106 replies to this topic

[Frost_Byte]

Hey all.

I've seen some reviews of the patch notes and it seems some of the playerbase is confused as to the decisions we made balance wise so I thought I'd make a post to help clear up some of the misconceptions.

First things first, by we I mean Cauldron. PGI doesn't do the balancing for MWO anymore. This is probably a bit confusing since I'm a dev and am a member of the Cauldron, but for this post the "we" means Cauldron
Second things second, not all Cauldron members agree with the direction we've taken with HAGs. So if I say Cauldron did something, that means that the consensus Cauldron reached via vote. There are plenty of members who have disagreed and are always free to voice their opinions of dissent publicly and privately. Since Cauldron is democratic, not everyone has to be on board with everything.

So let's start with the elephant in the room, HAGs. Since their inception, HAGs have been a very powerful weapon. It's true that they had a spread stat at the start that was pretty severe, but in the September patch we nerfed the HAG volley delay. For those who don't know, this means that the time in between HAG shells was increased, slowing down the speed of your burst. This increased volley delay causes a pretty significant amount of spread when your target is moving or at range, so we felt that the spread stat was safe to remove. At long ranges, HAGs are not effective damage unless the target is standing still. HAGs are not effective sniping weapons, it is very difficult to pinpoint on a mech more than 700m away unless they are either 100 tons or standing still. The Cauldron members are some of the best players this game currently has to offer, and if they are struggling to do it consistently then it is a safe upper limit of the weapon. So I hope that explains the spread, the long time it takes to get your burst of shells out acts as a spread of its own and we didn't feel the need to give the weapon 2 spread stats.

With spread taken care of, HAGs were still a problem inside of ranges of 600m. Outside of 600m, they weren't that problematic as sniping weapons as long as you're moving. They operate like an AC2 at range, they can farm good damage but struggle to kill. Inside of 600m, they were drilling machines. The problem was that mechs could equip HAGs + too many other weapons to acheive absurb alpha strikes. Too many clan assaults were getting alpha strikes of over 100 damage and not shutting down from heat. The solution to that was just a major HAG heat nerf, which we did in the November patch. Many mechs struggle to carry serious amounts of lasers with their HAGs now, which should solve the problem of extreme alpha strikes. If it doesn't, we'll just heat nerf again.

All things considered, the removal of spread so low that it did nothing, a massive heat nerf, and a minor cooldown nerf makes this patch a major HAG net nerf. I've played them a lot this patch and they feel closer to appropriately balanced. But they're still too strong and we plan on nerfing them again. This December we are looking at a velocity nerf and maybe a CDHS nerf. But that's not set in stone, Cauldron may decide to do something else.

As far as other misc things, I've seen talk about the Stalker 4N losing the ability to fire 4 BLC. The mech carried a high alpha and Cauldron's aim over the next few months is to reduce the high-alpha creep and slow time to kill, this was one of those mechs that was just too strong. With 4 Binaries all up in the arms giving it the best poking profile in the game, the incredible tankiness of a Stalker, plus the incredible hitboxes of a Stalker, its just a beast. 3 BLC 3 ERML is still very strong on it, just not OP.

I hope this help clears up some of the decisions this patch. As with all patches, if we don't get things right here then we'll take more steps in the next patch. Cauldron IS aware that HAGs are OP. The mindset is to take conservative and measured steps, rather than dropping a nerf nuke from orbit.





As a side note, we are aware of the increased loading times and instability in the game. The loading times have been solved and repaired. For those of you who hate the Christmas mechlab, I'm sorry to say that it wasn't the cause of the loading time increase so that'll be staying.

We're still working on the instability and have a few potential fixes that we should be rolling out here soon, so stay tuned for an announcement on that.

[Ramen Noodle Roland]

But I love my Christmas bells War horn.

PS Bring back the Turkey war horn

[Evan20k]

Stop posting reasonable explanations and let me draw my own conjecture and get angry about it!

I don't want solutions, I want to be mad!

[GoodTry]

On Tuesday, my five year old son (who plays MWO) burst into the room shouting "Papa! Papa! THERE ARE TREES IN THE MECHLAB. THERE ARE TREES. They decorated our accounts!!"

