845 replies to this topic

[James Wirth]

Aff, let us make Clan mechs and weapons even less fun to play than they already are by nerfing them yet again and even harder.

So what is the point any more?

[Too Much Love]

Clans appeared in MWO in 2014.

4 years passed and PGI is still trying to nerf it.

Meh.

[zudukai]

[Dungeon 206]

Tesunie, on 12 June 2018 - 10:47 AM, said:

For the record, I am not exaggerating the account. Faced off with an Annihilator, I know I'm going to lose. I shot once, twist (doesn't seem to count with HSR), and got nailed in the CT with one alpha and promptly died. I only have 6 points of rear armor, rest is all front loaded.

it was me. im sorry for DHGRing your CT.
and im sorry Pelmeshek and Vxheous for being the source of the argument.

Edited by Dungeon 206, 12 June 2018 - 10:58 PM.

[H I A S]

Colonel ONeill, on 11 June 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

[Redacted]

ALKALIN3, on 11 June 2018 - 03:16 PM, said:

[Redacted]

kjubert, on 11 June 2018 - 03:30 PM, said:

[Redacted]

FileTitan, on 11 June 2018 - 04:00 PM, said:

[Redacted]

denAirwalkerrr, on 11 June 2018 - 04:01 PM, said:

Because their opinion gets [REDACTED]

Ill have to agree with all of that.

/e: Can we have a guy who knows what is fun for balance?

Edited by H I A S, 13 June 2018 - 12:10 AM.

[lazorbeamz]

eyeballs, on 12 June 2018 - 03:57 PM, said:

Firstly, until pin point accuracy is addressed, this is all pointless. This is the root of the issue. No pin point accuracy: Who cares how big your alpha is. Pin point accuracy: Lights and Mediums are mostly screwed once alpha goes above 50, heavies above 70 and assaults above 90. As PGI is never going to address that, and the community is going to continue to react violently to any suggestion that it might be an issue, the rest of this discussion is pointless theory crafting that serves no purpose.

Secondly, until the system for determining player skill is addressed, any changes made are ultimately futile. You can have the best balanced game in the industry, but if your match-maker is being fed garbage data about your players' skill the game is still going to be a lop-sided chunderthrust that no one finds satisfying. The upward bias of the PSR system results in all players with a win/loss ratio of 1 or greater getting to Tier 1 (eventually). That makes it useless as a metric to base match-making on, resulting in supposedly 'high Tier' games that are actually filled with players that have been carried by friends or over-performing team-mates/meta-builds matched against the best of the best, a game play situation that neither side finds acceptable or fun.

Lastly, as long as there is no interest by the devs and outright hostility from the community in using heat as anything other than a binary 'can I alpha or not/oops I'm dead' system, an entire axis of balance levers is missing from the equation. That such a system of ramping penalties existed in all previous versions of MechWarrior seems not to matter to those who roundly poo-poo any attempt at discussion on the topic, it is as verboten as cone of fire and lobby-based matches. Why? I can only conclude that those who dismiss it out of hand, as has happened numerous times in this very thread, don't want anything to interfere with their big and repeated alphas, and therefore engaging them in any kind of discussion is simply a waste of time.

TL;DR : Fix pin-point, fix PSR, make heat matter, then we can talk about weapon balance.

Hmmm... remove coolshots and weapon convergence. Sounds good for me. You have a bunch of lasers which shoot parallel to each other and spread all over. And you cant reset your heat with a paid consumable either.

Edited by lazorbeamz, 13 June 2018 - 01:18 AM.

[Leon Ward]

As I wrote in last month, the Nerf trozdem comes, oh PGI is so transparent.



Almost everyone wants the TTK to be longer and the Mega Highalpha builds to be screwed down.

The ominous 94 DMG Alpha which can be driven by the Dire and Mad Cat is so popular thanks to the heat that drives everyone. The said builds are also the reason why in CW the clans win every game in half asleep.



