845 replies to this topic

[Navid A1]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 June 2018 - 10:58 AM, said:

Option 1:

• Upfront damage is reduced to IS equivalent levels. Superior range values are kept.
  
• Instead of superior upfront damage, we can reduce the cool-downs, heat, and other attributes to move the natural boosted per-turn damage that the Clan weapons are historically known for in the fiction, as a higher rate of fire leaving them overall where they are now, but shifting the added damage perks away from Boosted Alpha strikes and more towards higher overall DPS. Keeping closer alpha damage

This is the only approach that I can get behind.
However reducing to IS level damage is not good since the main aspect of clan laser weapons is higher damage. 6 damage is the minimum cERMLs should deal.

Edited by Navid A1, 12 June 2018 - 02:16 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

I prefer option 1 for both, but would greatly prefer buffs to nerfs overall. I don't think buffs are going to significantly affect TTK, since the weapons you're buffing aren't being used much anyway. It would simply result in a greater variety of weapons killing you.

And I would also prefer you guys work on some of the baseline imbalances first, instead of going straight for the weapons. I think fixing the massive advantage clans have in engines and upgrades would be far more effective at balancing and allow PGI to not have to rely on big quirks to make IS mechs more viable.

[The_UltimoScorp]

Putting the Community Panel's Weapon Balance on a PTS would be nice. See what the community can really do when they've come together to really try and do something for the game as a whole, instead of what seems to me to be a spiteful 'we know better than you cause it's ours' mentality.

This game has changed significantly in just the time since I began playing, and while I like a lot of things, like the UI and the idea(if not necessarily the practice) of Solaris, most of what's become the norm for me is frustration as one by one, things that are fun or at least entertaining are stripped away because they just don't work anymore.

It sucks, and it's affected how often I actually play because when heavy handed nerfs come crashing in, I start losing viable builds, or even Mechs! And grinding out time and effort to get something that works under the new nerfs istime-consumingg and soul-sucking.

Just give us a chance, and see what we can do with all the tools you've provided, and maybe we'll both get something great out of it?

[AlphaPiAlpha]

DrUnK3nPaNdA, on 11 June 2018 - 10:04 PM, said:

Well, literally every one of those things seems like a horrible idea.

Does anyone seriously consider those mechs with the high alphas to be sustainable? I would argue that 70-80% heat is not sustainable, not in any way, and can easily be defeated by a coordinated team willing to close distance and engage said mech in a brawl where it can't cool quickly enough. At best every one of these ideas throws the baby out with the bathwater. If you're trying to nerf a couple rare, niche builds, nerfing every single clan mech that uses energy weapons is a completely nonsensical way to do it.

Nerfing clan lasers nerfs literally the only thing that they still have keeping them even close to on-par with Inner Sphere mechs. I think it's already been pointed out that Inner Sphere can lay down ACTUALLY sustainable 80 damage alpha-strikes.

You're talking about power creep, but in fact you are actually causing it, just power creep of defensive quirks, high armor and structure. The weaker weapons get, the more pronounced the power disparity between Clan and IS will get, since IS has far more armor and structure.

I took a break from this game for 5 years and only recently came back, and my reason for leaving was partially the absurdly long TTK that feels nothing like tabletop and allows for too many bad decisions without appreciable punishment. The more damage is lowered, the less pronounced individual skill in the form of positioning, shot placement and use of cover becomes. I should add that this power creep of defensive abilities is VERY present, as things like PGI's new skill tree allows for even more armor and structure than before.

From what I have seen, IS already dominates faction play. IS mechs have higher sustainable DPS, so given that advantage, what, exactly, is wrong with Clans having higher burst/alpha damage?

What he said! Thanks <3

Yeonne Greene, on 11 June 2018 - 10:15 PM, said:

All lasers are pinpoint. What they aren't is front-loaded.

And that said, the damage-tick is so damn high, especially with the instant 15 or 30 from cGauss, that even the short IS laser duration doesn't quite make up for it. That's why the IS just dakka rush; most Clan skittles are coming loaded for trading or LRMs (kinda like IS skittles) and then get steamrolled when a coordinated ballistics team can just out-DPS them the entire way through.

