136 replies to this topic

[Gas Guzzler]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 06:54 AM, said:

So then why remove it in the first place?

The cauldron is a group of people yes, but they don't represent the players en masse and there's clear preferences and sentiments within the group. Don't kid me or yourself.

Of course LRM mechs will get relevant quirks, that doesn't change the anti LRM bias and the fact that the weapon system has been completely neutered.

BlueDevilspawn, on 08 January 2025 - 09:15 PM, said:

Regarding LRMs, it's as Navid says. Multiple Cauldron members spent a weekend playing the Bane 3 to see what buffs to give it. Additionally, going through all the patch notes from the past year and we can see ALL the lock-on ecosystem BUFFS that were put in place.

• ECM (Clan and IS) bubbles overall nerfed
  
• ECM (Clan and IS) lock time nerfed
  
• Clan ECM skill nodes nerfed
  
• Mechs with sensor range quirks are far more prevalent and serve as effective spotters
  
• Radar deprivation skill nodes nerfed twice
  
• BAP tonnage reduction to be easier to mount
  
• Command console/ASP sensor range capability added, better detection and spotting
  
• Plasma cannon added (ppc effects) to cancel ECM mechs
  
• Added Thunderbolts, which are the fastest lock-ons and are essentially aimbot AC5s
  
• Much older but --> took away matchscore from AMS which disincentivized bringing it on mechs

Which of these looks like a nerf to LRMs/lock-ons? Answer, none.

“Neutered”.

Sorry, I don’t see it. But if you are going to cry foul every time a mech that uses LRMs gets an insignificant nerf then I don’t know what to tell you.

[RockmachinE]

Quote

Multiple Cauldron members spent a weekend playing the Bane 3 to see what buffs to give it.

And you see no issues here? A few guys play a mech for a coupe of days then a decision is made what to do with it. Its a closed biased group of players that do not represent the playerbase of MWO. No one cares about the one 10% LRM velocity nerf and that's the point, its a waste of time and resources on something insignificant that someone clearly had a problem with. This is the precise issue of the Cauldron and ironically you've laid it out perfectly yourself. You shape the game to your liking and try to justify and pretend that you don't.

Edited by RockmachinE, 09 January 2025 - 08:11 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 07:45 AM, said:

Its a closed biased group of players that do not represent the playerbase of MWO.

What do you think game developers are? To be fair, they often aren't really players. I don't think any in the cauldron even claim to represent the playerbase.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 09 January 2025 - 08:09 AM.

[Ttly]

Gas Guzzler, on 09 January 2025 - 07:05 AM, said:

“Neutered”. Sorry, I don’t see it. But if you are going to cry foul every time a mech that uses LRMs gets an insignificant nerf then I don’t know what to tell you.

Well if it's so "insignificant" why nerf it in the first place? Frankly most of the tweaks that came from Cauldron really do come off as haphazard at times.
Just look at last year, stuff like the Viper agility nerfs (on rarely used variants at that), SR-1 heat quirk nerfed to ballistic only because of an ACboat+LPPC loadout, however many times Summoner So8 quirks got tweaked, Gargoyle finally getting ammo quirks but without addressing its other issues, etc.

[RockmachinE]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 09 January 2025 - 08:07 AM, said:

I don't think any in the cauldron even claim to represent the playerbase.

So we do have a small group of players that shape the game to their whim. They should at least drop the pretense that there's no clear bias against certain weapons and playstyles.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 08:21 AM, said:

So we do have a small group of players that shape the game to their whim. They should at least drop the pretense that there's no clear bias against certain weapons and playstyles.

There's a BIG difference between perceived bias and balancing weapons based on ease-of-use and such. Again, if they just wanted to nerf LRMs, radar derp and ECM lock time debuff wouldn't have ever been touched.

A nerf to ONE mech's velocity is not nerfing LRMs, especially when it did better as an MRM mech anyway. TBH the whining about velocity on one mech smells more like a persecution complex than an actual bias. It wasn't even the biggest nerf in patch (VND-5L, my beloved).

[RockmachinE]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 09 January 2025 - 08:32 AM, said:

TBH the whining about velocity on one mech smells more like a persecution complex than an actual bias.

