265 replies to this topic

[MechMaster059]

Gasboy, on 15 June 2024 - 06:34 AM, said:

I'll remind you that armor values in MWO are double that of Battletech, which you neglected to mention. Set damage and armor values to TT numbers and TTK will shrink precipitously. Your argument is basically defeated by this fact.

So doubling armor vs TT fixed all TTK issues? Wrong. Doubling armor was necessary to make MWO playable at all.

You've never asked yourself WHY armor values were doubled vs TT have you? Answer: Because in TT you're not free to aim at individual components of a mech except under certain circumstances and there are significant restrictions for doing so. Here are the rules for taking aimed shots in TT:

- You can only aim at individual components of enemy mechs that are stationary.
- "Cluster" type weapons may NEVER take aimed shots. (no Missiles, LBX, nor HAGs)
- You can aim at individual components of moving mechs (except the Head) using weapons attached to a targeting computer but the targeting computer doesn't give its usual -1 to hit bonus and "Pulse" type weapons / "Multi-Shot" weapons cannot be used. (No Pulse Lasers, UACs cannot double-tap an aimed shot at a moving target.)(In TT you can only attach 5T of weapons / 1T of TC for Clan and 4T of weapons / 1T of TC for Inner Sphere.)
- If you aim for the Head of a stationary target you lose the -4 to hit modifier and get an additional +3 to hit penalty. (A massive swing in hit chance that makes hitting the head extremely difficult except at close range.)
- After rolling to hit with an aimed shot, you then roll to see if your aimed shot actually hit the intended component by rolling a 6, 7, or 8. (A 44% chance on 2D6) If you miss this roll the aimed shot didn't hit the intended component and you roll to see which component you actually hit per the normal procedure.

So there you have it, no aimed shots by Missiles, LBX nor HAGs under ANY circumstances and no aimed shots vs moving targets by Pulse Lasers / UAC double-taps and you're guaranteed not to land about half of the aimed shots you take on the intended component.

Aiming at specific components is the norm in MWO. In fact, it's considered a measure of a player's skill how good they are at maintaining their fire upon the same component. The usual targets are side torsos since they're generally as easy to hit as the CT but easier to destroy and severely cripple the enemy mech once destroyed making destroying a ST a de-facto kill most of the time. (or in the case of IS XL engines, a real kill)

This is why armor values had to be doubled for MWO, because focusing PPFLD against individual components is so easy in MWO. This is totally alien to TT where players have much less control over where their shots land and entire weapon classes can't make aimed shots at all.

Gasboy, on 15 June 2024 - 06:34 AM, said:

Your suggested changes to lasers would basically gut them as a weapon.

No, a couple more tenths of a second in laser duration wouldn't "gut them". That's a hyperbolic statement.

Gasboy, on 15 June 2024 - 06:34 AM, said:

Why not suggest that they simply be point and click instant damage like PPCs/ACs?

Is this a serious question? Because lasers would be OP as hell and make PPCs obsolete if they dealt their damage instantly.

Edited by MechMaster059, 15 June 2024 - 09:58 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 09:34 AM, said:

This is why armor values had to be doubled for MWO, because focusing PPFLD against individual components is so easy in MWO. This is totally alien to TT where players have much less control over where their shots land and entire weapons classes can't make aimed shots at all

It's not just PPFLD, its just damage volume. If it werent for PPFLD it would be just be DPS, etc, etc.

[MechMaster059]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 09:59 AM, said:

It's not just PPFLD, its just damage volume. If it werent for PPFLD it would be just be DPS, etc, etc.

Oh it's PPFLD all right. You watch any YouTube videos of TTB or D A T A and they constantly nuke side torsos from long range using Advanced Zoom and alpha strikes.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 10:11 AM, said:

Oh it's PPFLD all right. You watch any YouTube videos of TTB or D A T A and they constantly nuke side torsos from long range using Advanced Zoom and alpha strikes.

So we are really going to use highlight reels as evidence? Youtube videos are always going to use cherry-picked data. Dakka and X-Pulse are/have been meta before and if PPFLD wasn't the boogeyman, dakka and xpulse would be the next one.

