Okay... this post is going to get rather long, since you're going to force me to reveal all the reasons that your ideas are not a perfect answer....... skipping the emotes for a bit too...
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Respect is earned, not given. You have instead lost it by constantly spreading bad advice on the forums. This is especially bad when brought to new player sections. It is harmful.
It's only bad advice in the eyes of someone trying to force everyone to play the game only their way, and having no respect for people with a disability and/or a slow computer. Not everyone can play in a Split-Second Nascar Competitive Brawl type of fashion, which it appears quite a lot of your advice (
and what comes from some others) is unfortunately linked to. Thus, my advice is going to differ from yours whether you like it or not, and you're sadly the one being toxic & harmful by not accepting that fact. People have a right to see multiple differing views,
and not only what the Competitive Crowd deems appropriate, as to allow those other people to have their own chance to form an opinion with a style of play, and not have their minds pre-shoved in one direction only.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Weapon balance is currently rather good, with some minor exceptions such as inner sphere medium pulse lasers standing out due to how other lasers are a bit lacklustre. Laser vomit is still playable too, though. Even inner sphere and clan tech are in balance, which is honestly pretty amazing considering clans are hopelessly broken in every other game based on batteltech, including battletech itself. Most popular weapons in competitive play are is-MPL, c-ERPPC and IS autocannons but most other things see use as well except for maybe clan small pulse lasers.
In other words, you're saying that anything of the PPFLD Variety has been given the better place in the game while everything else can suffer. Any person with shaky aim and/or a slow computer has issues with making that land, period. Depending on the level of difficulty that a person's tracking is affected by, particularly when a battle gets hot and framerate lags, that can easily result in tons of missed shots and/or grazing hits where little damage is done. You again give me the impression that you have never really had to deal with limitations on how well you can react to the battle situation, which means that you don't understand people who have bounced off their own physical limits multiple times.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Lock-on missiles, especially LRM, have been buffed three or four times in a row. Last buff gave them a low firing arc and high velocity that makes getting damage on target easier than it used to be. Streaks have never been good outside of when the game was in beta or alpha, and ATM are slightly overpowered. Not by much but enough that I wouldn't be surprised if there will be a nerf to ATM short range damage or missile velocity or both.
Streaks + TAG = Reasonable Upon Successful Lock... ATM is actually rather Feast-or-Famine depending on how much AMS that the Enemy Mech & Team have... But again, that's if you can get a Lock-On now, what with it requiring virtually Pinpoint Accuracy to complete the Lock at all. Again here, people without a disability and/or slow computer are given an unnecessary advantage that they should not have in MWO's Current State Of Play which we all have to live within.
But, what is most bothersome is your remarks about LRMs here. You ignore several ugly nerfs that have also been applied, including intentional ignorance of the nerfs to Range, Spread, Lock-On Time (
and the overdone link to Sensor Range), and Indirect Fire Support that could help Teammates get their Mechs in-gear and moving to fight the Enemy at whatever Range which helps them the best.
Lowered Arc? Higher Velocity? More Ammo? That all gets made worthless by the fact that needing to be able to fire past a Teammate's head at the Enemy Mech in order to Support them means a whole lot more. It also gets made more worthless by the fact that more than two-thirds of the Missiles when Chain-Firing tend to spread so wide as to miss the CT completely, thereby giving someone with PPFLD Weapons a rather strong advantage. Sadly and regrettably, I have personally found that even includes the LRM5 being rendered unable to strike properly. It finishes getting made worthless by the fact that the Lock-On Missile User literally is UNABLE to Torso Twist while attacking with that kind of weaponry, meaning that any Missiles still in flight will totally miss if the Lock-On Missile User has to Torso Twist at all. In the meanwhile, someone with PPFLD Weapons can easily twist repeatedly and weather the damage by radiating it across their Mech's surface. This effectively means that the Lock-On Missile User is far more easily cut through than the PPFLD User is, and rather much shows how badly biased the game has become in the PPFLD User's favor.
Allowance to wiggle the Lock-On Missile Mech's Torsos is literally non-existent at this point, and I would frankly be willing to trade back...
- the Extra 60/Ton of Ammo
- Lowered Line-Of-Sight Arc
- Higher Line-Of-Sight Velocity
- Different Line-Of-Sight Locking Speed
...in order to get back...