No, lasers are NOT pinpoint, the burn duration of SEVERAL SECONDS for the clans is insane, enemy moves, runs, twists, damage gets spread all over the enemy mech (or just runs over a tiny stone and mechs the enemy mech move up and down) and there is also the movement of the person shooting. If you are one of those players standing still getting laser vomit to one location, it is your fault

[SweetJackal]

TL;DR: I still say that the entire High Alpha Meta is a side effect of the current aiming system. Redesigning the combat to have fixed convergence for weapons, like WW2 fighter planes, instead of instant dynamic convergence that is pinpoint accurate to the cursor fixes the cause and generates a lot of depth to the game that both creates tradeoffs for weapon placement and increases the skill ceiling by adding another skillset to what the game demands.

Beating a dead horse on this topic and possibly going off the rails? I'll dive right in.

The difference between Clan Alpha damage and their more frequent Alphas compared to Inner Sphere counterparts is merely a symptom. It is the symptom of the current pinpoint damage system, and fixing that root cause will solve the current issue dealing with Alphas entirely. This has been a conversation tossed about on these forums since time immemorial, and upon which many have butted heads, dismissed opinions, and plain failed to understand what another was even trying to say.

To make this clear, I am not advocating to any randomness being added to aiming in any way whatsoever. A system to solve the issue of pinpoint damage requires, at least for me, the following points:

-It cannot add any random factors to aiming, doing so would significantly hamper the experience of play and control of the mech due to the current health system.

-It must be predictable and intuitive, the way in which it pushes damage into a spread rather than stacking it on a single pinpoint must be in a manner that is consistent enough that you can expect what will happen and compensate for it, and that doing so is something that is something easily understood by the mind in effectively operating it.

-It must be additive to the game experience, not subtractive. It should provide an increase in meaningful choices the player must make, or provide a meaningful skill for players to learn without increasing busywork or otherwise menial tasks. It should not remove gameplay aspects that fit that description from the game.

-Any added complexity and depth to the game through doing this must be 'easy to understand and hard to master.' That is to say it needs to be easily understood to remain accessible but have enough compelling choices so that it adds another layer of tradeoffs between those choices to the point that each choice can be debated.

For me, a very narrow set of methods fit those requirements and the most compelling to me is to divide weapon mounts in the arms from weapon mounts in the torsos. That is, weapon mounts in the arms use the current system, weapon mounts in the torsos use the new/proposed system for determining the convergence point of weapons fire to the reticle. In this proposal the current targeting reticles for Torso and Arms would not be changed, keeping them clean and simple is best. Arm mounted weapons maintaining the instant and dynamic pinpoint convergence, that is the weapon always hitting the center of the reticle no matter the distance to the target or the weapon fired, comes with the tradeoff that arm mounts are normally lower (and are more often having their firing lines obstructed by terrain) and arms are much more exposed and often lost earlier than torsos.

To put it simply, for torso mounted weapons they would use the aiming system found in many WW2 Fighter Sims. The weapons would be set to have their firing line cross with targeting reticle at a fixed range for that weapon, not at the distance shown by the rangefinder when the reticle is over a target or obstacle. That is if a weapon mounted in the Right Torso has an optimal range of 600 meters, then it's convergence point is 600 meters out. If you are shooting at a target closer than 600 meters then the natural firing line drawn from the weapon mounting location to the center of your reticle at 600 meters out would mean that the impact point on the target would be to the right of the reticle. If the target was farther than 600 meters out the same would be true to hitting to the left of the reticle.

This makes the location you mount a weapon in and the weapon you mount in that location matter more. It makes it much more difficult to hit the same location of a target with different torso mounted weapons if those weapons have different optimal ranges or are mounted in different torsos. Likewise this natural damage spread will protect the lighter mech classes more because the smaller profiles means that even small offsets of fire will have damage hit different locations or even miss the mech entirely. This change is minimal against heavier mechs as the larger profiles allow for an incorrect adjustment to your aim to have your fire still hit the desired location, or to have less of your damage spread out overall.

