100 replies to this topic

[HammerMaster]

OZHomerOZ, on 21 August 2018 - 03:30 AM, said:

Yeah but balancing on such a skill imbalance the balance of weapons is unbalanced.
FW have not a MM, and group Queues MM is almost the same

There is no viable defense to skill unbalance


SoloQ is much better for balancing and even its MM is breaking down fast

You cant make a weapon that will provide a viable defense to skill imbalance

Impossibru

Point here sir is 12 LRM 12 AC10s 12 Large Laser. The multiplier of coordination trumps any weapons perceived efficacy.
So for all the LRM cry, the people who malinged it the most now used it to great effect and caused MORE LRM cry.

Edited by HammerMaster, 21 August 2018 - 04:27 AM.

[Abaddun]

With a community as toxic and fractured as this, it's no wonder PGI keep swinging back and forth with balance. Rather than adapt, the vast majority of players will scream bloody murder and demand the changes be redacted, even though they address problems the very same people complained about weeks earlier.

Rather than being outright hostile, take a step back, look at the big picture, and ask "Is my feedback going to be constructive

The6thMessenger, on 20 August 2018 - 03:18 PM, said:

This is dumb. Sure you could addess the preemptive cooling before overheating, but that's just about it. You could still cool 14 heat, and with Clan Lasers having about 4.5 - 5.5 seconds cooldown, you still took away 14 heat before their next shot.



You know, if you really want to insist that -50% lock-cone, at least reduce time to lock by half as well. The point of homing weapon system is that they are easy to land, the point of streaks is that it's easy to shoot down lights.

LRMs doesn't deserve any more nerfs, it needs god damn reworks. ATMs have really powerful close-range damage, and useless long-range damage, and if the main issue is the Streaks, perhaps making them stream-fire?



Congratulations, now Artemis is a damn waste of space. No, it's not a worth while upgrade with your changes. We need lock to land LRMs, and the lock-speed and tracking bonus is one of the key benefits of Artemis. Reduction of spread isn't really that important in comparison considering that LRMs would inevitably spread all around anyways, that's more of the SRM's stuff. So aside from being devalued for SRMs, now it's a **** upgrade for LRMs.

You know what would have been useful? If Artemis discriminates between Direct and Indirect fire. Apparently there wasn't such bonuses, no wonder you have to backpedal. Hows about fix that mechanically first?



Well, i guess that's fine. But considering that you also nuked the hell out of the homing-missiles' damn lock-time, kind of pointless.



Actually, put the NARC on 10 seconds. Unfortunately, not with how LRMs are made right now. It would be more appropriate to make LRMs direct-fire oriented, and would need NARC and TAG for effective indirect-fire, and then make NARC CD on 10 seconds because LRMs are now powerful.



You know what would actually work better? bonus 50% lock speed. That being said, 10% velocity bonus is okay, but considering ATMs are already performing well, if not what i want mechanically.



That's not exactly relevant, considering that you don't need to maintain visuals for the flying missiles to land anyways. What the lock-cone will affect is getting effective target at all, and what would have been a prudent adjustment is the bonus 50% lock-speed to offset the 50% reduction in cone.



Now, i don't really have anything to comment to the other quirk adjustments on the other mechs, cause i don't exactly use them.

The Centurion A however, I don't use heavy ballistic there, because it just makes more sense to mass missiles, it's not exactly a platform for AC20 due to it's lower-arm actuator. The 5% from missile cd and then to heat-gen quirks could be a nice touch, but if you really want to raise it above, you should have put the missile CD quirk to 10%, and still have the heat-gen reduction.

1.The coolshot nerf addresses the problem of laser builds being dominant, why would you complain about something that predominantly hits one type of build that's drastically outperforming others? It's not like it's going to gimp non vomit puilds and it doesn't outright cripple Clan lasers used in moderation.

2. Heaven forbid you have to actually look in the direction of a target you want to shoot. And no homing weapons shouldn't essentially play the game for you, there needs to be some player input. And no, streaks shouldn't be an automatic death sentence for a light mech, especially if I'm good enough to outpilot the streak carrier. A 50% lock speed boost to streak makes weaving inbetween cover and break LOS meaningless. Believe it or not, there are other light mechs than the piranha, and I'd like to keep enjoying my time piloting them.