- the old Narrower Spread that Indirect Fire should have
- the Overhead Support Arc that does not change due to Line-Of-Sight ... nobody wants to hit Teammates in the back even by accident with Lock-On Missiles
- Greater Lock-On Angle, which comes with the inherent Ability To Torso Twist
- Better Overall Lock-On Time, which should NEVER have exceeded 8 Seconds @ 900 Meters
...which people with disabilities and/or slow computers like myself need far much more. There should have always been a difference between LRMs and ATMs on that Line-Of-Sight thing, and that has been blurred far beyond too much. It almost wipes out the place that Streaks should still have.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Lights, Mediums, Heavies and Assaults are all popular and effective. Major differences are between some chassis and variants being better than others independent of their weight. Weapon placement as described by Tarl above is especially important.
That depends a bit on what the Weapons Loadout happens to be, and whether one has things mounted to catch even the most extreme angles, including rather low positions. Mech effectiveness should NOT be entirely decided by how high that the Weapon Hardpoints are located at, and it's regrettable that people have wiped out the consideration of effectiveness via lower Hardpoints in trying to force a single style of play. Keep in mind that if all the weapons are High-Mount Torso positions, and nothing on the Arms, then there is nothing to defend with if a Light Mech gets smack in-between the legs of the Higher Weight Classes on the battlefields.
On top of this, someone showed me a Heavy Mech where they were forced to opt totally into Firepower, Survival, Cool Run, and ECM in order to make it effective against Mediums/Heavys/Assaults at all. But without the Mobility Tree, it can not stand up against Lights at all, and it ran out of Skill Nodes to allocate. Given what I have seen over time, that effectively creates the following Effectiveness Chains on how Mechs handle against each other...
- Lights > Assaults & Heavys > Mediums > Lights
- Lights > Assaults > Heavys > Mediums > Lights
- Streak SRM Mechs (if able to Lock at all) > Lights
- SRM/LBX Mechs > Anything Else
- Any Non-Locking Weapon > Lock-On Users
...and shows that many Heavys (
as well as certain other unfortunate Builds) have been left in a rather UnderPowered State overall, while Lights are in a far better place overall... possibly even to the point that they're sometimes OverPowered too. PGI's Staff at the time of the Skill Tree release simply did not get the issue they created when other people forced them to make different ones, particularly when they avoided something more reminiscent of the "65 Active/105 Total" Ratio shown by games like BorderLands and its' successors. While there may be need for Specialization Limits in order to help with preventing OverPowered Mechs in MWO's game, there is a point that got exceeded at which how narrow that the available options are limited gets way too thin, and that has resulted in hurting MWO overall. I have personally seen this myself, and have seen a Heavy (
as if it were merely a lower tonnage Assault) get outdone by a Light because it was not able to have room for Mobility at all.
Before I forget about Medium Mechs here, it should be noted that a Team which is properly working together won't so easily have the vulnerability of Lights being able to turn OverPowered against both Assaults & Heavys on the field. But, when the Medium Mechs all run off and fail to protect their larger Teammate Mechs that they get as help, it ultimately will tend upon turning into easy meals for the Lights against the Assaults & Heavys of the Opposing Team that they're facing against. When one is already dealing with jitter-causing disability and/or a slow computer, this problem with Lights becoming OverPowered is massively amplified. Unfortunately, this one falls on the Community in general to start working together. Will they do that any time soon? Not so likely, I am unfortunately left to say.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
MWO runs on an old engine that demands very little from your GPU and leans heavily on single-thread CPU performance. New hardware therefore has limited effectiveness as new computers have advanced the most in GPU and memory, neither of which MWO uses much, and multi-core performance when MWO struggles to take advantage of multiple cores. I play it on a medium tier computer on Linux trough hacky Windows emulation and do fine with FPS hovering between 40 and 50.
You would have needed to state here what your system specs were like for someone to better understand you. (
Also, I am surprised that you have it running in Linux since the last reports I've heard were that people ended up with their setups on Linux entirely perma-broken. You might want to start a different Thread about that, and make note of what hardware you're running it on top of.) I've personally discovered the hard way that if MWO does not have a fast enough CPU & GPU to work with, as well as enough RAM, then it always lags down. To give you a rough idea, I was working with an "AMD FX-Series CPU /w 8 GB RAM & NVidia GeForce GT440" and could barely hang onto around 30 to 40 FPS @ 1280x720 FullScreen on rather low-end settings. When I was able to increase to a "16 GB RAM & NVidia GeForce GTX 670" configuration, it allowed me to take it up to 1600x900 FullScreen with 35 to 50 FPS as the GPU was a lot more powerful and no longer choked for RAM that it could pick to utilize.
