605 replies to this topic

[Sable Dove]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 August 2018 - 11:27 AM, said:

Nothing is final yet, so feel free to continue the discussion with your own opinions on the matter. On my side, I am pushing for it.

Dissipation affects lasers, but it also affects a number of other weapons that can be leaned on for DPS. Like we said in the podcast, global changes don't affect all things equally, and as much as lasers are quickly pointed to as being the most affected by a change like this, this would be something that affects all builds. PPC's, Mass MRM and SRM, and many other builds rely on those heat reserves just as much as lasers do and will be as much under the microscope as lasers are, everything will need to be tested in these cases.

I'm glad touching the heat capacity and dissipation is at least being considered after being suggested something like 3 years ago and being shot down for no particular reason.

If you want it to not have a huge effect on most builds, just raise dissipation in proportion with the lowering of the heat cap. If you halve the heat cap, double the dissipation, for example. This keeps sustained DPS the same (except for builds that are either so cool that heat isn't a thing for them, or so hot that they can no longer fire all of their weapons before some of their cooldowns are up - which are generally the problem builds that needs to be solved anyways).

I'd suggest starting with heat capacity cut in half and dissipation doubled (approximately); a smaller change simply wouldn't have a significant effect on alphas. Even halving the heat cap only affects mechs that hit 50+% heat in one shot.

Somewhat unrelated, please consider reducing the simultaneous charging of gauss rifles to 1 for at least standard and heavy gauss.

Other suggestion for mitigating high-alpha issues: get rid of torso weapon convergence. The issue with high alphas is when they're all dealt to one component. If every torso/head mounted weapon shot straight forward, many of these builds would spread damage more, or be forced to mount their weapons in their more vulnerable arms.

[The6thMessenger]

Imperius, on 08 August 2018 - 02:40 PM, said:

Except the Tier 5’s who can’t aim consistently to use NARC and TAG.

Well, that would be an important lesson.

Imperius, on 08 August 2018 - 02:40 PM, said:

Before you say teammates, the majority of complaints about LRM’s seemed to come from solo players.

No, i'd actually say "git-gud". Aiming is basic to the game. While i get that, the spotter might not be able to effectively do this, the T5s still have the direct-fire homing missiles to fall back on.

TAG is hitscan, NARC is one-and-done, and both need only to touch the silhouette of the mech and not actually target components, so they don't need that much Aiming skills.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 08 August 2018 - 02:53 PM.

[SilentFenris]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 August 2018 - 11:27 AM, said:

Dissipation affects lasers, but it also affects a number of other weapons that can be leaned on for DPS. Like we said in the podcast, global changes don't affect all things equally, and as much as lasers are quickly pointed to as being the most affected by a change like this, this would be something that affects all builds. PPC's, Mass MRM and SRM, and many other builds rely on those heat reserves just as much as lasers do and will be as much under the microscope as lasers are, everything will need to be tested in these cases.

Sounds great to me. Cut heatcap in half, double what the heatsinks remove.

Would be nice if these changes also narrowed the gap between the Light/Medium classes and the Heavy/Assault classes instead of hurting the Light/Medium class performance like the High-Alpha PTS.

[Hiten Bongz]

If you nerf Artemis that hard I would expect a tonnage reduction to compensate, otherwise it won't even be worth it's weight anymore...it's barely worth it as it is. Also: why not just make it lore-accurate?

"In order to actually benefit from Artemis IV...the firing unit must have line of sight to its target; indirectly fired LRM receives no increase in accuracy." - Sarna.net

Changing Artemis to work like the above would already be an indirect (haHAA) nerf, and it would also satiate all the lore buffs. I think the community would be more willing to accept that. Win-win?!

I also hope the nerf doesn't affect the built-in Artemis of ATMs. Speaking of, is there any consideration on ATM buffs such as: removing minimum range, increasing missile health, and tightening the launch spread? Or are they going to remain AMS food forever, allowing a one-ton defense system to hard counter multiple tons of launchers and missiles? Not cool bro...not cool.

Can we perhaps just get the HE ammo and call it a day? Nobody needs 1100+m range ATMs in this game, its just silly, and they don't work that far anyways due to map design, trajectory, and low missile health/AMS super vulnerability. Another win-win tweak that'd satiate lore buffs, and make the weapon system viable and balanced by adjusting it's range vs. damage (or lack of damage in the dead zone).

"The High Explosive version has a much shorter range since it trades the booster for increased power. This removes the minimum range and allows the missile to deal three points of damage." - Sarna.net

80% of players polled would like the dead zone removed or shrunk:
https://mwomercs.com...ge-should-they/

Edited by Hiten Bongz, 08 August 2018 - 04:08 PM.

