845 replies to this topic

[Swearwolf]

Could someone remind me about the engine/agility decoupling? Why was that done again? Also, why were the scales "rebalanced" so that a medium mech is as tall and as big as an assault? Not trying to be cheeky, just genuinely forgot about why this was done.

[Moadebe]

Sigh, at this point I will agree with a suggestion up there ^ since people are going to continue to point at the community made "fixes". It will take some work... but put everything suggested in the community made post into the PTR. It will suck for the person doing the code, but just do it.

It is the PTR ... it is a tool available that (from my experience) has been ill-utilized. Just use the resources really quick and put it up and let people SEE what you are talking about Chris/Paul. Let them FEEL that power creep that you are talking about. I will help test it. Hell I will even suggest everyone I know to log in and test it.

Reason I am saying this is because they will continue to point at it and say "we did a thing....do it." Give them a little of what they want. Hell who knows. There might be something come out of it that you might not have thought of. *shrug*

What I am basically saying is PARTIALLY give them what they want. Perhaps it might make people STOP being so negative if you give em a little.

[Navid A1]

Paul Inouye said:

It’s very easy to come up with ideas to approach certain issues or things we’d like to see happen in terms of balance, but there’s a huge wall of ‘what if’ scenarios we have to run through. Sometimes things work out perfectly, sometimes the community finds loop holes through the implementation of a change. This is why a statement of “just do this” is not a black and white switch of changing a value. While it may make sense on a spreadsheet, something a spreadsheet will never take into consideration is player behavior and player skill.

The thing is that you are only seeing a spreadsheet and you are making assumptions that are not true.
On every change we did, we make more than 30+ different mech configurations, trying to find any outliers and oddities. Many changes were scraped because there was always something that could abuse it.
We even made a quirk list and analyzed what weapon works on what mechs to know if there is a relation with quirks or not.
Here is a snapshot of what we normally do... and this is for LRMs alone:

Spoiler

Also, on the part regarding "player behavior" and "skill", I think we have enough "experience" in our small group to understand the basics.
Player experience was one of the main sources we took into account.

Paul Inouye said:

That document is a full upward trajectory of power creep.

Below is a set of graphs that show what power creep is vs baseline balancing:

Nice textbook graphs... but sorry to say that in MWO you don't have a smooth distribution like that and it seems like they are presented to justify a powercreep accusation.
Boosting low performing weapons is not called power creep if over-performing weapons are also brought down.

The problem with the game right now is that 4 clan laser weapons are so powerful that anything else just pales in comparison, making the lasers the only weapon above the average line.
You also see a lot of weapons with no changes... those are the ones that operate around the average line.
What we did was to directly address clan lasers (with an ongoing internal discussion to even go further), and bringing up the under-performers. You don't see much nerfs in that document because only a handful number of lasers are the problem.

Also, it is worth noting that most of the things we did in that document can not be branded with "nerf" or "buff" alone. On a large number of weapons, the "tweaks" are aimed to address the problems (such as alpha damage) while adjusting other stats to keep the weapon relevant.

Paul Inouye said:

Right now we have a number of ‘Mech/Weapon combinations out there on the Clan side of balance. These platforms can reach a staggering 94 damage Alpha.

That combination is only possible on a direwolf (with its long list of limitations), and a hero mech.
after our changes, that 94 damage output is cut down to 88. Still may seem a lot... but I don't call it power creep.






And finally to borrow a page from your book... this is what you are doing with those options right now:

Spoiler

Current Situation:

Options provided by Chris:

Please... stop balancing by introducing frustration as a weapon feature... fix the weapon.

Edited by Navid A1, 11 June 2018 - 08:18 PM.

[TheMadTypist]

For Gauss, I like option 2 best, option 3 as a fallback. Leaves a single Gauss a more potent supporting choice.
For Lasers, I like option 1. Nobody uses 'just the one' laser, and it could let us finally have our triple LL arms in the supernova without ghost heat.

Edited by TheMadTypist, 11 June 2018 - 02:30 PM.

[Xx_M01S7R47JU1C35_xX]

Nerfing the only viable weapon combinations the clans have is absurdity. I'm an IS main, and even I can see that. 90% of the Clan mechs I encounter are running the same 4 weapons in some combination dictated by chassis limits.