I was not saying that PPFLD isn't super strong right now either, I was just saying that if you were to nerf PPFLD, DPS would just be the next target of people's ire because people hate being shot at.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 15 June 2024 - 10:50 AM.

[MechMaster059]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 10:50 AM, said:

So we are really going to use highlight reels as evidence? Youtube videos are always going to use cherry-picked data.

Are you implying Tier 2/Tier 1 players don't routinely focus fire individual components? Because that would be pretty silly considering even I am starting to get decent at shooting individual components.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 10:50 AM, said:

Dakka and X-Pulse are/have been meta before and if PPFLD wasn't the boogeyman, dakka and xpulse would be the next one.

X-Pulse lasers aren't going to do squat because they suck in this game. They're WAYYYY too hot.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 10:50 AM, said:

I was not saying that PPFLD isn't super strong right now either, I was just saying that if you were to nerf PPFLD, DPS would just be the next target of people's ire because people hate being shot at.

While people would still complain about DPS, their arguments would stand on much less solid ground considering that simply torso-twisting can greatly reduce the chance of a component being destroyed vs sustained DPS.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 11:05 AM, said:

Are you implying Tier 2/Tier 1 players don't routinely focus fire individual components? Because that would be pretty silly considering even I am starting to get decent at shooting individual components.

Not sure where you even got that I implied that, youtube videos aren't going to include all the misses, bad games, etc. It's cherry picked data, so using that as evidence is how we get people actually believing that the 3 Gauss Ilya was meta because they saw a B33F video about it.....

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 11:05 AM, said:

X-Pulse lasers aren't going to do squat because they suck in this game. They're WAYYYY too hot.

Except you can get them to be as efficient as dakka for sustained/burst DPS. So not really sure why you seem to think that. They can be rough to take in QP because the lack of coordination can really hamper DPS builds like that where a full team can just burn down mechs crossing bad terrain faster than any other mech but :shrug:.

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 11:05 AM, said:

While people would still complain about DPS, their arguments would stand on much less solid ground considering that simply torso-twisting can greatly reduce the chance of a component being destroyed vs sustained DPS.

Torso twisting helps only so much, and if it manages to save you then we are just talking about brawling being the meta in QP which would means the game has devolved such that tactics/cover no longer matter. Just smash W and blast legs with SRMs.

[MechMaster059]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 11:19 AM, said:

... youtube videos aren't going to include all the misses, bad games, etc. It's cherry picked data,...

Misses, bad games, and cherry picked data... from guys like Baradul, TTB, and D A T A.... riiiiiggghtt. Don't act like blowing out individual components is some kind of rare feat for these guys. They all do it. Routinely. Sean Lang, LtPoohPants... etc. All of them. This style of play is standard operating procedure in Tier 2 / Tier 1 and even very common in Tier 3. Please just stop with trying to deny this.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 11:19 AM, said:

Except you can get them to be as efficient as dakka for sustained/burst DPS. So not really sure why you seem to think that. They can be rough to take in QP because the lack of coordination can really hamper DPS builds like that where a full team can just burn down mechs crossing bad terrain faster than any other mech but :shrug:.

Not going to be sidetracked into a discussion about how badly X-Pulse lasers suck.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 11:19 AM, said:

Torso twisting helps only so much, and if it manages to save you then we are just talking about brawling being the meta in QP which would means the game has devolved such that tactics/cover no longer matter. Just smash W and blast legs with SRMs.

Torso twisting being useful doesn't automatically mean the meta has devolved into a brawl-fest... LOL. These are hyperbolic statements.

[Void Angel]

Math is hard; tactics are harder - put them together... And the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in pretty strongly. Long-range alphas aren't going to be nuking side torsos in a single hit - nor are you going to hit people all the time with them. That's one of the primary things to know when trying out sniper builds - you absolutely must hit your shots in order to get good performance with them. Dakka, meanwhile, is much more forgiving of misses, and can (usually) sustain that damage for longer periods of time. Is high-alpha too strong? Eh, I think so, a little. But it's not terrible - and the same mistakes that you see punished on Youtube highlight reels will punish players against dakka as well.