He proceeded to tell everyone on VOIP about it on every drop that night and he is still talking about it two days later.

Just wanted to let you know that it was appreciated.

[Rosarius]

Evan20k, on 23 November 2023 - 01:56 PM, said:

Stop posting reasonable explanations and let me draw my own conjecture and get angry about it!

I don't want solutions, I want to be mad!

[MechB Kotare]

Can't wait, till biased people, who don't know what they are talking about, jump in here, trying to convince you that HAGs are a sniping weapon nevertheless.

Edited by MechB Kotare, 23 November 2023 - 02:33 PM.

[Bl00dbeard]

Frost_Byte, on 23 November 2023 - 01:24 PM, said:

With 4 Binaries all up in the arms giving it the best poking profile in the game, the incredible tankiness of a Stalker, plus the incredible hitboxes of a Stalker, its just a beast. 3 BLC 3 ERML is still very strong on it, just not OP.

Bahahahahahahahahaha !!!

Unbelieveable.

Thanks for the patch tho.

Edited by Bl00dbeard, 23 November 2023 - 02:37 PM.

[foamyesque]

I appreciate you taking the time to post the reasoning -- I wish more of this made it into the patch notes proper -- but a few points:

1. "Removing the spread entirely isn't a problem because the spread was already minimal" -- This is disingenuous, because Cauldron was the one who made spread minimal in the first place.

The increase to volley duration was a good idea, and the heat increase and cooldown increase will weaken HAG's DPS, but what it is not likely to do is reduce alphas, particularly the long-range ones. I ran the numbers prior to the patch with the proposed numbers; twin HAG30s + twin ERLLs was still lighter, cooler, higher alpha, and tighter firing window than twin gauss + quad ERLLs, which was the previous 'best' long-range alpha machine.

You could eventually tame HAG alphas by just amping their heat to unmanageable levels and people will switch back to gauss or UACs or standard ACs, but on the other hand you could at a stroke make them much less of a problem by putting substantial spread back on them. The raw damage is there but if it is actually genuinely spreading / clean missing the actual effectiveness drops off substantially. See also LRMs.

2. A Clan DHS nerf would be interesting but the only reason it's coming up now would seem to be because HAGs broke things. Clan lasvom was strong before, of course, but it seems to me I've only been hearing about a DHS nerf since HAGs were released. Fixing HAGs before fiddling around with something that will impact the balance of every single Clan machine would be my thinking. If Clan DHSes do get changed you might be looking at having to go through and requirk every machine in the game again.


3. The 4N is strong and I don't even necessarily disagree it needed a nerf, but like, that was a priority? I dunno 'bout you but I see (or at least notice) a lot more Scaleshots (which cost actual real money!) and DWF-Cs out there than I do 4Ns. Does the Cauldron have access to e.g. consolidated weapon/mech use stats? Hit rate, use rate, win rate, KDR, etc? Because it'd be real interesting to see, for example, what the most-dropped machines are, what the win rates are, how many people are actually carrying HAGs and how accurate they are with them as compared to lasers, etc.

Edited by foamyesque, 23 November 2023 - 03:11 PM.

[Rosarius]

foamyesque, on 23 November 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

I ran the numbers prior to the patch with the proposed numbers

We can all stroke beards about what things will be like on paper and in a vacuum. It's in the game now, so go out and get testing in a live environment!

foamyesque, on 23 November 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

If Clan DHSes do get changed you might be looking at having to go through and requirk every machine in the game again.

From what I have gathered it will be just a heat capacity nerf, dissipation will stay as is. So if you're currently running a mech that uses all the heat bar in a single alpha, better play it while you can. Otherwise it doesn't really change much, clan mechs still get an absurd level of heat dissipation which ultimately is the deciding factor of how often you can shoot.

