Buffing underperforming weapons won't decrease TTK, it'll just give you different ways to die in a similar timeframe.
This. Combine buffs to underperforming weapons with a general buff to agility and adjustment of some mechs' hp quirks to make them tankier. TTK will increase, along with fun and the number of viable playstyles. Then do teeny, tiny micro-nerfs to stuff that is still a bit OP
I'm not saying that there doesn't need to be a dissuasion from running 2xcHLL+6xcERML, but I don't believe nerfing clan Gauss rifles is in any way actually helpful in moving the game forwards. If you nerf one Gauss, just nerf them all with similar effects of varying intensity. Reducing cERML damage to 5.5 or 6 is perfectly acceptable if keeping heat/duration, or matching the IS ERML for damage with a bit more heat and range would also be fine. Why not incorporate the inherent inaccuracy of Heavy lasers (HLL in particular) by adding a minor reticle-shake to them so that they spread damage regardless of player skill outside of 200m-250m. That forces a trade off in bringing a weapon that has high damage but extremely high heat into an engagement where high heat is a significant disadvantage.
There are a lot of different ways to do this, the most proper unfortunately requires a lot more effort and overhauling than I'm willing to bet a 5 year old game is going to get.
The fundamental issue isn't strictly alphas, it's overall damage output. At 400+ meters, I get greater alphas, greater max DPS, and greater sustained DPS with Clan lasers than I do with IS ones. The IS have a small advantage in damage over duration, but that evaporates as you go up in tonnage because the 'Mechs slow down to a point where that advantage can't be capitalized upon. Both sides can fire two alphas at similar range before having to cool-shot for the third, but then the Clan one surges past the IS one in output once heat-capped because of the greater number of DHS. And to make it all the worse, the Clan lasers have a hard range advantage only mitigated by quirks.
You cannot maintain this. It doesn't matter what you do to the weapons in your presented options because you simply don't address this at all; all of your proposed solutions maintain current advantages in range, DPS, and HPS over dissipation. As such, the IS will continue to have to lean on haphazardly applied quirks on specific chassis to be at all competitive, and that is and has proven to be a logistical nightmare for balance, not just from the sheer number of quirks to worry about but also because whenever you make a piece of IS gear good, it becomes OP on that one 'Mech with the right combination of quirks and then you have to make that item suck to reign it in without gimping that 'Mech.
Chris Lowrey, on 08 June 2018 - 10:58 AM, said:
Options
What is described bellow are some of the options we are considering for addressing this. These are all individual things being explored, and should not be seen as an "all or nothing" series of changes so much as what options we have on the table to address the above points. We are divulging these things to spur discussion on the matter and monitor what is considered the best way forward to address this particular issue. Based on feedback received, we will more then likely only integrate either a single larger change to a single item, or a series of smaller changes across multiple items depending on community feedback on overall direction.
Clan Gauss Rifles
The 3 less tons needed to equip Clan Gauss rifles need to come with meaningful give and take compared to their heavier IS equivalents. Off of two clan Gauss rifles, the 6 saved tons over their IS counterparts is often plenty of tonnage to compliment the weapons with payloads that their IS counterparts are often strapped to compete with. This will be adjusted to offer fairer give and take between the two tech base's rifles.
Option 1:
Upfront damage reduced to something more in-line for the tonnage invested in the weapon, Other attributes adjusted to keep the same current DPS.
Option 2:
The Clan Gauss rifle is given a recoil effect similar to, but not as intense as, the Heavy Gauss rifle. No other attributes are changed.
Option 3:
The Clan Gauss Rifle and all Clan Large Class Lasers are linked into the same heat penalty group.
Spoiler
Option 1: What is more in line with 12 tons and 6 slots? The LGauss is 12 tons and 5 slots and does 8 damage for almost the same DPS as a standard Gauss, so how much is 1 more slot worth to performance? To wit, a Clan crit-slot is not as valuable as an IS crit-slot because of all the other equipment efficiency gains from smaller cDHS, cXL, cEndo, cFerro, etc. Maybe 12 damage? I can see riots over that reduction, though, especially if cERML get cut down, too. That said, I like this option the most. It should also go in conjunction with adjusting explosion chance down from 100%, since that's currently the only balancing implement.
