29 replies to this topic

[Darian DelFord]

Yes I have been around since the beginning and I know that this will most likely fall on deaf ears, and I know that Russ does not read the forums as much as he is on twitter. However I do not have twitter or facebook or whatever else is out there. Sorry just not my generation.

However it is past time for Jenners and most light mechs to be improved so they are not the walking trash cans most of them are ( sorry no offense to dedicated Urbie mechs out there ). Certain variants are great for instance the Piranha almost all variants are viable. This is not a discussion of OP or not.... (Personally I do think they are, due to its drawbacks) but a discussion specifically for Jenners and to a lesser extent light mechs in general.

We all know the direct nerfs to hit most light mechs. Rescale, mobility, armor re-allocation, and most of the indirect nerfs, weapons and jump jets and several others to numerous to mention.

The Jenner is the only 35 tonner that I am aware of that has a very difficult time spreading damage. The geometry just does not make it easy. Before the hit box changes, yes we would complain but we also were able to strip off the side torso's max out the CT, and put in an extra JJ or heat sink to make it manageable. I understand that PGI wants to get rid of the quirks, however on some mechs they will be a necessary evil. The ONLY way to get rid of the quirk system is to individualize the skill tree for EACH mech and EACH chassis not the general one size mostly fits all situation. For example there is no reason to spec out survivability in most lights, as the gains are really negligible. Make them non negligible.

Another huge issue is mobility. For lights and mediums speed and agility is life. However the mobility has taken multiple hits over the course of years. When damage is king and one good shot from a heavy or an assault all but cripples you, you must be quick. The jenners move and handles like a Sherman tank. Some of my fondest memories are with the Jenner D and its knife fighting skill (4 SPL's and 2 SRM 4's), try that build now and you are toast. With the exception of a few light chassis, trying to do any close fighting will get you killed. In a game were damage is KING for almost everything, most lights are at a disadvantage. We have quiet literally been reduced to circle the outskirts and harass. While most assault and heavy pilots are proud of that as they feel that only heavies and assaults should be able to do any decent damage. Circling and waiting for an assault or heavy to be left alone enough to make a run on him has gotten quiet boring. With the advent of 12v12 most mechs can assist another being harassed by a light, most mech sometimes just choose not to help.

So again this post is made with me being with this game since beta. Through all the highs and lows and piloting mostly Jenners. Though I am competent in most lights. What can PGI do that is actually doable to fix the Jenners to bring them back to a competitive status. By competitive status I mean on par with being able to be a meaningful member of the team. Currently when I see a Jenner the few times I have, I disregard them as a non factor in the game.

Also PGI if you are reading this. FIX THE DAMNED MISSLE BOX BUG on the D K and Oxide!!!! Tired of having from front CT cored out from the back ;pp

Thoughts Comments?

Edited by Darian DelFord, 27 December 2018 - 06:49 AM.

[JediPanther]

You know as well as I do that that pgi ain't going to do anything but nerf them more some how. they're dead set on mw5 and all things mw5. Mwo is dead as far as active development but the mech packs and endless cyle of nerf/buff will continue until they flip the server offline.

I rarely use my jenners for all the problems you've named. I use them for that unicorn riding a jenner reaction once in a blood red moon while during a solar eclipse. Spider 5v outperforms the jenners, that is how much pgi hates them. As much as I want them to be fun and competitive pgi doesn't know balance from a bag of burning dog doo doo. Jenners are my troll mechs.

[Spheroid]

Is there some great need of more Jenners on the field?

Also meta in shooters is binary. Something is either optimal or it isn't. Absent an external reward or restriction that modifies the payout the optimum will always be chosen over time.

[Ilfi]

The vast majority of Mechs and variants are going to become obsolete by nature of the game's design. You decide on a weapon setup, and pick the best Mech for that setup. That's what... maybe 20 competitive options? Things like Jenners, Centurions, Hellspawns, and a host of other awful robots are going to remain a thing of the past. That's how it has always been.

[DrxAbstract]

Ilfi, on 27 December 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

The vast majority of Mechs and variants are going to become obsolete by nature of the game's design. You decide on a weapon setup, and pick the best Mech for that setup. That's what... maybe 20 competitive options? Things like Jenners, Centurions, Hellspawns, and a host of other awful robots are going to remain a thing of the past. That's how it has always been.

Let's clarify a few things with this comment:

Claiming things become obsolete 'by design' is a redundant excuse - it's admitting they're only obsolete because that's the way PGI wants it... As in they're doing it for 'reasons', most likely to continue driving sales of new Mech Packs. It's a digital, imaginary environment they have total control over which means whatever they do (or don't do) is intentional.

