347 replies to this topic

[MTier Slayed Up]

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

Here's my take on proposed changes:

1) It seems to me that the proposed changes strongly affect the short-range brawling meta, which is already strong enough. I don't need even more effective linebacker/assassin rushes thank you..

It would favor only a certain small percentage of the elite players / units.

Gauss is still relatively strong, and the proposed laser nerfs aren't terrible either. It's been an ongoing problem long enough for PGI to consider ghost heating clan tech to a maximum of (4?) medium lasers. That's significant, and I can't begin to emphasize on how much it would kill clan builds to the point that brawling would be the only viable thing to which that is also a lack luster.

The issue is, Artemis is largely useless, the spread reduction is not noticeable until you're completely face tanking or you're boating SRM2's. Brawling is rather weak, not many people can do it/pull it off until certain criteria is met. Map, location, position, not too early but not too late, hoping most of the mech is in tact when a push happens, etc. The meta hasn't really been re-defined in years, and it's been largely the same compared to two years ago to now.

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

2) I'm not for nerfing lasers. because there are mech variants that are dedicated laservomit mechs, and such mechs would suffer. For instance, cooldown and heat nerfs completely killed the Executioner.

See above.

Executioner was dead on arrival. It's not that great of a mech to begin with because other mechs can out perform it in almost every category. It's only saving grace is the MASC, when used right, can get you in and out of cover instantly, and the jump jets. Other than that, it's a giant walking CT with abysmally low hard points.

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

3) I am in favor of making IS LRMs better, especially in terms of heat. IS LRMs really are too hot, and no IS mech can mount the same number of tubes and ammo like Clan mechs..

However, I don't think Artemis Buff will make much of a difference, because most dedicated LRM boats simply don't use Artemis, because it requires a direct LOS playstyle which is not suited to dedicated LRMing.. That said, I am not against artemis buffs, but I think other buffs are needed to make LRMs better, like Lock-on arc returned to 45%, base spread buffs and targeting strength buffs.

Also, I think the artemis buff should affect only LRMs, and not SRMs, since SRMs are too powerful as is.

See above.

God, please no. LRM's don't need a buff. It has and always will spread damage and is largely useless in most cases. There's no point in buffing an anti fun weapon.

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

4) From the names listed as authors of this suggestion, I have to administer a dose of skepticism. Why? Because the people involved are all top-tier players that already dominate the game. While I have nothing against them, and acknowledge their skill, I think people from all skill levels should contribute to global changes to the game. Top-Tier players tend to lose perspective and aim the changes at making the game more fun for them.

Top tier players have an understanding about the game mechanics moreso than most others, otherwise, they wouldn't be top tier. It's the same reason most companies in the gaming community approach these top players to see what they do exactly to get there and what they abuse specifically. If anything, they have more say on what should be or not be fixed over you or I in terms of buffing/nerfing because of that understanding. I'm not going to approach someone who's only played this game for roughly a month or a guy that hops on a weekend or two on how he specifically thinks on how the weapons should be balanced. At least this is a combination of a variety of different top level players rather than a couple from the same unit.

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

Proposed changes aimed at lower cooldowns would dramatically drop TTK, which is already too short.

Also, to be perfectly honest, I'm sooo bloody tired of constant balance changes, meta shifts and bickering over IS and Clan balance. Set it up ONCE so that all weapons are good and useful, and leave it alone.

This is an issue with MMO's. Every MMO ever conceived has balance tweaks to keep the game "fresh" in order to shift gameplay. That's one of the things about League of Legends. They constantly buff or nerf champions to make others more appealing, sometimes with mixed results. Leaving the game in it's current state with no balance tweaks will only stagnate it, and you'll see more and more of the same thing every game until it's eventual shutdown in the future.

[Thrudvangar]

Supporting this with this comment! Good job!

[Khobai]

El Bandito, on 11 June 2018 - 12:26 AM, said:

Of course, I personally still think base tech should be balanced before weapons. With luck, some weapon issues might go away post tech balance, thus we can kill several birds with one stone.

absolutely.

any other way is putting the cart before the horse.

Wraith 1, on 10 June 2018 - 12:39 PM, said:

There's tons of ways to avoid it, that's why they have short range, long cooldown, and are restricted to the slowest mechs in the game. It's a deadly build with obvious weaknesses, it's very fun to play as and against.

