119 replies to this topic

[Kynesis]

There are many design choices that PGI has made that I'm quite critical about. Choices can and often should be debated or even criticized. People make mistakes like this though, it's not like they're piloting an aircraft full of fuel, people & kittens between mountains in a snow storm.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry that people are being so harsh. Getting to work on a game is a dream job for a lot of people, even if it is with a difficult old engine with weird features, for a company that's basically run out of money. I have great sympathy for you.

Now, about the doodads on maps that snag mechs...

[Typhlon]

Lockheed_, on 23 August 2023 - 07:01 AM, said:

The only thing that is "unacceptable" is that PGI, and I don't think that Tiyos has any say in that, is waiting an entire month and doesn't release a hot fix. If you make a mistake and this obviously slipped past QA as well, let your developer fix it instead of letting him taking unnecessary fallout and go through all the stress of having messed with the start of comp season.

The lack of hotfixes is very annoying (especially for such a tiny change), but like I said idk why that is and it's not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is community devs, actively competitive players, are allowing mistakes that influence balance into the game, and there is no accountability for it whatsoever. Again, Clan MASC is unfixed despite being a known problem that would take literal seconds to correct (to anyone who knew where the entry was, anyway). There is a real chance that this doesn't get fixed either, and my aim is to point out that if it was intentional, then we will know when the September patch drops.

Edited by Typhlon, 23 August 2023 - 07:12 AM.

[An6ryMan69]

I give the PGI team the gears pretty hard when I feel I should, but an actual unintended error, that anyone can make even with the best intentions, is something that you just point out and hope for a hotfix. No need to rub salt in people's wounds.

[Athom83]

Meep Meep, on 22 August 2023 - 10:45 PM, said:

Ok so IS can boat three of them with no heat penalty giving many IS mechs ~almost~ clan laser vomit alphas. This isn't some game breaking bug. At ~worst~ it will allow some IS mechs to be competitive with meta clan vomit mechs. Not seeing the huge issue.

The issue is quite a few IS mechs have laser HSL quirks so can get up 4 or 5 BLCs before GH. This means they're firing effectively 8 or 10 large lasers without tipping heat over the 100% threshold.

[CFC Conky]

Typhlon said:

1692771681[/url]' post='6506291']

I've coded enough and worked with enough coders to understand that mistakes DO happen, but that allowing a mistake through to the final product is far worse than just making the mistake at all. And that's before considering that you know that it won't be fixed for a month. And of all things, the introduction of a new weapon is the exact place you'd want to proofread thoroughly and test, both because the large amount of code is more likely to have a mistake by virtue of being Bigger and also because you do NOT want the audience's first impression of a new feature to be "oh. there's an obvious bug." (consider that the first thing most people were mentioning about the Ceres map wasn't the gameplay, the look, or anything meaningful about the map itself, but that the large frames of debris could be seen but not fired through and that seemed dumb)

And that's before before considering that this exact type of error happened last month, was noticed, and was NOT fixed, which is exactly my entire thesis - I went back and added some info to the original post to clarify that, as I hadn't put in nearly as much context on the MASC thing as was necessary for the point, but it goes deeper than me or anyone else being buttmad about one typo.

Fair enough.

That said, game patches often require hotfixes to correct small errors that have noticeable consequences.

As for the effect on comp play, since all tournament players will have access to the weapons (unless fixed beforehand), no team should have an undue advantage beyond their skill level. Teams like JGx, EMP, etc will still be at the top.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 23 August 2023 - 08:47 AM.

[Ken Harkin]

As a mistake its sucks but just deal with it. This is coding for a video game which will get addressed in the next patch in a month. This is not a lifesaving medical device or something never expected to go through future updates. People need to chill out, it's a game.

Part of this issue seems to be how a small group of intensely competitive players are molding the game into their preferred styles of play. LRMs, ATMs, and Streaks have gotten pretty badly brutalized both with stats, the proliferation of ECM/stealth, and maps such as the giant mushroom map literally designed around stopping LRMs. Drop in an honest error with the HSL on this direct fire comp friendly weapon and you get the issues spilling into each other.

Even with the blatant steering of the play style to satisfy a segment I am still thrilled to see new weapons and the like. It will get fixed, people need to chill.

[Hauptmann Keg Steiner]

Would be nice if the Fafnir 6R got an extra +1 HSL for Binaries after the fix; it would be nice to have one other 'mech than the Stalker that could run 4 Binaries legit, and the 6R really doesn't stand out otherwise (and has the usual Fafnir giant hitboxes issue to boot).