Most importantly this offset from the reticle is predictable and repeatable. The same weapon fired from the same mounting point on the same mech at the same distance from target will continue to have the same offset from the reticle. This offset changes with distance in a way that is predictable and reliable. This means that not only is adjusting your aim to account for the offset from your sights possible, but it is an easy concept for the mind to grasp and it is a skill employed by marksmen the world over today.

Should the proposal be adopted or tested in the game, it would change the landscape as we know it. You could keep using the weapons as we currently do by mounting them in the arms and putting them at more risk, or you could mount them in the torso to protect them while having to compensate for the offset from the fixed range convergence. That is, if you are firing a torso mounted with with this system in order to hit your target exactly where you want you would have to account for the exact location the weapon is mounted on your mech and the distance to your target to adjust your aim to compensate for the offset properly.

The current and past Metas have been symptoms of every player effectively having the perfect pilot in the cockpit of their mech, we have had computers doing the aiming for us and all we have had to do is point and click. Addressing the Meta to seek a positive change is best done by tackling the roadblock that keeps the same Meta type in play as the only option. This is something that PGI has continued to try to fight by ensuring that most of the new era tech isn't front loaded pinpoint damage weapons, but doing so ignores the matter that the meta has revolved around pinpoint damage since the first public betas and these weapons have continued to remain in the pool and the skills to fight it are just as harmed by equipping much of the new tech as said new tech tries to fight or avoid compounding the existing Meta.

[Lurm God]

In worlds last year how many 94 alpha damage mechs were there? The direwolf was available and how often was it seen in the final 12? I can tell you from my memory I only recall 2-3 dakka dires in the semis and that is it. The issue in that 94 damage to me is not that it does not ghost heat etc etc. The clan ER Med is still the outlier in the situation. Lower its damage, lower its heat and slightly increase the cycle time on a clan gauss if you feel it is over performing.

When you propose a big balance change like this can you include metrics, numbers etc of the over performing weapon combination that you are basing this off? If so can you then refine this to include how successful the pilot is and scale accordingly? If overachieving pilots are the only ones playing the build it probably is the pilots not the weapon combination. If no metrics are being used can you be clear on that because the post seems a bit ambiguously planned out.

I have kept mostly on topic why are you looking for feedback on this when you have had media blackout and not answered much about worlds etc? Seems weird to bring up a topic like this but not want it on bigger issues.

Edited by Lurm God, 11 June 2018 - 11:23 PM.

[AlphaPiAlpha]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 13 June 2018 - 01:34 PM.
unconstructive, replies removed

[Y E O N N E]

Gartenlaube, on 11 June 2018 - 10:27 PM, said:

What he said! Thanks <3


No, lasers are NOT pinpoint, the burn duration of SEVERAL SECONDS for the clans is insane, enemy moves, runs, twists, damage gets spread all over the enemy mech (or just runs over a tiny stone and mechs the enemy mech move up and down) and there is also the movement of the person shooting. If you are one of those players standing still getting laser vomit to one location, it is your fault

Pinpoint means damage is directed at one place. Lasers are all directed at one place. Front-loaded means it is delivered instantly. Lasers do not deliver instantly.

Lasers are pinpoint. They are not front-loaded. Pin-point without front-loading can be re-directed. Front-loading without pinpoint is inherently diffuse. Pinpoint with front-loading is the most devastating damage in the game because it is directed to one place and it cannot be redirected.

Use the terms correctly or don't use them at all. There's a reason PPFLD is the boogeyman rather than just PP or FLD independently.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 11 June 2018 - 10:45 PM.

[The Mysterious Fox]

the proposals dont sound fun

[Karl Streiger]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 June 2018 - 10:58 AM, said:

[color=#FFA500]Clan Gauss Rifles[/color]

The 3 less tons needed to equip Clan Gauss rifles need to come with meaningful give and take compared to their heavier IS equivalents. Off of two clan Gauss rifles, the 6 saved tons over their IS counterparts is often plenty of tonnage to compliment the weapons with payloads that their IS counterparts are often strapped to compete with. This will be adjusted to offer fairer give and take between the two tech base's rifles.