Your suggestion is the best compromise I've seen for nerfing dual HGR, but the game doesn't need any more fun, skillful builds nerfed out of it, especially when said build spends half the match paying extra weight for the damage of a normal gauss rifle.

but its still not fun to get hit with dual heavy gauss.

its less a balance issue and more that its just not fun.

Excessive PPFLD totally sucks the fun out of the game IMO. especially for medium mechs that have neither the speed of lights or the armor of heavies and often having scaling issues that make them easy to hit.

I feel weapons like HGR and AC20 need to be rebalanced around being singleton weapons. Make HGR and AC20 really good even when you only take one of them. And still let people fire them in pairs but with a ghost heat penalty.

Edited by Khobai, 11 June 2018 - 09:46 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Khobai, on 11 June 2018 - 09:40 AM, said:

but its still not fun to get hit with dual heavy gauss.

its less a balance issue and more than its just not fun.

Dying isn't fun, shall we make all 'mech invincible?

I mean, what an argument...

[Khobai]

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Dying isn't fun, shall we make all 'mech invincible?

I mean, what an argument...

I disagree. Dying can be plenty fun. It all depends how you die. If you die to dual HGR headshotting you thats definitely not fun though. Getting instagibbed by dual HGR feels cheap and always leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. It absolutely detracts from the fun of the game.

Besides Im not saying Dual HGR shouldnt be allowed. Just that it should incur a ghost heat penalty.

In exchange HGR should get a buff so its stronger as a singleton weapon. But if you wanna fire dual HGR you have to eat a bunch of extra heat. That makes using dual HGR more of a tradeoff rather than being the standard mode of operation.

Edited by Khobai, 11 June 2018 - 09:59 AM.

[FupDup]

Jay Leon Hart, on 11 June 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

Dying isn't fun, shall we make all 'mech invincible?

I mean, what an argument...

That's just being disingenuous bruh. The important distinction is that not all dying is creating equally. Some forms of dying let the player feel like they had a chance to alter the outcome, that it was only their screw up that caused it to happen (as in, they could change the outcome by changing their approach) rather than feeling like you got screwed over by fate.

You can debate the specific cases, but in general it's a pretty terrible argument to say that "Well, of course it's not supposed to be fun!" Games are kinda sorta supposed to be fun...

[Jay Leon Hart]

FupDup, on 11 June 2018 - 09:50 AM, said:

That's just being disingenuous bruh. The important distinction is that not all dying is creating equally. Some forms of dying let the player feel like they had a chance to alter the outcome, that it was only their screw up that caused it to happen (as in, they could change the outcome by changing their approach) rather than feeling like you got screwed over by fate.

You can debate the specific cases, but in general it's a pretty terrible argument to say that "Well, of course it's not supposed to be fun!" Games are kinda sorta supposed to be fun...

But what is and isn't fun is entirely subjective. When is it fun to take damage? I would argue never, so following the logic that "damage = unfun" and "unfun = nerf it" then damage should be removed.

Don't blame me for pointing out how stupid an argument "but it's not fun!" really is, once you boil it down to the core claim.

Anyway, there are counters to dual HGauss - don't turn blind corners, keep your distance, among others.

[Jay Leon Hart]

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I disagree. Dying can be plenty fun. It all depends how you die. If you die to HGR headshotting you thats definitely not fun though.

Besides Im not saying Dual HGR shouldnt be allowed. Just that it should incur a ghost heat penalty.

If they shot you while moving, they are very lucky and/or an excellent shot. If they shot you stood still & staring at them, don't do that next time.

Sure, GH away, once you lower it to 10 slots and/or add GH for 2 LB20X

[Khobai]

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But what is and isn't fun is entirely subjective.

I dont think its that subjective. Im pretty sure nobody thinks getting headshotted is fun.

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If they shot you while moving, they are very lucky and/or an excellent shot. If they shot you stood still & staring at them, don't do that next time.

It still happens. And when it does its not fun.

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Sure, GH away, once you lower it to 10 slots and/or add GH for 2 LB20X

2 LB20X doesnt need GH it doesnt have the potential to one shot kill anyone lmao. its not at all the same thing.

your arguments make no sense.