[JumpingHunter]

Tiy0s, on 22 August 2023 - 03:52 PM, said:

Posting this on my personal and not my dev account because it's not about PGI, but my own personal response to this. You're taking a screenshot of a single post I've made in an entire conversation about the balance of these new weapons. If you actually read the conversation, you'd know that I am beating myself up incredibly because of accidentally letting this change slip by me. People telling me I've ruined the integrity of their championship series opener, cauldron members calling it a catastrophe, and who knows what else. I'm probably going to end up taking a sick day on community outreach because of how much negative community feedback I've had sent to me directly about the mistake of mistyping a 4 instead of a 3 on a weapon stat. These weapons were my first major project since joining PGI that I took the initiative on, and I wanted them to do as well as they could. And I'm mostly satisfied with how they turned out despite a few glaring issues that we're fixing in September. So I'm sorry I made a single post alleviating it with humor as I beat myself up on this issue, and I'm sorry that the single post of me trying to deal with it through humor is all that you cared to read.

No matter what people say, just thank you for interrupting the stagnation period MWO was in for a long time. Bugs are fixable, mistakes are correctable, balance is adjustable. Nothing is going to be permanently worse than it was before, nothing is going to be worse than it was before the update at all, aside from egos and anger issues of certain people. You did a great job, it's just some of us who don't know how to properly say that.

[crazytimes]

JumpingHunter, on 23 August 2023 - 10:56 AM, said:

No matter what people say, just thank you for interrupting the stagnation period MWO was in for a long time. Bugs are fixable, mistakes are correctable, balance is adjustable. Nothing is going to be permanently worse than it was before, nothing is going to be worse than it was before the update at all, aside from egos and anger issues of certain people. You did a great job, it's just some of us who don't know how to properly say that.

I get that and all... But this has happened right as a tournament with real world money is on the line starts. It kind of detracts from trying to make the game appear like a legitimate thing to outside observers, which affects the potential flow of new players a streamed tournament could bring.

It's not just a "oopsie, no biggie" because of the timing.

[Meep Meep]

Athom83, on 23 August 2023 - 08:41 AM, said:

The issue is quite a few IS mechs have laser HSL quirks so can get up 4 or 5 BLCs before GH. This means they're firing effectively 8 or 10 large lasers without tipping heat over the 100% threshold.

It's not an issue because no IS mech can boat enough sinks to make it viable. Yeah you get off an alpha and then have to wait to cool. It's no different than clan vomit other than clans can actually boat enough sinks to matter. The most efficient builds so far are 3x binary and a bunch of er meds.

[LordNothing]

bugs are expected, so are whines about bugs. fixes are not. at least not expected quickly. probibly why cauldron is only doing a few weapons at a time, give time to find bugs, balance them out and get good data on usage.

[KursedVixen]

kalashnikity, on 23 August 2023 - 06:15 AM, said:

I put together a 4xHAG20 Kodiak last night, didn't run it, but I know what the results will be.

They are going to nerf the heck out of HAG soon, can't bring a weapon into the game like that, it "unbalances" the entire game.

So... enjoy it while it lasts.

i REALLY HOPE NOT 4 20's on a Kodiak WHY DO YOU PEOPLE ALWAYS RUIN THINGS!!! That kodiak must have a smaller engine and little to no backup weapons this same thing happened with the Dire and 4 guass WHY??! WHY CAN"T YOU SETTLE WITH 2 MAX OF ALMOST ANY GUN!?(other than lasers)

It's stuff like this that gets things nerfed not people using them.

crazytimes, on 23 August 2023 - 11:49 AM, said:

I get that and all... But this has happened right as a tournament with real world money is on the line starts. It kind of detracts from trying to make the game appear like a legitimate thing to outside observers, which affects the potential flow of new players a streamed tournament could bring. It's not just a "oopsie, no biggie" because of the timing.

I don't understand how it went through without someone finding it editors exist and for coding you should have multiple people checking it before it goes out the door....

Edited by KursedVixen, 23 August 2023 - 04:26 PM.

[Fookerton]

Yea, it's almost like you can play this game for free.

[JediPanther]

This is entertaining reading. A month just to fix a few numbers. It took year(s) to fix the cptl geometry issues. At least "they know" about it.

[Gilgamesh Hoi]

Typhlon, on 22 August 2023 - 02:53 PM, said:

So the binaries have dropped with the ability to fire 3 without ghost heat, rather than the 2 that was announced/intended. This is, for a game two days from entering the competitive season, unbelievable. To miss that in this extremely simple, easy to read, and easy to CORRECT, file is an extreme and frankly alarming oversight, when that code should have been checked, double checked, and triple checked prior to release, as a single typo could completely destabilize the game. (Oops, 180 damage instead of 18! My bad.)




Now on its own, that's a huge problem and indicates a worrying lack of care and attention from the programmer(s) responsible, and a worrying lack of oversight and playtesting for what should have been a very easy to spot issue. But for the response to be THIS? There are multiple people, myself included, whose frustration with the blatant lack of care and professionalism shown here is to the point that many of us are considering leaving the game behind.



It is at the point that we believe that this is intentional; not everyone here might know this, but last month it was found that Clan Assault MASC was accidentally dropped to 1/10th the accuracy penalty it should have. Despite this being a KNOWN issue, it remains unfixed and continues to further inflate the strength of mechs like the Koloss. This is the EXACT same type of mistake - a single incorrect entry - as the binary HSL, and would take barely a minute to fix for the next patch. So if it was known to be incorrect, would be very easy to fix, but was still not fixed, then I can only assume that it was either intentional from the start or that nobody cares enough to fix it. Both of these possibilities are Very Bad for a competitive game to be taken seriously.

