151 replies to this topic

[Dogstar]

I think that the weapon improvements and the agility improvements are all good things.

The only downside is that it makes one play style somewhat more significant than others - that of the alpha+dodge

By which I mean the sort of tactic where you unload a big bunch of damage and then maneuver out of the way while you cool down for delivering another load of damage. This obviously benefits higher skill because more accuracy means more kills and more agility means taking less damage.

So the Cauldron changes, while good, definitely benefit the more skilled players. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

However those other playstyles - facetime with DPS, and lock-on missile boating are suffering a _little_ bit and could do with a tweak of improvement. Neither benefits from agility improvements and neither has received much of a weapon buff.

That said we are still awaiting the quirks passes. Hopefully those will improve mech chassis that work better with the other play styles

[Cerebus23]

high ping locusts and etc, teleporting all over the map or you running them sometimes.


they need to figure that out.

[Aivazovsky]

Aivazovsky, on 23 June 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

I think we need to see these "quirks" before discussing mobility?

Ok, a month has passed. Can someone tell when the community will see new quirks? Any announcement?

[1453 R]

There are currently over eight hundred individual pilotable 'Mechs in the game, taking into account different variants of each given chassis. Each and every one of those pilotable 'Mechs needs its own specific individual review. Existing quirks largely cannot be used as a yardstick given weapons and mobility adjustments as well as a desire to stop the endless cycle of chase-the-meta quirks that do nothing to make a given 'Mech feel unique and cool. The Cauldron's stated goal is to come up with a system where each individual machine in the game gets quirks that make it feel unique and fun to play as well as whatever quirks are needed to make it at least semi-functionally sorta-competitive with top-tier machines.

They need to do this for over eight hundred 'Mechs.

It's gonna be something of a capital-P Project, and easily the biggest single lift the Cauldron has to do. Especially when they're so sharply limited by the nature of the changes they can make ("is it an XML edit? If not, no dice for you"), which is going to force them to get quite creative indeed to make over eight hundred individual machines feel unique.

Creativity takes time. Especially when your creativity needs to be checked, rechecked, and triple-checked again by a group of your contemporaries to ensure the changes are working as intended.

I know everybody is expecting the Cauldron Quirkening to save their favorite Shitmech from the Shitmech Pile, but I feel like some perspective is in order, especially if "your favorite Shitmech" is, just as one example, something like this: AWS-8R. There's only so much quirks can do, and if your godawful FrankenBuild is off base enough you likely won't see much benefit from Quirkening X.0 anyways. So...temper expectations, ne? This is MechWarrior Online, "temper expectations" should be burned into your blood by now.

[Dogstar]

Hmm it would be interesting to have a month with quirks all set to zero, ten we'd get a chance to actually see how mechs perform without quirks and with the weapon and mobility pass in place.

Edited by Dogstar, 02 August 2021 - 08:16 AM.

[1453 R]

Heeeh. Man. While that would absolutely be useful in terms of data gathering, I can imagine most folks around here would, ahhh.......object..........to any such proposal. Especially Sphere diehards.

[Alex Morgaine]

Do we have access to PTS still? If so, since our accounts get cloned, why not set an event using pts data that puts the rewards in the real account.
And if no pts, just make the rewards IS centric then next month do 0 quirk on all clan Mechs including omni set of 8 bonuses. With the event on that side vs required IS Mechs, same idea if pts is available.

[Dogstar]

1453 R, on 02 August 2021 - 08:28 AM, said:

Heeeh. Man. While that would absolutely be useful in terms of data gathering, I can imagine most folks around here would, ahhh.......object..........to any such proposal. Especially Sphere diehards.

I think, that amongst other things, it would show that the tech imbalance is still pretty strong. It feels like there are lot more quirks on IS mechs to make them palatable than there are on Clan mechs.

[1453 R]

Dogstar, on 03 August 2021 - 12:51 AM, said:

I think, that amongst other things, it would show that the tech imbalance is still pretty strong. It feels like there are lot more quirks on IS mechs to make them palatable than there are on Clan mechs.

Leaving aside for the moment that this is a thread for debating the Mobility pass (long since been hijacked anyways, sadly), I would posit that Sphere overquirking is due in part to lingering tech imbalance, and in part to Sphere machines' inability to fix bad hardpoint layouts via pod swaps, the way OmniMechs can. There are relatively few Clan BattleMechs, and most of the ones that do exist are considered exceptionally terrible when they don't have highly advantageous hardpoints (Hunch IIC, Muck-Tew) or an unusual plethora of weapons/build options (Veagle). Clan BattleMechs such as the Orion, the Highlander, and the Hellfire are usually considered average at best; players strongly prefer Sphere machines over these, and not just because of quirks. I know a number of the players in my circle actively prefer Inner Sphere weapons when they can get them.

The tech imbalance still exists in Clan Endo, Ferro, and DHS, which Piranha generally can't muck with unless they feel like breaking stock loadouts. Getting the benefits of Endo and Ferro for the cost of Endo alone on a Sphere 'Mech is huge, and two-slot DHS are one of those "once you go Clan you'll never go back" things. The Sphere has significant trouble fitting more than seventeen or eighteen DHS on any given 'Mech; Clan machines can approach thirty, and their reduced tonnage/slotcount energy weaponry makes that a decisive advantage.

The DHS issue can be corrected simply by making a Sphere DHS count for a heat sink and a half's worth of cooling or something close to it, which to be fair I think Piranha's tried. There's no MWO wiki for me to check current numbers, but I believe I recall that Sphere DHS count for more cooling than Clan stuff. That said? There's no good way to fix the Clan Endo/Ferro situation - the tabletop designers specifically wanted overpowered gear, Piranha is stuck with stock fits, and making Clan Endo/Ferro debuff whatever it's on (i.e. the only reasonably practical solution) is potentially overly punitive to the scads of OmniMechs with locked armor and structure. Ironically, one could do that anyways and solve the issue for OmniMechs simply by giving them quirks, but we all know what the community thinks of giving OmniMechs worthwhile quirks. Quirks are for Sphere 'mechs and Sphere 'Mechs alone; the Clans get nothing, good-day-sir.

And yes yes yes, I know. Before someone screams it at me, I know - the Clan XL engine is the worst thing mankind has invented since the atomic bong and is the source of all imbalance in the entire BattleTech universe/setting. Look - y'all want Clan XLs to blow out on a single shoulder loss like Sphere XLs? Sure. Fine. Let's try it. But y'all had better also be prepared, at that point, to relinquish your stranglehold on meaningful durability quirks because most Clan machines don't get the option of switching to a standard, and the Clans don't get LFEs at all. At that point you're breaking one of the cardinal rules of tabletop 'Mech functionality and taking away one of the bedrock rules the entire Clan tech base was built on back when the tabletop developers were initially constructing it. If Piranha was allowed to muck with stock fits and tabletop build rules that'd be one thing, but they're not allowed to do that. Not really. So either admit that forcing Clan XLs to blow out on shoulder loss would break the entire Clan tech base and we can't do that, or be prepared to go nuts with the quirks because telling Clan pilots who can't switch out their engines or even muck with engine heat sinks that they now get absolutely no benefit from those fancy engines hard-bolted into their chassis is just a twitch unfair, ne?

[Mochyn Pupur]

pbiggz, on 30 July 2021 - 11:18 AM, said:

A: The changes are only part of the rebalance. We have weapon balance, maneuverability, and quirks coming, AND a rescale down the road. Claiming that the cauldron ruined the meta for you when the meta has barely settled in the last 5 months is remarkably dishonest.

B: If you honestly think light mechs are overpowered that is a pretty big admission that you don't understand this game.

Its ok dude, im mediocre too, but at least i have the wherewithal to admit that MY skills leave alot of room for improvement, rather than imagining i lose sometimes because justcallme A S H rubs his devious Australian hands together while he personally plots to nerf my favourite mechs.

Please don't try to be condescending, its not a good look.

(a) I seriously couldn't be bothered by meta, I play for fun, but I am aware of how the weapon unbalanced has impacted ttk.

( Look back to the chart and you will see that the shift in agility - after the weapons pass - has benefited the vast majority of lights far more than the heavies/assaults (10% of nothing, still equates to nothing!) This is a straight observation of fact that was published by "The Cauldron"

(c) I understand the game as close as perfectly as anyone else does - I can run a meta based light and wrack up silly amounts of damage/kills, but that is because I know how to abuse the mechanics of the game.

(d) I have favoured mechs, but not favourites, so your final comment is so far out of the playing field as to be untrue.

(e) Yes you can look at my Jarl's or what other metric you want to try and score shame me, but consider this, I am missing my ring and little finger along with a goodly portion of my left palm following an accident, so question not what my score is, but that I have a score at all.

Basic facts, dps has gone up, some builds are now rolling in muck because of the disproportional ability to boat, agility at best spreads damage but to to the degree dps has increased - there are too many people who believe it is their right to try and personally attack anyone who stands up and speak for themselves.

You seriously need to think before creating mythical situations and casting them on others . . . .

[Mochyn Pupur]

justcallme A S H, on 30 July 2021 - 02:49 AM, said:

They were buffed up to, or near, as my example showed.

So they are not beyond reasonable as the commando is by definition, reasonable, for its mobility.

Really, please stop and think before getting stuck in a rut discussing a mech that you are fixated on. "They" refers to the other light mechs that have received proportionately large buffs compared to other weights - this is not a discussion about the Commando that you are trying to smokescreen reference.

[justcallme A S H]

They actually have not if you look at it objectively.

You clearly just don't understand the discussion.

[1453 R]

Peppa. What Ash is saying is that other light 'Mechs received proportionately larger buffs because they needed those buffs. Many assault 'Mechs received significant tweaks in the mobility pass, which would've meant the final death of the light 'Mech class if they did not in turn receive commensurate adjustments in the mobility pass.

The Commando is referenced because despite receiving next to no mobility uptweaks during the mobility pass, it is still righteously obnoxious to pin down when run at all decently. It is, for practical purposes, the yardstick against which the light class measures its mobility. Even then, a lot of heavy 'Mechs post-mobility pass have little trouble keeping things like Commandos in their field of fire; pilots simply have trouble hitting the payout and connecting with an evading light 'Mech. Only the largest and most sluggish of assault 'Mechs have trouble so much as keeping small, fast, nimble lights in their field of fire, and frankly that's perfectly natural and working as intended. Your monstrous, gigafat Gunzilla with enough weaponry to level a small country is more vulnerable to fast, agile skirmishers that can stay away from your weapons - that is normal. You don't get to be immune to light 'Mechs outmaneuvering you when that is the core weakness of huge, massively-armed assault 'Mechs.

Don't like it? Invest in the mobility tree. Even for something as ponderous as a Dire Whale, you'd be astonished how much difference Mobility can make. It's not always enough to keep a Commando in front of you, but there's been a few light and fast medium 'Mechs that were clearly not prepared for my Whale Charlie to move as well as it does and eaten some gauss slugs for their trouble.

[pbiggz]

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

Please don't try to be condescending, its not a good look.

lmao

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

(a) I seriously couldn't be bothered by meta, I play for fun, but I am aware of how the weapon unbalanced has impacted ttk.

Good for you

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

( Look back to the chart and you will see that the shift in agility - after the weapons pass - has benefited the vast majority of lights far more than the heavies/assaults (10% of nothing, still equates to nothing!) This is a straight observation of fact that was published by "The Cauldron"

Is an opinion, and one, i might add, that is not supported by facts?

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

(c) I understand the game as close as perfectly as anyone else does

This is your problem. You don't know what you don't know, and since you are unwilling to consider that you might have space to improve, you've all but ensured you will never improve.

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

- I can run a meta based light and wrack up silly amounts of damage/kills, but that is because I know how to abuse the mechanics of the game.

I'm glad you have success with lights. That IS a skill. I am personally no good with them but my two good friends are terrifying when they run a wolfpack. This "overpowered" notion though, is a common mentality among people who have trouble landing shots. Piranhas are terrifying until you realize they're two shot kills at best. In the hands of a pilot who can avoid those shots, they perform, in anything less, they're target practice.

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

(d) I have favoured mechs, but not favourites, so your final comment is so far out of the playing field as to be untrue.

I see the point I was making passed just over your head.

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

(e) Yes you can look at my Jarl's or what other metric you want to try and score shame me, but consider this, I am missing my ring and little finger along with a goodly portion of my left palm following an accident, so question not what my score is, but that I have a score at all.

I'm not score shaming you, everyone plays at their own level. I do, you do, ash does, so does everyone else. I play casually every few weeks when im feeling it, I miss alot of shots, I enjoy brawlers and janky summoner builds. I don't play to grind up the tiers, I enjoy putzing around in the mechlab and trying new things out. My score definitely reflects that. I also think I have lots of room where I could improve, so if I drop in a hyperjank build on a map that doesn't suit it and I get flattened, I won't curse the cauldron/devs for it, because I know that match was my responsibility.

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

Basic facts, dps has gone up, some builds are now rolling in muck because of the disproportional ability to boat, agility at best spreads damage but to to the degree dps has increased - there are too many people who believe it is their right to try and personally attack anyone who stands up and speak for themselves.

