18 replies to this topic

[Cygnus X1]

Seriously... 10 years into this game and the devs still haven't figured out that the 3.5 ton minimum loadout for a NARC is ridiculously stupid?

Seriously. What is the "game balance" reason for this stupidity?

[Meep Meep]

Probably an additional way to reign in lrm spam which used to be an issue until enough usable ecm mechs made it into the game and the skill tree changes that gave everyone easy radar dep. You are only going to mount a narc if you are making a dedicated spotter otherwise you would see it more on lrm and atm mechs to self narc a target.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

they'll never do it, but:

once the FREE c4-unit is NOT in the game anymore, that 3,5t of narcy-goodness looks a LOT better.
just sayin.

[Curccu]

Cygnus X1, on 11 June 2023 - 01:24 PM, said:

Seriously... 10 years into this game and the devs still haven't figured out that the 3.5 ton minimum loadout for a NARC is ridiculously stupid?

Seriously. What is the "game balance" reason for this stupidity?

Well as veteran you should know that almost all of the equipment gets their weight and size value from BT, This rule has been broken only lately and only two times (CASE weight, BAP size and weight) if remember correctly.

So no weapon sizes and weights are same as BT even though some weapons could use some love like LB20-X

[Meep Meep]

Yeah we definitely need a fittings balance pass since cauldron is more focused on playability than faithful conversion of BT values.

[Cygnus X1]

Curccu, on 11 June 2023 - 01:37 PM, said:

almost all of the equipment gets their weight and size value from BT

Tabletop and FPS games are not even remotely the same, though.

I mean, you can't compare the utility of an item in a turn based game vs real time. Video games should be balanced for the fun.

Edited by Cygnus X1, 11 June 2023 - 01:50 PM.

[Wraith 1]

NARC is easily the worst mechanic in the entire game, and really shouldn't have a place in a first person game in the first place.

Best case scenario, you encounter a lone narcer with no lrms on the enemy team, in which case getting hit only forces you to sit out of the game until it wears off, or else be pre-fired by the entire enemy team which now has wallhax on you.

Worst case scenario, you're on a map with minimal hard cover and the narcer has buddies with 300 tubes of pure unfiltered skill™ pointed vaguely in your general direction, in which case you're fighting a light mech that effectively has a one-hit-kill weapon with 600m range.

I get that could use a bit more incentive for solo players to use it, but simply buffing NARC would be absolutely terrible for the game unless they entirely reworked lock-on weapons, which it's about 10 years too late for.

[LordNothing]

Curccu, on 11 June 2023 - 01:37 PM, said:

Well as veteran you should know that almost all of the equipment gets their weight and size value from BT, This rule has been broken only lately and only two times (CASE weight, BAP size and weight) if remember correctly.

So no weapon sizes and weights are same as BT even though some weapons could use some love like LB20-X

is lb2 and lb5 also got size reductions. i think i could support doing this for narc as well since there is precedence. at least give it parity with the clan version since the other numbers are identical. more ammo/t would also be nice.

Edited by LordNothing, 11 June 2023 - 04:25 PM.

[Meep Meep]

LordNothing, on 11 June 2023 - 04:24 PM, said:

is lb2 and lb5 also got size reductions. i think i could support doing this for narc as well since there is precedence. at least give it parity with the clan version since the other numbers are identical. more ammo/t would also be nice.

I think on common shared items there should be parity between the clan and IS fittings. The real clan advantage has always been their smaller lighter weapons and two slot double sinks and mechs with hardpoint bloat so that even light clan mechs can mount an incredible amount of firepower.

[Marcel Leander]

Wraith 1, on 11 June 2023 - 02:00 PM, said:

NARC is easily the worst mechanic in the entire game, and really shouldn't have a place in a first person game in the first place.

Best case scenario, you encounter a lone narcer with no lrms on the enemy team, in which case getting hit only forces you to sit out of the game until it wears off, or else be pre-fired by the entire enemy team which now has wallhax on you.

