158 replies to this topic

[Hauptmann Keg Steiner]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 24 May 2022 - 01:49 AM, said:

But why would the HAG40 be restricted to only Omnis. I bet KDK's and MCII's would love to run two of these.

It's not and they sure can, but omnis still make up most of the Clans' mechs right now. If the strongest version of a gun is really only going to be seen on some of the Clans' most popular choices (or historic balancing nightmares), that's just another reason not to bother.

[FupDup]

Hauptmann Keg Steiner, on 24 May 2022 - 08:37 AM, said:

It's not and they sure can, but omnis still make up most of the Clans' mechs right now. If the strongest version of a gun is really only going to be seen on some of the Clans' most popular choices (or historic balancing nightmares), that's just another reason not to bother.

We could make that argument about every piece of equipment though, not just HAGs. That's not a HAG problem, that's a chassis problem.

Also, as I suggested earlier in the thread, I'm like 95% sure that the HAG/40 would have a ghost heat cap of just 1. It's mechanically similar to the MRM40 but with more range and probably charge-up mechanic, so if the MRM40 can only shoot 1 I think it's fair to cap the HAG/40 at just 1 as well.

[SirNotlag]

Yeah id love if they released some of the later weapons. I know they probably aren't as the games kinda old but it'd be fun to run around in a light mech carrying some decent cannons or mini gauss rifles. Wonder how they could work in this game.

The clan AP gauss is an anti personnel weapon so being a super machine gun that generates a little heat would make sense. Like 1.5 damage per second out to an optimum 270 meters.
I don't think the IS magshot got any bonus against infantry so it being a mini gauss rifle that deals like 2 damage out to 270m could be fun. preferably without the charge mechanic since its so small but i mean at 0.5 tons you can bring as many as you have hard points on the mech has for it so it might be needed so bigger mechs dont have an easy extra pinpoint damage for little weight.

Light ACs for the most part work like regular just shorter range. If they are deemed too OP they can do the splitting the number of shots so the LAC 5 fires 2 bullets of 2.5 damage instead of the single 5. I don't think there would be a need for this with all the huge ultras ACs around but its an easy option.

IS X-Pulse laser could just be longer range pulse lasers that generate more heat but that wouldn't be fun. I think it would be neat to have them have a different firing pattern from other energy weapons. Instead of having a burn time it deals a small bit of damage instantly and has a short cooldown before it fires again.
For example the X-small pulse deals 1.4 damage out to 150m for 1.4 heat and 1 second cooldown
the X-medium pulse laser could deal 1.7 damage out to 270m with 1.7 heat and have a cooldown of only 1 second.
The X-Large pulse deals 1.4 damage out to 450m for 2 heat and a cooldown of only 0.6 seconds.
They become a good precision weapon but to get the most damage out of them requires a lot of face time and they generate a lot of heat. It would give the IS a good pairing to go with their machine guns similar to how the clans have heavy lasers.

Hell even the IS MML could be done to add in as an IS version of the clans ATMs since the ATM is supposed to work by using three different ammo types so its most effective at any range. Since MWO doesn't have multiple ammo types it just deals varying damage depending on range. Couple issues I guess are that ATM used ATM ammo where as MML fire LRMs or SRMs not its own type of ammo so would PGI have to create MML ammo and then it probably wouldn't work with any stock loadouts. Could be done but probably shouldn't.

[ComradeHavoc]

MELEE

[TheArisen]

New weapons and equipment continue to be popular.
https://mwomercs.com...equipment-poll/

I don't think it's been mentioned yet but new weapons and equipment would also mean more mechs & variants are available to be added.

[SirNotlag]

TheArisen, on 01 June 2022 - 09:15 AM, said:

New weapons and equipment continue to be popular.
https://mwomercs.com...equipment-poll/

I don't think it's been mentioned yet but new weapons and equipment would also mean more mechs & variants are available to be added.

