122 replies to this topic

[KursedVixen]

I wonder what the majority of cauldron's tier (the ones in charge mostly) is vs the common player....

[SolCrusher]

In closed beta TTK was really low. So they doubled armor values across the board. Why not just double armor values again? Problem solved?

[Void Angel]

Probably not; or rather, you'd likely just end up with different problems.

To explain what I mean, lemme give you an example from World of Warcraft, circa the Burning Crusade. Feel free to skip past it if your eyes glaze over at complex explanations:

Spoiler

This was after the introduction of the Arena system; the important part of that system was the special PvP gear you'd earn by playing - my memory's a bit fuzzy, but essentially there were 3 tiers - one per "season" of the stuff available at the beginning of any expansion. This is important. See, around Season 2 of any time period, the Rogues would start to cry. "Boo-hoo, we can't kill anyone, rogues need a buff, waaah." Thing was, they were really quiet in during Season 1, and they got quiet again in Season 3 - with absolutely no changes to their class.

The reason? Stunlock. For those of you who don't know, WoW Rogues sucked at PvP. Rogues didn't think so: Rogues thought they were just awesome at their highly technical class, but mostly what they were really good at was playing a stunlock mini-game where the other guy wasn't allowed to play. Here's where it gets relevant to our discussion: The reason they started crying around the time Tier/Season 2 gear became prevalent was that their victims were getting enough durability to survive the Rogues' stunlock cycle with enough HP to matter - and that interval between the end of that stunlock and when their stun cooldowns made the difference between winning and losing fights. As you can imagine, once Tier 3 gear became prevalent, Rogues had enough durability themselves to make it to the next set of stun cooldowns, and "balance" was restored. This power swing happened because while damage and durability were proportional, the duration of stuns was set.

We could just quadruple tabletop values and see what happened - but what would likely happen is that optimized brawling and dakka loadouts would so outperform all the slow-damage sniper poke builds that we could only see those builds. Take a comparison between a stereotypical sniper loadout v an apex brawler: I'll use a HAG Direwolf and an Atlas Brawler. These are just representative examples; you could alter the brawler to be more heat efficient, but I'm just going to use the MechDB values for the sake of convenience (and as a kind of control.) A fast glance at the two builds will show that both 'mechs have similar max dps - but the brawler's sustained dps is proportionally much higher. While the Dire Wolf can only fire all of its guns barely once before needing to cool, the Atlas can keep on kicking with its arsenal of close-range weaponry. Those 5 86-pt alphas are going to blast through a side torso before he hits overheat, and from there it's all over but the squirming.

So here's how it fits together with my earlier example: another armor doubling will lower time to kill, because weapon cooldowns and heat caps would be unchanged. But 'mech movement speeds will also remain unchanged, as will the map spaces - so you're going to have more effects than just 'mechs lasting longer. You're probably going to see brawling dominate - which will drive buffs to sniper weapons and/or nerfs to brawling weapons, and now we had to make gun changes anyway.

Anyhow, the TL;DR on this - I think - is that we have two problems: time to kill, and relative loadout balance. It's a lot simpler to just change armor/structure, but that would throw off a lot of balance tuning and likely have follow-on effects that would force us to rebalance weapons, cooling, etc anyway - so it's best to tackle the problem from the weapons and cooling systems themselves, rather than changing armor.

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 17 December 2023 - 10:36 PM, said:

Probably not; or rather, you'd likely just end up with different problems.

To explain what I mean, lemme give you an example from World of Warcraft, circa the Burning Crusade. Feel free to skip past it if your eyes glaze over at complex explanations:

Spoiler

This was after the introduction of the Arena system; the important part of that system was the special PvP gear you'd earn by playing - my memory's a bit fuzzy, but essentially there were 3 tiers - one per "season" of the stuff available at the beginning of any expansion. This is important. See, around Season 2 of any time period, the Rogues would start to cry. "Boo-hoo, we can't kill anyone, rogues need a buff, waaah." Thing was, they were really quiet in during Season 1, and they got quiet again in Season 3 - with absolutely no changes to their class.

