141 replies to this topic

[Yer man oer yonder]

Nightbird, on 20 July 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

Heavy Gauss has a limit of 2. It's not bugged.

Ghost heat groups works with the lowest number limit and highest heat penalty of all included weapons.

Isn't Heavy Gauss in the PPC HSL family though? So you should be able to fire a Heavy Gauss with 2 Heavy PPCs

HPPC also has a limit of 2 but this triple Heavy PPC build works with the HSL quirk. As does the example with 2 Heavy PPC and a Gauss rifle (which would use the Heavy PPC limit)

[CrimsonPhantom6sg062]

Nightbird, on 20 July 2022 - 10:35 AM, said:

Assaults are easily the best performing weight class. Heavies are the second best.

If you want to balance, then you would be doing a blanket buff on lights and mediums and then working on outliers. The only work needed on assault is the nerfing of top performers.

If you want to understand why, look up Cauldron members on Jarl's list. Most main assaults.

Full stop.

Agreed

You have to admit though, survival tree IS broken for heavies and assaults though, and the balance is better since 2021.

Yer man oer yonder, on 20 July 2022 - 10:50 AM, said:

Isn't Heavy Gauss in the PPC HSL family though? So you should be able to fire a Heavy Gauss with 2 Heavy PPCs

HPPC also has a limit of 2 but this triple Heavy PPC build works with the HSL quirk. As does the example with 2 Heavy PPC and a Gauss rifle (which would use the Heavy PPC limit)

HGR is part (subset) of the PPC/Gauss HSL family.

However, it is not covered in the buffs whereas PPCs that ARE buffed are a subset of the PPC/Gauss family. Just as ERLLs are part (subset) of the Large Laser family, but are not part of the LPL HSL buff where LPLs are also a subset of the Large Laser family.

So for HGR, because HGR is not buffed and the game takes the minimum HSL when calculating ghost heat. HSL is 2 because HGR is the minimum HSL.

However for Gauss, the HSL is 6. Now due to the buff, HPPCs have a HSL of 3 for the BNC-LM. So the HSL is 3 because between Gauss and HPPCs, HPPCs are the minimum HSL.

Edited by CrimsonPhantom6sg062, 20 July 2022 - 11:00 AM.

[Nightbird]

Yer man oer yonder, on 20 July 2022 - 10:50 AM, said:

As does the example with 2 Heavy PPC and a Gauss rifle (which would use the Heavy PPC limit)

Gauss Rifle has a limit of 6, and the HPPC has a limit of 3 (due to HSL quirk) so that is why you can fire 3 without GH.
HGauss has a limit of 2, which is less than the HPPC limit of 3.

[Yer man oer yonder]

Nightbird, on 20 July 2022 - 10:59 AM, said:

Gauss Rifle has a limit of 6, and the HPPC has a limit of 3 (due to HSL quirk) so that is why you can fire 3 without GH.
HGauss has a limit of 2, which is less than the HPPC limit of 3.

But the HSL quirk should also affect Heavy Gauss rifle since that's part of the PPC HSL family. So the Heavy Gauss limit should also be 3 allowing you to fire it with 2 PPCs with the quirk

[Yer man oer yonder]

CrimsonPhantom6sg062, on 20 July 2022 - 10:52 AM, said:

HGR is part (subset) of the PPC/Gauss HSL family.

However, it is not covered in the buffs whereas PPCs that ARE buffed are a subset of the PPC/Gauss family. Just as ERLLs are part (subset) of the Large Laser family, but are not part of the LPL HSL buff where LPLs are also a subset of the Large Laser family.

So for HGR, because HGR is not buffed and the game takes the minimum HSL when calculating ghost heat. HSL is 2 because HGR is the minimum HSL.

However for Gauss, the HSL is 6. Now due to the buff, HPPCs have a HSL of 3 for the BNC-LM. So the HSL is 3 because between Gauss and HPPCs, HPPCs are the minimum HSL.

Ah, so despite being a part of the PPC HSL family gauss rifles are not affected by PPC family HSL quirks (and this allows for double gauss ppc builds because regular gauss limit is higher).

I had thought the whole "family" would be affected by the quirk.