The greatest oversight in this entire discussion is that it isn't IS mechs suffering the most because of Clan laser vomit or gauss vomit. It's other clan mechs that don't have the quirks to deal with it. Or the handful of quirk stripped IS mechs that no one plays anymore. But mostly other clan mechs. Not only do the vast majority of them have no quirks, or arbitrary quirks, a lot of them have horrible geometry or agility for spreading damage out. The ones with good geometry have some of the worst agility in the game.

This game is consistently feeling worse to play, and more limited in our choices of how we do actually play. Mechs are sluggish, and bland. The most consistently performing mechs are the simplest or tankiest and mobility, and brawling agility is dead. This is why the annihilator, mad cat mk2, blood asp, etc are all performing well. They're brick shithouses with high alpha. Literally everything else is under performing right now.

Nerfing the only decently performing loadouts, that only a small handful of mechs can pull off successfully doesn't solve anything. It just further pushes us down the in to the **** swamp we're already drowning in and makes already boring **** more unfun to play.

Nerf clan laser vomit and guass all you want, they will still get used because everything else is painful and inconsistent. Alpha has nothing to do with it.

You know how you counter high burn time, or charge up weapons? You torso twist, or move in to cover. You know what we can't do in this game anymore? Torso twist or move in to cover. You know what we do instead? Play big metal boxes that camp behind rocks waiting to see which team is going to do something stupid first.

P.S. the power creep comments about the community balance pass are about as ignorant as possible. They put a lot of specific care and attention in to only adressing underperforming weapons, and keeping TTK and effective dps the same. Only a few weapons had DPS increases but because of extremely limited ranges or heat the effective DPS didn't change. Well over a thousand players , lead by great community leaders, put tremendous effort in to something that seems to be so casually dismissed as nothing more than a warning sign that the game feels like **** to play.

I have been playing off and on half a decade through 6 or 7 notable metas, and I can strongly say the game is at and all time low for player experience, and enjoyment. We don't want to sit in ****** laser boats all day, and we don't do it only because they're good. We do it because everything else feels like **** to play, or is so wildly inconsistent. You can nerf clan laser vomit and guass all you want, but people are still going to use it because we have no other options.

Implement the community balance patch on the PTS, give us back mech agility and responsive handling, and don't waste your time or ours with these nearsighted and narrowminded nerfs to such a horrendously unimportant problem when the real problem is piloting a battlemech feels like ****.

Edited by ExRedux, 11 June 2018 - 03:04 PM.

[- S A R G E -]

Tbh, if the clans get nerfed again, it won't be a pretty thing. You guys are looking way too hard into this


Personally I think if you allow IS to mount *some* clan tech, you would see a HUGE boost in the IS favor, but not by completly screwing the clans.

[Marmon Rzohr]

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

So as Paul stated in his overview post found here, we will be looking to directly address the current state of clan Alphas and bring them closer into alignment with the capabilities on the Inner Sphere side of the tech factions. The current trends of sustainable Alphas on the clan side reaching up to 94 damage when the IS typically cap out at around 60-65 effective damage without serious build concessions is too great of a divide to have fully slanted into the corner of a single faction and we will be taking steps to bring them closer into alignment.

In my opinion it's far better to reduce the superior damage of clan lasers directly. Lowering the damage of the Clan ER Medium Laser from 7 to 6 would probably be the best possible starting point.

Lowering the damage values of Clan lasers can still leave room for individuality via different heat and DPS characteristics as well as different ranges.

The Clan Gauss Rifle by itself is not a problem IMO. Clan laser vomit exists with or without the Gauss rifle - in fact some of the currently most popular high alpha Clan builds don't utilize the Gauss Rifle at all - the Hellbringer and Linebacker heavy laser vomit builds, for instance. Furthermore the Gauss rifle has inherent drawbacks that help balance it out - which is why it is only successful in select mechs and for select situation, while lasers are staple choices and the backbone of the Clan tech advantage and have been from the start - the Clan Medium Laser especially.

