258 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

Khobai, on 11 September 2018 - 07:40 PM, said:

obviously.

you have missed the point as usual. the point is not to encourage it further.

there is already enough of a reason to boat weapons without quirks and the skill system encouraging it even more.

I didn't miss a point, you just don't know what you are talking about even a little bit, as usual.

You don't encourage it further, all you do is change which option is being boated.

[Khobai]

Yeonne Greene, on 11 September 2018 - 07:42 PM, said:

I didn't miss a point, you just don't know what you are talking about even a little bit, as usual.

You don't encourage it further, all you do is change which option is being boated.

how does it change what option is being boated if it rewards boating less and encourages diversified builds more? the end goal being to tip the scales enough towards diversified builds so boating isnt always the absolute best way to play the game. you DID miss the point which is why I had to explain it.

but forget it, its obviously way above your head anyway.

thats the problem with trying to debate with people like you. you just want the game to stay how it is so you can mindlessly spam the same weapons over and over and get rewarded by quirks and the skill system for doing so.

why else wouldnt you want more diversity in the game? I cant think of any other reason. because the whole way you achieve more diversity is to stop rewarding boating as much and start rewarding diversified builds more... either that or you could force stock mechs on people, but that idea is dumb.

but theres absolutely a theoretical balancing point between boated builds and diversified builds where the two are balanced. if boated loadouts didnt benefit from quirks and only diversified loadouts benefited from quirks we would certainly be closer to that balancing point than we are now. And if the skill system rewarded boating less that would help too. will boated loadouts always be better? probably. but at least they wouldnt be as completely dominant like they are now.

theres definitely merit to getting rid of mech-based weapon quirks that encourage boating in favor of signature hardpoints that dont give you quirks unless you use more diversified weapon loadouts. You couldnt change what weapons you boat to circumvent that because it would be set up in such a way that it would never reward you for boating weapons.

Edited by Khobai, 11 September 2018 - 08:23 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

XkrX Dragoon, on 11 September 2018 - 02:49 PM, said:

You and i both know its not only effective within 350 meters, having a max range of 900, before quirks or skills of any sort. Despite the high drop off rate, the weapon still does considerable damage at 600

No, I don't because at 600m it does less than regular dual gauss...

It is not really effective at 600m at all. It is a weapon that is not high on ammo / tonne on top of being virtually insta-crit ones you lose that 70-80pt of armour on a torso. Its high alpha is 350m or there about effective, simple as that.

There are also many drawbacks to using it as I already pointed out. If you can't understand that, well, I dunno what else to say.

This is a key issue of the PSR system though and people thinking issues exist, when they do not, because they are playing against people that are far better when they should not.

Fluffinator, on 11 September 2018 - 12:18 PM, said:

??? I have been playing a couple years and not sure I have even been headshot 3 times period. Thinking back I can only remember it ever happening 2 times. How are you getting headshot more times per day than I get per year?

Granted 2 of them, IMO, were more luck from the players that did them esp as I was already twisting at the time. It's usually not that common at all, at least for me.

But yeah just cause it happens does not mean there is an issue - which is what some corners of this community think. Because they can't / won't learn how to counter something - it must be fixed to help them

Edited by justcallme A S H, 11 September 2018 - 08:47 PM.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 11 September 2018 - 07:48 PM, said:

how does it change what option is being boated if it rewards boating less and encourages diversified builds more? the end goal being to tip the scales enough towards diversified builds so boating isnt always the absolute best way to play the game. you DID miss the point which is why I had to explain it.

but forget it, its obviously way above your head anyway.

thats the problem with trying to debate with people like you. you just want the game to stay how it is so you can mindlessly spam the same weapons over and over and get rewarded by quirks and the skill system for doing so.

why else wouldnt you want more diversity in the game? I cant think of any other reason. because the whole way you achieve more diversity is to stop rewarding boating as much and start rewarding diversified builds more... either that or you could force stock mechs on people, but that idea is dumb.

but theres absolutely a theoretical balancing point between boated builds and diversified builds where the two are balanced. if boated loadouts didnt benefit from quirks and only diversified loadouts benefited from quirks we would certainly be closer to that balancing point than we are now. And if the skill system rewarded boating less that would help too. will boated loadouts always be better? probably. but at least they wouldnt be as completely dominant like they are now.

theres definitely merit to getting rid of mech-based weapon quirks that encourage boating in favor of signature hardpoints that dont give you quirks unless you use more diversified weapon loadouts. You couldnt change what weapons you boat to circumvent that because it would be set up in such a way that it would never reward you for boating weapons.

