124 replies to this topic

[Zaark]

While I wouldn't put it quite as harshly as Quandoo I do think that the game is in bad state atm. There is just too much damage going around which leads to many issues.

Personally I'd like to see significant damage nerfs across the board. Minority view, I know.

[Khobai]

To be the fair defensive quirk pass hasnt happened yet.

The problem is defensive quirks are never going to keep up with the weapon buffs.

Giving mechs a couple extra points of armor on each location doesnt make up for massively increased PPFLD in the meta.

Zaark, on 12 June 2021 - 05:55 AM, said:

Personally I'd like to see significant damage nerfs across the board. Minority view, I know.

I dont think its a minority view at all. I think most people recognize mechs are dying way too fast these days. Cauldron even mentioned they were being criticized for it in their update video and said its because defensive quirks havent been added yet. But unless theyre adding enough defensive quirks so every mech can survive additional PPC or Gauss alphas the defensive quirks are going to fall severely short of keeping up with the PPFLD meta.

But the players behind Cauldron have always wanted the game to be more like a twitch shooter than a multiplayer mech sim. Theyve always pushed for high PPFLD and low TTK metas. And usually with an unhealthy bias towards sniping over brawling. And PGI always has to end up fixing it in some extreme way. like last time they merged PPCs/Gauss for ghost heat and put stricter ghost heat limits on PPCs because all the PPFLD made the game so unpleasant. And before that it was the miserable poptart meta which led to gauss getting chargeup and ppcs with really low velocity. Its the same cyclical balance thats been going on for years and years.

So well see what happens with the defensive quirks. And if the defensive quirks dont work I think PGI needs to look at increasing internal structure across the board. Go to x2 armor and x3 internal structure from tabletop values. So effectively a 50% increase to internal structure. That would help make critical hits matter more which I think is a problem right now because internal structure gets destroyed so fast that critting out weapons never seems to matter. That would help combat the increased amount of PPFLD thats getting thrown around too.

Edited by Khobai, 12 June 2021 - 07:16 AM.

[East Indy]

I'm seeing an increase in teams sitting and sitting and sitting, leaving brawlers and skirmishers to sit and hope for an opening while the trades go on, although it does depend on the map.

Few seem to want to believe this but fielded tonnage matters. Massive weight means disproportionate damage -- not to mention static positioning because few can move beyond typical spots before the long-range game starts. VGLs may still spoil it, but let's have an event or two ensuring 6-8 lights and mediums most matches, and see how the gameplay experience changes.

[Verilligo]

Khobai, on 12 June 2021 - 06:41 AM, said:

Go to x2 armor and x3 internal structure from tabletop values. So effectively a 50% increase to internal structure. That would help make critical hits matter more which I think is a problem right now because internal structure gets destroyed so fast that critting out weapons never seems to matter. That would help combat the increased amount of PPFLD thats getting thrown around too.

Aren't we already sitting at 2x armor and internal versus tabletop? I seem to remember that change was made in the early stages of the game's development.

[Khobai]

Verilligo, on 12 June 2021 - 10:03 AM, said:

Aren't we already sitting at 2x armor and internal versus tabletop? I seem to remember that change was made in the early stages of the game's development.

yes armor and structure are both x2

but I think damage is so high now the game probably needs x2 armor and x3 structure

going from x2 to x3 structure would be a 16.66% increase in survivability. but increasing internal structure also has the added benefit of helping make critical hits against weapons matter more so weapons like LBX are a little better. Since it will increase the chances of a weapon being destroyed before the entire location gets destroyed.


I just dont see how defensive quirks alone are going to counteract the higher amounts of PPFLD being thrown around.

Edited by Khobai, 12 June 2021 - 02:49 PM.

[AncientRaig]

Brizna, on 01 June 2021 - 01:24 PM, said:

You only need 1 build that can do plenty of damage to have short time to kill. Everyone can play that very same build to achieve meta deadliness.

Cauldron's patch made a lot more builds viable but it didn't improve the best builds.

Thus TTK didn't change significantly, with only one exception: PPFLD (pinpoint front-loaded damage), this did decrease time to kill, but mostly against light mechs. Getting one shot is a lot easier now that PPFLD is more competitive, it used to have appalling DPS, now it's closer to DPS builds.

Honestly, I think that more camping == less nascar, so it's not entirely bad.

It's that kind of a problem though? PPFLD has always been competitive. Hell, it's been the meta since day one more or less. DPS builds generally have the downside of damage spreading, being that they're usually SRM or pulse vomit. UACs and RACs fall into this category as well, but outside of the IS UAC5 they all suffer from projectile spread. They trade concentrated damage for rapid output. PPFLD is the opposite, trading output for concentrating all their damage on a single component. If PPFLD has the same DPS as DPS builds, why run DPS builds? Why take out the MPL build when you could take LPPCs or Snubs if the DPS is going to be the same? This month's free mech challenge has been pretty revealing on this IMO, with SRM bombing builds being largely dead at the moment, unable to output enough DPS to beat out the much quicker firing pinpoint builds. I can regularly pull in 4-600 damage in my PPC setups, but my 4 ASRM4 2ML Griffin 2N just gets annihilated with only 200 or so damage to show for it.

Edited by AncientRaig, 12 June 2021 - 11:51 PM.

[Khobai]

I agree that brawling builds need to significantly outdps PPFLD sniping builds. I mean thats common sense.

But TTK is also a consideration. I think brawling builds tend to do better when TTK is higher because they can be more aggressive against PPFLD builds and leverage their DPS advantage better.

A big part of the problem is that Cauldron has buffed all these weapons but not buffed anything on the defensive side. Mechs dying faster is almost always going to favor sniping over brawling because the brawlers get damaged heavily or die more often before they can get in brawling range.

I will wait to see what they do with defensive quirks but I have a feeling theyre going to fall way short of whats needed.

Edited by Khobai, 13 June 2021 - 12:12 AM.

[Vysir]

All I can say is I wish I could give my 611 days of banked premium time and far too many hero/special mechs to someone who still enjoys this game. The last weapon balance patches had sucked all fun out of MWO for me and I'm throwing in the towel. There's no incentive to play anymore and I'm not masochist enough to keep trying in this PGI pushed meta.

[Vxheous]

Vysir, on 14 June 2021 - 02:25 PM, said:

All I can say is I wish I could give my 611 days of banked premium time and far too many hero/special mechs to someone who still enjoys this game. The last weapon balance patches had sucked all fun out of MWO for me and I'm throwing in the towel. There's no incentive to play anymore and I'm not masochist enough to keep trying in this PGI pushed meta.

What meta would you prefer? Brawl meta? Ballistics meta? Kitchen sink meta?

[justcallme A S H]

Vysir, on 14 June 2021 - 02:25 PM, said:

All I can say is I wish I could give my 611 days of banked premium time and far too many hero/special mechs to someone who still enjoys this game. The last weapon balance patches had sucked all fun out of MWO for me and I'm throwing in the towel. There's no incentive to play anymore and I'm not masochist enough to keep trying in this PGI pushed meta.

The weapons are going back to 2016-2017 & early 2018 values for many weapons.

Did you buy mechs packs during those years?

If so you've basically contradicted yourself.

[Castigatus]

Vysir, on 14 June 2021 - 02:25 PM, said:

All I can say is I wish I could give my 611 days of banked premium time and far too many hero/special mechs to someone who still enjoys this game. The last weapon balance patches had sucked all fun out of MWO for me and I'm throwing in the towel. There's no incentive to play anymore and I'm not masochist enough to keep trying in this PGI pushed meta.

Why do you care so much about the meta anyway, I certainly don't and I'm enjoying this game more than ever.

Now I'll freely admit I'm a perpetual tier 5 scrub but I don't think it's fair to try and claim PGI pushed the current situation when It wasn't PGI who came up with these changes, it was players just like us who play the same game we do. All PGI did was accept their assessment of what needed to be changed, IE actually listened to their players telling them what they thought was wrong with the game.

Now having said that, if you don't enjoy the game currently then fine, don't play. But wait for the quirk changes to come and wait for the agility changes to be finished before you judge things as a whole.

[Kroete]

justcallme A S H, on 14 June 2021 - 07:59 PM, said:

The weapons are going back to 2016-2017 & early 2018 values for many weapons.

Wasnt that the time of the clan laser vomits and big pinpoint damage,
where both get nerfed,
because for the majority of the players it was unfun to die after 1 or 2 hits?

Edited by Kroete, 16 June 2021 - 02:11 AM.

[Quandoo]

Tonnage does not matter. I play assault and can run around the map before my team engages. This game is dead, you are just matched against anyone currently queued. Noob playing first time or rookie with thousand hours clocked.

I simply cant understand why there is now follow up game and how MW5 happened to be single player only. The MW license is in bad hands.

Edited by Quandoo, 16 June 2021 - 02:21 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Kroete, on 16 June 2021 - 02:08 AM, said:

Wasnt that the time of the clan laser vomits and big pinpoint damage,
where both get nerfed,
because for the majority of the players it was unfun to die after 1 or 2 hits?

And then after all those nerfings, the population took a nose-dive.

PGI nerfing something does not mean it was a correct or even a widely popular decision.

[Kroete]

Y E O N N E, on 16 June 2021 - 03:30 AM, said:

And then after all those nerfings, the population took a nose-dive.

PGI nerfing something does not mean it was a correct or even a widely popular decision.

Please provide evidence to these claims!

[Y E O N N E]

Kroete, on 16 June 2021 - 03:33 AM, said:

Please provide evidence to these claims!

You got it, boss.

[Vxheous]

Kroete, on 16 June 2021 - 03:33 AM, said:

Please provide evidence to these claims!

Every bad patch that PGI has put out directly correlates to mass player loss here:


https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

[Kroete]

Vxheous, on 16 June 2021 - 03:44 AM, said:

Every bad patch that PGI has put out directly correlates to mass player loss here:
....

A fancy line from some personal page without any comments or explanation is no evidence for the most of the world.

[Y E O N N E]

Kroete, on 16 June 2021 - 03:54 AM, said:

A fancy line from some personal page without any comments or explanation is no evidence for the most of the world.

The explanation is at the bottom of the page if you click the link. The data is collected by PGI via the game client.

Try again.

[Kroete]

Y E O N N E, on 16 June 2021 - 03:56 AM, said:

The explanation is at the bottom of the page if you click the link. The data is collected by PGI via the game client.

Try again.

Where are the patches that are mentioned on this page and where can i find them in the explanation you mentioned? Where is the correlation shown on this page, if there is no hint about patches?

[Redacted]

Edited by Armchair General, 16 June 2021 - 09:06 AM.