Thank you for the explanation

[CrimsonPhantom6sg062]

C337Skymaster, on 20 July 2022 - 10:32 AM, said:

Yes, I want MWO to feel more like TT. Yes, I really liked the idea of moving the universe along in real time, not even so much for the power creep, as for the storyline, and actually having a REASON to play the game after 10 years. (This is literally the ONLY multiplayer shooter I've ever played, and every single other game I've ever played in my life has been one with an immersive single player campaign, including the original MechWarrior titles. I got suckered into this one because I was under the impression that this was going to have a similar story-based gameplay, and was quickly disappointed to find a rinse-and-repeat style of game).

That's not to say that we're not getting power creep in MWO, itself. Damage stats HAVE been increasing. Cooldowns HAVE been decreasing. Heat stats HAVE been decreasing. More and more 'mechs are getting Ghost Heat exceptions unrelated to their stock loadouts, further decreasing heat burdens, and increasing damage output.

It's getting easier and easier to get killed while your 'mech is still in the high 90's % health from a well-placed, high damage alpha strike.

TTB just posted a video the other day of one-shotting assaults in the behind with a rocket launcher Javelin, although my experience has been with laser/ppc/gauss vomit.

So your problem is?

I completely get that you want a story-based game.

But stop painting the power creep you don't like in a doom-and-gloom context, when it is very similar to what would happen in Battletech lore:

Firepower: Weapon buffs versus Silver Round Gauss and X-Pulse lasers.
Armor: Armor buffs versus Reactive armor and mechs with special armor abilities.
Mobility: Agility buffs versus XXL engines and higher tech mechs.

The difference is that with artificial power creep, all builds can be balanced.
With lore, how do you balance older mechs?


Check it out:
I have followed this game for 10 years, until my account creation, and MechLabbed for about 5. I loved the concept of MWO since it was a tactical shooter (like Battlefield which I played before) with a strong customization element (like Armored Core and Forza). To me, collecting all the mechs and builds has always been my goal.

The problem was the terrible economy. Repairing and rearming for massive amounts of C-Bills, really? I was really disappointed.

But that was part of the Battle Value system in MWO. Another aspect is the power creep. Eventually you had the DWF and Supernova who could one-shot assaults from the back, and lights from the FRONT. That and various poor balancing decisions led to the terrible game balance that we have seen until 2017. Things were better, but still not great until 2021 when the Cauldron came about.

So what happened? During the early stages of MWO, there were a bunch of players who wanted to become the best mechwarriors of MWO. But to stay relevant, you had to P2W by shelling money to buy and maintain the best and latest mechs. The economy system was supposed to promote Battle Value, just like in TT, but it ended up promoting P2W instead. This led to toxicity and the eventual departure of these players who felt they deserved to be the best because of what they invested. Eventually they couldn't keep up with the power creep. So this feature was scrapped by 2013, but the game was a mess. If you were new and didn't know what worked in MWO, you had no chance. There was no real guide to the MechLab. There was no real official strategy guide. By 2017, PGI lost all hope in maintaining lore and started implementing Solaris and engine desync. But they lacked direction and how do you balance a game without knowing what you want from it? So between the toxicity, terrible NPE and lack of direction, the game nearly died until 2021 when the Cauldron came onboard.

In summary, copying and pasting TT Battletech into a F2P MMO shooter game doesn't work, especially if you didn't make a good plan, like Dark Souls did with their story-based multiplayer game. That is the hard pill that we all have to swallow.

When I saw the proposed changes from the Cauldron, I thought - This is it. I had hope in the game and signed on. I wasn't very familiar with the game - I treated it like Battlefield and eventually felt my way up single-handedly to the Tier 1 battles. But this was the game I hoped for 10 years ago - finally there was some semblance of balance in MWO, where I can run whatever build I want.

Hopefully you understand. I really do get your disappointment, and I am sure PGI are very disappointed in the failure of implementing Battletech into MWO. But that is the reality, nothing much can be done.


For your sake, I hope you find your perfect game in MW5 or perhaps MW6 when they get their online components. I suspect that would be the perfect platform for your vision of MW, because the F2P aspect is no longer an issue. In fact, I have some ideas on how to build that exact game that I might post in the future (though can't be bothered to follow through on them now, because real-life has limits).

