68 replies to this topic

[D A T A]

I am curious to see how many people percieve the necessity to have some mistakes that PGI did on weapon tuning, fixed.

Since late 2017, competitive gameplay has only been about:

inner sphere MPL
SRMs
dakka spam
ERPPCs
with some LRM spam on specific maps and some IS erll on alpine peaks

I mean, i would like to have the possibility to do something different like laser vomit or erll gauss: not a signle competitive team has used these things since they got overnerfed in 2017

Edited by D A T A, 06 October 2020 - 08:18 AM.

[Nightbird]

Here's a thread I put together a while back, after the community laser balance pass.

https://mwomercs.com...-server-chance/

[LordNothing]

i think any balance pass needs to give a go at resurrecting old mechs that have found their way into the trash tier. if pgi wants to pedal their entire backlog of mechs, it would help if they were competitive with the current metas or at least the middle tier mechs. nobody is going to drop real money on a spider 5v. with the focus on trying to sell the old stuff rather than new stuff, its something that needs to be addressed.

leave weapons alone this time instead specifically focus on quirks and baseline stats on some of the weaker chassis/variants. special attention should be given to older mechs that have been long surpassed by the power creep. maybe even going so far as adding hardpoints or even new more competitive variants, which you might sell for a few bucks a pop.

Edited by LordNothing, 06 October 2020 - 09:38 AM.

[Scout Derek]

You and I both already know the answer...

and that's yes. Absolutely.

[John Bronco]

Yes, it is time.

[DevinMace]

I think of all the issues the weapons are likely the smallest need to change, I know comp players drool at the idea of a new meta, but I would rather see things like bug fixes and quality of life changes.

[Monkey Lover]

Time to buff the pos mechs they nerfed In to not playable few years back.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 06 October 2020 - 10:52 AM.

[RickySpanish]

From a QP perspective I don't think a weapon change would be terribly good, because

A) They've already done it many times, and fluffed it up

And

Upset to the current weapons and 'Mechs might throw off the few newer players in the game.

I'd rather see as mentioned, buffs to old and forgotten chassis that would not risk wrecking existing builds. We'd potentially end up with a broader selection of viable 'Mechs that could lead to more interesting team compositions.

[Brizna]

I am not averse to some weapon buffing and nerfing but I think a quirk and base line agility tweaking across all mech variants is far more necessary.

[Charles Sennet]

Long past time. Weapon tuning for sure but I'd start with the broken/outlier mechs themselves.

[VonBruinwald]

Charles Sennet, on 06 October 2020 - 02:35 PM, said:

Long past time. Weapon tuning for sure but I'd start with the broken/outlier mechs themselves.

I'd say engine crits need fixing first, biggest source of imbalance in the game is cXL. Balance that and every thing else becomes so much easier.

[Anomalocaris]

Getting rid of the insta death IS XL sidetorso loss penalty would pretty much fix the engine imbalance. Reduce the penalty for side torso loss on LFE and make the IS XL penalty a little worse than the clan XL penalty.

Of course it would be nice to get rid of that asinine heat spike on ST loss too. Never made any sense to begin with.

After that, I'd like to see a mobility boost for a large number of mechs in the game, preferably with an engine size modifier to undo the garbage that was the engine desync nerf.

Do those three things and then sit back and watch. Adding back mobility to mechs is going to make ATMs (arguably one of the weapons in need of rebalance) less effective, which means any nerf to ATMs becomes less necessary or much smaller in magnitude. In fact, any weapon which deals spreadable damage is effectively nerfed by increased mobility as long as the pilot has some skill. So you can leave alone all missile weapons, beam weapons and stuff like RACs for the time being.

[thievingmagpi]

Anomalocaris, on 06 October 2020 - 05:05 PM, said:

Getting rid of the insta death IS XL sidetorso loss penalty would pretty much fix the engine imbalance. Reduce the penalty for side torso loss on LFE and make the IS XL penalty a little worse than the clan XL penalty.

Of course it would be nice to get rid of that asinine heat spike on ST loss too. Never made any sense to begin with.

After that, I'd like to see a mobility boost for a large number of mechs in the game, preferably with an engine size modifier to undo the garbage that was the engine desync nerf.