The bigger issue, Mechmaster, is that you're arguing from the fracking tabletop rulebook for a game in which that rulebook does not apply. People don't want cone-of-fire in a Mechwarrior game. It's been discussed - a lot, over the years. But literally every weapon, targeting modifier, and point of durability in tabletop is based on random hit allocation along a 2D6 probability curve. Even engines are designed for this environment. Literally the entire game revolves around it. Without that core mechanic, none of your reasoning from the tabletop rulebook makes sense.

Your reliance on tabletop as a reference source also gives you blind spots: consider your reasoning about the BLC. Yes, it's a good weapon, and the tonnage savings over 2 Large Lasers is a benefit - but you completely forgot to consider its increased burn time. The Binary Laser Cannon has a 30% increased burn time over the Large Laser; it comes within 0.05 seconds of the Clan ER Large Laser - that makes the BLC the third-longest burn time in the game. This is a significant benefit when you consider torso twisting, and a major part of what makes the BLC good, but not overpowered - you trade longer burn time for an extra ton and some heat/hardpoint efficiency (you've made an error about the Heat Scale Limits here: HSL for the BLC is 2, and the LL is 4; you cannot bypass the HSL with BLCs.)

So sure, PPFLD can stand to be toned down! But you can't prove that by pulling out a rulebook from the 1980s.

PS: As someone who plays in the same tier as the people you're citing, I can tell you they absolutely do miss shots and have bad games - but their Youtube subscribers don't want to see that; they want to see the highlights. And as long as everyone understands that it's a highlight reel (it isn't a secret!) that's perfectly good. But you still cannot use a selected sample to prove a general case like this.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 June 2024 - 12:46 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 11:33 AM, said:

Misses, bad games, and cherry picked data... from guys like Baradul, TTB, and D A T A.... riiiiiggghtt.

.....and outside D A T A, none of them are considered that good, but regardless you can think what you want but the difference between QP and div A comp aiming is quite stark.

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 11:33 AM, said:

Torso twisting being useful doesn't automatically mean the meta has devolved into a brawl-fest... LOL. These are hyperbolic statements.

DPS builds don't really care about torso-twisting, the whole point of doing that much damage is you either go legs so they can't twist the damage away or you just overwhelm them with damage such that twisting is just delaying the inevitable. I legitimately don't think people understand how delicate that balance of DPS vs Alpha/Burst damage is.

[MechMaster059]

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

...Long-range alphas aren't going to be nuking side torsos in a single hit - nor are you going to hit people all the time with them
...

I had the LT armor of my MAD-IIC-D put into the red by a single blue laser alpha from Bassault in his laser Blood Asp peeking over a hill on Caustic Valley. I was almost cockpit killed by him on Bearclaw II.

Though he failed to kill me, he created a severe weak spot on my mech both times that his teammates could easily exploit for the rest of the match and made me very apprehensive about getting into further combat... from a single alpha. (I was killed both matches and my team also lost both.)

You don't need to get a kill for a single well-placed alpha to have a devastating impact.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

The bigger issue, Mechmaster, is that you're arguing from the fracking tabletop rulebook for a game in which that rulebook does not apply. ...

Blah blah blah... notice how table top suddenly doesn't matter when people don't want it to folks? All of the weapons are pulled from and based upon table top. There is no deviation in weight, and almost no deviation in slot cost. Most damage values were kept nearly equal to TT. Every number for HAGs was pulled directly from TT except the spread was removed. Don't come in here and act like referencing TT is crazy or invalid.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

... but you completely forgot to consider its increased burn time.

LMAO... you think a burn time of 1.3s to inflict 18 damage is long!? It would take 3 seconds for a Beam Laser to deal that much damage and Beam Lasers are powerful weapons.

By the way, it's almost never 1.3s. The skills bring it down to 1.1s and then quirks potentially bring it down even more.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

(you've made an error about the Heat Scale Limits here: HSL for the BLC is 2, and the LL is 4; you cannot bypass the HSL with BLCs.)