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Anyway, there are counters to dual HGauss - don't turn blind corners, keep your distance, among others.

if HGauss is so easy to counter, thats all the more reason it should be changed.

leaving dual heavy gauss as a cornercase/situational weapon combo thats easy to counter and isnt fun to get hit with makes far less sense than buffing heavy gauss as a singleton weapon and making it a useful more versatile weapon thats not unfun to be on the receiving end of.

Edited by Khobai, 11 June 2018 - 10:20 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

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I dont think its that subjective. Im pretty sure nobody thinks getting headshotted is fun.

I'm pretty sure nobody think dying is fun.

[Khobai]

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I'm pretty sure nobody think dying is fun.

Nope. Some of the most satisfying games ive played ive died in. Like games where ive done 1500 damage and 6 kills with my annihilator before dying.

Again youre being disingenuous like FupDup said. Not all dying is the same.

Dying cheaply is not the same thing as dying with fulfilled purpose.

Edited by Khobai, 11 June 2018 - 10:09 AM.

[Brauer]

I've been headshotted once in close to 4000 QP matches (not counting some hundreds, maybe thousands of FW matches and some Solaris). Whether it's fun or not seems pretty irrelevant for something that is that infrequent. Also, that one time I was headshotted wasn't the least fun thing in the game. It was surprising, and I remember having a good chuckle while moving on to my next drop. In my opinion being lrmed while narced on polar is much less fun, and at least an order of magnitude more frequent. I'm not advocating that narc or lrms be nerfed, or even that polar be scrapped (though more cover from the rain would be nice).

[Khobai]

headshotting was just one example. its also not fun getting hit with dual HGR when youre in a medium and all you have is like 30 armor. Getting hit with 50+ PPFLD sucks a lot of the fun out of playing mediums because of their lack of speed, lack of armor, and often poor scaling.

Excessive PPFLD is not good for the game. And trying to justify it by giving weapons fatal flaws is just a bad way to balance weapons. It prevents Heavy Gauss from being a fully viable weapon; and in the situations when it does work its not fun to be on the receiving end of.

It would be better if heavy gauss was always fully viable and was never unfun to be up against. Ive already explained how to accomplish that.

Edited by Khobai, 11 June 2018 - 10:29 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Khobai, on 11 June 2018 - 10:07 AM, said:

Nope. Some of the most satisfying games ive played ive died in. Like games where ive done 1500 damage and 6 kills with my annihilator before dying.

Again youre being disingenuous like FupDup said. Not all dying is the same.

Dying cheaply is not the same thing as dying with fulfilled purpose.

So how much fun you have has nothing to do with how you died. You're admitting how you die doesn't matter. You're admitting dying to HGauss isn't unfun *if* you have performed well that match.

I never said dying cheaply was the same as dying after doing well, I said your argument is stupid. Which it is, demonstrated by you just now arguing against it.

Khobai, on 11 June 2018 - 10:22 AM, said:

its also not fun getting hit with dual HGR when youre in a medium and all you have is like 30 armor. Getting hit with 50+ PPFLD sucks a lot of the fun out of playing mediums because of their lack of speed, lack of armor, and often poor scaling.

It's not fun to lose weapon to crits.

It's not fun to be unable to fire weapons because of flamers.

It's not fun getting 1 shot from lasers, PPCs, ACs, ATMs, SRMs, SSRMs, MRMs or even regular Gauss.

Dying is not fun. That is no metric to nerf a weapon, because fun is subjective.

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your arguments make no sense.

They make as much sense as yours. Make of that what you will.

[Prototelis]

Vellron2005, on 10 June 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

4) From the names listed as authors of this suggestion, I have to administer a dose of skepticism. Why? Because the people involved are all top-tier players that already dominate the game. While I have nothing against them, and acknowledge their skill, I think people from all skill levels should contribute to global changes to the game. Top-Tier players tend to lose perspective and aim the changes at making the game more fun for them.

Balancing from the bottom will only increase the gap between you and the people at the top.

These changes aim to give parity and/or flavor to all weapon classes, even your beloved spud cannons.

[Vellron2005]

Prototelis, on 11 June 2018 - 12:30 PM, said:

Balancing from the bottom will only increase the gap between you and the people at the top.

These changes aim to give parity and/or flavor to all weapon classes, even your beloved spud cannons.

You misunderstood.. it's not "balancing from the bottom", but "balancing from all levels"..

