145 replies to this topic

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Curccu, on 10 November 2023 - 05:16 AM, said:

There is also option to swap those HLL to LPL, remove one DHS and add Endo-Steel.
Alpha is reduced by 10 but burn duration is reduced by 0,4 second
MAX DPS increases, Sustained DPS increases, range increases.

Of course, but KursedVixen mentioned these two large laser categories specifically and my goal was to compare them in the most direct way possible.

[martian]

KursedVixen, on 10 November 2023 - 01:15 AM, said:

have you ever compared firing 3 binary lasers to 3 clan heavy lasers?

INNER SPHERE
3 Binary Laser Cannons
3* 9 tons = 27 tons
3* 4 slots = 12 slots

CLAN
3 Heavy Large Laser
3* 4 tons = 12 tons
3* 3 slots = 9 slots

Spot the difference ...

Edited by martian, 10 November 2023 - 09:04 AM.

[martian]

Nine-Ball, on 10 November 2023 - 08:58 AM, said:

FIFY

Dammit! Thanks a lot!

[Djinnhammer]

Moadebe, on 10 November 2023 - 01:51 AM, said:

Comparing weapons across factions is not the best take and ill tell ya why.

IS and Clan have different "kits." The clan side has to account for omni mechs and the low critical slot space needed to customize them in MWO. Clans tend to be less armored overall and have a higher weapon capacity. "Usually."

If they had ZERO difference then whats the point for starters. Clans generally have the highest alphas. Which is why talk of nerfing the heatsinks is even happening.

Like I don't know what game you are playing, but objectively.....Clans have higher dps overall (sheer amount of weaponry and cooling available.) Weapon to weapon....IS probably has the advantage DPS wise....maybe....

My Is mechs, nearly always have higher dps. You have to take into account some of the quirks they have. Build to those and you can build some freakish monsters. My clan stuff tends to have higher peak damage, less frequently.

[Weeny Machine]

Moadebe, on 09 November 2023 - 09:58 PM, said:

And this is why people FEEL there is a bias.

I will admit...the main issue is hardpoint inflation. Being able to boat the amount of weapons we can is indeed a problem. This might be a way to help that.

HOWEVER....its going to hurt lights and meds the most in this....

just my 2 cents

Just gotta see how this plays out I guess....*shrug

The problem is that a lot of people don't like lighs and this is therefore a cherry on the cake. Especially for one certain vocal Cauldron member...

[Moadebe]

Weeny Machine, on 10 November 2023 - 10:11 AM, said:

The problem is that a lot of people don't like lighs and this is therefore a cherry on the cake. Especially for one certain vocal Cauldron member...

Yeah well that members wrong. Lights are a high skill cap. Especially now with these hard hitting alphas. One good hit and its over.

[KursedVixen]

Moadebe, on 10 November 2023 - 10:26 AM, said:

Yeah well that members wrong. Lights are a high skill cap. Especially now with these hard hitting alphas. One good hit and its over.

Yeah light mechs need alot of help and perhaps should be put into a more scouting role with sensor quirks and stuff but not on lights like the adder and such that are built more for firepowere.

[ScrapIron Prime]

KursedVixen, on 10 November 2023 - 10:51 AM, said:

Yeah light mechs need alot of help and perhaps should be put into a more scouting role with sensor quirks and stuff but not on lights like the adder and such that are built more for firepowere.

Agreed, but this is a PVP game where objectives don't matter. Unless you count "finding the red team", there is no scouting role, there is only a shooting role.

[ThreeStooges]

KursedVixen, on 10 November 2023 - 10:51 AM, said:

Yeah light mechs need alot of help and perhaps should be put into a more scouting role with sensor quirks and stuff but not on lights like the adder and such that are built more for firepowere.

you don't need to scout when 90% of the matches happen in the nearly same grid every match. G7 river city,d5 solaris and so on. As for quirks look how stacked the 3l is and yet it sucks in a "scout" role. Try just capping and only capping in a game mode. That 0xp 100cb bonus giving you the c-bill ***** yet? We all know this game is designed to reward damage over any thing else. A win will net you the same 300 xp regardless if you do any thing at all.

Even with a joke rl 40 lct build on the 3s I can still get half a mech blown away or dead if I hit the rear with the 15% extra crit skill.

[Weeny Machine]

KursedVixen, on 10 November 2023 - 10:51 AM, said:

Yeah light mechs need alot of help and perhaps should be put into a more scouting role with sensor quirks and stuff but not on lights like the adder and such that are built more for firepowere.

