845 replies to this topic

[Disinterest]

@Paul
TL:DR Lore and intransitive system balance do not mix; Your compromise needs to go back to the basics

First, and foremost, the opinions of new players, veteran players, and min-maxers be damned. The Inner Sphere was effectively conquered because clan tech was better, and the only thing that saved it were background lore interactions: treason, politics, and mercy. People who play inner-sphere are playing the under-dog, and crying about being the under-dog makes about as much sense as forcing IS Mercs and freelancers to play IS mechs in the faction war, when what I did in MW2 Mercs was risk mission success to get a cockpit shot on the clan mechs I wanted to salvage so that I could "WIN".

Gauss rifles: If you're so ready to pounce on the tonnage issue, then change the tonnage, NOT anything else.

Lasers: You made your bed, and are simply having to lay in it; Your REAL problem comes from the extra balance features you threw into the game: The hard points, omnipods, flat number bonuses (quirks, skills), and the overall restriction of what is canonically more of a choice than a min-max per patch fest. Instead of classic Mechwarrior 2 build issues (slots, tonnage, heat), being at the head of everyone's "too good to be true" build, you invited this nonsense of packing many small weapons on mechs; you released a 20 ton mech with more hardpoints than assault mechs, with hardpoints defining how much damage you can pack onto them. Your current laser offenders today will be your "x" offenders tomorrow, you are maintaining a cycle, and I'm not sure you aren't doing it on purpose.

You can claim your intentions were to "balance" or uniquely define a chassis, but let's be real: Twitch streamers and min-maxers are free advertisement and keep a game going, and the debate on the gap between IS vs Clan tech strength keeps people as enthralled as U.S. politics, while you charge folks for convenience. Honestly, you've got more problems with your game than huge alpha strikes; 40 some dollars worth of MC buys two mechs, and is enough to turn off the majority of people I demo this game to, but if you're so dead set on leveling the playing field, then do so. By saying that, I mean remove this "progress" you've made, let go, and let MWO be MechWarrior Online. If you're set on IS vs Clan balance, then shear the numbers so they're closer in DPS and DPH, and let that be the hit to the lore, not this restricted build garbage that you claim promotes the uniqueness of variants. If someone wants to stick a huge gun on the fastest mech with no armor, LET THE FREEBIRTH TRY, if people stack heavies because more tons means more boom, that's why you have tonnage LIMITS.

You want to "balance" this intransitive system? Prove it, by bringing back some of it's inherent transitive nature... and stop doing dumb stuff: C-light mg > C-heavy mg because C-light has an effective range of 250.

Best of luck
- The guy who quit shortly after launch because there was no feature to have jump jet strafing, or spinning.

Edited by EnzoNETMECH, 13 July 2018 - 06:36 AM.

[Smutty]

[redacted]

Edited by Ibrandul Mike, 08 August 2018 - 11:04 AM.
unconstructive

[General Solo]

Imagine a meta that can't be spread
Lazer meta aint that bad
Lasers can be spread and can be meh due to hit detection issues

[lazorbeamz]

OZHomerOZ, on 13 July 2018 - 12:26 PM, said:

Imagine a meta that can't be spread
Lazer meta aint that bad
Lasers can be spread and can be meh due to hit detection issues

Pretty difficult to spread when the weapon is pinpoint and hitscan. Unlike cannon and missiles which have low velocity and spread.

[Haggis McMutton]

The Mayor of Smuttington, on 13 July 2018 - 11:28 AM, said:

I didn't think I'd ever lay eyes on it, but as God is my witness I believe we've found the single worst post on this entire website

Take a minute and examine this thing of beauty, everyone. It's not everyday something as markedly rancid as this washes up from the Brown Sea

Garbage ad hom with no substance. Pick something wrong about what he said, or STFU.

Edited by Cheeks the Taker, 13 July 2018 - 11:39 PM.

[Disinterest]

Cheeks the Taker, on 13 July 2018 - 11:38 PM, said:

Garbage ad hom with no substance. Pick something wrong about what he said, or STFU.

Sums it up. Guy was posting for attention, or some masochist who was lapping it up when they dumped skill-trees on people with 200 some mechs. Nice direct hit to the specific logic fallacy 10/10.

[Imperius]

EnzoNETMECH, on 13 July 2018 - 11:44 PM, said:

Sums it up. Guy was posting for attention, or some masochist who was lapping it up when they dumped skill-trees on people with 200 some mechs. Nice direct hit to the specific logic fallacy 10/10.

Dude your last sentence was all I needed to read. You basically just said I quit because this game was not Armored Core 4 For Answer.

Back on topic....

4v4 was the best change made to this game yet! I’m enjoying the freedom of not going to the same choke points and playing the same way match in and match out.

Edited by Imperius, 14 July 2018 - 06:51 AM.