Option 2: Not going to have any appreciable effect, we just fire the lasers first and then fire the Gauss round just like we do with HGauss.
Option 3: This one working depends on what happens to cERML and that is a much more complicated topic. You potentially drop the IS deficit to 6 tons for 60 damage. And on a fundamental note, I don't like linking weapons like this. It's highly unintuitive.
Quote
Clan Lasers:
The upfront damage of Clan lasers, and the ease of access the clans have at supplementing their fire with heavy upfront damage, at decent ranges, for minimal tonnage directly contributes not just to those Alpha's at the top, but a general lopsidedness in most build performance throughout the entire clan / IS lineup and often sees the Clan 'Mechs with access to a large number of energy hard points consistently outperform equivalent 'Mechs on the IS side. While the popular adage sees the belief that only a handful of 'mechs consist as "problem" 'Mechs, the reality is that as a whole, the overall performance of even an average clan 'Mech can put up are often consistently higher then what the average IS 'Mech can put up provided they have access to a certain number of energy hardpoints. This will be a change that is targeted to either raise the skill cap needed to utilized mass Clan laser fire, or will be reduced to a level that does not completely overshadow the IS equivalent weapons.
I would point out that the IS do not have a single 'Mech with more than nine (9) energy hardpoints. It is difficult to really observe how strong certain IS builds would be because we haven't had the opportunity to try, say, twelve IS Medium Lasers on something like a Nova (Black Hawk-KU). I submit that it would actually be pretty darn strong.
Quote
Option 1:
Upfront damage is reduced to IS equivalent levels. Superior range values are kept.
Instead of superior upfront damage, we can reduce the cool-downs, heat, and other attributes to move the natural boosted per-turn damage that the Clan weapons are historically known for in the fiction, as a higher rate of fire leaving them overall where they are now, but shifting the added damage perks away from Boosted Alpha strikes and more towards higher overall DPS. Keeping closer alpha damage
Option 2:
Clan Laser's heat scale triggers set to 30 damage caps similar to their IS counterparts. All other weapon attributes remain unaffected.
This will keep the superior damage for the weapons as it is now, but mass lasers will come with a higher skill ceiling in order to effectively utilize the entire payload in combat
Spoiler
There are other factors besides damage at play, here, those being cooling capacity and duration.
If you go with Option 1, Clans are going to get laser alphas that are exceedingly good at pressuring thanks to the lower down-time from massed double heatsinks and much shorter cycle times you'll need. Take a look at the sustained DPS you can get out of a Clan laser vomit 'Mech; it's very often into the 5s for 400 meter mid-range builds, while the IS one rarely exceeds 4.3 for the same bracket on the coldest 'Mechs (sans quirks). And right now, there are sizable gaps between volleys you can exploit to counter that DPS. With shorter cycle times, this becomes much harder. Those same short cycle times are also going to run head-first into an issue with your cERML and cMPL butting heads because both are going to have to cycle much faster to keep current DPS; we're talking a total cycle time (duration + cooldown) of 4.1 seconds for the cERML if you lower its damage to 5, which is roughly where the IS ERML was before you guys nerfed its cooldown to 4 seconds. The cMPL changed to 6 damage would need a crazy short total cycle time of 3.3 seconds.
And we haven't even touched duration yet. When you simply cut the damage down, either by reducing the base damage (Option 1) or by reducing the heat scale trigger (Option 2), if you leave the durations unchanged then the lighter Clan 'Mechs are extremely hard-up on viable options. In fact, this is already the case; IS lasers are simply better on Lights. If you shorten the duration to compensate for the reduced damage and maintain the damage-per-tick, then we are right back at square one with there being no inherent reason to take the IS version of the weapon when the Clan one does everything as-well-as or better.