I stand corrected on that.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

So sure, PPFLD can stand to be toned down! But you can't prove that by pulling out a rulebook from the 1980s.

I think I can considering MWO is based on TT and no justification has been given as to why blue laser damage values were boosted beyond TT or why HAGs had the one mechanic keeping them in check (spread) completely removed.

Just for the record, my proposed changes to what happens when a side torso is destroyed break from TT rules so don't pretend like I'm some religious adherent to TT rules.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

(You've also made an error about the

About the what?

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

...But you still cannot use a selected sample to prove a general case like this.

I think it's a pretty representative sample considering I'm referencing 5 streamers and it jibes with what I've experienced in game repeatedly having my STs blown off playing in Tier 2.

=====

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 12:32 PM, said:

.....and outside D A T A, none of them are considered that good, but regardless you can think what you want but the difference between QP and div A comp aiming is quite stark.

Doh! Shots fired! Every streamer I referenced is a 99%er except Baradul who is 98% and the only reason he's probably not a 99%er is because he uses a lot of fun/goofy builds on his channel to create content that the other streamers don't use.

I think it's a little rude and unfair of you to say they're not considered good.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 12:32 PM, said:

DPS builds don't really care about torso-twisting, the whole point of doing that much damage is you either go legs so they can't twist the damage away or you just overwhelm them with damage such that twisting is just delaying the inevitable. I legitimately don't think people understand how delicate that balance of DPS vs Alpha/Burst damage is.

OK.

Edited by MechMaster059, 15 June 2024 - 01:22 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 01:12 PM, said:

Doh! Shots fired! Every streamer I referenced is a 99%er except Baradul who is 98% and the only reason he's probably not a 99%er is because he uses a lot of fun/goofy builds on his channel to create content that the other streamers don't use.

I think it's a little rude and unfair of you to say they're not considered good.

99% doesn't really mean much. There can still be a wide gap of skill between 99% and top 99.9999%. The player base skill level seems to have dropped compared to the around the peak times of 2016-2017, that or there were just more tier 1s during my play time so I ran into lower tiers less then but yeah regardless.

[RockmachinE]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 01:22 PM, said:

99% doesn't really mean much. There can still be a wide gap of skill between 99% and top 99.9999%. The player base skill level seems to have dropped compared to the around the peak times of 2016-2017, that or there were just more tier 1s during my play time so I ran into lower tiers less then but yeah regardless.

Player skill levels decreased quite a bit. The quality of matches is all over the place. Back then people would at least murder ball up and understand what the dominant position is on the map and try and take it. Occasionally they'd coordinate an unexpected flank. I swear half the time now people just wander around aimlessly all over the map with 0 cohesion. And that's T1 matches. Its goofy.

Edited by RockmachinE, 15 June 2024 - 02:38 PM.

[Void Angel]

So much to cover:
(Do note that I am not cutting up your post into a bazillion unmanageable pieces and responding to it one sentence at a time.)

Representative samples are samples which include all the information collected over a broad enough range that the sample collected "represents" the entire range of whatever you're sampling - in this case player performance. Examples might include raw match footage over a full evening of play; randomly selected raw match footage over a longer period, or game telemetry over a period of time. You are not watching raw matches on those Youtube videos. You are watching the highlight reels. A highlight reel is a series of partial footage cut together to show things of interest to the prospective viewer. It is literally a selected sample, and selected samples are not representative. You don't see any of the times TTB got caught and murdered trying to sneak around the flank in his Fafnir, for example. But logically, you know that happens from time to time - it's not on the video because the video doesn't represent all of the data, and isn't intended to do so. The fact that you have used those selected samples to back up your own subjective experience does not strengthen your argument...

