615 replies to this topic

[The6thMessenger]

SPNKRGrenth, on 24 February 2021 - 06:20 PM, said:

After having given the Gulag v2 balance suggestion posted by Navid on page 1 a full thorough read through, I have to agree it'd be a great starting point on resurrecting the fun and balance of the game, IF implemented in its entirety, not pick-and-choose piecemeal.

Do I fully agree with every single suggested change? No. But it even says in the link, farther tweaking and changes can always be made afterwards to smooth out issues. But as a whole, man oh man would it get me and my friends to come back and start spending cash on the game again.

I agree with the Gulag too, the direction at least, some of them didn't go far enough in my opinion.

Spoiler

The streaks gets mostly nerf, and without slightly longer range. Yeah, the lights needs less anti-weapon when basically everything else is anti-light already with good aim. The IS SSRMs are just mechanically irrelevant that if you can just land your SRM shots well, you might as well go with standard SRMs, you'd get better damage/missile and use on demand anyways. Clan SSRMs don't have this problem, because their SSRMs precisely can hit for farther and is pushed at a different playstyle, it's mechanically relevant.

The UACs, while I agree with the increased reliability, there is just the crests of dps and shooting, and the troughs of hiding and cooling down. The fundamental issue with the system why it's feast-or-famine is that by chance it could either do well, and is somehow balanced by getting jammed. Min-Maxing banks on that, and if luck is on your side you have runaway DPS. While Laser-Vomits at least have their crests and troughs of damage-hide, these are reliant to skill, while the UACs is mostly reliant on luck. The issue with UACs applies to RACs too, that being balanced around redlining the RACs.

The CAC, I agree with the other guy, reduce the slots as well. The LB20X needs slot reduction for relevance vs AC20.

Maybe the 2nd balance pass, the weapons gets full reworks.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 24 February 2021 - 07:41 PM.

[xAndy199]

FupDup, on 24 February 2021 - 04:30 PM, said:

Reducing tonnage or slots would technically not invalidate existing builds. You are allowed to drop under-tonnage. It would be weird though.

The BT universe already has many things with different tonnage/slot values, like Light ACs and Protomech ACs for lighter ballistics. Just push the timeline further and there's no need to make stuff lighter.

My reason for wanting to fix PPCs and ACs using their weight and their ammo weight respectively is concern over buff creep.
PPCs have a clear relative position among themselves, but between the predominant map design (the common engagement ranges outside of Faction Play) and the real-time, real-skill nature of non-tabletop Mechwarrior, for the IS side, there's always a better ton-for-ton solution with lasers, barring some builds with exotic quirks or hardpoint configurations.

2x LPPC matches PPC range and damage, heat is more-or-less the same, just with LPPC you save 1 ton in exchange for 1 hardpoint and 1 slot. Seems like a fine trade, until either Mediumboating or a single Large Laser leave it in the dust. And the Ghost Heat Goblin steals your LPPC alpha.

The PPC itself is hard-pressed to stay competitive with the Large Laser line.

There's truly no downside to taking 2x HPPC over 3x PPC (at these heat levels, 25% extra cooldown is a bonus, not a hinderance), but they are still within a few % of each other. The HPPC also has a hardpoint advantage over both the PPC and the PPC's Laser competition.

Clearly, the worst off from these is the LPPC (and the SNPPC), so you give it a big buff.
This means you need to considerably buff the PPC, which is still fine by itself.
You'll end up having to buff the HPPC somewhat, and now we've in trouble.

The HPPC is a clear-cut energy equivalent to the Gauss Rifle. Same damage up to ~500 m, save 5 tons + ammo, pay in 15x heat. Fair trade.
You'll have to get a buff for the Gauss rifle, but then you'll have to buff the AC/20 in some way.
Then you'll have to buff the HGauss somehow to justify the heft. Imagine making the HGauss any more powerful (apart from tweaking ammo/ton).

As a side note, any increase in effective range for the other PPCs will endanger the thus-far-okay ER-PPC with irrelevance.

Therefore, I want to balance the LPPC as a long-range peer of the Medium Lasers (alternative to MPL and ERML) and the SNPPC as a short-range peer of the Large Laser (alternative to LL and ERLL), so that the PPC and HPPC can be balanced on their own terms.