There is also no reason for the gap separating optimal Mechs from sub-optimal Mechs to be so glaringly wide to the point, as you said, we have 20 peak varients and several hundred absolute garbage ones. The difference could be a matter of one varient having .01 better heat dissipation and that's it. Nobody is arguing against the existence of optimal versus sub-optimal as that's inevitable. What's being argued against the massive chasm separating them rather than the fine line it should be.

There is no valid reason for Jenners, and most Lights, to suck as much as they do. The fact PGI altered the scoring system to reward based on weight class rather indicates they want Lights to do poorly and have no intention of addressing their lackluster performance capabilities.

[Ilfi]

Unless you have a time machine and the ability to rewrite the TROs, you just can't fix bad hitboxes, bad locked engines and bad weapon options. It's not even a matter the weight class -- between Adder, Uziel, Thanatos, Zeus and Executioner, they're all trash and have been since the moment we switched from dice to mice. A lot of Mechs are going to be better simply because of their ancestral design.

Look at the Orion. The thing has quirks up the wazoo. -10% Heat to everything, -15% to -25% to all weapon cooldowns, more armor than most Assaults and an awesome dead side to shield with just like the Thunderbolt. Does it see play, even with those godlike quirks? No. What does see play is the Bushwacker (a walking pencil) and the Mad Cat Mk II (a 95 tonner with 85 tonner hitboxes because of PGI's modular missile ears).

I sympathize with you, I really do. But at this stage of the game, I'd rather be blunt.

[Chaldon]

I miss my Jenner's - mastered each one over 100,000xp. I miss watching them trip over people and get wasted away in laser fire while trying to stand back up. It made me so mad... good times.

[Daggett]

Darian DelFord, on 27 December 2018 - 06:40 AM, said:

For example there is no reason to spec out survivability in most lights, as the gains are really negligible. Make them non negligible.

I would not say that additional 26% armor and 41% structure is negligible. That's often the difference if a dual gauss shot kills/legs you or not, especially on 20t mechs. Even the best light pilots will get shot at, and having legs that can sustain about 30% more damage are always welcome. And that's without quirks that get amplified by survival nodes.

Of cause on many lights you don't take survival because you already need lots of nodes from the other trees, but when my light already got big quirks and/or is running a knife-fighter build then i try to fit in at least half of the survival tree because it really does matter. Staying alive is the most important thing for any mech, all the heat-gen and cooldown nodes do nothing when one-shot early by a lucky hit or when running into a bad situation.

Of cause the more range a mech of any weight class has, the less important the survival tree becomes.

Edited by Daggett, 27 December 2018 - 03:01 PM.

[R5D4]

Jenners (clan and IS) have been dead a VERY long time now. As other have said PGI is solely devoted to MW5 right now so between that and their history of poor balance decisions I don't expect Jenners to be revived anytime soon no matter how little effort it maybe (e.g. adding defensive quirks and improving agility).

Nope, until/unless Russ tells the team to actually give a crap about MWO again OR they get a renewed license and a cash injection for MWO2 I just don't see it happening

EDIT: I also remember Chris(? maybe Paul) saying that they didn't want to give every light the Urbie treatment to make them viable in game. Which is bunk imo given that they haven't shown they can improve viability any other way for lights in the past 6 years.

Edited by R5D4, 27 December 2018 - 03:14 PM.

[Sable Dove]

I feel like PGI needs to choose what they want to do with lights. Either...
1) Mechs are balanced by tonnage, and any mech will generally lose a 1v1 fight with any significantly-heavier mech, or;
2) All mechs should be balanced, and equally-skilled pilots should be a close match regardless of relative tonnage (how some of the newer lights are balanced), or;
3) A rock-paper-scissors balance where with equally-skilled pilots, lights should beat assaults (assaults unable to keep up with the light's agility), lose to mediums (mediums nimble enough to track, but packing more firepower) and tie with heavies (much more firepower, but struggle to track lights).

As it stands, a lot of older lights are balanced for the first option, but newer lights tend to be more like the second or third option. That's an opinion, anyways.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Ilfi, on 27 December 2018 - 02:44 PM, said:

Unless you have a time machine and the ability to rewrite the TROs, you just can't fix bad hitboxes, bad locked engines and bad weapon options. It's not even a matter the weight class -- between Adder, Uziel, Thanatos, Zeus and Executioner, they're all trash and have been since the moment we switched from dice to mice. A lot of Mechs are going to be better simply because of their ancestral design.