As for me, you know I don't want the game to fail. That's why I frequent the forums, unlike any other game. It makes me so happy when I build something like an SRM Rifleman IIC, or ERLL Piranha, or some kitchen sink build and make it work even at the highest level. I can't describe how satisfying it is to see my work (both MechLab, and practice sessions) pay off in making these builds perform. And to me, my mech that I crafted and tuned for myself FEELS like my avatar. Its an awesome feeling.

I just wish more players tried more builds, and experience the euphoria that I feel from all of that.

[Knownswift]

C337Skymaster, on 20 July 2022 - 02:43 AM, said:

Military technology is made out of power creep

Neat straw.

Battletech is intentionally power crept to compel the plot and to sell bits. If clan tech was introduced against IS tech with tabletop values there would be no point to ever touching an innersphere mech. Likewise when you dumb down the mechlab to simulate the complete opposite of the point of blank record sheets and tabletop build rules you narrow the playing field down considerably to a handful of things that work.

This is probably the worst hill to die on, especially in this context, a game which is loosely based on a board game. Battletech table top is not a balanced game, it is super lopsided on purpose. That kind of play imbalance will never suit an action based online experience.


That said. I don't see the point in the heavy/assault survival tree buff, and I think we've reached a point where buffing everything isn't working.

Edited by Knownswift, 20 July 2022 - 01:49 PM.

[Roodkapje]

D V Devnull, on 18 July 2022 - 04:40 PM, said:

Can anyone tell me what this "v1.4.264.0 - July 18th, 2022" Patch will mean to a Win7 user who can't hang onto their MWO connection and has zero issues with their computer other than MWO acting up badly since the "Error 13" Patch and the "v1.4.261.0 - June 21st, 2022" Patch both landed??? I can not upgrade or get a new system regardless of what I do, this issue has been acting like an ocean wave on steroids, and I'm beginning to feel like PGI's MWO Team does not want part of their player base anymore!

~D. V. "being killed too much by rubberbanding for the last 27 days, and feeling like 'v1.4.264.0' won't fix that" Devnull

I think you have some hardware issues or a corrupt driver or something because Windows 7 Pro and MWO are big friends here and everything is working without any issues since the release of MWO basically!

And all these comments :

minnowzzz, on 18 July 2022 - 05:30 PM, said:

It's not that PGI has malicious intent for Win7 users (same with most devs too) it that it's a issue that Win7 13 year old OS that is not even supported by Microsoft anymore, and will continue to have more problems as time goes on. considering this and the fact it's more then likely that MWO's player base majority use Win10-11 and/or Linux, It's not likely in PGI's interests to use (at this point likely limited) resources to support a discontinued Operating system.

What your going thru sounds like it sucks my dude, I hope your situation Improves enough that you can get a system that supports a newer OS. If that does not pan out, while I my knowledge of it is very limited, my guess is Linux may be a cheaper way to solve your issue, I would try to duel boot that and see if that can help. defiantly read up on it or get someone that actually knows what they are doing when it comes to Linux to help you.

confracto, on 18 July 2022 - 07:46 PM, said:

Honestly, they don't, and you're really late to figuring this out. Supporting a bunch of old os's as you make future changes becomes harder and harder, and you end up supporting fewer and fewer. It becomes increasingly frustrating and expensive to make on the game as the ball-and-chain of supporting old stuff (4:3 anyone?), for the incredibly diminishing returns of how few players it supports. As much as you only see it from your perspective of loving a game, and wanting to enjoy it despite limited resources, they see it differently. When you look at the effort to support vs the cost of doing so for so few players, it's not worth it for them at all. Even the steam page's system requirements list 8.1, so you're just lucky it still worked at all until now.

...and what I listed above was my thinking on it 3 whole years ago. now, with the dramatically reduced team size, yeah, it's never going to happen. think of it this way, the team could support windows7 players, or get event queue and the skill tree update. not both. could you in all honestly choose windows7 player support over new features in the game's current state? to intentionally choose supporting a few players on an old unsupported OS as your first priority coding changes after 3 years away?

I couldn't.

martian, on 18 July 2022 - 08:10 PM, said:

Check the MWO system requirements, please:

sycxowl, on 19 July 2022 - 11:36 AM, said:

Why can't you just install Windows 10/11? Or buy a new PC?

You can't or just unwilling to learn how to install or spend?

Are just total nonsense!

People need to understand that some of us basically dislike everything released by Microsoft after Windows 7 so that makes everything starting with Windows 8.x up to the most recent Windows 11 release!

C337Skymaster, on 18 July 2022 - 05:09 PM, said:

Holy IS Sniper Meta. 25% range boost to La Malinche? So 40% with skills, and who knows what (50%?) on energy weapons with a TC-8. So Gauss Sniping from 2870m, and ERLL from at least 2072, probably closer to 2200. That's literally drop-zone to drop-zone on Boreal Vault, and that's literally every open area on every QP map covered by the optimum range.

When's power creep gonna end?

How many people do you know that actually use TC's in their build ?!
And those who do probably don't even use more than the most basic models!

All that stuff takes too much space and weight in most mechs anyway...

Therax, on 18 July 2022 - 05:19 PM, said:

I have not seem a La Malinche in a long, long time.
I have not played my La Malinche in probably over 2 years. Just looked up my stats for that mech, 3 games played in it total.

I am not at all worried that there are all of a sudden going to be La Malinche's in every match, even with the heavy steroids it just received.

Me neither, but please do note that it was a FREE MECH some years ago so many players should have that specific mech

martian, on 18 July 2022 - 08:40 PM, said:

Because the Assault class with its best K/D ratio, best MS ratio and the best W/L ratio really needed boosting!

I appreciate the sarcasm but lately I have been playing a lot of Medium mechs and if I am honest it's the best class of them all :
- Fast
- Powerfull
- Some of them VERY TANKY !!!

Combine those three things and your opponents should pee their pants when the match starts!

Saved By The Bell, on 18 July 2022 - 08:52 PM, said:

Hey guys, reduce ECM a bit, I want to play LRMs sometimes.

Please don't and use something more honorfull instead

#MRMs/SRMs/StreaksFTW!!!

Navid A1, on 18 July 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

(despite you framing it as 80%, to make it sound like it is a crazy change)

People using percentages to make things better has sadly become a VERY ANNOYING trend the last 10 years or so...

Lockheed_, on 18 July 2022 - 11:10 PM, said:

Whenever the topic of lights being OP is brought up some will counter (and bring up a graph) that lights are the worst performing and picked class and assaults are still the best and I think it's a valid point. How come that assaults get blanket buffs while they are the best performing weight class? Shouldn't those blanket buffs go to lights mechs instead?

IMHO the Lights class can be a lot more annoying than some Assault mech I can shoot down easily!

Nightbird, on 19 July 2022 - 06:59 AM, said:

You just want to buff the most OP, top performing mechs in the game today.

You could say that for any class if you pick specific mechs from those classes!

CrimsonPhantom6sg062, on 19 July 2022 - 11:39 AM, said:

Handing out free health willy nilly is not a good change IMO (think DWF, think Stalker).

The DWF is almost made of paper like many other Clan mechs compared to many IS mechs so I don't think you can compare those two ?!

One extreme example :

When you compare the Heavy MAD-3R with the Assault MAD-IIC-A then you get the feeling that the Heavy IS mech is actually better than the Assault Clan mech when it comes to survivability!

Buenaventura, on 19 July 2022 - 01:42 PM, said:

To update on this:
It was NOT fixed!

Remove the map from the rotation until it is fixed.

That's what you get when you buy a AMD GPU to play a game that prefers Nvidia GPUs

Taking the map out of the rotation is not needed : Just press H and enjoy the game!

FLG 01, on 19 July 2022 - 04:24 PM, said:

How often do you see Griffins e.g.? (...which were buffed by the cauldron already, supposedly.)

As soon as I buy one in the near future!

I am running out of Mediums to skill/play with and I think one of those could be a good idea...

Quote

What you are doing here is a blanket buff for a weight class that performs best already.
That won't help the who-cares assault Mechs, it will help making the dominant assault Mechs even more dominant ..,because you buffed them all the same regardless!