[IshanDeston]

Would be nice if we wouldn't have weapon combinations in the game that insta delete people from the game. Like Dual Heavy Gauss which can kill an Innersphere Light mech with a lucky hit to the side torso and take them out with nothing the Light pilot can do, due to projectile velocity and inability to twist the damage. (And i am already scared of the mech scale re-balance, that is likely going to compound this issue when perspective wise, the Locust will be as big as an Atlas is now)

Anyway, would be nice if we could go back to the 30 pinpoint damage Alpha limitations. Lasers with long beam duration and MRM and such are fine to go beyond that, but 50 damage pin point in a fraction of a second is just frustrating as hell to be on the receiving end of. Its like being back before the cockpit hitbox reduction and receiving dual PPC to the face.

[The pessimistic optimist]

KodiakGW, on 24 February 2021 - 01:16 PM, said:

UAC random jam replaced by bar like RACs
Regular ACs that are 1 slot bigger than their UAC counterparts decreased 1 slot to be equal crit points

good idea and please more ammo per ton for ACs

Edited by SirSmokes, 25 February 2021 - 04:50 AM.

[Itsacon]

For all those people complaining about how clan weapons are nerfed in respect to IS weapons, that's because one very important thing from tabletop Battletech is missing from MWO:

Battle Value.

In TT, a Daishi and an Atlas are not even close to considered equal. Nor are equivalent clan and IS weapon types. In many cases, the ratio approaches 3:2.

If you translate that to MWO, it means that for every two clan mechs on your team, you'd face three IS mechs of equal tonnage.

The same goes for weapons: right now, a stock chassis and one optimized and skilled out completely to a meta build are considered completely equal by the matchmaker. In TT, that wouldn't happen. If you exchange 6 medium lasers on your team with PPCs, the difference in BV amounts to a complete light mech on the enemy team.

So to everyone saying: Clan and IS weapons should be equal: Then you have to implement battlevalues, and use those in the matchmaker.

This is also the absolute easiest way to solve any balance issues long term, since battlevalues are easy to tweak, and you can even replace ghost heat with them, by simply using a scaling BV for certain weapons that are interesting to stack: second PPC gives 1.2 multiplier to its BV, third gets a 1.5, etc. If you want 11 PPCs on your Dire Wolf, you can. But you'll be dropping with a bunch of light mechs and nothing else.

Adding BV to mechs and equipment gives endless room for tweaking the balance, without invalidating any builds. It's just that the better your build, the crappier your teammates.

You can then use PSR as a multiplier on BV when determining a player's 'weight' on the team, and simply divide players so the BV on each team matches as close as possible.

[Powderpuppy]

everyone has an opinion so he's mine.
As a regular player of between 2 and 20 hrs a week depending on life and tbh not that good i have read most of the comments above and make these observations

IS LRM's personally the min range shouldn't be reduced but long range accuracy should be increased with a slightly increased reloading time.( maybe Artemis could be may more effective)

Clan LRM's increase the reload time

LBX auto cannons the slots should be reduced in line with normal Ac's

RAC s I think they should increase in weight by at least a ton but the heat generation should be reduced slightly and they shouldn't jam while spooling.

UACS either the jam rate should drop or the reload time should shorted

Gauss Cannons all the firing mechanics just seem wrong ( but i do like the recoil on the heavy) I also think they need some sort of tracer .

Laser AMS should generate less heat maybe bring it inline with a small pulse laser as atm it generates over double the heat

IS double heat sinks should be more efficient after all they are bigger

Targeting computers should have a range buff or the bigger better ones should have benefits against ECM s

Tag should have a option to come on with a locked target.

[Alreech]

Itsacon, on 25 February 2021 - 08:01 AM, said:

For all those people complaining about how clan weapons are nerfed in respect to IS weapons, that's because one very important thing from tabletop Battletech is missing from MWO:

Battle Value.

In TT, a Daishi and an Atlas are not even close to considered equal. Nor are equivalent clan and IS weapon types. In many cases, the ratio approaches 3:2.

If you translate that to MWO, it means that for every two clan mechs on your team, you'd face three IS mechs of equal tonnage.

The matchmaker in Quickplay isn't even able to balance teams by Mech class and player tier while achiving short match making times.