It is also worth noting that adding a Heavy Gauss style recoil mechanic to the Clan Gauss rifle will not be very adverse to currently powerful builds because they rely mostly on lasers and because Heavy Gauss + laser builds on mechs like the Annihilator show that this does not impede the very high damage output these builds are capable of significantly. It would, in fact, only make the Clan Gauss Rifle less user friendly and worse as a standalone weapon while.

Lastly I too support the community balance initiative:

https://docs.google....2xIIfVKM4o/edit

Edited by Marmon Rzohr, 11 June 2018 - 02:42 PM.

[CougChaos]

I haven't had time to read everything but what about either rear loading or front loading the laser damage.

So if it is front loaded you do a spike of damage upon initial trigger(rewards accuracy) and if you lose the target you only suffer a smaller damage loss. If the gauss rifles damage hits after the peak damage for the laser you may spread the damage or provide enough time for the target to spread the damage.

In reverse if the damage is increased at the end of the burst you give time to adjust aim and punish anyone who doesn't try and spread the damage. You have to hold the target for the full burst to get the most benefit so it would also mean more face time or if you are forced to break the attempt your damage goes down.

[Tesunie]

I've long been a proprietor of damage within a set time, rather than alpha damage.

For my example, I'd almost like to see weapons deal a set amount of damage (and heat) within 10 seconds of constant shooting (for example). If it hits too hard, increase the number of shots to get that damage out.

My concept was based more so on TT lore and rules. For example, if a medium laser deals 5 damage in 10 seconds, it could shoot four times within 10 seconds. Each shot would only deal 1.25 damage, but over the course of 10 seconds it would still be 5 damage. As a counter example, the Gauss (being a sniper weapon) might deal 15 damage in one swing, but then require a full 10 seconds to reload, leaving it as a sniper weapon. (As I said, my original idea was based upon TT damage values, and the fact that TT turns last for 10 second intervals.) Things like this would set sniper mechs as being weak to faster reloading brawling weapons... (Not, this idea probably would not work directly.)



With with that in mind though, I think decreasing damage per individual shot and spreading it to deal the same DPS probably is a better solution for Clan lasers.

---

I also want to mention, more than likely these balance changes are with the intention of reducing (or even hopefully removing) most health quirks of IS mechs. If they can balance Clans and IS damage levels, then IS would no longer have the need of their health quirks (besides in cases of poor hit boxes, which might be more beneficial to just shift health around on the mech).

[Tina Benoit]

Reminder for everyone to be respectful and post constructively to the discussion or you will be moderated, not just your post(s). Any posts that include insults will be immediately redacted.

[Alaric Hasek]

Chris, Paul, everyone else else on the dev team,

The problem is much deeper than something like "X weapon does too much damage for its weight compared to its IS version" or "X 'mech needs armor quirks". This is just a symptom. It has always been true in Battletech that there were always weapons that were better than others - PPCs, large pulse lasers, ERLLs and gauss rifles. This was even more so when one could do things like headhunt with gauss rifles and targeting computers. Of course, that is an artifact of that particular game. Still, there will always be weapons in this game that have a good balance of damage, heat, and weight. This might not be long-range weapons (as in TT Battletech) as there isn't as much open space between starting points and open firing lanes.

No, the basic problem is what the dev team may think of as the very thing that attracts people to the game - massive customization. What that leads to is the very un-Battletech modifications like a standard Firestarter that canonically carries 4 flamers and 2 machine guns instead has a number of pulse lasers, or an Urbanmech going 97 kph and carrying MRM 30s. OF COURSE this is going to encourage people to boat things, especially to boat those weapons that you as devs make the optimum weapon to take as you try to rebalance weapons. What is optimal will change as you make weapon changes, just like the 'mechs people take depend on what quirks you hand out.

It's extrememly unlikely you'll ever be able to balance weapons, especially if you have two tech bases.Why would you want to? There's no point in having two tech bases if they all are equally effective. Of course, eventually the IS has access to Clan tech, so there's a good excuse to eliminate the difference (though the Clans and IS might still have certain things the other doesn't have - Clans have ATMs, IS have MRMs, and so on). Rather than waste your time trying to tweak weapons on a rolling basis as game data comes in perhaps you should look at the real cause - breaking the 'mech construction rules.

