..... because the matchmaker is assuming you're going to perform at a level set by your use of direct fire, which works better.
At this point you sound like a total new player!
You know that the matchmaker only looks for the level (1-5) you have and only if the valves are not open.
Would be nice if the matchmaker would look for wl/kd/kmmd/bv/.....
If you read my post, you have the numbers to see that your claim is not right,
maybe you could say "most times" or for "the most people" to make it not false.
At this point you sound like a total new player!
You know that the matchmaker only looks for the level (1-5) you have and only if the valves are not open.
Would be nice if the matchmaker would look for wl/kd/kmmd/bv/.....
If you read my post, you have the numbers to see that your claim is not right,
maybe you could say "most times" or for "the most people" to make it not false.
The MM looks at your PSR, but uses Tiers to break up where it draws the line so it's not matching T4 level PSR (hence why it's an 'xp bar') with T1 PSR players to get a high/low to reach an average.
As to how often, no. 100% of the time. If you're not able to use direct fire as effectively as others is a personal performance issue. The weapons themselves are static - their values are constant for every player. If someone is bad at something that's on them, not the weapon. If someone 'gits gud' then they'll do better with direct fire than LRMs, barring a physical disability or similar issue.
Your stats genuinely show that your W/L is lower than it should be for the damage you do. If your personal W/L is still higher with LRMs than with direct fire and that's not going to change or improve as you gain in skill from practice, etc. then it would be more accurate to say 'players who specialize in LRMs reduce their teams odds of winning relative to any player with the same average match score but using direct fire'.
So, again, taking LRMs reduces the odds of your team winning relative to direct fire.
Play what you want, do what you enjoy. Just be honest about it. The failures of LRMs to drive wins isn't a claim but an observation based on hundreds of thousands of player matches among tens of thousands of players for years and years and years. It's also reaffirmed by the people who actually win the most often, which is the only authoritative opinion on the subject of what is best at winning.
LRMs are not and have never been a force multiplier. This is absolutely false. LRMs don't do more damage than other weapon types - they don't multiply any force. They leech locks from other players. It's not that LRMs let you shoot more people it's that they let you get away with not putting yourself into the line of fire to take shots, which in turn weakens your team.
That's the whole issue.
LRM use reduces the functional ability of your team to apply focused, lethal force (concentrated damage) while spreading enemy damage among as many targets (teammates) as possible. Compounding this is the impact of AMS, ECM, using cover and just moving to within 180m to nullify the firepower of a team members weaponry relative to direct fire weapons.
That's why LRMs don't win as much. They are not a force multiplier. They are not artillery. They are a weaker weapon, easily countered that rewards behavior which reduces the teams ability to win.
LRMs are not and have never been a force multiplier. This is absolutely false. LRMs don't do more damage than other weapon types - they don't multiply any force. They leech locks from other players. It's not that LRMs let you shoot more people it's that they let you get away with not putting yourself into the line of fire to take shots, which in turn weakens your team.
That's the whole issue.
LRM use reduces the functional ability of your team to apply focused, lethal force (concentrated damage) while spreading enemy damage among as many targets (teammates) as possible. Compounding this is the impact of AMS, ECM, using cover and just moving to within 180m to nullify the firepower of a team members weaponry relative to direct fire weapons.
That's why LRMs don't win as much. They are not a force multiplier. They are not artillery. They are a weaker weapon, easily countered that rewards behavior which reduces the teams ability to win.
But they can apply focused lethal force and you don't even have to spread damage among the team members. How often do you play this game anyway? Haven't you seen the teams mowing down peeps with LRMs just using sneaky spotters? There are videos of this stuff. Sure it doesn't happen all the time and like all LRM things it is situational. But the focused fire is sick when it happens.
You can say direct fire is superior all you want to. The only time that it is weak is when you getting mass lurmed and you can't get enough cover or find the spotter.
LocationFrom a distance in an Urbie with a HAG, delivering righteous fury to heretics.
Posted 11 August 2018 - 08:57 PM
OmniFail, on 11 August 2018 - 05:42 PM, said:
But they can apply focused lethal force and you don't even have to spread damage among the team members. How often do you play this game anyway? Haven't you seen the teams mowing down peeps with LRMs just using sneaky spotters? There are videos of this stuff. Sure it doesn't happen all the time and like all LRM things it is situational. But the focused fire is sick when it happens.
You can say direct fire is superior all you want to. The only time that it is weak is when you getting mass lurmed and you can't get enough cover or find the spotter.
I don't think it's justifiable to make a weapon system **** most the time just because it's tolerable a few times.
That TheB33f's Maximum LRM, that is doozy, i admit. But that does not represent majority of the games, or what happens in high levels of play, such as Comp. Those videos are just a result of experienced people trolling.