Worst case scenario, you're on a map with minimal hard cover and the narcer has buddies with 300 tubes of pure unfiltered skill™ pointed vaguely in your general direction, in which case you're fighting a light mech that effectively has a one-hit-kill weapon with 600m range.

I get that could use a bit more incentive for solo players to use it, but simply buffing NARC would be absolutely terrible for the game unless they entirely reworked lock-on weapons, which it's about 10 years too late for.

I wouldn't want to see it buffed, but I definitely don't think it's as OP as you make it out to be. It's short range, slow projectile speed, long cool down, and you only get 12 shots per ammo bucket. You gotta be able to get in close to use it, and you don't want to be nearby when missiles start to fly so you need to get back out quick. So it's really only suitable for the lights or maaaaybe the very fast mediums - VPR/ASN. Now, loading up a 2 slot 3 ton launcher on one of your precious missile hard points with another slot for another 1/2 or 1 ton of ammo to only get 6 or 12 shots on a mech that may only have 10 tons of room to work with... that's a steep price to pay for a weapon that doesn't benefit you at all, depends on you being able to hit them with it, has a time limit, depends on them not being able to just duck behind cover and wait it out, and requires that you have a teammate nearby with the right load out and good positioning to actually use the thing you just did.

So what do you do? Take a BIG gamble taking NARC into QP and HOPE someone else brought missiles AND will coordinate with you on position and targets? Or do you take in some friends and a pre-planned lance? That would mean you need the light with NARC, a missile boat or two and at least one mech to protect them. That'll probably get you between 20-30 tubes, maybe?

So it's very high risk, high reward and situational item. Not a magic bullet by any means.

Edited by Marcel Leander, 11 June 2023 - 10:47 PM.

[CherokeeRose187]

Only thing needs buffed is the individual NARC missile hit points,

It's ridiculous to sit there and fire NARC over and over again, and not get a single lock because a single AMS is somewhere out of line of sight, but within ~200 meters, and can fire at your one missile through buildings and mountains with impunity.

I even tried firing double NARC and AMS just swats it out of the sky.

[Wraith 1]

Marcel Leander, on 11 June 2023 - 10:44 PM, said:

-snip-

I never said it's overpowered. My point is that it's incredibly annoying to play against, and a bad mechanic for an FPS game.

For solo pilots, a combat focused light will serve both them and their team better in 90% of matches than a dedicated NARC spotter. It seems a little better on self-spotting LRM boats or poptarts, but I haven't tried that myself. Regarding groups, while NARC will make focus-firing and positioning much easier, any group worth the stock armor on a JM6 will be able to win with whatever they want.

Even so, you're vastly underselling it. 20-30 tubes, is your LRM lance a single Cougar!? Two Mad Dogs or HBK-IIC-Bs can bring 120+ tubes easily. The bodyguard isn't needed either; it's trivial to keep the boats >180m apart, or better yet, just stay with the rest of the pug team that have actual guns.

Even if there aren't any LRMs, any poptart or poker has a huge advantage against a NARC'd mech just from knowing their exact location, with nothing the NARC'd mech can do except hope there's an un-NARC'd friendly with ECM nearby or find hard cover and just not play the game for a while. It won't get the narcer any score and is arguable whether it's worth the tonnage, but it's still great at ruining the game for that one guy in particular, which is why it's great that NARC sucks as much as it does.

[LordNothing]

in terms of badness: annoying to play with > annoying to play against. the only real people i see having trouble with lerms are the erll boats at the edges of the map. for the rest of us dodging a narc is as easy as finding cover or standing next to an ecm mech. and half the time im narced i dont have to do anything because the enemy lerm boat is either non-existant or grossly out of range.

[Curccu]

LordNothing, on 12 June 2023 - 05:07 AM, said:

in terms of badness: annoying to play with > annoying to play against. the only real people i see having trouble with lerms are the erll boats at the edges of the map. for the rest of us dodging a narc is as easy as finding cover or standing next to an ecm mech. and half the time im narced i dont have to do anything because the enemy lerm boat is either non-existant or grossly out of range.