Even with equal teams by Battle Value the team with more clan mechs will have either less players or less tonnage or both.
I don't think that even die hard Clan players would like that.

A much easier way to balance teams would be the use of dropdecks and more spawns or tonnage for the IS mechs - and dito, i don't think even the die hard Clan players would like that.

[feeWAIVER]

Flamers should have synergy with machine guns.
The flamers should soften the armor so the machines can penetrate it.

[Curccu]

feeWAIVER, on 25 February 2021 - 09:38 PM, said:

Flamers should have synergy with machine guns.
The flamers should soften the armor so the machines can penetrate it.

Sure if you keep that torch in same spot for few minutes.

[Meppoy]

Just hope my voice would be counted in).

First of all, Clan Small Pulse Lasers damage boost. Like from up to 5.5 at the very least, they're just unplayable right now.

Second, downgrade of Heavy Gausses. Assaults with double Heavy Gausses are cancer, they make MWO look like Counter Strike, and it's not the kind of experience you hope to find in this game. One-shot-kills are just bad for gameplay, no matter how much satisfaction they may grand for HGR-users. I want also note that this problem is aggravated by ability to use this build with ECM. So we have not-so-easily-noticable one-shot-killers. I really consider it to be one of the worst parts of the current meta.

And third point - machine-guns boats. It may not be the biggest problem by itself, but obvious plusses of such builds make other light mechs game-styles overshadowed and barely used. I do suppose that slowing fire rate a tad or maybe weaking crit chance per bullet may improve the overall situation - without making this gamestyle completely useless, which won't be good, of course.

[dario03]

I find the amount of people asking for machine gun nerfs odd. Its typically brought up because of light mechs with them. But like I said in an earlier post, lights are the lowest scoring class. Also if you check high level comp I don't think you will find many mg lights. Don't know exactly but I'm pretty sure you would find ismpl boats more than anything, honestly I think mgs would be decently down the list in usage in high level comp. I see them a decent amount in qp/fp, but I wouldn't say a lot, and they tend to die easily since the requirement of constant exposure gives plenty of opportunity for anybody near by to kill them.
I also think spl/cspl buffs would get more people using those instead of mgs, especially with clans. The clan lights don't have an answer for ismpl since the cmpl is so different and is more suited for bigger mechs, cspl by itself isn't that great, the other medium lasers have to long of duration so different style of play, so with that and hardpoints a lot of clan lights currently need mgs.

[Bud Crue]

Read through the whole thread and finally got around to reviewing the Gulag's latest proposals in detail. I'm pretty much in the "make the Gulag changes wholesale" camp, and especially the quirk changes. Few points of contention regarding some of the proposed quirk reductions, and the only one I really care about is in regard to the proposed armor reduction for the IV-4. While reducing the armor bonus may be a necessary nerf, but I think that is only from the perspective of the MRM builds. If we want to encourage build diversity then I think I would rather see a nerf to the missile cool down quirk along with a potential buff to arm armor if indeed the overall armor values are going to drop. On a related note, I'd also give the non-IV-4 quickies some additional quirks as well.

[FupDup]

dario03, on 26 February 2021 - 10:16 AM, said:

I find the amount of people asking for machine gun nerfs odd. Its typically brought up because of light mechs with them. But like I said in an earlier post, lights are the lowest scoring class. Also if you check high level comp I don't think you will find many mg lights. Don't know exactly but I'm pretty sure you would find ismpl boats more than anything, honestly I think mgs would be decently down the list in usage in high level comp. I see them a decent amount in qp/fp, but I wouldn't say a lot, and they tend to die easily since the requirement of constant exposure gives plenty of opportunity for anybody near by to kill them. I also think spl/cspl buffs would get more people using those instead of mgs, especially with clans. The clan lights don't have an answer for ismpl since the cmpl is so different and is more suited for bigger mechs, cspl by itself isn't that great, the other medium lasers have to long of duration so different style of play, so with that and hardpoints a lot of clan lights currently need mgs.

Most lights can't even carry enough MGs to pose a threat. The only thing holding back MG buffs (for Clans at least) is a certain 20-ton elephant in the room, but even then I think a rework could be possible to reduce frustration while simultaneously making MGs less boat-dependent.