Loadouts focused around a single weapon type and diversity are not these mutually exclusive things. You can still have a diverse array of viable loadouts (and mechs) even if those loadouts may each be built around one kind of gun.

And really, there's only a certain amount of different types of guns you can pack into a single loadout before it becomes too weak in any individual area to do anything effective. Stock mechs like the Dragon are an example of this. There already are some slightly mixed loadouts like Gauss Vomit (lasers + Gauss) or pretty much lasers + anything else really (they combo very well with a lot of things because of their low initial tonnage cost) that work fine enough.

But you definitely can never expect a build with 4+ completely different weapon types to be effective, because then you're bad at every role rather than being decent at something.


I'm not sure why you're complaining about quirks here when most of them are already converted to being generic across an entire weapon class (i.e. energy heat, missile cooldown, etc.). Some of them are even generic across all weapons (i.e. heat gen). Same goes for most of the skill tree (they could probably merge some skills together though like having ballistic/missile ammo in one node type, merging velocity/spread/duration, etc.).

Edited by FupDup, 11 September 2018 - 09:12 PM.

[Dago Red]

Khobai, on 11 September 2018 - 07:48 PM, said:

how does it change what option is being boated if it rewards boating less and encourages diversified builds more? the end goal being to tip the scales enough towards diversified builds so boating isnt always the absolute best way to play the game. you DID miss the point which is why I had to explain it.

but forget it, its obviously way above your head anyway.

thats the problem with trying to debate with people like you. you just want the game to stay how it is so you can mindlessly spam the same weapons over and over and get rewarded by quirks and the skill system for doing so.

why else wouldnt you want more diversity in the game? I cant think of any other reason. because the whole way you achieve more diversity is to stop rewarding boating as much and start rewarding diversified builds more... either that or you could force stock mechs on people, but that idea is dumb.

but theres absolutely a theoretical balancing point between boated builds and diversified builds where the two are balanced. if boated loadouts didnt benefit from quirks and only diversified loadouts benefited from quirks we would certainly be closer to that balancing point than we are now. And if the skill system rewarded boating less that would help too. will boated loadouts always be better? probably. but at least they wouldnt be as completely dominant like they are now.

theres definitely merit to getting rid of mech-based weapon quirks that encourage boating in favor of signature hardpoints that dont give you quirks unless you use more diversified weapon loadouts. You couldnt change what weapons you boat to circumvent that because it would be set up in such a way that it would never reward you for boating weapons.

And what level of quirks do you think are required to make a mech with a single CT missile hardpoint and 2 ballistics but not enough weight to use them for anything big not want to lean on its more numerous laser mounts for example?

Hell doesn't one of the Grasshoppers have missile quirks? This is fundamentally a hardpoint distribution issue rather than a quirk one.

[Bud Crue]

Chris Lowrey, on 11 September 2018 - 11:22 AM, said:

The challenge of this comes from the core role of the 'Mechlab, which is personal customization. In various Hero or role based shooters, kits are designer driven and locked in from the start specifically so they can fill in very precise niches within the game. Which is not something that we can really design towards because of the deep 'Mechlab.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 11 September 2018 - 02:42 PM, said:

You HAVE to, there is NO way around pigeon holing to ensure each mech has a place. You either accept that and do something like WoT and Pokemon comp and create tiers, you pull a LoL and bring in certain mechs just to change the meta up rather than actually try to balance, or you accept your fate that your business model is flawed and that it rides purely on nostalgia or to sell things once all the unique mechs are dried up.

The above exchange, I think, gets to the root of what I see as both the disconnect between what Chris is advancing as the idea of "balance" and what many of us see as the un-funing of MWO, as well as what he sees as encouraging player choice and we see as the vanilification of the game.

I keep coming back to mechs like the Black Knight, Grasshoppers, Wolfhounds, and other for all intent and purpose single weapon or at least weapon type mechs, and yet there are other chassis of similar respective weight and that can also run similar load outs Each chassis, with several variants, that by themselves are pretty much the same, and still others that can do the same thing.