3.you are literally complaining about the most piss weak nerfs I have ever seen Artemis is still an almost unconditional upgrade if you have slots, which almost all LRM boats have after sacrificing a fraction of their ammo. Lock time for LRMs is pretty meaningless with the absolute slew of tools you have to help assist spotting. Do you do what boosts lockspeed? TAG, NARC, SKill points. Maybe considering positioning yourself where you can establish a TAG lock rather than sit in the backfield.maybe consider fielding LRM on a lighter, faster mech so you can move onto a flank.

4. There are other medium mechs built to boat missiles. The Ballistic CD buff helps establish the Centurian as a medium range skirmisher.

Edited by Abaddun, 21 August 2018 - 04:14 AM.

[Mystere]

HammerMaster, on 21 August 2018 - 04:13 AM, said:

So for all the LRM cry, the people who malinged it the most now used it to great effect and caused MORE LRM cry.

There is a word for that. I think it starts with "H".

Abaddun, on 21 August 2018 - 04:13 AM, said:

With a community as toxic and fractured as this, it's no wonder PGI keep swinging back and forth with balance.

As I have been saying for years now, at least half of the problems with this game can be traced back to the extremely whiny player base. <shrugs>

Edited by Mystere, 21 August 2018 - 04:33 AM.

[Khobai]

PGI created the whiny player base though. They arnt exactly inspiring faith in their players... not with patches like this last one.

[Abaddun]

Khobai, on 21 August 2018 - 04:43 AM, said:

PGI created the whiny player base though. They arnt exactly inspiring faith in their players... not with patches like this last one.

PGI arn't gimping spread, damage or CD. LRMs are just as useable as before the patch became live because all the tools to assist LRM boats are still in place. Oh no, you have to wait another 0.5 secs for a lock when using Artemis. Oh the humanity.

I don't find anything amiss in PGI's logic. To me, it seems sound.

[Kroete]

Abaddun, on 21 August 2018 - 05:03 AM, said:

PGI arn't gimping spread, damage or CD. LRMs are just as useable as before the patch became live because all the tools to assist LRM boats are still in place. Oh no, you have to wait another 0.5 secs for a lock when using Artemis. Oh the humanity.

I don't find anything amiss in PGI's logic. To me, it seems sound.

Artemis was for the locktime to get your own locks without getting cored, now its:
If i need to stare more, i will get cored, so i remove artemis,
safe my armor and stay back and rain with 4 tons more ammo.
Should i also mention that bending lrms is gone, the last arc-nerf was bad, now you cant bend anymore,
means if there is a small obstacle you will hit it with lrms, or stay futher away to clear it.

Great patch for skillless, indirect massspamming of lrms,
people cry about lrms users staying back and not sharing armor,
pgi brings a patch where you need to stay back even more
and removes the option to use lrms at low range with your own locks without getting cored,
but changes nothing on indirect massspamming.

Like the narc nerf,
around 1 minute of narcduratuion (raven and some points in the treee) is more a problem then the cooldown.

Edited by Kroete, 21 August 2018 - 05:21 AM.

[HammerMaster]

This is 100% counter to what good LRM users and LRM haters called for TOGETHER!

Which again was!
Nerf out of LOS buff in LOS

This will hurt lrm at any range.
Anyone trying to use at min to medium range will be CT wrecked for staring down.
The exact thing asked for (get users closer to the brawl) will not happen.
The exact thing asked not to do (parasitic 800 to 1000 meter firing) is encouraged.

[The6thMessenger]

Abaddun, on 21 August 2018 - 04:13 AM, said:

1.The coolshot nerf addresses the problem of laser builds being dominant, why would you complain about something that predominantly hits one type of build that's drastically outperforming others? It's not like it's going to gimp non vomit puilds and it doesn't outright cripple Clan lasers used in moderation.

First off, it doesn't. Lasers used in laser vomits are well over 3 seconds of CD, add in the laser duration and they pretty much still cool 14 heat, allowing them to fire the next volley as early regardless. If anything, it only addresses the preemptive cooling, but really amounts to practically little. The point of coolshot is to let out another hot-stuff early, and if you haven't noticed, their changes hardly addresses a thing -- so it's dumb.

You know what would have been effective? Cooling 24 heat over 12 seconds -- its still worth our money and cools an adequate amount of heat, but it wouldn't be at an insane rate of dissipation that effectively allows really hot alphas in quick successions.

Abaddun, on 21 August 2018 - 04:13 AM, said:

2. Heaven forbid you have to actually look in the direction of a target you want to shoot. And no homing weapons shouldn't essentially play the game for you, there needs to be some player input.