Specifically, it's the crits. Those friggin' crits. Instantly losing your weapons and thus ability to fight back when your armor disappears sucks. MGs should just have good normal damage and not have any silly crit shenanigans. This would make smaller quantities of MGs useful while making MG Piranhas less frustrating to fight against.

MGs have always been viable against mech armor in every MW game ever (in MW3 they were brutally OP, boat 16 of them and kill a Dire Wolf in 2 shots) and in TT itself but PGI drank the "BUT MUH ANTI-INFANTRY WEAPON BRO" kool-aid.

Edited by FupDup, 26 February 2021 - 01:20 PM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

FupDup said:

Most lights can't even carry enough MGs to pose a threat. The only thing holding back MG buffs (for Clans at least) is a certain 20-ton elephant in the room,

I'm still regularly surprised that this particular variant that you refer to as a "20-ton elephant in the romm" is still made out to be the big bad bogeyman in any such conversations and then gets the blame for PGI not considering changes to machine gun damage values.
Let's face it:

• Lights are still the significantly least played weight class in pretty much any game mode including the one that is the dominant one (QP)
  
• Even among the Lights that actually get played said "elephant" doesn't strike me as the one that takes a lion's share. There are other Lights that you see far more regularly
  
• That "elephant" is squishy as hell even when compared against its other 20-ton brethren and ...
  
• ... has been heavily nerfed with regards to its twist and yaw capabilities which severly impacts its prowess in close quarters ... where it's supposed to fight due to the weaponry in the first place

FupDup said:

but even then I think a rework could be possible to reduce frustration while simultaneously making MGs less boat-dependent.

Specifically, it's the crits. Those friggin' crits. Instantly losing your weapons and thus ability to fight back when your armor disappears sucks.

Let's ignore for a second that

a ) "elephant" pilots tend to focus on center torso from behind and legs and thus aim at zones with little gear that can be critted out.
b ) the crit supression provided via survival tree can knock off quite a bit off of those increased crit chances of machine guns

and take your claim that this "elephant" will regularly crit out your weaponry in exposed zones "instantly" (by always instantly scoring the on average 8+ crits required to kill all weapons in any given location) at face value.

FupDup said:

MGs should just have good normal damage and not have any silly crit shenanigans. This would make smaller quantities of MGs useful while making MG Piranhas less frustrating to fight against.

Okay, so let's say that CIG removes the general 1.5 multiplier on crit chance for machine guns as well as decreasing the crit damage multiplier per bullet down to flamer values and then also add a negative crit chance quirk on the "elephant" just to be totally sure .. by what percentage would you then be willing to increase machine gun damage (across the board for bot IS and Clan)? The same 1.5 (to 0.105, 0.15 and 0.225) or even a 2.0 (to 0.14, 0.2 and 0.3) multiplier which would still keep the standard machine gun below AC2 DPS (which it "should" equal in TT terms)?

FupDup said:

MGs have always been viable against mech armor in every MW game ever (in MW3 they were brutally OP, boat 16 of them and kill a Dire Wolf in 2 shots) and in TT itself

Indeed ... so let's have standard machine guns with 0.278 damage per bullet then (with removal of the crit chance bonues and better tuned crit damage bonuses).

FupDup said:

but PGI drank the "BUT MUH ANTI-INFANTRY WEAPON BRO" kool-aid.

Which is kind of annoying considering how much emphasis they put on TT resemblance

[MechWarrior5782621]

Easy fix: give all MG's a significant damage buff, maybe 33% higher DPS. They should have high DPS because they require so much facetime, otherwise they're just worthless.

But, they should also generate some heat, maybe around 0.3 HPS, to keep the MG boats under control.

[Natural Predator]

Everything that hits over 900 meters needs an across the board nerf to range. Eliminate Zimbabwe play style please. Lurms, ppcs, ac2s. Heat or damage nerfs. Especially ac2 mechs

[jamesbombed00420]

please buff small lasers, would love to see laser brawling be viable again.

