112 replies to this topic

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 24 November 2023 - 02:10 PM, said:

If you don't know how the game works, or pay any attention to the patch notes (which is the same thing,) you really can't expect to people to find your opinions about the game credible, you know.

This is not the first time they've nerfed stuff, either.

Is it really a nerf when you introduce an incredibly OP weapon system into the game and then nerf it a touch? A real nerf wchanges behaviour. I’ve been complaining about TTK for years, and I’m not the only one. It’s only gotten worse with people getting rekt at range. This isn’t a pleasant gaming experience for vets (bec this makes them reluctant to experiment outside of meta-builds) or newcomers (bec they lack general experience) alike. I’m so sick of seeing so-called ‘good players’ using every crutch in the game.. mainly ranged weapons. They do it bec they know it gives them an unfair advantage. If this is what makes someone ‘good’ they can keep it. I’m proud to say I haven’t dropped one match with HAG bec I see how unfairly strong it is.

We never got the mech resize they promised which would have increased TTK.. but they can at least bump armour values en-masse, a certain percentage, based on chassis. Just off the top of my head: lights could get a 20% boost, med’s 15%, heavies 10%, and assaults 5%.

You can try to dismiss my opinion all you like.. I’m not the only one that's been voicing this opinion.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 24 November 2023 - 03:41 PM.

[Void Angel]

"Is it a nerf when you nerf it?" Yes, it's a nerf. It's not "dismissing your opinion" to point out that your own argument discredits your conclusion. Like "a real nerf changes behavior." That's just wrongheaded motivated reasoning. A good nerf increases viable options; you're using "people stop playing the builds I dislike" as your measuring stick for a "real" nerf - to the extent of dismissing a 20%-30% heat increase!

Ditto for not knowing how HAGs work from the inside. You've never used the weapon, because you think long-range combat is a "crutch," which is why all the good players use long-range builds. Why, they're not really that "good" at all, are they? Those crutch-using cripples need every crutch in the game to make them "good," by gum! But the best way to learn how to deal with a weapon, or chassis, or build, is to use it. By admitting that you proudly refuse to learn the weapon system, you are proclaiming your ignorance - so why should your opinion carry weight?

You're lying to yourself, man. And a fallacious appeal to common wisdom doesn't exactly reduce your credibility gap on this. Just because time to kill really has been a problem doesn't make you right when your logic is wrong.

Edited by Void Angel, 24 November 2023 - 08:09 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 24 November 2023 - 08:09 PM, said:

"Is it a nerf when you nerf it?" Yes, it's a nerf. It's not "dismissing your opinion" to point out that your own argument discredits your conclusion. Like "a real nerf changes behavior." That's just wrongheaded motivated reasoning. A good nerf increases viable options; you're using "people stop playing the builds I dislike" as your measuring stick for a "real" nerf - to the extent of dismissing a 20%-30% heat increase!

Ditto for not knowing how HAGs work from the inside. You've never used the weapon, because you think long-range combat is a "crutch," which is why all the good players use long-range builds. Why, they're not really that "good" at all, are they? Those crutch-using cripples need every crutch in the game to make them "good," by gum! But the best way to learn how to deal with a weapon, or chassis, or build, is to use it. By admitting that you proudly refuse to learn the weapon system, you are proclaiming your ignorance - so why should your opinion carry weight?

You're lying to yourself, man. And a fallacious appeal to common wisdom doesn't exactly reduce your credibility gap on this. Just because time to kill really has been a problem doesn't make you right when your logic is wrong.

Breath

[JOATMON Incorporated]

I'm not a fan of messing with clan Double Heat Sinks. If weapons like lasers are being a problem as mentioned above, then address the lasers. Increase the time between shots, increase beam duration, increase heat on the lasers themselves. This goes for any other weapon system family as well. Address weapon families that are problems, or quirks on specific mechs if needed.
Please don't bring in a kneejerk shortsighted sledgehammer. This is going to require extensive rebalance in numerous other weapons and mech quirks to make them properly usable after the smoke from the immediate threat is cleared.

[Void Angel]

Well, it's not just the lasers, see; that's the problem - it's lasers combined with other guns, or other guns combined with lasers. So you have to tune all the weapons together in order to prevent the "Big-Alpha Smash" meta. But that's just one balance concern: now you have to worry about the relative effectiveness of DPS weapons, and the effectiveness of guns that aren't being boated, etc. And once (if, really) you get that all hammered out, you've got to do it all over again if you make any major changes, like adding new weapons or armor tech to the game.