Not every MWO player knows how to play the Assault class correctly!

I think many of them would be a lot happier with one of the better performing Mediums or even Lights

CrimsonPhantom6sg062, on 20 July 2022 - 10:06 AM, said:

Make snipers OP to attract inflexible CS players

Camping Snipers in CS are bad players in general and the good ones "brawl" together with the rest of the team so to speak so not all CS players are bad because they AWP a lot

Quote

What we need to do is nerf assault snipers

What we really need to do is forbid such gameplay completely or even better : Adjust the maps so they are Camping Sniper unfriendly in general !!!

Players in Assaults camping on high walls or hills make me wanna Disconnect or somehow !votekick them to stay with the CS mood!

Quote

Do you think the invisible walls, current state of MM, and constant game-changing patches will appeal to the wider audience?

YES!!! PLEASE!!! Let's fix the damn invisible walls for once and never talk about them ever again !!!

I also agree with the too many changes constantly issue : This game is difficult enough already for a lot of people and having to remember changes constantly is not making it any easier for them!

See the earlier Gauss + PPC discussion : Many people don't even know that...

Nightbird, on 20 July 2022 - 10:35 AM, said:

Assaults are easily the best performing weight class. Heavies are the second best.

That's simply not true!

The best performing mechs are IMHO certain mechs in each class!

CrimsonPhantom6sg062, on 20 July 2022 - 12:33 PM, said:

I loved the concept of MWO since it was a tactical shooter (like Battlefield which I played before)

Battlefield games are pure crap made by EA/DICE and as someone who played both Battlefield 2 + all the stuff that came out later like Special and Euro Forces and after that got a free code for Battlefield 3 while also playing games like S.W.A.T. 4 and the good old Rainbow Six : Ravenshield and some of the ArmA titles I can tell you that the Battlefield games are just Arcade FPS Shooters and nothing more than that!

Edited by Roodkapje, 20 July 2022 - 01:23 PM.

[Knownswift]

Roodkapje, on 20 July 2022 - 01:14 PM, said:

Are just total nonsense!
People need to understand that some of us basically dislike everything released by Microsoft after Windows 7 so that makes everything starting with Windows 8.x up to the most recent Windows 11 release!

They are not. What you need to understand is that Windows 7 has reached it's end of service. As such it is no longer receiving critical security updates which not only protect you the end user, but the internet as a whole.

All Windows 7 machines are vulnerable, and that isn't an opinion.

That said, legacy components that require continued development absolutely should be gutted. We've already seen this game shed XP and DX9.

[Roodkapje]

Knownswift, on 20 July 2022 - 01:38 PM, said:

They are not. What you need to understand is that Windows 7 has reached it's end of service.

That doesn't mean it's no longer working correctly for MWO Players !!!

Quote

As such it is no longer receiving critical security updates which not only protect you the end user, but the internet as a whole.

All Windows 7 machines are vulnerable, and that isn't an opinion.

The most vulnerable part that can't be patched is the user or the so called PEBCAK so as long as you don't do stupid things there is ZERO to worry about!

Quote

That said, legacy components that require continued development absolutely should be gutted. We've already seen this game shed XP and DX9.

That's a completely different issue!

MWO and Windows 7 work just FINE!

PERIOD.

[Knownswift]

Roodkapje, on 20 July 2022 - 01:45 PM, said:

That doesn't mean it's no longer working correctly for MWO Players !!!

No, it means they should stop using it.

Quote

MWO and Windows 7 work just FINE!

PERIOD.

It might, but it isn't supported. The game has already dropped support for XP and DX9 for similar reasons.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Stats that the performance of lights is closer to being on par with assaults?

Is that data biased because of frequently playing good players though? Say there's 10 really good light players and they play a lot. Are they dragging those stat up because of the mechs they are playing (Urbanmech probably) and because they are better? How's it look for players with less experience? Datasets can say a lot of things depending on how you're looking at it.

The game feels too fast to me. There has been too much power creep for a long time. I mean, I do expect Assaults to outperform because of their tonnage and overall, the other weight classes are viable in a PvP shooter but we really ought to be talking about the reduced cooldowns we've gotten and the lower TTK because of the skill tree changes.

