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...
They won't apply any nerfs that will actually impact game-play.. the outcry from the 'good' players would be too deafening. This is evidenced from the steady and increasing trend towards higher and higher alpha's, and stronger snipe weapons. Sure they may buff brawl weapons too, but these buffs are more than negated against the other buffs bec before you can even use these short range weapons, you have a lot of terrain to cover. Good luck.
JOATMON Incorporated, on 27 November 2023 - 09:57 AM, said:
Also if the clan DHS changes hit, do you really think the Alpha strikes just wont move over to the IS mechs?
With what heat sinks? The Inner Sphere doesn't have a tool like Clan DHS - or rather, it has the exact same thing, but 33.3% worse. That's the outlier that's driving a good part of these builds; along with superior range, and space - neither of which are possible nerf points. You could make an argument for reducing range, but... while BT isn't a straightjacket for balance, it is a necessary source for flavor, and removing the Clans' range advantage would be detrimental.
What you're proposing, literally putting all high-alpha (I assume you misspoke, since we're talking about the Big Alpha Smash meta) weapons into the same heat scale group has some pretty negative consequences. First, it won't help gig alphas per se; it'll just reduce the range, as people switch to mid-range guns which you will then also have to add in. The second thing is, you'll have to figure out how to balance a grouping of different weapons with different HSLs, some of which are already balanced by heat in different ways. Grouping Gauss Rifles and ERPPs is manageable, because it's a single, known interaction - but now you'd have to manage Gauss, and ERPPCs, and ERLLs, and cAC/10s, and LPLs, and whatever else we throw in. These weapons have dramatically different DPH in many cases, which makes balancing them together properly a chore. It's also going to be really hard for players in the MechLab to figure out which combination of what guns is and is not going to penalize them, and a lot of people just won't put up with that.
Plus, that HAS meta perpetuates itself down the line of weight classes. A lot of Clan Lights use the same laservomit builds as their higher-tonnage friends, just scaled down. TTB just did a video on the Wolfhound C; he's a really good pilot, but my point isn't his performance. It's how he built it. I still can't link it from MechDB, but even if you use a copy of the Grinner MPL build, the Clan version has higher cooling, range, and dps - along with a higher heat cap than the Grinner (I use these two because they are a rare direct substitute; the WLF-C is an IS Wolfhound rebuilt with Clantech.)
So I totally get that we could do this through the Heat Scale system, but I can see some serious potential pitfalls. On the other hand, nerfing DHS capacity will affect lighter 'mechs, but to a lesser degree - the nerf's severity literally scales down with tonnage, because a 20-ton Clan 'mech isn't using a lot of heat sinks anyway. A 75-ton Laservomit Timber Wolf will be hit much more severely than a 35-ton Clan 'mech, and only somewhat more than an 85-ton Marauder IIC. It's not going to be a huge nerf for most 'mechs that aren't boating high-heat, high-alpha weapons.
PS: LRMs are not a counter to alpha strike builds - quite the opposite, actually! Those builds generally sit next to cover and hammer people from range (another reason most of them are Clantech.) An LRM boat will force them back into cover if they're spotted (many of them use ECM,) but by the time those LRMs come in, most of their firepower is going to hit a building or wall: so it's, "poke, hide, cool, repeat" - which is the alpha build strategy already.
With what heat sinks? The Inner Sphere doesn't have a tool like Clan DHS - or rather, it has the exact same thing, but 33.3% worse. That's the outlier that's driving a good part of these builds; along with superior range, and space - neither of which are possible nerf points. You could make an argument for reducing range, but... while BT isn't a straightjacket for balance, it is a necessary source for flavor, and removing the Clans' range advantage would be detrimental.
What you're proposing, literally putting all high-alpha (I assume you misspoke, since we're talking about the Big Alpha Smash meta) weapons into the same heat scale group has some pretty negative consequences. First, it won't help gig alphas per se; it'll just reduce the range, as people switch to mid-range guns which you will then also have to add in. The second thing is, you'll have to figure out how to balance a grouping of different weapons with different HSLs, some of which are already balanced by heat in different ways. Grouping Gauss Rifles and ERPPs is manageable, because it's a single, known interaction - but now you'd have to manage Gauss, and ERPPCs, and ERLLs, and cAC/10s, and LPLs, and whatever else we throw in. These weapons have dramatically different DPH in many cases, which makes balancing them together properly a chore. It's also going to be really hard for players in the MechLab to figure out which combination of what guns is and is not going to penalize them, and a lot of people just won't put up with that.