We also run into a similar problem with heat. The Clan weapons have to be more inefficient than their IS counterparts to offset the gigantic advantage in double heatsink count on the heavier 'Mechs, but that again leaves the Clan Lights up a creek.
I feel like you are operating with one hand behind your back, with these options. You have way more tools you can use than what you've provided, but even more than that you are trying to maintain something that is fundamentally flawed.
My Proposal
You have probably seen this floating around:
Spoiler
Note: "Ghost limit" is how many you can fire before triggering heat penalty, e.g. ghost limit + 1 = penalty.
In this, I display all the lasers and how I might tune them, with each variable weighted based on how important I think it is through personal experience. My philosophy is to turn the hard advantages into softer ones. Clans have more damage? Fine. Clans get more optimum range? Great! But I'm attaching caveats that reign them in. Small reductions in utility that aggregate into a more even playing field.
Range: All Clan ER and Pulse lasers get a non-trivial optimum range advantage over their IS counterparts...except they get max-range determined by a universal 1.75x multiplier while the IS get the full 2x. So the Clans deal better damage up to some point between max and optimum where it flips to IS, giving the latter something of a scratch-damage advantage. It would behoove the typically faster Clan 'Mechs to move in a bit instead of trying to trade at the edge of viability. Because it's scratch damage, it's an option that can realistically be considered. Behold, depth of play!
Actually all Clan lasers are 1.75x for max range for consistency; I do not like juggling a whole slew of multipliers like the current game does.
Also note, cLPL does not really compete with isLPL. Instead, it more properly competes against the isLL; a pair of Clan Large Pulse used to be roughly equivalent to a trio of Large Lasers in cost and performance back when they were 13 damage and so I tuned it as such.
Damage: Clan lasers all do more damage than their IS counterparts, but they also all have considerably longer cooldowns to increase the gaps in fire and allow 'Mechs to maneuver in between volleys. Where Clans are about bigger up-front damage per class of laser, IS are more about constant pressure by legitimately running colder per point of damage with smaller alphas and smaller gaps in fire. Clan lasers also have lower ghost heat trigger points to keep the alphas in check.
Throw in a reduction to 12 damage for Clan Gauss, and the problem builds are reduced thus:
Spoiler
2x cGauss + 2x HLL + 4x cERML goes from 94 to 84
2x cGauss + 2x cERLL + 4x cERML goes from 84 to 72, directly counterable by the Annihilator 1X at mutual optimum range.
2x cGauss + 6x cERML is unchanged, but triggers ghost heat; going to 5x cERML lowers it from 72 to 65.
1x cGauss + 2x HLL + 4x cERML goes from 79 to 74, directly counterable by the Annihilator 1X at mutual optimum range
1x cGauss + 2x cERLL + 4x cERML goes from 65 to 60
2x HLL + 6x cERML goes from 78 to 74 and triggers ghost heat
2x HLL + 5x cERML goes from 71 to 67, which BNC-3S, MAL-2P, FNR-5B, and ANH can all counter directly at mutual optimum range
2x cERLL + 6x cERML goes from 64 to 62 and triggers ghost heat and is well within IS counter abilities
2x cERLL + 5x cERML goes from 57 to 55 and is well within IS counter abilities.
cLPL builds fall between HLL and cERLL, but with four extra tons in cost per pair and thus not really concerning.
Is this perfect? Probably not. We might find a problem with IS ERLL having too much of a damage-per-tick advantage in triplets compared to cERLL. We might find that IS Small lasers are too cold for their damage rate. We absolutely will find that IS quirks are making some 'Mechs too strong. But I would argue there's still more depth of play after these changes. Getting close enough to use Micros and smalls is rewarded with good damage output. Paying the heat and speed premiums for IS ERLL rewards with slightly longer reach and max damage rate.