Or, you can tackle one of the core causes of the issue: Clan DHS are too good. The Inner Sphere DHS is half again bigger than Clan models, and that space savings synergises really well with Clan weight saving technologies like Endo-steel. The net result is to give Clan 'mechs better cooling rates and higher heat caps in most of their builds. It's fueling builds like This Monstrosity, and that's not even the most meta alpha build.

So something probably needs to give, and it can't be space requirements - that's locked into a bunch of omnipods. So we're left with either cooling rate or heat capacity. And Clan builds need the option for efficient cooling. Clan energy weapons are hotter than the Inner Sphere, and that's partly to balance their superior range... and tonnage... and space... but it's also to balance Clan DHS. Heat capacity, on the other hand, makes it less efficient to poke - and that makes high-alpha builds less attractive. I mean, you can just blast people with Rocket Launchers - once. But how often do you see them in a game?

Remember that quite a few Clan Omnimechs simply do not have the pod space to mount extensively bulky weaponry, so nerfing lasers specifically while we're trying to stop the bigger, high-alpha 'mechs will hurt those 'mechs disproportionately.

Thus, nerfing heat capacity isn't a sledgehammer, it's a targeted surgical intervention to reduce the issue, then evaluate. Overall, well, we're still going to have to alter weapons balance somewhat, but we'll have to do a lot less of that if we address the heat cap first, then see where it stands. That seems to be the thought process PGI is going for, and I don't think they're wrong.

Edited by Void Angel, 25 November 2023 - 02:01 PM.

[Void Angel]

After playing some of the weaker Lights, something like the Incubus feels a little like cheating.

[DoucheNugg3t]

is the "shrubbery" in the holidays mech lab smoke-a-ble ??

[CrimsonEye]

Tested the new loyal mech Piranha Decarion, honestly, compared to other loyal mechs, this mech felt like "meh"

Yes it's cool to have masc, but with lower rating engine compared to other variants, no laser/enregy quirks fo it, i don't find this mech is fun to play at all. Plus it's fragile.

A locust or incubus could easily caught up with it n kill it without masc ,

[JOATMON Incorporated]

Frost_Byte, on 20 November 2023 - 04:17 PM, said:

We have taken feedback before from players and incorporated into the game. Scorch buffs were almost entirely player driven, and they were a pretty heavily asked for change. That Uziel Belial with 270% MRM velocity(or something like that) actually came from a member of the feedback server as well. I believe it was Sir Epic Pwner? Not sure.

As for the Thunderbolt 10SE, we buffed it? I actually played it recently, it farms a fair bit better with the general cooldown quirk. The loss of armor can be lamented, but it does have more effective health now.

What you did to my baby Thunderbolt 10SE was NOT a buff.
Removing weapon velocity hurt PPC use at range against horizontally mobile targets.
Also as others have already pointed out, due to critical hits, structure hitpoints, are not as good as armor hitpoints.

Doing changes like lasers range 5% bonus being changed to energy 5% or even a universal range 5% are changes that feel like upgrades.
Changes like velocity being turned into something completely different feels more like someone was trying to force-fit a personal build into gameplay instead of enabling additional play use with existing chassis.

[JOATMON Incorporated]

Void Angel, on 25 November 2023 - 01:59 PM, said:

Well, it's not just the lasers, see; that's the problem - it's lasers combined with other guns, or other guns combined with lasers. So you have to tune all the weapons together in order to prevent the "Big-Alpha Smash" meta. But that's just one balance concern: now you have to worry about the relative effectiveness of DPS weapons, and the effectiveness of guns that aren't being boated, etc. And once (if, really) you get that all hammered out, you've got to do it all over again if you make any major changes, like adding new weapons or armor tech to the game.

Or, you can tackle one of the core causes of the issue: Clan DHS are too good. The Inner Sphere DHS is half again bigger than Clan models, and that space savings synergises really well with Clan weight saving technologies like Endo-steel. The net result is to give Clan 'mechs better cooling rates and higher heat caps in most of their builds. It's fueling builds like This Monstrosity, and that's not even the most meta alpha build.