The reason? Stunlock. For those of you who don't know, WoW Rogues sucked at PvP. Rogues didn't think so: Rogues thought they were just awesome at their highly technical class, but mostly what they were really good at was playing a stunlock mini-game where the other guy wasn't allowed to play. Here's where it gets relevant to our discussion: The reason they started crying around the time Tier/Season 2 gear became prevalent was that their victims were getting enough durability to survive the Rogues' stunlock cycle with enough HP to matter - and that interval between the end of that stunlock and when their stun cooldowns made the difference between winning and losing fights. As you can imagine, once Tier 3 gear became prevalent, Rogues had enough durability themselves to make it to the next set of stun cooldowns, and "balance" was restored. This power swing happened because while damage and durability were proportional, the duration of stuns was set.

We could just quadruple tabletop values and see what happened - but what would likely happen is that optimized brawling and dakka loadouts would so outperform all the slow-damage sniper poke builds that we could only see those builds. Take a comparison between a stereotypical sniper loadout v an apex brawler: I'll use a HAG Direwolf and an Atlas Brawler. These are just representative examples; you could alter the brawler to be more heat efficient, but I'm just going to use the MechDB values for the sake of convenience (and as a kind of control.) A fast glance at the two builds will show that both 'mechs have similar max dps - but the brawler's sustained dps is proportionally much higher. While the Dire Wolf can only fire all of its guns barely once before needing to cool, the Atlas can keep on kicking with its arsenal of close-range weaponry. Those 5 86-pt alphas are going to blast through a side torso before he hits overheat, and from there it's all over but the squirming.

So here's how it fits together with my earlier example: another armor doubling will lower time to kill, because weapon cooldowns and heat caps would be unchanged. But 'mech movement speeds will also remain unchanged, as will the map spaces - so you're going to have more effects than just 'mechs lasting longer. You're probably going to see brawling dominate - which will drive buffs to sniper weapons and/or nerfs to brawling weapons, and now we had to make gun changes anyway.

Anyhow, the TL;DR on this - I think - is that we have two problems: time to kill, and relative loadout balance. It's a lot simpler to just change armor/structure, but that would throw off a lot of balance tuning and likely have follow-on effects that would force us to rebalance weapons, cooling, etc anyway - so it's best to tackle the problem from the weapons and cooling systems themselves, rather than changing armor.

You want to talk imbalance? Every match is dominated by some form of gauss. We need to up the armor as follows as a starting point and tweak it from there:

lights by 20%,
med's by 15,
heavies by 10 and
assaults by 5%.

Sick of getting cored in the first minute of the match from realms unknown.. there's a reason why we aren't seeing lights anymore.. something's gotta change. Haven't been this unmotivated to play in a long time.

[torsie]

[Word salad sorry]
You helped me already bunch of times and we talked a little so you probably know how good or rather bad player I am .

But I also think that giving everyone more health would actually be much more helpful.
This is not like against you or anything, its just me rumbling in general .

Spoiler

When I started playing I would just explode all the time, and from what I saw pretty much everyone would too. I started with the small mechs, so instead I moved into the biggest category and picked something I like there. (Thats how I ended up with Torsie1 you helped me with ).

And it didnt work . Yes I would not explode instantly, but instead, now I would explode only few moments later, by someone shooting me with 4654165144 laser pointers from opposite end of the map and hiding before I can even notice that I was turned into a carrot.

So I put my gauss guns on, I kinda like them, but I mostly wanted them to poke people who poke me, I am not really fan of sitting around and doing nothing.

And thats pretty much what everyone keeps complaining about I think. Wherever I looked on forums, steam discussions all over the internet, people are complaining that everyone just sits back and explodes you with a single button.

So far I have lived through 2 waves of changes that should be against it (Ok this is where my low skills kick in, I might be reading it completely wrong).
#1 HAG nerf (I didnt even know what HAG is and that its the weapon I am using.) Removed spread, ok I dont understand how that works against people just poking with this weapon, increased HEAT and cooldown.
#2 Clan Double Heat Sinks heatsinking reduced.

Well I have both of those things on my Torsie1 and my playstyle is poke around a corner, shoot everything and walk back.
And this did absolutely nothing .
I still end every round, or almost every round, with some 600+- damage done, no matter if we lose or win and I even get occasional kill. Not to mention that I now probably do even better, since aiming with my gauss guns is now even easier.