There's a quirk update AND a rescale on the way, both part and parcel to the cauldron rebalance. You're judging the entire operation while only half of it is done. Either you are doing this to be dishonest (which, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say isn't the case) or you just don't understand what's happening.

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

You seriously need to think before creating mythical situations and casting them on others . . . .

What I have told you is that the mark of a skilled player is introspection, i.e. knowing where you might be lacking, rather than simply externalizing every loss and blaming someone or something else for it. Nobody improves without introspection. That's not an insult, and if you think it is, then it means you need some introspection. Look inward.

Edited by pbiggz, 03 August 2021 - 06:27 AM.

[1453 R]

Worth noting, and stating plainly in its own post.

Skill comes from Practice. Practice is not - at all - equivalent to "just play more". Practice is the act of playing with the specific, premeditated intent to improve on a weak aspect of your game, or to acquire skills in a way more effective than playing the game. Acquiring an FPS aim trainer program and taking fifteen minutes a day to run it is practice. Saying to yourself "I overheat and shut down in scrums too often; I need to work on improving my heat handling and monitoring skills" and then actively, consciously keeping that in mind as you play and adjusting your behavior is practice. Hell - watching high-tier play, studying the decisions they make both on the field and in the 'MechLab via websites like Grim, and working to understand why they make the decisions they make is also practice.

Skill is cultivated. It does not simply occur naturally in a small percentage of the population. That is talent; talent and skill are not synonyms. You can have all the talent in the world and if you don't bother to refine it through meaningful practice/training, someone with trained skill will clean your clock.

* * *

Pbiggz is correct. Skill comes, in significant part, from the willingness to own your losses and the self-honesty to examine them and determine why you lost. I know exactly why I'm still stuck in T5 with my little Mistress of Derp Hollow badge over there on the left; the answers are "shoddy marksmanship", "overaggression/poor positioning/impatience", and "ingrained dislike of/failure to properly twist to avoid coring damage." I could work on fixing those things and climb the ranks, and I absolutely keep them in mind when I play and try to address them when I can, but I have deemed other uses of my time as more valuable than training in a mostly-dead game and so I reap the rewards of my own suck.

My suck does not stop me from commenting on the game. Far from it - intellectually I'd say I have an excellent grasp of the game's overall mechanics and flow, and if the 'Like' counts on my posts are anything to go by the rest of the community seems to agree. What my suck does do is limit what I can speak to. I can't really comment on top-end competitive balancing - I've never seen it, I've never fought in those conditions, I never will fight in those conditions, and any commentary I have on Ultracomp balancing is unwelcome and meaningless.

I have to account for my own suck when speaking to things like inter-weapon balance; I have a crush on heavy lasers because their enormous burn times and significant damage potential let me correct bad shots and still land meaningful damage on enemies, but that's my suck talking, not actual game balance. In the swamps of T5, enemy players are often bad at capitalizing on poorly-timed overheat shutdowns and not as great at spreading damage, so heavy lasers' downsides are less troublesome and their upsides of dealing stupid high damage per ton/hardpoint spent on them are amplified. Heavy lasers are great for me. They're bad at higher levels of play, and I need the ability to see past my own suck to speak in those discussions.

Sucking at the game does not make you a bad human being, a bad BattleTech fan, or even a bad MWO player. it just means you're not as good at killing robits as other folks. It does mean that when you try and assert your own experiences and opinions as undeniable, incontrovertible, universal facts - such as "light 'Mechs are too agile! They're literally impossible to hit no matter who you are or what you drive!" - you're gonna get slapped down by people who are better than you and do not suffer that issue, and they do not want you polluting discussions with incorrect, misleading, and unhelpful distortions of the truth. The good ones will not try and shame you or invalidate your experiences, they'll simply tell you that your experiences are not universal and are less meritorious to the discussion as a whole than you think.

The bad ones will fetch your Jarl link and club you over the head with it to silence you, especially if theirs is better than yours, but ye know? One of the marvelous things about owning your own suck and accounting for it when you post is that people don't do that to you. I'm absolutely awful at this game, but nobody has ever once hit me over the head with my Jarl stats to dissuade me from speaking. They don't need to; I know my limits, and I know when they apply and when they do not.

Give it a shot some time. Acknowledge your suck and how it may limit or color your views, and then contribute anyways. You'll be surprised to find that the good eggs, and most of the Cauldron folk, are perfectly willing to listen to you and consider your views. The Cauldron is made up of folks from every tier, after all, and their objective is to make the game as fun and satisfying as they can at every tier, including 5. They can't do that by ignoring T5 players, and they don't really want to try. T5 players' opinions, when organized and presented properly, can be as valuable as World Championship players' opinions.