And no, streaks shouldn't be an automatic death sentence for a light mech, especially if I'm good enough to outpilot the streak carrier. A 50% lock speed boost to streak makes weaving inbetween cover and break LOS meaningless. Believe it or not, there are other light mechs than the piranha, and I'd like to keep enjoying my time piloting them.

There's more to the game than aiming, such as positioning. And as far as i'm concerned, be it 45 degree, 25 degree, or 12.5 degree of cone to lock, you still need to put your reticle at the general direction of your target.

I agree that streaks shouldn't be a death-sentence to a light mech, but merely a counter. That being said, it's stupid to blanket nerf every other homing weapons to achieve that. It's ******* dumb.

Abaddun, on 21 August 2018 - 04:13 AM, said:

3.you are literally complaining about the most piss weak nerfs I have ever seen Artemis is still an almost unconditional upgrade if you have slots, which almost all LRM boats have after sacrificing a fraction of their ammo. Lock time for LRMs is pretty meaningless with the absolute slew of tools you have to help assist spotting. Do you do what boosts lockspeed? TAG, NARC, SKill points. Maybe considering positioning yourself where you can establish a TAG lock rather than sit in the backfield.maybe consider fielding LRM on a lighter, faster mech so you can move onto a flank.

Lol, just lol. I'm not sure if we're playing the same game and weapon systems.

First off, I don't care about how many nerfs you might have seen, we're discussing about the potential impact of said changes in game as it is currently, in which we -- the experienced -- could provide a properly educated prediction, and by that we predicted that LRMs are nerfed to the ground as a result of this change in Artemis.

You obviously don't know what you're talking about, so let me break this down for you:

You need lock to effectively land LRMs, dumb-fire is either being lucky or target being extra dumber than usual, thus getting faster lock means getting out LRMs faster to respond to targets. Another facet of this is that LRMs takes usually a long time to land, that means there's plenty of chances to break lock and the subsequent job of trying to reacquire lock -- you need constant lock to land your LRMs by the way. And now with the changes in the Lock-Cone, that means that you'd be breaking lock a lot more frequently, and the reduced Lock-Speed means it's even harder to get locks.

So the crux of this nerf is that Artemis is not only hard to get locks, it's even hard to maintain locks -- effectively nerfing every other homing weapon to oblivion.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 21 August 2018 - 02:11 PM.

[Gen Lee]

They would have been better off working with last October's patch and making minor adjustments. Hack n Slash balance changes usually aren't a good idea in any game. I've been using ATMs on some builds, and I prefer them over LRMs. Nerfing ATMs, or even LOS LRMs, isn't what we need, and certainly not what we were asking for. I can see NARC getting a longer cooldown, but altogether removing Artemis' quicker lock-on and better tracking is just a bad idea. We've already nerfed the missile spread of Artemis and ATMs back in October when they changed the ATMs baseline spread "to correspond with the changes to the Artemis Upgrade described earlier".

https://mwomercs.com...14137-18oct2017

ATMs were already nerfed regarding the previous changes to Artemis and missle spread, removing their other properties just make them a bad LRM, with less health, flat trajectory, same lock time. If I'm using ATMs, I prefer to get my own locks by targeting enemies I can see, to get quicker locks, to get better target tracking, so I can fire and get back to cover. ATMs also weigh more and take up more space than LRMs, not to mention they have a lower velocity.

These changes pretty much encourage the worst kind of LRM play, and completely wreck ATM usage. Did they put a drunk monkey in charge of balance changes? I know that monkey, gives the worst advice on taxes.

Edited by Gen Lee, 21 August 2018 - 06:00 AM.

[dario03]

El Bandito, on 20 August 2018 - 11:06 PM, said:

There is no reason whatsoever on picking IS SSRMs post patch. Far better just to use SRMs instead. At least Clan SSRMs have the extra range to shoot before the light mech gets close.

They still have the benefit of all hitting as long as you don't shoot right before the target goes into cover. And like I said if they want to give them something then they can come up with something that helps them against bigger targets. The weapon has needed a rebalance/rework forever, having them be a nearly auto aimed anti light weapon that is bad against the bigger mechs never made sense.