I dont know how to write it to make sense, so I will try something like making a list. And yes I am fully aware that you cant fix everything by waving magic wand and that there would still be lots of things to change properly.

These were some things I was thinking about:

1. You die super fast. Even big mechs die super fast, walking anywhere and not being behind 5 buildings and walls means you are dead. Some of the big mechs are supposed to just walk into anything, but even the biggest mechs will disappear the moment they walk into the open.

2. Poking with lasers. There is no other way to play this game. Super long. Lots of damage. No ammunition. Easy to use. I would like to make giant CRABBO and waddle him into the middle of map and just explode people with the guns that shot those billion small projectiles. But no. You will be stopped by one small mech with one laser that will poke you from across the world before you get anywhere.

2.5. Those two points above, are pretty much what turns away instantly any new player, I think, it almost made me stop playing. You are not allowed to go anywhere and you are only allowed to play laser pointers (or something similar)

3. Destroying components. I actually like this. Shooting someones leg so they cant run, poking weapons so they cant shoot you. Or when I get shot and my guns explode and I almost die . But it has an issue. Why would I shoot someones leg, when I can just shoot somewhere in the middle and instantly destroy them. When I started playing I was actually trying to aim. I even got bunch of headshots on actual living people. I was aiming on weapons and arms and stuff. But its completely pointless. Unless its someone having like 1 last weapon or already being half orange, its always better to just shoot in the middle, at best you will hit their torso or head, at worst their sides or legs and when it comes to mechs like Torsie1 even exploding sides can kill you.

Now magic wand waving time and everything has lots of health suddenly .

1. You can now actually play and have fun, you wont get exploded from single mistake, big mechs will now be properly big and smaller mechs wont suddenly be a horror for new players. This will sound super silly, but not dying makes a big part of first impression.

2. You can suddenly start playing more things. Yes what was strong now, will still be strong. But now you can play things that either need time to get closer or need to spend time shooting you. I will use your two examples here (again I might be reading it wrong so bear with me). This one is basically my Torsie1, bunch of lasers and gauss guns, you dont want to be anywhere near enemy with it, if someone can shoot you, some bad decisions were made that day so if the other guy kills you, well he will kill you now too, he will kill you even if both of you have twice as much health, the only difference now is, if he tries getting into his 1000 meters range now, he gets exploded within second the moment he steps out of cover, if he manages to get within those 360 he fully deserves blasting you with it .

3. Now when everyone has much much more health it might actually be worth it shooting them in their body parts. That big one with the funny head, his gun hurts a lot when he gets close and now he can actually get close enough to use it, so instead of shooting that funny head, break his weapon first or his legs so he cant go anywhere. That big fat one with that lots of guns? Well now he is going to stay around for 2 hours and turn your screen into fireworks, so it might actually be worth it poking few weapons down first.

Yes there would still be lots of other stuff needed for change, you will now need more ammunition boxes because you need to deal more damage, maybe body parts should have different health stuff like that. But increasing cooldown on gauss guns, that noone even uses, is from a new players perspective no help at all in anything.

I am sorry I got carried a bit here, thats what this game did to me, before I started playing when I went to bed I would think a little about work next day and then fall asleep, now I roll around for 2 hours wondering if I should remove that 1 armor from my left side or right side .

Edited by torsie, 18 December 2023 - 09:53 AM.

[Void Angel]

DAEDALOS513, on 18 December 2023 - 08:16 AM, said:

Sick of getting cored in the first minute of the match from realms unknown.. there's a reason why we aren't seeing lights anymore.. something's gotta change. Haven't been this unmotivated to play in a long time.

That's what time to kill reduction is about - remember, it's not actually Gauss that's dominating - it's Gauss plus lasers, like torsie is noticing. This is mostly coming from Clan chassis, leveraging their superior cooling and compact lasers to tune builds for max damage within the heat cap - and so we see 121-point alphas at 460m. But those "gigavomit" builds aren't the ones you see dominating the battlefield - it's the Gauss+Laser builds with relatively low AtO ratings in MechDB. You also see that hyper-ranged Marauder IIC-D with the TCVII, but while they can rack up damage by being invisible on Mining Collective, their damage output isn't that extreme. So that's why the first round of TTK nerfs focused on Clan cooling; it makes Clan builds wait longer before hammering out their next laser alpha, which both reduces time to kill and makes those builds themselves more counterable by closer-ranged adversaries. I doubt that it's enough, because the problem of mass focused fire from high-alpha builds remains. But it's a step, and not the only one they'll be taking, I'm sure.

[Void Angel]

torsie, on 18 December 2023 - 09:32 AM, said:

1. You die super fast. Even big mechs die super fast, walking anywhere and not being behind 5 buildings and walls means you are dead. Some of the big mechs are supposed to just walk into anything, but even the biggest mechs will disappear the moment they walk into the open.

2. Poking with lasers. There is no other way to play this game. Super long. Lots of damage. No ammunition. Easy to use. I would like to make giant CRABBO and waddle him into the middle of map and just explode people with the guns that shot those billion small projectiles. But no. You will be stopped by one small mech with one laser that will poke you from across the world before you get anywhere.

2.5. Those two points above, are pretty much what turns away instantly any new player, I think, it almost made me stop playing. You are not allowed to go anywhere and you are only allowed to play laser pointers (or something similar)

3. Destroying components. I actually like this. Shooting someones leg so they cant run, poking weapons so they cant shoot you. Or when I get shot and my guns explode and I almost die . But it has an issue. Why would I shoot someones leg, when I can just shoot somewhere in the middle and instantly destroy them. When I started playing I was actually trying to aim. I even got bunch of headshots on actual living people. I was aiming on weapons and arms and stuff. But its completely pointless. Unless its someone having like 1 last weapon or already being half orange, its always better to just shoot in the middle, at best you will hit their torso or head, at worst their sides or legs and when it comes to mechs like Torsie1 even exploding sides can kill you.

Other weapons are viable, but there's a long learning curve in MWO, and lasers are the easiest way to get damage right now. Same with LRMs, for that matter. You don't always have to use lasers or laser/gauss, though - other weapons are viable, but right now ranged trading is very strong in the game. People watch videos, notice the builds, or go to GrimMech's, and thus you see all these long-range trading builds. Still, I know from experience that it's frustrating to pop your head over a ridgeline and get finger-painted with lasers by a bunch of glue-eating Clanners sitting 800m away.

On that note, though, lasers (and HAGS) do have a weakness - torso twisting! It is generally more efficient to just hammer their CT into the ground while fishing for a headshot - if they're just staring at you in bovine concentration. As soon as you start taking damage, from anywhere, turn your torso (and possibly your 'mech) to spread that damage around as much as possible. You're not taking less damage, usually, but you are making the damage they're doing less effective.

Which brings us to targeting components. Don't get lazy! Pay attention to what components are damaged on your target and shoot for those. Even if he's not losing guns, he's probably losing equipment; Clan XLs and IS LFEs both impart a significant heat penalty for losing a side torso, and you never know what he's got in that open coponent. With Lights, you WANT to shoot for legs, because a legged light is a dead 'mech - losing a leg will doom a Light, and they know it. So even if you don't get the leg, reducing a Light's leg armor makes him much easier to kill, and he'll likely be less aggressive in harassing your team. In short, targeting weak components will reduce your enemy's ability to fight back, making trades with them more favorable to you.

And that's an important thing to realize about MWO: Mechwarrior - and Battletech, for that matter - is all about trading and attrition. Ranged or close-in doesn't matter. Your object is always to put out more damage than you're taking, in proportion to the toughness of your 'mech. Lights obviously don't want to take damage at all, relying on mobility and attacking from angles or under cover of a heavier teammate's assault. But there's a difference in bigger 'mechs, too. A Blood Asp like your torsie1 has very anemic durability quirks - and a lot of high-mounted hardpoints. Compared to something like an Atlas, this makes the Blood Asp a weapons platform; you're still 90 tons, but you want to be the second Assault someone sees in order to maximize your output of hot blam.

