845 replies to this topic

[WillyPete]

So it appears Chris says that the problem lies in the avg max alpha of clans, and that it lies with energy weapons mostly.
Offer more protection to IS mechs in the form of Reflective armour as an option. (Maybe restrict it to battlemechs only and not allow on omnis)
There's an immediate "balance" to laser, with the risk of AC /Missiles doing a bit more damage to you.

Also: Melee.
I think any IS pilot would forget about their disadvantage if you gave them a no-heat high damage melee option (IS only - keeps lore happy)
So what if your mech is doing 30-40 less damage than an equivalent tonnage clanner? If you were able to boost your alpha by 50 melee points damage then you'd be laughing at that gap.
Let's not forget that it would also be single location, which is another feature of clan energy alphas that the balance folks hate, and thus add "balance" to the IS side.

[banana peel]

I agree with what you are saying fundamentally, both Chris and Paul. I wish we could have it implemented carefully.

Also i wish we could have this principle as a ground rule in balance changes:

Every weapon in the game must be worth taking on it's own.

With that in mind:

1. Reducing clan gauss damage will bring gaussvomit playstyle in line with others, but will make the gauss not worth taking on its own or in other combinations. Not an option. Recoil introduction on the other hand is a proper solution of nerfing a playstyle and keeping the weapon itself almost untouched. Also its a nice, immersive dynamic.

2. Clan ghost heat limit nerf has a huge drawback - the highest clan laser alphas will be available to medium mechs. Heavy and assault energy based clan mechs will suffer to make themselves usefull on the battlefield. I choose straight reduction to alpha with prominent dps and heat buffs. 15 dmg for c-hll and 6 dmg for c-ermed are the values i would start with. 94 extreme case alpha drops to 84 level. IS equivalent of extreme alpha is 77 (gaussvomit ANH-1X) with worse mounts and speed, but better surivability, duration and sustained fire. Closer ranged heavygaussvomit for IS part exceeds clan value and reaches 87 points.

I'm woried that you, guys, see the community balance proposal as a pile of "i want this" buffs and nothing else. The absolute values are not what this document is about. It's about the balance between weapons.

Nobody in their right mind expects you to implement those exact changes straight away. It's just a perfect, almost objective spreadsheet exposing underperforming and overperforming weapons. Take clan small pulses. They are unusable compared to other clan and IS options available. Whether you buff clan small pulses or nerf everything else to their level - your choice. It is irrelevant to the main goal of balance, which is:

To achieve the widest selection of viable weapons/playstyles that is possible within game mechanics

Edited by banana peel, 11 June 2018 - 03:15 PM.

[Tesunie]

After reading the opening statement of the Community Weapon Balance sheet... I wonder how much is considered "community"? I didn't exactly see a lot of names on the opening document.

That aside, I already see one issue. Lt Gauss rifles appear to be fine to me. I've been favoring them over normal and H Gauss. They reload so fast with such a fast charging time, I can really sink a lot of damage with them.

On note of Clan normal ACs, I feel they should just throw less bullets out per shot and/or IS equivalents should gain a bit of a "burst fire" mechanic themselves. Personally, I like the multi-shot ACs over the single ones, as they "feel" more like an AC, instead of just a big cannon. (As described in lore, they are suppose to fire in "cassets" or "clips" that reload after automatically shooting a set clip of ammo. Of course, I also realize that lore =/= balance.)

This is not to say I disagree with everything there (I've only just heard of this despite my rather heavy viewing of the MW:O forums), but I don't agree with everything there.

[ALKALIN3]

[Redacted]

Edited by Tina Benoit, 11 June 2018 - 03:25 PM.
Staff Abuse/Insults/Nonconstructive

[Kerch1253]

Can I vote Option 4: Do Nothing, the game is fine?

I'm a relatively new player, so perhaps I'm missing the perspective you have on the game's balance. But I find the current game to be largely fine. I play lots of 'mechs {both IS and Clan}, and don't find either to be inherently advantaged over the other (clan stuff possibly would be, but IS quirks largely rectify that).