There is not much to scout in this game.

Then add the problem of the core gameplay: the amount of firepower has increased substantially thanks to powercreep and ppt weapons like ERPPCs having much more velocity than in earlier times (also thanks to massive velocity quirks).

Now, let's look at the light mechs: The light mech class didn't get buffs in their department where they should excel: maneuverability. And no, I don't speak about weeny 20t mechs. They have no problem here. However, take a 35t mech and try to stay out of the firing arc of any assault for a substantial period of time like in a brawl.

More maneuverability for the 35t mechs would be really great so they can evade some shots.


Last but not least: with the Scattershot medium, why should you play a light brawler? Let's compare it to a Wolfhound: This mech is nearly as fast, has much more firepower than, turns better plus has a MUCH better decel and accel than said Wolfhound.


My suggestion: beef up the dece/accel and turn rates of the 35t mechs. This should be an excel spreadsheet work because I doubt we will see a re-sizing before the game closes.

Edited by Weeny Machine, 10 November 2023 - 12:18 PM.

[Weeny Machine]

Nine-Ball, on 10 November 2023 - 12:48 PM, said:

Not everybody is a pub god that is at home in the chaos of a broken play where anarchy reigns and those who keep their wits about them and aim solid will survive.

But this is where the fun begins

[sycocys]

The range issue could be and should have been solve/mitigate back in closed or open beta by implement damage slopes on both sides of weapons and much longer cooldowns on higher damage weapons with much higher heat for short cycle weapons - but people were and are still far to gung-ho about adhering to tabletop implementation.

There would have been an opportunity for at least some information warfare even still now if ECM wasn't a simple low cost hard counter to information - and its slot/tonnage/heat (since no energy) cost scaled with mech size.

[Moadebe]

sycocys, on 11 November 2023 - 09:45 AM, said:

but people were and are still far to gung-ho about adhering to tabletop implementation.

All of this. Too much "MUST BE TAKEN LITERAL OR ITS BREAKING LORE...." and not enough using it for inspiration and knowing in a real time pvp fps setting things will be different.

[Besh]

Moadebe, on 11 November 2023 - 11:58 AM, said:

All of this. Too much "MUST BE TAKEN LITERAL OR ITS BREAKING LORE...." and not enough using it for inspiration and knowing in a real time pvp fps setting things will be different.

Sad thing to me is, the Lore insistence did not prevent MW:O from over time more and more resembling a minmax twitch shooter in many aspects .

[Runecarver]

Moadebe, on 11 November 2023 - 11:58 AM, said:

All of this. Too much "MUST BE TAKEN LITERAL OR ITS BREAKING LORE...." and not enough using it for inspiration and knowing in a real time pvp fps setting things will be different.

This sort of projection is extremely amusing. Considering this entire situation is the way it is because the source material was ignored or not understood at all.

Ballistics and energy weapons have more range AND extra falloff range than they do in tabletop. Missiles got more range too, but they lack the doubled maximum range so its less egregious. ECM making you radar invisible when it doesn't do any such thing. HAGs that many complain about being pinpoint accurate rapid fire AC/5's when they're actually burst firing, gauss range LB-X cannons.

Edited by Runecarver, 12 November 2023 - 01:42 AM.

[Frost_Byte]

Just some thoughts from reading this thread. They are in no particular order.

Weeny Machine, on 10 November 2023 - 10:11 AM, said:

The problem is that a lot of people don't like lighs and this is therefore a cherry on the cake. Especially for one certain vocal Cauldron member...

If you're referring to Data, he left the cauldron in September.



The purpose of the clan double heatsinks nerf proposal was to curb clan high alpha. Clan mechs being able to have extreme alpha strikes, sit back and cooldown, then poke and melt someone again. As of right now, clan midrange vomit is the strongest archetype in the game and we need to pull it back a bit. We're looking at other options as well, maybe a heat nerf on specific weapons rather than slapping clan double heatsinks.


There's no cauldron bias on inner sphere vs clan. I hate to say it, but anyone who thinks there is just doesn't really understand balance in MWO. Each tech base does have its strengths, mind you, but we're not sitting down going "okay we can't let X tech base be stronger than Y." If I was to say which tech base I thought was stronger for QP I'd say clans on average but there's also a lot of representation of both sides in S-Tier mechs.