You know what do represent it? Stats.
Edited by The6thMessenger, 11 August 2018 - 08:57 PM.
The6thMessenger, on 11 August 2018 - 08:57 PM, said:
I don't think it's justifiable to make a weapon system **** most the time just because it's tolerable a few times.
That TheB33f's Maximum LRM, that is doozy, i admit. But that does not represent majority of the games, or what happens in high levels of play, such as Comp. Those videos are just a result of experienced people trolling.
You know what do represent it? Stats.
I am not sure what stats you mean.
But when comparing to competent players, that play mainly solo drops they seem pretty well balanced over the course of several seasons. You know except for the kill to death ratio.
LocationFrom a distance in an Urbie with a HAG, delivering righteous fury to heretics.
Posted 11 August 2018 - 10:36 PM
OmniFail, on 11 August 2018 - 10:25 PM, said:
I am not sure what stats you mean.
But when comparing to competent players, that play mainly solo drops they seem pretty well balanced over the course of several seasons. You know except for the kill to death ratio.
Notice that the guys actually have better WLR than any of us. Except Vellron2005, he's a primary LRM player. A different approach of this would be, maybe you have so much skill that LRMs are holding you back hmm? As high as your stats might be, if you are the same skill as El Bandito or others that have high WLR and KDR, would that mean your KDR and WLR skyrockets when you were a primary direct fire, and thereby show a problem with LRMs in the first place? Unless of course you admit that you aren't really that high-skilled as your stats you claim to prove.
Edited by The6thMessenger, 12 August 2018 - 06:15 AM.
But they can apply focused lethal force and you don't even have to spread damage among the team members. How often do you play this game anyway? Haven't you seen the teams mowing down peeps with LRMs just using sneaky spotters? There are videos of this stuff. Sure it doesn't happen all the time and like all LRM things it is situational. But the focused fire is sick when it happens.
You can say direct fire is superior all you want to. The only time that it is weak is when you getting mass lurmed and you can't get enough cover or find the spotter.
Focused fire happens with direct-fire weapons, too, and deletes mechs even faster.
The thing with LRMs is that it allows someone who is not in position for an angle to get their own shot... to at least have a shot (which is better than no shot at all). Maybe not the best quality shot, but at least something. If you're not that good at positioning to assist teammates in shooting at the enemies they're engaged with, then LRMs somewhat compensate for not being in the right place at the right time. The problem is the LRM skill ceiling. Even if you get your own line-of-sight for a direct-fire LRM shot, you're not rewarded well enough for it.
With direct-fire weapons, you can learn position yourself better, so that you are more often in position to shoot at what your teammates are shooting at. The better you get at being in the right place at the right time, the more that direct-fire weapons pull ahead of LRMs.
Consider that many experienced LRM users manage something like a <40% hit rate, and it's clear that even though LRMs can get off shots that aren't possible with direct-fire weapons, these are still highly inefficient shots. Now sure, if an enemy team is passive and keeps letting you bleed off your heat to repeat these volleys and attrit them to death, it can work, but if the enemy team is aggressive and forces the issue, these kind of inefficient shots are going to lose out against much more efficient direct-fire damage (in terms of effective heat-per-damage-on-target's vitals, and well as effective damage-per-second-on-target's vitals).
To explain that last bit: there's plenty of damage you can do to a mech that ultimately had zero impact on how it ended up dying. All that damage is essentially wasted damage, nothing more than stat padding. If I scrape 40 damage across all four of an opponent's arms and legs, yet the arms&legs never had their armor breached, and ultimately he dies from getting both side torsos popped, then that 40 damage I did was completely meaningless.
Personally, even with direct fire weapons, I know that I do plenty of meaningless damage. I'll end up desperately trying to land that last CT hit on a cored enemy mech, only to hit LT, then hit RT, then finally nail the CT for the kill. Meanwhile I just wasted ammunition, time, and built up heat firing shots that ended up doing meaningless damage.
Yet even so, there's times when I manage to aim properly and bring a target down efficiently. The potential is always there.
That potential just doesn't exist with LRMs. It's always going to be spread, and on top of that the slow velocity (compared to direct-fire weapons) gives the intended victim plenty of time to react and twist the incoming missile barrage.
Hell, even SRMs which are normally spread have the potential to be practically pin-point damage if you get within 50 meters. And if you face-hug, it all goes into one hitbox.
I'd love to see LRMs get a complete revamp of their core mechanics, to the point where a skilled LRM user can bend their missiles around cover to hit people like this:
Raise the skill ceiling for LRM use, let really talented pilots pull off some amazing trick shots with them, instead of simply locking onto a red box and letting fly and praying that it hits. Let the shooter control the degree of spread, they can narrow the spread but at the risk of missing completely, or they can hedge and widen the spread to guarantee at least some missiles hitting, but less focused damage. There's all kinds of creative ways to make LRMs interesting and unique to use.