You can solve this problem fairly easily, I think. 'mechs (IS) should have a standard set of slots and weapon mounts - as they do now. But rather than having a generic (for instance) 2 energy slots in an arm that can be used for anyting from a micro laser to a heavy PPC or 2 ballistic slots that can fit anything from a light machine gun to a heavy gauss rifle... instead a slot is locked to a certain size. If the variant mounts as standard an IS large pulse laser (2 spaces, 7 tons) it could instead mount something close to that size - a snub-nosed PPC (2 spaces, 6 tons) or an ER large laser (2 spaces, 5 tons) or even something like an AC 2 (1 space, 6 tons) or an AC 5 (4 spaces, 8 tons) but not an AC 20 (11 spaces, 14 tons). The idea is that battlemechs can't have their guts ripped out to make such huge changes. How much each slot (which would no longer be ballistic or energy slots) probably needs some data to decide how much a variance will work - 1%, 5%, etc. Omnimechs should have slightly more flexibility in that it can change out pods - but pods should be locked into a certain weapon/heat sink/etc. configuration as that is the entire point of pods - just change out something modular for a certain mission.

You're also allowing boating of weapons that in TT Battletech are more or less useless - massed machine guns is a very viable build in Mechwarrior, whereas machine guns in tabletop were just a sure way to get your 'mech crippled when 1000 rounds were internally hit and exploded for 1000 damage. Getting within 3 spaces of another 'mech just to shoot 1 point damage weapons at them was just silly - if they didn't return fire with their much more powerful weapons they would punch or kick your machine gun-carrying light 'mech. Machine guns are for shooting at things that aren't in Mechwarrior - infantry and very light vehicles.

So, what does this do? Yes, it means that people aren't going to buy every 'mech that comes out because they can't make every 'mech the same. People will still be chasing the meta, but they'll be chasing a meta of the proper chassis/weapon slot variance - the IS builds become somethng for the more advanced players while the casual player may prefer the ease of plugging in pre-assigned omnipods. If you need something for people to buy, give them the opportunity to pay for advanced slots or chassis that allow for slightly more changes or to choose a particular weapon as standard that's not normally available for the chassis. Tournament prizes could do also offer these sorts of things. Yes, people will complain about "pay to win", but you already have a huge disparity between people who have spent thousands of dollars here since closed beta and new players with nothing. You also have a dying game. You need to do something drastic now while there's still a game to work with. You're going to lose some people, but it's better to do that and have a healtier game in the end than just keep going the way you are now.

[ForceUser]

Personally I would like to see a solution, as always, that does not dilute the uniqueness of clan mechs to make the play more and more like IS mechs. I pilot both equally and that's a reduction in game play variety. This makes me hesitant to support a change that reduces damage to just make the lasers closer to IS lasers.

I am also leery of making changes that keeps the exact same power level, just at a higher skill ceiling. That doesn't solve the problem presented, it just removes the ability to use it from the people who need it (lower skilled players) and the people who don't need it (higher skilled players) get to keep the ability, making the power difference even larger. As a side note, making ghost heat changes doesn't fall under this as it has a drawback (longer/more face time).



Here is a crazy idea (if technically feasible):



Another option is to go ahead with nerfing the problem combination with something like ghost heat, as an example, but buffing the survivability of the mechs affected through agility. Is it possible to add agility to a mech for every laser it fits? Is that something that could possibly be technically feasible? Lore reasons don't matter in my personal opinion but lasers are more compact in terms of crit space and doesn't need ammo feeds so more extreme maneuvring is possible with lasers mounted. Alternatively (if it's possible to change agility like this) make gauss rifles reduce agility. Obviously not both changes at the same time as they will just cancel each other out on the already problem mechs lol.



I guess you could also just have every omnipod that has an energy mount add agility (while adding ghost heat to lasers+Gauss) OR every ballistic mount reduce agility BUT that will effect weapons outside of the targeted weapons.

[Xx_M01S7R47JU1C35_xX]

Tina Benoit, on 11 June 2018 - 02:38 PM, said:

[mod] Reminder for everyone to be respectful and post constructively to the discussion or you will be moderated, not just your post(s). Any posts that include insults will be immediately redacted.[/mod]

We're trying very hard. A lot of players are very angry but we're doing our best to remain civil. Thank you for only redacting posts or using a light hand while moderating so far.