Despite your desire to do so, you simply cannot prove what should happen in MWO from the tabletop ruleset, for the reasons I have already provided - and which you have ignored: "blah blah blah." There has been plenty of "justification" given for changing from the canon tabletop numbers - which are what MWO actually used originally. It didn't work, because MWO is its own genre, and people want to aim. The fact that you don't know why - and have not actually asked - isn't evidence that there is no reason to deviate from the tabletop damage and heat numbers. As to why they use canon tonnage and crit slot numbers, well - ten seconds of serious thought should tell you that, but I'll lay it out for you: it's so that canon 'mechs and builds can be put into the game. Things like slot costs and weapon tonnage are the same because they have to be - which means that balance has to be done by means of things like weapon damage and burn times. None of this supports your arguments about what the damage numbers "should be" based on tabletop sources. Put the rulebook for the other game down, and stop hitting.

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 01:12 PM, said:

You don't need to get a kill for a single well-placed alpha to have a devastating impact.

OK, so your Marauder IIC should have about 89 points of armor on that LT. The biggest blue laser alpha I could find was 65 points, which will overheat it if you alpha in most cases (depending on if you went with jump jets.) That's going to leave you with 24 points after an alpha - at which point the enemy 'mech is done, and you still have 72 durability on that torso, including structure. Also, you're using an ECM-equipped 85-ton firepower platform with smaller survivability quirks than a Mist Lynx - and being hit while you were likely zoomed in with those Gauss Rifles, otherwise you would have been able to twist. If taking a hit like that makes you too apprehensive to engage, you might consider piloting something less fragile.

You do a lot of hand-waving and misrepresentation of people's arguments. I notice that Quicksilver's

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 12:32 PM, said:

.....and outside D A T A, none of them are considered that good,

turned into "I think it's a little rude and unfair of you to say they're not considered good." Don't do that; I assume it's unintentional, but that just means you're not thinking carefully about what you're saying, or worrying about treating your opponent fairly in debate.

[pattonesque]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 01:12 PM, said:

I had the LT armor of my MAD-IIC-D put into the red by a single blue laser alpha from Bassault in his laser Blood Asp peeking over a hill on Caustic Valley. I was almost cockpit killed by him on Bearclaw II.

what I'm hearing here is that you *let* him put an entire blue laser alpha, which if he splits it into two groups of three has a burn time of like two seconds, into your mech without reacting. that's a skill issue

[Void Angel]

If it was a non-jumping Blood Asp, there'd be enough heat capacity to eat the heat scale penalties, so it'd only be a .9 second alpha. Human response time to visual stimuli is about .19 seconds, so...

[MechMaster059]

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

...
You are not watching raw matches on those Youtube videos. You are watching the highlight reels. A highlight reel is a series of partial footage cut together to show things of interest to the prospective viewer.
...

I've watched about a dozen videos of LtPoohPants, about 2 dozen each of D A T A / Sean Lang / TTB, and probably about 4 dozen or more of Baradul. So you're telling me I shouldn't believe my lying eyes and that the skill they display in these videos is a fluke, an exception, cherry-picked best of the best, magically disappears when the camera isn't on and they bumble around the battlefield like the 3 stooges getting REKT left and right just as often as they do well? Is that what you're telling me? Because I was under the impression that the skill I see in their videos is just another day at the office for them and largely typical of how well they play.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

You don't see any of the times TTB got caught and murdered trying to sneak around the flank in his Fafnir, for example.
...

I've played with and against TTB a small number of times. He's dangerous as hell and did well in all of the half-dozen or so matches I saw him in. I guess he just got lucky those times though huh? Not a big enough sample size. Perhaps the next half-dozen times I see him he'll do less than 100 damage per match maybe? LMAO.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

Despite your desire to do so, you simply cannot prove what should happen in MWO from the tabletop ruleset, for the reasons I have already provided - and which you have ignored: "blah blah blah."

You didn't provide any "reasons". You just proclaimed table top is a "rulebook that doesn't apply" to MWO and left it at that missing the point entirely which is that PPFLD is MUCH more dangerous in MWO precisely because the restrictions for taking aimed shots in TT don't apply to MWO. The logical conclusion to this fact is that either weapons need to have their damage reduced or mechs need to be made tougher. Rather than screwing around with all the weapon values PGI chose to just make mechs tougher by doubling armor which is a simpler solution.

