Bud Crue, on 27 June 2018 - 09:26 AM, said:
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.
I presented the IS quirks as "PGI does do buffs" to counter the statement of "PGI only does nerfs". It should be obvious that PGI doesn't just nerf everything all the time. Just like they don't buff everything all the time either. Doing one or the other only all the time would... be bad for balance. Of course, I guess what you call a Buff or a Nerf might depend upon perspective. IS got a health buff? That's a nerf to all damage headed at them. Clans for a weapon/damage nerf, that's a health buff to anything clans are shooing at.
My question starts to become, how much more can we "buff" IS, before we need to "nerf" Clan? For some time, IS items have been getting buffed (back when the clans basically were introduced). Now, instead of continuously buffing IS, they are now nerfing Clans. If something is underperforming or overperforming, then it should probably be addressed. It makes little sense to buff everything else when nerfing one or two items instead could do the task.
Now, don't confuse my statement with blindly approving of the proposed changes presented so far. I'm simply trying to remind people that this is only the proposal for session one of the PTS. The world is not coming to an end. See what has happened in every PTS before hand... I'll just go to the New Tech PTS. We made suggestions for balance back then, and many of the suggestions actually did make a meaningful difference. We have the same chance here.
Bud Crue, on 27 June 2018 - 09:26 AM, said:
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.
I think decoupling the engines from twisting speeds was a good thing overall. However, it appears that many of the base line speeds probably are too low. I'd press more for adjusting the twisting speeds rather than bring engine resync(?) back...
I agree that the PTS has a history of low population when it is active, and it's often times active for too short of a time period on top of that. There is a reason I keep suggesting to incentive it with some kind of reward based on number of matches played. This will encourage players to actually utilize and play within the PTS, rather than ignore it (because it has no rewards). Should boost population on the server, as well as help show more accurate data.
Also, PTS is better than them just dumping this into the live servers. Only other solution would be to dump this on the live servers for a short while and then revert it... but I'm sure that would confuse a lot of people and certainly not be the popular choice...
11
