180 replies to this topic

[PocketYoda]

Hello to you Krasnopesky, good to meet you and sorry if i give the cauldron a hard time, you guys do help more than PGI in many respects.

My question to you with this thread is wasn't the whole cauldron patch designed to make the TTK higher.. As in faster because with all the buffs and heat removal, damage boosts, ghost heat removal etc, how on earth would it not be.

Isn't that the whole by design.

Anyway thanks for posting.

Edited by MechaGnome, 28 April 2021 - 08:38 PM.

[udoshi]

udoshi, on 28 April 2021 - 06:44 PM, said:

2) Add Hibernal Rift as a regular map mode! Its actually a really damn good map! Just park it in regular rotation (its faction play normally)
Thanks

Sorry, I confused maps! I meant Vitric Forge

[Krasnopesky]

MechaGnome, on 28 April 2021 - 08:34 PM, said:

Hello to you Krasnopesky, good to meet you and sorry if i give the cauldron a hard time, you guys do help more than PGI in many respects.

My question to you with this thread is wasn't the whole cauldron patch designed to make the TTK higher.. As in faster because with all the buffs and heat removal, damage boosts, ghost heat removal etc, how on earth would it not be.

Isn't that the whole by design.

Anyway thanks for posting.

As we have stated many times since October last year our balance proposals are designed with all the passes in mind: Weapons, Mobility, Quirks, Rescale, and eventually Skill Tree. Weapons are the one area where the focus is skewed towards buffing offense, the rest focus much more on increasing defense and time to kill.

PGI only has the resources for us to focus on one area at a time, so we started on weapons as it was the most defining one and impacted the other areas greatly. The next few months we will focus on improving agility and defensive quirks while reducing now unneeded offensive quirks and continuing to balance weapons (which will likely include weapon nerfs, not just buffs). All of these future passes will increase TTK.

Edited by Krasnopesky, 28 April 2021 - 09:14 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Krasnopesky, on 28 April 2021 - 09:05 PM, said:

MechaGnome, on 28 April 2021 - 08:34 PM, said:

Hello to you Krasnopesky, good to meet you and sorry if i give the cauldron a hard time, you guys do help more than PGI in many respects.

My question to you with this thread is wasn't the whole cauldron patch designed to make the TTK higher.. As in faster because with all the buffs and heat removal, damage boosts, ghost heat removal etc, how on earth would it not be.

Isn't that the whole by design.

Anyway thanks for posting.

As we have stated many times since October last year our balance proposals are designed with all the passes in mind: Weapons, Mobility, Quirks, Rescale, and eventually Skill Tree. Weapons are the one area where the focus is skewed towards buffing offense, the rest focus much more on increasing defense and time to kill.

PGI only has the resources for us to focus on one area at a time, so we started on weapons as it was the most defining one and impacted the other areas greatly. The next few months will focus on improving agility and defensive quirks while reducing now unneeded offensive quirks and continuing to balance weapons (which will likely include weapon nerfs, not just buffs). All of these incoming passes will increase TTK.

The Gulag Cauldron's result is promising so far. There's some nitpicks with the current implementations, but that can always be addressed later patches.

I just see no good reason to be worried with their proposals. Better than what PGI ever did.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 28 April 2021 - 09:18 PM.

[mike29tw]

Nightbird, on 28 April 2021 - 03:38 PM, said:

Funnily I expect increased mobility to cause TTK to go down rather than up. "How, when you can spread damage better?" You might ask. Mobility does increase defense capabilities, but it also increases offense by allowing you get around a corner faster, poke more aggressively, track a target more accurately. My bet is on the latter being a larger impact than the former.

100% agree with this.

Good players would leverage increased mobility for offense capability more than defense. Matches are still, primarily, about killing other mechs. You win by dealing damage and NOT taking damage. Not a single good player ever thinks, "I'm going to go to that spot, pop myself up in the enemy's crosshair, and spread some damage like a champ!"