Yeah well, the Anni with DHG and 6 MPL and an alpha of 86 DMG can barely keep up even though he can outball the Alpha 2x. (6 seconds for a hellbringer ..... that's what I call super TTK)



Balancing is good but unfortunately this is going in the wrong direction. Clanners are except for a few exceptions glass cannons and thanks to the lack of defensive queries, they would be patched at future allowable 30 damage per Laseralpha without reasonable compensation quasi from the game.



What should make the 'Mechs like the supernova or the nova, to name only 2? 3 weapon groups and even longer burning time so they have blown so thanks to the non-existent Quirks of Battlemaster 1G in the Nirvana in Laserduell?



I've been a clan fanboy since I started with BT as a kid. I have 73 'Mechs, 7 IS and the rest are Clanmechs. What should you do with it!?! I will no longer spend any money on Clanmechs! And if the clans still continue to be just nerf without compensation even though now the IS has the edge I'll probably get out of the game ... A pity!


PS: Sry for Googletranslater my English is not good enough and the German Forum you don´t read i think

[cougurt]

the biggest culprit when it comes to weapon imbalance is the clan ER medium laser. nerf its damage by .5-1 and give it compensatory buffs elsewhere. this way it remains a useful weapon across all weight classes and builds while helping to tone down excessively high alphas. you can take a similar approach to the large laser class as well if necessary. i would also recommend a comprehensive balance pass on mech agility, including a moderate agility buff across the board. the sluggishness of most mechs plays a big part in many of the game's current balance issues, the relative strength of clan lasers being one of them.

i don't understand the aversion to buffing underused weapons. it can hardly be considered power creep when most of the weapons in question have gone through multiple nerfs to begin with, or have been useless since their introduction. you're making a huge amount of needless work for yourselves if you're using the worst weapons in the game as your balance baseline.

[Leon Ward]

Please make all weapon systems no matter what the lore says. Doubles the armor and the TTK is better. Removes all quirks. But trying convulsively over Ghostheat and Quirks to balance leads to nothing.

Edited by Lance-a-Lot, 13 June 2018 - 03:02 AM.

[D34DMetal]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 June 2018 - 07:49 PM, said:

It's detrimental because whatever point you set the first heat penalty at governs how big the alphas can be, meaning you don't need to invest in more guns once you hit that point, you just invest in more heatsinks. Only one side has hyper tonnage efficient weapons that can fit more than enough heatsinks to completely offset the higher base heat on them. That's what happened during the Energy Draw PTS; Clan DHS boating was the new meta. Even with ballistics, to get a given amount of firepower the IS had to sacrifice more DHS.

So you've got 'Mechs that have to run hotter to get similar firepower having a harder time riding the line.

TL;DR: you will have to adjust more than just the heat system if you want heat penalties.



There's no point in discussing the specifics because they really don't matter. If heat penalties trigger at 30%, then we treat 30% like we treat 100% now. You can easily extrapolate the rest from that.

What's wrong with governing how big alphas are; isn't the point of these balance changes to start limiting damage potential? The energy draw system is not analogous to this proposed heat-scale so you can't make such comparisons (so there goes your argument right out the window).

Again: limiting the potential alpha strike damage before heat-scale penalties is a good thing. How is a player optimizing their build for a certain amount of upfront damage before it hits the heat-scale effects a bad thing? You'd have a mech that's good for DPS, but lacking in the PPFLD department; isn't this what balance is trying to accomplish?

The matter of fact is you don't know how a heat-scale system would work in-game (never mind how players would adapt their play to such a system) without actually testing it in the game.

[Tarl Cabot]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 June 2018 - 07:49 PM, said:

It's detrimental because whatever point you set the first heat penalty at governs how big the alphas can be, meaning you don't need to invest in more guns once you hit that point, you just invest in more heatsinks. Only one side has hyper tonnage efficient weapons that can fit more than enough heatsinks to completely offset the higher base heat on them. That's what happened during the Energy Draw PTS; Clan DHS boating was the new meta. Even with ballistics, to get a given amount of firepower the IS had to sacrifice more DHS.

So you've got 'Mechs that have to run hotter to get similar firepower having a harder time riding the line.

TL;DR: you will have to adjust more than just the heat system if you want heat penalties.