[General Solo]

lazorbeamz, on 13 July 2018 - 11:30 PM, said:

Pretty difficult to spread when the weapon is pinpoint and hitscan. Unlike cannon and missiles which have low velocity and spread.

You did not mention lazor duration which for lots of clan lasers is over a second. You can spread damage over at least 3 locations in the second or so that is the lasers firing duration.

[dante245]

0111101, on 11 June 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

I take it you won't be considering anything in the Community Panel's Weapon Balance document then?

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

yah...what ever happened to this? i mean this was the single greatest community driven effort of actual viable changes that would have made the largest majority happy. lol i guess joy is not the business model.

[Koruthaiolos]

dante245, on 14 July 2018 - 09:54 PM, said:

yah...what ever happened to this? i mean this was the single greatest community driven effort of actual viable changes that would have made the largest majority happy. lol i guess joy is not the business model.

The two things that will completely solve high alpha is mitigating pinpoint damage and introducing power draw.

[Disinterest]

Imperius, on 14 July 2018 - 06:51 AM, said:

Dude your last sentence was all I needed to read. You basically just said I quit because this game was not Armored Core 4 For Answer.

Back on topic....

4v4 was the best change made to this game yet! I’m enjoying the freedom of not going to the same choke points and playing the same way match in and match out.

Really? Did you ever play MW2? Nice exaggeration, but losing JJ spin and strafe effectively diminished the value and skillcap associated with JJs, which is huge... not an entire transformation into the game you're talking about.

You didn't get back on topic, you just brown-nosed about how you like 4v4 in a thread about nerfing clan lasers and clan gauss rifles;

I get it, I called a dev out on what I know to be industry B.S. because I'm unfortunate enough to work in it, and invited hit-and-runs and fanboys/gals to take shots at me. My friends and I aren't going to waste our time ridiculing people or fueling a thread fire.

The developers working on this game know flat damage number increases, imbalances, and min-maxing are all part of a healthy (financially for us) game addiction because we're taught about it at school, and get free refreshers at company pow wows where game development strats are demoed and rehashed every annual cycle (think "You can recolor artwork instead of creating new content!"). All who think otherwise are playing themselves, and you can either demand drastic change, or remain cowed and witness an almost MMO series of "balance" patches until the game dies.

Edited by EnzoNETMECH, 16 July 2018 - 11:44 PM.

[General Solo]

Viva La MW5

[zaku2142]

xUnbreakablex, on 11 June 2018 - 01:50 PM, said:

So, there is a lot of hot garbage here but I will try to get through this as painlessly as possible for the readers and the staff.

Lore - From a lore perspective this makes no sense as clan tech has always been superior to IS tech.

CW - have you looked at the map? It has not moved much for a reason. Clan tech is lacking severly. We are limited in our effective builds to combat the Inner Sphere Surrats to that which works.

Clan Gauss - Do not touch it. Stop it right now. It is fine as is. The Freebirths have so much flexability with light gauss, gauss, and heavy gauss. Take a kodiak with dual gauss and an annihilator with dual heavy gauss and there is no competition, the heavy gauss wins every time. The range is what makes the weapon semi-useful, although you will probably never see it used in competitive play because the slow rate of fire makes other equally heavy weapons (see UAC20's), much better. If you have to nerf bat it, add the recoil. realistically, leave it alone. My counter argument is IS gets to fire 3 large lasers with a duration much shorter then our large lasers, faster cooldown, and seemingly almost greater range, and that will mess up any mech with guass.

Lasers - ok i got a little chuckle out of this. "often sees the Clan 'Mechs with access to a large number of energy hard points consistently outperform equivalent 'Mechs on the IS side." do you even play clan? or CW at all? Competitive drops? I have had entire teams decimated by IS stalkers, battlemasters, and Thunderbolts boating ER large lasers which fire almost as far as clan ER lasers, with a shorter duration and cooldown, and the icing on the cake is they can fire 3 where as we can only fire 2. That third laser means they get 27 damage (not counting any damage bonus quirks) to our 22. Lets not forget that most IS Mechs have bonus armor, structure, and weapon quirks which can easily give them an advantage over an omnimech.

If you reduce clan laser damage to IS levels you will basically be taking lasers out of the game for clans. You will see a shift to more missiles and dakka. Why? Because who wants to shoot 2 er large lasers for 18 damage so you dont incur a heat penalty (which is already greater than IS counterparts) while the IS nukes you with 3 lasers for 27 damage in a shorter duration.

If you cap weapon group fire damage to lasers to 30, you will also see a shift to most likely pulse, dakka, and missiles. Why would i want a capped 30 point alpha with a longer burn time when i can just poke out with a uac 20 and 10 and rip off 60 damage and go back into cover. otherwise i'll need to expose for far too long to get my full weapon volley off and end up getting cored before i can get back into cover.