Unfortunately, something seems to have changed with how MWO is built in the last few months, and now I can not run the game as well as I used to have the ability for. Out of nowhere, the FullScreen Mode took one hell of a significant hit which pushed me out of it, and I've been forced into the use of 1920x1080 Borderless Full Window on rather low settings with a wild swinging 15 to 55 FPS range to have to deal with. It sometimes gets sickening trying to put up with it. I can not afford to get a new system, and wish I could get back to FullScreen Mode for normal use. Trying to use lower resolutions in Borderless Full Window format is also not an option, as the Framerate gets worse at any lower setting with that kind of overlay processing happening. And I am rather sure that if this had happened before the Additional RAM and Better GPU had reached me, then it would have solidly knocked me out of MWO when the whole situation for Borderless Full Window Mode decided to slam me in the face.
That brings me to the note of the fact that I know that I'm not the only one having to put up with these issues. Not everyone can afford hardware for even 1920x1080 Medium @ 40 to 50 FPS like you can. If they tried, they would then not have the money for something else they still need and/or must deal with, and you know that's not anything they would have a choice about either. So yeah, the GPU & RAM still factor in somewhat and should not be ignored in active reasoning, even if the CPU still holds the bigger bit. We may be able to agree that MWO may not be able to really use things like "a 16-Core System /w 32+ GB RAM & NVidia GeForce RTX 2080" to their full potential, but I have to sharply disagree on how things factor when dealing with far lesser hardware due to direct experience with two distinct system configurations.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Time to Kill a mech 1v1 in MWO is actually rather high, since the armour is indeed double what it is in other games based on Battletech. When a player manouvers badly and exposes themselves to an opposing team of 12 players however, no amount of extra armour will save them. You will always die fast when taking damage from a very large number of mechs and tripled or quadrupled armour would not change that.
Actually, having 3x TableTop could change that just a little, and that would be all that is needed in order to balance MWO a little better. Heck, it might have even saved everyone from the massive "Nerfageddon" that has happened over the last few years to all the Weapons & Mechs in the game. (
Thankfully, we can agree that 4x TableTop would be too much and would not balance properly, even if our agreement is due to distantly differing reasons!) As I would like to try and not to be too verbose, having only 2x TableTop in the game's current climate is still too unforgiving, and this game's base design needs to receive an adjustment to further increase & slow down TTK in order to give a better chance to players who are still trying to grow and develop. Sure, it will not save everyone instantly off the bat, but what I think you're skipping here is that it would increase the chance that some people would have to be able to pull back before they're totally crushed. That would therefore result in at least some helpful-yet-small appreciable margin of escapes. I think we can agree that would be far better than the frustrating nothing that staying at 2x TableTop would leave Newer & Lower-Tier Players with.
To give you a rough idea, I want to actively
AVOID solving the problems that the game is having through the idea that other people came up with where a debuff handicap would get applied against Higher-Tiered Players who get put in a Match against Lower-Tiered Players for battle. Ideas like that could result in a complete collapse of the PSR Systems and how they're usually supposed to keep Higher-Tier Players apart from the Lower-Tier Players under normal circumstances, as it would effectively create a situation where Lower-Tier Players could gank Higher-Tier Players and rise outside where they should be on the PSR System's placement. At the same time, it would create a vacuum that would drag down the Higher-Tier Players out of where the PSR System says they should be, and drop them to where they would then be ganking everyone in trying to climb back up, which would result in a loss of fun for everyone as the Higher-Tier Players ended up in a constantly futile uphill battle.
Hmph... Perhaps those rumors of needing to put an Undo command on several years worth of Weapon Balance Changes & Mech Quirk Removals are actually true. It sure sounds to me like somebody back then knew ahead of time what calamity would befall MWO between then and now! It even makes me wonder what things would be like if we tried using the MWO Game Balance & Mech Quirks of 5 Years Ago, combined with an increase of Armor & Structure to 3x TableTop levels, along with use of the Pumped-Up Original Quirks of all subsequent Mech Releases beyond that point. If only we had a PTS to actually try that stuff out with, but I don't think anyone could ever get PGI to do that.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Unlike other games based on Battletech, even light mechs can be very powerful, tho not all players enjoy the faster pace of gameplay. I enjoy it a lot.
You probably got into the idea that I was trying to disrespect Light Mech Players when you were reading my previous post, right? Please calm down, because I can most certainly tell you that was a severe misconception of my mentality, and would still be if you're having that thought about me while reading this post. For me, as long as it does not lag, and I'm not feeling sick and/or claustrophobic while trying to pilot a Light Mech myself, I also sometimes can find piloting Light Mechs to be a rather enjoyable experience too! Who knows, maybe the MatchMaker will at some future point put us together in a Match on the Same Team while we're both running Light Mechs and then you can see for yourself as we somehow work together against the Opposing Team and what they brought.