None of the complaints I hear in game from other players have anything to do with clan alphas. Rather, most just complain about LRMs being too good/totally useless, depending on the opinion.

TTK in this game is significantly higher than any shooter I've ever played, so I find it strange you want it to be any higher. I find my survivability to be more than sufficient currently. If I die suddenly, I'm almost always the one at fault (bad positioning or the like). Clan alpha strikes are higher than IS alpha strikes, and I find that to be 100% OK. It's already sufficiently balanced against other downsides (softer mechs and higher heat levels).

Don't fix things that aren't really broken, focus on the things your players actually don't like. If you must change anything, lower the offer rate on Polar Highlands. It's fine that you have a map that plays completely different from every other map in the game, but it probably shouldn't be as common as it is.

I like the game as it currently is, else I wouldn't have give you hundreds of dollars to enjoy it further. Please don't make me regret that choice.

[Jatix]

Glad balance is finally coming. As a player since beta it makes me sad how low skill and fast TTK the game has become. The run around brawling and out playing your enemy is a thing of the past now. Now I just roll broken easy crap like my MAD 2C for effortless performance.

My opinion on the options is that if they keep the high damage numbers for lasers and try to make them spread it over time, people will just drop a few and add gauss. That kind of thing. Re min max. Unless that is also nerfed.

So I would say lower laser and gauss damage, that way they cant just re mix the weapons to still get cancer alpha's.

hope to be able to enjoy the game more in the future and keep playing this game for a long time. Its one of a kind and I'd like to never leave. Keep up the good work pgi.

PS. Inner sphere mechs need nerfs too. They haev some really cancer builds also.

Kerch1253, on 11 June 2018 - 03:22 PM, said:

Can I vote Option 4: Do Nothing, the game is fine?

I'm a relatively new player, so perhaps I'm missing the perspective you have on the game's balance.

TTK in this game is significantly higher than any shooter I've ever played, so I find it strange you want it to be any higher.

Don't fix things that aren't really broken, focus on the things your players actually don't like.

I like the game as it currently is, else I wouldn't have give you hundreds of dollars to enjoy it further. Please don't make me regret that choice.

I dont mean this in a unfriendly / troll way. But as a new player its very hard to have a good view of balance. This goes for all games. I've been here since beta and I can say the game was waaay more fun before. Its only more fun now for players who dont want to improve and need op stuff to compete. But they still had plenty of ways to contribute before (lrm's, etc)

But to address the points I quoted. You dont respawn in this game like in COD and stuff. So you want low TTK. Otherwise the round can just be a waste of time when you have to be the one to peek because nobody on your team will and you die instantly to multiple extreme alphas. Or any similar scenario.

I can assure you some builds are broken. All I have to do is switch from one of my cool mechs to a broken mech and my average damage per game can over double and I dont even need to play well. and I've seen a lot of chat salt lately towards the game so something is definitely wrong.

and I wouldnt worry about balance changes making you regret spending $. All it will do is make you die slower from aids boats. If you enjoy the game that wont change.

Edited by Jatix, 11 June 2018 - 03:34 PM.

[Charles Sennet]

Eisenhorne, on 11 June 2018 - 01:15 PM, said:

The Annihilator can achieve a 80 pt pinpoint alpha strike, and can fire off like 3 of them before it's overheating. Granted, the ANH has a much shorter range, but armor quirks make it strong enough to get there.

This.

IS has its own version of high Gauss-Laser alphas (HG + ML to achieve 80-85 alphas). if you're going to nerf Clan Gauss Vom (or just lasers) there are some serious outliers on the IS side which also need to be reviewed.