And this isn't even the only approach. Instead of tweaking damage, we can take what we have in the game now and further increase the relative gulf between IS and Clan cooldown rates so IS can pressure better, something they used to be able to do before you nerfed the MedLas and ER MedLas cooldowns, though it was still capped by heat. We can make IS DHS cool at a full 0.2 heat/sec to offset the size disparity and the weight of LFE vs. cXL. We can get really crazy and make a proper energy draw system where every high energy weapon (PPC, Gauss, lasers) requires points from a pool to cool-down at max rate and firing a big volley initiates an elongated cool-down cycle; something like that, and we can keep big alphas at the cost of leaving one's self vulnerable when fired.
well.... PGI stated what their "optimal state of the game" they are going for and have proposed ways to achieve them, all of them nerfs. Highly doubt at this stage anyone is going to convenience PGI that the game's TTK kill needs to decrease to increase "fun" (ie. implement Community Balance Proposal).
Sadly I've lost all confidence in PGI over the past few months that they are going to make the right decision at all.
The Community Balance Proposal doesn't actually decrease the shortest time to kill, it's aiming to bring the other weapons in line with each other. It's focused on buffing underperforming weapons to match the current ones. For the record the only thing in that document I'm not sure about it the MRM buff.
A main issue I have with PGI's balancing is the scale of it. Why the heck are you taking nerfs of this scale to weapons in a game that's as mature as this? Gentle buffs and nerfs are the way to go. Drastic changes shouldn't be considered as often or mainline as it's being used now.
Tesunie, on 11 June 2018 - 07:05 PM, said:
Seen as I've been 1v1 one hit KOed in my Riflemen (no skills, newly bought)... I think it's up to high. And no, it's happened more than once.
What that magic number might be, I have no idea. I just think it's too high at the moment.
I'm not considering headshots relevant to time to kill. It's either very common with certain weapons with good aim or rare with everything else requiring extreme skill to pull off often. I'm not considering solaris with this either, because the whole thing is utterly rubbish as a method of matchmaking. There are very valid reasons as to why nobody plays solaris.
Do recall, FP was forced out by IGP in a scramble when they realize they couldn't delay the subject any longer. Too much of this game was shaped by early decisions probably brought on by IGP. I even feel the Cryengine this game uses was probably bought by IGP, despite it not being the best engine for this style of game. IGP probably bought it for PGI, thinking "shooter game, shooter engine"... Hence a lot of the coding in this game had to be reworked.
You are incorrect on your who released Community warfare. IGP Was already bankrupt and out of the picture by the time CW came out in December 2014, IGP rushed out the Clan Pack in Dec 2013, not Community Warfare as their last gasp.
I sincerely hope PGI considers the input of people who are have both played this game, and played this game with a high degree of still even. TTK is fine where it is. There are a lot of what can be best described as solo queue PUGs that are not anywhere near the top percentile that think they want an increase in TTK, but that will not help them and only benefit players sitting up in the 97th percentile and higher.
The issue is that you as a company are balancing down to the bottom majority of players while essentially sacrificing everything at the top. Clan laservomit is prevailing because clans have no other option against armor quirked IS mechs. Plain and simple. Buff SRMs, buff Autocannons, and give clan mechs the ability to actually brawl against armor quirked IS mechs instead of forcing them into this boring as hell peak and poke game. Clans literally have no ability at all to brawl it out with IS right now, addressing this on its own will resolve the laser meta significantly.
I said it before and I'll say it again, I can help people's inability to deal with the clan mechs but balancing the entire game around lesser skilled players is a bad idea. I'm sorry, but if a person is simply not good enough they are not good enough, and trying to balance around the fact that elite players can utilize a laservomit mech is completely disingenuous as a whole. So unless you want to rework the paperdoll system, TTK is irrelevant to people like me because I will more often than not hit what I am aiming for. I'm not out brawling or in the middle of the fight, I'm utilizing cover and using terrain as armor when I'm tryharding and.. you know, being situationally aware. Pro-tip - neither of that has anything to do with weapons and everything to do with my own individual skill.
