657 replies to this topic

[sneakolai]

"...the gulf that currently exists between the average Clan Alpha centric build and Inner Sphere Alpha centric build..."

Does anyone actually believe PGI has put in the research to make any kind of assertion? I know I don't. We know who they're listening to.

I don't even use Gauss given the 'Mechs I prefer to play, and these constant nerfs sadden me. I do know there's a discrepancy between IS and Clan performance, but this particular weapon isn't the cause.

My unit amiably accuses me of "shilling" for PGI 'cause I constantly mention the TSP and get excited about all the peripherals that can come with a new pack, but I can't bring myself to do it much more. I'm too disappointed. I hope more people vote with their feet and their wallets so the powers that be get a clue.

[Lozruet Gravemind]

Havnt read the whole post so not sure its been said or not. There is only ONE way your going to ever fix a high alpha meta, one phrase.

TRUE HEAT SCALE.

Until there is a penalty for cooking your mech people will find, build, and play the mech that generates the most damage possible. If you had a ACTUAL heat scale where heating your mech up slowed you down, made targetting harder, or god forbid for those meta and espots try hards, actually had a chance of COOKING OFF AMMO. Then people would have reasons to run Small Lasers and backup weapons s they dont want to have their capabilities hampered or their leg blown off cause they cooked their AC/20 ammo.

[Agent of Change]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 June 2018 - 05:25 AM, said:

Not really, because at the end of the day the core issue is whether TTK needs to go up or down.

True and TTK needs to IMO be a bit longer than it is now. But when every weapon balance adjustment that isn't making numbers bigger is decried instantly as a "nerf" and that somehow the only way to make the game more fun is bigger numbers... I feel like we just need to provide them with an incrementing spread sheet so they can have all the bigger numbers they want and leave game balance to people who can understand that values can and should go up AND down to make for better game play.

Only ever "making things better" (as defined by more damage/less heat etc) will only make things worse.

Edited by Agent of Change, 27 June 2018 - 06:56 AM.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Honestly I would scrap the recoil idea.
Gauss on both sides as performance wise (minus weight) does exactly the same thing so no point in changing that in my opinion.
If the weight does play a game in the decision why not just buffing IS by either reducing the Gauss weight or more ammo a ton for it?
It doesn't have to be EXACTLY the same as on the clan side.
If the clan lasers do get nerfed it should be compensated with either cool down or laser duration buffs, either way it shouldn't be just a blanket nerf.

What I'm afraid of by nerfing clans more is that Inner Sphere get's even more stacked in faction play, waiting times for inner sphere is getting longer and longer nowadays.

[Weeny Machine]

On the one hand I think the laser nerf is a step in the right direction.

The problem is: Clan light mechs will get hit again. I hope they throw light mechs in general a bone

[Tesunie]

A Headless Chicken, on 26 June 2018 - 08:44 PM, said:

LRM velocity -a low-skill weapon- was buffed which was completely redundant and a nonissue with the game to begin with. It just made people more intent on bringing LRMs and insist they were contributing to the game. Cue a month or two of LRMageddon where people enjoyed lobbing metal at each other from across the map and static, boring gameplay.

IS mechs got 'quirked' - you mean armor reassignment? The one where now I can easily disarm Jenners and Stalkers by shooting at the arms since armor went from there to the CT? That incident was another a misguided nerf when the Mechs should have been outright buffed.

IS ERPPCs got a velocity buff to go hand in hand with PPFLD nerf but are still to toasty to be effective - meanwhile Clan ERPPC now has a 5s cooldown, IS PPC is still untouched and underwhelming, and Snubby is still too hot for its role.

Add this and a few piecemeal buffs (the only one which was welcome was the slight TBR mobility buff) that look good on paper but do not change anything in the game and of course, it's all fine - some irrelevant things got buffed right?

Not the things which actually need it though.

So... because you don't like LRMs and call them "low skill", that buff doesn't count.

I'm talking about actual IS quirks... where the Vindicator (and Urbanmech) as the armor of some heavies. Where the Dragon has rather large weapon quirks. Etc. You know, the very buffs granted to IS so they could "fight on the same level of the Clans", which hasn't really been too successful until rather recently. (Look at every single FP event, and show me which side was the winner by number of victories. It wasn't until rather recently that IS even came close to winning. And yes, some of that is where the comp teams and large merc units went... but that also should be a hint.) Or is that "too old" to be counted?

Too hot or not... it's another buff you are ignoring "because reasons". It was still a buff... so PGI doesn't do "just nerfs".

So... because YOU don't like those buffs or dismiss them, PGI only does nerfs. Well, that makes... complete... logical... sense... Ignore what you don't like so you can make your bold claims. "PGI STOP NERFING!!!!1!1!". Sure...

How about... you give the changes an honest try in the PTS with an open mind and as unbiased an opinion as you possibly can. You want to be so vocal here, then be active in the PTS as well and DO something besides just talk. It's easy to talk...

The Mayor of Smuttington, on 26 June 2018 - 08:47 PM, said:

For the love of God please PGI do this

'cept like, y'know, make the PTS actually have some substance so people won't mind putting off their actual games

I do hope so. I want them to try out several different ideas, with the PTS up for a week if not two per session (if not even longer). Get some real data, and try to provide some kind of reward to accounts that do participate (so people are incentivized to do so). Maybe a small amount of MC per match played on the PTS (probably with a cap), or even some C-bills for each match played would be awarded to the account at the end of the PTS?

Oh, and they also need to not do it during an event... or it will be a ghost town like one of their previous PTS were. (Can't recall what one that was.)

[Imperius]

How about you just make IS Gauss include the ammo per ton of extra weight over the Clan gauss?

[Zibmo]

Daruwind, on 26 June 2018 - 10:01 AM, said:

What about starting to use brain? Whatever is nerfed, the next item in list become META. So what about starting to buffing things?

What about buffing (ER)PPC back to being useful like -0.5 from cooldown? SPL? What about buffing Light Gauss to 10 dmg?.....

In other words, you believe TTK is too high and want to see yet more damage output?

[JigglyMoobs]

All of your nerfs are RUINING THE GAME.

STOP.

BUFF MOBILITY AND OTHER LASER COUNTERS.

You should worry about balance when your game is actually fun. You've nerfed the game to the point where it's not fun any more. FIX FUN FIRST.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 27 June 2018 - 12:47 PM.

[HammerMaster]

Balance ***** out of whack. Return to baseline. IS vs IS 12 vs 12. Clan vs clan 10 vs 10. IS vs clan 8 vs 5. Done. Stop fooling with this!How many times are you gonna be shown the hard lesson that YOUR Balance DOES NOT work because you are unable to follow the above formula!? (Pgi)

Edited by HammerMaster, 27 June 2018 - 08:23 AM.

[Grus]

Oh boy here we go... I'll be logging on the PTS tonight to see how fuckered they made clans..

[Imperius]

Grus, on 27 June 2018 - 08:24 AM, said:

Oh boy here we go... I'll be logging on the PTS tonight to see how fuckered they made clans..

It was announced for tonight?

[Hal Greaves]

so what are we gonna do with all the lighter weight clan mechs? You know, the ones that absolutely need to rely on lasers for any amount of competent damage?

[Agent of Change]

Hal Greaves, on 27 June 2018 - 08:42 AM, said:

so what are we gonna do with all the lighter weight clan mechs? You know, the ones that absolutely need to rely on lasers for any amount of competent damage?

https://mwomercs.com...s-and-planning/
I'm going to just start posting this link to the balance plan

There is apparently a plan to balance towards the middle to avoid power creep which means reducing teh top and raising the bottom. This means that small lasers will likely get some/ a lot of love sometime soon.

Edited by Agent of Change, 27 June 2018 - 08:48 AM.

[Myj]

I don't understand why you don't just buff things, it's always nerfing with you guys. Not the right approach in my opinion.