No explanation has been given as to why blue lasers had their damage increased over TT, though in the case of ERLLs I have a hunch. Their TT damage of 8 seems a bit low given the weight of the weapon compared to medium lasers, so how can it still be a good weapon in TT? Because the fact that there's no such thing as damage drop-off in TT means weapon range is a much more valuable stat in TT than it is in MWO. ERLL's can have subpar damage in TT yet still be good because the extra range they have over medium lasers is so valuable.

This isn't the case in MWO where damage drop-off makes weapon range a much "fuzzier" stat. Mechs can still do decent damage outside of optimal range, hence ERLLs should do an amount of damage more in line with their weight in MWO. This is why I only drew attention to the 11 damage of the C-ERLL which I think is too much and not the 9 damage of the IS-ERLL which is probably about right.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

...people want to aim...

Ya, I assumed that. How would MWO possibly work if players couldn't manually aim their weapons in real time?

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

...None of this supports your arguments about what the damage numbers "should be" based on tabletop sources. Put the rulebook for the other game down, and stop hitting.

Well if they keep the slot cost and tonnage in MWO the same as TT then they would likely need to hew closer to TT damage values as well to maintain balance. No, I'm not going to "put the rulebook of the other game down". It's what MWO is based on and therefore is THE reference material for what weapon values should be.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

OK, so your Marauder IIC should have about 89 points of armor on that LT. The biggest blue laser alpha I could find was 65 points, which will overheat it if you alpha in most cases (depending on if you went with jump jets.) ...

MY MAD-IIC-D has 86 front / 7 rear armor and 47 structure on the STs. (Skeletal Density 9, Armor Hardening 10)

I could see the head and shoulders of his Blood Asp steadily peeking over the top of this hill in E6 at around this range of 120-140 meters:


I wanted to shoot him so I waited for him to crest the hill to get a good shot. That's why I did a poor job of twisting the damage, I was trying to shoot him so I wasn't paying good attention to his alpha and only noticed how damaging it was after I retreated away to the right.

I remember him shooting me with at least 4 blue lasers. There were no yellow medium lasers. I strongly suspect it was a BA-Rancor because the energy weapon arm mounts in that mech are spaced very closely together so it would be easy for 2 ERLLs firing from them to be mistaken as a single laser firing in the heat of battle.

Here is a possible BA-Rancor build with 80 blue laser alpha and 28 heat sinks:
A6;E=:X1|l^p41MY7|PC|l^|l^|l^q41KY7|PC|l^|l^|l^rl0JY7|mB|mB|l^|l^sl0NY7|mB|mB|l^|l^|l^t<1OY7|l^u;1PY7|l^vB0IY7w<08080

I was able to fire all of the lasers on this build with only the standard ½ second delay between each pair without overheating. I realize I could have twisted some of the damage but I was going to eat most of it no matter what.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

You do a lot of hand-waving and misrepresentation of people's arguments.

Nope, not misrepresenting anyone's arguments here. That's all in your head.

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 02:40 PM, said:

I notice that Quicksilver's turned into "I think it's a little rude and unfair of you to say they're not considered good." ...

At first I didn't understand what you meant by this. Quicksilver obviously made a derogatory statement about those streamers. I suppose you mean the difference between saying "not considered good" and "not considered THAT good". Yes, that was an unintentional omission on my part. Saying a bunch of 99%ers are good but "not THAT good" is both derogatory and laughable on its face. They're all EXCELLENT and HIGHLY SKILLED players, not merely "not THAT good". LMAO.

Edited by MechMaster059, 15 June 2024 - 06:01 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 05:51 PM, said:

At first I didn't understand what you meant by this. Quicksilver obviously made a derogatory statement about those streamers. I suppose you mean the difference between saying "not considered good" and "not considered THAT good". Yes, that was an unintentional omission on my part. Saying a bunch of 99%ers are good but "not THAT good" is both derogatory and laughable on its face. They're all EXCELLENT and HIGHLY SKILLED players, not merely "not THAT good". LMAO.

This is you misunderstanding and misrepresenting my point. The gap between lower tiers is minimal, the difference between a 66% and 80% percentile player is marginal compared to the gap between a player like Chimera and someone like TTB or even Baradul (who is not actually a 99% player mind you).