[FupDup]

Der Geisterbaer, on 27 February 2021 - 06:40 AM, said:

I'm still regularly surprised that this particular variant that you refer to as a "20-ton elephant in the romm" is still made out to be the big bad bogeyman in any such conversations and then gets the blame for PGI not considering changes to machine gun damage values.
Let's face it:

• Lights are still the significantly least played weight class in pretty much any game mode including the one that is the dominant one (QP)
  
• Even among the Lights that actually get played said "elephant" doesn't strike me as the one that takes a lion's share. There are other Lights that you see far more regularly
  
• That "elephant" is squishy as hell even when compared against its other 20-ton brethren and ...
  
• ... has been heavily nerfed with regards to its twist and yaw capabilities which severly impacts its prowess in close quarters ... where it's supposed to fight due to the weaponry in the first place

Let's ignore for a second that

a ) "elephant" pilots tend to focus on center torso from behind and legs and thus aim at zones with little gear that can be critted out.
b ) the crit supression provided via survival tree can knock off quite a bit off of those increased crit chances of machine guns

and take your claim that this "elephant" will regularly crit out your weaponry in exposed zones "instantly" (by always instantly scoring the on average 8+ crits required to kill all weapons in any given location) at face value.


Okay, so let's say that CIG removes the general 1.5 multiplier on crit chance for machine guns as well as decreasing the crit damage multiplier per bullet down to flamer values and then also add a negative crit chance quirk on the "elephant" just to be totally sure .. by what percentage would you then be willing to increase machine gun damage (across the board for bot IS and Clan)? The same 1.5 (to 0.105, 0.15 and 0.225) or even a 2.0 (to 0.14, 0.2 and 0.3) multiplier which would still keep the standard machine gun below AC2 DPS (which it "should" equal in TT terms)?


Indeed ... so let's have standard machine guns with 0.278 damage per bullet then (with removal of the crit chance bonues and better tuned crit damage bonuses).


Which is kind of annoying considering how much emphasis they put on TT resemblance

I'm not one of those assaultwarriors who thinks lights are OP. I'm saying that this one particular light makes it harder to make buffs to MGs because it will naturally get a lot more benefit from those buffs than other Clan mechs who can only pack a few MGs.

Yeah, the Fishbot is armored with glass, but it's got plenty of cannon to go with that and it caused Clan MGs to get nerfed for everybody (which is exactly the point I'm making) as well as getting its own agility nerfed a few times. Those nerfs didn't come out of nowhere, they came because a particular mech initially had abnormally high performance.

As for what exact damage to give them in exchange for crit reduction, I'd start with between 10-20% more for Clan MGs and 30-40% more for IS MGs (because they're twice as heavy and IS mechs don't have many hardpoints). Spread would get tightened a bit for all of them with LMGs getting the most tightening because range is their job and they kinda fail at that job right now.

I'd also push out the ranges for regular and light MGs a bit more because they're just too close to each other right now (especially MGs and HMGs, I don't know why people in this thread keep wanting to give them the exact same range). I'd actually let the Clans have a little more range here because it keeps the theme of Clans generally outranging the IS and it adds more give-and-take than just "Clan weapon is lighter and weaker."

[Omniseed]

Trashtier, on 27 February 2021 - 08:42 AM, said:

Everything that hits over 900 meters needs an across the board nerf to range. Eliminate Zimbabwe play style please. Lurms, ppcs, ac2s. Heat or damage nerfs. Especially ac2 mechs

Trashtier indeed

[The6thMessenger]

FupDup, on 27 February 2021 - 09:21 AM, said:

I'm not one of those assaultwarriors who thinks lights are OP. I'm saying that this one particular light makes it harder to make buffs to MGs because it will naturally get a lot more benefit from those buffs than other Clan mechs who can only pack a few MGs.

Yeah, the Fishbot is armored with glass, but it's got plenty of cannon to go with that and it caused Clan MGs to get nerfed for everybody (which is exactly the point I'm making) as well as getting its own agility nerfed a few times.

Yeah, PGI is dumb like that. One mech overperforming, and then it's the rest of the mechs that are also nerfed.

Nobody complained about 4x CUAC10 on a direwolf IIRC, but god-forbid the Kodiak with it overperformed, now it's suddenly nerfed to 2x GH limit.

They should be liberal with Nega-Quirks, -20% MG ROF on Piranha or something instead of making it sluggish and unfun to pilot.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 27 February 2021 - 03:58 PM.