[BigSpam]

What has happened to balance? Not sure what the point of armor is anymore... It definitely seems that the reduction in time to kill has been intentional, but it absolutely is killing this game for me. There isn't enough time to enjoy a match, especially if the team you are solo dropping into is not coordinated. Not that you guys care about the average player like me, as long as the game is good for you that's all that matters.

Edited by BigSpam, 04 January 2024 - 02:34 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

BigSpam, on 04 January 2024 - 02:26 PM, said:

What has happened to balance? Not sure what the point of armor is anymore... It definitely seems that the reduction in time to kill has been intentional, but it absolutely is killing this game for me. There isn't enough time to enjoy a match, especially if the team you are solo dropping into is not coordinated. Not that you guys care about the average player like me, as long as the game is good for you that's all that matters.

Agreed. Right off the bat all mechs should get an armor boost based on chassis..

Lights 20%
Meds 15
Heavies 10
Assaults 5%

Second.. as much as it will piss off the ‘elites,’ the sniper role is too powerful and needs to be nerfed back down to earth. This crutch has persisted for way too long. How is it fair that the sniper role that requires the least amount of skill and the least amount of armour sharing.. should result in the biggest performer in most matches? Make it make sense.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 16 July 2024 - 02:00 PM.

[BigSpam]

DAEDALOS513, on 04 January 2024 - 04:02 PM, said:

Agreed. Right off the bat all mechs should get an armor boost based on chassis..

Lights 20%
Meds 15
Heavies 10
Assaults 5%

Second.. as much as it will piss off the ‘elites,’ the sniper roll is too powerful and needs to be nerfed back down to earth. This crutch has persisted for way too long. How is it fair that the sniper role that requires the least amount of skill and the least amount of armour sharing.. should result in the biggest performer of most matches? Make it make sense.

Thank you! It's nice to be heard. At least someone is listening.

Edited by BigSpam, 04 January 2024 - 05:58 PM.

[Void Angel]

The devs and cauldron have already acknowledted time to kill as a problem. They just don't want to disrupt balance too much in order to reduce it. Properly speaking, that should involve rebalancing weapons. Increasing armor looks like an easy fix at first blush, but it's a lot like raising the minimum wage to reduce poverty.

In any case, it wasn't deliberate. New weapon releases resulted in power creep; they didn't set out to reduce time to kill.

[Big-G]

Please may I request the inclusion of double-bin and quarter bin ammo for all weapon types.

Double bin with the penalty if one slot if destroyed due to damage/crit, the entire ammo bin is destroyed with increase crit chance, damage on destruction etc.

Quarter bin with less crit chance and chance of being destroyed.

[Heat Skink]

Voice of Kerensky, on 20 November 2023 - 06:03 PM, said:

I hope that someday PGI (first of all) and Cauldron will understand that increasing time to kill largely depends on the quality of team selection.
As long as you save groups in the solo QP, all your attempts to improve the quality of matches and increase time to kill will be in vain.

limiting groups to their own que would help or a opt-out to playing with groups. especially those over 2

DAEDALOS513, on 04 January 2024 - 04:02 PM, said:

Agreed. Right off the bat all mechs should get an armor boost based on chassis..

Lights 20%
Meds 15
Heavies 10
Assaults 5%

Second.. as much as it will piss off the ‘elites,’ the sniper roll is too powerful and needs to be nerfed back down to earth. This crutch has persisted for way too long. How is it fair that the sniper role that requires the least amount of skill and the least amount of armour sharing.. should result in the biggest performer of most matches? Make it make sense.

i think that should be the other way around

lights 10%
medium 15
Heavies 20%
Assaults 22% (or more0

Edited by Heat Skink, 16 July 2024 - 04:46 AM.

[Hawok79]

In which patch happens the damage reducedtion by 20% for all Hag's?

[Adalonzo]

I know I am not overly experienced but if I may, I'd like to see some minor buffs to KGCs, specifically some -crit receiving as a baseline perk for the chassis. Considering how huge they are, i feel like they need it. But that's just my opinion of a crab lover. Although, as I read earlier in the thread your plans to increase the TTK, so that would likely help as well.