In Conclusion - do not nerf clan stuff, its already bad enough as it is. If you do I would like to hear your thoughts on how you plan to balance the fact that clan can only fire 2 er larges while the IS gets 3, and how 27 damage will always be superior to your proposed 18 for clans.

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 04:32 PM.

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 04:31 PM.

[PraetorGix]

Throe, on 17 July 2018 - 01:45 PM, said:

So, if my Summoner with 2xHLL, 4xERML isn't part of the problem here, why is it being nerfed so severely?

Yeah well, that's what everyone is asking with this PTS. I guess the only logical answer is "because PGI".

[VoodooLou Kerensky]

Since lore has been thrown to the wind, just make the weapons exactly the same.

[Disinterest]

Throe, on 17 July 2018 - 01:52 PM, said:

As elegant as this seems, it completely removes the viability of alpha strikes as a close-range, all-or-nothing, oh-****-button. The Alpha Strike is a cornerstone of the IP. To remove it from the game without actually removing it from the game would be gutting a significant game mechanic even more than ghost heat already does.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, the solution to high alpha pinpoint attacks is to implement weapon divergence for firing weapons over the limit, akin to what we already have with jump jets, so that high-alpha, long-ranged fire becomes ineffective, but close ranged alpha strikes are every bit as dangerous as they always have been.

That's an idea; I feel like the high damage close range alpha strikes are just as ridiculous. 100s of tons of space metal just getting wrecked due to min-maxing is having a negative effect on gameplay as is, some quick matches have lrm spammers begging people to initiate because everyone is terrified of the high damage builds (not just lasers). It's bad enough per player to be noticeable, and when someone is calling targets and there's follow through: you see people getting gibbed in a game whose origins come from tabletop, where you had a turn. The durability of all mechs is dubious, and people are sitting in long ques sometimes just to get denied a turn, and that's no fun.

You're 100% right though, alpha strikes shouldn't be diminished to where they are useless, specifically because it is a part of this production that has a lot of potential: It features risk/reward when combined with an override, it should be expensive in heat, and it should do more damage instantly than chain firing, or even group firing while mastering the art of parsing perfectly to avoid heat group penalties.

As obnoxious as hardpoints, skills, and quirks are, if told to shut up and do my job and implement a "quick" fix for the current problem, I would experiment with boosting armor across the board (then tuning it), re-tune heating to address the laser meta (again) and remove the heating consumable. As it stands, a laser strike build can manage its' heat too efficiently that it doesn't NEED the consumable to become demonstrably more powerful; Cool shot didn't fit in this game, not even here
https://mwomercs.com...attletech-lore/
The current incarnation features no risk/reward balance that you have to think about other than taking up a mod slot, and it is going to complicate any work that could be done in balancing heat, and heat group penalties.

[Eli The Chaldean]

My opinion (sry for my English).

1. Clan Lasers.
ARE U KIDDING? Of course the first option!
May be this problem with clan alpha dmg is real - I don't feel it so hard. But, I feel a HUGE problem in a Faction Play. IS is totally beyond competition. To someone this overestimated clan alpha damage gives an advantage, but in FP, it's a big problem. Especially because it greatly increases the requirements for teamwork of players, their experience and tactics. Even for experienced players, this is a certain problem, a hole in the balance sheet. I am fully confident that the first option is able to completely solve both these problems.

2. Clan Gauss Rifle.
I don't see what's wrong with this. I'm sure that this weapon does not need any edits. If the statistics still show the opposite, then the only reasonable solution is option 3.

The current situation with the balance is terrifying. Just imagine how obvious the superiority of IS in the Faction Play, but all the news I read on the site talk about the nerf of the Clans. It is not difficult to calculate two plus two - the current situation indicates that the model of the balance of clans and the inner sphere was chosen by itself incorrectly. Balancing the clans is skewed. It's not difficult to notice even a thoughtful beginner. They are given "advantages" from which they are neither hot nor cold, they are given shortcomings that make them suffer - they can not be compensated, they can not be disposed of, even tactics can not save them. This is fundamentally wrong. I insist that this issue be considered from the position "And that the clans can oppose the Sphere, if not the alpha damage?". Or "what do the Clans need to counter the Sphere, what would the gameplay become more interesting?". Firstly - because the alpha damage to put it mildly does not give the clans as a faction at least some good. Secondly - if you simply take and cut the alpha damage, this will make the situation worse and even possibly create a sad outcome, which you want to avoid these by changes.

Edited by Eli The Chaldean, 03 August 2018 - 04:33 PM.

[silvertalonhawk]

Stop downgrading clan. It seems to be every change that is made is detrimental to clans. You need 2 viable sides to have a game. You are rapidly making one side unplayable. Stop please.