[Khobai]

dario03, on 21 August 2018 - 08:09 AM, said:

The weapon has needed a rebalance/rework forever, having them be a nearly auto aimed anti light weapon that is bad against the bigger mechs never made sense.

how do you fix that though?

the only thing I can think of is to add an armorpiercing characteristic to the weapon that makes its damage scale up based on the tonnage of the target

that way the base damage of streaks can be turned down so theyre less effective vs lights. but then the damage would scale up vs heavier mechs.

that would in theory make streaks roughly the same effectiveness vs all weight classes without being too strong against lights.

Edited by Khobai, 21 August 2018 - 08:21 AM.

[dario03]

Khobai, on 21 August 2018 - 08:20 AM, said:

how do you fix that though?

the only thing I can think of is to add an armorpiercing characteristic to the weapon that makes its damage scale up based on the tonnage of the target

that way the base damage of streaks can be turned down so theyre less effective vs lights. but then the damage would scale up vs heavier mechs.

That's one way, or another if we can make them act differently against different sized targets would be with the spread. Lower damage and make them spread a lot vs smaller mechs, more torso focused on bigger mechs.

Or they could make it so not all streaks work when fired and base it on target size and speed. Streaks were made to be an ammo saving system, if the system detected that not all missiles would hit then it wouldn't fire. And how often do you get all of a csrm36 shot to hit a strafing locust at 160kph? Make it so smaller faster targets cause some launchers to not fire, but still go into cooldown.

Or if that's to much work, then for now just lower the damage and velocity. Faster cool down so the dps isn't hurt to bad or at all, maybe even buffed. That would at least help lights by letting them retreat without taking a giant alpha.

Edited by dario03, 21 August 2018 - 08:33 AM.

[Joshua McEvedy]

Quote

ECM
ECM effect radius increased to 120 meters (from 90 meters.)

Design Notes: The previous ECM range was a bit too restrictive which often found ECM 'Mechs utilizing the system as a personal cloaking device with the team assistance / anchor position too restrictive. We want to provide a small boost to the radius to reward ECM 'Mechs being utilized as team anchors in which they can be screened from incoming LRM fire.

Which is a 180 degree reversal from what Paul said two years ago when he nerfed ECM range from the original 120 meters down to 90 meters----"ECM was not meant to cover the entire force."

Remember that, Paul? Now we're back to 120 meters, which is where it should have stayed in the first place.

[dario03]

Joshua McEvedy, on 21 August 2018 - 08:31 AM, said:

Which is a 180 degree reversal from what Paul said two years ago when he nerfed ECM range from the original 120 meters down to 90 meters----"ECM was not meant to cover the entire force."

Remember that, Paul? Now we're back to 120 meters, which is where it should have stayed in the first place.

Was originally 180m.

[Khobai]

ECM shouldnt even grant stealth at all. period.

[brroleg]

Shadowomega1, on 20 August 2018 - 07:45 PM, said:

To be fair in the lore the Lasers shouldn't be visible as well

They should be visible in presence of atmosphere, because high energy laser beam ionize gases that it passes through making them glow. In vacuum yes lasers should be invisible.

[FireStoat]

I like the new Logout feature. It lets you exit the game faster when you discover the patch sucks.

[Shadowomega1]

brroleg, on 21 August 2018 - 10:58 AM, said:

They should be visible in presence of atmosphere, because high energy laser beam ionize gases that it passes through making them glow. In vacuum yes lasers should be invisible.

The only time a laser is visible is at the target, or source. Go look up the (M)THEL, and ABL tests, not the simulations/demonstration videos.

[Abaddun]

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

Lasers used in laser vomits are well over 3 seconds of CD, add in the laser duration and they pretty much still cool 14 heat, allowing them to fire the next volley as early regardless. If anything, it only addresses the preemptive cooling, but really amounts to practically little. The point of coolshot is to let out another hot-stuff early, and if you haven't noticed, their changes hardly addresses a thing -- so it's dumb.

You are discounting the possibility of the coolshot being used to bring the heat leavel from above 100% to sub 100% in a short span of time. With the change, you punish vomit builds for hard pushing the heat cap more then what they did before.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

You know what would have been effective? Cooling 24 heat over 12 seconds -- its still worth our money and cools an adequate amount of heat, but it wouldn't be at an insane rate of dissipation that effectively allows really hot alphas in quick successions without

Then you open another can of worms by giving consistent heat generators like the Octo AC2 Dire Wolf or quad UltraAC5 Slepnir of augmenting their cooling, allowing them to sustain DPS. Even cooling as minor as an extra 1 EDHS can have a significant impact. You would only be creating another monster.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

There's more to the game than aiming, such as positioning. And as far as i'm concerned, be it 45 degree, 25 degree, or 12.5 degree of cone to lock, you still need to put your reticle at the general direction of your target.

