127 replies to this topic

[kapusta11]

Why not reduce cGauss damage instead of adding recoil? Two cGauss rifles weight 6 tons less than 2 IS ones, that's just stupid.

[TWIAFU]

Let's just get this over with.

Make ALL Clan weapons the exact same in all aspects as IS.

Make ALL Clan Engines the same as IS.

Make all Clan tech the exact same as IS.

Make it so the ONLY difference is laser and HUD color tween the two.

There you go, balance. No more quirks, no more advantages/disadvantage between the two techs.

Everyone is the same except for a few things. Put an end to this constant merry go round.

Make it so only deciding factor is finally pilot skill.

[Dogstar]

TWIAFU, on 01 July 2018 - 03:52 AM, said:

Make it so only deciding factor is finally pilot skill.

There's a lot of clan fans who _really_ don't want that to be the deciding factor!

[SFC174]

Dogstar, on 01 July 2018 - 06:32 AM, said:

There's a lot of clan fans who _really_ don't want that to be the deciding factor!

The crusade is over, you can take off the armor.....sheesh

Tell you what, convince the IS to give up quirks first and then the Clan will have to be nerfed, right? Set an example. You don't need all those armor and structure buffs, right? My MAD-3R is badass without all that extra structure. And my Anni doesn't need the armor buffs.

[Tarl Cabot]

SFC174, on 01 July 2018 - 06:38 AM, said:

The crusade is over, you can take off the armor.....sheesh

Tell you what, convince the IS to give up quirks first and then the Clan will have to be nerfed, right? Set an example. You don't need all those armor and structure buffs, right? My MAD-3R is badass without all that extra structure. And my Anni doesn't need the armor buffs.

Convince IS? ROFL.. you mean PGI... PGI put the quirks there when Clans went live, and for awhile the cXL had no penalties w/loss of one side torso. For armor/internal added PGI noted it was mostly ( not all) due to bad hitboxes, and even now more Clans mechs are getting them now for the same reason. For the weapons, PGI did not start touching the ACTUAL weapons til much later, and PGI still giveth/taketh away quirks.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 01 July 2018 - 06:52 AM.

[SFC174]

Tarl Cabot, on 01 July 2018 - 06:51 AM, said:

Convince IS? ROFL.. you mean PGI... PGI put the quirks there when Clans went live, and for awhile the cXL had no penalties w/loss of one side torso. For armor/internal added PGI noted it was mostly ( not all) due to bad hitboxes, and even now more Clans mechs are getting them now for the same reason. For the weapons, PGI did not start touching the ACTUAL weapons til much later, and PGI still giveth/taketh away quirks.

You clearly aren't familiar with old Dogstar. The guy who is so obsessed with his Clan hate that he actually took the time to make a blog page and a logo about it. It's just fun to yank his chain. Zealots are easy targets.

[TWIAFU]

SFC174, on 01 July 2018 - 06:38 AM, said:

The crusade is over, you can take off the armor.....sheesh

Tell you what, convince the IS to give up quirks first and then the Clan will have to be nerfed, right? Set an example. You don't need all those armor and structure buffs, right? My MAD-3R is badass without all that extra structure. And my Anni doesn't need the armor buffs.

Right.

Get rid of all Quirks and make Clan tech carbon copies of IS. Same weight, heat, damage, range, etc. the same as IS.

Done.

Only choice pilots have to make between the two tech bases is do you want a Blue HUD or not or do you want your lasers a different color or not.

ONLY difference tween the two would be the pilot. Then we can go back to people complaining about loosing to better pilots and how unfair that is.

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 June 2018 - 08:49 PM, said:

I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me; some of what you said is an elaboration on implications I made and some of it seems to be placing me on the opposite side of an argument than I really am. Like this:





Ignoring that the first sentence belies a gross misunderstanding of what TTK represents, we are not disagreeing on the second sentence.