Once upon a time many of these variants had what I would have called "flavor" quirks: ERPPC specific quirks, PPC specific quirks, ML specific quirks, ERLL specific quirks, etc. When skill tree arrived, Chris and the balance team decided that these quirks were either "unacceptable power creep" or interfered with player choice by "forcing a player into a single optimized build in order to be effective". So now we have a bunch of nearly identical variants between multiple chassis with small and often irrelevant quirks so as to prevent them from falling into some dastardly niche, and according to Chris, supposedly encouraging players to do all sorts of wondrous things in our "deep" mech lab.

That's bunk. It's the illusion of diversity and choice.

In this resultant system (and keep in mind Chris has stated that we need to further reduce quirks both generally, and specifically up above in his second post) the quirks become irrelevant (even if they still exist once Chris has his way according to his intent as stated in the OP) and only things like hard point number and height along with hit box idealization, profile, etc. will define which one (maybe two) of these numerous mechs are "the meta" since they all run the same thing with no real "flavor" (or depending on Chris's mood, undesired power creep and diversity killing quirks). Which of course means that mechs with low hard points, or fewer hard points, or worse hit boxes, etc. than others are now essentially irrelevant and may as well cease to exist all because rather than having a niche (however limited) encouraged by real and substantive quirks; they instead have no niche, no role, no effective place in the game at all.

The result is that player choice is saved at the cost of any actual diversity of choice. We can now all play the one variant of the one mech that sucks the least (using the least weak weapons, and change them as PGI continues to vanilify those as well) and leave the 23 other variants and chassis with 6E, or 8E, or whatever hard points, sitting in our "deep" mechlab un-played because there is absolutely no reason to.

That isn't diversity, or encouraging player choice. That is killing the fun of playing more than a handful of mechs.

Edited by Bud Crue, 12 September 2018 - 03:07 AM.

[Daurock]

Bud Crue, on 12 September 2018 - 03:00 AM, said:

Once upon a time many of these variants had what I would have called "flavor" quirks: ERPPC specific quirks, PPC specific quirks, ML specific quirks, ERLL specific quirks, etc. When skill tree arrived, Chris and the balance team decided that these quirks were either "unacceptable power creep" or interfered with player choice by "forcing a player into a single optimized build in order to be effective". So now we have a bunch of nearly identical variants between multiple chassis with small and often irrelevant quirks so as to prevent them from falling into some dastardly niche, and according to Chris, supposedly encouraging players to do all sorts of wondrous things in our "deep" mech lab.

That's bunk. It's the illusion of diversity and choice.

"Diversity" is now, has been, and will probably will always be an Illusion. There is only room for 1 meta - that's just the way competitive games work. With lots of weapon specific quirks, you'd have just a few variants, of a few select mechs, being actually competetive, just as we do now. Which mechs they are would just shuffle around a bit.

The only real question is really "How far from the meta do you fall when you don't conform." The challenge with weapon specific quirks is that you can create a very wide, very obvious gap very quickly between "Conforming mech, and Non-conforming mech" when you ratchet up the power and number of those quirks.

Sometimes, a weapon-specific quirk is appropriate, IMO. The black knight is a good example of one that could use some offensive, weapon specific, quirks. It's a trend I wouldn't mind seeing extend to a good number of mechs that as a rule have similar hardpoints (Crab, Wolfhound, Grasshopper, maybe the stalker or Nova.) I'd still try to have at least one variant of each of these mechs that doesn't have any real specific quirks though, in favor of having a bit more armor, heat, or agility instead. Additionally, some of those mechs (Like the crab and wolfwhound) would probably need to lose some of those more generic armor quirks, so as not to become overpowered.

At the end of the day though, I think expecting weapon specific quirks to become the de-facto norm for most mechs is probably not the right answer. We don't really need weapon specifc quirks on something like the Marauder or Warhammer, even though they carry Iconic weapons, and even though they currently DO carry those quirks. The PPC quirk is often either ignored, or felt bad about because you couldn't use it in your build, and are honestly something they'd probably just as well be without. More often than not, simple armor, agility and heat tuning (I.E. basic, universally useful mech quirks) could do well enough to balance the variants of each individual mech.

