If there are any PGI employees in a lead or managerial position reading this thread, please take note:
Bassault, on 10 January 2024 - 10:14 AM, said:
Let's make this very clear. LRMs take no skill to play. Not less skill, not little skill, they take.no skill to play.
This is the 5th "Gold Champ" to come into this thread and heap scorn upon LRMs and, by extension, upon players who use them. Not just one, the 5th one. The attitude of these people is poison to your game. Do you really believe such people are capable of balancing LRMs in a fair and objective manner?
The end result of such people calling the shots is stagnation and neglect for LRMs and even more so for STREAKs.
In the past few weeks, after watching patch after patch flail around trying to balance HAGs, I've considered writing a post asking PGI to take control of weapon balance away from the Cauldron and do it in house. I think that time has come. The Cauldron can provide valuable advice on quirk changes because they have many more eyes and ears beyond the PGI staff for monitoring all the myriad of mechs and variants. But when it comes to weapons, the Cauldron clearly can't get it done. They're not trained as engineers and they expose this fact over and over with flaws/oversights in the changes they make and the attitude they display.
Here's but one small example, the last patch increased the ammo/ton on various ballistics. This was an AWESOME change that I advocated for a year ago and Lord Nothing advocated for 6+ YEARS ago. The inconsistencies in damage/ton of the various calibers was a fundamental flaw in the game and it was great to see it finally be fixed. The point isn't how much time it took to finally get this change implemented (though such a long time does not reflect well upon the Cauldron), the point is what they still missed in making this change.
They didn't update the +ammo skills accordingly. As a result, the +ammo skills give significantly less benefit to the 2 and 5 caliber weapons as a percentage after the change, a stealth nerf. 2 caliber weapons previously and currently get +16 ammo/ton from skills. This number should have been increased to 16 --> 18 for UAC/AC2s and 16 --> 22 for LBX2s and a similar percentage for 5 caliber weapons to keep them normalized with the buff to ammo/ton.
Members of the Cauldron reading this are probably rolling their eyes. They probably think I'm being "nit-picky". I noticed the absences of that change almost immediately when I first read the patch notes. I noticed because I'm an engineer. The Cauldron didn't because they're not engineers. Even reading this now they probably still don't care and think I'm making much ado about nothing. Now that I've brought attention to it, will these +ammo numbers be updated in a future patch? I doubt it.
Guess how much benefit HAGs get from +ammo skills? +16 ammo/ton, a massive +33%, by far the most of any ballistic. This is overpowered. The Cauldron doesn't even know it's a problem. Taking this number down from +16 --> +10 ammo/ton, thus bringing it in line with 20 caliber weapons, is a brain-dead easy fix to help bring HAGs in line. The Cauldron probably won't make that change either even now that I've pointed it out.
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This thread is about LRMs so lets bring it back to LRMs. Radar Deprivation has been known to be very over powered by many people for a long time. Finally something is being done about it but the community doesn't know to what degree because the number changes haven't be released yet. This nerf to something that negatively effects LRMs, Radar Derp, is being paired with nerfs to things that positvely effect LRMs, velocity and trajectory angle. LRM velocity is already slow. LRMs already stupidly slam into various terrain features they should be able to get over. There is no need to nerf velocity and trajectory as "compensation" for nerfing Radar Deprivation because they're already bad and Radar Derp is VERY OP, not sort of OP, VERY OP. Radar Derp should be nerfed alone and if that causes problems, which is HIGHLY UNLIKELY, only then should the positive aspects of LRMs be nerfed.
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Going forward, I'm willing to offer my services for free, as a player and a fan of the game, to PGI as a consultant for making balance changes. I could provide advice for weapon/balance changes in email format directly to PGI for them to consider and do with what they will. I have nothing to say to the Cauldron. They are too slow and too far away from being able make effective change that there's no point in joining their discord channel. This is why I've ignored it despite having an account there.
- I know how to fix STREAKs.
- I know how to balance HAGs.
- I have ideas on how to make auxiliary items such as Targeting Computers, Command Console, and TAGs more useful.
- The recent change to lower UAC10 jam time (a change I advocated for a year ago) helped a lot but UACs still aren't there yet. They don't work well as single-mount weapons except for the C-UAC20. They really need to be paired to work well. I know how to make UACs MUCH better as well.
If you're interested in establishing a direct channel, please let me know PGI.
Edited by MechMaster059, 11 January 2024 - 05:04 AM.