Do those three things and then sit back and watch. Adding back mobility to mechs is going to make ATMs (arguably one of the weapons in need of rebalance) less effective, which means any nerf to ATMs becomes less necessary or much smaller in magnitude. In fact, any weapon which deals spreadable damage is effectively nerfed by increased mobility as long as the pilot has some skill. So you can leave alone all missile weapons, beam weapons and stuff like RACs for the time being.

The rest I agree with, but I don't agree with the XL change. It's an interesting mechanic that keeps mechs from feeling too samey. "Balance passes" should focus on making sure they're fun, interesting and ensuring they have a reason to exist. *Ideally* the IS XL vulnerability should have a trade off somewhere, agility, firepower, tankiness etc even if that tradeoff comes with a high skill requirement.

[Anomalocaris]

thievingmagpi, on 06 October 2020 - 05:23 PM, said:

The rest I agree with, but I don't agree with the XL change. It's an interesting mechanic that keeps mechs from feeling too samey. "Balance passes" should focus on making sure they're fun, interesting and ensuring they have a reason to exist. *Ideally* the IS XL vulnerability should have a trade off somewhere, agility, firepower, tankiness etc even if that tradeoff comes with a high skill requirement.

Valid points. If you improve IS XL survivability you'd have to do an armor/structure quirk reduction too

Edited by Anomalocaris, 07 October 2020 - 10:47 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

thievingmagpi, on 06 October 2020 - 05:23 PM, said:

*Ideally* the IS XL vulnerability should have a trade off somewhere, agility, firepower, tankiness etc even if that tradeoff comes with a high skill requirement.

That's actually counter-productive. It's the cXL that should have a trade-off, as it stands it is outright superior to the IS-XL and LFE, it's the reason we've seen extensive such mobility nerfs to Clan mechs. The IS engines are actually pretty balanced amongst each other.

Removing insta-death may make the engines more generic but it would actually increase build variety and diversity.


Personally I favour moving to a 20% death chance per slot on ST loss. So:
The IS XL gets a 60% chance of death each time it loses a ST
The LFE/cXL gets a 40% chance of death each time it loses a ST

It also smoothly opens up the possibility of adding the ISXXL (120% chance of death), cXXL (80% chance) and the theoretical cLFE (20% chance).

The only cavat is Clan Omnis have a 40% chance to pop on the 1st loss, but it also gives them a 16% chance of surviving both ST losses, and it also makes IS Omnis viable.

Edited by VonBruinwald, 07 October 2020 - 10:19 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Lockheed_, on 07 October 2020 - 10:22 AM, said:

I think balance is fine. Well it's good enough and I don't trust the community is able to improve it.

Are you kidding me! We picked a great PSR/MM system.

[RickySpanish]

Yeah but clan engines are not the be all end all of clan 'Mechs. You can't just zero in on one specific mechanic and say AHA! That's the Broken One! When there is so much more balance involved. Clans get better engines, but run hot and have greater damage spread (burn time, shell count, missile stream etc) with less defensive quirks and locked in engine sizes on omnimechs. Side torso loss on a Clan XL is basically a death sentence in most cases, especially in the literal heat of battle.

[General Solo]

When will people learn that balancing anything with a busted a$$ matchmaker and a skill gap the size of Texas does not work.

When T1 plays T1 you can balance a thing
When T5 plays T5 you can balance a thing
But when T1 plays T5 their is no balance to balance on your balance a thing. Hope that's clear.

[Willard Phule]

OZHomerOZ, on 07 October 2020 - 09:32 PM, said:

When will people learn that balancing anything with a busted a$$ matchmaker and a skill gap the size of Texas does not work.

When T1 plays T1 you can balance a thing
When T5 plays T5 you can balance a thing
But when T1 plays T5 their is no balance to balance on your balance a thing. Hope that's clear.

So, in essence, until there's enough of a population that you can separate tiers properly, there's no point in trying to balance anything.

[Buster Machine 0]

There isn't enough population in MWO for a full balance pass and unique faction weapon aspects and feels to be implemented. That would require a test server with enough pop to get enough data to properly balance it.

At this point all PGI would be capable of doing within reason is minor tweaks based on the metrics they gathered from the live server such as minor heat adjustments like they did with the IS LPL in the past.