Clan Gauss Rifles are also fragile as hell - you want to tweak? Reduce the effectiveness of Clan CASE or(logical) make IS Gauss tougher and reduce the effect of critical damage (including Heavy and Light)
No additional heat ramp, recoil stuff necessary - risk reward keep it simple

Quote

[color=#FFA500]Clan Lasers:[/color]

The upfront damage of Clan lasers, and the ease of access the clans have at supplementing their fire with heavy upfront damage, at decent ranges, for minimal tonnage directly contributes not just to those Alpha's at the top, but a general lopsidedness in most build performance throughout the entire clan / IS lineup and often sees the Clan 'Mechs with access to a large number of energy hard points consistently outperform equivalent 'Mechs on the IS side. While the popular adage sees the belief that only a handful of 'mechs consist as "problem" 'Mechs, the reality is that as a whole, the overall performance of even an average clan 'Mech can put up are often consistently higher then what the average IS 'Mech can put up provided they have access to a certain number of energy hardpoints. This will be a change that is targeted to either raise the skill cap needed to utilized mass Clan laser fire, or will be reduced to a level that does not completely overshadow the IS equivalent weapons.

YOu might not realized it but you have already a house made issue with lasers or weapons at all....
Why does smaller weapons shoot faster and are simpler to use (faster speeds, shorter beam duration)?
When you answer this question you might get an idea how to solve it. - Desync you want DPS then create DPS Laser.
A DPS Laser is not achieved with some mini-changes ... a DPS Laser might have a burn duration of 200ms and recharge in 1sec but it does only do a fraction of damage.

Just shooting into the blue:

• Small Laser - 1sec beam duration cools down every 2sec - 6dmg
  
• Medium Laser 0.2sec beam duration cools down every 0.8sec - 2dmg
  
• Large Laser 0.5sec beam cools down every 5.5 sec - 12dmg

See what I did there?

[dr3dnought]

To answer the OP

Quote

[color=#00FFFF]Changes that result in Desynced fire as the optimal method of fire to reward the clans overall higher damage outputs.[/color]

Since this would require ghost-heat (as it's currently implemented) I am against this approach.

Which only leaves

Quote

• Reduction in baseline Damage output to something that is much better aligned to what the Inner Sphere is capable of keeping up with.

Insofar as these changes align with the community balance proposals I can support them.

If cGauss absolutely must be nerfed (which i don't think it does) then Option 2 (recoil) is the least bad option. Absolutely not Option 3 (ghost heat with large lasers).

For clan lasers, Option 1 (damage nerf) is most in line with the community balance changes and would be preferable to Option 2 (ghost heat)

However, there are other changes players have proposed in this thread that I would be interested to see:
Improve agility
Bring back Gauss+PPC
Reduce heat cap and increase dissipation
Increase clan laser duration

[_Casper_]

In my opinion the alphas we have in the game right now aren't a problem at all. Nerfing every weapon till it feels like you are throwing cotton balls and shine with your flashlight is a horrible solution. Look at the skilltree. It is unsatisfying to move in tiny steps. It is unsatisfying to use weapons that have a minimal effect. It sucks the fun out of the gaming experience. Some examples?
The srm spread nerf was unfun and in combination with the 'over the top' spl nerf it hit brawling as a playstyle way too hard. The gauss+ppc nerf was unfun unneccessary and killed the playstyle completely. The engine deysnc was unfun and hurt the game. It reduced mobility and made gameplay more sluggish and (even more important when it comes to ttk) made it harder to protect yourself by twisting and shielding. The proposed nerfs to gauss and lasers are unfun and would hurt the game and the joy of playing it.

This balance mentality or balance approach is what made the current MWO worse than the MWO we had a year ago. A little reduction of the dmg to reduce alphas slighly is probably ok but nerfs that kill a playstyle and make you feel to fight with a wet towel instead of a battlemech are just bad.