Edited by Daurock, 12 September 2018 - 06:44 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 06:40 AM, said:

"Diversity" is now, has been, and will probably will always be an Illusion. There is only room for 1 meta - that's just the way competitive games work.

This is false. Do you think there is only one strat that gets played in CS:GO, Overwatch, R6:Siege, etc, etc?

Khobai, on 11 September 2018 - 07:48 PM, said:

how does it change what option is being boated if it rewards boating less and encourages diversified builds more? the end goal being to tip the scales enough towards diversified builds so boating isnt always the absolute best way to play the game. you DID miss the point which is why I had to explain it.

So basically you want specialized builds to not be the way to play the game, that kind of defeats the purpose of roles for mechs. There is no special role that stems from a jack-of-all-trades mech (just tactical flexibility which is not necessarily a good thing) so what does that really add to the game?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 12 September 2018 - 07:15 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 06:40 AM, said:

"Diversity" is now, has been, and will probably will always be an Illusion. There is only room for 1 meta- etc.

At the end of the day though, I think expecting weapon specific quirks to become the de-facto norm for most mechs is probably not the right answer. We don't really need weapon specifc quirks on something like the Marauder or Warhammer, even though they carry Iconic weapons, and even though they currently DO carry those quirks. The PPC quirk is often either ignored, or felt bad about because you couldn't use it in your build, and are honestly something they'd probably just as well be without. More often than not, simple armor, agility and heat tuning (I.E. basic, universally useful mech quirks) could do well enough to balance the variants of each individual mech.

Agreed.

My point is merely that by making every mech “equal” by reducing or eliminating quirks in the manner that Chris has both done and wishes to continue, will make the meta perhaps less pronounced, but also more obvious. It will make the lesser mechs even more of a pointlessness other than one of nostalgia or some sort of ‘leet “I play this POS for the challenge” type of experience. There is no reason to take mechs 1-27 to run the meta of the day when mech 28 has the same damn load out potential with the highest hard points and decent hit boxes compared to the rest. We literally have that many mechs running laser vomit for example (more probably) yet the best variants are clear. Take away quirks and the best become even more obvious. Continue to provide zero incentive to play different weapons and different play styles and those 27 mechs will just sit. That is where I see us at now, and if we continue down this road, its going to get worse.

Economically it also seems pretty stupid in a game with hundreds of variants -again of which many are practically the same and Chris apparently wants to make more so- that they try and sell for $, to make them all the same when there are clear examples that are better than the rest. Quirks give those lesser options a reason to be played, and perhaps even purchased, with builds that may be niche and/or less than the meta perhaps, but played nonetheless.

If there is a way to provide that incentive and that distinctiveness other than quirks then I would be open to it, but right now I don’t see it.

Edited by Bud Crue, 12 September 2018 - 07:54 AM.

[Daurock]

Bud Crue, on 12 September 2018 - 07:50 AM, said:

Agreed.

My point is merely that by making every mech “equal” by reducing or eliminating quirks in the manner that Chris has both done and wishes to continue, will make the meta perhaps less pronounced, but also more obvious. It will make the lesser mechs even more of a pointlessness other than one of nostalgia or some sort of ‘leet “I play this POS for the challenge” type of experience. There is no reason to take mechs 1-27 to run the meta of the day when mech 28 has the same damn load out potential with the highest hard points and decent hit boxes compared to the rest. We literally have that many mechs running laser vomit for example (more probably) yet the best variants are clear. Take away quirks and the best become even more obvious. Continue to provide zero incentive to play different weapons and different play styles and those 27 mechs will just sit. That is where I see us at now, and if we continue down this road, its going to get worse.

Economically it also seems pretty stupid in a game with hundreds of variants -again of which many are practically the same and Chris apparently wants to make more so- that they try and sell for $, to make them all the same when there are clear examples that are better than the rest. Quirks give those lesser options a reason to be played, and perhaps even purchased, with builds that may be niche and/or less than the meta perhaps, but played nonetheless.

If there is a way to provide that incentive and that distinctiveness other than quirks then I would be open to it, but right now I don’t see it.

I believe there's a still a ton of as-yet un-mined ground apart from weapon quirks to help differentiate mechs. (Which I agree, should not be attempted to be phased out entirely, but should instead remain pretty rare.) The more dials, the harder it is to balance, but the wider your list of unique mechs becomes.


