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Whats The Cauldron Got In Mind To Help Lights?


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#41 pattonesque

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Posted 01 May 2021 - 06:24 PM

View PostFishtiddies, on 01 May 2021 - 05:45 PM, said:


Thanks, Kanye very cool. Now there is practically double the amount per match.


weirdly rude, and also your complaint is that it only takes one alpha

#42 Darian DelFord

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Posted 02 May 2021 - 07:46 PM

View PostJediPanther, on 01 May 2021 - 02:44 PM, said:

Since no re-re-scale (for now) I'm seeing the best lights have are mobility or quarks. While I haven't been playing I've watched my brother play. From what I've seen of low tier it is still dominated by the fle/lct-pb. A rare (c) jenner probably used for an event challenge. If a light needs god tier quirks to even be considered to use it would be better off to make that god tier quirk a permanent stat of the mech and add on a different quirk.



Once again just MHO, but this is what I am afraid of. The last patch really did not do that much for lights in regards to weapons, especially when you consider the amount of armor we have to chew through sometimes. It did make it more dangerous for us in the field. Your situational awareness has to be even higher than what it was pre patch. I can not even imagine what is going to be needed in regards to quirks to even out the playing field.


View PostLordNothing, on 01 May 2021 - 05:27 PM, said:


ive been advocating splashy snubs for some time now. glad to see the cauldron finally saw the light. splash is still useful as a mild soft counter to torso twisting, since splash can propagate through a shield side torso and drop a couple points on the ct, which comes in handy if you come across a pilot who can twist like a boss and you need to pop that cherry ct. though i never really considered it as buff to lights until now. its a good way to make the weapon stay useful at brawling bigger mechs without being too leathal against squirrels. i think i like this development.



It will benefit heavier mechs vs the lighter mechs the most, simply due to the amount of armor. Even with the spalsh damage of the new snubs, the PPFLD aspect of it is really going to crush most of the light mechs. Its really going to be no different than when the Clan ER PPC's were changed. Lights were still popped like a pinata.

#43 JediPanther

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 06:11 PM

No amount of quirks can help the lights. Even if they could have all of them active they'd till suck and be the least class played. No reason I should play mwo any more since I can't use the vast majority of my lights including most the heroes. At least I have gog to spend money on.

#44 Vincefeld

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 08:17 PM

Only lights that are playable run 140-150kph and have very low profiles/good hitboxes

Anything like a firestarter or a raven is just oversized freekill.

Dont run 30-35t lights guys, only run 20-25t ones like locust, piranha and flea with arctic cheetah.

#45 Dogstar

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 11:37 PM

As someone who likes to stick in tier 5 I run (IS) lights fairly often because it's harder to get a high score in them. Lights are fun but are, without doubt, the riskiest class to play. Your build choices for most lights are generally either very fast with low damage, moderately fast with lowish damage, or slow and dead. As such it's harder to get a good score because you simply don't have the damage output and the rewards for other 'roles' are minimal.

The trouble is that there are exceptions like the Piranha and the tiny hard to hit mechs like the Flea, which is what most people are thinking of when they complain about 'OP lights'. So the balance decisions are always going to be compromised by the fixed outliers that can min-max any shift in balance. Piranhas will always be 'OP' because they simply have way too may hardpoints and they can't be fixed in any way that won't make them even more vulnerable to being one-shotted. The same applies to the other 'OP lights'.

So to my mind the Cauldron should be balancing for the middle ground of light mechs, there's no way to fix the mistakes PGI made of allowing unbalanced mech builds, we're stuck with those oddities but we do want the remaining lights to be viable.

So please, if you are commenting on lights, make sure to define whether you mean the bulk of light mechs or the outliers.

#46 Storming Angel

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 11:56 PM

I find the wolfhound too still be a pretty solid mech regardless. Maybe more armour quirks for 30-35 ton mechs if they are underperforming that much? Or are they getting resized?

Too be fair i only have the arctic cheetah, locust, wolfhound, javelin and urbanmech as my only lights.

#47 D A T A

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 02:37 AM

View Postjustcallme A S H, on 01 May 2021 - 04:14 AM, said:

In 2016/2017 - Did lights suffer? Yes or no.

Remembering back then dual cGauss/cERPPC for 60pt PPFLD which was a thing out to 800m minimum.
And does that exist in the current game to the same level?

Decide where it sits based off that with a logical outlook from there.


My thoughts - it is nothing like that at all. There is no prolific 60 PPFLD @ 800m+, and with values going back to the same as they were in 2016/2017 - how is that a problem?

The only issue is skill. Back in '16/'17 the skill floor was higher - it might mean players drop in Tiers because they are smacked for poor play and that is how it should be.


Actually, to me the problem is that in 2017 lights got too many buffs

1) Light mech armor tree is out of the window OP (3 times as strong as the assaults one): stack full skill tree armor on a fast light with default survival quirks and you are more or less immortal.

2) the agility gap between lights and assaults became insane: the former top performer mpl light was the firestarter, at 45 accel rate, now vulcan at over 70

3)big mech weapon combos (4uac10, laser vomit, laser gauss, erppc gauss) got nerfed into the ground and even cauldron pass did not restore them at 2016 level.

4) rescale made assaults and heavies taller and easier to hit, wile the armor remained the same.
On the contrary 20-30 tonners became tiny and got insane survival quirks on top of a riddicolous overpowered survival tree.....

And pretty much this explains how emp won 2019 with a commando and a flea
And how jgx won 2020 with basically 4 lights out of 8 mechs

Edited by D A T A, 05 May 2021 - 02:38 AM.


#48 Wid1046

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 03:43 AM

View PostD A T A, on 05 May 2021 - 02:37 AM, said:

Actually, to me the problem is that in 2017 lights got too many buffs

1) Light mech armor tree is out of the window OP (3 times as strong as the assaults one): stack full skill tree armor on a fast light with default survival quirks and you are more or less immortal.

2) the agility gap between lights and assaults became insane: the former top performer mpl light was the firestarter, at 45 accel rate, now vulcan at over 70

3)big mech weapon combos (4uac10, laser vomit, laser gauss, erppc gauss) got nerfed into the ground and even cauldron pass did not restore them at 2016 level.

4) rescale made assaults and heavies taller and easier to hit, wile the armor remained the same.
On the contrary 20-30 tonners became tiny and got insane survival quirks on top of a riddicolous overpowered survival tree.....

And pretty much this explains how emp won 2019 with a commando and a flea
And how jgx won 2020 with basically 4 lights out of 8 mechs


The survivability tree won't do much if your armor and structure pool are next to nothing to begin with. Let's compare the effects of a maxed out survivability tree on the legs of a flea vs an annihilator.
The flea starts out with 16 armor on it's leg with an 'insane survival quirk' of +6 bringing it to 22 armor, the maxed out tree gives a 'ridiculously overpowered' 23% boost to that 22 armor which is 5 addition armor for a total of 27.
The annihilator starts off with 84 armor in its legs with a quirk of +7 bringing it to 91 armor, the maxed out tree gives a 10% boost to that 91 armor which is 9 additional armor for a total of 100.
The flea starts out with 8 structure, the maxed out tree gives a 'ridiculously overpowered' 38% boost to that structure which is 3 additional structure for a total of 11.
The annihilator starts out with 42 structure, the maxed out tree gives a boost of 25% which is 10 for a total of 52.

So the flea with a maxed out 'ridiculously overpowered' tree gets a total of 8 extra hit points to bring its total to 38 while the annihilator will get 19 extra hit points. The flea can still be legged in a single pinpoint hit, so increased mobility is probably a better use of the 32 skill points required to get every armor hardening and skeletal density node.

Also, most players aren't comp players. Lights still need to be competitive in tier 2 through tier 5, so we don't really care what competitive team comps are like when the best of the best are piloting the mechs.

#49 East Indy

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 03:56 AM

If extreme numbers of assaults and heavies weren't dropping in most matches -- talking both sides, here -- we'd be having a different conversation. The Cauldron may not be able to control excessive tonnage, but they can consider solutions and lobby directly for them.

#50 Dogstar

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 05:10 AM

View PostD A T A, on 05 May 2021 - 02:37 AM, said:

1) Light mech armor tree is out of the window OP (3 times as strong as the assaults one): stack full skill tree armor on a fast light with default survival quirks and you are more or less immortal.

I'm sorry but this is just complete gibberish. It might, just might, be vaguely believable if you were referring only to the ultimate elite players but for everyone else it's just not factual. Again you're showing that extreme hyperbole like this does not make for good balancing decisions.


The basic problem with most light mechs, bar a few heavily armed ones as I've mentioned before, is that they simply don't do enough damage to get a decent match score in the hands of the majority of players.

No we could add armour and structure quirks to make them tougher but all that does is just make them undergunned mediums - see the Urbanmech for an example of this. I think that survival quirks are useful for lights but they can't be the only part of the solution - especially if you believe what DATA says.

So instead I think that we should consider damage quirks for light and medium mechs. As a base I'd suggest an average of +20% for lights, +10% for mediums, and removing any damage bonuses for heavies and assaults.

I'd suggest modifying that base bonus depending on the number and type of hardpoints that the mech has so in extreme cases like the Spider SDR-5D with only 3 hardpoints it could maybe get as much as a 30% bonus.

Now obviously you can't give all of the Piranha variants a 20% damage bonus becasue they have a bucket full of hardpoints and can do plenty of damage, so outliers like this need to have no bonus. Fortunately those are very few and pretty obvious.

I think that, barring any way to apply role warfare or change the rewards for what is done in matches, increasing the damage output of most light mechs, will make that class more fun, more performant, better balanced with other weight classes, and more prevalent. All of which will help increase player numbers.

Lastly I want to add that it shouldn't be easy for people like me to run lights knowing that they will underperform compared to other classes just so that they can keep themselves in lower tiers for longer. So if you improve lights then you're also making me suffer - and that's surely something that a few of the forum-goers can be motivated by!

Edited by Dogstar, 05 May 2021 - 05:24 AM.


#51 w0qj

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 08:23 AM

Let's re-cap what has already been pointed out elsewhere on this forum:

1) Please increase the Jenner's arm armour!
Currently Jenner's head max 18 armor, and Jenner's arm max 14 armor.
So head has more armor than arms?
And almost all weapons are on Jenner's arms!! JR7-D, JR7-O, etc.
Please fix this by adding more armor into Jenner's arms!!

2) Jenner IIC the Clan's side is almost the same situation too, while we are at it.


View PostDarian DelFord, on 01 May 2021 - 09:24 AM, said:

...I damn well want my armor back on my Jenners arms.... While defensive and ammo quirks will be welcomed it comes down to damage is king. Currently the only way to get paid is damage. When it comes to damage, heavier chasis just do it far easier with less risk and less skill and are able to advance quicker. See where I am going with this?


#52 CFC Conky

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:07 AM

Some of the Cauldron changes have already helped some of my light mechs, specifically the Incubus-4. I run it with 6xC-ERML and the reduced heat and cooldown has made the mech much easier for me to manage. While the INC isn't exactly top of the class when it comes to light mechs, being able to stay at some range does help with survival. I completed the current light mech challenge in three matches in it and I am an absolutely terrible light mech driver.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 05 May 2021 - 09:08 AM.


#53 Mochyn Pupur

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:16 AM

Although my play style means anything too fast is difficult for me to control (try using WASD with only two fingers and thumb having lost little and ring fingers), I took a PIR out laden with micro lasers just to see what difference the latest pass made. I immediately hit 4 or 5 kills per match, just being careful of timing and positioning, basically coring most mechs from the rear in about 1 - 2 seconds with full volley fire and no heat penalties.

If it wasn't so painful to use these kind of mechs/loadouts, I would play lights all the time now - there's no need for any further "balancing" to give lights more dominance in the game, any half decent player should be boating ridiculous damage that ton v ton, outweighs most mechs in higher weight limits.

#54 Wid1046

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:22 AM

View PostPeppaPig, on 05 May 2021 - 09:16 AM, said:

Although my play style means anything too fast is difficult for me to control (try using WASD with only two fingers and thumb having lost little and ring fingers), I took a PIR out laden with micro lasers just to see what difference the latest pass made. I immediately hit 4 or 5 kills per match, just being careful of timing and positioning, basically coring most mechs from the rear in about 1 - 2 seconds with full volley fire and no heat penalties.

If it wasn't so painful to use these kind of mechs/loadouts, I would play lights all the time now - there's no need for any further "balancing" to give lights more dominance in the game, any half decent player should be boating ridiculous damage that ton v ton, outweighs most mechs in higher weight limits.


FYI, that micro pulse piranha build will no longer be possible once the new patch hits. Not only are micro pulses getting an increase to their heat, but they are also getting a heat scale limit to prevent them from being boated.

#55 Krasnopesky

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:25 AM

View Postw0qj, on 05 May 2021 - 08:23 AM, said:

Let's re-cap what has already been pointed out elsewhere on this forum:

1) Please increase the Jenner's arm armour!
Currently Jenner's head max 18 armor, and Jenner's arm max 14 armor.
So head has more armor than arms?
And almost all weapons are on Jenner's arms!! JR7-D, JR7-O, etc.
Please fix this by adding more armor into Jenner's arms!!

2) Jenner IIC the Clan's side is almost the same situation too, while we are at it.



We have already given PGI the information to fix the Jenners, Cicada, JagerMech, and Stalkers arms. They all have this problem.

So hopefully this will be fixed in the May Patch!

#56 Alex Morgaine

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:33 AM

heavier light mechs at 30-35 IMO tend towards being built more like mobile mediums, putting the biggest engine into a 35 ton mech actually feels like a limitation when a moderate sized engine allows you to put a more medium mech level of weapons on a lot of them. 12+ tons of weapons AND full armor on light mech, a trade off of raw speed for mobile attack/support unit capability seems like a good trade off instead of trying to shoehorn every mech into the same category based on weight.

Jenner/cicada/jager/stalker arms are a whole different issue though, the armor swap idea wasn't the best one and needs reverting.

#57 Wid1046

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 09:36 AM

View PostKrasnopesky, on 05 May 2021 - 09:25 AM, said:

We have already given PGI the information to fix the Jenners, Cicada, JagerMech, and Stalkers arms. They all have this problem.

So hopefully this will be fixed in the May Patch!


Nice! I was expecting that this would have to wait until the quirk patch in June. Nice to hear that there's a good chance that it'll happen sooner.

#58 Parashurama

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 10:25 AM

View PostVincefeld, on 04 May 2021 - 08:17 PM, said:

Only lights that are playable run 140-150kph and have very low profiles/good hitboxes


/fake old man rant on
Back in my day Dire Wolves ran 54 kph and Fleas ran 113 kph... with MASC!
Sarna remembers.
/fake old man rant off

I think we need to wait until we see how the next three months go and re-evaluate lights at that time.

There is reason to be concerned about lights. They can be easily one shot, but they also are responsible for most of the 6-12 come from behind wins while finishing above 90% health. They can often get a kill heavier targets using less than 100 points of damage.

#59 Tomo Sukesada

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 12:10 PM

The April patch brought up a lot of underperforming weapons resulting in more mechs being able to carry "more" combinations of better weapons. On average, this means there are more lethal mechs on the battle field. Some weapons lost their dead zone and some also got increased projectile velocity (ie. I can hit lights with AC20 now, I never could before, lol). So, its MUCH riskier now to pilot a light. And for the AVERAGE light player, your performance will suffer compared to pre-patch. This makes playing lights less fun which only make up 15% of players.

Now, if you look at the proposed torso twist speed coming up in the May patch, larger mechs are getting huge buffs which will result in them being able to track lights MUCH easier than today. This will just worsen the situation for lights.

I can understand the idea of giving lights Urbie level quirks to "fix" the problem, but that would assume Urbies are doing well post April patch. Their armor is NOT protecting them at all from being one-shot. If the Cauldron thinks giving lights Urbie level quirks is the answer, they are very much mistaken. God like quirks could work, perhaps?

One final point, I would suggest that the "expert" light pilots are less affected by these indirect nerfs as they are sooo much more highly skilled than the average player. The Cauldron needs to remember that for every top tier light pilot there are thousands of us average light pilots. These are the people you need to make the game more "FUN" for.

#60 Darian DelFord

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Posted 05 May 2021 - 05:40 PM

View Postw0qj, on 05 May 2021 - 08:23 AM, said:

Let's re-cap what has already been pointed out elsewhere on this forum:

1) Please increase the Jenner's arm armour!
Currently Jenner's head max 18 armor, and Jenner's arm max 14 armor.
So head has more armor than arms?
And almost all weapons are on Jenner's arms!! JR7-D, JR7-O, etc.
Please fix this by adding more armor into Jenner's arms!!

2) Jenner IIC the Clan's side is almost the same situation too, while we are at it.


HEHEHEHE I like it!

I can't argue that quote Posted Image

View PostKrasnopesky, on 05 May 2021 - 09:25 AM, said:

We have already given PGI the information to fix the Jenners, Cicada, JagerMech, and Stalkers arms. They all have this problem.

So hopefully this will be fixed in the May Patch!


He is making fun of me Posted Image





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