Edit: pls take a look at the community driven proposals by Tarogato and mates. From a player's perspective these ideas make much more sense than what you take into consideration or wanna discuss now.

Edit2: Or take a looke at Tarogatos post on page 13 of this discussion. Everything written there makes more sense than the proposed changes. If he is available you really should hire him as a consultant.

Edited by _Casper_, 11 June 2018 - 11:35 PM.

[Ur-vile]

Please stop. Just. Stop. You are going the wreck way more than you are going to fix.

[WolfSpine Vickers]

I actually think the game is balanced as it is.

p.s spend more resources on Faction Warfare is you want to keep your player base and bring new player in

[A Headless Chicken]

The Lighthouse, on 11 June 2018 - 11:07 PM, said:

I have to keep saying, from my experience in Heroes of Newerth days, being good at a game does not automatically mean he/she can make a good balance suggestion, and vice versa (famous example would be icefrog for opposite example.)

Top players know what are broken and what need to be fixed, but that's it. Actual fixes and changes are the realm of game designers. Being good at the game does not make a person a good game designer, simple as that.

Oxymoronic. As if a company which barely touches its game and is unable to make sense of gleaned data could be called good game designers.

[CarloArmato]

Tranderas, on 11 June 2018 - 01:01 PM, said:

You don't seem to understand that the reason clan has higher alpha and marginally higher dps is to compensate for the fact that IS has armor quirks. It's not raw DPS vs DPS- it's dps as a percentage of a mech's health, and alpha vs sustain, and ability to deal damage that is effective vs trivial damage.

Your initial assumption- that clans have higher damage per heat than IS so clan is imbalanced- is flawed on these grounds. Therefore, any conclusion you make from it is also inherently flawed.

You need to go back to the drawing board on this. And honestly, if you want to reduce the effect of high-alpha clan laser vomit and increase time to kill- both of which are goals you and Paul have put forth- the best place to start is giving us mobility back. The ability to twist torsos to spread damage among multiple components is a direct counter to the clan strategy.

Further: If you want clans to stop using laser vomit so much, you need to give them something to use as an alternative. The changes you've proposed in the past, and in this post, would make IS objectively better than clan. Instead of taking a nerf bat to everything that you deem too powerful- which, as established above, is an incorrect assumption to begin with- buff some other things. Give me a different weapon system that's just as good. Don't nerf lasers or gauss, buff UACs or ACs. Give me a series of mechs with SRM quirks. Give me AC quirks. Stop making me feel smaller and less powerful in this game about piloting massive, powerful robots.

THIS.

IS annihilator with skills has nearly 1.5 time the tank and 80 damage alpha strike (dual HGR + 6xERML), clanners has little to no bonus to tank and a 92 alpha strike with very long cooldown and massive heat.

I mostly played IS and seeing the clan nerfed would only leave the clanners with no real strong option to counter IS builds.
IS are generally cooler, tankier and better apply damage (shorter laser duration, less bullets in UACs).

LRMs and ATMs? Countered by AMS and good use of cover
Laser vomit builds? Can be countered by high mobility/speed or good torso twist, maybe increase laser duration and keep overall DPS if you really feel to. If you face tank a HLL, you are doing it wrong. If you have to face tank because you are using a homing weapon, it's your choice to use such "low effort" weapon compared to one that actually requires aim... That's also one of the reasons why "poptarting" with ATMs is not as efficient as with other pinpoint weapons.

TBF, adding GR and PPCs in the same heat scale group IMHO was needed: poptarting was too efficient because left little to no room for counters. Laser vomit builds, instead, MUST face you and expose for the entire duration of the lasers plus the movement to expose themselves and hide back. They have a greater vulnerability windows, even if small.

If you buff brawl weapons or make other weapons usable, you will start to take the steps in the right direction: what this game need is variety, not flee back to un-nerfed weapons.


Also, to prove even further than clanners do NOT need nerfs, just look at Solaris: how many clan meta mechs are there in the top 20 for ANY division? Not even a handful.