That being said, I enjoy Cauldron's changes. I'm excited to see what's coming.

[Firewuff]

justcallme A S H, on 28 April 2021 - 07:41 PM, said:

Outlier situations are just that. The whole point of a large sample is to ensure those outliers don't adversely skew the results. Over 1,000s of games they won't so such a statement is of little relevance.

Map, mode - it's all taken care of via ways of average and sample size. It's all accounted for.

Of course more detailed stats would be useful. However if you expect there to be a huge shift it isn't going to be there be that map, mode or Tier.

Even if Tier 1-3 games TTK is lower / matches are faster (that might be true) that means TTK/match time for Tier 3-5 is even less impacted or potentially not at all due to the average over the sample size. Imagine T3-5 games not being affected much at all? It's possible based on these numbers.

Ash is the assumption that all tiers are affected equally is flawed. Different weapons selections are popular in different tiers. Gauss needs far more skill than med laser.

Also on the sampling question, I dont doubt a large sample set helps but it doesn't eliminate the outlier problem. It can infact make it worse (larger sample size is more likely to get extremem outliers than a smaller one, its just basic statistics). If the data isn't available its a shame, given PGI has the ability to review games post play for support and greifing report reasons I would have thought they could pull it out. The idea is you end up with a distribution over time for each kill 1 -24 so you could see if there was an early stack of kills at the start of a match and a long tail, or a long slow battle to start and a frenzied kill fest at the end. It would be super intersting to see in general, even not in comparison to prior to the patch.


I would say dont see my original post or this as a criticisim. If thats the data PGI has and can give you then its probably part of the reason PGI has had trouble balancing since day one.

Edited by Firewuff, 28 April 2021 - 09:55 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

Firewuff, on 28 April 2021 - 09:53 PM, said:

Ash is the assumption that all tiers are affected equally is flawed. Different weapons selections are popular in different tiers. Gauss needs far more skill than med laser.

I never said all Tiers were equally affected. I even provided an example where by some tiers could be having different things going on - where over the average - it events out.

And that number it evens out to is 4.1%.

Firewuff, on 28 April 2021 - 09:53 PM, said:

Also on the sampling question, I dont doubt a large sample set helps but it doesn't eliminate the outlier problem.

• Did the outliers exist before patch? Yes.
  
• Do the outliers exist post patch? Yes.
  
• Have the outliers changed enough to alter the numbers? I don't believe so at all.

If these outliers did not exist prior to the patch - I would 100% agree that the numbers were not that useful.

You would have to have a rise of significant proportions of these outlier scenarios to have even a minor impact on the numbers when you're talking 1,000s of matches of data.

Firewuff, on 28 April 2021 - 09:53 PM, said:

If thats the data PGI has and can give you then its probably part of the reason PGI has had trouble balancing since day one.

PGI have more data, much much much more data. No doubt about it. What Kras posted is what PGI have shared with us so far.

The issue of PGI and balancing is a lot more complicated and not really a point to discuss in this thread anyway.

[The Brewer]

I've finally put down enough matches since patch day to say this definitely feels different, and for the better. Can't say I noticed the TTK drop, but build diversity is way up and that alone has made the game more fun to play than it has been for me in a while. I'm enjoying the work and I'm looking forward to what y'all have lined up. Good job Cauldron, and thanks!

[Nayru]

Krasnopesky, on 28 April 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

The Cauldron's overarching goal has always been to increase 'fun' and 'enjoyment' for the majority of people who play this game, two extremely subjective concepts. In order to make this goal more measurable and achievable we have decided to focus on making more weapons, play styles, and 'Mechs in general viable. This concept presumes that having more options available to use and not being punished for using ineffective weapons (because the goal is there will be zero ineffective weapons) will be more 'fun' for the vast majority of players. This goal is measurable as PGI will (hopefully) provide us with statistics that indicate whether or not an increase in weapon and 'Mech diversity has occurred as a result of our changes.

...