[Krasnopesky]

Just give the Community Balance Proposal a go to see how it holds up. If it does not meet expectations for whatever reason then you can continue to expand your ghost heat system.

[Xx_M01S7R47JU1C35_xX]

Alaric Hasek, on 11 June 2018 - 02:39 PM, said:

Chris, Paul, everyone else else on the dev team,

The problem is much deeper than something like "X weapon does too much damage for its weight compared to its IS version" or "X 'mech needs armor quirks". This is just a symptom. It has always been true in Battletech that there were always weapons that were better than others - PPCs, large pulse lasers, ERLLs and gauss rifles. This was even more so when one could do things like headhunt with gauss rifles and targeting computers. Of course, that is an artifact of that particular game. Still, there will always be weapons in this game that have a good balance of damage, heat, and weight. This might not be long-range weapons (as in TT Battletech) as there isn't as much open space between starting points and open firing lanes.

No, the basic problem is what the dev team may think of as the very thing that attracts people to the game - massive customization. What that leads to is the very un-Battletech modifications like a standard Firestarter that canonically carries 4 flamers and 2 machine guns instead has a number of pulse lasers, or an Urbanmech going 97 kph and carrying MRM 30s. OF COURSE this is going to encourage people to boat things, especially to boat those weapons that you as devs make the optimum weapon to take as you try to rebalance weapons. What is optimal will change as you make weapon changes, just like the 'mechs people take depend on what quirks you hand out.

It's extrememly unlikely you'll ever be able to balance weapons, especially if you have two tech bases.Why would you want to? There's no point in having two tech bases if they all are equally effective. Of course, eventually the IS has access to Clan tech, so there's a good excuse to eliminate the difference (though the Clans and IS might still have certain things the other doesn't have - Clans have ATMs, IS have MRMs, and so on). Rather than waste your time trying to tweak weapons on a rolling basis as game data comes in perhaps you should look at the real cause - breaking the 'mech construction rules.

You can solve this problem fairly easily, I think. 'mechs (IS) should have a standard set of slots and weapon mounts - as they do now. But rather than having a generic (for instance) 2 energy slots in an arm that can be used for anyting from a micro laser to a heavy PPC or 2 ballistic slots that can fit anything from a light machine gun to a heavy gauss rifle... instead a slot is locked to a certain size. If the variant mounts as standard an IS large pulse laser (2 spaces, 7 tons) it could instead mount something close to that size - a snub-nosed PPC (2 spaces, 6 tons) or an ER large laser (2 spaces, 5 tons) or even something like an AC 2 (1 space, 6 tons) or an AC 5 (4 spaces, 8 tons) but not an AC 20 (11 spaces, 14 tons). The idea is that battlemechs can't have their guts ripped out to make such huge changes. How much each slot (which would no longer be ballistic or energy slots) probably needs some data to decide how much a variance will work - 1%, 5%, etc. Omnimechs should have slightly more flexibility in that it can change out pods - but pods should be locked into a certain weapon/heat sink/etc. configuration as that is the entire point of pods - just change out something modular for a certain mission.

You're also allowing boating of weapons that in TT Battletech are more or less useless - massed machine guns is a very viable build in Mechwarrior, whereas machine guns in tabletop were just a sure way to get your 'mech crippled when 1000 rounds were internally hit and exploded for 1000 damage. Getting within 3 spaces of another 'mech just to shoot 1 point damage weapons at them was just silly - if they didn't return fire with their much more powerful weapons they would punch or kick your machine gun-carrying light 'mech. Machine guns are for shooting at things that aren't in Mechwarrior - infantry and very light vehicles.