Would also like to see some buffs to a lot of the worse off chassis (Think Champions and the like) just to encourage their play. I know inherently bad profiles can't be fully compensated for but it would be nice to see more variety on the field and I think buffing for some kind of uniqueness vs pure power would be the way to go, although I'll admit I don't have any ideas at the moment.

Just some passing thoughts.

[Ttly]

Adalonzo, on 30 July 2024 - 05:26 PM, said:

I know I am not overly experienced but if I may, I'd like to see some minor buffs to KGCs, specifically some -crit receiving as a baseline perk for the chassis. Considering how huge they are, i feel like they need it. But that's just my opinion of a crab lover. Although, as I read earlier in the thread your plans to increase the TTK, so that would likely help as well.

Would also like to see some buffs to a lot of the worse off chassis (Think Champions and the like) just to encourage their play. I know inherently bad profiles can't be fully compensated for but it would be nice to see more variety on the field and I think buffing for some kind of uniqueness vs pure power would be the way to go, although I'll admit I don't have any ideas at the moment.

Just some passing thoughts.

The main reason as to why KGCs are so underwhelming to most people is that they're not brave enough to run XLs on them rather than lack of survivability, -crit% quirks isn't gonna make that CT hitbox any smaller to let it weather significantly more hits. Mounting more guns so you can actually shoot back more effectively with XL does.

Edited by Ttly, 03 September 2024 - 04:46 PM.

[LordTiamat]

If I could throw my bronze tier hat into the ring.

Please PGI or Cauldron. Lock out config changes from quick play.

I get not everyone has a top of the line computer, but this game is OLD I'm sure 99% of the player base can run it fine without needing to change it. For the tournament players sure let them eek out every last drop of help, but right now there are people playing two entirely different games.

The base game and the one where there's no smoke, no fog, everything is bright, no trees, no RAC shots flashing in your face, hell no WATER on maps like River City.

Why does it have to feel like I'm being punished if I don't want my game to look like complete *** and am happy to stick with the default config file?

[DAEDALOS513]

LordTiamat, on 03 September 2024 - 07:36 PM, said:

If I could throw my bronze tier hat into the ring.

Please PGI or Cauldron. Lock out config changes from quick play.

I get not everyone has a top of the line computer, but this game is OLD I'm sure 99% of the player base can run it fine without needing to change it. For the tournament players sure let them eek out every last drop of help, but right now there are people playing two entirely different games.

The base game and the one where there's no smoke, no fog, everything is bright, no trees, no RAC shots flashing in your face, hell no WATER on maps like River City.

Why does it have to feel like I'm being punished if I don't want my game to look like complete *** and am happy to stick with the default config file?

I concur.

Ttly, on 03 September 2024 - 04:46 PM, said:

The main reason as to why KGCs are so underwhelming to most people is that they're not brave enough to run XLs on them rather than lack of survivability, -crit% quirks isn't gonna make that CT hitbox any smaller to let it weather significantly more hits. Mounting more guns so you can actually shoot back more effectively with XL does.

You are correct, sir. Absolutely love my XL King Crabs! Once you get over the XL fear, you can do so much with them..

Spoiler

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 03 September 2024 - 10:00 PM.

[Void Angel]

King Crabs also have extremely wide weapon mounts, which makes them harder to use. Most builds a King Crab can mount are doable by more survivable chassis with narrower convergence.

That being said, you're going to have to expose anyway, so if you can mount enough firepower to make people hide from you instead of fighting when you've got good positioning, well... the best medicine on any battlefield is fire superiority.

[DAEDALOS513]

Void Angel, on 04 September 2024 - 01:47 PM, said:

King Crabs also have extremely wide weapon mounts, which makes them harder to use. Most builds a King Crab can mount are doable by more survivable chassis with narrower convergence.

That being said, you're going to have to expose anyway, so if you can mount enough firepower to make people hide from you instead of fighting when you've got good positioning, well... the best medicine on any battlefield is fire superiority.

BINGO! When your mounts are less than optimal and close range, you gotta make sure your build will seriously hurt them with one or two alphas. Was running the 2ac20, 3lppc, xl build last night.. utterly devastating.

Also ran the 6ERPPC build.. wide mounts don't matter when you have that kind of range..

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 04 September 2024 - 02:11 PM.