So something probably needs to give, and it can't be space requirements - that's locked into a bunch of omnipods. So we're left with either cooling rate or heat capacity. And Clan builds need the option for efficient cooling. Clan energy weapons are hotter than the Inner Sphere, and that's partly to balance their superior range... and tonnage... and space... but it's also to balance Clan DHS. Heat capacity, on the other hand, makes it less efficient to poke - and that makes high-alpha builds less attractive. I mean, you can just blast people with Rocket Launchers - once. But how often do you see them in a game?

Remember that quite a few Clan Omnimechs simply do not have the pod space to mount extensively bulky weaponry, so nerfing lasers specifically while we're trying to stop the bigger, high-alpha 'mechs will hurt those 'mechs disproportionately.

Thus, nerfing heat capacity isn't a sledgehammer, it's a targeted surgical intervention to reduce the issue, then evaluate. Overall, well, we're still going to have to alter weapons balance somewhat, but we'll have to do a lot less of that if we address the heat cap first, then see where it stands. That seems to be the thought process PGI is going for, and I don't think they're wrong.

I'm still not sure if I'm quite sold on this, but as long as they are just messing with the heat cap, and not the cooling rate, the sledgehammer damage shouldn't be catastrophic.

On a related note, if the problem is supposedly boating too many different kinds of weapons, why haven't they just played with the ghost heat? Put Gauss, PPC, HAG, LG Las, AC10, AC20, and all the other apparent major high impact offenders into the same ghost heat family. Cap it at however many of those they want shot at once and then adjust that heat penalty as needed. If it isn't working, the penalty isn't high enough. This approach should have similar desired impact but will have less side impact on other chassis types that aren't being used as alpha strikers.

[Joshua McEvedy]

Frost_Byte, on 20 November 2023 - 04:08 PM, said:

Starting in December we plan on slowing time to kill. The first is probably a clan double heatsink nerf. But most of cauldron is aware of time to kill quickening to the point of becoming a problem. We just wanted to avoid radical changes to the meta until Champion Series is over.

Feels like 2015 all over again when PGI started nerfing Clan tech to try and achieve that ever so elusive game balance and to increase TTK. PGI didn't get it right then, and in fact screwed things up badly. So what makes you think that repeating that nerf history will end any differently?

[Void Angel]

Riiight. Because balance is in such a sorry state today compared to on-release Clantech...

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 26 November 2023 - 01:54 PM, said:

Riiight. Because balance is in such a sorry state today compared to on-release Clantech...

Because only your opinion is valid..

[Void Angel]

JOATMON Incorporated, on 26 November 2023 - 01:43 AM, said:

I'm still not sure if I'm quite sold on this, but as long as they are just messing with the heat cap, and not the cooling rate, the sledgehammer damage shouldn't be catastrophic.

On a related note, if the problem is supposedly boating too many different kinds of weapons, why haven't they just played with the ghost heat? Put Gauss, PPC, HAG, LG Las, AC10, AC20, and all the other apparent major high impact offenders into the same ghost heat family. Cap it at however many of those they want shot at once and then adjust that heat penalty as needed. If it isn't working, the penalty isn't high enough. This approach should have similar desired impact but will have less side impact on other chassis types that aren't being used as alpha strikers.

I'd imagine that it's because adjusting the Heat Scale limits is likely to result in more complexity, and the game is already hard enough for those of us without a background in BT or Mechwarrior. You could end up needing to add multiple weapon types to the same Heat Scale category because of certain builds, and that cross-linking could quickly spiral out of control.

Take This Monstrosity, or This One. In order to prevent those alphas with Heat Scale limits, you'd have to add those weapons to each other's HSL categories. Is it do-able? Sure... Without screwing up other lower-alpha weapons? Maybe. But then you'll have to add in LB-X, or MRMs, or something else, and eventually you'll get to the point where all of your major guns are on the same Heat Scale categories - but possibley not to the same degree, kind of like how ERPPCs and Gauss Rifles share a category even though you can only ever fire two Gauss at once. Imagine the whole system being like that.

I dunno if this is their reasoning - nobody consulted me on anything, after all - but the chain of logic makes sense.

DAEDALOS513, on 26 November 2023 - 02:01 PM, said:

Because only your opinion is valid..

I'm sorry, did you have any quantifiable reason for thinking I'm wrong, or are you still smarting from the last argument you lost and just being unconstructive?

Please, argue that on-release Clans were balanced. I want to see it.