Then there is the issue of IS durability which was ostensibly put place to compensate for XL engine vulnerabilities but what has come to be seen as overall compensation (along with weapon quirks) for superior Clan alphas and range. However, CW tech arrived with LFE's benefiting many IS mechs greatly without any rollback of durability quirks on the IS side. Now that Clan damage is proposed to get nerfed (for the 500th time) does this mean IS durability and weapon quirks will be toned down? [I still don't understand how mechs with durability quirks designed to offset XL side torso vulnerability also got CT quirks].

IS ERLL and the BLR-1G are kings of long range. Short range its not even close with IS dominating. That leaves medium range where Clan advantage is about to get hit hard yet again.

The continued Clan nerfs without addressing IS outliers in pinpoint damage and durability is just bad optics. Keep it up and there will be no logic in playing Clan at all.

[Xx_M01S7R47JU1C35_xX]

Tesunie, on 11 June 2018 - 03:15 PM, said:

After reading the opening statement of the Community Weapon Balance sheet... I wonder how much is considered "community"? I didn't exactly see a lot of names on the opening document.

That aside, I already see one issue. Lt Gauss rifles appear to be fine to me. I've been favoring them over normal and H Gauss. They reload so fast with such a fast charging time, I can really sink a lot of damage with them.

On note of Clan normal ACs, I feel they should just throw less bullets out per shot and/or IS equivalents should gain a bit of a "burst fire" mechanic themselves. Personally, I like the multi-shot ACs over the single ones, as they "feel" more like an AC, instead of just a big cannon. (As described in lore, they are suppose to fire in "cassets" or "clips" that reload after automatically shooting a set clip of ammo. Of course, I also realize that lore =/= balance.)

This is not to say I disagree with everything there (I've only just heard of this despite my rather heavy viewing of the MW:O forums), but I don't agree with everything there.

The real driving force behind the community balance patch has been through subreddits, discord, and a few youtube videos by repected individuals. Most notably through OutreachHPG, and competitive group's inner circles. Many iterations and updates were posted for community feedback through these channels, and a tremendous amount of feedback was given by large clans, and competitive teams looking at both faction warfare and quickplay. It was also posted here a handful of times. But to be completely honest a large portion of the active community ignores the official forums these days.

[Stinger554]

banana peel, on 11 June 2018 - 03:14 PM, said:

I agree with what you are saying fundamentally, both Chris and Paul. I wish we could have it implemented carefully.

Also i wish we could have this principle as a ground rule in balance changes:

Every weapon in the game must be worth taking on it's own.

With that in mind:

1. Reducing clan gauss damage will bring gaussvomit playstyle in line with others, but will make the gauss not worth taking on its own or in other combinations. Not an option. Recoil introduction on the other hand is a proper solution of nerfing a playstyle and keeping the weapon itself almost untouched. Also its a nice, immersive dynamic.

2. Clan ghost heat limit nerf has a huge drawback - the highest clan laser alphas will be available to medium mechs. Heavy and assault energy based clan mechs will suffer to make themselves usefull on the battlefield. I choose straight reduction to alpha with prominent dps and heat buffs. 15 dmg for c-hll and 6 dmg for c-ermed are the values i would start with. 94 extreme case alpha drops to 84 level. IS equivalent of extreme alpha is 77 (gaussvomit ANH-1X) with worse mounts and speed, but better surivability, duration and sustained fire. Closer ranged heavygaussvomit for IS part exceeds clan value and reaches 87 points.

I'm woried that you, guys, see the community balance proposal as a pile of "i want this" buffs and nothing else. The absolute values are not what this document is about. It's about the balance between weapons.

Nobody in their right mind expects you to implement those exact changes straight away. It's just a perfect, almost objective spreadsheet exposing underperforming and overperforming weapons. Take clan small pulses. They are unusable compared to other clan and IS options available. Whether you buff clan small pulses or nerf everything else to their level - your choice. It is irrelevant to the main goal of balance, which is:

To achieve the widest selection of viable weapons/playstyles that is possible within game mechanics

Problem with your overall goal is that no individual weapon will ever be taken just by itself ever. No one will ever just mount one ppc, one HLL, one gauss, one a/c, etc.