Look at the Orion. The thing has quirks up the wazoo. -10% Heat to everything, -15% to -25% to all weapon cooldowns, more armor than most Assaults and an awesome dead side to shield with just like the Thunderbolt. Does it see play, even with those godlike quirks? No. What does see play is the Bushwacker (a walking pencil) and the Mad Cat Mk II (a 95 tonner with 85 tonner hitboxes because of PGI's modular missile ears).

I sympathize with you, I really do. But at this stage of the game, I'd rather be blunt.

You absolutely can fix bad hitboxes, bad quirks, and bad engines. They're called quirks. Tall mechs with low hardpoints get more quirks. Slow lights get more quirks.

The Orion? Easy fix. Even bigger quirks! Worked for the Urbanmech. Worked for the Thunderbolt, way back in the day. It will work here.

[Y E O N N E]

Ilfi, on 27 December 2018 - 02:44 PM, said:

Unless you have a time machine and the ability to rewrite the TROs, you just can't fix bad hitboxes, bad locked engines and bad weapon options.

This is false. They fixed them in 2015, with quirks, and then they unfixed them with the Skill Tree and the 'Mech rescale.

PGI can fix them, they just don't want to.

[Chados]

Jenners simply are too big. Full stop. If you want them to be worth running and not trash tier then need to be 3/4 the size they now are. They’re nearly as big as the 65 ton Catapult. That can’t be right.

[Sable Dove]

Chados, on 27 December 2018 - 05:17 PM, said:

Jenners simply are too big. Full stop. If you want them to be worth running and not trash tier then need to be 3/4 the size they now are. They’re nearly as big as the 65 ton Catapult. That can’t be right.

To be fair, they Catapult is exceptionally small for its weight specifically because of its hitboxes. Its giant CT made it one of the most-killable mechs back in the day.

[Requiemking]

Sable Dove, on 27 December 2018 - 03:40 PM, said:

I feel like PGI needs to choose what they want to do with lights. Either...
1) Mechs are balanced by tonnage, and any mech will generally lose a 1v1 fight with any significantly-heavier mech, or;
2) All mechs should be balanced, and equally-skilled pilots should be a close match regardless of relative tonnage (how some of the newer lights are balanced), or;
3) A rock-paper-scissors balance where with equally-skilled pilots, lights should beat assaults (assaults unable to keep up with the light's agility), lose to mediums (mediums nimble enough to track, but packing more firepower) and tie with heavies (much more firepower, but struggle to track lights).

As it stands, a lot of older lights are balanced for the first option, but newer lights tend to be more like the second or third option. That's an opinion, anyways.

Believe it or not, number 3 is how it used to be, back before the Rescale.

[R5D4]

Chados, on 27 December 2018 - 05:17 PM, said:

Jenners simply are too big. Full stop. If you want them to be worth running and not trash tier then need to be 3/4 the size they now are. They’re nearly as big as the 65 ton Catapult. That can’t be right.

Agreed, but PGI won't reverse that horrific re-scale because its "too much work". Of course it wouldn't have been any work if they had left it alone as it wasn't even one of the mech's people asked to be changed to begin with.

But PGI gonna PGI...

[Sable Dove]

Requiemking, on 27 December 2018 - 05:45 PM, said:

Believe it or not, number 3 is how it used to be, back before the Rescale.

I disagree. This may have been true without mech skills; with mech skills (which disproportionately benefited assaults and heavies), I'd argue it's closer to the first option in most cases. The only reason it may have been a closer fight was that the poor netcode at the time benefited lights more than heavies and assaults.

[GeminiWolf]

Two mechs I sold off and refuse to purchase again, the Cataphrat and the Jenner. Each mech is way to easy to Cockpit.Cataphrat because the Cockpit is dead center where most people aim and the Jenner basically puts it cockpit right out there to be shot.

[Y E O N N E]

Requiemking, on 27 December 2018 - 05:45 PM, said:

Believe it or not, number 3 is how it used to be, back before the Rescale.

Never really was that, no. You never had Lights trying to go gank Assaults alone in comp, because competent Assault pilots could put them down quickly and it wouldn't be worth the trade in armor anyway. Sets you up for late game failure.

Lights are the "anti-assault" in QP mostly because a good Light player is almost completely immune to gunfire from players with bad reaction times.

[Helreginn]

I think many underperformers need help, not just the Jenner. Looking at you Ice Ferret. These mechs with horrible hitboxes, weapon placement and in a few cases both problems need massive quirks just to be remotely viable. Even with massive quirks a Jenner will still never be a Wolfhound and an Ice Ferret will never be an Arctic Wolf but it will bring them closer to parity and make more chassis' viable to play since many players currently don't want to touch these mechs because of their reputation.