As weapons were chosen first and The Cauldron decided to focus on mainly weapon 'buffs' as opposed to 'nerfs' (PGI has historically focused on nerfs as opposed to buffs)

except streaks i guess

you ever gank a ssrm24 6 spl stormcrow with a mg piranha before? i would never have dared try that pre-patch

pls revert

[Der Geisterbaer]

Nayru said:

you ever gank a ssrm24 6 spl stormcrow with a mg piranha before?

Setting aside the question on how often you really saw that happen since this most recent patch ... Yes, there were times before when PIR-1 pilots dared attacking such a stormcrow build (or other SSRM build for that matter). To be precise, prior to the January 2019 patch (https://mwomercs.com...41910-22jan2018 *don't let the wrong year number at the end of the url confuse you)

• That patch drastically changed SSRM behavior in terms of how SSRM damage spreads across a mech with a strong bias towards the torsos where before the 48 damage points of a 4x SSRM6 volley tended to be distributed across the entire mech equally. Where PIR-1 standard builds stood a chance to survive 2 full 4x SSRM6 volleys without serious armor breaches and weapon losses and could even live beyond a 3rd or 4th volley this change pretty much guaranteed that the first volley was likely to breach at least one torso and a 2nd volley then pretty much took the mech off the playing field.
  
• That patch seriously reduced the PIR-1's torso yaw angle, which allowed it far better to engage in narrower circles and maneuver without losing LOS for its machine guns on the target while trying to outmaneuver said target
  
• That patch also removed the PIR-1's bonus structure on its legs which allowed survival of two additional SSRM hits per leg prior to any survival tree bonuses.

Since you explicitly referenced a clan SSRM build: Even with the now reduced SSRM damage on clan side the picture doesn't change that much: The first volley of 4xSSRM6 will make the torso armor cherry red (and still possibly breach) and a successful second volley is more than often bound to be either the kill or at least leaves a PIR-1 in a pretty much non-threatening state ... and your cooldown for that second volley is 33% lower than it was prior to the patch.

Nayru said:

i would never have dared try that pre-patch

I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing

Nayru said:

pls revert

And the PIR-1 bogeyman has struck again

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 29 April 2021 - 04:07 AM.

[Mech Walesa]

The Cauldron - I'm loving it.

[DerMaulwurf]

I'm sorry, but match time is a genuinely terrible metric to measure TTK in a game where so much time is spent walking without enemy contact.

I am willing to give your changes a chance, but I expect honest analysis.

[Kroete]

Matchtime does not say much over tkk.

The matchtime can be near the same because ttk is nearly the same
or
is the matchtime is near the same because we have lower ttk and people hide more to not die fast.

Whats the goal and plan ?
Mechs taking some hits
or mechs die fast
and how can these goal be verified by which numbers?

i will, in the moment, assume thats not at will that you try false correlations,
but it will do nothing good for the acceptance of the changes.
(And i will also forget that some defenders of these changes claimed that ttk will not go down or no weapon will be nerfed. But some more of these and i need to say you are following an agenda or/and are just incompetent.)

Edited by Kroete, 29 April 2021 - 03:35 AM.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Nightbird, on 28 April 2021 - 03:38 PM, said:

Funnily I expect increased mobility to cause TTK to go down rather than up. "How, when you can spread damage better?" You might ask. Mobility does increase defense capabilities, but it also increases offense by allowing you get around a corner faster, poke more aggressively, track a target more accurately. My bet is on the latter being a larger impact than the former.

yes and no; I suspect TTK for the most part will go up; reason: a major part of active players I see don't know how to use mobility properly to their offensive advantage, or as you pointed out: to aim&peek better, for example.
the same players don't know how to use it defensively either, but this comes 'more naturally', since their opponents are from the same skill-level more often than not.

where TTK will go down though are those who do know how to use mobility proper, I fully agree with you here. matches against good opposition will be harder fought&more exiting I hope, and I'm not unhappy with increased mobility -at all-
it's a skill/learning-related thing and naturally those who do invest time to learn benefit more from it than those who don't - or in case of beginners didn't have time to learn, yet.

the one (constant) thing that comes up: it makes beginner-life even harder, and it seems too hard for many to begin with. once the t5cadets reach t4 and run into 'proper' t1-players, they have yet one thing more to master in order to not-getting-farmed 24/7;
many people aren't up for that, and imo we would have a broader&bigger playerbase if we'd "protect" the beginning seals at least for a while, and not throw them between the sharks after a hand full of matches.

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 29 April 2021 - 04:31 AM.

[Nayru]

Der Geisterbaer, on 29 April 2021 - 02:57 AM, said:

And the PIR-1 bogeyman has struck again

maybe if hitreg behaved like it should it wouldn't be much an issue, but i tore out its laser torso in seconds and then the 3/4 remaining streaks were too heat/damage inefficient and it blew up before it could get me

or blow off any of my components

on the by and large easiest to kill light in the game, with a change that only subjectively buffed it towards lights (because it's complete garbage vs anything more substantial than a not-abnormally-durable light now with the nerfs, which allegedly the entire point was to make cssrm better vs not-lights, a catastrophic failure)

but sure streaks saw a LOT of use especially in comp and need to be a complete non-factor, very overpowered

not like snubs that were so unusable they needed to be given twin gauss level of insta-pinpoint and a 30% heat cut

the only reason i brought up that it was mg piranha is because if it was my laser piranha it wouldn't've fired a single shot off (because shockingly a stormcrow can't take 77 in the rct), but i guess it's at least refreshing to see after all these years cluelessness is still in no short supply on these forums

Edited by Nayru, 29 April 2021 - 04:46 AM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Nayru said:

maybe if hitreg behaved like it should it wouldn't be much an issue,

So now we're not talking SSRM damage but rather the old and tired "hitreg" / "lag shield" argument.

Nayru said:

but i tore out its laser torso in seconds

Care to show what 4xcSSRM6 + 6cSPL Stormcrow you're talking of now, just to know which "laser torso" you're talking about? Where from did this engagement start? How many seconds of you getting uninterupted machine gun fire on said "laser torso" are we talking here ?

Nayru said:

and then the 3/4 remaining streaks were too heat/damage inefficient and it blew up before it could get me

So basically you're saying that you managed to outmaneuver the Stormcrow for several seconds in such a manner that its pilot couldn't even score a full 4xSSRM6 volley on your PIR-1 and by the time he managed to fire his SSRMs you had already killed 1 SSRM launcher along with his lasers.

Are you sure that the damage reduction plus cooldown reduction on SSRMs really were the determining factors there?

Nayru said:

on the by and large easiest to kill light in the game,

Ah, so that easy kill is supposed to remain easy?

Nayru said:

with a change that only subjectively buffed it towards lights (because it's complete garbage vs anything more substantial than a not-abnormally-durable light now with the nerfs, which allegedly the entire point was to make cssrm better vs not-lights, a catastrophic failure)

Sorry, but that doesn't quite compute with regards to the expressed goals for the changes. The official goal was:

The current state of Clan streak SRMs can be described as the definition of a feast or famine mechanic. The extremely long cooldown phase of the weapon could mean that a miss is equivalent to being completely disabled for a long time while the fight around you is going on. On the other hand, this has resulted in Clan ‘Mechs packing in as many Streaks as possible and opting for a hit and run fighting style, counting on their sheer number of launchers to destroy or cripple their target in one shot, and using cover or speed to safely wait for the next salvo. The goal of changes made to Streak SRMs in this patch has been to make the weapon more consistent in terms of damage output which has been achieved by reducing the upfront raw damage and adjusted heat values while allowing the weapon to fire faster. This change is expected to turn Clan Streak SRMs into a viable close range option against all types of targets. Alongside this change IS Streaks have also been tuned to have longer cooldown to balance their damage output potential between IS normal SRMs and Clan Streaks.

Nothing in that goal says anything about "(only subjectively) buffing 'it' towards lights". If anything the stated goal is and was to make SSRMs have less up-front damage but consistent damage thereafter. Heck, what you're describing is - with regards to light mechs - actually spot on in terms of what the patch stipulated as its goal: 4xSSRM6 almost insta-killing a PIR-1 (and a large number of other lights) is quite literally one of those "feast" situations referenced under the goals section. If that "feast" situation is now gone, then it's hard to call it a "catastrophic failure".

Nayru said:

but sure streaks saw a LOT of use especially in comp and need to be a complete non-factor, very overpowered

It would appear that you're now starting to ramble as well as starting to move the goal post.

Nayru said:

not like snubs that were so unusable they needed to be given twin gauss level of insta-pinpoint and a 30% heat cut

Okay, so now it's not even about SSRMs vs. the weakest / easiest to kill light mech that somehow also is the big bad bogeyman anymore but instead you've reached the whatabotism stage where you're dissatisfied with weapon changes that are totally unrelated to both the SSRM Stormcrow and the PIR-1

Nayru said:

the only reason i brought up that it was mg piranha is because if it was my laser piranha it wouldn't've fired a single shot off (because shockingly a stormcrow can't take 77 in the rct),

So instead of the allegedly even stronger PIR-2 / PIR-3 bogeyman you chose to bring up the "easiest to kill" PIR-1 bogeyman. What exactly does that in terms of "proving" your point about (clan) SSRMs now allegedly being too weak?

Nayru said:

but i guess it's at least refreshing to see after all these years cluelessness is still in no short supply on these forums

~rofl~ And now it's time to sling mud I guess!?

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 29 April 2021 - 05:28 AM.

[Nayru]

i was being sarcastic when i thought to myself that maybe if you wrote me a forum warrior tier essay with a million in-quote replies nitpicking everything i said that it'd make your points somehow intrinsically more correct

but you're not exactly the sort of person to be talking game design with judging by these last two posts, so i'll wait and see if someone a bit closer to what happened and more reasonable bites

[Der Geisterbaer]

Nayru said:

i was being sarcastic when i thought to myself that maybe if you wrote me a forum warrior tier essay with a million in-quote replies nitpicking everything i said that it'd make your points somehow intrinsically more correct

~laugh~ So we're indeed on the mud slinging and fallacy level. Inigo Montoya might also want to have words with you there

Nayru said:

but you're not exactly the sort of person to be talking game design with judging by these last two posts,

But your last two postings show that you are such a person? ~rofl~

Nayru said:

so i'll wait and see if someone a bit closer to what happened and more reasonable bites

Oh, I'm quite certain that the list of possible outcomes in such a situation is quite short and rather predictable. I'll be entertained regardless.

[A PLUMP BABY SEAL]

Thanks to the Cauldron and all their hard work, even plump baby seals are having fun again...except when Wild Alaskan is on the opposing side.

[Krasnopesky]

DerMaulwurf, on 29 April 2021 - 03:24 AM, said:

I'm sorry, but match time is a genuinely terrible metric to measure TTK in a game where so much time is spent walking without enemy contact.

I am willing to give your changes a chance, but I expect honest analysis.

I am not trying to simply measure TTK with just match time, but the fact remains that average match time is the only data set I have access to. True TTK is very difficult to measure and would require a lot more work on PGI's behalf, if it is even possible at all to truly do it with the data and resources they have.

The correlation between TTK and match time in this instance is the fact that 'walking time' and other factors have not been impacted at all while the weapons that do the killing have. This means the data is indicating TTK has been reduced, as one would expect when you buff a lot of under-performing weapons.

I have been as transparent as possible in regards to The Cauldron's intentions, plans, data, analysis, and results. Certainly more transparent than we have experienced from PGI in the past.

Edited by Krasnopesky, 29 April 2021 - 07:59 AM.