does 11.61 DPS. If an enemy is spreading RAC fire they're spreading HLL fire.

[Hopeasusi]

Khobai, on 20 May 2018 - 10:12 AM, said:

the point of engine desync was to give all mechs of the same tonnage consistent agility across the board. the base agility of a mech was supposed to be determined by its tonnage (rather than its engine rating) and then the mech might get like +/- 15% agility based on its specific role.

thats all PGI had to do. but they went way beyond that and used engine desync as a way to majorly nerf agility on assaults and clan mechs and basically sucked all the fun out of playing them.

and the best part is... we still dont have consistent agility for mechs of the same tonnage. we still have horrendous outliers and theres still no consistency at all.

so not only did PGI completely fail at what engine desync was meant to accomplish. They also made the game LESS fun in the process.

actually its the combination of engine desync along with the new skill tree removing all the free mobility skills thats made the game way less fun in the last year or so. we used to get all the mobility skills for free and now we have to pay skill points for them, and theyre not worth it anymore, since weapons and armor and operations are all better investments. they tried to fix it by buffing the mobility skills but 5% is still totally insignificant.

So much this.

When the desync came I was like finally a heavy is gonna be a heavy and so on, but was so badly disappointed.

The system PGI made is just a really bad balance attempt, that makes no sense what so ever.

[Luminis]

Vonbach, on 21 May 2018 - 07:01 AM, said:

If theres any one thing I'm sick of its Clan players trying to pretend H lasers are in some way balanced. They are not.
There burn is not that extreme especially with the skill tree. And heat doesn't matter in the great peek a boo hell.
Most of the new IS were designed with brawling in mind then PGI nuked brawling with the de sync.

I agree that they're imbalanced in a vacuum (like many other things, mind you), but how many Mechs do you see actually running them? HBRs do. And the somewhat outdated MAD-IIC. That aside, though? I think the HBR is about the only Mech that runs HLLs as part of its meta loadout.

Sure seems strange for such an overpowered weapon to not warp the meta more.

Edited by Luminis, 21 May 2018 - 07:24 AM.