801 replies to this topic

[Rkshz]

Daeron Katz, on 17 March 2021 - 10:40 AM, said:

Hello all, I've been spending the last two days reading the forum threads, monitoring Twitch chats, and reading all the feedback sent to me through email, Discord, Twitter, etc. As you might imagine, as this is already a 34 page thread, the amount of feedback has been substantial.

I'm just making a quick post to let you know that Matt and I will be addressing this patch, future patches, Quarter 2 development, the overall MWO Roadmap, and more in a Dev Vlog this week. In the meantime, continue with the feedback, venting, or anything else you want to get across to us.

really? is that all you can say?
I think you and Matt (all PGI team) love hate... you need hate, you wanna hate, you eat hate for breakfast, and then you eat hate for dinner with a glass of wine - this is the only reason why you are breaking the game!!!

[Averof]

Louis Brofist, on 19 March 2021 - 01:20 AM, said:

Lol I'm using this as my new signature. There's so much going on here. The entire discourse of this patch and the entire premise of this freaking game, but also a warning to developers reduced and simplified into one basic sentence.

This is brilliant

I know right? Making PPC's unviable for med to close range encounters by increasing their alpha is a great idea! Relegating the PPC to a strictly fire support role and nerfing everyone's favorite slug throwers was bound to mess everything up. I should not be complaining i am a PPC Peaker after all, my playstyle is all about sitting 2k out and poking people with ERPPCs but even i do not like these changes because i can see how they ruin the game. You cannot make a weapon system less versatile and expect anything other than anger.

The MASC changes made all locust pilots, a rare and very difficult playstyle all but extinct. See i hate the little buggers as much as the next man but i respect them because their playstyle requires skill.

Keep the ac changes and mrm tho those were nice.

[Adrian0815]

The PPC changes are really unfun as hell. On the giving side it took way to long to shoot again and on the receiving end its more than pesky to get nearly killed (or get halved) in one / two shots from this neverending poptarting PPC snipers/boats.

I just came back cause of the hiring of Daeron, but now i´m thinking to fuly quit this game.

Edited by Adrian0815, 19 March 2021 - 05:07 AM.

[Tsume Eiranis]

I just came back to the game last autumn after a 5? year hiatus.

Used the various events and loot bags as well as discounts to grab equipment, most notably light engines, to kite my mechs out.

Finally figured out what to do with most of them, including a few mechs which do use/are meant to use light gauss rifles.

And then this patch hits.

Well done PGI. I did loath what you did with gauss rifles way back with the counter-intuitive "hold down and release" fire method, and now that I am finally at ease with at least trying the light version, you turn it into a worse pre-change normal gauss.

There go a few very different and varied builds from my usual lineup as well as the actual feeling of "this did shape up decent enough in the last few years". I take it back. SNAFU all the way.

[Emo Duck]

After having played with the new PPC parameters a bit... I don't hate it. Stacking light PPCs on mechs with extra energy hardpoints (in favour of regular/heavy PPCs) actually feels pretty good.

Don't care for the new light gauss rifle parameters so far, but I'm going to try it out a bit more.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Oh go to hell.

EVERY TIME.

EVERY TIME YOU LET CHRIS TOUCH THE GAME'S BALANCE YOU MAKE IT WORSE!

Guess I'll go throw my Shadowcat in the trashcan now, too. Damnit!

All you had to do was listen to the community balance document Navid has been repping. Go back and look at how many likes that has in your little info gathering post! Now look at how many likes this announcement has with 37 pages of comments! Only six!

Edited by Jack Shayu Walker, 19 March 2021 - 06:47 AM.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

So this is going to be the pattern huh? You're going to go right back to ruining MWO one patch at a time, saying you're going to listen to the community, but subbing in your own terrible in-house ideas every step of the way?

There's no excuse for this. You can't say "we were just trying to help, we didn't know". You didn't not see the community balance patch. You didn't not see the support it had. At worst you could have just taken a slice of that patch and jammed it in there. But no. You ****** up MASC, PPCs and Gauss Rifles, and now your going to do what PGI does best and die on that hill rather than ever revert your changes.

[ShooterMcGavin80]

I guess what annoys me most is there were a lot of nice weapon synchronicities going on with PPC's that are no longer complementary.

SNPPC's worked very complimentary with AC20's, LB20X's, SRM's, and MRM's. I've got several builds that run combos with those but now they're freaking weird. The SNPPC may now be lost in the wilderness.