Plus, that HAS meta perpetuates itself down the line of weight classes. A lot of Clan Lights use the same laservomit builds as their higher-tonnage friends, just scaled down. TTB just did a video on the Wolfhound C; he's a really good pilot, but my point isn't his performance. It's how he built it. I still can't link it from MechDB, but even if you use a copy of the Grinner MPL build, the Clan version has higher cooling, range, and dps - along with a higher heat cap than the Grinner (I use these two because they are a rare direct substitute; the WLF-C is an IS Wolfhound rebuilt with Clantech.)
So I totally get that we could do this through the Heat Scale system, but I can see some serious potential pitfalls. On the other hand, nerfing DHS capacity will affect lighter 'mechs, but to a lesser degree - the nerf's severity literally scales down with tonnage, because a 20-ton Clan 'mech isn't using a lot of heat sinks anyway. A 75-ton Laservomit Timber Wolf will be hit much more severely than a 35-ton Clan 'mech, and only somewhat more than an 85-ton Marauder IIC. It's not going to be a huge nerf for most 'mechs that aren't boating high-heat, high-alpha weapons.
PS: LRMs are not a counter to alpha strike builds - quite the opposite, actually! Those builds generally sit next to cover and hammer people from range (another reason most of them are Clantech.) An LRM boat will force them back into cover if they're spotted (many of them use ECM,) but by the time those LRMs come in, most of their firepower is going to hit a building or wall: so it's, "poke, hide, cool, repeat" - which is the alpha build strategy already.
Ok just to be clear, you indicated that all my proposal would do is reduce the engagement range of the alpha strike mechs so it wouldn't be any good.
But then you also indicated that LRM's won't impact them because the preferred tactic of the alpha strike mechs is to sit behind cover at longer ranges and pop out and shoot.
From what you have said, It sounds like putting in ghost heat would have a sizable impact on the preferred deployment of the alpha strikers. Forcing them to user medium range weapons forces the alpha strikers to get closer. This improves exposer time and gives opponents with other weapon loadouts more time to whittle them down. It would also push their ideal combat ranges closer towards the brawler range.
You may have a valid point about the weapons heat being potentially confusing to players in the mechlab.
Then again, just having the universal system would be far easier to understand than the current system for folks.
Currently there are multiple ghost heat systems in play. Ok I have 2 PPCs, or a PPC and a Gauss, or 2 gauss and 2 LL of some type, before I get heat penalties. Missiles are their own HSL. Then add ACs HSLs into the mix. None of these warn you in advance until you put them on the mech and you get the heat penalty warning.
If PGI could flag weapons over threshold as a main weapon, it would help all of the above. Ok, I can X number of all of these combined before heat penalties kick in. Either way, a transition period would indeed likely cause some initial confusion for irregular users of the mechlab.
Despite what you said, I still view LRMs as a natural predator in this case. If the Alphastriker are behind full cover then yes, LRMs can not hit them. But then neither can PPCs, Lasers, ACs or anything else but arty.
However LRMs when coordinated can at least hit Alphas without being hit back from within the alphastriker's longer strike range.
Don't get me wrong, a proper brawler can do a good number on an alphastriker as well, but its going to lose some armor in the process.
No, I told you that grouping all the big guns together would force people to start mixing in midrange guns, which you would then have to add in as well - and that it still wouldn't stop the giga-alpha builds. 'Mechs can be behind cover at 800m, or 500m - it really doesn't make a difference on most maps. Sure, you'd have marginal improvements in the build's vulnerability - in exchange for more heat efficiency on those middle-range guns. It'll change the problem; it might even mitigate the problem. It won't solve the problem, because the long-range component of these builds are only part of the general problem of Time to Kill. If you can blast a brawler down into red armor or open structure with a single burst, it's not going to matter to him if you had to get within 500m to do that.