Here's just a few of those things that they could look into to create a little more more uniqueness between mechs -

Engine caps - Right now, they currently run far too wide, at least between battlemechs. This enables far too many mechs to overlap, and create the same build. Reducing the "Range" of engines available to any one mech could do a wonders to help differentiate things. Often, this means Raising the Minimum Engine cap on many mechs. (For example, the cyclops - Raising the minimum engine cap, and forcing the cyclops chassis to take a 335+ engine forces it to take different builds, differentiating it from the mauler chassis) While it doesn't solve every build overlap (See the 55 ton IS missile mechs, which all carry the same stock 275 size engine, so you'd have to do something like set 275 as a max for one mech, and a minimum for a different one) It does help pare down the overlap a little bit.

Sensors - In all honesty, I'd like to see sensors become more different between mechs. Some would have a terrible range, others would have a greater range, based on mech choice. This would enable many lights to become actual spotters, while others become incapable of sharing/gathering information. Generally, this would mean dropping sensor range, especially on the heavy and assault sized mechs, due to map sizes. (Think like a 400m range for a basic assault, and maybe a 500m range for your average heavy) Same goes for things like lock time, data gathering time, ECM coverage, etc.

Agility - Right now, most of the agility stats are seemingly linked - you don't find many mechs with 1 good stat (Such as torso twist speed) that also don't share other great stats (Like acceleration, or deceleration). Breaking up these a little bit, and giving more pointed buffs to one or two aspects would allow for a little more different "Feel" between individual mechs. (I.E. some turn their feet fast, others turn their torsos, and still others can start and stop on a dime.)

Edited by Daurock, 12 September 2018 - 08:40 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 08:39 AM, said:

Sensors - In all honesty, I'd like to see sensors become more different between mechs. Some would have a terrible range, others would have a greater range, based on mech choice. This would enable many lights to become actual spotters, while others become incapable of sharing/gathering information.

Lights are already spotters, they rely more on visual information than actual radar though which of course they do since radar is just LoS based. This has been part of the problem since day 1 with only allowing LoS radar; it is supplemental to eyesight rather than offering something that can't be done through eyesight. Information sharing/gathering is also only really useful in QP because coordinated play makes use of voicecomms. Now if a lights could share more than one target (or share their entire radar with others) that might be handy but I don't know that it should be used a balancing mechanism and more something that lights just offer by being a light.

There is also something you left out, special equipment. Whether it be BAP, JJs, ECM, AMS, Stealth Armor, etc, etc. These help in add stuff to a mech and in some cases way too many mechs have access to these where they could offer something unique. Hell we could start making up equipment or reimagining existing ones to try and allow mechs to offer more unique flavors.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 12 September 2018 - 09:24 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 08:39 AM, said:

I believe there's a still a ton of as-yet un-mined ground apart from weapon quirks to help differentiate mechs. (Which I agree, should not be attempted to be phased out entirely, but should instead remain pretty rare.) The more dials, the harder it is to balance, but the wider your list of unique mechs becomes.


Here's just a few of those things that they could look into to create a little more more uniqueness between mechs -

Engine caps -
Sensors -
Agility -

Pgi wont muck with engine cap (tt governance).
Info tech failed and there is no indication that it will be revisited.
Agility is all thats left and as I illustrated a few posts above not enough to make a bad mech good. Certainly not enough to make a less than meta mech comparable thereto if it is lacking equivalent fire power. It helps, its just not enough. Quirks could be (and in the past were in select instances) enough if with agility distinctions if PGI wasnt so hell bent on minimizing or eliminating them.

[Stinger554]

Chris Lowrey, on 11 September 2018 - 11:22 AM, said:

The thing is if we lean heavily towards defined roles, we would more then likely keep more to the traditional roles in the fiction, and then we begin to introduce more of what we purposefully moved away from where native 'Mech settings shoehorned builds into ways where if you did deviate in a way that wasn't effective, your in-game performance took a nose dive, which contradicts the core design of giving you all of the options to customize the 'Mech the way you want it to be customized through the 'Mechlab.

As others have said what's happened is now if you don't take X mech your in-game performance drops since certain mechs are better at their roles over others in that same role.