Then again, this is PGI we're talking about. A major revamp of LRM mechanics is probably not in the cards.
We used to be able to do trick shots before they tightened the lock cone last time. Now they’re dropping it again, plus ensuring that Artemis doesn’t help gain and keep locks. The objective is to make you stare to keep a lock. SSRM boats won’t be able to do it and keep on the move, and that’s the reason for the change. They really don’t care about the collateral damage to LRMs, and they assume that all LRM users boat 80 tubes, stare from 750 meters away, and don’t use Artemis anyway. Chris thinks that is the only way anyone uses LRMs, and will not hear anything different.
As said, this pass is focused on the ease of use and the force multipliers, but this does not mean we are against further changes. So feel free to discuss. As Paul has said in a previous podcast, only so far I'm allowed to push a month on certain things. So we aren't ruling out that we may see further changes to LRMs in the future.
LRM's are a legitimate support weapon and should be part of the MWO universe, as they have always been part of the game. I do boat LRM's as an older player with slower reactions than the kids out there it allows me to have a role within the battlefield. LRMing is a skill, keeping locks, following the flow and keeping up with team mates. PGI should change the point system to reward damage but not kills, encourage LRM's to hurt and let the brawlers get the kills. My biggest bug bear is strikes that do huge damage, too early and ruin fun as your mech is knackered before the fight starts (PGI should look at these no weight, little skill and heavy damage 'weapons').
LRMs not support weapons ?
Humbug.
LRMs do nnot need direct LoF at ground level allowing you to fire on targets even if the firing lane is blocked...be it by friends or enemies.
On some maps that is not a problem and in some it is.
Further more due to most maps utilising chokepoints + firing lane designs (at ground level atleast )...LRMs allow you to switch targets without relocating, unless the choke points are tunnels or there are large vertical obstacles in the way.
And flight time, and the possibility of your damage being countered (ams), and in the need to have a lock, and even in flight path at times, because even though it gives the advantage of going over terrain in some scenarios, that same flight path can send a volley into a rock or hillside just as easily.
In a straight up fight pretty much every gun will have LRMs dead to rights, LRMs need teammates. Both it and AMS are team items, if everyone carried at least one ams and one lrm, every single opportunity provided by scouting could be maximised by that damage potential, and conversely every volley of lrms is better countered by a team that sees them coming and stacks their ams to protect the guy getting hit, or draws those lrms across his teams ams more effectively.
None of this is reason for anyone to boat LRMs though, and it is perhaps the single most selfish thing to do without prior coordination due to its requirements as a weapon to be utilised.
Darakor Stormwind, on 08 August 2018 - 08:44 AM, said:
I am fine with the Artillery comparison, if LRMs work like artillery. Someone in view of the enemy calls in a grid coordinate, you fire at said grid coordinate. If the enemy is still there, you hit, if he isn't, you don't. Maybe LRMs should just go to wherever the person being targeted is at that moment in time and should only be locked on as long as someone actually holds a tag to keep the target information up to day. Exactly like missiles work today. Opinions?
No worries. Sounds legit. How about "You" go stand out into the open and TAG an enemy target and then let me know when it is good to fire and "I" will keep firing my LRM's at your target for as long as "you" stand out in the open with your TAG on the target. Fair enough? Sounds legit right?
It’s the stacking of them, or any other weapon that’s the issue.
As I’ve previuosly stated the simplest way to deal with this or any other ammo based system is to introduce a jamming mechanic where the duration of the jam increases (potentially exponentially) when the player equipped a mech with more than 2 of a particular weapon system.
PGI never ever has adressed the boating problematic - every balance pass has led to more and bigger boating.
PGI never ever has adressed the idirect fire problematic - every balance pass has led to more indirect fire bcs direct fire sucks so much for the matter that you have the biggest exposure time of all weapons for direct fire application in all MWO using LRM.
PGI makes aiming harder - utmost ridiculous - the more you are away the better you can aim bcs the the lower is the angle and speed of the evasion movement of your target promoting even more indirect fire.
Every single thing they did ever was counterproductive and the coming patches afaik the patchnotes will not adress that but make it worse.
I dont believe anymore in PGIs capability or willingness to adress real problems instead of scapegoats that are handed to them by Players with an Agenda or hadled by PGI with an Agenda in mind.
Players will find anyway the exploits left and game them only to embarass PGIs feeble attemps even more...
Godspeed Balance - we never came to know you...
Edited by Thorqemada, 20 September 2018 - 12:37 PM.
3
MischiefSC, on 11 August 2018 - 06:13 AM, said:
