845 replies to this topic

[Shadowomega1]

I don't know if anyone on staff will respond to this at all but, why is the root of the problem never addressed?

Why is Ghost heat aka Heat Penalty keep going as is, if massive Alpha damage is the big issue? Wouldn't the best issue to solve the problem would be to cap heat to 30 or 35 be a better fix, while buffing heat dissipation to compensate? Once that is done build on that, with heat actually affecting mech movement, running to hot for to long causing an ammo explosion if ammo is there, cycle time on energy weapons and jam chance on UAC weapons. This setup could later be used to add in other mech options like Triple Strength Myomer as a heat effect system is in place. This would bring the clan down in alpha damage, but improve their sustain, while also directly buffing a lot of great IS builds by improving their (Double) heat sinks that they do mount.

As for LLs in general their damage could be Dropped by 1 each, IS LL & IS ERLL to TT 8 (Currently 9) and Clan ERLL to TT 10(Currently 11). As for HLL going down to 16 damage(Currently 18) 15 heat(currently 17) would be fine but its Cycle and burn times will need to be cut down as well. Though HLL might fall out of use due to its shorter range leaving Clan ERLL better over all clan LL class weapon like in MW3:PM.

As for the clan 2x Gauss Rifle and 2x ERLL people, what mech clan mechs can mount those weapons with sufficient ammo and heat sinks and a decent engine to stay mobile? Assault and one or two heavies can pull it off.

[Drunk Canuck]

Bows3r, on 11 June 2018 - 03:38 PM, said:

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?

It was changed likely because of the skill bush. The Black Knight and Grasshopper used to be amazing laser boats, post rescale, skill bush and civil war tech, they got kicked in the junk. Even the Thunderbolt which was also a great laser boat chassis with a few different niche roles based on variants, was incredibly fun before the nerf hammer that was quirks.

[Tesunie]

ExRedux, on 11 June 2018 - 03:27 PM, said:

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.

I'll state, as much as I respect comp players, they are not the end all and be all of everything. They might be able to spot disturbances in the force balance, but that doesn't always mean they always know the solution. It's one thing to recognize an issue, but another to come to a solution that is practical and functional. It's also easy to make suggestions that favor "what you want" rather than "what is needed".

I might also mention that, several possible points of balance was proposed. Each time, people slammed it down because "it's a nerf to my mech", even if it might very well be better for the game. Sometimes, it's better to nerf rather than buff... Then again, I've seen people swing from "PGI makes too drastic of changes" and then next time when smaller changes are made "PGI doesn't make enough changes". So, sometimes we have only ourselves to blame.


Also, I think it's sad when people don't use these forums. I find the forums to be easy to use, unlike those other places. Maybe if more people used these forums, we'd have less diverse places for "discussion", on top of the fact that maybe more official posts would be discussed here, rather than on twitter. (Yes, this is a problem as much Russ's/PGI's fault as it is the player bases.)

[Araara]

Ok so...from a beta tester and a world champion team member, this is going to be my ONLY comment in this god forsaken thread.


I'm going to propose to you, as a bet, a wager, a slap in PGI's face to wake them up, to implement
the community panel weapon balance document changes (ALL of it) in a test server and have them test it.

Heck, you could even test it in a 8v8 setting as well as a 12v12 setting.

Guarantee you that the game will be more fun not only for high tier but also low tier.


Because right now? There's a reason a lot of the high tier players/old players are leaving the game. It's just unfun at every balance patch.

With the loss of high tier comments on balance and population, do you feel confident enough to balance to game from the bottom up? Do you feel confident enough to reach to more new players and transform them into long term players to offset the loss from the old players?

Edited by Araara, 11 June 2018 - 03:46 PM.

[Drunk Canuck]

MaoutheGreat, on 11 June 2018 - 03:39 PM, said:

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.

If the HLL gets a damage nerf, than it needs a duration reduction big time. It's lack of range and fairly large heat generation makes it hard enough to wield as is. If you lop off that damage, a lot of other adjustments need to be made to offset it's other drawbacks. The issue seems to be more that PGI never really designed it well enough from the get go. I think it has a longer range in TT than it does in MWO, so it would have to get a reduced duration and increased range to justify that 15 heat. Because otherwise, for 1 ton more, ER PPC's are a better option.

[Phyrce]

JohnnyWayne, on 11 June 2018 - 03:42 PM, said:

Anyone expecting this form MWO is long gone and everyone who likes the playstyle we have now is still around. It is actually these changes I witness again today right here and now that drove me away from playing this game. Its getting worse and worse.

I do expect this from MWO, and ive been here since 2nd beta. I haven't played "every day" but i have several thousands of hours on this game. I've been through the ups and downs. I play it regardless because its the best Mechwarrior game we have currently. I think the release of MW5 diminish the population more than any weapon change. I also think that NOT going through with these changes will leave players who want to play the "alpha" game with no one left to play with. Hawken is a prime example of a quick TTK mech game, it didn't pan out so well.

[JohnnyWayne]

Tesunie, on 11 June 2018 - 03:43 PM, said:

I'll state, as much as I respect comp players, they are not the end all and be all of everything. They might be able to spot disturbances in the force balance, but that doesn't always mean they always know the solution. It's one thing to recognize an issue, but another to come to a solution that is practical and functional. It's also easy to make suggestions that favor "what you want" rather than "what is needed".

I am not trying to insult you but I dare to say that you don't even grasp half of hidden behaviour in the engine that is used in comp play (or by actual great players). Neither do I, probably. There is by far more to know and understand about this or any game than a casual player even realizes.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 11 June 2018 - 03:52 PM.

[Summin]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 11 June 2018 - 03:56 PM.
staff abuse

[banana peel]

Stinger554, on 11 June 2018 - 03:28 PM, said:

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.

This is incorrect, and the very game we are talking about has examples proving you wrong. When a single c-erppc was good on its own, with decent dps for tonnage invested, a single erppc mlynx was not the mech you wanted on the enemy team. Before that, when IS large pulse was a powerful weapon, a single lpl locust was a very usable mech.

Right now you can build a single mrm40 mech and be a threat to enemy team.

Also, maybe my wording was off (not my main language), or maybe you misunderstood me. By being worth taking on its own i mean being worth outside of specific combinations - so that when you have 4 tons left and at least one energy slot, clan heavy large laser is regarded as an option for an investment, whether you have ermeds boated already or not.

[Tesunie]

Rydiak, on 11 June 2018 - 03:41 PM, said:

Increase the duration (burn-time) of clan ER-laser and Heavy-laser weaponry by about 20%, and compensate by lowering the cooldown by about 6% (this will preserve the DPS values). Keep damage values the same.

An increase in duration will lower the "quality" (e.g. damage per time interval) of the weaponry, but preserve their total damage output.

Remember, they tried that once. Everyone complained because their lasers burned for too long, and a lot of team damage was cause from people seemingly unable to divert their lasers off allies... So this is unlikely to work without an uprising of pitchforks and torches...

Araara, on 11 June 2018 - 03:43 PM, said:

(PGI should) implement the community panel weapon balance document changes (ALL of it) in a test server and have them test it.

Heck, you could even test it in a 8v8 setting as well as a 12v12 setting.

Guarantee you that the game will be more fun not only for high tier but also low tier.

Fix it for you... because your rudeness was way out of line there.

I do agree with your statement though, minus the rudeness. The PTS were implemented just for occasions such as this. I only would like to point out the amount of work involved in it.

I will note that most people don't play on the PTS when they are up, because there are no rewards. Maybe if they handed out some MCs per match played on the PTS (granted at the end of the server run, to a set max) it might encourage players to use it for actual testing. Larger audience, more data.

[Rkshz]

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

dear PGI and especially Chris Lowrey - can you stop [censored] nerfs? pls just STOP

Edited by Rkshz, 11 June 2018 - 03:58 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

It is more clear with each post that comes out that Balance is just going to get worse and the game is going to become even less fun to play.