As for why I don't just roll everything back: the engine desync, rescale, and skill tree complicate it, because they didn't exist in the Goldilocks Era. It's easier just to start where we are and say "increase it" than it is to sort out the implications of "roll it back". You asked me for a succinct set of changes I would make, and I replied accordingly.

I agree with your general assessment - I would like to take it further.

I've come to the conclusion that the approach to balancing PGI has taken may have gotten a sort of balance but it's not an enjoyable one. I am in favor of broad mobility increases and loosening ghost heat limitations in general and either a flat armor increase or a (mostly, some weapons don't need it) flat damage decrease.

I also think the concept of the rescale was good but but where it makes some mechs terrible it should be flexible.

I'm pretty far in to the "playability" vs "lore" spectrum now. Battletech made sweeping changes to performance of weapons and equipment - way more than MWO ever did. That made it a better game than it otherwise would have been. That's a big lesson to absorb.

[Dogstar]

SFC174, on 01 July 2018 - 06:59 AM, said:

Zealots are easy targets.

DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVER!

[Battlemaster56]

TWIAFU, on 01 July 2018 - 03:52 AM, said:

Let's just get this over with.

Make ALL Clan weapons the exact same in all aspects as IS.

Make ALL Clan Engines the same as IS.

Make all Clan tech the exact same as IS.

Make it so the ONLY difference is laser and HUD color tween the two.

There you go, balance. No more quirks, no more advantages/disadvantage between the two techs.

Everyone is the same except for a few things. Put an end to this constant merry go round.

Make it so only deciding factor is finally pilot skill.

If you want to kill the game, and drive off players go ahead and do that. I rather feel like I'm playing something different and not the illusion of it.

[Humpday]

Relax, the cGuass screen shake is nothing and is easily side stepped.

Personally I don't quite know why they are touching cGauss in the first place but whatever.

Anyway those that play Hgauss already know how to stagger fire and alpha with heavy gauss:
Stagger fire is just that, let your guass loose, ~.5 sec later fire your other weapons...
To alpha, just mush all your weapons and .5sec into your laser burn, release your gauss...its quite easy to do.

If you watch some high end players they, by default, fire their lasers AFTER they let the guass fly because they don't want the target to start twisting before they land the the guass shot.

Its not a big deal.

In fact, adding screen shake to cGauss will make playing Gauss-PPC easier, as the screen shake forces you to wait ~.5 secs for your followup shot to avoid GHing yourself to death.

[SFC174]

MischiefSC, on 01 July 2018 - 08:42 AM, said:

I've come to the conclusion that the approach to balancing PGI has taken may have gotten a sort of balance but it's not an enjoyable one. I am in favor of broad mobility increases and loosening ghost heat limitations in general and either a flat armor increase or a (mostly, some weapons don't need it) flat damage decrease.

^This

If TTK is so all important, bump up the armor values. Yeah, you'll have to bump up ammo too, but hey, they just did that!!

Interestingly enough, bumping armor values would be a nerf of indeterminate proportions to hot weapons (cough...lasers...cough). A mech I could melt a side torso off in 2 meta-HBR salvos now takes 3, which means I have to spend more time cooling down before I can get off that 3rd strike. And if we keep coolshots at only 2, the impact of those consumables goes down too. In fact, it would also nerf the impact of strikes as well if we don't change the damage.

Then we can buff the poor performing weapons (which is more fun than nerfing the good ones - people like good stuff) and all is well.

Just don't tell the potatoes that buffing armor values is going to magnify the effects of the skill gap between goods and bads. That'll be our little secret.

[Y E O N N E]

SFC174, on 01 July 2018 - 10:17 AM, said:

If TTK is so all important, bump up the armor values. Yeah, you'll have to bump up ammo too, but hey, they just did that!!

Ugh, TTK is not this simple. TTK has many flavors, but I would say the two most important ones are thus:

Raw TTK: how long it takes one player to kill another based solely on damage rate vs. hit-point quantity; this is what most people seem to be referring to when they make claims that TTK is too short.

Applied TTK: how long it takes one player to kill another after you've factored in everything else such as damage mitigation techniques, upper limits to physical and mental player abilities, and realities of the game mode(s).

And beyond that, you have to understand that "average" TTK is extremely complex. Alpha-centric builds are necessarily going to skew that number low. Imbalanced combat between un-like 'Mechs, a situation that players actively seek out in their favor, is also going to skew it low.

The applied TTK in the game now is not perceptibly longer than it was in 2015, but the raw TTK is certainly higher. How can this be? Because it's much harder to mitigate damage now. Contrary to popular opinion, Clan alphas are not bigger now than they used to be. Where before we had 2x cLPL and 4-6x cERML generating alphas of 54 to 68, we have moved over mostly to 2x cERLL + 4-6x cERML generating 50-64. There is only one real outlier, the MCII-DS; the rest that can shoot bigger pin-point alphas have hefty and exploitable drawbacks (typically making it even harder still for the user to mitigate damage, i.e. using Heavy Lasers). Having three 'Mechs capable of volleying out 94 is not making any significant dent in applied TTK, because those are sub-standard builds already.

IS alphas, too, have remained largely unchanged. IS have always been able to get 65-68 points on certain select 'Mechs, and laser alphas have dropped from the typical 58 to 52. Again, there is one outlier: the ANH-1X. Nothing shoots a bigger pin-point alpha for them and, indeed, there is no IS 'Mech currently in the game that I am aware of with more offensive weapon hard-points than the ANH-1X has (11).

And all of that is before we've even accounted for durability increases through quirks and skill tree and nerfs to other weapon systems reducing effective damage output.

In 2015, we had a game that demanded more of the player to stay alive. In 2018, the game is doing more for the player in this regard. It feels good for bad players that got minced in the old game, but it feels bad for good players because their input seems to matter less and it becomes more about the MechLab and less about its application on the field.

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 01 July 2018 - 10:49 AM, said:

Ugh, TTK is not this simple. TTK has many flavors, but I would say the two most important ones are thus:

Raw TTK: how long it takes one player to kill another based solely on damage rate vs. hit-point quantity; this is what most people seem to be referring to when they make claims that TTK is too short.

Applied TTK: how long it takes one player to kill another after you've factored in everything else such as damage mitigation techniques, upper limits to physical and mental player abilities, and realities of the game mode(s).

And beyond that, you have to understand that "average" TTK is extremely complex. Alpha-centric builds are necessarily going to skew that number low. Imbalanced combat between un-like 'Mechs, a situation that players actively seek out in their favor, is also going to skew it low.

The applied TTK in the game now is not perceptibly longer than it was in 2015, but the raw TTK is certainly higher. How can this be? Because it's much harder to mitigate damage now. Contrary to popular opinion, Clan alphas are not bigger now than they used to be. Where before we had 2x cLPL and 4-6x cERML generating alphas of 54 to 68, we have moved over mostly to 2x cERLL + 4-6x cERML generating 50-64. There is only one real outlier, the MCII-DS; the rest that can shoot bigger pin-point alphas have hefty and exploitable drawbacks (typically making it even harder still for the user to mitigate damage, i.e. using Heavy Lasers). Having three 'Mechs capable of volleying out 94 is not making any significant dent in applied TTK, because those are sub-standard builds already.

IS alphas, too, have remained largely unchanged. IS have always been able to get 65-68 points on certain select 'Mechs, and laser alphas have dropped from the typical 58 to 52. Again, there is one outlier: the ANH-1X. Nothing shoots a bigger pin-point alpha for them and, indeed, there is no IS 'Mech currently in the game that I am aware of with more offensive weapon hard-points than the ANH-1X has (11).

And all of that is before we've even accounted for durability increases through quirks and skill tree and nerfs to other weapon systems reducing effective damage output.

In 2015, we had a game that demanded more of the player to stay alive. In 2018, the game is doing more for the player in this regard. It feels good for bad players that got minced in the old game, but it feels bad for good players because their input seems to matter less and it becomes more about the MechLab and less about its application on the field.

That's a really good assessment.

It's why I want to increase mobility while reducing damage vs health.

Good players should be able, by skill and action, to significantly influence TTK. They should, by skill way more than luck, ensure their success vs a less skilled opponent -

However for everyone else you still need games to last long enough to be worth the time invested for the majority of players.

So you increase the value of skill while extended the total time involved in killing mechs.

The balancing comes in with how to do that without skewing push vs trade. I believe that in high skill vs high skill match balance should favor trade but push still be a potential threat. How to make that work I'm game with being super flexible on. I want it to be more fun to play - more mobility, faster cooldown, shorter duration, higher velocity.

[Y E O N N E]

Increasing raw TTK at the same time you increase the factors that multiply it for applied TTK doesn't magically make the game feel better. It just means everything takes way too damn long to happen and it still feels like I'm throwing spitballs at targets while I juke incoming spitballs like a god compared to most of the flotsam.

Because 'Mechs still move at the same speeds and cover is still just as potent as it has always been, significantly increasing raw and the multipliers only gets you a close-range DPS race; that's what I've been trying to say in the other thread. You have to break those close range weapons to near worthlessness to not get a DPS race, and in the process you will destroy the ability for Light 'Mechs to make plays.

The result is a game that still feels bad.

[JC Daxion]

TWIAFU, on 01 July 2018 - 03:52 AM, said:

Let's just get this over with.

Make ALL Clan weapons the exact same in all aspects as IS.

Make ALL Clan Engines the same as IS.

Make all Clan tech the exact same as IS.

Make it so the ONLY difference is laser and HUD color tween the two.

There you go, balance. No more quirks, no more advantages/disadvantage between the two techs.

Everyone is the same except for a few things. Put an end to this constant merry go round.

Make it so only deciding factor is finally pilot skill.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or serious...


If serious, then why bother having different load outs at all?


Solaris has most people playing the exact same mechs/builds in many cases, How fun is that for most folks?




And yet, people still chase the OP mechs, then cry if they get nerfed.

Edited by JC Daxion, 01 July 2018 - 11:59 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 01 July 2018 - 11:38 AM, said:

Increasing raw TTK at the same time you increase the factors that multiply it for applied TTK doesn't magically make the game feel better. It just means everything takes way too damn long to happen and it still feels like I'm throwing spitballs at targets while I juke incoming spitballs like a god compared to most of the flotsam.

Because 'Mechs still move at the same speeds and cover is still just as potent as it has always been, significantly increasing raw and the multipliers only gets you a close-range DPS race; that's what I've been trying to say in the other thread. You have to break those close range weapons to near worthlessness to not get a DPS race, and in the process you will destroy the ability for Light 'Mechs to make plays.

The result is a game that still feels bad.

You're talking extreme changes, I'm not.

The reason we are where we are is that around 2015 if you left cover you could lose a ST almost instantly or at least you were opened up. QP sucked, most people hated it. That was too far the other way and it led us to here.

I want to increase mobility and velocity and reduce burn times to make the game more fun. However we need to avoid the same situation we had before. Not talking about "spitballs" but not 1 hit from 1 mech to cripple a heavy/assault either.

Normally I'm in favor of game balance decisions from the top down but for general feel/experience QP needs to be fun before comp matches are fun. Total time shooting/playing vs time to get in/out of a match has to feel worthwhile.

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 01 July 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

You're talking extreme changes, I'm not.

That's because extreme changes are the only ones that are going to perceptibly raise applied TTK.

Quote

The reason we are where we are is that around 2015 if you left cover you could lose a ST almost instantly or at least you were opened up. QP sucked, most people hated it. That was too far the other way and it led us to here.

First, the issue was Clan PPC+Gauss blowing out sides from across the map in single shots; such builds are extinct. It was not lasers, it was not SRMs, and once they fixed the ghost heat on cUAC/10 it was not dakka.

Second, that overall situation hasn't changed much, you can still lose a ST almost instantly because you can't leave and return to cover quickly and you can't twist quickly. At the same time, everything that required more advanced game knowledge to use was kicked in the nuts.