MechMaster059, on 15 June 2024 - 05:51 PM, said:

Here is a possible BA-Rancor build with 80 blue laser alpha and 28 heat sinks:
A6;E=:X1|l^p41MY7|PC|l^|l^|l^q41KY7|PC|l^|l^|l^rl0JY7|mB|mB|l^|l^sl0NY7|mB|mB|l^|l^|l^t<1OY7|l^u;1PY7|l^vB0IY7w<08080

I was able to fire all of the lasers on this build with only the standard ½ second delay between each pair without overheating. I realize I could have twisted some of the damage but I was going to eat most of it no matter what.

This isn't that great of a build.....

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 15 June 2024 - 07:39 PM.

[pattonesque]

yeah and also you ate all of it in the same torso. "I could have twisted" -- you should have twisted but you didn't. which is fine, everyone forgets to twist sometimes, but this is on you

[The6thMessenger]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 15 June 2024 - 10:50 AM, said:

So we are really going to use highlight reels as evidence? Youtube videos are always going to use cherry-picked data.

This. ^

Should be common sense at this point. Yeah, they have skill, but going solo on the soup-queue also has luck as factor to it's outcome, because you can't really completely account for the shenanigans of the other 23 players.

Just a hat-on-ring with regards to the PPFLD vs DPS; Cauldron just addressed this by bloating damage; PPFLD is accurate hard-to-shield damage, that serves to stroke the aim-elites' ego, but just as well it can be compensated by overwhelming amount of damage, like the flurry of HAGs, the ATMs at sweet-spot, or the relentless volley of dakka.

So the real problem is the damage creep; this is evident on their balancing styles, on their new mechs bloating ungodly amount of hardpoints just to pack the most small weapons to boost their damage to have some form of relevance which is kind of understandable.

So long as the game is about dishing damage than running the objectives, then we'll just keep going back to it. Either embrace it, or play different game.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 15 June 2024 - 07:55 PM.

[Void Angel]

Oh my goodness. It is literally your assertion that he shot you... with up to SIX large-class lasers... with a total burn time of at least 1.81 seconds... while clearing his ARM MOUNTS... while you were waiting for him to fully crest... at 120m range!!!

I literally am still laughing. Problem exists between keyboard and chair - but don't think I haven't noticed that we've somehow stopped talking about a single laser alpha and gone to staggered fire without so much as an "actually, now that I try to remember the facts..."

As far as your fallacious appeal to authority video evidence, despite your constant straw man attempts, I'm still telling you that no matter how many highlight reels you watch, they're still going to be highlight reels. You are trying to use only the selected best matches that made it into those reels as a body of evidence for general balance. Streamers aren't doing scientific studies; they're showing off their builds for entertainment. That's a selected sample, and your subjective perceptions as an admittedly low-skilled player aren't authoritative just because you found cherry-picked data that supports your opinion. TTB is a case in point - you're not Tier 1. That means that every time you played in those matches, it was because the matchmaker couldn't find people of Tier 1 to play with him. That happens often enough to be unsurprising - but it means that your subjective T2 experience isn't an accurate measure of a Tier 1's skill. I've played with streamers more times than you've watched videos: I know what I'm talking about, and you don't.

Tabletop Battletech is, obviously, a different game with different rules - stamping your foot and screaming, "No! I don't wanna stop playing make-believe!" doesn't change anything. You're totally convinced of your own rightness, despite players who vastly outclass you trying to explain how the game works. As somebody said earlier:

Void Angel, on 15 June 2024 - 12:31 PM, said:

Math is hard; tactics are harder - put them together... And the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in pretty strongly.

Put the 1980s rulebook down and stop arguing with the big kids who are playing the actual game from today.

PS: Quicksilver is qualified to say what the top-level community thinks about your favorite streamers - you are not, as your own description of your performance against Bassault demonstrates. Additionally, his comment wasn't a random dig against those streamers - it came in the context of your baseless claims about how streamers' highlight reels are actually their standard match performance all the time.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 June 2024 - 08:00 PM.