Well new variants I doubt we will get new mechs aside from the hatchetman as they have done the work of creating it in MW5.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

There will be no Hatchetman in MWO. And rightfully so. Without melee, that hatchet would be dead weight in any scenario. And removing the hatchet... well, that would make the addition of the mech very much superfluous.

[Sjorpha]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 18 May 2022 - 02:58 PM, said:

Large units were the bane of CW in its initial iteration, encouraging MercStar 2.0 is definitely not what the game needs. Scaling down CW was a symptom of a much larger issue, like the fact that CW and the concept of a persistent universe was a flawed project from the get-go, especially for a developer that loves to remind us they aren't a AAA studio.

CW declined because PGI destroyed the reasons to be a unit in phase 3 (and actively punished unit play for a while with their super weird recruitment fees). The healthiest period of CW was the time when units big and small felt that they could impact the map and actually play a macro game.

When PGI split the queue into group and solo, it was the solo queue that instantly died while the group queue remained fine. Demonstrating that the bulk and driving force of the CW community at the time was the units, not solo players.

I don't see how MS did any harm to the game, they were never even a strong unit just very large. It was fun fighting them because they took the role of the boogeyman while the actual teams they fielded still being weak enough to defeat without building a stacked group. So just scooping up a random team on the FRR hub and giving some minor coordination was more than enough to contend them. I have great respect and grattitude to MS for giving me that kind of resistance figther experiance as we defended and clawed back FRRs territory during phase 2.

MS and many other units (including mine) actively tried to cooperate with PGI as well to make CW better, including measures to improve matchmaking and the solo experience, but rather than utilize this deeply engaged community that actually existed as a free resource PGI decided to completely destroy unit play. And that's why there hasn't been any meaningful unit engagement in CW since early phase 3, and that lack of engagement from units is why CW/FW/FP has declined into what it is today. PGIs refusal to address the broken long tom mechanics for 6 months also didn't help in that regard.

Edited by Sjorpha, 03 June 2022 - 02:41 AM.

[Meep Meep]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 02 June 2022 - 09:41 PM, said:

There will be no Hatchetman in MWO. And rightfully so. Without melee, that hatchet would be dead weight in any scenario. And removing the hatchet... well, that would make the addition of the mech very much superfluous.

Well we technically have a melee mechanic with collision damage. I don't see why they couldn't code in an ax arm that inflicts more collision damage than it takes. But it would look silly and probably able to be abused by rapidly swinging your arms. Plus given that we are in xml edit mode the chances drop to near zero anyways.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sjorpha, on 03 June 2022 - 02:32 AM, said:

CW declined because PGI destroyed the reasons to be a unit in phase 3 (and actively punished unit play for a while with their super weird recruitment fees). The healthiest period of CW was the time when units big and small felt that they could impact the map and actually play a macro game.

"Healthy" in comparison but never healthy because it was definitely exploitable. However probably the bigger reason people stopped caring once the newness of the crappy game modes and maps wore off and there was no real benefit to suffering through the game mode,

Sjorpha, on 03 June 2022 - 02:32 AM, said:

I don't see how MS did any harm to the game, they were never even a strong unit just very large.

That largeness had an advanatage as far as I remember because they could challenge more planets and effectively take more planets without really any sort of cost so that eventually all the planets were just MS. And you are right they weren't all that great players, but they had numerous planets because they just had bodies to throw at everything. Quantity mattered more than quality.

I could be mis-remembering everything though because CW moved from one bad phase to another and it happened so long ago that its highly possible I mis-attributing the different phases.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 03 June 2022 - 09:33 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 03 June 2022 - 09:29 AM, said:

That largeness had an advanatage as far as I remember because they could challenge more planets and effectively take more planets without really any sort of cost so that eventually all the planets were just MS. And you are right they weren't all that great players, but they had numerous planets because they just had bodies to throw at everything. Quantity mattered more than quality.

I could be mis-remembering everything though because CW moved from one bad phase to another and it happened so long ago that its highly possible I mis-attributing the different phases.

Of course their largeness was an advantage, but the mistake here is to paint that as a problem. If you want a game mode with a map based macro game, there has to be a possibility of success. Large scale organization has to be rewarded, otherwise what's the point of making that type of game mode? It was marketed as "change battletech history" remember? And then someone goes and actually changes history and suddenly that's a bad thing?

The success of MS in reaching Terra was a large part of the motivation for the FRR resistance, and also the Kurita hub had lots of activity at that time. If PGI hadn't decided that "changing history" was suddenly a problem and wiped the server we could have seen a warfront between the clans and Davion/Marik/Liao whose communities had been infighting until that point, with those southern loyalist IS units MS could have been pushed back.

So the success or failures of certain units or factions was never a problem, on the contrary it was PGIs stupid map resets that was hugely demoralising because it made everything feel more meaningless every time it happened. I think that had a lot to do with Russ & Co being control freaks, they couldn't accept that the community created their own stories and instead reset the map and made the Tukkayid events, because of course the event couldn't even be based of what had actually happened in CW that season...("change history" my ***!)

Now of course CW was an underdeveloped game mode with lots of problems at that time, but it had promise and a large dedicated community. Would it have lasted without development? No, probably not. But what PGI did instead of develop the concept of Community Warfare was to actively destroy what they had, instead of fixing the problems they scrapped the vision. Instead of increasing the rewards for large scale community organisation they punished it or made it impossible. Instead of new and better ways for the factions and units to manage the conflicts and politics on the map they removed more and more agency.

We will never know what CW could have been beyond that first sketch, because PGI never tried to make it.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 June 2022 - 01:11 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sjorpha, on 07 June 2022 - 12:56 PM, said:

Large scale organization has to be rewarded, otherwise what's the point of making that type of game mode?

Pluralism is an important part of a healthy game mode. If quality can be drowned out by quantity then why would any skilled team bother playing this game mode? And if skilled teams aren't playing then you have no real check on the balance of these large units other than.....larger units and you get into this arms race of who can align to create the biggest group. I get that some people liked the appeal of the whole "david versus goliath" theme with MS, but that doesn't mean everyone does. IIRC MS was created in part to specifically exploit the fact that quantity could drown out quality and to prove to PGI why CW/FW/etc was flawed at the time. Not to mention it is generally a sign of lack of competition and/or population growth that can also create a feedback loop (or death spiral). Top end competitive play went through this sort of cycle right before the real EmP called it quits as they had slowly gobbled up free agents (some new faces, and some picked from teams that were folding) and had enough for a B team during practice when most if not all other units outside of 228 had no such thing. It didn't take long after EmP called it quits for other teams to fold as well.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 07 June 2022 - 02:14 PM.

[Sjorpha]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 07 June 2022 - 02:07 PM, said:

Pluralism is an important part of a healthy game mode. If quality can be drowned out by quantity then why would any skilled team bother playing this game mode? And if skilled teams aren't playing then you have no real check on the balance of these large units other than.....larger units and you get into this arms race of who can align to create the biggest group. I get that some people liked the appeal of the whole "david versus goliath" theme with MS, but that doesn't mean everyone does. IIRC MS was created in part to specifically exploit the fact that quantity could drown out quality and to prove to PGI why CW/FW/etc was flawed at the time. Not to mention it is generally a sign of lack of competition and/or population growth that can also create a feedback loop (or death spiral). Top end competitive play went through this sort of cycle right before the real EmP called it quits as they had slowly gobbled up free agents (some new faces, and some picked from teams that were folding) and had enough for a B team during practice when most if not all other units outside of 228 had no such thing. It didn't take long after EmP called it quits for other teams to fold as well.

Fact remains that there is no evidence that MS ever caused a problem in CW, MS quit in response to the disastrous attack on unit play that was phase 3, they were actually one of the first units to quit because they felt like PGI was trying to scapegoat them for their own failures (which is true), and it was after that (during PGIs drawn out refusal to address the broken phase 3 including long tom) that the CW community declined.

Yes there needs to be pluralism, but there was plenty. MS was just the biggest unit around but there was plenty of other big units and two big active faction hubs. MS definitely did not discourage high skill units, on the contrary the ability to rely on MS groups as opponents rather than pugs made it much more enjoyable to build strong groups (because you wouldn't just be stomping pugs).

I played intensely that whole period on the FRR hub, first as a member of the 1st hussars and then MJ12, never did I hear MS discussed as a major problem by other players. Not once.

People were concerned about the design flaws, like the mechanics of attack and defence on planets combined with the call to arms making attck more attractive to units and defending more attractive to solos, which led to more pugstomps than necessary. One of many problems that could have been easily fixed rather than blamed on units.

People were concerned about the lack of maps, about the lack of ways to spend unit coffers, about tagging planets having no strategic impact (just bragging rights, no gameplay effects).

When phase 3 came people were concerned about the lost agency over conflicts, about long tom, about the unresponsiveness from PGI regarding broken mechanics and so forth.

Some solos periodically complained about groups being too strong durning all this, and they still do, but MS specifically was never a concern in that regard as they weren't the worst stompers (again, not a skill intensive unit). But all in all the solos were a minority of players in CW at the time, and a lot of the complaints were misplaced because just like now the units had no good way to avoid skittles teams. Basically those complaints are the same as the complaints you hear from weak players in quickplay when they face good players, not a CW specific thing. There was no lack of ideas to reduce the pugstomps either (like fixing the attack/defend mechanics), most units wanted that, but PGI did not listen to that either. They were only interested in destroying unit play on a macro level, feeling in control, and blaming other people, not in actually reducing stomps.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 June 2022 - 03:35 PM.

[TheArisen]

Sjorpha, on 07 June 2022 - 03:09 PM, said:

Fact remains that there is no evidence that MS ever caused a problem in CW, MS quit in response to the disastrous attack on unit play that was phase 3, they were actually one of the first units to quit because they felt like PGI was trying to scapegoat them for their own failures (which is true), and it was after that (during PGIs drawn out refusal to address the broken phase 3 including long tom) that the CW community declined.

Yes there needs to be pluralism, but there was plenty. MS was just the biggest unit around but there was plenty of other big units and two big active faction hubs. MS definitely did not discourage high skill units, on the contrary the ability to rely on MS groups as opponents rather than pugs made it much more enjoyable to build strong groups (because you wouldn't just be stomping pugs).

I played intensely that whole period on the FRR hub, first as a member of the 1st hussars and then MJ12, never did I hear MS discussed as a major problem by other players. Not once.

People were concerned about the design flaws, like the mechanics of attack and defence on planets combined with the call to arms making attck more attractive to units and defending more attractive to solos, which led to more pugstomps than necessary. One of many problems that could have been easily fixed rather than blamed on units.

People were concerned about the lack of maps, about the lack of ways to spend unit coffers, about tagging planets having no strategic impact (just bragging rights, no gameplay effects).

When phase 3 came people were concerned about the lost agency over conflicts, about long tom, about the unresponsiveness from PGI regarding broken mechanics and so forth.

Some solos periodically complained about groups being too strong durning all this, and they still do, but MS specifically was never a concern in that regard as they weren't the worst stompers (again, not a skill intensive unit). But all in all the solos were a minority of players in CW at the time, and a lot of the complaints were misplaced because just like now the units had no good way to avoid skittles teams. Basically those complaints are the same as the complaints you hear from weak players in quickplay when they face good players, not a CW specific thing. There was no lack of ideas to reduce the pugstomps either (like fixing the attack/defend mechanics), most units wanted that, but PGI did not listen to that either. They were only interested in destroying unit play on a macro level, feeling in control, and blaming other people, not in actually reducing stomps.

We can't forget the disaster that was Long Toms in CW. I liked the 4v4 scout mode and the concept of making scouting worthwhile but life is tough enough facing a good team but dodging long toms at the same time with the other benefits that came with was a pain and the thing is people wanted to play with all their friends/unit mates, not just some. So doing scouting became a chore sadly.