QP still sucks, most people still hate it, to the point where most good players have more or less quit, and it's why we are where we are now. The game is even more NASCAR than it was in 2015 because DPS rules and the 'Mechs with the most DPS are also the toughest in terms of hitpoints and mitigation factors. Once your high-alpha mid-range trade 'Mech is out of cool-shots, it's trivial to eat a hit, close on it, and beat it on heat management.

Quote

I want to increase mobility and velocity and reduce burn times to make the game more fun. However we need to avoid the same situation we had before. Not talking about "spitballs" but not 1 hit from 1 mech to cripple a heavy/assault either.

Increasing mobility and decreasing burn times just keeps us where we are now, where you can't adequately mitigate the damage. Burn times across the board are already shorter than they were in 2015. You decrease the duration on Clan lasers to compensate for the reduced damage and what are you going to do to further differentiate the IS lasers from these now more-similar Clan ones? Knock-on effects.

Really, the only reason you can cripple heavies and assaults in one hit right now is because they can't twist fast enough, or far enough, to spread the damage we have. Laser Battlemasters have had 60 degree torso yaw range since introduction, and they are very wide. Banshees, not much better. The Awesome handles like a dump truck, Thanatos too. Decreasing burn times will not help any of this. Decreasing the Clan damage will also not help unless you take it to an extreme (i.e. 1 point off of cERML, 3 points off of HLL, 3 points off of cGauss, and 1 point off of cERLL), and then the compensatory measures you implement will just put it right back where it was, but feeling different.

Quote

Normally I'm in favor of game balance decisions from the top down but for general feel/experience QP needs to be fun before comp matches are fun. Total time shooting/playing vs time to get in/out of a match has to feel worthwhile.

The time spent in QP is not the issue, and I'm not interested in a game where Harry the YOLO Lord can be expected to survive stupidly trading into a lance of attentive 'Mechs as anything other than a stick, because those are the only players who got wrecked so fast before and they will continue to get so wrecked.

That every match turns into pushing with DPS 'Mechs through LRM/ATM spam is the current issue with QP. That a half-decent player can sit just below the ridge and plow out 19 DPS from 400 meters without ever seeing his targets directly and risking his own neck is an issue. There is no trading in QP, there is sitting on the side and being ignored while you farm damage with lasers/PPCs and your team pushes or gets itself pushed. QP is a brain-dead brawl nearly 100% of the time.

[MechaBattler]

Humpday, on 01 July 2018 - 09:20 AM, said:

Relax, the cGuass screen shake is nothing and is easily side stepped.

Personally I don't quite know why they are touching cGauss in the first place but whatever.

Anyway those that play Hgauss already know how to stagger fire and alpha with heavy gauss:
Stagger fire is just that, let your guass loose, ~.5 sec later fire your other weapons...
To alpha, just mush all your weapons and .5sec into your laser burn, release your gauss...its quite easy to do.

If you watch some high end players they, by default, fire their lasers AFTER they let the guass fly because they don't want the target to start twisting before they land the the guass shot.

Its not a big deal.

In fact, adding screen shake to cGauss will make playing Gauss-PPC easier, as the screen shake forces you to wait ~.5 secs for your followup shot to avoid GHing yourself to death.

It's lighter than it's IS counterpart. That's pretty much why they're giving it a nerf. I supported recoil because it seemed like the change that would have the least effect. Lowering damage seems like it would be worse.

[FupDup]

I still think that the Gauss issue is best solved with heat, because the primary problem has always been the ability to combine it with lasers or peepers so well because of its heatless nature. This hits the high-end apex guys more than the mid to lower end guys who have their mech built around Gauss specifically rather than using it as a combo weapon with mass lasers or pepsis.

And of course more health and reduced explosion damage for all Gauss types (IS getting the best of those values) because the critpocalypse is real and heavily restricting which chassis can use Gauss without becoming a ticking time bomb.