Dogstar, on 25 April 2021 - 01:25 AM, said:
Alright a lot of ground to cover here.
I liked all the other points you made in this post but wanted to share my admittedly anecdotal experience after a few more battles in the lower tiers - I'm finding that for most of my battles the time is now much shorter at 4-5 mins with only a few at 8-10 mins (and that mostly due to large maps like Polar Highlands)
On it's own I've found 2LGR to be okay, for lower skilled players like me landing shots at extreme range and maintaining a 'sniping' position are trickier. I like that LGR has the excellent range + damage combo as it makes it a more interesting and fun weapon. Hopefully reducing (ER)PPC quirks on heavier mechs with ballistic and energy hardpoints will fix the problem, but if not then a ghost heat penalty would be preferable to a damage or range reduction
Again it looks like the real problem is quirks and not the base weapon, please try to avid what PGI have done in the past where they nerf weapons because a few mechs have quirks that make them excessive.
On the boating of 12+ lasers have you considered simply adding a ghost heat penalty for 9 or more small or micro lasers? It's less their ability to do a ton of damage and more their ability to repeat it several times in a row without overheating that's the problem.
I'd really like to see that too, and maybe even something as crazy as 4 damage and 2x4 splash
I'd like to see a change like this too, dual AC20 should be a build that we see more often than dual HGR
Overall, now that we're a few more matches in and people are settling down with their builds this patch is definitely looking very good.
I have a small bit of information from PGI in regards to match times: Since the April patch match times have reduced by 4.1%. That is excellent news, as after the May and the June patches we will easily see an overall increase in match time.
I agree that a lot of the problem is overquirked Mechs, this was to be expected. We balanced the weapons considering zero offensive quirks on purpose to give us more flexibility when approaching quirks. This will allow us to reduce some offensive quirks, particularly quirks like 10% heat and 10% range (as we did with the Awesome and Black Jack in April patch), which we will look at doing for select Mechs. At the same time we will be looking at putting in more defensive quirks for Mechs that need it and giving underperforming Mechs some unique and interesting quirks to help them have a use.
Those quirk changes in conjunction with the mobility pass (increasing the mobility of a lot of Mechs) will make Mechs a lot more survivable and increase match time as a result.