This won't change or help the lower skilled players in any capacity, because it'll only give me more survivability while they get nothing. The only thing any nerfs will bring is my further distancing from this game, and I can promise you that this is a sentiment many, many higher end players will share if this is the route that's chosen without at the very least considering what we all, as a whole, put together.
If I can tl;dr anything I just ask that you please give our community balance discussing a try. You don't lose anything, we did the work for you for the most part, and it it fails we can say we did it. This Nerf rollercoaster is just getting all too tiring and the constant pidgeonholing of mechs into singular roles is stale.
How about we link clan gauss rifles with every other weapon to prevent alpha damage?
Or better yet, how about we link the entire team's gauss rifles together, so if they fire more then two collectively in half a second they share the additional heat?
Now now, those 40-60 alphas were PPFLD, which means they could potentially screw over Lights/Mediums even more than Deathstrike's 94 alpha.
And we replaced that with a ghost heta cap of 20/30 damage. Meanwhile, we now also have a 50 PPFLD dual H Gauss in the game... So...
I'm just saying that if overall damage was reduced, than overall TTK would become better. It doesn't have to become "throwing wet noodles at each other" low, but a bit lower would still be nice from where it is now.
A Headless Chicken, on 11 June 2018 - 07:11 PM, said:
I'd like to raise the point that the Rifleman is squishier than most IS mediums and requires plenty of finesse by abusing the high mounts via hill humping and taking high ground. Also, do remember that the game isn't exactly well-optimized, or even balanced at all for 1v1.
Edit:
And if Timber Wolves are overperforming, we nerf them into the ground, as with the Kodiak and Hunchback IIC, right?
Still, a 60 ton mech, first hit it takes, drops dead with only a single mech being visible. A single mech, a single alpha. I think that's a little fast of a time to be killed here for a 60 ton mech.
Also, if Timberwolves where over performing, than we should give them slight nerfs. Of course, some people's view of slight nerfs and "nerfed into the ground" seem to differ. You know, where a 1% nerf is "nerfed into the ground"? Especially when the "I paid for this mech" crowd comes in, demanding it be reversed because "I paid for my mech, I don't want you to change it".
So, which makes for a better game and easier change. Nerf the Timberwolf if it is shown to be an overperformer for it's weight? Or buffing all other mechs in the game to compete with it?
A Headless Chicken, on 11 June 2018 - 07:27 PM, said:
As I said, buffing is not exclusive to weapons and damage.
The quote I specifically replied to refers to buffing weapons.
Buffing in anyway that would make any significant amount of weapons kill an opponent faster will decrease average TTK, because the current average TTK is based on the current state of the game.
Which, outside of extreme 80+ clan alphas, is pretty good right now. Decreasing it is bad. Conversely increasing it is also likely to be negative for the game.
Which decreases average TTK of the game since you know not everyone runs 80-94 alpha builds....but just totally ignore that; facts are not important.
The balancing isn't considering the average TTK of all builds. It's looking at a TTK for each build which will both support clans and IS and their builds evenly. As IS has the durability advantage and clan does not. Clans will need a higher alpha by default, or a stronger DPM because they are more flimsy. You have to keep that in mind. bringing both alphas in line for clan and IS will cripple clan mechs.
I'm not really a fan of the 80-94 alpha builds myself as well, but I consider the overall balance of the game a crime at this point.
I'd rather choose a potentially un-optimal TTK (although I don't really believe it to be the case) with the community balance update rather than PGI's choices.
The devs seriously need to start paying more attention to the top end of players, they are the folks that know how to min max and get the most out of builds and optimal play. They know best how to balance the game because they generally know best in what ways the game is broken. This results in more feasible builds. The more builds that are feasible the better. That's what I believe is fun. Variety.
A main issue I have with PGI's balancing is the scale of it. Why the heck are you taking nerfs of this scale to weapons in a game that's as mature as this? Gentle buffs and nerfs are the way to go. Drastic changes shouldn't be considered as often or mainline as it's being used now.
