130 replies to this topic

[MW Waldorf Statler]

pbiggz, on 03 February 2022 - 07:55 AM, said:

I dont like or agree with this. In olden days, you might have had a point, there was a time when the Remnant (my unit, which is by the way, still around) played competitively. We were alright too. It led to some very toxic stuff however and I think its been a net good that we haven't really engaged with that part of the game since 2014 more or less.

That was 2014, this is now. The comp guys have largely made an effort to be more approachable and open to opposing voices. They are open to those voices. I've seen the comp discord and its often full of discussions analyzing data after changes, monitoring feedback, all things the 2014 comp scene wouldn't have wasted a second on (not that they had the power back then anyway).

Saying they "make the game the way they want to play it" in so many words is pretty unfair and it cultivates an us-versus-them mentality that a few very vocal, very toxic members of this forum are very eager to spread for their own ends. They are the same people who rail against light mechs for "overperformance", rail against snipers for "overperformance" and rail against groups for "overperformance", or in other words, pick out exactly the things they dont personally like or play, and demand nerfs for, because they think playing the game differently from them is wrong.



This we can engage with. Because this is a real opinion that actually is informed by thoughts. You are right when you say time-to-kill has gone down and this is not the first time someone has expressed this opinion.

I disagree with it however, and I will explain why.

Time to kill is kind of fetishized. The lowreybalance era was defined by very very high time to kill. This was achieved because Paul Inouye's rotating nerfs in years past essentially reduced every weapon to wet noodle status.

This has a few effects. First, it means mechs feel like they're taking alot more of a beating. This is cool sometimes. However, it also has a notable drawback. Essentially, light mechs, and snipers, all rely on quick time to kill. If you cant knife someone quickly, or put a high enough alpha down range quickly enough to stop an advancing annihilator, then the annihilator will kill you 9 times out of 10. This essentially means the lowreybalance era was defined by assault brawlers; the only mechs that could put enough damage out to reliable kill anything.

Honestly, this is not a good enough outcome to justify higher time-to-kill. If having it nullifies all build options except medium range laser vomit and assault brawlers, then its not a good thing in the long run.

There is another aspect to this however. TTK is often held up as a golden ideal, because it implies players will spend more time shooting bad robots in game, and less time waiting in queue, or watching their friends play because they're already dead. This betrays another issue entirely; the gameplay loop.

Too much of the game is spent waiting for matches. perma-death means your actual game time can end very quickly, and because at the end of the match, you need to matchmake again, you end up often having to wait quite a while before you can get in a cockpit again.

Some measures, such as persistent lobbies, could mitigate this. Other, more extreme measures, like drop decks or respawns in quickplay, i think are at least worth analyzing, but that's a different thread. Time-to-kill, however, is a bandaid. It doesn't address the problem, or really fix it.




Some people argue here in good faith. Im assuming you're one of them. Sometimes people are honestly wrong. I think you're wrong about some of this stuff, which i've explained. That's ok. Im not gonna jump down your throat, I just hope my response helps you think about this a little differently.

Others do not argue in good faith. Its pretty obvious when that's the case, so when you see someone getting dragged, consider that they might be lying through their teeth, and they're getting called on it.

thats the Main problem with all games thats not have a Respawn System for QP ,so im nothing play Battle Royale in CoD and only Plunder, im hate a the wasting time and the Duels in Gulags.Its the Problem with each game -the balancing of Wting/Gaming/Action Time...Arma 3 is great and sadly not time for it ..Cod is fast and most to fast ...so Battlefield ,was perfect in BF2 and goes down in the further Way.

Waiting Time was killing the Faction Play (+ the only 2 faction Events)...waiting 30 Minutes to have a Match against the full RJF and kills in Minutes its not Fun to fight against and against the same Units thats hold the Planet.
Since there is neither attrition of stationed Mechs, nor a shortage of ammunition or other tactical elements in faction wars, it is only frustrating if your own unit is not the absolute elite and you have no chance of wearing out even elite units at some point simply by attrition, or to block their supply lines.

Long Text , so translated with Deepl Translator

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 17 February 2022 - 02:57 AM.

[Sergeant Destroy]

Mann Waldorf , benutz den Google Translator. Kein Arsch versteht was du sagen wilst , wenner kein Deutsch kann.

ISCH SCHWÖRE!