With the skill tree changes, all mechs can be better optimized. I take Radar dep on every mech because it's so important to. That entire targeting system needs looked at. Coolrun and Heat containment are readily accessible whereas before they were not. That needs looked at. Cooldown skills are all accessible though the boost from any one of them is small. I'm not as concerned about that. But every mech now can take full cooldown, full heat-reducing quirks, full armor skills, full radar dep, and still have some leftover. This needs examined. Honestly, I'm not sure heat is the main issue. I feel like cooldown/burn time/speed of fire is too low overall. I'd like to see a universal nerf to cooldown times of some amount. You can leave quirks alone for the most part. This gives the players more time to react between shots and duck for cover. Lights would benefit the most. It also can help close the distance for peek and poke snipers, and it means good marksmanship is more important.

I also think Speed Tweak should offer a fixed kph bonus instead of a percentage. Assaults need the speed boost the most, so I'd like all the nodes in total to add 10 kph. I think there are 5 nodes so each would add 2 kph. This won't help fast lights much, but anything going 140 kph is fast enough and we know the netcode doesn't work so well for really fast mechs. Other nodes might also work better as a fixed number rather than a percentage. One way to balance assault mechs is to give them hard choices on the skill tree--agility that is meaningful? Faster firing weapons that are meaningful? Better sensors and information systems? But they can't take all of it. You can change the values for the weight classes too to give certain low performing nodes more of a boost with certain classes to make them viable choices or at least competitive.

[SockSlayer]

Ok, I bought that hero banshee La Malinche, not sure what it was like before, but it seems the range quirk put it right where it should be, not an overperformer still, but not super sucky.

For flamers, this means with skill tree puts it at +40% range. Even with that, I think the base range on the flamer really should be 100m instead of 90m. This would mean fatter mechs can get some benefit out of using flamers and not just lighter ones. 0.2 damage would be nice as well since damage translates into cbills, and there is currently no reward for shutting a mech down in battle.

The critical hit receiving boost to tree is good too, prevents a large amount of cheap shots, Charger lucky seven now won't suffer critical hits at all. Hero mechs should be at least a hint stronger than regular ones, and recent changes seem to confirm this, so nice job.

The max flamer range possible is now 126m (possible on only firestarter and La Malinche), still short of what other Mechwarrior games have had, but at least now it is getting closer to the 150 m it was supposed to have.

[Clay Endfield]

FLG 01, on 19 July 2022 - 04:24 PM, said:

That is true for lights and mediums as well. How often do you see Griffins e.g.? (...which were buffed by the cauldron already, supposedly.)

There is always a small number of well performing mechs in every class, plus a larger number of who-cares.

What you are doing here is a blanket buff for a weight class that performs best already.
That won't help the who-cares assault Mechs, it will help making the dominant assault Mechs even more dominant ..,because you buffed them all the same regardless!

It's actually not an evenly distributed blanket. Mad Cats are one of the best performing Assaults, and look how much armor and structure it's getting from this compared to a Highlander, one of the underperforming assaults. Same tonnage, but different total armor because the Highlander is heavily quirked for armor, which applied before skill multipliers.

I believe the total health buff seen on the Mad Cat, armor and structure is 18. Keep in mind, armor is split on torsos, and typically the back is lightly armored, meaning a fairly small amount of extra structure is all back stabbers are going to chew through. You're still going to one-shot assaults from behind reliably.

As for that extra 18 health? Well, depending on your firepower, that's literally only 1 more alpha to kill at the lowest end of the spectrum. And we're talking 3x LPPCs and nothing else low end of the spectrum here. Most mechs are going chew through that 18 extra health with nearly identical TTK to pre-patch.

Cauldron appears to be aware that certain meta assaults are going to receive an unnecessary performance increase from this patch, and they are monitoring those particular concerns very closely for over performance. That list is surprisingly small, compared to the amount of assaults that needed buffs, and monitoring the few over performers is a lot easier and more economic than trying to buff each underperforming assault individually. Short term, some meta assaults may become far more obnoxious; long term we should see faster corrections and better balance.

