845 replies to this topic

[Tarogato]

Tesunie, on 12 June 2018 - 11:00 AM, said:

I should mention I did take a single glancing hit before hand that turned my CT armor yellow (not even yellow orange), but I don't think it should have been significant enough to result in a kill. Maybe 2-5 less points of CT armor max from my estimation. (Really wished I recorded my matches sometimes.)

With 74 CT armour, and your paper doll showing yellow, you could have been as low as 50% armour. How do you tell the difference between a "glancing hit" and a splash of 40 concentrated laser damage? You can't. It will look about the same on your end.

Which means you might have had only had 37 armour left, which means you had 77 hitpoints in total, of which the 40 was structure, would could be critted and perhaps only worth ~30 points. So maybe... you were killed by a ~70 damage alpha.

Annihilator with 2x HGauss and 6x ERML deals 80 damage. Also, Rifleman has a protruding CT, it's easy to hit even when you've twisted. You were dead to rights, no other way about it.


Paperdoll colour reference:

Edited by Tarogato, 12 June 2018 - 01:27 PM.

[Tesunie]

Pelmeshek, on 12 June 2018 - 01:18 PM, said:

Well, i can explain all in Russian but u cant understand nothing and its just waste of my time.
So Vxheous explain all correctly what i think.

God damit, HSR its some kind of mantra for you? You want to write off all your mistakes to HSR? U really stubborn or what? Here u can read about HSR. And pls stop post another part own cool story.

Yeah. Language barrier. Got it.

As for HSR, right from that article:
"We haven’t even talked about what to do for... the inconsistencies rewinding can cause between lagging and non-lagging players"

What that means is that, sometimes, things don't exactly line up. Hence, I can be twisted on my screen when I'm about to be shot, yet on their screen I'm not twisted and they shoot my CT and hit my CT. Then the server "predicts" where I am, how much I am twisted, where the enemy is, when they shot, will their shot hit, where their shot will hit... and sometimes things are not correct.

I can recall many times a shot went clean through a target I hit and it did no damage. Other times, I've shot, missed, but was rewarded with damage despite missing on my own screen. That's prediction for you. It isn't always accurate, so yes. I can know how to twist, from the full presenting of a side to the little nose wobble, and yes I can still take CT damage from HSR saying I wasn't twisted.

Hence, some of the issue. And, all that still doesn't even address the fact that you can apparently be one shot killed by (in this specific case) an Annihilator despite being in a 60 ton mech if it hits you in the CT. A heavy mech, dropping in a single hit. Am I the only one that thinks that this doesn't feel right? Or is TTK really okay and a single shot acceptable to kill most mechs in the game?

Twisting is irrelevant to that statement. Is it, or is it not, a good TTK frame of one alpha to potentially drop a heavy mech? Is that the TTK we want and expect from this game?

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

If you're really looking to just cut down on the high alphas themselves then I'd recommend the option of increasing the DPS of the clan lasers while decreasing alpha through giving them lower damage but also lower durations and cooldowns, the durations being the more important aspect.

The general concept of "making clan alphas more high skill" through the use of ghost heat that requires longer exposure times mostly just brings the Clan alphas into a point of being useless. This is mainly due to the amount of return fire that a clan mech would take over the course of this 2+ second period of time that they are firing their lasers and how much mechs can spread the incoming damage given such a long time to do so.

A Clan mech would be practically incapable of peeking out and getting even one shot off against multiple enemies present without dying, and the one enemy they shot has ample time to spread the damage to all their torso components at least. Which really brings us back to why PPFLD used to be the undisputed meta and why it remains extremely powerful.

Edit:

Also, I'd hardly call the highest damage Clan lasers alphas "sustainable". The Hellbringer 78 damage alphas can only be fired once then they must wait over 10-15 seconds to fire it again without overheating. Same deal with the Mad Cat MK2: Deathstrike's alpha.

Edited by Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, 12 June 2018 - 01:46 PM.

[Tesunie]

Tarogato, on 12 June 2018 - 01:24 PM, said:

With 74 CT armour, and your paper doll showing yellow, you could have been as low as 50% armour. How do you tell the difference between a "glancing hit" and a splash of 40 concentrated laser damage? You can't. It will look about the same on your end.

Which means you might have had only had 37 armour left, which means you had 77 hitpoints in total, of which the 40 was structure, would could be critted and perhaps only worth ~30 points. So maybe... you were killed by a ~70 damage alpha.