LPPC's worked decently in combo with AC5 boats (and also with AC10's or UAC10's). I had a couple fun builds with LPPC's and AC5's, but now they're much less synchronous. I was expecting some kind of small buff to make LPPC's better standalone weapons and possibly buff their synchronicity with AC5's or even LGR's, or open them up to other synchronicities; but it is hard to see now how they pair or work reasonably with other weapon systems.

Clan ERPPC's, while often just boated by themselves, were also very useful paired with complementary weapons. UAC10's, SRM6A's, ATM's, and even the ol' 2xERPPC 2xGR build was still workable even after the ghost heat change. Now the lower rate of fire but bigger alpha on ERPPC I think in general will promote them to be boated more exclusively rather than used in more interesting mixed builds. Clan ERPPC's combined with a mixed close in energy build of SPL/ERuL was also a very solid build type. May still be viable but its utility as a Clan option for energy brawling has gone down.

In general, buffing PPC damage values while increasing their cooldown seems to increase the 'high alpha peak' meta that we were trying to work against, and also may affect a lot of interesting mixed builds negatively.

Edited by ShooterMcGavin80, 21 March 2021 - 06:32 AM.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

I'm sorry. This patch broke me. I remember actually being happy when PGI finally stopped doing balance patches for good, because I was going to get enjoy what was left. I also remember being happy when balance patches were going to come back with the community at the helm. Now all I feel is robbed.

I don't always like what the majority of community wants to do with the game, but at least they care about the game being fun some way some how. I've been patient with PGI for so long before now. I don't have it in me to be patient with you guys coming back after all this time only to start repeating the same mistakes again when you could have left well-enough alone.

I'm canceling my Stryker Pack. I don't need a PPC dragon with dead PPCs and I don't need a MASC Tbolt with dead MASC. Sigh.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

ShooterMcGavin80, on 19 March 2021 - 07:08 AM, said:

I guess what annoys me most is there were a lot of nice weapon synchronicities going on with PPC's that are no longer complementary.

SNPPC's worked very complimentary with AC20's, LB20X's, SRM's, and MRM's. I've got several builds that run combos with those but now they're freaking weird. The SNPPC may now be lost in the wilderness.

LPPC's worked decently in combo with AC5 boats. I had a couple fun builds with LPPC's and AC5's, but now they're much less synchronous. I was expecting some kind of small buff to make LPPC's better standalone weapons and possibly buff their synchronicity with AC5's or even LGR's, or open them up to other synchronicities; but it is hard to see now how they pair or work reasonably with other weapon systems.

Clan ERPPC's, while often just boated by themselves, were also very useful paired with complementary weapons. UAC10's, SRM6A's, ATM's, and even the ol' 2xERPPC 2xGR build was still workable even after the ghost heat change. Now the lower rate of fire but bigger alpha on ERPPC I think in general will promote them to be boated more exclusively rather than used in more interesting mixed builds. Clan ERPPC's combined with a mixed close in energy build of SPL/ERuL was also a very solid build type. May still be viable but its utility as a Clan option for energy brawling has gone down.

In general, buffing PPC damage values while increasing their cooldown seems to increase the 'high alpha peak' meta that we were trying to work against, and also may affect a lot of interesting mixed builds negatively.

These synergies are always what take the most casualties when PGI starts rebalancing things. At the height of MWO's weapon balance things might have been a little unbalanced, but a lot of the weapons had versatility; you could use them in different ways and in different combinations.

PGI's approach since then has been to try to pack problem weapons tightly into a specific niche. They figure that's an interesting way to balance the game, but it kills variety, both in playstyle and in builds.

The cERPPC has been suffering from this for a very long time. Don't get me wrong it's stayed a very effective weapon in the niche it was relegated to, but it used to be a very versatile weapon back when it's velocity was lower and it had a faster fire rate. Now it's snipe with it or go home. No more using it like the clan equivalent of an IS AC/10.

Now all PPCs are getting the cERPPC treatment.

[Mechdocdie]

MASC test part 4: The Flea and the Locust

Disclaimer: I am not a good ultralight pilot, and I did not play well in either of these mechs this evening but I did get a sense of the MASC change, especially because you can compare these two FLE-17 and the LCT-1E pretty directly.