Probably not that big deal in QP mostly, few maps with good narcer and appropriate lurm boats and other team just disappears and they can't do much when they realize situation anything to counter that.

In FP invasion narc/lrm boat combo is insanely good for some maps for defender.

Cygnus X1, on 11 June 2023 - 01:44 PM, said:

Tabletop and FPS games are not even remotely the same, though.

I mean, you can't compare the utility of an item in a turn based game vs real time. Video games should be balanced for the fun.

True but I personally cannot see narc weighting as much as it does being really bad thing as it is sometimes pretty damn stupidly OP.

[ThreeStooges]

Too bad nothing else in the game has a longer cool down than narc. If I had to wait seven seconds to fire any weapon I'd go play some thing else so I did. World of warships has a lot of long cool downs longer than seven seconds yet they work fine there.

[Marcel Leander]

Wraith 1, on 12 June 2023 - 01:03 AM, said:

I never said it's overpowered. My point is that it's incredibly annoying to play against, and a bad mechanic for an FPS game.

I guess it makes sense when you follow it with the phrase "for an FPS game." It just feels weird to hear someone call Mechwarrior an FPS. Sure you're in first person and you shoot things, but you do that in games like Star Wars Squadrons and I can't see calling that an FPS. This is a Mechwarrior game. The first one in the series came out in 1989, predating the original Wolfenstein 3D by 3 years and Doom by 4. These games were already what they are before FPS as a concept even existed. It's a light sim / vehicular combat / war strategy game. Calling it an FPS feels like calling Battletech a board game. And Mechwarrior isn't like Call of Duty any more than Battletech is like Monopoly.

[Wraith 1]

Marcel Leander, on 12 June 2023 - 10:37 PM, said:

I hear ya; FPS is a super broad category nowadays, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that Mechwarrior has less strategic depth or should rely on fast-paced twitch reactions, just that a mechanic like NARC is a lot simpler to make work and feel fair in a game where a player controls a whole team of battlemechs rather than just one.

[PocketYoda]

Wraith 1, on 11 June 2023 - 02:00 PM, said:

Worst case scenario, you're on a map with minimal hard cover and the narcer has buddies with 300 tubes of pure unfiltered skill™ pointed vaguely in your general direction, in which case you're fighting a light mech that effectively has a one-hit-kill weapon with 600m range.

Hahaha i love it.

[LordNothing]

Marcel Leander, on 12 June 2023 - 10:37 PM, said:

I guess it makes sense when you follow it with the phrase "for an FPS game." It just feels weird to hear someone call Mechwarrior an FPS. Sure you're in first person and you shoot things, but you do that in games like Star Wars Squadrons and I can't see calling that an FPS. This is a Mechwarrior game. The first one in the series came out in 1989, predating the original Wolfenstein 3D by 3 years and Doom by 4. These games were already what they are before FPS as a concept even existed. It's a light sim / vehicular combat / war strategy game. Calling it an FPS feels like calling Battletech a board game. And Mechwarrior isn't like Call of Duty any more than Battletech is like Monopoly.

well its a shooter, and its in first person, its technically correct term. but somewhere the term "fps game" came to mean a game about a quaternion with a gun. i had this same argument about descent back in the 90s. its not an fps because its a 6dof. but you are in first person and shooting, but nope not an fps. you are shooting down corridors in either case, so its a corridor shooter, and you can lump what most gamers call fpses into that category as well. the description on the mw2 box was that it was a "mech simulator". somewhere the term "vehicle shooter" also came about and disappeared just as fast (which mwo would definitely be, as would descent). when i did space sims it was not really a simulator because the physics were usually bad in most cases and if it was a sim proper (say orbiter) it would no longer be a space sim, since the term is reserved for games with cartoon physics, totally counter-intuitive. even the term shooter is loaded language because asteroids was a shooter, any game where you shoot something can be called a shooter. that could apply to everything from super mario brothers to various sports games. maybe gamers need to come up with better genre names rather than just try to assemble them from the usual descriptors, everyone would be less confused.

Edited by LordNothing, 18 June 2023 - 05:59 AM.