[Agent of Change]

Myj, on 27 June 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

I don't understand why you don't just buff things, it's always nerfing with you guys. Not the right approach in my opinion.

https://mwomercs.com...s-and-planning/

[SneekiBreeki]

Can a competent person educate the guy above please? I'm way too tired to repeat myself for the uptenth time...

Edited by SneekiBreeki, 27 June 2018 - 09:15 AM.

[Weeny Machine]

Myj, on 27 June 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

I don't understand why you don't just buff things, it's always nerfing with you guys. Not the right approach in my opinion.

If you buff all the time, the TTK will drop and drop and drop

[SneekiBreeki]

Bush Hopper, on 27 June 2018 - 09:21 AM, said:

If you buff all the time, the TTK will drop and drop and drop

TTK is already way sensibly high, if you get instakilled in the current iteration of the game then you did something stupid and it's entirely your fault as a player.

[Bud Crue]

Tesunie, on 27 June 2018 - 07:18 AM, said:

Stuff about nerfs vs buffs, etc.
Stuff about PTS, etc.

TLDR: you’re wrong, we’re screwed.

To pretend that historical IS quirks are the reason for the very recent trend -if you can call something that has never occurred previously in the history of the game a trend- of IS teams doing well in CW ignores all of the changes that have occurred in the last year both in terms of content (Annihilator as well as dual HGR + builds in general for example) as well as game mechanics changes (e.g. the systematic nerfing of both IS and Clan weapon systems since last May).

IS quirks, particularly defensive ones exist to make crap mechs not such crap. Yes there are outliers (for example, I would argue that the Urbanmechs armor buffs for example are a tad excessive, so too perhaps...maybe...the Annihilator), but to suggest that nerfs, particularly the kind of nerfs being proposed, namely broad brush, lets make all mechs and all builds suffer via the nerfing of whole weapon systems are somehow an exception or that we need a PTS to understand their effect, ignores the patch history of the game since at least since last May and more honestly since rescale (if not all the way back to the great requirkening). We know EXACTLY what will result here: nerfing energy and gauss to address the 2-3 builds that can pull off the dreaded 94 point alpha, will result in a nerf to every mech and every build that runs ANY of those weapons as well. This guarantees that which is at the top of the relativistic food chain remains there, and thus nothing changes except a lot of mechs become less fun to play or they don’t get played at all.

Furthermore, it is incontrovertible that PGI nerfs FAR more than it buffs, and when it buffs it does things almost exclusively in the defensive realm. For example, the trend beginning in late 2017 wherein they started the switch from structure quirks to armor on a wide variety of mechs can certainly be seen as a buff to those chassis, but in the last year there were nerfs in every month but November and this last month (which were proposed but did not go in) to BOTH IS and Clan mechs’ weapons. Things like improving SHS performance is not a buff except to the half dozen or so mechs and their very precise builds (As an aside: Hey Chris! That sounds awfully like providing a mechanism wherein the player must solve a puzzle in order to take advantage of it. Sound familiar?). Re-allocating armor from one spot to another is not a buff either, and even if you think it is, the VAST majority of similarly “neutral” changes that have occurred in the last year have had an over all detrimental effect on more mechs (i.e. a perceived nerf) than those that have been a benefit (engine/agility decoupling says “hi”).

Anyway, sorry to go off on this but I think this whole situation is absurd and it exists only because of PGI’s fixation on raising TTK and their complete inability to address outlier performance. Speaking of which, the PTS will not give “real data” about anything. It is an artificial enviornment wherein few participants actually participate, wherein historically PGI has to impose 4v4 or similar situations in order for the few participants to find matches, and thus cannot by definition give “real data” about the 12v12 game that it is intended to act as a test bed for. It is a system that is seemingly designed to act as an outlier relative to the live server and we have all seen that PGI has no clue how to deal with outliers.

Edited by Bud Crue, 27 June 2018 - 09:28 AM.