On top of that there is always going to a relatively small number of effective builds compared to non-effective ones. That's just the nature of the game. Refusing to apply quirks isn't going to change that; however applying quirks may open up diversity in terms of using different mechs inside the same role because the relative performance would be similar.

Overall I agree with Yeonne Greene in regards to this.

[Daurock]

Bud Crue, on 12 September 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

Pgi wont muck with engine cap (tt governance).
Info tech failed and there is no indication that it will be revisited.

Agility is all thats left and as I illustrated a few posts above not enough to make a bad mech good. Certainly not enough to make a less than meta mech comparable thereto if it is lacking equivalent fire power. It helps, its just not enough. Quirks could be (and in the past were in select instances) enough if with agility distinctions if PGI wasnt so hell bent on minimizing or eliminating them.

For engine sizes, I would expect it to pretty much always cover the TT stock engine size.
If a TT mech was defaulted to a 275 engine, a 275 engine should be in its range. However, it does not need to have an available range from 120 all the way up to 360, like you can find on many mechs on live. Instead, a far narrower range should enable most players to create useful loadouts, differing the mech from something that may default with a size smaller, or size larger engine. (Think like 275 to 325 for a mech with 300 stock, or 225 to 275 for a mech with 250 stock.) The TT engine doesn't even have to fit in the middle of the mech's range if the devs find it necessary to differ it from another, similarly sized and engined mech. You could also keep more of the currently pretty dramatic agility differences in the game if "I wish i could put in a smaller engine for more weapons" became as common a complaint as "I wish my mech was more agile." Bottom line - They could narrow the available ranges quite a bit more than on live and still maintain TT accuracy, and narrowing the range is a tuning knob they could make more use of than they currently do.

As for information warfare, I don't really want to upset the entire system there. It's too much dev time, and too much of an overall shift. However, shortening up sensors in general, (As of now, they can pretty much see as far as you want them to, and increasing them further is not very noticeable.) could create enough of a discomfort in some mechs that you may want to switch a slightly less powerful mech with decent sensor quirks. The goal of the sensor change would NOT be a dramatic information warfare plan, nor to dramatically change the game, but instead change it slightly so that a lack of sensors could actually be felt from time to time. (Particularly if you're in a snipey mech.) Hopefully, it would be noticeable enough that mechs with strong sensors feel just a little different, even though they may have the same payload, speed, etc as a mech lacking them. Essentially, giving them an extra knob to turn if they need to. Some players, and some/most teams won't care a Lick about that - and that's OK. I wouldn't expect organized teams to make as much use out of them, nor to see them be the desired plan on every map. Other players may feel that they want those sensors, and/or some teams may want more than a couple lights capable of targeting the enemy team at 650 meters - and that's the entire idea.

Edited by Daurock, 12 September 2018 - 10:55 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 10:53 AM, said:

I wouldn't expect organized teams to make as much use out of them

Then that's a problem, your plan to make the game deeper is completely circumvented around teams actually playing more like teams. This is why infotech has always failed as an idea but it has little impact on higher level play and it doesn't make playing QP any more fun (it actually makes it worse for those that lose things) so why bother with that at all?

[Daurock]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 12 September 2018 - 11:31 AM, said:

Then that's a problem, your plan to make the game deeper is completely circumvented around teams actually playing more like teams. This is why infotech has always failed as an idea but it has little impact on higher level play and it doesn't make playing QP any more fun (it actually makes it worse for those that lose things) so why bother with that at all?

Higher level play is always going to have very few options that are truly competitive. There are already a ton of mechs, and a plenty of equipment systems, and/or weapons in the game that have little impact at high level play. (About 90% of the mech variants that aren't at or near "best in class" at any given role.) The game is still better having them in. If all we cared about was the things useful to organized, competitive teams, the game could lose about three quarters of the available mech variants out there and no one would notice.