We're nerfing coolshots in November patch to help curb high alphas. They'll give the same amount of cooling, but it'll be spread over 7 seconds instead of 4 seconds. It's actually pretty noticeable and a pretty big hit.


As for ECM, there have been technical blockers of hardcoded ECM stats that have been blocking Cauldron from truly being able to nerf them for years. I've recently identified core ECM stats that I'll be able to change for Cauldron a few weeks ago after digging through some of the code and variables(I'm an artist first so while I can change a few variables after making sure they're "safe" to edit, a full rework of ECM to make it less problematic is very much beyond me). So now it's just deliberating to find out what the best approach is, but I can assure you that an ECM nerf is coming. Probably more than one.


I wrote a Command Console rework for November patch that Cauldron approved. It rebrands the item to the Advanced Sensor Package, which is a modified targeting computer that gives boosts to sensors and a massive boost to how far a mech can zoom. Actually turns your mech into a telescope. I'm looking forward to it. Here's a writeup I wrote about it on discord.



One final thing: Lore is not an end all be all design guide. For single player or pve games, you can be fully true to the lore and have no real consequences. Especially when you have loot progression. For a single life pvp game like MWO, lore is actually an unbalanced mess. If you look back at the pvp sections of every other mechwarrior game, balance was unobtainable and TTK could be measured in milliseconds in some scenarios. As flawed as it is in some parts, in both current execution and in some cases even original mechanic design, MWO really is the closest mechwarrior pvp has ever been to balanced. So while the original lore and tabletop stats will always guide the vision and should be accepted in the broadest strokes, we cannot adapt it 1:1 and we'll always have to deviate pretty far in the name of an enjoyable and balanced game. As an avid tabletop player(more of other games than battletech though), tabletop balance never really converts to a realtime pvp in a sustainable manner.

[East Indy]

Frost_Byte, on 12 November 2023 - 02:38 AM, said:

So while the original lore and tabletop stats will always guide the vision and should be accepted in the broadest strokes, we cannot adapt it 1:1 and we'll always have to deviate pretty far in the name of an enjoyable and balanced game. As an avid tabletop player(more of other games than battletech though), tabletop balance never really converts to a realtime pvp in a sustainable manner.

This is good but doesn't go far enough.

MechWarrior as a feasible wide-audience title has a big perception problem. PGI to its credit addressed it but limitations of resources, talent and community-culture pressure prevented a real solution. And after 11 years of meandering, that's resulted in posts about tweaks to targeting computers.

The perception problem is that most people, whether BattleTech fans or prospective players, envision this as the game, but experience this instead. And by most people I mean a player base of 3-4k, not the 600 diehards still circling the drain.

The key is leaving behind a lot of lore, but on a paper-design, vision level that acknowledges the expectation of a short-/medium-range, rumble-style engagements with constant reciprocation of fire and very high TTK.

MWO is in its sunset, so yes, change is difficult, but that means the opportunity is in a successor title, which Russ has hinted at.

Anything else will come right back to this: super-niche game trapped in a meta that doesn't reflect the game's own theme.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

East Indy, on 12 November 2023 - 10:36 AM, said:

The key is leaving behind a lot of lore, but on a paper-design, vision level that acknowledges the expectation of a short-/medium-range, rumble-style engagements with constant reciprocation of fire and very high TTK.

And I'd argue that has the least longevity of any arena shooter PvP game because if games are just "circle of equal" level brawls all the time, what honestly keeps people going and playing? Sounds like a game that lacks any significant depth and has even worse balance than the current Mechwarrior.

The most successful PvP arena shooters pretty much lean into esports/competitive play as the "endgame". BT has the benefit of you can do third party planetary leagues like NBT used to do for years with MW4 without needing to be baked into the game like Faction Play was attempting (it also helps solve several issues that plagued faction play), you legit just need the same thing that comp does, private matches.



The only one I really can't figure out is TF2, I honestly can't explain why that game still has players.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 12 November 2023 - 10:49 AM.

[epikt]

East Indy, on 12 November 2023 - 10:36 AM, said:

the expectation of a short-/medium-range, rumble-style engagements with constant reciprocation of fire and very high TTK.

Translation: wet noodles combat. No thanks.

[Moadebe]

Frost_Byte, on 12 November 2023 - 02:38 AM, said:

Just some thoughts from reading this thread. They are in no particular order.




If you're referring to Data, he left the cauldron in September.