They're simply not universal.

[Vercors]

I think the masc on lights mechs have a too short duration, the difference beetwen lights mechs and medium mechs make it difficult to manage and most of the time it result with damaging the legs of the light mech. My experience is with flea, shadow cat and black lanner, don't know if there is subtility on the usage of masc beetwen other variant of mechs.

[Wid1046]

PeppaPig, on 03 August 2021 - 05:57 AM, said:

[redacted]
Look back to the chart and you will see that the shift in agility - after the weapons pass - has benefited the vast majority of lights far more than the heavies/assaults (10% of nothing, still equates to nothing!) This is a straight observation of fact that was published by "The Cauldron"
[redacted]

The agility patch benefited assaults more than any other class (which is understandable since their agility was pretty awful). The time required to fully accelerate or fully decelerate is what people feel, not the raw accel/decel numbers. Lights already accelerated up to their max speed pretty quickly, so even a large buff wouldn't have decreased the time required to hit that max speed by much.

Here are some examples of how many seconds time to hit max speed was changed by the mobility patch for some of the most buffed mechs:
FS9 (E,S,A,H,K) 0.73 sec
MLX (all) 0.42 sec
KFX (all) 0.43 sec
RVN-H 0.52 sec

KDK-3 2.64 sec
AS7 (all) 1.14 sec
MCII-2 1.29 sec
CGR-N7 1.09 sec


Just giving a larger raw number accel buff isn't going to mean that the mech will perform better. For example, the SPD-5V had its acceleration increased by a little over 13 kph/s while the Blood Asp had its acceleration buffed by only 3.2 kph/s. The Spider received the larger buff in terms of raw numbers, but only had its time to max speed reduced by 0.17 seconds which is pretty much unnoticeable, while the Blood Asp had its time to max speed reduced by 0.97 seconds. The Spider had its acceleration increased by more than four times what the Blood Asp got buffed by, and yet the Blood Asp had its time to max speed (which is what you actually notice) decreased by more than five times as much.

[1453 R]

Vercors, on 03 August 2021 - 07:44 AM, said:

I think the masc on lights mechs have a too short duration, the difference beetwen lights mechs and medium mechs make it difficult to manage and most of the time it result with damaging the legs of the light mech. My experience is with flea, shadow cat and black lanner, don't know if there is subtility on the usage of masc beetwen other variant of mechs.

M.A.S.C. is tricky, especially on things that are already super nimble. The Cauldron updates to M.A.S.C. specifically excluded the M.A.S.C. used by the lightest 'Mechs. Their stated reason was that M.A.S.C. on those 'Mechs was already performing very well, primarily because on Fleas and such (the only 'Mechs that currently use Mk. I M.A.S.C., as I recall), the true gain isn't so much in speed but in nigh-impossible agility. Mk. I M.A.S.C. on a Flea allows the thing to pull more G's than the blurdy Tallgeese, change directions nigh instantly and go from full throttle forward to full throttle reverse in less than a second. A highly skilled Flea pilot is basically playing Titanfall, not MWO.

Doubling the amount of M.A.S.C. in the tanks of any Mk. I M.A.S.C. user is one of those things they have to be super careful about. Giving larger 'Mechs with less jukes more overall use of the system compensates them for the system being less effective, much the same way giving fat 'Mechs more jet burntime compensates them for their jets being overall slower and suckier than smaller, nimbler machines.

[Scout Derek]

Dogstar, on 02 August 2021 - 08:15 AM, said:

Hmm it would be interesting to have a month with quirks all set to zero, ten we'd get a chance to actually see how mechs perform without quirks and with the weapon and mobility pass in place.

So you want clan invasion release all over again? No thanks.

[Wid1046]

Dogstar, on 02 August 2021 - 08:15 AM, said:

Hmm it would be interesting to have a month with quirks all set to zero, ten we'd get a chance to actually see how mechs perform without quirks and with the weapon and mobility pass in place.

Scout Derek, on 03 August 2021 - 08:54 AM, said:

So you want clan invasion release all over again? No thanks.

While that would be an interesting idea to get data, you'd have to adjust the matchmaker to only match IS with IS and Clan with Clan for the month. Making that change would likely require an engineer and would also increase queue times.

Might be worthwhile for the data, but I doubt that PGI will be able to get an engineer for the test.