605 replies to this topic

[The6thMessenger]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 August 2018 - 09:24 PM, said:

Just because we don't respond doesn't mean we don't read and discuss it internally. I can't speak for Paul, but in my case the discussion had moved on. This does not mean we are not monitoring everything that is going on even outside of the standard office hours.

https://mwomercs.com.../list/full.json

About that LRMs, I've been thinking. Maybe you can approach this with LRMs having piss poor spread and tracking strength when used Indirect-Fire. Have LRMs "equipped with artemis" by the norm, as in LOS provide lock, spread, and tracking strength bonus

For example:

LRM20:
- Speed: 240
- Damage: 1 to 2.0
- Missile Health:
- Cooldown: 4.3 to 8.6
- Spread: 5.2 to 7.8
- Tracking Strength: 2 to 1
- Lockspeed: -25% (1.5x lock time)
- LOS Spread Bonus: -35%
- LOS Track-Strength Bonus: 2
- LOS Lockspeed Bonus: 35%
- ARTEMIS LOS Spread Bonus: -65%
- ARTEMIS LOS Track-Strength Bonus: 4
- ARTEMIS LOS Lockspeed Bonus: 65%

TAG Spread Bonus: -35%
TAG Lockspeed Bonus: 35%
TAG Track-Strength Bonus: 2
NARC Spread Bonus: -35%
NARC Lockspeed Bonus: 35%
NARC Track-Strength Bonus: 2

Now this mean, the LRM20, used at indirect fire would have 8.6 spread, and only 1 tracking strength. Note, the Clan SSRM2 has 92 tracking strength. But with LOS bonuses, it would be at 5.07 spread and 3 Tracking-Strength, with Artemis LOS spread it would be at 2.73 spread and 5 Tracking Strength. For scale, the SRM2 has 2.5 spread.

With NARC/TAG + IDF means it would be just as good as it is DF with LOS. But this also means that Artemis + NARC/TAG would have stacking bonuses. Of down to 1.7745 spread, 7 Tracking-Strength, and 77.25% lockspeed. For scale, the CSSRM2 has 92 tracking strength.

The 2x Damage and CD is just to taste, this is as high-level adjustment while retaining mechanics for low-level. This also allows the Indirect-Fire to deal a bit better damage after the immense spread increase because it's a hell of a massive spread. This makes sure that IDF would just be a trickle of rain, while DF would be a downpour. Now to actually use IDF in good effect, this requires NARC and or TAG. That being said, IDF would still be usable even without it, but terribly poor.

There. IDF would still be possible to use, but it's incredibly inefficient, thereby making DF primary. And the resulting tweak, it makes IDF powerful when used with NARC or TAG.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 08 August 2018 - 11:17 PM.

[FrontlineAssembly]

You(PGI) say you dont want dead weight in the mechlab. But then you nerf Artemis and coolshots into uselessness. Spending the extra tonnage to use Artemis just for a slightly tighter grouping is stupid. and it wont be used....Its already not a huge factor anyway.
And why would I pay 40K for a coolshot that doesnt really help me. And since when is it an issue in the game anyways???? If this is just a way to combat the high alpha builds. Then as with all of the nerfs. It is nerfing said system across the board to combat a isolated issue which as has been repeatedly stated is dumb.
Also you already have lots of dead weight in there...ie CSPL, CLPL, CACs, All Clan micro lasers.And you arent fixing any of that. Lets behonest about it already.
Another point that has been repeatedly brought up both in this thread, and previious threads on these issues. Is that You are ignoring what people arre really saying here. The player base has been telling you to stop breaking the game...fixing in your opinions...The repeated monthly nerfs and minor buffs are to put it mildly driving people away! We dont want to have to re-figure out our builds, and play styles every month or so, because you "fixed" something. Your continuous nerfs to clans have made many of the mechs useless..ie KDK3, Direwhale, etc. Laser vomit is so popular cause you have nerfed all the clan weapons so much. It has killed other play styles, or made at the least sub par. You have heard this before. Its not news flash to you. I personally am tired of dreading the patch because you will have fixed" something, and the game becomes yet again less fun. Stats have been shown, and stated in these posts how much the player base has shrunk since you started all of this. The players have spoken, and feeling they arent heard they left...and I am sure more will follow. Your credibility with the player base is pretty rock bottom. No one trusts you to do things that make the game better at this point. We want to believe you. But you have repeatedly let us down.
If you have to fix things. How about fixing bugs that have been around for years..ie friends list not refreshing unless you log out and back in, the floating chat that still doesntwork correctly, Hit reg issues for days, etc...
You say you are listening, but your really not. Do what you say, stop breaking the game, and stop driving us away. I say all this because I have enjoyed this game for years and am completely disheartned that it has gotten to this point.

Edited by FrontlineAssembly, 09 August 2018 - 02:51 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

FrontlineAssembly, on 09 August 2018 - 12:05 AM, said:

You(PGI) say you dont want dead weight in the mechlab. But then you nerf Artemis and coolshots into uselessness. Spending the extra tonnage to use Artemis just for a slightly tighter grouping is stupid. and it wont be used....Its already not a huge factor anyway.
And why would I pay 40K for a coolshot that doesnt really help me. And since when is it an issue in the game anyways???? If this is just a way to comabt the high alpha builds. Then as with all of the nerfs. It is nerfing said system across the board to combat a isolated issue which as has been repeatedly stated is dumb.
Also you already have lots of dead weight in there...ie CSPL, CLPL, CACs, All Clan micro lasers.And you arent fixing any of that. Lets behonest about it already.

100%. Just giving a tighter spread is far less important than lock time.

If it doesn't provide a lock time reduction then I'll take it off all mechs I have it on now because it's very much wasted/dead tonnage at that point and just slap more more ammo/heatsinks or larger launchers. I tell you now, what you will see then is just how offensive 'ranged DPS' from LRMs will get and it ain't gonna be pretty.

The easiest adjustment for LRMs is just roll back the velocity buff they did not need.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 09 August 2018 - 12:39 AM.

[General Solo]

justcallme A S H, on 09 August 2018 - 12:37 AM, said:

The easiest adjustment for LRMs is just roll back the velocity buff they did not need.

I agree
Thou alots of people now know the awesomeness of narc.
I dont think it will be quite the same.

[GweNTLeR]

FrontlineAssembly, on 09 August 2018 - 12:05 AM, said:

You(PGI) say you dont want dead weight in the mechlab.
Also you already have lots of dead weight in there...ie CSPL, CLPL, CACs, All Clan micro lasers.And you arent fixing any of that. Lets behonest about it already.

Dont forget about IS small caliber LBX, LPPC, SPL, LPL, MRM10, ERSL...I'd even say AC5 and PPC... They all deserve a tune.

Edited by GweNTLeR, 09 August 2018 - 12:57 AM.

[Felbombling]

Chris Lowrey, on 08 August 2018 - 09:24 PM, said:

Just because we don't respond doesn't mean we don't read and discuss it internally. I can't speak for Paul, but in my case the discussion had moved on. This does not mean we are not monitoring everything that is going on even outside of the standard office hours.

Cool beans... faith restored.

[MurghSharduk]

- DONT nerf Artemis

-DO buff AMS
-REMOVE (U)AC/20 Ghost heat, even if for one patch, and just for test. It really can not unbalance the game, buy could make AC/20 viable.

[Chados]

Here’s the thing. Chris is on record as claiming that they don’t like to do expansive changes all at once. Yet that is exactly what they’re doing when they simultaneously nerf Artemis AND buff ECM. They ought simply to buff ECM and leave Artemis alone, as the change to ECM will offset Artemis lock time and tracking strength bonuses. Chris appears to have forgotten why they nerfed ECM range years ago in the first place, because it was too strong. But now he wants to double buff it all at once. That doesn’t track with the claim that they don’t want to (1) invalidate weapon systems (AMS comes to mind) and (2) make big changes incrementally. We aren’t even getting a PTS with a change of this magnitude, it’s just going live, BAM without any consideration of how it’s going to affect the game on live. Why the rush?

[HammerMaster]

Heat cap schmeat cap.
Cool shots are an abberation / abortion and never should have been implemented the way they are now.
They SHOULD be costing tons/ slots.
You see the cry/animosity from just spending slots/tons on AMS? Imagine lore based coolant pods!
Plain as day pgi messed this up. It surely would attitude adjust beam boats people are trying to address now.

Also! And again!
ECM is an abortion/aberration and never should have been implemented the way it has been. (Free null signature)
Stop making your own up. You make it do what is in books (nullify Artemis target data etc. Not make invisible to sensors)

Edited by HammerMaster, 09 August 2018 - 06:09 AM.

[Marmon Rzohr]

Jman5, on 08 August 2018 - 01:39 PM, said:

Yeah this is what I'm worried about which is why I prefer the idea of something reasonable like a 50 heat capacity cap (base+internal HS), but then leave dissipation rate as is right now. I could certainly be wrong, but I think tinkering with just heat capacity is enough to bring down some of the excessive Alphastrikes without mucking with all the other balanced builds that aren't using 20-25 heatsinks.

I support this idea as well. A heat cap which is too low will simply make laser builds irrelevant and trading in general. There must be some interplay between burst/alpha damage and sustained DPS otherwise torso twisting will become mostly a thing of the past and we will have a stare-each-other-down meta kind of like Div 1 in Solaris.

[Khobai]

justcallme A S H, on 09 August 2018 - 12:37 AM, said:

The easiest adjustment for LRMs is just roll back the velocity buff they did not need.

No. They definitely needed the velocity buff. Because theyre supposed to be LONG range missiles. Not MEDIUM range missiles.

The whole reason they got a velocity buff was to help make them more effective in the range bracket theyre supposed to be effective in: LONG RANGE.

LRMs are supposed to be in the same approximate range bracket as the ERLL (LRM = 21 hexes, ERLL = 19 hexes). Of course, the x2 max range nonsense and range skills/quirks are still a huge problem, and ERLL gets way too much range compared to LRMs. But the other part of the problem was LRMs simply werent fast enough to reach the target at longer ranges without being laughably easy to dodge. The velocity buff helped with that somewhat.

I still maintain that the #1 problem with LRMs is the parasitic nature of indirect fire. Because mechs that indirect fire are not sharing armor and are leeching off teammates that are sharing armor. And I believe the best change for indirect LRMs is changing how the rewards are structured. Spotters/Taggers/Narcers should get much more of a reward for indirect LRMs, and the LRM boat itself should get less reward.

PGI also needs to reel in the max range on direct fire weapons. It should be like x1.6 instead of x2. ERLL having a max range of like 1700m-1800m has always been pretty dumb. And I think it gets upto 2000m for the CERLL with a max targeting computer which is even dumber. In MWO, LRMs are barely effective past 600m... when in actuality theyre supposed to outrange ERLL? MWO failed at that that translation.

And I mean common sense tells us the max ranges are too long when you can damage enemy mechs in their dropzone from your dropzone on certain maps. Why is that even a thing? Theyve given certain weapons way too much max range compared to the size of the maps.

Edited by Khobai, 09 August 2018 - 06:00 AM.

[Daggett]

Paul Inouye, on 07 August 2018 - 02:14 PM, said:

Where else do you the community think could help us with the laser vomit gulf?

I could imagine attacking what i think is the root of this and several other problems: TT-values for tonnage and slots on weapons/equipment. For instance 2-slot C-DHS play a big role on mitigating the high heat of clan-lasers, they are effectively neutralizing their major drawback.

I understand that you guys want to preserve as much of the lore as possible, but maybe in this case it could make sense to get rid of some TT/lore concepts.

The TT values for tonnage/slots are based on the lore idea that clans are superior to IS, but this idea does not translate well into a competitive FPS with equal team-sizes.
You tried your best to close the inherent gap between IS and clans with quirks, fixed equipment on omnis and increased spread on clan weapons like AC's and lasers.

This works well enough at least for me but i think you will always struggle to achieve the best possible (we know that perfect is unrealistic) balance when clan equipment is so much more compact and lightweight than the IS one.

So my proposal is to test the waters on the community by asking us how we stand to current TT-values for equipment. Maybe it turns out that we can still recognize the Battletech universe when for instance a c-gauss does not weight 3t less than the otherwise identical IS-one?

Paul Inouye, on 07 August 2018 - 03:08 PM, said:

I wanted to ask this question because I know there will be a lot of people who hate the idea of any type of negative quirk even if it's to tone down a few outlier 'Mechs for the benefit of the entire lineup. Just getting a feel for how it would be received here in this discussion.

Personally i'm totally fine with negative quirks. Again sticking to lore is a big problem here. While in TT things like high mounts and slim-/cone-shaped torsos do not matter, they greatly define a mech's overall power in MWO. Additionally you are kinda forced to implement extreme mechs like the PIR-1 with all it's 12 MG mounts to be compliant with lore. And to be honest i would not have preordered it with only 8MG mounts.

So when we say that positive quirks are needed to make underperforming mech-geometry viable then in my opinion it's only fair to apply negative ones on overperforming mech-geometry to bring them in line. From a rational viewpoint i think this would be much better than nerfing whole weapon systems or weapon-combinations just to keep some outliers in check, so i hope i'm not alone with my assessment. Nerfs and negative quirks do hurt, but sometimes they are the best solution.

While we are at it:
I would have preferred negative quirks on the Piranha instead of the nerf in disguise in form of it's cramped cockpit which forces me to switch FOV to prevent claustrophobia each time i want to play it...

Edited by Daggett, 09 August 2018 - 05:59 AM.

[Daurock]

Khobai, on 09 August 2018 - 05:31 AM, said:

No. They definitely needed the velocity buff. Because theyre supposed to be LONG range missiles. Not MEDIUM range missiles.

The whole reason they got a velocity buff was to help make them more effective in the range bracket theyre supposed to be effective in.

LRMs are supposed to be in the same exact range bracket as the ERLL. Of course, the x2 max range nonsense and range skills/quirks are still a huge problem, and ERLL gets way too much range compared to LRMs. But the other part of the problem was LRMs simply werent fast enough to reach the target at long range without being laughably easy to dodge. The velocity buff helped with that somewhat.

I still maintain that the #1 problem with LRMs is the parasitic nature of indirect fire. Because mechs that indirect fire are not sharing armor and are leeching off teammates that are sharing armor. And I believe the best change for indirect LRMs is changing how the rewards are structured. Spotters/Taggers/Narcers should get much more of a reward for indirect LRMs, and the LRM boat itself should get less reward.

Agreed. The velocity buff is needed not for indirect fire, but for direct fire. If anything, I'd prefer even more velocity, with even wider spread, and lower tracking than now. I.E. that LRM boat is a bit harder to dodge via cover, but won't DPS you down so fast if you can't get to cover.

I'd probably buff Tag, and artemis LOS spread bonuses though, so that if he DOES have LOS on you, you still get shredded, similar to what would happen to you if you get caught in the open by a dakka boat.

[SilentFenris]

Khobai, on 08 August 2018 - 07:56 PM, said:

truth be told ecm shouldnt even grant stealth AT ALL.

weve repeatedly asked for that "feature" to be removed

its way too good for an equipment that only weighs 1-1.5 tons. And making it cost 14 skill points instead of just removing ECM stealth was a terrible way to try and fix it. Because it just further punishes people for taking ECM, which shouldnt be unbalanced in the first place.

Agreed.

Khobai, on 08 August 2018 - 07:56 PM, said:

what should ecm do instead of granting stealth? it should jam enemy mechs from sharing sensor info with their teammates. it should create fake radar contacts

Agreed. Although interrupting enemy radar/sensors per the faction play/incursion jam effect would be more appropriate in my opinion and it is already coded in-game.

Khobai, on 08 August 2018 - 07:56 PM, said:

and possibly generate holographic projections of mechs.

NO. NO. NO. Unless MWO gets a complete recoding for optimization, the game-engine should not be handling 24 mechs AND fully-rendered decoys.

Khobai, on 08 August 2018 - 07:56 PM, said:

only stealth armor should grant stealth.

Agreed.

Edited by SilentFenris, 09 August 2018 - 06:52 AM.

[Jman5]

So I just want to make one final point for why I like the idea of a Heat Capacity Cap, but I don't like the idea of tacking on a Dissipation Buff.

Go build something like this:
https://mwo.smurfy-n...8cca1a66843b292

Then max Heat Gen, Heat Containment, and Cool run.

Now count how long after your cooldown for those HLL end until you can fire again.

It's pretty quick right? 25 DHS with skills makes your heat dissipation something like 4.675 HPS. If you guys bump up Heat dissipation, builds such as this suddenly might become 100% heat efficient.

This is why on the one hand I'm excited to try out a capacity cap, but I'm also hesitant to see heat dissipation buffed.

If you guys cap Heat Capacity to 50 and leave Heat Dissipation alone, I think we would wind up with a more targeted rebalance. Again, I think the concern about off-target builds getting screwed is largely misplaced. As long as you include the 10 internal DHS toward Capacity limit it will only very minimally impact the performance of DPS builds because most of those builds carry very few external heatsinks (if any).

However if you do something extreme like drop capacity down to 30, and then jack dissipation through the roof you're going to wind up effecting every build significantly. Worst case, you're going to see-saw the other way and overpower DPS builds.

Edited by Jman5, 09 August 2018 - 07:00 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Jman5, on 09 August 2018 - 06:58 AM, said:

So I just want to make one final point for why I like the idea of a Heat
If you guys cap Heat Capacity to 50 and leave Heat Dissipation alone, I think we would wind up with a more targeted rebalance. Again, I think the concern about off-target builds getting screwed is largely misplaced. As long as you include the 10 internal DHS toward Capacity limit it will only very minimally impact the performance of DPS builds because most of those builds carry very few external heatsinks (if any).

However if you do something extreme like drop capacity down to 30, and then jack dissipation through the roof you're going to wind up effecting every build significantly. Worst case, you're going to see-saw the other way and overpower DPS builds.

If you lock cap at 50 and then don't at least buff dissipation for IS, what you will see is the death of laser vomit on IS Heavies. When one IS 52 point alpha takes you to 80% with 20 DHS at the baseline, and it takes 11.5 seconds to fire again and the Clan 'Mech gets a 54 alpha taking it to 86% with 26 DHS at the baseline while still only taking 9.7 seconds to fire again, there is a problem. It becomes more evident when you start swapping to cMPL boats, when you throw Gauss builds into the mix, and when you examine ballistic builds being same heat with less DHS.

What the dynamic heat cap does is effectively blunt the Clan dissipation advantage. By locking the cap, and locking it low, you place that advantage on center stage.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 09 August 2018 - 07:29 AM.

[Daurock]

Jman5, on 09 August 2018 - 06:58 AM, said:

So I just want to make one final point for why I like the idea of a Heat Capacity Cap, but I don't like the idea of tacking on a Dissipation Buff.

Go build something like this:
https://mwo.smurfy-n...8cca1a66843b292

Then max Heat Gen, Heat Containment, and Cool run.

Now count how long after your cooldown for those HLL end until you can fire again.

It's pretty quick right? 25 DHS with skills makes your heat dissipation something like 4.675 HPS. If you guys bump up Heat dissipation, builds such as this suddenly might become 100% heat efficient.

This is why on the one hand I'm excited to try out a capacity cap, but I'm also hesitant to see heat dissipation buffed.

If you guys cap Heat Capacity to 50 and leave Heat Dissipation alone, I think we would wind up with a more targeted rebalance. Again, I think the concern about off-target builds getting screwed is largely misplaced. As long as you include the 10 internal DHS toward Capacity limit it will only very minimally impact the performance of DPS builds because most of those builds carry very few external heatsinks (if any).

However if you do something extreme like drop capacity down to 30, and then jack dissipation through the roof you're going to wind up effecting every build significantly. Worst case, you're going to see-saw the other way and overpower DPS builds.

I doubt even dropping the heat to 50 cap will do a lot to get alphas noticeably lower - It gets problematic when you can mix in a single Gauss with a set of Medium Lasers. Do it on a mech like the Huntsman, Ebon Jag, or Hellbringer, and you can generate those 60ish point alphas just as easily, and keep the heat spike well under 50 (and even under 40 with just a set of meds.) They even now have better sustain than pure vomit, and if you pump the dissipation, those builds will just become even more repeatable than now. Essentially, so long as clan can fire 6 ERMLs at 7 damage each, they can hit 57 alpha with 1 gauss, and 72 with twin gauss, changing little from today. In order to actually remove that, they're going to have to dramatically be lowering the heat cap even from the base 50 that we have now, to levels that really start to mess with other builds.

Or, if the goal is to lower alphas, they can just lower alphas, (Starting with the heavy weapons, AKA gauss) and add buffs where mechs get left behind. Simplicity, and all that.