The purpose of the clan double heatsinks nerf proposal was to curb clan high alpha. Clan mechs being able to have extreme alpha strikes, sit back and cooldown, then poke and melt someone again. As of right now, clan midrange vomit is the strongest archetype in the game and we need to pull it back a bit. We're looking at other options as well, maybe a heat nerf on specific weapons rather than slapping clan double heatsinks.


There's no cauldron bias on inner sphere vs clan. I hate to say it, but anyone who thinks there is just doesn't really understand balance in MWO. Each tech base does have its strengths, mind you, but we're not sitting down going "okay we can't let X tech base be stronger than Y." If I was to say which tech base I thought was stronger for QP I'd say clans on average but there's also a lot of representation of both sides in S-Tier mechs.


We're nerfing coolshots in November patch to help curb high alphas. They'll give the same amount of cooling, but it'll be spread over 7 seconds instead of 4 seconds. It's actually pretty noticeable and a pretty big hit.


As for ECM, there have been technical blockers of hardcoded ECM stats that have been blocking Cauldron from truly being able to nerf them for years. I've recently identified core ECM stats that I'll be able to change for Cauldron a few weeks ago after digging through some of the code and variables(I'm an artist first so while I can change a few variables after making sure they're "safe" to edit, a full rework of ECM to make it less problematic is very much beyond me). So now it's just deliberating to find out what the best approach is, but I can assure you that an ECM nerf is coming. Probably more than one.


I wrote a Command Console rework for November patch that Cauldron approved. It rebrands the item to the Advanced Sensor Package, which is a modified targeting computer that gives boosts to sensors and a massive boost to how far a mech can zoom. Actually turns your mech into a telescope. I'm looking forward to it. Here's a writeup I wrote about it on discord.



One final thing: Lore is not an end all be all design guide. For single player or pve games, you can be fully true to the lore and have no real consequences. Especially when you have loot progression. For a single life pvp game like MWO, lore is actually an unbalanced mess. If you look back at the pvp sections of every other mechwarrior game, balance was unobtainable and TTK could be measured in milliseconds in some scenarios. As flawed as it is in some parts, in both current execution and in some cases even original mechanic design, MWO really is the closest mechwarrior pvp has ever been to balanced. So while the original lore and tabletop stats will always guide the vision and should be accepted in the broadest strokes, we cannot adapt it 1:1 and we'll always have to deviate pretty far in the name of an enjoyable and balanced game. As an avid tabletop player(more of other games than battletech though), tabletop balance never really converts to a realtime pvp in a sustainable manner.

First off thanks for the feedback and insight. I have been trying to not only educate my own self on some things, but also attempt to come up with some solutions to the problem instead of just "discussing it" and airing out frustrations. I do believe in think of the solution and not the problem. Acknowledge the problem....but focusing too much on it does nothing. Hence this entire post.

(I am also just finding the cauldrons discord server and reading up on things...again...would rather be a part of the solution rather than the problem.)

Thanks for the transparency. Posts like what you just did goes a long way into the thought behind things and keeps people informed. Which is ....honestly....lacking. No offense meant...just there is a TON of frustration out there and quite frankly ignorance (which I am guilty of...wont lie....hence the attempting to educate my own self.)

It would be awesome if we got small updates such as what you just posted perhaps on the regular. Perhaps once a month. Two or three weeks before patches. Yeah I know. Saying TOO much will have people saying "well so and so said earlier....why didnt it happen?" I get people can hold onto something and clutch it as truth cause they WANT it to be true.

Just little posts like this goes a long way.

So...thanks.

As far as Ideas. If they are presented as proper suggestions and make actual sense to the overall gameplay and NOT breaking (one way or another ... good or bad) will they be at least considered? And if so....best place to present them?

The speed retention skill change is something that the more and more I think about ....just makes sense.

I also have an idea for the Consumable tree in the skill tree (arties, coolshots, and UAVs.) Not something to break anything, but rather to have a better progression of the tree itself. (I have seen one problem with the idea I have, but it only happens when trying to unlock that 5th consumable slot. Mostly point investment. But I am looking at it as a high cost to "have it all" persay.)

Ill get a graphic made up and probably post it here (and in the cauldron skill tree feedback section in the discord.)

Just. Glad to hear ECM is getting a look at. Now for that pesky Radar Deprivation....

Edited by Moadebe, 12 November 2023 - 11:33 AM.