There's no point in discussing the specifics because they really don't matter. If heat penalties trigger at 30%, then we treat 30% like we treat 100% now. You can easily extrapolate the rest from that.

Not necessarily true. At 100%+ is the final governor, be it internal damage, regardless of shutdown or override and keep moving/more damage. Using 3 soft HS thresholds @ 40-60-80% or 50-70-90% or two HS thresholds 50-75%, etc no self damage is being inflicted.

Take the Heavy Lasers, most people want to fire and move/twist but people are willing to suffer the long burn times to inflict higher damage. Now add a more functional heatscale. Said player has to decide at any moment if firing an alpha of heavy lasers, or would heavy laser/smaller lasers the better choice due to how his speed/agility will be affected?

No, just adding a more functional heatscale should NOT be the only item but there should be more soft thresholds in between lets do it til we actually can not (damage-shutdown).

[D34DMetal]

Tarl Cabot, on 13 June 2018 - 03:36 AM, said:

Not necessarily true. At 100%+ is the final governor, be it internal damage, regardless of shutdown or override and keep moving/more damage. Using 3 soft HS thresholds @ 40-60-80% or 50-70-90% or two HS thresholds 50-75%, etc no self damage is being inflicted.

Take the Heavy Lasers, most people want to fire and move/twist but people are willing to suffer the long burn times to inflict higher damage. Now add a more functional heatscale. Said player has to decide at any moment if firing an alpha of heavy lasers, or would heavy laser/smaller lasers the better choice due to how his speed/agility will be affected?

No, just adding a more functional heatscale should NOT be the only item but there should be more soft thresholds in between lets do it til we actually can not (damage-shutdown).

Yes I like this. The idea is that the player will need to make more choices than "I can load all this PPFLD and fire it at the same time before I hit the max heat threshold". With a proper heat-scale, players would need to navigate other effects such as the following:

• mobility/agility and speed (maybe even adding in a feature like your torso twisting ability getting locked or torso twist speed getting drastically reduced after firing an alpha strike
  
• increased weapon cool down times (could be after an alpha strike OR after a certain heat threshold like 40% heat)
  
• weapon recoil or accuracy: again something depending on how much heat you have accumulated

I don't think it's a 100% perfect system, but it would be better than what we have now and it would be more substantial than adjusting ghost heat.

[Kompleks Ognevoi Podderzhki 320]

Lower the heating of all the ballistic weapons, except for the AC-2, in order to make it more justified. (I do not need to put a balistik if I can buy a better laser robot) It would not be profitable to lower the chiller's capacity so much that it would shoot with more than 20 damage.
Thus, it will be meaningful to diversify the fighting with all types of weapons. Since now, the most effective weapons are lasers. And the robot under the volley of lasers lives less than before any other weapons. They more than justify themselves, even if deal 50 damage per volley.

[SlippnGriff]

TAKE ME HOOOOME, COUNTRY ROOOOOAAAD

Edited by SlippnGriff, 13 June 2018 - 05:05 AM.

[Nightbird]

Nightbird, on 12 June 2018 - 12:00 PM, said:

Energy draw for energy weapons and gauss.

Capacitor: 30 pts fixed.
Recharge: 15pts/sec

Only lasers, PPC, gauss use energy

Lasers, PPC use 1 pt per damage, gauss uses .5pt per damage

Behavior:
Lasers draw evergy as it fires, cuts off if runs out of energy (45 damage alpha possible with 1sec laser duration)

PPCs only fire if there is enough pts in total

Gauss draws energy as it charges, needs 15pt for dual gauss, 25 for dual heavy gauss, if run out of capacitor energy can charge at reduced rate as regen

Changes needed:
Large lasers need faster cooldown, medium lasers need slower cooldown, balance DPS/ton


Remove ghost heat from all affected weapons

Nightbird, on 12 June 2018 - 09:17 PM, said:

An example of clan gauss+vomit meta with this change:

If you have 2x C-Gauss and lasers, you can still charge your Gauss, which consumes 15pts over 0.75 seconds, at which point your capacitor will have regenerated to 27 pts, wait another 0.25 seconds for a full capacitor, and fire your gauss + vomit about 45 damage over a 1 second period for a total of 75 damage.