Annihilator with 2x HGauss and 6x ERML deals 80 damage. Also, Rifleman has a protruding CT, it's easy to hit even when you've twisted. You were dead to rights, no other way about it.


Paperdoll colour reference:

Good reference there. I'd say it was yellow, as in 80-95% on your chart. But, I think that may go to show we could use a HUD option setting.... Nice little bar graphs for your health meters like how some of the MW games previously could do. It would be far more helpful to know your exact damage.

Man, I do wish I had recorded those matches (no idea how to exactly do it, if my system could even handle it that is). Then I could get far more insight into... everything. Would be far better to relay what happened.

[Hal Greaves]

Tesunie, on 12 June 2018 - 01:38 PM, said:

words

Rifleman CT is incredibly easy to hit. What likely happened is that you saw a mech but missed another on a flank and got nuked by 2 at 1. Or they simply shot the radar dish at the top of your mech that was poking up over cover. Many people can't grasp the fact that the Rifleman's cockpit view is lower than what it feels like in the mech itself, and while you might feel like you're in cover you got a big spoiler on your back that flags you for attack.

Also dont torso twist in a rifleman the CT is easy to hit from the side. Nose tank like a Marauder, guarantee you'll survive more.

[Tesunie]

Hal Greaves, on 12 June 2018 - 01:43 PM, said:

Rifleman CT is incredibly easy to hit. What likely happened is that you saw a mech but missed another on a flank and got nuked by 2 at 1. Or they simply shot the radar dish at the top of your mech that was poking up over cover. Many people can't grasp the fact that the Rifleman's cockpit view is lower than what it feels like in the mech itself, and while you might feel like you're in cover you got a big spoiler on your back that flags you for attack.

Also dont torso twist in a rifleman the CT is easy to hit from the side. Nose tank like a Marauder, guarantee you'll survive more.

Unless the two mechs shot me at the same time with the same list of weapons (because death screen doesn't log exact number of weapons within the types that hit), I do believe that the person that got the kill was the only one to hit me at that time.

I'll have to take your advise about actually "face tanking" with the Riflemen and only do the "Nose wobble" for twisting instead of hard twists. Maybe I can get it to work better. Still don't think it would have saved me in that case, but I'll take any advice given.

As I said, never expected to survive or win against that engagement, but I would have imagined me lasting a bit longer...

[Racerxintegra2k]

These balance changes are going to be epic ... one way or another.

[Vxheous]

Racerxintegra2k, on 12 June 2018 - 01:58 PM, said:

These balance changes are going to be epic ... one way or another.

Probably set off another mass exodus of players like the skill tree patch.

[SneekiBreeki]

Vxheous, on 12 June 2018 - 02:07 PM, said:

Probably set off another mass exodus of players like the skill tree patch.

It would most likely be also the last mass exodus this game will ever see.

[Humpday]

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

[color=#FFA500]Clan Gauss Rifles[/color]
[color=#FFA500]Option 2: [/color]

• The Clan Gauss rifle is given a recoil effect similar to, but not as intense as, the Heavy Gauss rifle. No other attributes are changed.

This works...

...but I don't think the c-Gauss needs to be touched at all. As it stands right now...if you sneeze on that thing it blows up. That leaves the only real consistently viable carriers to be the MKII and NightGyr(anything not torso mounted).

EDIT: yes I'm aware the Blood Asp..but all it takes is a strike and any machine gun to touch your bum and boom goes your gauss.

You could also just make it 1ton heavier limiting the amount of aux weapons, dhs, weapons one can take. That right there will curb gauss-vomit right down, if not kill it.

Again however...probably not a great idea to mess with c-Gauss. Address laser vomit instead.

Quote

[color=#FFA500]Clan Lasers:[/color]
[color=#FFA500]Option 1: [/color]

• 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

Just flat out reduce the damage output so its not so extreme. Don't make it 100% on par with IS, but do reduce it a bit.
There is an earlier post that details it better than I can.

Edited by Humpday, 12 June 2018 - 02:27 PM.

[SFC174]

Paul said:

[color=#00FFFF]We are not going to grandly scale all ‘Mechs and weapon systems upward to meet this level of damage output as that would lead to severe power creep and degradation of gameplay even in its current state. This touches on a community based balance document that has just started circulating. That document is a full upward trajectory of power creep. This does NOT mean there isn’t valuable information in there. There are some number changes we can make and underutilized weapon systems pointed out in the document and the points made about them are very useful feedback that we will address as we move forward.[/color]

If someone else already addressed this, sorry, I just saw the thread and haven't read all 21 pages. That said....

I think you, Paul, and the rest of the team are looking at this from the wrong angle. You're concerned about making other weapons combos perform similarly to the meta combos that you deem problematic. But _why_ are they problematic? Because people run them often and are effective with them? Why is that a problem? Because other people _don't_ want to run them but can't compete? Those other people would like to be effective killers too, why not let them? The whole TTK concern is vastly overblown IMO simply because people love to run those combos right now, so clearly they aren't all that concerned about TTK.

Furthermore, you have not qualitatively looked at the nature of those big alphas. A 78 pt laser vomit alpha is, arguably, less effective at killing mechs than a 50 pt dual heavy gauss alpha. Because any halfway decent player is going to spread that 78 pt alpha over at least 2-3 components during the 1+ second burn time.

I'm sorry, but again, I think you are simply looking at this the wrong way. The vast majority of players in MWO are in it to kill mechs. Effective weapons combos, with a reasonable skill cap/learning curve, are fun to use. And if you're going to nerf all kinds of clan combos, requiring double the face time and scattering the damage even wider, then you have to rebalance all the quirks, armor, etc. on IS mechs to compensate. You're taking the hard road.

Edited by SFC174, 12 June 2018 - 02:26 PM.

[0111101]

Bush Hopper, on 12 June 2018 - 11:57 AM, said:

I also think that the alpha-hunker into cover-cooldown alpha should be massively curbed and a DPS playstyle should be established.

Brawlers. You are looking for brawlers. Enemy laser boats reach their heat capacity by the time the brawler gets in range, and then the brawler uses its heat efficient weapons to knock the laser boat out of the fight before it has a chance to cool down. It just isn't practical like it used to be because the small pulse laser was nerfed into the ground and engine desync dropped agility across the board.

Net effect: your brawl loadout gets killed easily by being less efficient at torso twisting to spread out incoming damage, and is spending more time exposed to enemy fire before killing the target because of the small pulse laser's reduced damage output.

The ranged counter against laser boats used to be Gauss+PPC, where the fire and forget pinpoint damage allowed you to minimize exposure to laser boats. This build type has been completely gutted by the nerf linking the two weapons with a ghost heat penalty: Gauss+PPC loadouts actually run hotter than any laser boat in the game now and that wasn't the case a year ago where we had these different build archetypes offering a rock paper scissors approach to balance. Laser vomit just filled the power vacuum, that's all.

[Y E O N N E]

Jay Leon Hart, on 12 June 2018 - 01:17 PM, said:

Aye, a poll would at least offer a more streamlined avenue of feedback on the options, unless they'e holding off in case any good ideas come from this thread. Unlikely, given most of the responses are either regurgitating "just buff!!!!111" or "but the community thing!!!111" instead.

[Edit]

Dammit, stop proving me wrong [/Edit]

There's so much more to say, too. I'm not even sure if I agree with everything I said in that post, there are many directions that things could go that would be an improvement on what we currently have.

But right now, everything just feels really bad.

Clans feel bad because they have two tricks: big pinpoint alpha damage at mid-range and MG spam, but they are all fairly squishy, most of them handle very clumsily, and there is little to no top-rate variety in their builds because their own lasers are just too damn strong across too many scenarios to justify alternatives except in very specific cases, i.e. Lights, which can't play energy because the face-time on Clan lasers will get you cored by decent players. The only dakka worth taking are the MCII-B and DWF because cACs have no significant redeeming qualities and cUACs jam too much to be used in small numbers. Only the cUAC/2 is reliable enough to use a couple of.

IS feel bad because, unless you are using a handful of specific 'Mechs with the right quirks (chiefly, generous durability and energy heat gen, often energy range), their gear is just crap. ER Mediums are too hot, sharing a heat ratio with the Clan ER Medium without sharing the DHS capacity. ERLL don't have competitive range without a quirk. PPCs across the board are too hot and most of them are too slow. IS dakka isn't really worth it unless the 'Mech has quirks because the amount of dakka you get per ton is just not competitive at all and it all runs inherently hotter than the Clan versions.

Nothing feels right.

[ADI84000]

yea gimme IS level quirks on my clan mechs and you can nerf my weapons , also gimme IS low heat lasers and slow burn time.... haha the clan small lasers has higher duration than the IS large pulse and we`re talking about ballance here a weapon that can do like -10 damage in half a second vs a weapon that does 5 damage in 1 second.... ... or the fact that some is assaults have 140-160 front armor + structure in the ct , and like 100-110 armor plus structure on the side torso .... yea 94 alpha.... you shoot once and its like 90% heat and he has 66 armor left and structure in the ct , if its a noob that stood stiil and didnt torso twist and will look at you and shoot you... and you sit there for like 10 seconds to cool of while that IS assault kills you. so basicly even in a potato vs potato no torso twist scenario is mech is going to win... anyone seen a clan mech in division 1 ?
clan so op we beat everyone.... as clan ... well i went IS with my unit ... and honestly i feel like its easy mode... to how easy it is to kill clan mechs... how squishy they are... compared to the IS mechs ... and how all of them have some of the pointiest biggest and worse hitboxes in the game...honestly i dont want to be on IS side anymore because its to easy.... more tonnage... allot of quirks... skill tree better...
we we`re promissed with the new skill tree that all IS mechs will loose they`re quirks... well what happened to that .... well some IS mechs would retain they`re quirks... actualy they got more... and the ones that didnt got quirks...
look at how faction play was like 1 year ago... when clan was advancing at great speed .... not anymore.... isn`t that any indication that clan is not as op as you guys think... also most of the big units are on the clan side... and still not advancing as it did 1 year ago..

come on if mad cat deathstrike and dire wolf is so op why isn`t anyone in top 10 in solaris using it ? cause it cant do anything vs an anni with heavy gauss or other anni build with balistics , it fires once 94 and dies in the next 7 seconds it takes to cool of the heat from that 94 alpha...
the same reason you dont see any hellbringer with heavy lasers in solaris... you fire once... and you die before you cooldown to fire again....
you`ve been nerfing weapons for more than a year now.... balistics... srms... lasers.... and now nerf again... yea 2 years from now it will take 10 minutes to kill a mech.... and matches will end 3-2 in skirmish... increasing time to kill has to take in consideration that noobs cry ... that well i stood still and 2-3 clan laser vomits shot me... or 10 mechs did.... well even before heavy lasers... you would have died instantly....
here is another solution ... make clan lore like super op and make it 8 vs 12 in faction play and make two buckets of quick play , clan vs clan and is vs is , and is vs clan or just make it that in qp u have 6 clanners + 6 is mechs vs 6 clanners and 6 is mechs...
or just tweek the damn pulse lasers to have enough dps to beat the laser vomit, pulse lasers should have super low cooldowns 1-2 seconds very low heat and duration, then its a counter to high alpha , make balistics lower cooldown lower heat better velocity and you have a counter, make srm spread lower and velocity bigger , honestly srms feel like launching a pie at an enemy.... in the face .... well i dont tech in the future is that slow ... for missiles...
make dps real ... and high alpha will not be as strong...
or just make ppcs lower heat lower cooldown so they can peek and poke better and make them an alternatiev to laser vomit
and TO MAKE A FINAL ARGUMENT A BLACK KNIGHT WITH 3 LPL AND 6 ER MEDS HAS A ALPHA THAT IS CLOSE TO HELLBRINGER... WITH ALLOT LOWER DURATION AND LOWER HEAT AND ALSO IT HAS ARMOR OR STRUCTURE QUIRKS AND IT HAS ENERGY QUIRKS NOT TO MENTION A BETTER SKILL TREE FOR ENERGY....
IF YOU NERF THE CLAN LASERS NERF THAT TOO.... CAUSE ITS ON THE SAME LEVEL OF HIGH ALPHA AND LOWER BURN SO THE DAMAGE IS EASIER TO PUT IN ONE COMPONENT , THATS MY CONCLUSION TO IS LASER VOMIT VS CLAN LASER VOMIT... AND LONG RANGE WISE GIVE CLAN 3 ER LARGE LASER WITHOUT GHOST HEAT THEY CAN FIRE 27 DAMAGE COMPARED TO 22 WITH LOWER BURN AT SAME RANGES WITH QUIRKS SKILL TREE AND TARGETING COMPS.... OR EVEN GREATER RANGE ON BATTLE MASTERS AND OTHER RANGE QUIRKED MECHS ,

[Tarl Cabot]

[Redacted] Staff Abuse/Insults/Nonconstructive /beats Tina to it!!