[Weagles]

Chris, great meeting you at Mechcon last year and at the studio tour. The weapon balance is not a factor to play. I say this as a player with over 20k matches played in the current stats and about the same amount in the history. I play for fun, unit play, lance play, as a solo pug, in Solaris, FW invasion, FW scouting and QP. I really have seen it all.

The current play is so well balanced I don't notice any weapon or group of weapons as having an advantage on most maps. I see some tactics as having advantages in certain situations which is tough to overcome without teamwork. Improving or nerfing any weapon will not stop this.

The biggest improvement in years was the LRM and ammo buffs. LRMs are still weak weapons but the nature of the weapon requiring targeting gets pilots to focus fire more often then not on a single target. It is the focus fire effect that makes them seem OP.

Neither test improved play. I do thank you for the cicada warhorns, they look good in my X5s.

Speaking of warhorns Paul, time for the Gobbler Warhorn reminder, Thanksgiving is coming. Press G to sound the call.

Final note on balancing:
If the community spent more time playing the game, developing team work, and tactics and less time whining in the forums to get an advantage to their way of playing, the game would naturally balance. Then you could work on what we truly need, a new weapon release every couple of months to disrupt the meta and give the community a new challenge to overcome and exploit.

Edited by Weagles, 08 August 2018 - 03:27 PM.

[Gierling]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 10:52 AM, said:

Just a heads up.

For next PTS:

- Full reset to what is on live servers right now.
- We will be looking at the effects of a locked heat cap and faster dissipation proposal from long ago.
- Spectrum of 'Mechs will be buffed in terms of agility/mobility and that list will be provided prior to PTS going up.

What we hope to gain:
- Is the heatcap/faster dissipation route something that is a feasible net gain for the laser vomit issue?
- The agility/mobility buffs to the selected 'Mechs, is it buffed enough/too much? While we'll be doing a small subset of the 'Mech line-up, we are going to be targeting the slowest performers and a few suggested by the community to set a standard to address the rest of the 'Mechs.

While LRMs are being covered in a few changes in August's patch, we will be investigating other items that the community has put on the table as well. This will be tested in a subsequent PTS after the above. We are not going to stock pile a bunch of changes into a single PTS as there are too many variables at play to have proper testing coverage.

I like the idea of testing lower cap higher dissipation. However I feel compelled to bring up that this will make some builds have far more sustainability.

Fortunately they are builds that most people would consider pretty subpar already (I'm looking at you AC10's).

[Shadowomega1]

Look forward to testing the next pts build, looks like it is going in the right direction.

[Imperius]

Weagles, on 08 August 2018 - 03:25 PM, said:

Chris, great meeting you at Mechcon last year and at the studio tour. The weapon balance is not a factor to play. I say this as a player with over 20k matches played in the current stats and about the same amount in the history. I play for fun, unit play, lance play, as a solo pug, in Solaris, FW invasion, FW scouting and QP. I really have seen it all.

The current play is so well balanced I don't notice any weapon or group of weapons as having an advantage on most maps. I see some tactics as having advantages in certain situations which is tough to overcome without teamwork. Improving or nerfing any weapon will not stop this.

The biggest improvement in years was the LRM and ammo buffs. LRMs are still weak weapons but the nature of the weapon requiring targeting gets pilots to focus fire more often then not on a single target. It is the focus fire effect that makes them seem OP.

Neither test improved play. I do thank you for the cicada warhorns, they look good in my X5s.

Speaking of warhorns Paul, time for the Gobbler Warhorn reminder, Thanksgiving is coming. Press G to sound the call.

Final note on balancing:
If the community spent more time playing the game, developing team work, and tactics and less time whining in the forums to get an advantage to their way of playing, the game would naturally balance. Then you could work on what we truly need, a new weapon release every couple of months to disrupt the meta and give the community a new challenge to overcome and exploit.

Why bother developing team work when everything done in this game pretty much since inception has been to punish playing and building a team?

CryEngine doesn’t allow a new weapon made every few months to shape up the meta. Plus every mech would have to be retrofitted with the look of this new weapon.

I’m gonna say this as nicely as I can. I wouldn’t make blanket statements like you have. People like me who have been providing feedback since closed beta take it negatively when you call it whining. By the way ammo per ton getting looked at is something I asked for for years. Guess you can call that whining.

[Drunk Canuck]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 10:52 AM, said:

Just a heads up.