Edited by Sergeant Destroy, 05 February 2022 - 05:53 PM.

[pattonesque]

Weeny Machine, on 03 February 2022 - 12:38 AM, said:

Overall I don't like the Cauldron's worked. After my two year break I must say that the game is less diverse than it has been before. The only really good thing was the change to light ppcs and also the threshold quirk on some light mechs to fire 4 of them. Finall light mechs can field a weapon others than lasers

man, I don't know where you're getting this from. you see people running Centurions now and they're actually carrying in them.

[Curccu]

pattonesque, on 06 February 2022 - 06:55 AM, said:

man, I don't know where you're getting this from. you see people running Centurions now and they're actually carrying in them.

I like my cn9-ylw again, tanks very well and has enough speed & firepower to beat mechs that are considered meta.

[YueFei]

pattonesque, on 06 February 2022 - 06:55 AM, said:

man, I don't know where you're getting this from. you see people running Centurions now and they're actually carrying in them.

It's just that his experience before was so heavily tilted in favor of brawl. 2 years ago, with so many midrange and longrange weapons hitting like wet noodles, brawl was overly dominant.

Now that midrange and longrange are more viable, and we see more of it, there's actually more variety, but he feels his own preferred playstyle (brawl) feels more constrained in its options. This is what he means by "less diverse".

Speaking as someone who is almost always in a brawler, these days I see a mixture of longrange/midrange/brawl on both teams, so in terms of diversity it's looking pretty good to me.

[pattonesque]

YueFei, on 06 February 2022 - 11:28 AM, said:

It's just that his experience before was so heavily tilted in favor of brawl. 2 years ago, with so many midrange and longrange weapons hitting like wet noodles, brawl was overly dominant.

Now that midrange and longrange are more viable, and we see more of it, there's actually more variety, but he feels his own preferred playstyle (brawl) feels more constrained in its options. This is what he means by "less diverse".

Speaking as someone who is almost always in a brawler, these days I see a mixture of longrange/midrange/brawl on both teams, so in terms of diversity it's looking pretty good to me.

yeah like, it feels right now that if you play at your range and use cover/movement to stay in it, you do well

[FLG 01]

pattonesque, on 06 February 2022 - 06:55 AM, said:

man, I don't know where you're getting this from. you see people running Centurions now and they're actually carrying in them.

I said it before and I will say it again: I for one welcome our Centurion overlords (as far as fast non-JJ mediums are concerned).

Seriously, YLW is a blast now. I almost feel like my namesake sometimes, cutting through the enemy.

[Relishcakes]

Mr Nice Mech, on 23 January 2022 - 10:10 PM, said:

ROFL.....have fun with this one.

[redacted]

one side didnt pew pew enough, the other side pew pew'd enough.

[foamyesque]

pbiggz, on 03 February 2022 - 05:50 AM, said:

Half the screams and protests on this forum come from those assault brawlers, now saddled with the herculean burden of having to pay attention to other builds, which didn't exist for like 2 years. That's a pretty significant change.

Speaking as someone who only got into the game in 2021, it feels like there are a lot of large lasers and PPCs and gauss flying around out there right now. I don't have access to any kind of hard data, it's just an impression, but it's one that's not skewed by exposure to a previous era.

It makes sense, in that leveraging a range advantage to disassemble someone before they can shoot back is a really reliable standby across both the Battletech franchise and combat games generally, but hoo boy does it make me grind my teeth if I've taken a close-in weapons package and the map is Frozen City, Giant Canyon edition.

Edited by foamyesque, 17 February 2022 - 12:43 AM.

[Ignatius Audene]

In qp it is fine. But since pgi told cauldron to set qp as a bar for balancing fp turns in extreme range duels even more.

[Dogstar]

pbiggz, on 03 February 2022 - 07:55 AM, said:

<a bunch of well thought out stuff on TTK>

Don't forget that the Cauldron initially based their changes on the assumption that there would be a rescale of mechs which would make TTK higher by making it easier to use defensive skills.

As that appears to be still 'on the horizon' over a year later we can only assume that it's not coming.

Therefore the current TTK is, logically thinking, likely to be a bit faster than was the initial plan.

So I think that there's two things the Cauldron should consider:

Firstly, will a rescale happen in the near future or even _ever_?

Secondly, assuming that a rescale is not coming, what changes should be made to account for that?