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 26 November 2023 - 01:54 PM, said:

Riiight. Because balance is in such a sorry state today compared to on-release Clantech...

Quantifiable like this attack.. I mean, statement?

[Void Angel]

Pointing out the ridiculousness of a statement isn't "attacking" them, but have you ever noticed how people who are misbehaving will accuse you of doing what they just did?

This:

Quote

Because only your opinion is valid..

... is an attack. Be constructive, or go away again.

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 26 November 2023 - 02:48 PM, said:

Pointing out the ridiculousness of a statement isn't "attacking" them, but have you ever noticed how people who are misbehaving will accuse you of doing what they just did?

This:

... is an attack. Be constructive, or go away again.

So just to recap: only your opinion is valid, and only you can make statements without offering quantifiable evidence because only you can deem other opinions as being ridiculous enough so that quantifiable evidence isn't necessary.

[Void Angel]

Void Angel, on 26 November 2023 - 02:48 PM, said:

Pointing out the ridiculousness of a statement isn't "attacking" them, but have you ever noticed how people who are misbehaving will accuse you of doing what they just did?

I'm not obliged to defend myself from a straw man, but come on. There are other people on this thread - embarrass yourself on your own time.

[JOATMON Incorporated]

Void Angel, on 26 November 2023 - 02:07 PM, said:

I'd imagine that it's because adjusting the Heat Scale limits is likely to result in more complexity, and the game is already hard enough for those of us without a background in BT or Mechwarrior. You could end up needing to add multiple weapon types to the same Heat Scale category because of certain builds, and that cross-linking could quickly spiral out of control.

Take This Monstrosity, or This One. In order to prevent those alphas with Heat Scale limits, you'd have to add those weapons to each other's HSL categories. Is it do-able? Sure... Without screwing up other lower-alpha weapons? Maybe. But then you'll have to add in LB-X, or MRMs, or something else, and eventually you'll get to the point where all of your major guns are on the same Heat Scale categories - but possibley not to the same degree, kind of like how ERPPCs and Gauss Rifles share a category even though you can only ever fire two Gauss at once. Imagine the whole system being like that.

I dunno if this is their reasoning - nobody consulted me on anything, after all - but the chain of logic makes sense.

Yes the spiral is exactly the point! If you don't spiral, alpha strikes will just remove A and add B. Later remove B and add C to get around the system and loophole in another alternative DPS system. If A, B, C, D, E... through Z are already in the same heat family like PPCs and Gauss already are, then there isn't a whack a mole game going on. Add all the major concentrated high DPS weapons to the ghost heat group to it at once and be done with it.

The proposed change isn't going to just hinder alpha strike monsters it will have collateral damage on lots of other clan builds as well. Pretty much any clan mech that uses DHS installs is going to be impacted.

My favorite clan mech is a Kitfox. I use 4 Er Meds, ECM, 1x Laser AMS, 2x AMS and machine guns. It will be impacted by a proposed DHS change. It would NOT be impacted by a ghost heat family change.

One of my friends uses a clan LRM boat, the natural predator of the alpha strike mechs. She uses ripple fire all the time. It will be impacted by the DHS change. It would not be impacted by ghost heat upgrades.

I support the idea of addressing problems in the games ecosystem and gameplay. I just think that problems should be addressed in a meaningful way that doesn't mess up everything else in the process.

Also if the clan DHS changes hit, do you really think the Alpha strikes just wont move over to the IS mechs?

Edited by JOATMON Incorporated, 27 November 2023 - 09:59 AM.

[An6ryMan69]

If the problem is massive alpha's and short time to kill on the big heavy hitters then hammering everyone using clan DHS is a bad way to do deal with it.

As much as I dislike ghost heat, that may be the way to go.

Or you could go with novel ideas like damage penalties (think golf hadicaps) for builds with massive alphas - say any alpha over 50 starts to suffer an increasing damage penalty, so the bigger your alpha the more scaled down you actual damage is. Or you could have scaling cooldown penalties done the same way on high alpha mechs. Or you could add heat nerfs to specific mechs, as distasteful as I find that.

While we are talking about heat - can we finally stop my machinegun armed flea or piranha from having to carry around extra useless heat sinks besides those in the engine? I mean seriously now it's just idiotic and it would help lights get more play time if they weren't hampered like that...

Edited by An6ryMan69, 27 November 2023 - 12:33 PM.