I'm not considering headshots relevant to time to kill. It's either very common with certain weapons with good aim or rare with everything else requiring extreme skill to pull off often. I'm not considering solaris with this either, because the whole thing is utterly rubbish as a method of matchmaking. There are very valid reasons as to why nobody plays solaris.
Example: WoW has been around for how long? They still occasionally have vast and large adjustments between their classes.
Also, that was CT, but thanks for assuming it was a head shot. I wouldn't complain about a head shot as the head of mechs are hard to hit and have the least amount of health on all mechs. It's when I die of CT damage, with front loaded armor (only 6 to the back) and die facing only a single opponent with only a single Alpha (and I still don't know how it happened). That was a live match, not Solaris...
I’d be keen to see the actual stats around what these TTK numbers are, and how they are impacted by different load outs - is there somewhere this is available, or is it proprietary information? Transparency would help filter through legitimate complaints and those which are just salt.
Beyond that, it seems a bit out to reduce damage or increase heat for the clan lasers, which are supposed to be superior to their IS counterparts. But, if we’re looking to increase TTK, then why not just increase the burn time per alpha (0.25s? 0.5s?) rather than adjusting heat or damage? Forces more face time and reduces total DPS, and for a clan mech that has armour mostly made of paper mache, that’ll surely make a diffeeence?
Also, if Timberwolves where over performing, than we should give them slight nerfs. Of course, some people's view of slight nerfs and "nerfed into the ground" seem to differ. You know, where a 1% nerf is "nerfed into the ground"? Especially when the "I paid for this mech" crowd comes in, demanding it be reversed because "I paid for my mech, I don't want you to change it".
So, which makes for a better game and easier change. Nerf the Timberwolf if it is shown to be an overperformer for it's weight? Or buffing all other mechs in the game to compete with it?
If you get one shot via facetanking against a who-knows-what loadout, you're probably playing the 'Mech wrong, or facing off against some assault you have no hope of winning against to begin with. Exceptions if you got headshot, or a back gib. The fact that you don't even know what gibbed you to begin with doesn't help your case as a player or in argument.
Do you pilot a Timberwolf? I don't think so. It's an inferior pick compared to almost every other heavy out there. The only reason it "overperforms" is because people load LRMs on it and farm ineffective damage. The Timberwolf currently has assault-tier accel/decel and turn rate, limited tonnage, and bad hitboxes. This is the kind of heavy handed nerfing PGI likes to suggest and implement, and this should not be allowed to persist in any area of the game.
Edited by A Headless Chicken, 11 June 2018 - 07:55 PM.
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.
First of all, you should do a better research:
IS ERLL: Damage 9 C-ERLL: Damage 11
Alpha without ghostheat is 27 on IS and 22 on clan.
Also, the typical ERLL boat for IS is the Battlemaster 1G and this one got armor quirks for its arms. Do you know how many weapons are in the arms? Right, none!
But I do agree that we don´t need a clanmlazer nerf and also no c-gauss nerf.
Also I do agree that some weaponbuffs on the right places were better then more nerfs.
Most nerfs are hitting hard for mechs with limited weaponslots.
Example: WoW has been around for how long? They still occasionally have vast and large adjustments between their classes.
Also, that was CT, but thanks for assuming it was a head shot. I wouldn't complain about a head shot as the head of mechs are hard to hit and have the least amount of health on all mechs. It's when I die of CT damage, with front loaded armor (only 6 to the back) and die facing only a single opponent with only a single Alpha (and I still don't know how it happened). That was a live match, not Solaris...
Last I heard WoW balancing isn't good either. The time to balance a game depends entirely on it's feedback loop, which is pretty short compared to WoW, which also isn't exactly a competitive game if I recall right. I'd rather we stick to the topic of MWO.
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IronEleven, on 11 June 2018 - 07:01 PM, said:
This topic is locked