[LordNothing]

hags were never the big issue for me, they felt about right when released and idk why we are so focused on them so heavily. we dont have a hag problem, we dont have a heatsink problem, we have a laser problem.

i dont think were going to make the 60+ point laser alphas go away without direct damage nerfs because of the various ways of stacking different lasers for gh-free alphas. which the is now has access to thanks to the binlas. you gonna nerf isdubs too? we got to reign in the lasers a bit if we want to fix ttk to something more manageable. and messing with sinks hurts ppcs and srm boats.

i always felt lasers should be a #2 weapon system behind ballistics with ppcs splitting the difference. ballistics have intrinsic limitations. you have burst fire that requires follow through, you have ammo management requirements, you need to worry about ammo explosions, you have to lead targets, the hgauss recoil mechanic. instead velocities are way too high, ammo is practically free, bursts were whined down or out a long time ago, recoil is still only used on hgr. the fact that these have all required buffs to keep up with vomit is a good indication that these weapons are not the problem.

im not even going to mention what they have done to missiles, its impolite to speak unkindly of the dead.

reduce the damage on all lasers by at minimum 25% and buff the cool down so you have to take more alphas to get the same overall damage. even that would still allow for 60 point alphas without tripping ghost heat in a few situations. lasers have too many hardpoints, stack to too high damage, have too many quirks, with too many gh loopholes and are far too dominant on the battlefield.

Edited by LordNothing, 23 November 2023 - 03:16 PM.

[Frost_Byte]

foamyesque, on 23 November 2023 - 02:49 PM, said:

I appreciate you taking the time to post the reasoning -- I wish more of this made it into the patch notes proper -- but a few points:

1. "Removing the spread entirely isn't a problem because the spread was already minimal" -- This is disingenuous, because Cauldron was the one who made spread minimal in the first place.

The increase to volley duration was a good idea, and the heat increase and cooldown increase will weaken HAG's DPS, but what it is not likely to do is reduce alphas, particularly the long-range ones. I ran the numbers prior to the patch with the proposed numbers; twin HAG30s + twin ERLLs was still lighter, cooler, higher alpha, and tighter firing window than twin gauss + quad ERLLs, which was the previous 'best' long-range alpha machine.

You could eventually tame HAG alphas by just amping their heat to unmanageable levels and people will switch back to gauss or UACs or standard ACs, but on the other hand you could at a stroke make them much less of a problem by putting substantial spread back on them. The raw damage is there but if it is actually genuinely spreading / clean missing the actual effectiveness drops off substantially. See also LRMs.

2. A Clan DHS nerf would be interesting but the only reason it's coming up now would seem to be because HAGs broke things. Clan lasvom was strong before, of course, but it seems to me I've only been hearing about a DHS nerf since HAGs were released. Fixing HAGs before fiddling around with something that will impact the balance of every single Clan machine would be my thinking. If Clan DHSes do get changed you might be looking at having to go through and requirk every machine in the game again.


3. The 4N is strong and I don't even necessarily disagree it needed a nerf, but like, that was a priority? I dunno 'bout you but I see (or at least notice) a lot more Scaleshots (which cost actual real money!) and DWF-Cs out there than I do 4Ns. Does the Cauldron have access to e.g. consolidated weapon/mech use stats? Hit rate, use rate, win rate, KDR, etc? Because it'd be real interesting to see, for example, what the most-dropped machines are, what the win rates are, how many people are actually carrying HAGs and how accurate they are with them, etc.

The scaleshot was also nerfed this patch.

Cauldron doesn't use popularity to get the strength of a mech. If it's too powerful, it's nerfed regardless of popularity.

Once every three months we do fully export stats of every mech variant, its usage, and performance and we go over them. So yes, we do have them for internal control.

As for HAG spread, maybe I chose a poor phrasing. The volley delay was enough spread on its own, which was why we removed it. Volley delay + spread is essentially 2 spread stats. Gauss should kill better than HAGs at long range due to much better pinpoint, but the current issue is HAGs just doing too much damage at midrange that the loss of pinpoint via volley delay doesn't really matter.

We've had Clan DHS nerfs on the board for awhile. We've been internally mulling it over for a year at least. You're right, we haven't really talked about it publicly until recently, but it's very much been on our minds for quite some time.

We decided to nerf Clan DHS dissipation from 0.22 to 0.2 in the December patch.

Bl00dbeard, on 23 November 2023 - 02:36 PM, said:

Bahahahahahahahahaha !!!

Unbelieveable.

Thanks for the patch tho.

Ask any top tier player, Stalker with its armor quirks and hitboxes is probably one of the tankiest assault mechs in the game.

[LordNothing]

theres xy spread and there is z spread (bursts). the only real difference is the z spread can be compensated with follow through where as the xy spread you just have to put up with. high skilled players can do the follow through, but there is no way to skill around xy spread. so i can see why the cauldron went with the z spread. but the xy spread can be used to control engagement ranges, hit the ct inside 2/3 optimal, but at range its spray and pray.

[foamyesque]

Frost_Byte, on 23 November 2023 - 03:10 PM, said:

The scaleshot was also nerfed this patch.

Cauldron doesn't use popularity to get the strength of a mech. If it's too powerful, it's nerfed regardless of popularity.

Granted. But people tend to gravitate towards machines that feel good and strong to play, particularly once they've played enough to work out what those are. So if you have things that stand out as exceptionally popular (or, in the other direction, unpopular), it can point to problems that need fixing.

And last I saw anyone post statistics -- can't recall who, might even have been yourself -- the DWF-C is the single most dropped varient in the game by a real big margin. Is that still true?

Quote

As for HAG spread, maybe I chose a poor phrasing. The volley delay was enough spread on its own, which was why we removed it. Volley delay + spread is essentially 2 spread stats. Gauss should kill better than HAGs at long range due to much better pinpoint, but the current issue is HAGs just doing too much damage at midrange that the loss of pinpoint via volley delay doesn't really matter.

Well, first off, the two different spread stats serve different purposes. Volley duration rewards accuracy and being able to lead well, and punishes immobility, and so both amplifies skill differentials and still allows the weapon to perform to optimum capacity in the correct circumstances. What a firecone does is act as an indirect damage nerf -- it means that even though a weapon claims it does X damage (in accordance with the TT numbers to placate the fanatics), in practice it can't put all of that on target no matter how good a shooter you are.

And that's what's needed, I think, to get HAGs out of their do-everything role. If they have strong midrange alphas that's fine because midrange there's way more answers to them (e.g. conventional lasvom or MRMs) and every weapon should have a purpose.

Or, if the argument is that volley duration and spread are redundant and if a weapon has one it shouldn't have the other, I look forward to the incoming changes to MRMs to make them snapshot weapons. (Or Clan LRMs, but a buff for LRMs is probably a pipe dream).

I've yet to see an explanation to convince me that fiddling with every aspect of HAGs except increasing their spread has been the best option. Cauldron's tried moving every other knob (bar the actual damage) and, from your statement, appears to be committing to 'and we'll keep doing what we've been doing if what we've done isn't enough', and I'm baffled that simply putting real, significant spread -- even the release spread was too low especially in conjunction with the lower burst duration at the time -- on the guns hasn't been tried yet.

Edited by foamyesque, 23 November 2023 - 03:58 PM.

[confracto]

Frost_Byte, on 23 November 2023 - 01:24 PM, said:

Hey all.

I've seen some reviews of the patch notes and it seems some of the playerbase is confused as to the decisions we made balance wise so I thought I'd make a post to help clear up some of the misconceptions.

First things first, by we I mean Cauldron. PGI doesn't do the balancing for MWO anymore. This is probably a bit confusing since I'm a dev and am a member of the Cauldron, but for this post the "we" means Cauldron
Second things second, not all Cauldron members agree with the direction we've taken with HAGs. So if I say Cauldron did something, that means that the consensus Cauldron reached via vote. There are plenty of members who have disagreed and are always free to voice their opinions of dissent publicly and privately. Since Cauldron is democratic, not everyone has to be on board with everything.

You don't get to have it both ways. You represent PGI and have input on Cauldron decisions, therefore PGI has a say on balance, even if it's as a single voice in a democratic group.

[The6thMessenger]

I was always been a proponent to the Zero-Spread HAGs from the start, because the Volley Duration ultimately screws the weapon over already, as movement and torso-twisting can and often prevent effective landing of shots. Imagine a fixed spread on top of that, lol.

My issue is pushing it's actual effective range out 810m. I don't fancy that from the blue lasers, the AC2s, I don't fancy it here either, but they were at least mostly nuisance. But the key difference is that HAGs do a fuckton of damage like MRMs to compensate for it's poor efficiency, and with it being pretty efficient now, it being broken when you guys started shrinking the spread ain't really much a surprise.

Now that I think about it, I don't think velocity nerf would be helpful either, as ultimately the direct damage output is the issue. Sure it'll address my concern of it being at 810m, depending on how much nerf, funneling the use back at mid-range where it'll be pretty ****** with it's heat unlike before; but it's long-range use now would instead be prohibitively frustrating even if possible.

To that end, I'd rather have Range-Nerf instead, since it's "Damage-Lite" and is an indirect way of nerfing the damage while keeping the HAG-number as per lore; maybe have a high differential between Optimal and Max Range like the HGR. With a specific value in mind, my money is at 360m outward 1620m, where HAG30 at 810m will now deal 19.2857 damage, and with such damage reduction you can keep the heat kinda low and the velocity kinda high, even make even fire faster.

Actual optimal range, since you don't want a nuke, I propose starting at 600m-ish.

But that's just me.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 23 November 2023 - 07:32 PM.

[RickySpanish]

confracto, on 23 November 2023 - 07:17 PM, said:

You don't get to have it both ways. You represent PGI and have input on Cauldron decisions, therefore PGI has a say on balance, even if it's as a single voice in a democratic group.

Right, so "PGI doesn't do the balancing" means they don't do it exclusively anymore, as it's now done by a group of players using a voting system. One developer from PGI is able to cast a vote, but that's not enough to dictate balance direction.

[Tarl Cabot]

Frost_Byte, on 23 November 2023 - 03:10 PM, said:

snip

Cauldron doesn't use popularity to get the strength of a mech. If it's too powerful, it's nerfed regardless of popularity.

Once every three months we do fully export stats of every mech variant, its usage, and performance and we go over them. So yes, we do have them for internal control.

As for HAG spread, maybe I chose a poor phrasing. The volley delay was enough spread on its own, which was why we removed it. Volley delay + spread is essentially 2 spread stats. Gauss should kill better than HAGs at long range due to much better pinpoint, but the current issue is HAGs just doing too much damage at midrange that the loss of pinpoint via volley delay doesn't really matter.

snip

As we know, BT lore does not carry over well to FPS type mechgame (looking at that XL engine death on loss of ST due to original BT engine crit rules)

Ran across the Lore description of HAGS. And the current setting, it does not come close to RACs. Maybe HAGs should be changed from the 5dmg/slug to 2dmg/slug w/more slugs. Does the Innersphere actually have anything close to it? And since this is a 1-1 matchup and not a "Clan to IS" matchup (and neg, going that route would not be fun for most), shouldnt that also be taken into consideration?

And thanks for the thread. Might need a sticky after a bit

[The6thMessenger]

Tarl Cabot, on 23 November 2023 - 07:28 PM, said:

Maybe HAGs should be changed from the 5dmg/slug to 2dmg/slug w/more slugs.

I like the 2/slug with more-slugs, as the 5 PPFLD is also part of the damage problem with regards to it's efficiency. Problem is the engineering behind it, the stress to the system that they didn't want to add more.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

foamyesque, on 23 November 2023 - 03:54 PM, said:

Granted. But people tend to gravitate towards machines that feel good and strong to play

Given the usage of 20 tonners over any of the other lights idk that you can glean too much from usage stats (or at least the popular ones). Buffs/nerfs/new content can also skew usage stats for a month or so. I think the bottom of the barrel is more informative than the top.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 23 November 2023 - 08:21 PM.

[KursedVixen]

MechB Kotare, on 23 November 2023 - 02:32 PM, said:

Can't wait, till biased people, who don't know what they are talking about, jump in here, trying to convince you that HAGs are a sniping weapon nevertheless.

They were never suppose to be they're suppose to be like gauss LBX I don't think the heat nerf was correct i think the spread should have been upped.

The other point I'd like to make is Clan mechs are suppose to be powerful, maybe instead of a heat nerf seeing what weapons are used with it like say large lasers and adding it into the ghost heat table?

Edited by KursedVixen, 23 November 2023 - 09:28 PM.