DAEDALOS513, on 23 March 2021 - 03:10 PM, said:
I don't misunderstand at all. I understand that matches are lasting on average 5 minutes. I understand that the cause is weapons being too strong in that they core and/or drop mechs too quickly. I understand that buffing weapons to match the strong weapons will only make things worse in that TTK will be reduced and match time in turn will be reduced. Unfunning..
If cauldron is implemented.. to counter these obvious results, we will eventually call for armour buffs and mech quirk nerfing .. these armour buffs and quirk nerfs will nullify weapon buffs .. and then you have nothing but wasted time and effort. For the love of God, you guys don't see the quagmire that will ensue? There's a guy in other forum complaining that these weapon buffs will leave his lrms' viability in the dust.. Haven't we gone through this enough before to learn from history? You can't make sweeping changes and you can't make a bunch o' weapons stronger without unbalancing everything else.
Instead we must take baby steps in the opposite direction.. take the strong weapons and bring them inline with weaker ones. The fun will still be there in that everyone is on the same playing field. The skilled will still dominate, the difference is that it will take more work and time to do so. The difference is players won't die in 1 or 2 minutes (half of match time) and they will derive more satisfaction out of the game by actually contributing to a match more (win or lose).
If our goal is to shorten lengthy match times then fine.. but that isn't the case. You say players leave when their mech is nerfed.. I counter that players leave when they get insta-cored insta-dead within minutes of match time. This is evident from the yelling rage quitting. The steep learning curve doesn't help either..
Winners will still win, losers will still lose.. the difference is TTK and match time will only increase.
If TTK is reduced substantially in the first iteration of the PTS, then we will adjust it as that isn't our intention. I do not anticipate a large reduction in TTK. As I said before that's the entire point of the PTS; to test the changes in a live environment and receive feedback from the community.
PGI have a long history of repeatedly nerfing weapons. They have done so far more often than buffing weapons over the years. Nerfing weapons that work into something that doesn't work well is not the design approach we want to take in The Cauldron. We are not prepared to repeat the same mistakes PGI has made.
Some weapon systems, like LRMs and ATMs, we are looking at re-balancing rather than nerfing. Currently they are often 'all or nothing' type weapons where they either kill 'Mechs very quickly and easily, or do 0 damage often due to AMS. Our approach to start with is test a slight velocity reduction paired with increased missile health for LRMs. We have simply reverted the last LRM velocity buff given to them by PGI. We will look at how LRMs perform and then consider if further changes are needed based on testing and feedback we receive. We are also looking into AMS changes too for future PTS iterations.
Agility, Skill Tree, 'Mech rescale, and Quirks are all aspects of the game that have driven people away from this game in the past. Huge numbers of players left when agility was nerfed and the skill tree was implemented in particular. Certain 'Mechs were nerfed into the ground with PGI's rescaling too.
A great example of a 'Mech hit very hard by these changes is the Firestarter. It used to be a very good light 'Mech, but was hit by repeated nerfs until we barely see it used anywhere in the game at any level. The Firestarter was made far larger, the common weapons it used were nerfed, its agility was reduced, and 35 tonne light 'Mech jumpjets are some of the worst in the game, especially when compared to the performance of 40 tonne class IV jump jets. All these factors contributed to making a usable 'Mech near unusable.
The overarching goal of all this is to both bring back old players who have quit the game due to these varied reasons and bring in brand new players. Obviously other content is needed as you have already mentioned; new maps, new content, QOL changes, but as I previously said, those are outside our scope to change. PGI must do that part, whereas we can work and help on other parts.
Edited by Krasnopesky, 24 March 2021 - 06:46 AM.
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