For next PTS:

- Full reset to what is on live servers right now.
- We will be looking at the effects of a locked heat cap and faster dissipation proposal from long ago.
- Spectrum of 'Mechs will be buffed in terms of agility/mobility and that list will be provided prior to PTS going up.

What we hope to gain:
- Is the heatcap/faster dissipation route something that is a feasible net gain for the laser vomit issue?
- The agility/mobility buffs to the selected 'Mechs, is it buffed enough/too much? While we'll be doing a small subset of the 'Mech line-up, we are going to be targeting the slowest performers and a few suggested by the community to set a standard to address the rest of the 'Mechs.

While LRMs are being covered in a few changes in August's patch, we will be investigating other items that the community has put on the table as well. This will be tested in a subsequent PTS after the above. We are not going to stock pile a bunch of changes into a single PTS as there are too many variables at play to have proper testing coverage.

Paul, this is something I know a lot of players, myself included, have been bickering at for you guys to try for the last few years. It was suggested the last time there was a major blow up over laser vomit when Clans came out and we saw just how underwhelming a lot of the weapons were relative to Clan lasers. Nerfing other weapons since has not helped reduce laser vomit as well.

I am glad that you and the team are finally going to take a serious look at reducing heat capacity and increasing dissipation. It will lead to lower alpha strikes, but also push for more burst fire builds. I don't like the chainfire playstyle mind you, and I still think that alpha striking should still be something that is possible, however it really needs to be a last ditch effort sort of thing. For those of us who have played the Living Legends mod, that game has always had stock builds, armor and a much lower heat capacity and it was still fun, so I don't see why custom builds with quirks and Mech skills and a lower capacity can't be fun either.

I don't know how much you plan on reducing capacity, but I'd say if you dropped it by 25% for starters, and increased dissipation on double heat sinks to 2.0 like they should be, then you can tweak from there. I feel like faster dissipation gives Mech's that are brawlers more time to close distance due to reduced damage, rather than getting nuked trying to cover 500 meters of ground before bringing weapons into optimal range. Also bearing in mind that a lot of weapons are going to have to be tuned after the fact to be more useful with a lower capacity.

I guess my main question is, how do you feel about both tech bases having different capacities and dissipation rates? Because if Clans had a lower capacity but they could cool faster, that should be the trade off for having higher damage weapons. It would also be more in line with the lore, not that it should be a factor in balance. Clans always have been able to fit more heat sinks into their Mech's, so they cool faster, but having the same dissipation as IS Mech's doesn't really help a whole lot at this current time unless you are running a laser vomit build.

[Drunk Canuck]

Weagles, on 08 August 2018 - 03:25 PM, said:

Chris, great meeting you at Mechcon last year and at the studio tour. The weapon balance is not a factor to play. I say this as a player with over 20k matches played in the current stats and about the same amount in the history. I play for fun, unit play, lance play, as a solo pug, in Solaris, FW invasion, FW scouting and QP. I really have seen it all.

The current play is so well balanced I don't notice any weapon or group of weapons as having an advantage on most maps. I see some tactics as having advantages in certain situations which is tough to overcome without teamwork. Improving or nerfing any weapon will not stop this.

The biggest improvement in years was the LRM and ammo buffs. LRMs are still weak weapons but the nature of the weapon requiring targeting gets pilots to focus fire more often then not on a single target. It is the focus fire effect that makes them seem OP.

Neither test improved play. I do thank you for the cicada warhorns, they look good in my X5s.

Speaking of warhorns Paul, time for the Gobbler Warhorn reminder, Thanksgiving is coming. Press G to sound the call.

Final note on balancing:
If the community spent more time playing the game, developing team work, and tactics and less time whining in the forums to get an advantage to their way of playing, the game would naturally balance. Then you could work on what we truly need, a new weapon release every couple of months to disrupt the meta and give the community a new challenge to overcome and exploit.

Uhh, no, LRM's are just fine in the current state, if anything they need mechanics changes. If you don't think they aren't useful, then you don't know how to use them properly, don't understand positioning and don't understand when to make your shots. If you expect LRM's to be effective outside of 500 meters, you should probably go try hitting a moving target beyond that and see how many shots land.

https://i.redd.it/onmpe0tzp4e11.jpg

[Drunk Canuck]

r0b0tc0rpse, on 08 August 2018 - 12:38 PM, said:

Matchmaker seems to be ignored.

Machine guns are a problem. Equipment health is a problem. Not sure what to do to get their attention.

If anything, most weapons need more health. Gauss is pretty much instant explosion, especially for Clans. Machine Guns will take them out from the back in only a few seconds, which is ridiculous. I feel like a lot of weapons would be better off with health buffs just to mitigate the crit factor in MG's, but still gives lights a weapon that can do rapid damage fairly quickly.