Both Tiyos and Navid play this game. Competitively, and with competitive teams (Tiyos was on the 3rd place team, ABIN, last year, and Navid is a member of JGx who got 1st). For them to be making these updates/changes, with no oversight or accountability, is a gargantuan conflict of interest, and that is the ultimate problem.



To be clear, I am not negatively impacted by the HSL. I am a very high level IS main who mostly plays FP, and who loves IS laser vomit. I benefit greatly here. But the random QP pugs getting cored out by 80 alpha lasers or 100 alpha HAG vomit? They'll have a much worse time than I will.

The bugged HSL can, and will, affect the upcoming competitive season. It's not game breaking, but it will have impact. It is also an extremely easy fix. Those of us here hope that it is quickly fixed, and if it is then our worries will be greatly reduced. But we are extremely concerned that it will be left as is until the next patch about a month from now, or that it won't be fixed at all. And frankly, that level of disregard for the basic integrity of the game is not something which everyone here is willing to deal with.

Edit: Removed "credibly believe" - I meant to say 'credulously' (to convey sincere belief, but even 'credulously' isn't exactly the right word) as opposed to 'credibly', which implies that there is hard evidence that it was actually intentional. To be clear, there is not, but it is a concern that a lot of us share.

Edit 2: Added more context to the bugged MASC thing, as that's very important to the overall concern here.

Meh. I ran triple Blazers in half a dozen mechs yesterday (god help my KDR this month...) and even with the bug firing 3 wasn't worth the heat or the spotlight it put on me for the damage it did. That duration is rough! sure on a shut down mech it was aces but against a medium or light on the move I saw no better performance than any of the current weapon platforms, if not sub-par performance.

The next month with triple blazers isn't going to be a problem, the month after when you can only shoot 2 is going to be filled with much moaning and gnashing of teeth for the sub-sub-par performance.

So enjoy while you can, they will suck even more next month, also maybe get outside and take a walk, get some fresh air, check in on the Ukraine war, etc...

[LordNothing]

i put 4 on my stone crusher and got about the same number of kills in my first game. damn thing was hot though, i had to shut down many times. i dropped it down to 3 and its still strong.

[martian]

Could anybody tell me how difficult would be to prepare a hotfix patch?

[Sjorpha]

Unfortunate, but can't you just ban Blazers in the seeding matches?

[pbiggz]

the check engine light, on 24 August 2023 - 06:34 AM, said:

What actually cracks me up is that 3 Blazers even with the HSL goof are hotter than the devil's arse for anything but an assault or turboquirked heavy. It's definitely oppressive as **** on those and especially when there's 4 on an HSL+ assault, and hopefully that hotfix hits, buuuuut so is the insane amount of other lasvom recently.

Suppression gameplay needs some super-hard counters IMO, that habit of "hold still so we can farm you " needs to get shut right the **** down. Whether that comes via mechanics or by players being more assertive about taking lead and the rest shutting the **** up long enough to follow a plan matters little to me but anyone who says squatting in a couple different locations, shuffling back and forth out of cover and barfing beams at things is fun and engaging gameplay should be considered to be under the influence of powerful controlled substances and largely ******* ignored. Effective? Probably. Engaging enough to get players to play along? Try again.

I've been having fun with a triple Blazer Orion Protector. Not exactly the most efficient build but it had enough tonnage to be relatively cool. I liked it. Still pretty dangerously hot when firing all 3. Im not sure dropping HSL to 2 is even needed but eh, I found myself firing 2 and 1 just to stay cool anyway.

Edited by pbiggz, 24 August 2023 - 07:17 AM.

[JumpingHunter]

JumpingHunter, on 23 August 2023 - 10:56 AM, said:

No matter what people say, just thank you for interrupting the stagnation period MWO was in for a long time. Bugs are fixable, mistakes are correctable, balance is adjustable. Nothing is going to be permanently worse than it was before, nothing is going to be worse than it was before the update at all, aside from egos and anger issues of certain people. You did a great job, it's just some of us who don't know how to properly say that.

That is true, but still, it's nothing worth panicing about. Even if the comp scene is going to be seriously affected by this bug, it's not that the game will die or balance will be screwed over THAT hardly. I had a game yesterday with Atlas RS and 2 stalkers all boating 4 Binary Lasers, they walked in a large group covering eachother back when they could, yet they still lost, because the heat of Heavy PPC every 3.6 seconds instead of 5 melted their reactors, and they had to cool down much more often than they were planning to, resulting in them getting overwhelmed by guys who didn't bet on big alphastrike damage and instead got more heat-neutral loadouts. It was in low end of tier 2, but still, i don't think that this is going to have THAT much of a bad consequences. And it's definitely not worth throwing crap in the dev for making a mistake, considering that we got a lot more than we could have get. **** happens.