Edited by Daurock, 09 August 2018 - 11:29 AM.

[process]

Jman5, on 09 August 2018 - 06:58 AM, said:

So I just want to make one final point for why I like the idea of a Heat Capacity Cap, but I don't like the idea of tacking on a Dissipation Buff.

Go build something like this:
https://mwo.smurfy-n...8cca1a66843b292

Then max Heat Gen, Heat Containment, and Cool run.

Now count how long after your cooldown for those HLL end until you can fire again.

It's pretty quick right? 25 DHS with skills makes your heat dissipation something like 4.675 HPS. If you guys bump up Heat dissipation, builds such as this suddenly might become 100% heat efficient.

This is why on the one hand I'm excited to try out a capacity cap, but I'm also hesitant to see heat dissipation buffed.

If you guys cap Heat Capacity to 50 and leave Heat Dissipation alone, I think we would wind up with a more targeted rebalance. Again, I think the concern about off-target builds getting screwed is largely misplaced. As long as you include the 10 internal DHS toward Capacity limit it will only very minimally impact the performance of DPS builds because most of those builds carry very few external heatsinks (if any).

However if you do something extreme like drop capacity down to 30, and then jack dissipation through the roof you're going to wind up effecting every build significantly. Worst case, you're going to see-saw the other way and overpower DPS builds.

Simplified math excluding the effects of duration and duration, heat gen and cool run skills:

An alpha with that build is 64 damage for 57.2 heat (76% cap). A dissipation rate of 4.25 h/s results in 13.5 seconds to fully cool off.

A reduced capacity of 50 means you'd have to drop 2 cERML or 1 HLL. With only 2 cERML and 2 HLL, plus 2 DHS in exchange, you get an alpha of 50 for 44.6 heat (89% cap). Dissipation is 4.55 h/s (9.8 seconds).

If dissipation were increased slightly, let's say 10%, that dissipation becomes 5 h/s (8.9 seconds).

So either we have:

1. 64 damage alpha every 13.5 seconds (effective DPS of 4.74)
2. 50 damage alpha every 9.8 seconds (DPS = 5.1)
3. 50 damage alpha every 8.9 seconds (DPS = 5.6)

I think scenario 3 is a fair place to start. DPS is improved, alphas are still strong, but you have to expose yourself more often, and as you say, weapons that are already DPS-oriented improved as well. Overall I think it bring all weapon systems closer together without completely gutting energy builds.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Would PGI be willing to implement weapon balance changes mid-patch cycle to make it more iterative/more responsive to trends on live? This might help speed up the goal of balance or at least change the meta more often. I remember an entire summer of PPC+gauss that people complained about until the "fix" was ghost heat. I know something is always needing buffed and something else nerfed, but a month can be a long time to see any perceived changes and, in reality, it's rarely only a month before a change is implemented on the same system. You can see this with quirks as well. With so many mechs and variants, there are many that were balanced 3 years ago to the contemporary standards and no longer are. Someone pointed out the differences in agility between even 35 ton mechs. At the time, the Firestarter reigned supreme, but nowadays is no longer played because other mechs have come out. I also feel that over time, you've had different people putting their hand in the pot and that's why consistency is all over the map. As for the Piranha, give that mech a negative mg cooldown quirk, but counter it with a +range quirk or something. It's really a one-trick pony, so you can't take away the mg boating, but instead of punishing the whole mg line, just punish this mech. It's an outlier, and nothing else ever will be.

[Bidetlol]

Hello,

- what are your plans for subpar or just average clan mech (about 60% of clans mech in fact imo), if you nerf clan weaponry in any way?

I understand that you want to nerf the differences between IS and top tier clan laser vomit, but the others are just bad or average with the current values, so how are you going to nerf the actual situation without killing all the others?

- Do you plan to buff the JJ? If you look, a lot of subpar mech are the ones with low tonnage and JJ (EXE, etc...), I understand that you nerfed the Poptart gameplay, but I have the impression it was just too much and would add some different gameplay to the game. With the actual DPS I dont think it would be OP since theses weapons (ppc, gauss) have also changed a lot



Thanks

Edited by Bidetlol, 09 August 2018 - 09:35 AM.