[KDK Prime]

How quickly the fickle opinion of the mechcrowd swings.
Are we past the "lights op" phase and one step into the "assaults op" era? Or it's both now?
Tune into the next couple of videos by your preferred media person, to keep up with the proper thoughts you're supposed to have!

Personally, i welcome these slight assault buffs, with the rescale being nowhere in sight. I guess no amount of bought P-packs is going to bring it any closer.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

KDK Prime, on 21 July 2022 - 01:50 AM, said:

How quickly the fickle opinion of the mechcrowd swings.
Are we past the "lights op" phase and one step into the "assaults op" era? Or it's both now?
Tune into the next couple of videos by your preferred media person, to keep up with the proper thoughts you're supposed to have!

Personally, i welcome these slight assault buffs, with the rescale being nowhere in sight. I guess no amount of bought P-packs is going to bring it any closer.

and with no reason at all you're posting on an alt..
just sayin'.

[SockSlayer]

Assaults do seem stronger lately, that is in no way to assume lights are now not able to take them on. It will come down to the assault players accuracy vs lights dodge. Pirahnas especially are still a danger to assaults, or anything so fast they can't get a solid hit. And it really is a mech by mech basis, not class as pirahnas are far more dangerous then most lights. It will just vary.

Edited by SockSlayer, 21 July 2022 - 10:12 AM.

[Capt Deadpool]

Nightbird, on 20 July 2022 - 10:35 AM, said:

Assaults are easily the best performing weight class. Heavies are the second best.

If you want to balance, then you would be doing a blanket buff on lights and mediums and then working on outliers. The only work needed on assault is the nerfing of top performers.

If you want to understand why, look up Cauldron members on Jarl's list. Most main assaults.

Full stop.

Deserves repost.

If you look at Navid's nonsensical explanations, however, he does seem genuinely confused as to why his posts are not accepted as satisfactorily explanatory. He concludes it is everyone else who is confused about the methodology they have used, which is a classic symptom of Group Think.

Group Think happens to a team when they are unaware of their own subconscious biases and they do not have strong leadership to vigilantly keep them aware of and directed in avoiding the phenomenon. History is littered with groups with far higher cumulative IQ than The Cauldron outputting results with far more dire consequences than a blanket buff to the MWO assault class... So we can't be too harsh I suppose.

When I could explain how to utilize the most basic of statistics and game balance to a group of second graders, and help make them aware of their own pre-existing biases, and they could output a more professional result than a group of ostensibly mostly college educated adults, it's likely that Group Think holds sway.

(I.e., they are not, consciously at least, listening to the one or two lunatics who have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years that lights are OP, we know the people, those who have never taken a math class and sleep with their plush dire wolf at night. However, the net end result is the same, with a blanket buff to assaults being relativistically equivalent to a blanket nerf to lighter classes which are the least-played, least damage-dealing, least impactful to W/L, despite the dumbed-down machine gun spam mechanic that has been granted to them which of course was never the answer and is like a band-aid for a bullet hole...)

[Heavy Money]

Capt Deadpool, on 21 July 2022 - 11:00 AM, said:

Deserves repost.

If you look at Navid's nonsensical explanations, however, he does seem genuinely confused as to why his posts are not accepted as satisfactorily explanatory. He concludes it is everyone else who is confused about the methodology they have used, which is a classic symptom of Group Think.

Group Think happens to a team when they are unaware of their own subconscious biases and they do not have strong leadership to vigilantly keep them aware of and directed in avoiding the phenomenon. History is littered with groups with far higher cumulative IQ than The Cauldron outputting results with far more dire consequences than a blanket buff to the MWO assault class... So we can't be too harsh I suppose.

When I could explain how to utilize the most basic of statistics and game balance to a group of second graders, and help make them aware of their own pre-existing biases, and they could output a more professional result than a group of ostensibly mostly college educated adults, it's likely that Group Think holds sway.

(I.e., they are not, consciously at least, listening to the one or two lunatics who have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years that lights are OP, we know the people, those who have never taken a math class and sleep with their plush dire wolf at night. However, the net end result is the same, with a blanket buff to assaults being relativistically equivalent to a blanket nerf to lighter classes which are the least-played, least damage-dealing, least impactful to W/L, despite the dumbed-down machine gun spam mechanic that has been granted to them which of course was never the answer and is like a band-aid for a bullet hole...)