This is still a little higher than what IS can do, but a little less outrageously so. If the Night Star ever has its hands removed, it would be able to do IS gauss+vomit of 60 damage.

The major difference though, is that if you turn a corner and panic alpha, charging your gauss and vomiting at the same will choke your energy system, meaning your lasers get cut short and your gauss doesn't finish charging. This increases the skill needed to use this combo by a little.

Another benefit of this approach is that you allow people to mix and match lasers they want. Many mechs don't have the tonnage to run more than CERMLs, so the earlier proposed 4GH limit on them was cringe worthy. That been said, it must be made meaningful to use large lasers over the medium ones, and the easiest way I can think of is DPS versus alpha per ton.

Medium lasers are Alpha boosting/backup weapons, large lasers are low alpha/ton, high DPS weapons. The CHLL for example needs to have the same DPS as 4CERML to justify its existence. Do you want a big alpha once in a blue moon or do you want a gun you can shoot with minimal downtime? Medium pulse lasers likewise can be twice the DPS (2x tonnage) as well as having a more intense burn for its range tradeoff.

Edit: also want to note that while the 68 damage clan alpha today is nerfed by this idea..
You have to space your shots out, you get in return 2 things:
1. You can alpha more CERLL (4) (dps and duration prolly needs tweaking)
2. You can emulate a fast IS burn by shooting more lasers than your capacity and using the out of energy laser cutting mechanic to twist earlier.

Edited by Nightbird, 13 June 2018 - 06:59 AM.

[Mister Glitchdragon]

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

[color=#FFA500]Option 3: [/color]

• The Clan Gauss Rifle and all Clan Large Class Lasers are linked into the same heat penalty group.

I'll take option 3.

[Jman5]

A lot of people talking about heat being a balance issue and I agree. I wonder if part of the problem is that heatsinks scale linearly. Each heatsink improves performance by the same values whether you're adding your 12th heatsink or your 24th heatsink. Maybe a better approach would be to have the effectiveness of each individual heatsink decrease the more you add.

So in this example, adding your first heatsink does a lot, but adding your 20th heatsink isn't going to improve your build by all that much.

If you do this, you can better curtail some of the more overpowered builds without breaking the weapons themselves and screwing up builds that weren't a problem.

[Tesunie]

Dungeon 206, on 12 June 2018 - 10:51 PM, said:

it was me. im sorry for DHGRing your CT.
and im sorry Pelmeshek and Vxheous for being the source of the argument.

Don't be apologizing for doing something the game lets you do (if it was you, not that it would matter). It's a sound strategy in this game at the moment.

My only reason for even bringing it up is more so the questions (which no one seemed to want to answer); Is this the TTK we are really looking for? Are we looking for a TTK where even heavy mechs (granted, a 60 ton mech, but still a heavy) can basically be killed in a single alpha form a single mech? (I believe crit damage finished me off, dealing the extra damage needed to drop me.)

If it is, then all is fine and we need to do nothing to change things. If that isn't want we want, then we need to make a change somewhere to prevent it from being possible or reduce the ability to do it without some kind of serious penalty.

If we don't want this TTK and choose to reduce/remove it, the new question becomes: How do we do this fairly? How do we desire to address this problem?


In this specific case, PGI has said "we don't want this in the game, how do you (the players) feel we should address this problem?" I was just trying to provide a reason why I agree with PGI, a case for those who say "naw, it's fine".

[Hydrocarbon]

Kanajashi, on 11 June 2018 - 12:58 PM, said:

Paul mentioned in his post that the community's balance document was a good starting point for the discussion and to direct feedback towards Chris in this forum thread.

What do you call all PGI's balance decisions placed at the bottom of the deepest sea? A start.

Stop UNFUNNING mwo with your nerfs already!

[Erikwa Kell]

Simple solution.

General heat increase for clan weapons. (maybe 10%)

Rework heat-sinks to function correctly. (dispensation bonus ONLY! no max heat cap increase for either single or double sinks)

keep current ghost heat settings


done.


you're welcome