I agree that streaks shouldn't be a death-sentence to a light mech, but merely a counter. That being said, it's stupid to blanket nerf every other homing weapons to achieve that. It's ******* dumb.

I refer back to my point, which you failed to address, this change makes it so that a greater amount of player input is required to attain and maintain locks. In my opinion you sound very adverse to actually putting any effort into you gameplay.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

Lol, just lol. I'm not sure if we're playing the same game and weapon systems.

First off, I don't care about how many nerfs you might have seen, we're discussing about the potential impact of said changes in game as it is currently, in which we -- the experienced -- could provide a properly educated prediction, and by that we predicted that LRMs are nerfed to the ground as a result of this change in Artemis.

So far you have demonstrated very little understanding of how changes will impact the game. Reading through your historical posts, your "balance suggestions" have been outlandish, poorly conceived and show a blatent disregard towards conventional video game balance and lore accuracy(For example, prior to this you wanted to remove ATM minimum range and increase tracking strength, turning them into giant super streaks, when I asked how that was remotely balanced, you responded with "they fire in streams" as if that in any way balances them). Unless you can back it up your "prediction" amounts to little more than an opinion that doesn't even consider the wider context of the changes.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

You obviously don't know what you're talking about, so let me break this down for you:

You need lock to effectively land LRMs, dumb-fire is either being lucky or target being extra dumber than usual, thus getting faster lock means getting out LRMs faster to respond to targets.

First off, from what I have seen I might as well be lectured on Uk Housing Law by a toddler, so don't even try and act condescending towards me. Secondly as far as my testing shows Artemis applies to the base value of lock on time, so there are no multiplicative modifiers. Which means Artemis on it's own had an approx 0.25S impact on your lock on speed. When stacked with TAG, lock on speed was reduced to 0.5S approx. Before Aretemis supplanted the lock on time bonus of NARC, but as Artemis only tightens spread now(still an incredibly useful feature which you seem to dismiss out of hand) you, as an LRM boat, will have to actually do some work by bringing a TAG and actual look to line up shots on NARCd targets.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

Another facet of this is that LRMs takes usually a long time to land, that means there's plenty of chances to break lock and the subsequent job of trying to reacquire lock -- you need constant lock to land your LRMs by the way. And now with the changes in the Lock-Cone, that means that you'd be breaking lock a lot more frequently, and the reduced Lock-Speed means it's even harder to get locks.

It takes at minimum 16 skill nodes to get 100% radar deprivation, and generally speaking, for some mechs that means 11 skill nodes they won't be using. Essentially, LRMS deplete 12% of a players maximum number of skills if they want to break lock after going into cover AND that's not a sure fire way to completely avoid LRMs as they will still to the point where the target was before the break, so slower, less mobile mechs will still eat a few salvos even if they duck behind cover.

The6thMessenger, on 21 August 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

So the crux of this nerf is that Artemis is not only hard to get locks, it's even hard to maintain locks -- effectively nerfing every other homing weapon to oblivion.

I completely disagree, lock on missiles will maintain exact functionality as they do pre patch and nothing will change except ECM mechs being able to blanket more of their team. For my example I call back to December 2012 when ECM was first introduced. LRMs dealt 1.7 damage per missile at the time to make up for the borked hit reg, but they were still undeniably strong. ECM was introduced and it killed all lockons, and I mean killed. The only operable missile caddies were Commando 2Ds and Raven 3Ls, both which needed TAGs. The popular Streak boat, Catapult A1 was forced out of the meta overnight(though it soon came back as the SplatCat) LRMs were a thing of the past, as you would see entire lances drop in Atlas DDCs.

I think I've made my point.

Joshua McEvedy, on 21 August 2018 - 08:31 AM, said:

Which is a 180 degree reversal from what Paul said two years ago when he nerfed ECM range from the original 120 meters down to 90 meters----&quot;ECM was not meant to cover the entire force.&quot;

Remember that, Paul? Now we're back to 120 meters, which is where it should have stayed in the first place.

Mmmmmmmm Spot on.

[brroleg]

Shadowomega1, on 21 August 2018 - 11:37 AM, said:

The only time a laser is visible is at the target, or source. Go look up the (M)THEL, and ABL tests, not the simulations/demonstration videos.

https://physics.stac...the-lasers-beam