Or he's just correct and knows the people making noise here fundamentally do not understand the game. And the other people who understand are not here because there is no point in casting pearls before swine. If you want to talk about IQ and Group Think and make implications about people's intelligence using them, you should start by looking up the Dunning-Kruger effect and considering the implications for yourself before attacking others.


Those complaining about these changes are ignoring fundamental factors about how the game works such as:

• The context of the game is very different for different weight classes.
  
• Assaults live and die primarily based on Strategic and Tactical level position choices, and on rock/paper/scissors style counters. A bit more armor is largely irrelevant when a sniper assault is mobbed by Vipers.
  
• More armor matters more depending on what is shooting you, and depending on various breakpoints. Does it make the difference between a brawl Atlas getting an extra volley off?
  
• Performance data based on average scores of different sizes of mechs tells us very little. Dealing damage and things downstream of dealing damage are the primary score contributors, so of course the mechs with the most weapons wrack up the biggest score!
  
• High damage/score does not mean biggest match impact since it matters when and where damage is done. Everyone understands this in the case of things like a LRM Boat + Spotter, but then seems to just forget in other contexts.
  
• W:L stats without a lot more context don't mean a whole lot.
  
• There's more but I know you don't actually want to understand. You want to be snarky online and feel smart.

Those complaining about the change are not talking about any of these factors, or others like it. If they were so knowledgeable, it would have come up, and you'd be able to easily say why each of these doesn't matter for your conclusion. Instead we are just getting linear assumptions.

Assaults are not overpowered or too strong as a class. Hardly any specific variants/loadouts are either. Those that are can get nerfed individually. Changes that are logical across the whole class don't need to be held up because of a few specific ones, and this change doesn't have a huge impact for them anyway.

TL;DR: No u are the Group Thinker.

[Figaro Jibaro]

Navid A1, on 18 July 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

If by OP lights you are referring to the Ember and Firestorm losing MG RoF, then it is better to pay attention to the rest of the stuff they are getting too.

Instead of having an inferior copy paste of dozen different SPL+MG mechs, Ember being boosted into mid/kiting range brings it out of being a worse Firestorm.
The firestorm itself also never relies on 10% MG RoF, its best builds are often 3xLPPC+4xMG or 4xMPLs+4xMGs.
I should also say that LMGs will get another revision in August.


Regarding heavy and assault mechs... Unfortunately since we are stuck with large scale mechs, there are only two paths ahead.
- Doing a complete blanket nerf to everything... including heatsinks, weapons, etc. (affecting every mech in the game) so that having 10 times surface area would not catch every shot lobbed at general direction of the mech.
- Address the larger mechs specifically


The changes to armor and structure nodes, for a 100 tonner for example which is the largest change will lead to only 7.2% boost to armor (at max) compared to the currently live game and a 6.4% boost to structure (at max) compared the currently live game (despite you framing it as 80%, to make it sound like it is a crazy change)

And that is the maximum extent of it for a 100 tonner. The absolute highest boost you can get out of this change.
Also if you want, feel free to check the current tree and see the amount of raw armor gain you get from the tree for a 100 tonner compared to a 60 or 65 tonner.

Increasing TTK for slow brawling short range assaults, which are the main focus of this change is always a good thing. That said, adjustment to the current survival quirks of some assault mechs have never been off the table, as I can think of a few myself.


Also btw... you can check the rest of the quirk list which is mainly focused on lights and mediums.

I am curious as to what data led the cauldron to believe assaults, out of all the other classes, needed an armor/structure buff. Out of the top 150 players, data suggests most play the below classes:

21 play Light (14%)
26 Medium (17%)
45 Heavy (30%)
58 Assault (39%)

So 39% of the top players play predominantly assaults.

Out of the combined 445,247 matches the above represents the match breakdown is:

10% lights
19% medium
29% heavy
42% assault

Assaults already tend to score the highest match scores, can hold the most weapons, have the potential for most firepower and DPS, already have the most armor/structure.

By many metrics the assaults are already the top performers.

Even survival rates look comparable across the board.

You are using some kind of actual data right? Not just pulling it out of nowhere?