Division 1: annihilator party. Any clan mech get rekt (EDIT: with the only exception of an artic wolf full SRM boat which is a natural counter to big and fat assaults, so IMHO it does not count)
Division 2: only 1 warhawk dual LBX20 + 3xSRM6 and 1 Night Gyr AC2/LBX2 boat.
Division 3: only 1 shadow cat ECM poptart with NARC
Division 4 to 7: never seen a clan win against any of my mech, neither seen one in the top 20 leaderboard.

Why not nerf AC2, then? They look dominant in any division in solaris due do low slot consumption (which means endosteel and ferrofibrous, further increasing available tonnage), low heat and high DPS output.

Clanners do NOT need that nerf if you don't make other weapon systems anywhere useful: reduce 1 bullet per burst of non ultra-autocannos, change the UAC node bonus to reduced jam time instead of chance, actually make the same skill tree for both factions instead of the current "clan can't skill as good as IS", make brawl / short range weapons actually viable if you manage to get close to a target and even if you have taken some sustained fire...

There is plenty you can do to improve the game, but it's ALWAYS better to buff something useless to increase variety than to nerf something players got used to that do not completely break the game or actually need skills (aiming and positioning) to make it worth while.

Edited by CarloArmato, 12 June 2018 - 06:25 AM.

[SaltiestRaccoon]

Phyrce, on 11 June 2018 - 03:36 PM, said:

Perfect example of the problem here. Mechwarrior is not and has never been a standard FPS. Mech combat is closer to tanks than a shooter.the TTK is far to low for the "epic mech battle" feel that Mechwarrior has traditionally captured, you can see MW2,3,4 as examples.

Did we play the same Mechwarrior 2? Because I am 100% certain you are misremembering it. MWO uses close to tabletop weapon damage values with double structure and armor, plus quirks and skills that even further increase that armor and structure. Mechwarrior 2 was a 1:1 conversion. So weapons did literally more than twice as much damage as they do in MWO. It also didn't have stupid systems like ghost heat to further nerf damage, nor did it have nerfed heat sinks that do less to prevent appreciable DPS. Moreover a single leg destroyed would completely immobilize a mech, as it does in tabletop.

The idea is not to be another random FPS, but instead to actually be SOMETHING like the setting that the game is supposed to take place in. In that setting mechs can be and are quickly destroyed.

The difference is that weapons are harder to hit with. I would be very unopposed to adding reticle bloom to the game, decreasing weapon accuracy when you rapidly change aimpoint or move past a certain percentage of your speed. Hell, that would actually make light mechs more interesting for their improved ability to run and gun since even 'walking' they're faster than most heavy mechs 'running.' That also kills the very uncanonical strategy of twisting (I do it, too. I'm not bad at it, but I think it's stupid because the mech hitboxes make some mechs WILDLY more or less viable based on a mechanic that exists nowhere but in MWO.) Finally it makes targeting computers and pulse lasers more interesting options because their accuracy can actually be improved by reducing the inaccuracy from running or frantic aiming, more akin to their canonical counterparts. It makes the game more deliberate and more like actual armored combat as well as the tabletop game. And it fixes the problem of high damage alphas without feeling like you're shooting wet noodles. I'm sure people would complain it takes the skill out of the game, but the VAST majority of shooters (all with more populous and developed competitive scenes than MWO) impart accuracy penalties for certain things like running or jumping.

Edited by DrUnK3nPaNdA, 12 June 2018 - 01:15 AM.

[GoatHILL]

Un-nerf IS med lasers would be a good start.

[Mighty Spike]

WolfSpine Vickers, on 12 June 2018 - 12:15 AM, said:

I actually think the game is balanced as it is.

p.s spend more resources on Faction Warfare is you want to keep your player base and bring new player in

^That

[Saint Atlas and the Commando Elf]

I am (almost) beyond caring at this point.

So "balance" whatever you feel needs to be balanced.

Imho, you just reap what you sow. If you would have put some more brains into the original design of the game (sized hardpoints, for example) you would be having a much easier time balancing the game now.

And one more thing: Remember Energy draw? That was actually a good idea, that would have solved many of the issues you are discussing right now. Sadly somebody lost his spirits on the way.