Unfortunately, that brings me to where I must make note of people with disabilities and/or slow computers once again. You put me in a position where I must make it clear that people facing any of these types of problems simply can not push themselves and/or their computer too far. While some of us may enjoy piloting Light Mechs now and then, I hope you can understand & respect that we can not always do it to the extent that you do it at. If we try, either our computer crunches, or we physically happen to lose the ability to keep playing... Sometimes both unfortunately happen at the same time. Heck, we'll eventually get pushed to a point where we have only two options for a bit... Either we go to using Lock-On Missile Boats for a while, or we end up going totally offline. For those of us who don't want to starve the MatchMaker of available players in order to keep the game going for everyone, that is not a great choice to be stuck with. Hopefully that gives you a quick pointer at better understanding why LRMs in particular really need some undo on the nerfing, even if we have to pay through loss of some Ammo-Per-Ton in order to get better Spread & Lock-On Angle to play with.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Arm lock is a bit of a matter of personal taste, but most players seem to prefer to have arms unlocked to enable aiming of arm weapons and most of all to make twisting your torso smoother and lock them only to make a shot when needed. Tarl's suggestion to remap hold to toggle is a good one.
And neither am I really against
Tarl Cabot's Suggestion about that key remap. I just wanted to make sure that the Opening Poster,
Andrewlik, fully understood the ramifications of that action, and what would be required to recover & gain access to that part of the MWO Game Features for their use. Sure, some people may not want or need the MWO Academy after remaps like that. However, I personally saw no reason to leave them without a "Warning Label" about that matter, and I think we should be able to agree that being honest about caveats is the better choice. I am rather sure you get that it would definitely be rude to not be truthful about a hidden impact like that!
Also, you seem to have seen a far different section of the Player Base & Community than I happen to have. After my own mech gets downed during most of the Matches that I have personally been in, I tend to find that people have their Arms locked to their Torso instead of being separate. I would therefore have to suspect that like me, they don't like the lag time either between their Arms moving and the Torso catching up to be able to fire those Weapons too. Thus, I have ended up with a differing opinion over the matter, specifically because my mileage has been radically different from yours. So, I really would like to think that we can "constructively agree to disagree" (
even with divisively different opinions and experiences) on the best primary state for Arm Unlock at the Match beginning, and therefore kindly show
Andrewlik that there is more than one reasonable way with MWO to pilot and play.
Gagis, on 14 March 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:
Cockpit geometry doesn't really make a difference for any mech, except maybe Piranhas which many players seem to prefer playing slightly zoomed in. Adjusting your Field of View may help though, since the default value of 60 in MWO is optimal for playing console games on a sofa with your eyes quite far away from the television. For PC games with your eyes much closer to the monitor, you'll probably want something between 75 and 90 to feel comfortable.
And thus... guess what... My own FOV setting in MWO is up at 80 specifically because I found 60 to be far too narrow when I began playing. That's part of why I mentioned the whole issue with claustrophobia in the first place. Even though I have increased this setting myself, it so happens that there is still the outstanding issue with certain Mechs that still do not provide the ability to see out to the sides at all. As I also mentioned before, I understand how disconcerting that can get, and was therefore just trying to put another "Warning Label" up about that. I am very specifically
NOT trying to prevent people from doing as they wish, but instead have them be pre-informed with more than one side of thinking as they make their choices so that they go into it with as much knowledge as possible of what they may be getting themself into.
...and hopefully by this point and a ton of quotes-with-reply later, you get that I was personally
NOT trying to be some kind of perfect authority either. However, I did want the Opening Poster,
Andrewlik, to be able to see that the Community is diverse and has separate (
even if occasionally sharp) takes on what might work well. In turn, this would enable them to learn and turn into a good pilot of their own making, instead of missing out on useful parts of the learning experience that could help them because they only followed a "Cookie Cutter Path" for their development. The more people that we can get to use their brain here on MWO and help develop into their own MWO-enjoying person through that mental usage, then the better that is for all of us. Otherwise, it would end up that they would play a while without using their mind, come up short and frustrated, and then end up leaving again instead of adding to the permanent population. I would like to think nobody wants the worse of those two results to occur.
Anywho, I've gotta scoot for now. This post has basically eaten the last FIVE hours of my time to build and type out properly while avoiding being short-sighted with my thoughts. Hopefully you will now get that I'm not as goofy under the hood as you thought I was, and that there are things where there can be multiple valid opinions!
~D. V. "
There will always be far more than one single way to play MWO..." Devnull
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