I don't want T5 people to determine balancing.. I want T1,T2, T3, T4, and T5 people to determine balancing..

Also.. don't just assume I'm not at the top, just cose' I stick up for people who aren't ;-)

[El Bandito]

Vellron2005, on 11 June 2018 - 10:51 PM, said:

Also.. don't just assume I'm not at the top, just cose' I stick up for people who aren't ;-)

I'd say you are dead in the middle of the pack. https://leaderboard....h?u=vellron2005

[MTier Slayed Up]

Vellron2005, on 11 June 2018 - 10:51 PM, said:

You misunderstood.. it's not "balancing from the bottom", but "balancing from all levels"..

I don't want T5 people to determine balancing.. I want T1,T2, T3, T4, and T5 people to determine balancing..

Also.. don't just assume I'm not at the top, just cose' I stick up for people who aren't ;-)

That's a rather big problem...

T1 opinions are going to be drastically different from T5 and T4. T5 and T4 are players trying to get the hang of things, the do's and don'ts...IE: Don't chase after a light in an assault. Don't lone cap on assault. Don't wander off by yourself. Boat specific weapons, alpha strike all the time, every time. Etc.

Edit - What I'm trying to get across is this; No one, and I mean no one, will ever agree on what weapons need to be buff or nerfed. We would have an endless debate about it, from all tiers, with no final conclusion. Evidence: The entire forum.

So, again, I wouldn't ask people in T4 or T5 on what should or should not be balanced because they will not have a cognitive thought with what's an actual problem or is overpowered. Hell, I wouldn't ask anyone in the general community because so far, everyone's ideas seem to either suck hard, PGI no fault worship, IS vs Clan mentality, or just spewing absolute nonsense.

Edited by DrtyDshSoap, 12 June 2018 - 02:00 AM.

[Sjorpha]

There is a big misunderstanding about what balancing based on the top level means. It doesn't mean top level players opinions are better (though they probably are better on average), and it doesn't mean you're only trying to balance the game for the best players.

What it means is to recognize that the only levels of play, in any game, that produces useful data for balancing is the top levels of play. The reason for this is that the skill disparities and random elements are too big in lower levels of play to produce useful data for balancing, there will also be no discernible trend to what bad players believe about balance which means you can't really ask them anything and get useful answers.

So it's not about lower skill levels being less important, it's not about not balancing FOR those lower skill levels, of course we should want to balance for everyone as far as possible. It's simply that there is no way of getting either objective or subjective data of any quality directly from those skill levels.

Most things are going to have roughly the same balance relations across most skill levels, so balancing things from top level data will actually get the balance right for most things for most players. The idea that balancing would be completely different for different skill levels is 99% hyperbole.

There are some exceptions though. Some stuff have very high or very low skill caps. Some other things are easily countered by good players but not by bad players. So the prime example of course is LRMs since it fall into both these categories, it tends to be underpowered at the top and overpowered at the bottom. What you have to do is case by case exceptions to balancing from the top for these specific cases, which is exactly what PGI is doing with LRMs as they have kept them underpowered through the years to prevent them from being oppressive in tier 5 games.

Gauss rifles are another example, it has a treshold for usage as you can either deal with the chargeup effectively or not. The balance trend is the opposite here as the charge might as well not exist for the best players but is a big downside for the new players it tends to be powerful at the top and weak at the bottom. Same is true for lasers with very long durations, the downside of a long suration is lower the higher the skill levels.

So the correct approach to balancing is using data from the top as a basis, and then make exceptions for weapons where the skill level makes a non-typical difference like LRMs and gauss etc. This is the way to balance the game across all skill levels.

It's actually ok if some weapons are only really good as some skill levels. So it's ok if LRMs are only really good in tier 4 and 5 and gauss in only really good in tier 1 and 2. What IS important is that nothing is truly oppressive at any skill level.

It's also important to remember that very overpowered things are much more problematic than very underpowered things. Both are problems but underpowered things only exclude themselves from use, while overpowered things narrows the whole metagame and excludes everything else from use. This is why fixing truly overpowered mechs and weapons is often much more urgent that buffing underpowered mechs and weapons.

Edited by Sjorpha, 12 June 2018 - 02:24 AM.

[The Mysterious Fox]

we're probably just going to get blanket nerfs over the entire spectrum of weapons before they walk some back due to logical outrage.