So, what does this do? Yes, it means that people aren't going to buy every 'mech that comes out because they can't make every 'mech the same. People will still be chasing the meta, but they'll be chasing a meta of the proper chassis/weapon slot variance - the IS builds become somethng for the more advanced players while the casual player may prefer the ease of plugging in pre-assigned omnipods. If you need something for people to buy, give them the opportunity to pay for advanced slots or chassis that allow for slightly more changes or to choose a particular weapon as standard that's not normally available for the chassis. Tournament prizes could do also offer these sorts of things. Yes, people will complain about "pay to win", but you already have a huge disparity between people who have spent thousands of dollars here since closed beta and new players with nothing. You also have a dying game. You need to do something drastic now while there's still a game to work with. You're going to lose some people, but it's better to do that and have a healtier game in the end than just keep going the way you are now.

This isn't exactly feasible with how hardpoints and mech geometry is designed. It would be a tremendous amount of work to redesign every mech to accommodate that variety of loadouts, and the effects of the end result arent guaranteed. High risk. Low reward. Plus, that is a long term solution to a very immediate issue, and the current problems would still need to be addressed in the meantime.

[JohnnyWayne]

Before I even read any of this - what makes you even THINK that is what is needed? This game ran like this for YEARS and only the people that consider playing this game that are aware of this playstyle and like it. Do you really want to leave the rest as well that badly?!

I want to quote this satement:

"spreadsheet will never take into consideration is player behavior and player skill."

Player skill? Ok guys, listen. player skill is nothing you design a game around with nerfs in mind. It is what differenciates good and bad players, a basic sepeartion. Good players excel with stupid loadouts and there is nothing you can do. That doesn't mean it will be the new goto for everyone.
A spreadsheet builds the foundation on which each kind of players builds onto. Though it is true, actual changes are needed but the community SKIPPED out on them in their considerations in order to not overburden PGI's capabilities.

Edit 2: You are trying to balance mechs purly with weapon changes again. AGAIN! The spreadsheet is about weapons, not mechs. Why do you not understand that? Don't say you do, obviously you shown otherwise AGAIN!

Edit 3: My face hurts reading all this.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 11 June 2018 - 03:30 PM.

[Colonel ONeill]

[Redacted]

Edited by Tina Benoit, 11 June 2018 - 03:05 PM.
memes are not constructive feedback to this discussion

[Dracol]

I'd choose recoil on clan gauss (option 2). For the people who want a lore explanation, the 3 tons in savings was from cutting out extra gryo stabilization. From a game play perspective, it is a detriment to the weapon that can be overcome with proper usage. (lasers first then gauss at the end).

For the lasers, I'm for option 2. Again, its a detriment that can be overcome via skill while maintaining the ability of clan mechs to have more hard hitting offensive capabilities suited to a poke and scoot play style. IMO, option 1 moves clans closer to IS's more continuous fire type overall play style.

[Pelmeshek]

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

[Redacted] I play on this game from august 2012 and after wc2016 this game going down and down more with this all idiotical nerf. Maybe time to stop to shoot on leg and back all changes in 2016 year level? Like small light mechs, no ppc+gauss ghost heat, a normal (c)splas, no engine nerf.

Tina, remove links to proof of people incompetences that's bad. If u dont like it i can proof from official site if u dont like the jarl list.

Edited by Pelmeshek, 11 June 2018 - 03:15 PM.
Staff Abuse/Insult

[PobbestGob]

Alaric Hasek, on 11 June 2018 - 02:39 PM, said:

Chris, Paul, everyone else else on the dev team,

The problem is much deeper than something like "X weapon does too much damage for its weight compared to its IS version" or "X 'mech needs armor quirks". This is just a symptom. It has always been true in Battletech that there were always weapons that were better than others - PPCs, large pulse lasers, ERLLs and gauss rifles. This was even more so when one could do things like headhunt with gauss rifles and targeting computers. Of course, that is an artifact of that particular game. Still, there will always be weapons in this game that have a good balance of damage, heat, and weight. This might not be long-range weapons (as in TT Battletech) as there isn't as much open space between starting points and open firing lanes.

No, the basic problem is what the dev team may think of as the very thing that attracts people to the game - massive customization.

lost me here. MWO isn't a simulator, and no other Mechwarrior game has limited builds so strictly. Limiting mechs to loadouts that more closely resemble builds made for a turn-based board game would take away a huge part of what makes Mechwarrior games fun to play, and make building way more confusing than it needs to be. A feature like this would also take a while to implement, uproot a basic concept of the game, and cause plenty of problems of its own.