[Kirito Kerenksy]

So... one K2, just one, was enough for you to think "this mech is too tanky"

You do understand why studies are done with something called a "large sample size" right?

[Paul Inouye]

Story Time, on 08 August 2018 - 04:33 PM, said:

So... one K2, just one, was enough for you to think "this mech is too tanky" You do understand why studies are done with something called a "large sample size" right?

The K2 is the 'Mech I am most familiar with as it's my go to no matter what mode/map it's in. I used it as an example of a problem I see across the board when it came to these specialized quirks on the IS side of things. Again... it was used as an example.

[cougurt]

i have two possible ideas for MG changes:

slightly reduce the ROF on clan MGs and give them a considerable accuracy buff. IS MGs would remain unchanged. i feel that this would be in keeping with the rest of the tech differences between the two factions, with the clan MGs being seemingly more "refined" than their primitive IS counterparts.

my other idea, if possible, would be to put a cap on the number of crit rolls that can occur against weapons and equipment. so, for example, maybe up to 6 MGs would work as they normally do, but any additional MGs you take would only serve to deal more damage to armor and structure. you would still get more crits against structure, just not weapons and equipment.

[Kin3ticX]

TTK is basically like the new PPFLD, its just a buzzword that gets too much attn.

No matter what PGI does to increase or lower TTK, stumbling into 2v1s, 3v1s, 12v1s etc are going to result in possible or likely insta-gibs no matter the balance.

Whats not fun is sandblasting each other down to nothing before sombody dies, which is what will happen if we keep trying to force people to chainfire or break up their alphas.

[Tlords]

Chris, Paul, and fellow mechwarriors,

Thank you for contributing to this discussion. It is the most fun I've had in reading the forums in quite some time. As I'm reading this I’m seeing a primary goal is to knock down clan laser alpha vomit. Great! Good idea! Much needed!

I may have missed someone else having this idea... just in case It’s original here goes...

Combine ghost heat for all Lasers. This would force players to stagger their fire. I see two potential ways of doing this.

1. Combined ghost heat based on the hottest laser fired. Firing 2 HLL and 4 ERML would be like firing 6 HLL (206 heat – wow that’s hot) and not what I'd recommend.
2. Combined ghost heat based on the second hottest laser fired is a better idea When Firing 2 HLL and 4 ERML, ghost heat kicks in for any laser fired beyond the limit set by the larger lasers. In this case, the 4 ERML are firing beyond the ghost heat limit. Total heat 117 vice the 57.2 heat today. I chose second hottest weapon to prevent someone from bringing 2 HLL, 3 ERML, and one micro-laser and alpha.

A simple idea that shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Cheers - I just bought my Mechcon ticket!

[Sucy Manbavaran]

Dear Balance team,

can you explain to me what Clanner are supposed to play during the time between "solve Alpha94Problem" And "MakeClanWeaponNotTrash" ?

from my honest point of view :

Lasers :

• Every Pulse will be trash (or are already)
  
• ER Micro/small/Medium will be trash (or are already)

So i can Play ER-LL and ERPPC gameplay and get rekt when any IS come close to me (HGR Effective range).

Missiles :

• SRM and SRM-A are just light ... the spread is only OK when you wanna hit the Training Ground Atlas, but max 200M range.
  
• SSRM are Streaks ... useless when you wanna do some Brawl (even if brawl for clan is a joke)
  
• LRM are playable for sure, but still on balance
  
• ATM are more and more useless cause of LRM (everybody take AMS if they think .1 sec on their LRM problem ? then ATM are REALY Hard to connect)

So i can play a LRM/ATM Boat maybe (can you do something for the LRM/ATM Timber Ears one day ?)

Balistics :

• UAC Jam Mecanic is cancer ... i mean get lock 5+ sec cause of RNG ? It's fun. Some velocity problems, the number of bullets, etc ...
  
• Regular AC ? I'm pretty sure the balance team doesn't know they Exist cause they are trash since day one.
  
• LBX ... Yeah its a good way to avoid Regular AC Crappiness ... So just remove Regular C-AC from the game i guess
  
• MG are ... well 2/3 are "useless", and a PIR make every player curse cause it's fun to get rekt by a 20tons OP MG boat (maybe nerf the variant by nerfing the crit chance for him ?)

So, cause i god bad luck on UAC and rekt people with PIR is not realy what i love to do ... i must play some LBX OR Maybe Regular C-AC2 ? And if someone can explain to me why IS AC2 are 1Slots/6Tons and C-AC2 are 3Slots/5Tons ...