As to sensors being useful, there's a big difference between "as much" and "no use." It's a whole lot harder to call "shoot alpha" in a ranged fight when there are 4 of the same mech mech over that hill, and you can't target any of them to define alpha. Similarly, being able to call out "Bravo is nearly cored, finish him" is also more difficult when you can't tell that he is nearly cored in a ranged fight. By contrast, brawlers, or callers using a mid-range or push strat may not care at all, since they typically fight at short ranges, and everyone can target everyone anyway. The changes aren't meant to be life changing, huge changes, nor to dramatically make a mech packing some sensor perks better. They're meant to be situational things that a player / team may want in a specific map, or with a particular loadout. Right now there's no room to "Add" that kind of boost to a few mechs here or there because the baseline level of sensors is a little too high. Ideally, a drop caller may well want 1 or 2 of the non-ideal, but only with a slightly smaller range quirk, (Remember, a quirk like this is typically meant to differentiate otherwise very similar mechs) mech for a map in order to help assist with those types of calls, in addition to the usual lights that typically do the job.

As for QP players being hurt by it from time to time - good. If it becomes an additional thing a player has to think about when considering which mech to drop in, That's working as intended.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 12:47 PM, said:

The game is still better having them in.

This is where you and I disagree, don't get me wrong, I don't think everything that isn't the absolute meta (including niche builds) should get removed. The idea though that for example we need 500 variants or micro lasers in this game is absurd. Even without meta most of these mechs don't see a fraction of usage and fall by the wayside because they are horrible and the balance team seems to think they can manage that or the fact that we have 3 subsets of lasers all with practically the same role and only offer a mech construction choice rather than a strategical one.

More options is not always or inherently better.

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 12:47 PM, said:

As to sensors being useful, there's a big difference between "as much" and "no use." It's a whole lot harder to call "shoot alpha" in a ranged fight when there are 4 of the same mech mech over that hill, and you can't target any of them to define alpha. Similarly, being able to call out "Bravo is nearly cored, finish him" is also more difficult when you can't tell that he is nearly cored in a ranged fight. By contrast, brawlers, or callers using a mid-range or push strat may not care at all, since they typically fight at short ranges, and everyone can target everyone anyway.

You've got this reversed. Brawlers and push strats actually care a lot because focus fire is king and having people shooting random targets is not beneficial, there isn't really a strat out there outside of maybe anything that relies on stunlock where you don't benefit from focus fire whether thats two squads of 4, main body and lights, etc it doesn't matter. Range fights are already as you describe because its rare that someone is exposed long enough to be able to get armor readouts (and scouts often can't get that information because range tends to be a threat to them, for obvious reasons) or they are out of range of sensors to begin with so both teams are fighting blind.

Daurock, on 12 September 2018 - 12:47 PM, said:

They're meant to be situational things that a player / team may want in a specific map, or with a particular loadout. Right now there's no room to "Add" that kind of boost to a few mechs here or there because the baseline level of sensors is a little too high. Ideally, a drop caller may well want 1 or 2 of the non-ideal, but only with a slightly smaller range quirk, (Remember, a quirk like this is typically meant to differentiate otherwise very similar mechs) mech for a map in order to help assist with those types of calls, in addition to the usual lights that typically do the job.

As for QP players being hurt by it from time to time - good. If it becomes an additional thing a player has to think about when considering which mech to drop in, That's working as intended.

These aren't going to impact teams other than offering a bad choice (choosing sensors over firepower and good play) so this is mostly about players, ie PUG queue where people rarely work as a team thus making this just more painful to play some mechs potentially (and thus skewing PUG queue vs group/comp queue usage statistics and balance further). It basically reminds me of the minimap fiasco, because it would have a similar impact. Again, the problem with sensors since day 1 hasn't been that they are too strong, it is that they are tied to something that can already offer you a lot: eyesight. You want sensors to matter for some mechs? Give them seismic like sensors for free because "wallhack" sensors offer a benefit that is more worth sacrificing firepower than having reduced TIG and sensor ranges. Why? Because they offer safer spotting which is way more beneficial since it can save you armor.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 12 September 2018 - 01:29 PM.

[Sir Immortal Shadow]

I wonder if they're going to adjust the heat on the Heavy Large at all or just make it hotter and weaker at the same time.

[FupDup]

Sir Immortal Shadow, on 13 September 2018 - 07:17 AM, said:

I wonder if they're going to adjust the heat on the Heavy Large at all or just make it hotter and weaker at the same time.

The HLL's heat didn't get increased, and if anything the heatsink changes will make it easier to manage the weapon's existing heat.

[waterfowl]

WTF did I just read?

"We're happy that players really liked the lowered heat cap"

"So we're not going to lower it, increase dissipation, and make laser vomit even worse"

I'm done with this game.