[Sjorpha]

TheArisen, on 07 June 2022 - 07:25 PM, said:

We can't forget the disaster that was Long Toms in CW. I liked the 4v4 scout mode and the concept of making scouting worthwhile but life is tough enough facing a good team but dodging long toms at the same time with the other benefits that came with was a pain and the thing is people wanted to play with all their friends/unit mates, not just some. So doing scouting became a chore sadly.

Yeah long tom was a disaster, or more specifically leaving such a clearly broken mechanic unfixed for more than 6 months was a disaster. I still can't fathom how you don't immediately go "oops, this is broke let's disable it while figuring out a fix" as a developer, that has to require a seriously dysfunctional work environment.

I liked scouting and how it influenced siege matches aside from long tom though, it was a great side activity for when your unit had more than 12 players online while waiting for a spot on the main group. It just needed long tom fixed and perhaps some other minor balancing.

[Curccu]

FupDup, on 24 May 2022 - 12:54 PM, said:

Also, as I suggested earlier in the thread, I'm like 95% sure that the HAG/40 would have a ghost heat cap of just 1. It's mechanically similar to the MRM40 but with more range and probably charge-up mechanic, so if the MRM40 can only shoot 1 I think it's fair to cap the HAG/40 at just 1 as well.

Is it even worthy to bring MRM40 ghost heat into discussion because that extra 1.6 heat added to shooting two MRM40s with 23 heat is irrelevant.
Even shooting 3xMRM40 has ___ONLY___ 5.23 extra heat which is nothing in trading situation if you got chance to unload 120 damage to your foe with 1 fast peek.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sjorpha, on 07 June 2022 - 03:09 PM, said:

they were actually one of the first units to quit because

Maybe the first large unit, but they were definitely not the first to leave. CW had been bleeding population well before MS quit. I never complained about solos because they were needed to actually feed the grinder that was CW for better or worse (and that should tell you something).

Look, I'm not saying MS was the biggest issue because the source of the issue was CW mechanics that they very much intended to abuse (I don't fault them for abusing existing mechanics), but I'm also not saying that encouraging other MS should've been deemed the success criteria or the first priority to get players in CW, faaaaaar from it.

Sjorpha, on 07 June 2022 - 03:09 PM, said:

MS definitely did not discourage high skill units

Quick question, who do you think are high skilled units? A majority (but not all, you always had people like Fission/Fusion who did enjoy it) of comp teams thought CW was a joke and I don't think any of them really played CW consistently.

KComm and maybe some others (MS did have a couple of comp teams in there) but the majority stayed out. Mostly because of the awful gameplay, but the lack of real bragging rights offered was definitely another (tagging planets was nice I guess, if you could keep it when MS was doing no defense drops to mark it in their name the next day).

Honestly CW for the longest time was just a good way to farm money but it wasn't fun.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 June 2022 - 07:40 AM.

[TheArisen]

Idk if this would be possible but Mattplog put a Blazer on a Hunchback & colorized it. A yellow core with orange on the outside like fire looks pretty good.
https://www.devianta...assic-918139646

[KursedVixen]

HAg 20 30 40

https://www.sarna.ne..._Gauss_Rifle_40

pretty much like a RAC but a guass rifle Clan only

HAG 20 20 total damage 10 tons 6 slots

HAG30 30 total damage13 tons 8 slots

HAG 40 40 total damage 16 tons 10 slots


I'm not sure how to best impliment this as far as damage per second but i would think damage per second should be fairly high to compensate for it being a Clan modified heavy guass... say maybe 3.5/45 Damage per second up to the max damage then the gun has to recharge I dunno but these would be great for clan

Clan RAcs they exist


Clan ferro lamelor armor - https://www.sarna.ne...-Lamellor_Armor


Current weapon adjustments: Give ATMs 120m mininium range...

Edited by KursedVixen, 21 June 2022 - 11:43 AM.