You cannot balance the game around that concept.

Recoil reduction for the gauss rifle in practice accomplishes nothing and doesn't change the situation.

Edited by Stinger554, 11 June 2018 - 03:29 PM.

[Tesunie]

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

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.

This seems reminiscent of MW4... which I did not like that customization scheme at all. For the record, it was abused there as well, so I don't think it would be much different here at that point.

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

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.

MGs for the record, did 2 damage in TT per shot. I've also seen mechs downed from a single MG shot... which critting through armor and hit the ammo bin. Boom.

But yes, MGs and Flamers was typically anti-infantry weapons. Seen as infantry could rip a mech's actuators to shreds and disable a mech... In lore and TT it was much needed to help protect your mech. In mech to mech only combat, it's a different story.

[kjubert]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 11 June 2018 - 03:57 PM.
unconstructive, staff abuse, replies removed

[Drunk Canuck]

process, on 11 June 2018 - 01:41 PM, said:

Dropping Gauss damage is the easiest option, but won't really address the source of the balance concern, i.e. complementary builds like dual Gauss + 6 er medium lasers. Reticle shake is a gimmick that doesn't actually affect performance. Linking large lasers is annoying and doesn't address medium lasers.

For lasers, ghost heat solution are not fun. Dropping damage with some heat/duration/cooldown offsets would be much more palatable. The problem with energy weapons has always been the high heat cap.

Also, the changes in that balance document mostly sought to improve underused or historically nerfed weapons. Not much, if any, power creep from what I recall.

Clan Gauss is fine as it is, it's easy to crit out and has had enough other nerfs. Start lowering laser damage incrementally for higher end weapons. It's a shame that the Clan ER PPC doesn't do more pin point, for the heat it generates and it's mediocre stock velocity, it's probably one of the most underwhelming energy weapons in the game unless you use a Mech that can pack a lot of heat sinks into it.

[JohnnyWayne]

Regarding Gauss: Drop IS gauss tonnage by 3 tons. It doesn't break stock loadouts and changes nothing for them. Yet it finally cuts that difference between both short. Also adjust all stats to be the same.

Mech balance: Balance mechs individually, ghost heat and agility wise. There were no changes since this ridicules engine decouple to agility at all, as if everything is alright. Add hardpoints if needed (I know there is textureing work involved, thats how it is) and buff individual stats.

Weapon balance: Balance in the lines of the community spreadsheet and move on from there. High alphas should be countered by individual ghost heat considerations, like linking lasers in smaller groups.


Finally I want to critize your handling of moderation in this forum. Relevant posts were removed that clearly summed up that persons opinion even if no words required. This arbitrariness is not appropriate for anyone who trys to run a business and is highly unprofessional.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 11 June 2018 - 03:40 PM.

[Phyrce]

Kerch1253, on 11 June 2018 - 03:22 PM, said:

Can I vote Option 4: Do Nothing, the game is fine?

I'm a relatively new player, so perhaps I'm missing the perspective you have on the game's balance. But I find the current game to be largely fine. I play lots of 'mechs {both IS and Clan}, and don't find either to be inherently advantaged over the other (clan stuff possibly would be, but IS quirks largely rectify that).

None of the complaints I hear in game from other players have anything to do with clan alphas. Rather, most just complain about LRMs being too good/totally useless, depending on the opinion.

TTK in this game is significantly higher than any shooter I've ever played, so I find it strange you want it to be any higher. I find my survivability to be more than sufficient currently. If I die suddenly, I'm almost always the one at fault (bad positioning or the like). Clan alpha strikes are higher than IS alpha strikes, and I find that to be 100% OK. It's already sufficiently balanced against other downsides (softer mechs and higher heat levels).

Don't fix things that aren't really broken, focus on the things your players actually don't like. If you must change anything, lower the offer rate on Polar Highlands. It's fine that you have a map that plays completely different from every other map in the game, but it probably shouldn't be as common as it is.