Does anyone at PGI wonder why so many good players have left the game in the past 12 months? Honestly, has anyone thought about it?

[Kaeb Odellas]

Tranderas, on 11 June 2018 - 01:01 PM, said:

You don't seem to understand that the reason clan has higher alpha and marginally higher dps is to compensate for the fact that IS has armor quirks. It's not raw DPS vs DPS- it's dps as a percentage of a mech's health, and alpha vs sustain, and ability to deal damage that is effective vs trivial damage.

Your initial assumption- that clans have higher damage per heat than IS so clan is imbalanced- is flawed on these grounds. Therefore, any conclusion you make from it is also inherently flawed.

You need to go back to the drawing board on this. And honestly, if you want to reduce the effect of high-alpha clan laser vomit and increase time to kill- both of which are goals you and Paul have put forth- the best place to start is giving us mobility back. The ability to twist torsos to spread damage among multiple components is a direct counter to the clan strategy.

Further: If you want clans to stop using laser vomit so much, you need to give them something to use as an alternative. The changes you've proposed in the past, and in this post, would make IS objectively better than clan. Instead of taking a nerf bat to everything that you deem too powerful- which, as established above, is an incorrect assumption to begin with- buff some other things. Give me a different weapon system that's just as good. Don't nerf lasers or gauss, buff UACs or ACs. Give me a series of mechs with SRM quirks. Give me AC quirks. Stop making me feel smaller and less powerful in this game about piloting massive, powerful robots.

You've got it completely backwards. Clan mechs don't have massive alphas because of big IS quirks. IS mechs have big quirks because of massive Clan alphas.

If you were around during the release of the first Clan mechs in June 2014 , you'd remember how utterly broken they were. The next few months saw incremental patches that nerfed the Clans and buffed the IS bit by bit, culminating in the great Quirkening in November.

Were the baseline Clan tech and weapons not so overpowered, quirks wouldn't be necessary. PGI's mistake was to try to use quirks to balance the two sides, instead of balancing the tech bases. Quirks should be used to buff underperforming mechs within the factions, not between them.

[Tesunie]

JohnnyWayne, on 11 June 2018 - 03:49 PM, said:

I am not trying to insult you but I dare to say that you don't even grasp half of hidden behaviour in the engine that is used in comp play (or by actual great players). Neither do I, probably. There is by far more to know and understand about this or any game than a casual player even realizes.

Agreed that I don't know everything about everything in this game. But I've been confronted by some comp players who had some basic game mechanics completely wrong, typically on weapons they "wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole". So there are also, in reverse, some game mechanics and tactics that, in turn, don't seem to grasp.

As I said, I respect a lot of comp players. Doesn't mean I agree with them nor that I feel they always have the best idea of balance. Same also goes in reverse, or course.

[NoSkillRush]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 11 June 2018 - 04:27 PM.
unconstructive

[denAirwalkerrr]

justcallme A S H, on 11 June 2018 - 03:59 PM, said:

It is more clear with each post that comes out that Balance is just going to get worse and the game is going to become even less fun to play.

Does anyone at PGI wonder why so many good players have left the game in the past 12 months? Honestly, has anyone thought about it?

Because their opinion gets [REDACTED]

[AgentIce]

It's almost like bottling up and silencing the community outrage for years
only makes them more outraged


hmmmmm

Edited by AgentIce, 11 June 2018 - 04:06 PM.

[Tesunie]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 11 June 2018 - 04:31 PM.
unconstructive, off-topic, replies removed

[Detergent II]

This is fine.

[justcallme A S H]

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

Because their opinion gets [REDACTED]

You only have to look at the amount of redacting going on here to see the level of frustration the community is once again experiencing.

I mean abusing staff and stuff isn't a good way to get what you want but if you read into it, just a little, you'll see the passion (and resulting frustration) that is once again coming onto the player base.

And of course it is the higher end of the player base getting slapped on some wayard attempt to increase TTK even though, it's going to do the opposite, once again.

Between this thread, Pauls thread and the Stock Mech World Champs - The train looks like it's firmly derailed.