For me, it feel like you wanna put Clanner 800m away from the fight or they'll insta die and put every brawl possibility ONLY for IS ... So maybe i'm wrong, but if you wanna CUT my clanner LazorRightArm at least put a lovely glove on my OtherLeftArm ... i'm sure you'll get less complains.

Waiting for some BalanceTeam answer now :[

[Sezneg]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 04:58 PM, said:

The K2 is the 'Mech I am most familiar with as it's my go to no matter what mode/map it's in. I used it as an example of a problem I see across the board when it came to these specialized quirks on the IS side of things. Again... it was used as an example.

I will always believe the the problem with doing a single volumetric pass for rescaling, was the assumption of uniform density for all mechs and the seeming loss of a human "does this make sense" factor. The K2 is tanky because it's small for its tonnage comparatively, so it gets lost when picking out targets.

It's the same reason my spiders feel much less tanky because they were turned basically into fast mediums that under the constraints this game have will NEVER be worth the hardpoint restrictions.

[Xetelian]

If you plan to rebalance all the agility

I ask you again

Please use a 350-360 engine Atlas from predesync as a baseline for how much agility 100 ton mechs should have all the way down to 20 ton mechs with great increases as the tonnage drops.


Back when I could pilot my atlas and enjoy it was a great time for brawling and laser vomit wasn't as big an issue. What changed? They nerfed everything:
UACs
SRMs
Artemis
Agility
Mobility

All of this drove people to using laser vomit.

The solution isn't to prevent people from using laser vomit but to make other options as effective as laser vomit.


I personally don't find laser vomit to be a big issue like some people.



Please increase the agility of 100 ton mechs back up to the predesync, please unnerf the weapons that used to be taken.



----------------------------------------------------------------



Heat cap can't be too low, lots of mechs don't have any other option than to take a high laser alpha, making them unplayable is going to hurt this game badly.

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 04:58 PM, said:

The K2 is the 'Mech I am most familiar with as it's my go to no matter what mode/map it's in. I used it as an example of a problem I see across the board when it came to these specialized quirks on the IS side of things. Again... it was used as an example.

I have 120+ mechs
I am familiar with them all.

Please try using the laser vomit mechs that you're about to nerf. See how long you have to stare for to get your 2 seconds of damage done in. See how long you have to hide for before you can fire again.

Edited by Xetelian, 08 August 2018 - 05:47 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Tarogato, on 08 August 2018 - 05:23 AM, said:

I would sooner like to see the Catapult rescaled properly to be sized like a 65-ton mech instead of the ~50-ton mech that it is now. (and the missile ears require significantly more arm durability quirks, while we're at it.)

The sad part is that the Catapult isn't tanky at all despite being tiny, so I really don't understand where Paul is coming from. They are comically easy to disarm and their sides suffer the same problems that the Stalker's do. Even the laser ears on the K2 and Jester could use some extra durability.

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 10:52 AM, said:

Just a heads up.

For next PTS:

- Full reset to what is on live servers right now.

- We will be looking at the effects of a locked heat cap and faster dissipation proposal from long ago.

- Spectrum of 'Mechs will be buffed in terms of agility/mobility and that list will be provided prior to PTS going up.

I want to point out that, unless you throw the IS (and only the IS) a bone with regard to heat and cycle time, the gulf between IS and Clan isn't likely to get any smaller. Locked cap has the same exact effect as Energy Draw did: you'll get the two sides building to that cap and one side will have dramatically superior cooling to just push-push-push.

r0b0tc0rpse, on 08 August 2018 - 12:03 PM, said:

yeah, 1 rac 5 shouldn't have as much DPS as 3 AC10's.

It doesn't, it has the DPS of slightly less than 2.5x AC/10s. Personally, I still prefer the AC/10s.

Frankly, though, what you say about big dumb DPS is true. It's not just RACs, it's also LB-X boats, UAC boats, HGauss boats, MRM boats, ATM boats, and LRM boats. QP revolves almost entirely around high sustained mid-range DPS now, bringing the big pokey builds of yesteryear is almost a handicap because teams crumble just often enough without putting up much of a fight that it leaves you hanging. And it's not like those DPS builds are necessarily too strong, it's just that the passive, raw TTK is too high for the pokey stuff to be sufficiently threatening until you get to the big 64+ alphas from Clan 'Mechs. The weaker 40-50 point alphas from the IS 'Mechs only do as well as they do because players in QP don't realize how hot they run and how much armor they really have.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 08 August 2018 - 05:52 PM.