Unlike the bigger MASCs I have tried so far the IS MASC Mk1 does not reduce turn rate and still slightly increases deceleration, so you don't immediately feel as if the Flea has been neutered. But as I said, I am not a skilled ultralight pilot and if I was I think I would miss the finesse which has now been stripped from the Flea. The extended MASC duration is very welcome, especially for Domination and Conquest, but I suspect that most Flea pilots will be looking at their Locusts again more closely.

The raw numbers say it most clearly...

FLE-17:
Speed with full tweak (kph) 148 - 177.6 MASC
Turn rate 124.4 deg/s with or without MASC (it was 186.6)
Deceleration(kph/s) 190.4 - 228.48 MASC (it was 361.76 - and with MASC the flea really cold stop and turn on a dime, but not anymore)

LCT-1E:
Speed with full tweak (kph) 165.4
Turn rate 127.1 deg/s
Deceleration (kph/s) 195.2

...and remember, you can't shoot straight while running MASC.

On a side note, I cannot recall being so cleanly hit by PPC shots so frequently. Very unfair nerfing the Fleas while buffing PPC velocity and damage. While many are unhappy about the big DPS drop for these weapons I suspect that the increased number of light instakills is probably easing their pain.

[K4I 4LL4RD LI4O]

You betrayed us. That is what you did.
I mean you really had us! All the good will in the world. Old streamers and players flocking back to your banner. Exitment was high. But shame on us I guess for falling into the same trap again. No more pgi no more!

[ExoForce]

For this event after this patch I brought LRM 100..

Edited by ExoForce, 19 March 2021 - 10:02 AM.

[Saved By The Bell]

Well Gauss a bit not useful now. Its true.

I used my old stealth Fafnir with 2 gauss for 1 day. I was good only in good position, when nobody sees me. Because cooldown a bit long now to have a close fight. You know how hard to shoot with gauss.

Of course I had good fights and bad fights. But really, so pain to use gauss.

Edited by Saved By The Bell, 19 March 2021 - 10:24 AM.

[AttackTorb]

I am playing PPC snipers a lot, and I am not very happy with the latest changes for IS PPCs.

The PPC changes introduced with recent patch are UNFAIR with respect to IS PPCs.

Contrary to the statement of DEVs, the COOLDOWN of IS PPC was 4s, not 4.5s.

So, the new DPS to old DPS ratio is (12/6)/(10/4) = 0.8, which indeed agrees with DEVs statement that DPS of PPCs goes down by 20%.

However, if we look closer at the changes introduced for CERPPC, the DPS goes down by ONLY 14%:

(18/7)/(15/5) = 0.8571428571428572


There are two solutions for this UNFAIR SITUATION:

1. Increase the cooldown of CLAN PPC by 0.5s, so that

(18/7.5)/(15/5) = 0.8,

to agree with statement that DPS of PPC goes down by 20%,

or

2. Increase damage of IS PPC, ERPPS, SNPPC by 1, so

(13/6)/(10/4) = 0.866,

increase by 1 the damage of HPPS to get

(18/7)/(15/5) = 0.857

for HPPC, and, finally, increase damage by 1 and increase cooldown to 7.5s for LPPC, to get

(8/7.5)/(5/4) = 0.853.



Clearly, the the second solution brings PPC DPS down by approximately 14% for all varieties.

Edited by AttackTorb, 19 March 2021 - 11:38 AM.

[AttackTorb]

I personally prefer the second solution, as it makes PPCs more viable weapon in general.

Edited by AttackTorb, 19 March 2021 - 11:38 AM.

[KursedVixen]

K4I 4LL4RD LI4O, on 19 March 2021 - 09:05 AM, said:

You betrayed us. That is what you did.
I mean you really had us! All the good will in the world. Old streamers and players flocking back to your banner. Exitment was high. But shame on us I guess for falling into the same trap again. No more pgi no more!

This isn't the first time.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

AttackTorb, on 19 March 2021 - 11:10 AM, said:

I personally prefer the second solution, as it makes PPCs more viable in general.

Nah. Roll back all the PPC changes to begin with. They won't though.

[Hexidecimark]

I think the best way to make the PPC/Gauss work if we're not doing what gulag proposes would be to remove the gauss charge and triple the range, then roll back the PPC changes completely.

[DrRockets]

I'm ok with all the new changes not what community asked but hey I like them nice burst in a dps meta, also it states clan ac20 should be 800 projectile speed but it's still 750 bug?