Okay, I have edited myself..

• Increase base armor/structural values from 2.0 to 2.5/3.0 of BT values
  
• Modify overall heat scale - Having only a penalty at max is not using any real flavor from BT heatscale
  
  • Hard shutdown at 105-110 % w/no override possible.
    
  • Add 2-3 soft thresholds on heatscale 40/60/80% or 50/70/90% to slow down to 10%/20%/30% a mech w/1 override at 100%.
• Give isXL same benefit as cXL but with slight greater penalties while improving the LFE penalty and a partial of the cXL penalty. Use BT for the flavor while working it for a FPS that has PPD instead of dice to determine hit/miss and location.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 12 June 2018 - 03:26 PM.

[Tamerlin]

I think Tarogato makes good points.

cGauss health. I don't mind increasing cGauss health, but not to the same level as IS. Current values are:

• IS: 7 slots, 15 tons, 10 health
  
• Clan: 6 slots, 12 tons, 5 health

Maybe increase cGauss health to 7.5 or 8 to reflect the lesser size and tonnage. But recognize that reduced weapon health only matters once you get thru a mech's armor, and then there is only a 42% chance to damage internal components with following shots to that location. But I admit that due to its crit slots if there is a crit it's very likely to damage the Gauss.

isGuass cooldown. Aligning the isGuass recycle to the isERML recycle is a good idea.

Now my thoughts -

cGauss Recoil: not only should cGauss get some kind of recoil, ALL weapons that impart impulse on a targeted mech should cause recoil to the firing mech - this is just the Third Law of Motion. The recoil should be relative to the firing weapon. This can be quirked and effected by skill tree (improved gyro), and there could even be a "ghost recoil" multiplier if too many impulse producing weapons are fired at once.

Ghost heat: rather than creating ever-increasing heat penalty groups, have ghost heat associated with total damage output. This could reduce the game balance catch-up with changing play styles. For example: "If you fire more than [30] damage within [0.5 seconds], there will be a heat spike." This can be augmented with a general weapon cooldown penalty the higher the mech's total heat is.

Edited by Tamerlin, 12 June 2018 - 03:27 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

You know, linking Gauss to any laser ghost heat grouping will do nothing because you can just fire the Gauss 0.5 seconds into your laser burn and avoid it entirely. Or you fire it at the end, just like you would to avoid cockpit shake from recoil.

It doesn't matter whether you do it in the middle or at the end because the damage is dealt instantaneously.

[NocturnalBeast]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 June 2018 - 03:32 PM, said:

You know, linking Gauss to any laser ghost heat grouping will do nothing because you can just fire the Gauss 0.5 seconds into your laser burn and avoid it entirely. Or you fire it at the end, just like you would to avoid cockpit shake from recoil.

It doesn't matter whether you do it in the middle or at the end because the damage is dealt instantaneously.

Ghost heat for Gauss Rifles is completely stupid. Seriously, at this rate, just start over, get rid of Clans, take the lostech out of the game, remove all buffs/nerfs and quirks, get rid of the skill tree and roll the timeline back to 3025.

While you are at it, take the Hero, Champion and Special Mechs out of the game, make all Mechs available for C-bills only and just make your money off of cosmetics.

Edited by Ed Steele, 12 June 2018 - 03:35 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Ed Steele, on 12 June 2018 - 03:34 PM, said:

Ghost heat for Gauss Rifles is completely stupid.

On that we agree. It can't do anything to harm Gauss-vomit builds because the way the system is designed and the way lasers work prevent it.

On a more philosophical note, though, the fact that BattleTech makes Gauss Rifles generate only 1 heat is also completely stupid. That is not how high electrical currents work and they should have known that even then. So much for grounded...

[Vxheous]

Ed Steele, on 12 June 2018 - 03:34 PM, said:

Ghost heat for Gauss Rifles is completely stupid. Seriously, at this rate, just start over, get rid of Clans, take the lostech out of the game, remove all buffs/nerfs and quirks, get rid of the skill tree and roll the timeline back to 3025.

While you are at it, take the Hero, Champion and Special Mechs out of the game, make all Mechs available for C-bills only and just make your money off of cosmetics.

Yes, lets just kill the game completely by taking away 90% of the mechs that people have paid cash/grinded for. Do you even think before you type such nonsense?

Edited by Vxheous, 12 June 2018 - 03:44 PM.