And now we're looking at cERMLs being in range, so you need to nerf them, too... Pretty soon you end up with all those separate Heat Scale groups interlocking. I think you're underestimating how opaque that will be. Think about the warning triangle in the Mechlab. "Firing more than 2 Gauss Rifles or PPCs simultaneously results in a heat spike higher than normal" becomes "Firing more than 2 Gauss Rifles or PPCs simultaneously with 2ER Large Lasers or 3 Large Pulse Lasers (or two Large Pulse Lasers with 4 ER Medium Lasers or 1 ER Large Laser,) or..." It's not going to be pretty; you might get roughly functional, but it'll never be elegant. Getting five warning messages for adding one weapon system is not an improvement to the MechLab, that's for sure.
Keying heat scale penalties to damage output would avoid this complexity, but that has problems of its own - as well as unintended consequences for dps-oriented weapons like X-Pulse and dakka.
LRMs cannot be a "natural predator" for builds whose playstyle directly works against LRMs primary limitation - the necessity of maintaining a lock. Generally, that's LoS, unless you have (edit: gah, this is what I get for posting in a hurry) a spotter - which brings up a whole host of other questions, like how LRMs are either totally overpowered or laughable, contingent on semi-random factors like map selection and team comp. But in any case, a build that literally works by breaking LoS to cool (and often uses ECM) simply isn't that bothered by LRMs. That's why LRMs are so rare in higher Tier matches.
Edited by Void Angel, 28 November 2023 - 06:01 PM.
I respect his work and the effort he puts in
However, a lot of things are going in the wrong direction
and if mechs are only puffed to get financial resources then in my opinion it is wrong
How about just being honest and telling when it comes to financial resources
the check engine light, on 25 November 2023 - 03:08 PM, said:
Every time I hear Lights OP I'm reminded of how poorly most of my lights fare. My best has been the COM-2D with SRMs because it's actually pretty damn good. Most of the others take a lot more work to make work, the Commando is kind of made of ********.
Luckily the hit detection on Commandos has never been accurate and feels like it has only gotten worse over time. You used to be able to handle this by dragon-bowling them, but that was 10 or 11 years ago. Now you can shoot a gauss at the thing's cockpit and it registers as a hit to the rear armor somehow. lol..
JOATMON Incorporated, on 26 November 2023 - 01:15 AM, said:
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.
Maybe they should buff the Osiris.
It's the one light mech I don't own.
What I don't understand is why it was changed in the first place. If the mech is underperforming, and you want to buff it, why even take away the velocity? What does it matter? Was the mech having 5%-10% extra velocity really too much, too gamebreaking after the other adjustments? What's the mindset behind removing the velocity. That's more important. Especially because some other mechs get quirks of +60%-75% velocity or +270% something. The thunderbolt having 5-10% is too much? Why? It would be nice to have any sort of explanation for the changes, or some kind of communication about the goals of a change, like, "This specific build was doing too well, so we adjusted this" or "We aim to do X Y and Z, so we are doing A B and C" - even if it's a bad idea ("we want to increase TTK, so we will nerf Clan DHS") is better than "We changed this. [Good luck figuring out why]
if alphas are to big why not just add more duration to lasers ?, it doesnt matter what you do to laser, they are are ammo less hitscan weapons they will allways work even if a full burn took 2 seconds
please just normalize velocities, get rid of heatscale conundrums and do universal quirks and then never touch that again
if a mech is still too powerfull just halve its armor or whatever, after all these years i feel like i've never stopped relearning how to play again
Cauldron makes the same mistake as PGI.
He should think about what concerns FP His quirks throw the mech balance out of
But I don't think he cares because he's pursuing other people
The Cauldron's remit is primarily QP. AFAIK PGI's own priority is QP and EQ. FP doesn't factor into balance concerns and any changes that are made are low-hanging fruit that are addressed when there is time to do so.
Even though they were left out of the patch notes, the hitbox changes to the Atlas, Cicada, Jenner IIC, etc. did apparently go through.
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.
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.
[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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
5
An6ryMan69, on 27 November 2023 - 12:33 PM, said:
