141 replies to this topic

[Centauri78]

MISC Changes

• AMS missile destroyed will now reward 40 C-Bills per missile shot down.

Yes! Now I actually have an incentive to spend tonnage and slots on AMS. Question though, will AMS give match score in addition to C-Bills? Does AMS already contribute to match score? I don't normally use AMS, so I don't know.

Edited by Centauri78, 14 February 2025 - 07:25 AM.

[benben10]

Katrina Steiner, on 14 February 2025 - 06:29 AM, said:

Minor and maybe silly but you get 40 cbills per missile destroyed but playing an objective for capture points is only 10 cbills.

True but only 1 person gets C-bills for the missile. Everyone gets C-bills for a capture point, whether they helped doing any capturing or not.

What are the rewards per second spent on capturing, if any?

Edited by benben10, 14 February 2025 - 07:25 AM.

[The Chancelor]

Samziel, on 14 February 2025 - 01:49 AM, said:

You're not convinced when someone who's making the changes tells you how it is? They're nerfing Stone Rhinos. This would be an insane buff, a HSL+9.

Just dreaming

[rascje]

Lepestok, on 14 February 2025 - 03:15 AM, said:

Personally, I'm all for nerfs.

Personally, I'm very... bored, tired, disappointed with the eternal changes to quirks so... why not end it and remove them completely permanently?..
To customize the 'mech there is the skill tree (which could be fixed much better at this point). Why should I be encouraged to use a certain weapon on a 'mech because for ballistics, for example, there is a quirk only for a certain category (ac or uac or lbx or rac or...)?
However, the eternal changes to weapons will continue so... they can be enough, right?

Edited by rascje, 15 February 2025 - 03:34 AM.

[BlueDevilspawn]

Martaloc, on 14 February 2025 - 06:31 AM, said:

Was ever a meta mech? No.

The Aksum which you are referring to (like the Exe Sovereign and the Bullshark 6) is the absolute pinnacle of dakka meta mech. Saying it's not meta is a non-starter philosophically. It indicates you do not understand its strengths or how it's an absolute farm machine in QP.

[Far Reach]

-Ramrod-, on 13 February 2025 - 03:58 PM, said:

As usual more unnecessary nerfs with bs excuses. You're not balancing anything you're taking away peoples fun. You're borderline false advertising. You can whine at me all you want but at the end of the day I represent a massive portion of this community. Whether you agree or not people feel like this. Instead of doing nerfs suggested by the arrogant elites and specially treated streamers and nerds who sit at their computers with calculators how about listening to us commonfolk huh? How about a Cauldron of Tier 3 to 5's solely? And I would looooove a list of Cauldron members. I'm not taking Big Brother at their word, sorry. "We assure you the Cauldron is balanced." Not good enough. List of members. Let's see if you're really telling the truth. Don't want people attacked? You screwed yourself by creating the damn thing. This feels like a friggin' shadow government. This is why people are leaving and have left. Because they are preached at by a nebulous unnamed group of elite tryhards. Complete transparency is required.
I have far more respect for the opinion of a Tier 3-5 because that's the majority of the playerbase. A lot of money comes from that group of people and the more you preach at them the more that will leave or NOT spend anymore money on the game. I know because I've literally known dozens of people who have done this. Attack me all you want. I don't give a damn what a tryhard has to say. You're out of touch and you don't want to listen. And PGI capitulates to you too much. The fact that people like my posts obviously shows there is a section of people that are being ignored.
And don't give me that "Facts and math don't care about your feelings." crap. Yea that's true, obviously. But if a group of people feel a certain way that closes their wallets doesn't it? You may be right but that's not how people FEEL. People are being flamed/harrassed/made fun of/automatically dismissed BY YOU because "Trust us, we know what's right for you." This is a game. And feelings matter more than facts whether you like it or not. It shouldn't but it does. A game like this survives on how people feel. On if they are having FUN or not.
You can explain the nerfs all you want. It will fall on deaf ears. People will lose interest in the mech and not use it altogether and feel like they've wasted money. Which I've read these forums for years...people do feel that way. I'm not saying only capitulate to those feelings. But a better balance needs to be found.
In conclusion people don't want a nebulous unnamed group of people making ALL the decisions. "Trust us, we know what's best for the game." And you know what's best for a game? People having fun. And fun equals money. And money equals a game. Math doesn't save a game. Fun does. And if people aren't having fun. You won't get money. And if you don't get money you won't have a game. And I'm quite sure that is a reason, maybe a small reason, but a reasoning nonetheless for the current layoffs. It may be unspoken. But it's there.

PREACH ON, BROTHER. Because the truth burns them.

[DoucheNugg3t]

a bright red head-shot indicator is a priority ? wonder where that idea came from ??? do we get a counter too ?

[Hawk819]

Centauri78, on 14 February 2025 - 07:20 AM, said:

MISC Changes

• AMS missile destroyed will now reward 40 C-Bills per missile shot down.

Yes! Now I actually have an incentive to spend tonnage and slots on AMS. Question though, will AMS give match score in addition to C-Bills? Does AMS already contribute to match score? I don't normally use AMS, so I don't know.

This long overdue, and should've been done right from the very word go.

[GreyNovember]

Can we get the Firemoth next to other mechs, for comparison?

And ideally, how it looks when you're in the cockpit of said larger mech, trying to shoot it as it closes to <200m for ideal small laser range?

Because my kneejerk reaction to those mechlab shots is I'm going to be losing half my weapons VERY easily with how shooting someone running parallel to you works. Enemy lasers and shots will be more likely to hit the side trailing behind where you run, and that's a REALLY big side; probably more so if there's more guns strapped to it.

[The Chancelor]

oltalmazo, on 14 February 2025 - 06:22 AM, said:

If your goal is to kill this game, then you meking a good work!!!

[color=#1F1F1F]Monkeys working in your office?![/color] Or your mantra is every morning in the office that's.

We need to the kill game, We need to kill the game, we dont lisen to the community!
We are making beater IS mechs and we nerf the Calns and more high weapon damage???

What will be next step. Clan mechs will hawe no armor and you can only shoot one weapon?

And you dont care the important things. The mech hight, high alpha build. But i think your solution is to nerf only the clan mechs. All the meta build in the In IS side use 1-2 binary
and 4-6 medium laser. At least 70-80 alha and i can shoot 2-3 time befor overheat. In the Clan side 1-2 heavy laser 4-6 medium laser the alpha is 60-70 and i can shoot 1 and next time i am shout down. IS mechs have 30%-40% more armor then Clan mechs. The IS mechs have heat quirks most of them -10% or higher, and ballistic, missel couldon reduction. The clan heve none or almost none. This is the unbalance...

I loved this game, i played it all the time but it is sad to see the buff and nerfs are so one sided. Because one or two people are thinking this game shoud be like FORTNITE.

I guess haters gonna hate.

There are perfect reasons to nerf clan mechs. Like in the lore clan tech is far advanced. IS mechs would be out of the game without buffs and nerfs.

[Martaloc]

BlueDevilspawn, on 14 February 2025 - 07:55 AM, said:

The Aksum which you are referring to (like the Exe Sovereign and the Bullshark 6) is the absolute pinnacle of dakka meta mech. Saying it's not meta is a non-starter philosophically. It indicates you do not understand its strengths or how it's an absolute farm machine in QP.

Nah budy ,you live in a dreamworld.
Many people bught Aksum because the Stone Rhinos were popular, the collector pack and addons were well received , so when the legend was out many people bought it.
The Bullshark 6 , Nighstar 10P, Jagermech 6DD, Fafnir Juggernaut was always superior to compared Aksum.
Better quirks and the qustionable IS AC 2 buff which reduced the critical slot to one, more fun for the IS, we see the pattern here as always.
So only to many people bought the Aksum but newer was too good.
How many Aksum see you inte QP ? Because im not much.
Funny thing that even the Juggernaut and jagermechs extinct from the QP because the binary lasers with Ermeds much more effecient with the high pinpoint alphas as the facetime dakkamechs.
So you know wery few and poorly.

[Tiy0s]

Martaloc, on 14 February 2025 - 10:59 AM, said:

Nah budy ,you live in a dreamworld.
Many people bught Aksum because the Stone Rhinos were popular, the collector pack and addons were well received , so when the legend was out many people bought it.
The Bullshark 6 , Nighstar 10P, Jagermech 6DD, Fafnir Juggernaut was always superior to compared Aksum.
Better quirks and the qustionable IS AC 2 buff which reduced the critical slot to one, more fun for the IS, we see the pattern here as always.
So only to many people bought the Aksum but newer was too good.
How many Aksum see you inte QP ? Because im not much.
Funny thing that even the Juggernaut and jagermechs extinct from the QP because the binary lasers with Ermeds much more effecient with the high pinpoint alphas as the facetime dakkamechs.
So you know wery few and poorly.

While the BSK-6, NSR-10P, and JM6-DD are all good, nothing really came close to the Aksum when it released. It's partially my fault since I took the lead on designing the mech but it really had it all. Quirks don't matter too much when you have 8 ballistic with mounts and convergence like that.

Historically, when looking at quick play stats of mech performance, the Aksum has been almost top of the chart every cycle since it came out. In fact, in the past 2 cycles it beat the BSK-6, NSR-10P, and JM6-DD in average damage. If you are curious, we publicly post our QP stat gathers of mech performance in quick play. We don't base balance purely off of there but it is good to get ideas of what mechs could be over performing from that list. I encourage you to give it a read to double check the validity of your statements.

https://docs.google....#gid=1582927142

IS AC2 has always been one slot in tabletop. How do you mean it was a questionable buff when we're just following the tabletop stat for that weapon? I could be wrong, but to my knowledge they have always been one slot in MWO and tabletop.

I dislike the common notion that there is a Clan or Inner Sphere bias among balance. The reason why Inner Sphere mechs get more quirks is because their base equipment stats are worse. Worse engines, worse weapons, larger items causing more slot restrictions, etc. If both sides got equal quirks, clan mechs would simply rule the game and there would be no variety whatsoever.

Let's take the examples of mechs you said were good dakka boats in the Inner Sphere and compare them to the Aksum. Mind you, the Aksum performs better than all of these examples according to empirical quick play data. That is not a debatable fact.

Aksum quirks(as of January patch, Feb hasn't hit the game yet):
- Armor
- Screen shake -100%
- Crit chance -20%

Nightstar 10P
- Armor
- Cooldown -15%
- Crit chance -10%
- Range +10%
- Weapon Velocity +10%
- UAC Jam Chance -30%
- UAC Jam Duration -25%
I'm not including the RAC quirks because they don't impact the balance of this mech. The best build on it is 2 UAC5 2 UAC2 and enough ammo to siege an entire country.

Bullshark 6(as of Jan patch)
- Armor
- Weapon Velocity +10%
- AC Cooldown -10%

Jagermech DD(not near as strong as the above three but you included it so I'm adding it here)
- Armor/structure
- Range +15%
- Ballistic Cooldown -10%
- UAC Jam Chance -20%


All of these mechs are worse than the Aksum, there's no question about it. Yet their quirks are much, much stronger. While there are many more factors that go into the quirks a mech gets(mech geometry, hitboxes, hardpoint totals, etc), the matter of the fact is that clan tech is just so much stronger by default that you have to give decent quirks to many IS mechs. The strongest ones can hold their own with less, such as the Annihilator, but even they still need something. If you gave quirks like you see on Inner Sphere dakka boats to Clan dakka boats such as the MCII-B, SR-AK, BSK-M, MAD-IIC-DN, KDK-3, or NTG you would see mechs that are game breaking OP.

A Clan or Inner Sphere bias is not the way to describe MWO balance. The way to describe is "using quirks in an attempt to keep Inner Sphere mechs viable in the face of Clans and ensure all mechs are playable in a genre where all mechs, regardless of their tech origin, are created unequal."

[Shineplasma]

Martaloc, on 14 February 2025 - 10:59 AM, said:

Nah budy ,you live in a dreamworld.
Many people bught Aksum because the Stone Rhinos were popular, the collector pack and addons were well received , so when the legend was out many people bought it.
The Bullshark 6 , Nighstar 10P, Jagermech 6DD, Fafnir Juggernaut was always superior to compared Aksum.
Better quirks and the qustionable IS AC 2 buff which reduced the critical slot to one, more fun for the IS, we see the pattern here as always.
So only to many people bought the Aksum but newer was too good.
How many Aksum see you inte QP ? Because im not much.
Funny thing that even the Juggernaut and jagermechs extinct from the QP because the binary lasers with Ermeds much more effecient with the high pinpoint alphas as the facetime dakkamechs.
So you know wery few and poorly.

I am sometimes amazed that someone could state so many ignorant things about the state of this game.

This is one of those times.

The Aksum has consistently been one of the most broken gigafarming mechs for quick play since release.

It continues to be such an outlier, despite multiple nerfs. The datasets coming out of QP aren't perfect, but the trend set by the QP data dumps since the Aksum's release clearly backs this. It also squares with my anecdotal experience.

The Aksum was overtuned and downright pay to win from day 1. The exact type of release I was afraid of when the Legend program was announced. Luckily they haven't all been that way, but the Aksum, along with the release Scattershot and the Scaleshot stand out as the worst offenders to date.

Anyone in this thread who thinks differently either doesn't know how to pilot or configure their mech and is massively coping about it.

[Rhaelcan]

PiVoR, on 13 February 2025 - 05:00 PM, said:

Lights buffs and asssult nerfs.. classic

Some light mechs got hit with nerfs too. Look harder, my guy

simon1812, on 13 February 2025 - 06:05 PM, said:

hmmm...nope, no addition of melee on this one, it's alright, baby steps.

Never getting melee in mwo, if you want it, its there in mw5.

Znozoic, on 13 February 2025 - 08:00 PM, said:

Thank god, another patch without touching scaleshot... I'm still waiting to see someone with the build that cauldron suggested....

It's been touched enough, a lot weaker than when it first released.

[Meatywand]

First off, thank you to The Supreme Evil Tossic Shadow Cabal Cauldron and Company for taking the time and effort to try and make the game a bit better, and a +1 thanks for explaining the reasoning behind changes. As a very casual player who isn't active in the Discord channels I know there's a lot I don't grasp, and appreciate the insight from those familiar with the game and it's mechanics

Also wanted to give a heartfelt thank you for being brave and applying some, in my opinion, healthy (if conservative) _nerfs, knowing how even mentioning that word gets some people riled up. It's something I feel is needed (finally seeing the Warthog and Blackjack 1X getting toned down a bit!), and wanted to give at least one voice of support for attempting to level the field in a way that isn't just adding more buffs to underperforming weapon systems and mechs (I understand those have their place and purpose as well, but it does feel a bit silly to see an Orion with a billion CT armor just so it can stand a chance in the modern racetrack battlefield)

So yeah, I wanted to leave a little positive comment about this patch and it's general intentions. As much as I laugh about the memey overtuned stuff we sometimes get, it's nice to see the overperformers do get reined in a little and aren't always relegating other mechs and weapons to obscurity

[Wraith 1]

The bright red headshots are going to be amazing! I've always wanted a more reliable way to tell if a kill was a headshot without waiting for paperdoll data, but I never would've expected something like this even back when the game was getting code engineering time! My VTR-9A1 is going to become a dopamine farming machine this patch.

The gauss buffs make sense, as they're very underwhelming on their own and cooldown doesn't affect heat-limited gauss+energy builds much, but I wonder if LGR or SBGR will be worth using after this patch. They already seem a little pointless aside from being an HSL loophole, and even those builds are fairly uncommon.

The nerfs all seem fair and warranted, even if the TBT-5J and SR-6 nerfs make me a little sad. If we're going to limit the upfront alpha of Clan laser builds though, I'd like to see the C-DHS nerf reverted. Speaking as someone with roughly 4-to-1 IS to Clan mechs in my garage, it makes comparison between the two tech bases even more confusing, and IS already has a ton of strong sustained DPS options. Even if some Clan weapons have to be nerfed a little more (seriously why are the C-AC/2 and 5 just better than the IS versions? Why is the P-AC/4 1 shell when the L-AC/5 is 2? *angry IS player noises*) It'd be great if 1 heatsink was 1 heatsink. Even better, make the heat skill trees equal too, then maybe I could compare the sustained DPS of a Clan mech and an IS mech with only 1 Excel page.

Edited by Wraith 1, 14 February 2025 - 02:47 PM.

[Luminios]

Okay, because it annoys me to no end that some people are crying about the SR nerfs - the Stone Rhinos deserve the nerfs, they will still be very good - probably the best assaults in the game, together with the Bullsharks.

Different Stone Rhinos have different strengths, but the stand-outs are the -1, the -6 and the Aksum. I suppose the Koloss also reigns supreme over assault brawl, but assault brawl is just much more difficult to pull off in the QP environment.

The SR-1 is usually played as a variation of this build. It has an alpha strike of 55 with 6 splash damage. 40 of that is in the dorsal guns with perfect convergence. 55 is a very high amount of PPFLD - pinpoint front loaded damage - at 600m. All the mechs with 2 Heavy Gauss Rifles only have 50, and also only to 280m. 3 Heavy PPCs are 45, but they get a similar range. Without HSL quirks or ignoring heat penalties you are not going to get more pinpoint damage into .11 seconds.

While PPFLD mechs usually have lower DPS and/or bad sustain, the SR-1 can rely on the 4cAC10 to provide 40 ice cold damage every 2 seconds. I'll post some numbers in the format of PPLFD / Peak DPS / Sustained DPS. For the SR-1 with the build I posted above those numbers are 55 / 24.32 / 19.56.

6AC5 Mauler-MX90 30 / 24.35 / 12.29 archetypal dps assault
4HPPC Awesome-8Q 45(60) / 13.64 / 6.43 HPPC pinpoint assault
2SBG 2HPPC Corsair-7A 60 / 15.96 / 12.81 assault without true ppfld

As we can see the SR-1 is superior to these mechs, which usually have some significant disadvantages not captured by the three stats I chose - none of them have JJs, they all have terrible hitboxes compared to the Rhino. The Awesome goes a bit faster, but has to carry an IS XL engine. Neither of the three examples is a bad mech either - they are all good QP mechs, able to hold their own.

The SR-6 on the other hand is pretty much the top end of how good clan laservomit can be. It is a 100t battlemech with 15E hardpoints. The most common build for it was probably either 6cERLL 7cERML or 4cLPL 7cERML. Since the last patch 14cMPL is also popular, but I don't think it is really problematic. There are also gigavomit builds like 2HLL 2cLPL 10cERML, but they are less common.

For laservomit builds the most useful stats to look at are the alpha, the duration and how many alphas you can do back to back. For the 4cLPL 7cERML build those stats are 94, 1.4 (0.94 if ignoring HSL) and 2. On IS side that type of firepower can't really be matched, but it also very sustainable, and goes pretty fast with its 350XL engine. I would say the Seraph, comes reasonably close (obviously missing a cERML), while having worse mounts and worse hitboxes. On IS side there is the Stonecrusher, which is similarly powerful offensively, but considerably slower and without a JJ. The MAD-4A can also do very high alpha laser vomit (3BLC 5LL), but really for anything but Seraph and Stonecrusher you are not going to do ~90 damage laser alphas back to back.

The 6cERLL 7cERML build has a strong ranged presence while still being a servicable laservomit mech when pushed - something other cERLL boats like the Rancor or IS Stalker and Battlemaster struggle with.

Finally, the Aksum is one of the best DPS mechs in the game, only surpassed by the Bane-1 and the Sovereign - both of which have very clear drawbacks that hold them back. The Bane is limited to a 300 rated engine and doesn't have JJs, the Sovereign is just as slow, and while it can jump it has ****** mounts. They also both have much worse geometry than the Aksum. The Bane can easily lose all its weapons if its RT is taken off e.g. 8cUAC2 builds and 4cUAC2 4cUAC5 builds have DPS that leaves most good assaults in the dust. Direwolf, Annihilator - even Bullshark can't keep up unless using gimmicky builds that have a big DPS number but are otherwise useless. Because we start fights with all our UACs unjammed the Aksum has absolutely crazy DPS that will drop down to a still insane average DPS over the first couple seconds of firing. I don't really model that fact well yet in my own calculator. I think the Blackhawk showed this very well on its release though, so I will use it as an example of what I mean before I give the numbers for the Aksum.

A 2UAC5 Blackhawk has three different states - both UAC5s are not jammed, one is jammed or both are jammed. Depending on which state the mech is in its DPS at release was either 49.26, 24.63 or 0. The average DPS a calc would give us was 28.65. In reality though, every Blackhawk starts at close to 50dps and goes to cover once both guns jam or it overheats. There is a good chance you get to peek someone, shoot him for two seconds with 50 DPS and then you dip. This is much less likely with the number of UACs the Aksum carries, but it is worthwhile to keep in mind that they begin every encounter with crazy damage, so we do really well in short exchanges - the Aksum is very bursty beyond what its average damage would suggest.

For the 8cUAC2 build the DPS at the start of an exchange is 49.16, which should over time even out to the average of 28.73. For the 4cUAC2 4cUAC5 build it is 52.74 at the beginning and 32.47 average. Please remember that a 6AC5 Mauler has a consistent DPS of 24.35. I hope these numbers illustrate just how dominant an Aksum can be in a lot of fights. On top of that it also has extremely good convergence and a very good staring profile - most people are going to ST an Aksum over trying to CT it. This might feel like your ST are just coming off super easily all the time, but in other mechs you'd just be dead with your CT gone instead.

Idk, we finally get some nerfs to the stronger assaults and people are yapping about those mechs not actually being strong. You are just telling on yourself. You are screaming at the top of your lungs that you don't care to engage with this game and can't accept that sometimes when something goes wrong it is your mistake and not the game's.

Edited by Luminios, 14 February 2025 - 04:04 PM.

[Sonsofabastages]

Sweet. Appreciate you taking the nerf bat to those in need. Given balance around quickplay, I understand the need to over-quirk light mechs, but it still feels weird. Have you guys considered meta-balance options like bonus c-bills or sweet titles / achievements / MC for racking up points in light mechs?

Also. Add cosmetics to the main store as a drop down with bolt-ons, colors, cockpit items, and camo patterns (same way that you have a light/medium/heavy/assault drop down for mechs). Add them to the normal sale rotation to capitalize on FOMO. Other free-to-play games have looked into this, and new in-game options (like new mechs) take a lot of dev time and monetize poorly, but cosmetics make real money.

[WOLF TooGoooD]

Keep nerfing and keep losing players. The deaf bell of every game that is a decade old.

[Flyby215]

InnerSphereNews, on 13 February 2025 - 02:47 PM, said:

Trebuchet

• TBT-5J
  
  • Reduced STD Laser duration to -40% (from -50%)

We got a little carried away with that one.

Aww, is that really needed? It's not like I'm ever in a match, see a Trebuchet on the other side and think to myself; "well crap, that's a big threat!"


First time seeing that data sheet; really cool! I didn't know the Bushwacker was so popular, and the Catapult too? Really?? Hm. Okay, I can see the 5J overperforming on the chart; but I guess my point still stands. Who's really threatened by a Treb?