I like the game as it currently is, else I wouldn't have give you hundreds of dollars to enjoy it further. Please don't make me regret that choice.

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.

[Bows3r]

I have a genuine question for the PGI balance team, why do all changes have to be nerfs rather than buffs?

As for my suggestion, I'm aware this isn't what you had outlined, but I believe it's worth considering nonetheless.

Either: Buff all IS laser damage by one point. The Alpha damage change would be relatively significant for most IS laser boats due to the increased hard-points on many of them.
Or: Buff IS Double Heat sinks. Some time ago, IS DHS were buffed 1 for 1 when compared to Clan DHS, consequentially IS laser boat 'mechs were much stronger when compared to Clan laser boats then they are now.

Why was this changed?

[Matthew Ace]

I'd opt for either at least buffing the blatant underperformers (e.g. small class lasers) as exhibited in the Community Balance and/or reducing base heat cap from 30 to 20 for a start. The changes suggested in the starting post will either not address the gap or take a too heavy-handed stance.

The reduction in base heat cap will slightly reduce high-heat alphas for a start and weapons can then be tailored to fit into the new environment. Study the meta weapon loadout and understand why they overperform in the first place.

E.g. Gauss on its own is not too nasty. But when paired with boated medium lasers, the effect is amplified. How many alphas can be done with such a build? 4x? How do you reduce this to 3 over a window of time or force an increased time between each alpha by a more organic manner?

[MaoutheGreat]

Something needs to be done about high alpha, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Many times members of what used to be the competitive, COMPETITIVE, scene have of MWO said 1 damage off of C-ERML and 2 points of damage off of HLL would be good as long as they got heat reductions to coincide with the damage reductions would be more than enough. The biggest problem though is no one wants to use anything else cause C-SRMs have terrible spread, C-SPL, C-ERSL, and uLs have such terrible dps and dph they can't be used to brawl, C-ACs are useless thanks to multiple bullets which cause damage spread, and this goes the same for C-LBXs. C-UACs are good and fun, but the mechs they can go on can either get 108 alpha damage to delete PUGs or just have such terrible agility they are physical painful to play. So nerf, but be gentle, but please, please, for the love of God or whatever celestial deity/deities you all pray to buff other weapons to make them more appealing.

[denAirwalkerrr]

Charles Sennet, on 11 June 2018 - 03:25 PM, said:

This.

IS has its own version of high Gauss-Laser alphas (HG + ML to achieve 80-85 alphas). if you're going to nerf Clan Gauss Vom (or just lasers) there are some serious outliers on the IS side which also need to be reviewed.

Then there is the issue of IS durability which was ostensibly put place to compensate for XL engine vulnerabilities but what has come to be seen as overall compensation (along with weapon quirks) for superior Clan alphas and range. However, CW tech arrived with LFE's benefiting many IS mechs greatly without any rollback of durability quirks on the IS side. Now that Clan damage is proposed to get nerfed (for the 500th time) does this mean IS durability and weapon quirks will be toned down? [I still don't understand how mechs with durability quirks designed to offset XL side torso vulnerability also got CT quirks].

IS ERLL and the BLR-1G are kings of long range. Short range its not even close with IS dominating. That leaves medium range where Clan advantage is about to get hit hard yet again.

The continued Clan nerfs without addressing IS outliers in pinpoint damage and durability is just bad optics. Keep it up and there will be no logic in playing Clan at all.

Have you considered bringing something aside from laservomit gargoyles to be able to stand a chance against almighty annihilator walls?

[Navid A1]

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 - 03:42 PM.

[Rydiak Randborir]

Option 1 for both, but keep clan laser damage a point higher than IS lasers and don't buff heat/cooldown as much as you would have if you made clan laser damage equivalent to IS laser damage.

Edited by Rydiak, 12 June 2018 - 12:22 AM.