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 07:45 AM, said:

No one cares about the one 10% LRM velocity nerf and that's the point

At least read the post.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 09 January 2025 - 08:32 AM, said:

radar derp and ECM lock time debuff wouldn't have ever been touched.

And yet LRMs are still completely useless.

Edited by RockmachinE, 09 January 2025 - 08:53 AM.

[kalashnikity]

PurplePuke, on 08 January 2025 - 03:33 PM, said:

I'm curious about the evidence behind removing the TBT-7M missile velocity quirk. Any cauldron folks care to explain how this decision was made?

One of the Blue Beam Bois finally got killed by one, so it had to be nerfed?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 08:52 AM, said:

At least read the post.

You can say that all you want, but clearly people care about it or they wouldn't be whining about its removal and trying to hold it up as proof to the Cauldron's "hatred" towards LRMs.

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 08:52 AM, said:

And yet LRMs are still completely useless.

Useless, no. Still situational, yes. There's no engineering for MWO, so there's a limit to changes they can make to fix them and there's a lot wrong with their functionality (just like all other lock-ons).

[RockmachinE]

Not a single post laments the nerf itself, people are curious about the reasoning behind such an insignificant nerf. They are, as they should be, critical of the cauldron's methods and motivations.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 09 January 2025 - 09:02 AM, said:

Useless, no. Still situational, yes. There's no engineering for MWO, so there's a limit to changes they can make to fix them and there's a lot wrong with their functionality (just like all other lock-ons).

The specifics of lock on mechanics are a different debate, but clearly they've worked well enough, otherwise LRMs wouldn't have been meta...twice, according to the age of your account you'd have been there to witness it.

If you want to call LRMs unique properties having been rendered almost useless as "situational" ok, but it seems like quite the stretch.

[kalashnikity]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 08:21 AM, said:

So we do have a small group of players that shape the game to their whim. They should at least drop the pretense that there's no clear bias against certain weapons and playstyles.

They've openly stated their distaste for LRMS, multiple times in past threads.

"It's a Low Skill weapons, so you won't be allowed to use it effectively, and if it gets used effectively we will nerf it further"

[kalashnikity]

Are all Stalkers getting actual functional missile doors, or just the clan version?

[Gas Guzzler]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 09:28 AM, said:

Not a single post laments the nerf itself, people are curious about the reasoning behind such an insignificant nerf. They are, as they should be, critical of the cauldron's methods and motivations.

Maybe they just wanted Tbolt trebuchets to be more effective against lights.

[RockmachinE]

BlueDevilspawn, on 08 January 2025 - 09:15 PM, said:

Which of these looks like a nerf to LRMs/lock-ons? Answer, none.

You made a nice looking yet disingenuous list. A good number of the points are irrelevant to LRMs. The others make little to no difference in practice.

Plasma to cancel ECM effects is not relevant to indirect fire. AMS score nerfs were done to prevent event farming. Sensor range, which is in quite a few points on the list, is not relevant to LRM usage since they are no good at very long ranges and easy to evade to begin with. BAP does not apply to LRMs at all.

Its a system that's been nerfed to oblivion, its been done because of personal preferences and bias and this is the real issue.

[Tiy0s]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 07:45 AM, said:

And you see no issues here? A few guys play a mech for a coupe of days then a decision is made what to do with it. Its a closed biased group of players that do not represent the playerbase of MWO. No one cares about the one 10% LRM velocity nerf and that's the point, its a waste of time and resources on something insignificant that someone clearly had a problem with. This is the precise issue of the Cauldron and ironically you've laid it out perfectly yourself. You shape the game to your liking and try to justify and pretend that you don't.

Game developers balance their games the same way. I play MWO with specific focuses in mind to see how aspects are performing so I can make an informed decision on changes.

So what separates the legitimacy of Cauldron from the legitimacy of PGI devs like myself? Is it the lack of data? Cauldron has full data on everything in MWO(minus player specific data for privacy reasons obviously). If they want metrics, sales comparisons, QP data, all of that I give to them when they ask for it. We usually have reviews once every three months. Is it the fact that they're not PGI? Everyone at PGI empowers them and trusts them to balance the game, effectively they have the authority of PGI when it comes to balancing.

As someone who works with Cauldron frequently, I can assure you that there's no sinister cabal that wants to disenfranchise the players. They care about the balance and meta health of the game and everyone there also has their own opinions and beliefs on what constitutes as a healthy state of the meta. As a result, there's a lot of debates, discussions, etc as they try to democratically reach a consensus on what to do.

Or does their lack of legitimacy come from the fact that you do not like their changes?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 09:28 AM, said:

Not a single post laments the nerf itself, people are curious about the reasoning behind such an insignificant nerf. They are, as they should be, critical of the cauldron's methods and motivations.

Critical yes, but this brown sea is anything but sure let me show you all of the people who were "curious"

CFC Conky, on 08 January 2025 - 12:40 PM, said:

Why the nerf to the TBT-7M?

Tell me where the bad LRM touched you.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

RockmachinE, on 08 January 2025 - 01:55 PM, said:

Pretty hilarious that even an insignificant LRM quirk gets removed. Very telling. Cauldron literally HATES lrms, its infuriating.

Purple was the first to NOT jump to conclusions out of anyone questioning it. Jumping to conclusions isn't very "critical" if you ask me.

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 09:28 AM, said:

The specifics of lock on mechanics are a different debate, but clearly they've worked well enough, otherwise LRMs wouldn't have been meta...twice, according to the age of your account you'd have been there to witness it.

If you want to call LRMs unique properties having been rendered almost useless as "situational" ok, but it seems like quite the stretch.

LRMs have never been meta, but they've been broken more than twice (the number of LRMpocalypse date back pretty far).

Edit: Sorry I blocked the 2018 WC out of my mind, but in that stupid stock abomination LRMs were meta, but that's pretty much it.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 09 January 2025 - 10:10 AM.

[Tiy0s]

Hawk819, on 08 January 2025 - 06:48 PM, said:

Jaime Wolf's Archer is coming. Finally! Too bad it's not a Hero variant. Which would be nice.

The 4 dragoon mechs are actually a booster pack! Which means that they will be coming out for MC/Cbills later this year, albeit without the cbill boost. You'll be able to have your Jaime Wolf Archer, just without the camo if you wait for a bit

[Samziel]

The patch is full of great buffs to bad mechs and all some of you guys see is one tiny nerf to missiles on a single mech variant. You really love to whine.

kalashnikity, on 09 January 2025 - 09:28 AM, said:

They've openly stated their distaste for LRMS, multiple times in past threads.

"It's a Low Skill weapons, so you won't be allowed to use it effectively, and if it gets used effectively we will nerf it further"

I dont think I've seen a Cauldron member say this. Or, at the very least you're greatly exaggerating what has been said.

Edited by Samziel, 09 January 2025 - 10:20 AM.

[RockmachinE]

Tiy0s, on 09 January 2025 - 10:05 AM, said:

Or does their lack of legitimacy come from the fact that you do not like their changes?

The issue is a lack of transparency, lack of greater MWO community involvement and clear bias. Whether I personally like the changes or not is irrelevant. The problem is that a small group of players have been given agency over game balance and direction. This gives the group the ability to project their bias and shape the game to their liking at the exclusion of everyone else.

Quote

Everyone at PGI empowers them and trusts them to balance the game, effectively they have the authority of PGI when it comes to balancing

This is precisely the problem. A group of players shouldn't have this level of control and empowerment to begin with. Any decisions made should be run by the community as a whole in a forum that is easily accessible to this community. This is the gist of the issue.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RockmachinE, on 09 January 2025 - 10:21 AM, said:

The issue is a lack of transparency, lack of greater MWO community involvement and clear bias. Whether I personally like the changes or not is irrelevant. The problem is that a small group of players have been given agency over game balance and direction. This gives the group the ability to project their bias and shape the game to their liking at the exclusion of everyone else.

That's literally what all game developers do......have a vision for what they want the game to be and execute. You are free to disagree with their vision of the game, but blaming them for executing on their vision is........and odd thing to complain about, especially given PGI's historical lack of one.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 09 January 2025 - 10:29 AM.