153 replies to this topic

[Ilfi]

Void Angel, on 26 August 2025 - 02:03 PM, said:

There are people, to this day, who insist that the Clans were balanced on release, and that every balancing adjustment since was essentially a campaign of unfair persecution.

My favorite excuse to date is "muh Table Top!". The disconnect between a balanced game and following their Mech Bible is insurmountable for some people.

After more exposure to the Clan Railgun setup, yeah it's definitely on the stronger side. While I can think of plenty of 400m range laser vomit setups that pack more power, I'm struggling to think of any sniper/ER LL flashlight range setups that are outputting more damage per peek than it. Pretty nutty stuff.

[fxd3]

The 40 point and 12 splash damage doesn't matter when I see so many players that can't keep the reticle on the enemy.

[LordNothing]

been screwing around seeing how little mech you need to carry a rail.

vgl-2
hbk-iic-dw
hbk-4h

think 50 tons is as low as you can go, as much as i wanted a rail urbie to work. 50 tons requires ammo quirks though.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

Void Angel, on 25 August 2025 - 08:18 PM, said:

She's not calling you a freeloader. She's expressing frustration because it seems to her that no matter what PGI puts out for 'mechs, people knock them for it. Which isn't wrong, though it's not always the same people.

Okay, fair.

Add Spectre to the list though (it's f***ing cool even though it's very challenging to use well)

That said - some of the screenshots etc I'm seeing people post of Railshark play are pretty obscene. More obscene than other egregious releases? Other people here are probably going to have better historical context if what they're saying about Clan release is any indication (wouldn't surprise me really).

[1453 R]

Any results page screenshot is anecdotal. Anybody can go on an ungodly tear, and the results page at the end of the match doesn't tell anyone what 'Mech or configuration was used - just that you scored a really fantastic game. Everybody gets fantastic games sometimes, even without railguns. Every "I scored 1500 damage with a railgun 'Mech! OP! KILL!" EoM screenshot could be matched with at least ten "Welp...I did a whoopsie and scored a hundred damage with my Void Killer. Guess the 'Mech needs help" screenshots.

[Void Angel]

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 27 August 2025 - 08:37 AM, said:

Okay, fair.

Add Spectre to the list though (it's f***ing cool even though it's very challenging to use well)

That said - some of the screenshots etc I'm seeing people post of Railshark play are pretty obscene. More obscene than other egregious releases? Other people here are probably going to have better historical context if what they're saying about Clan release is any indication (wouldn't surprise me really).

I hear about those screenshots, but haven't seen a ton of them. But I'm going to make a cguess from best principles - those screenshots probably fall into two categories. First, category is known players, the usual suspects that everyone in Tier 1 knows. The second category is Tier 4/5 matches where there are no higher-skilled players (aside from possibly the Railshark and their team.) The reason I'm making that guess is twofold: first, some of the Railshark's power is purely psychological. People are screaming about the damage, but the Bane exists for c-bills, and it has a number of builds that can contest the Railshark for fire superiority, even at Gauss ranges. People get sticker shock when they see the damage per shot, and they fear the Railshark - just like they fear those top players. Put the two together, and you'll get matches where the Railshark is fighting people who will try to hide before they try to fight back, and when you couple that with the positioning and marksmanship skills of a high-level player... well.

The second case arises when someone who knows what they're doing ends up matched with members of the steering wheel underhive who turn off their voice comms and don't coordinate well. Half of them will hide from the Railshark, too, but the other half won't worry enough, and that's another high-damage scenario - particularly if you're dealing with a smurf account.

That's why we have to do the math and wait for match telemetry before we decide about the Railsharks; there's just too much variation in personal anecdotes to prove much either way. People can and do put up insane, 1600-damage rounds with LRMs; they're still considered to be situational at best in higher-level play. Similarly, in the match I just got out of with my Railshark, I only got 450-ish damage while fighting for the top of Canyon Network for the whole match; assuming my aim doesn't just suck, is the Railshark underpowered? Even disregarding the weakness of anecdotes, you still don't know - I got an up arrow on that match, because my team really suffered by not having enough long-range firepower of our own to win that top fight (remember my point about Banes? Not theoretical.) So I actually did well, but how much of that was my comparative skill, how much was the team composition, and how much was just the random fortunes of chance? There's no way to know, and that's why we rely on overall match statistics.

It would be interesting to see not only how those pan out, but how they change over time as players adjust to the Railshark and lose their irrational fear.

[LordNothing]

the only indication i have that the mech was at least s-tier was how fast i rocketed up from 2/3 t3 to about 1/3 t2. if i wasn't burned out from the event i could probibly make a run at t1. though i suspect the mech is going to get nerfs next patch. that has happened to most of the good legends.

being s tier isnt exactly a rarity in this game. there are other s tier mechs that give me a similar boost if i didnt spend so much time in the f-b tiers putting games on underutilized mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 August 2025 - 04:14 PM.

[Frostee6]

Yeah, I really wanted a mech in game only available for real money, what can strip off almost all of the armor from a side torso from an unsuspecting medium mech from a km away outside sensor range. It is so much fun to play against it, absolutely brilliant idea, dont care how much dps it does.

Im waiting for the urbanmech with arrow IV nukes release, probably it will be so much fun to play against it like this one.

[Void Angel]

You know you're describing multiple 'mechs that are already in the game, right? Math more, knee-jerk less.

Your numbers are also wrong for a lot of Mediums - but hey, don't let me dissuade you from your opinion.

[Frostee6]

Void Angel, on 31 August 2025 - 08:47 PM, said:

You know you're describing multiple 'mechs that are already in the game, right? Math more, knee-jerk less.

Your numbers are also wrong for a lot of Mediums - but hey, don't let me dissuade you from your opinion.

Thats the thing, numbers doesn't matter. Why? Because doesnt matter how much DPS and max damage capable this mech is, it was already unfun to play against dual gauss rifles on a lot of maps, and this makes it worse. It is not fun or engaging getting a lot of damage from one shot from a weapon with higher range than the standard sensor range, and starting the game already handicapped. You can go do math all you want, it does not change the fact its not fun to play against it.

Edited by Frostee6, 01 September 2025 - 01:16 AM.

[Void Angel]

Numbers always matter - the entire game is numbers. What you're trying to do here is substitute your feelings for numbers, and that's not reasonable or ok. Don't think I haven't noticed your instant retreat from "this can strip most of a Medium's torso armor" to "well, uh, it's unfun, because I don't like it!" This is called a "motte and bailey defense," and is one of the established ways that irrational (or dishonest) people defend weak arguments.

[Frostee6]

Void Angel, on 01 September 2025 - 08:13 AM, said:

Numbers always matter - the entire game is numbers. What you're trying to do here is substitute your feelings for numbers, and that's not reasonable or ok. Don't think I haven't noticed your instant retreat from "this can strip most of a Medium's torso armor" to "well, uh, it's unfun, because I don't like it!" This is called a "motte and bailey defense," and is one of the established ways that irrational (or dishonest) people defend weak arguments.

first
i wrote SIDE torso, dont cherry pick what you quote if you quote someone, then suggesting the other person is dishonest or irrational or both

second
no other mech can do 64 damage (40 on the component hit) with ONE projectile from 800+ m, you cannot splash out the damage to other components from ONE projectile
the weapon is located on the top center, not even weapon convergence, or cover blocking one of your sides have to be considered, if you see something you can shoot it doesnt matter if you peek vertical or horizontal
the weapon has 5-5 slots in the side torsos, and it is not disabled when a side torso is lost, doesnt even get any negative quirks

third
this weapon (and almost all gauss weapons) have no big flashy firing effect (at least on my settings), have no projectile trail, effect or anything to see where the shot is coming from, and the hit soud is a muffled "ding" what you cant even hear if you are getting shot with other weapons

fourth
can i have my own opinion on a game i play? can i decide what is fun for me, and what is not enjoyable? the meta is pushing toward long range. me and others i play with have the same opinon, losing 40 armor from an enemy mech you dont even know about yet, and cant even fight back because of the range is not fun, not even with the dual gauss rifles

and let me know, where is the math you are talking about? where are the numbers buddy? you wrote how important the numbers are, and you did not provide any to prove how wrong i am
tell me what "multiple 'mechs that are already in the game" can do 40 damage to a component with ONE single fast moving projectile over 800m away? and the other things listed above?

Edited by Frostee6, 01 September 2025 - 12:46 PM.

[Void Angel]

No one is "cherry-picking" anything because they forgot to re-specify "SIDE" torso - you're still failing at math and trying to deflect.

Oh, and someone apparently fired the start gun for the 400m Goalpost Relay, because now you're suddenly specifying a single projectile - and trying to smuggle in splash damage about a dispute over whether the railgun can

Frostee6, on 31 August 2025 - 01:00 PM, said:

strip off almost all of the armor from a side torso

... well. Do note that your own ALL-CAPS stipulation implicitly requires us to consider only torso damage. Put the goalposts down and go sit in the penalty box.

If you knew enough about the game to generate a reasonable opinion, I wouldn't have to explain this, but here: the Railgun does 40 damage to wherever it hits, plush 12 splash. That's not going to strip any reasonable definition of "almost all" from a host of Mediums, Clan and Inner Sphere alike. Nova D, Stormcrows, Blackjacks, Enforcers, Vindicators... the list goes on. All of these 'mechs will have significant armor left from a Railgun strike after skills are factored in - and sometimes without skill nodes. But other weapon combinations can do the same, and without weapon shake - so the venerable Marauder IIC-D with its dual-gauss laser mode can inflict similar damage to an unaware "unsuspecting" 'mech in short order. A freaking Howl with dual HAG/30s can put 48 damage downrange and almost equal the Railgun's total damage with a much higher dps output. All of this was actually covered literally last page of this thread.

And which is it? Do numbers not matter, as you said, or do you now you require reams of other people doing work so you can pretend your opinion is a factual claim that needs to be disproved? If you had actually done your due diligence and looked at 'mech armor totals (as I did before I posted in the first place) you would have known that your knee-jerk complaint was empirically wrong. So you "can have" any opinion you want - but some opinions are false, and if you shout them in public, people "can have" opinions of their own about your false claims.

So don't even try "it's my opinion, and thus unassailable," when you're trying to pass your opinions off as facts of the game. When you say "it's unfun" as a fallback position from a bad argument, you don't get to straw man the objector as trying to suppress your opinion. I don't care that you have an opinion; I care that you're making false claims and bad-faith arguments. And if your opinion leads you to making bad arguments and then lying about them - should I really respect your opinion because you're loud about having it?

[Frostee6]

you quoted me false again, "what can strip off almost all of the armor from a side torso from an unsuspecting medium mech", where is the statement in this for ALMOST ALL medium mech?
you are fixated on wrongly quoting me, and not arguing about the points i made, and calling me a liar

"HAG/30s can put 48 damage downrange and almost equal the Railgun's total damage" how many projectiles are these two shots buddy? can you spread this damage out? do you need to factor in weapon convergence and the hardpoints?

"Marauder IIC-D with its dual-gauss laser mode can inflict similar damage" is this one projectile doing damage? can you spread out this damage? do you need to calculate with weapon convergence and hardpoints? do you have to keep the laser on the target component to dump all the damage in the same component?

I made my original post for PGI, hopefully they monitoring feedback, im done arguing with you, youre a clown

Edited by Frostee6, 02 September 2025 - 01:06 AM.

[Moadebe]

Void Angel, on 01 September 2025 - 08:13 AM, said:

Numbers always matter - the entire game is numbers. What you're trying to do here is substitute your feelings for numbers, and that's not reasonable or ok. Don't think I haven't noticed your instant retreat from "this can strip most of a Medium's torso armor" to "well, uh, it's unfun, because I don't like it!" This is called a "motte and bailey defense," and is one of the established ways that irrational (or dishonest) people defend weak arguments.

Just stop.

With this whole comment here just stop.

ANY game and it doesn't matter what game that is has two aspects to its development when it comes to balance and implementation. There is the numbers aspect and then the actual implementation. Not only does it matter being balanced in a numerical sense, but how does that translate to the actual gameplay. It can look great and balanced on paper ALL you want, but if its crap in its implementation it should be scrapped.

This isnt an individual experience either when it comes to his arguments. Multiple people have been sharing it and saying it for awhile that TTK is too short. That its incredibly unfun to just lose half your mech just trying to get to the fight. (incoming l2p and the other ego driven drivel.)

There are no conspiracies. There is no "whale favoritism". There IS alot of misinformation out there. Right along with people who dont know how to game dev trying to.

The biggest issue is what you said in this comment... "its all about the numbers..." People like you have effectively optimized the fun outta this game. Is that an aspect of it? Yep. Absolutely. Its how those numbers translate into actual gameplay that you and everyone who shouts "NUMBER BALANCE" fail to realize cause you think that THAT translates into fun. Not everyone is you. Same argument you just used since you just pointed out that he was saying it was unfun. What you are defending is fun for you. Not for everyone.

That doesn't make them a liar. That doesnt make them dishonest. That makes them right in their eyes. You just fail to see things from a different perspective. Much like many people. Thats just being human. We defend what we think is right.

At the end of the day .... with this whole rail gun fiasco...all of yall defending it are comparing one weapon system to the loadouts of entire mechs who used to be meta (and some still are). That to me is insanity and speaks volumes to where the mindset is of some people.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Moadebe, on 02 September 2025 - 06:59 AM, said:

This isnt an individual experience either when it comes to his arguments. Multiple people have been sharing it and saying it for awhile that TTK is too short.

Sorry but you're wrong. Do 1v1s with QP builds and tell me whether the TTK feels off or not. Often I've found that people find 1v1s have about right or too long TTK. So then that begs the question, is the issue that TTK actually is too short, or that people are getting popped by multiple people looking at a single angle.

Ironically, this was an issue that 8v8 helps solve because there are less people watching an angle, but people also can't escape bad plays. They can't fade away into the rest of the team and let them carry them.

TTK will never feel good enough for some people until we cover no longer matters and the game is just full bore DPS fest, full stop. Yes, if you take a medium you should definitely be wary of angles you peak into. You are in fact, not a tanky mech, you are on the lower half of the spectrum of tankiness. Use your mobility to poke off angles or from the flanks.



Now I will agree that some things can be unfun, as this game has numerous instances of bad mechanics that lead to unfun scenarios, but the railgun isn't any worse than any of those and guess what, it can in fact be tuned unlike those bad mechanics I mentioned earlier.

Edit: Also people are comparing the weapon to full loadouts because it is also as heavy as an entire Urbanmech, the closest in weight is the heavy gauss rifle which is only 60% of the weight of a railgun, please don't be dumb about why that isn't that crazy.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 02 September 2025 - 09:37 AM.

[Moadebe]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 02 September 2025 - 09:26 AM, said:

Sorry but you're wrong. Do 1v1s with QP builds and tell me whether the TTK feels off or not. Often I've found that people find 1v1s have about right or too long TTK. So then that begs the question, is the issue that TTK actually is too short, or that people are getting popped by multiple people looking at a single angle.

Ironically, this was an issue that 8v8 helps solve because there are less people watching an angle, but people also can't escape bad plays. They can't fade away into the rest of the team and let them carry them.

TTK will never feel good enough for some people until we cover no longer matters and the game is just full bore DPS fest, full stop. Yes, if you take a medium you should definitely be wary of angles you peak into. You are in fact, not a tanky mech, you are on the lower half of the spectrum of tankiness. Use your mobility to poke off angles or from the flanks.



Now I will agree that some things can be unfun, as this game has numerous instances of bad mechanics that lead to unfun scenarios, but the railgun isn't any worse than any of those and guess what, it can in fact be tuned unlike those bad mechanics I mentioned earlier.

Edit: Also people are comparing the weapon to full loadouts because it is also as heavy as an entire Urbanmech, the closest in weight is the heavy gauss rifle which is only 60% of the weight of a railgun, please don't be dumb about why that isn't that crazy.

This is not a 1v1 game and so that first point is irrelevant. Seriously. If balancing TTK is around a single mechs ability to 1v1 there is a problem.

A weapon that is as heavy as an urbanmech but twice the firepower as one. No. I am not being dumb about it. I am seeing it as the zero convergence issues, only spread its getting is its SRM6 skill less splash, and not even including the rest of its loadout weapon system. I can see its CD (Not much of a detriment) and weight in a 95 ton assault mech.

If they removed the splash It might be ok, but with it....nah.

[1453 R]

Moadebe, on 02 September 2025 - 06:59 AM, said:

Just stop.
...

You would prefer that all balancing and new 'Mech or equipment implementations be based solely on vibes?

Just ask ChatGPT to give it a whirl and figure it out?

Ignore numbers completely and utterly because numbers offend some people?

Yes, obviously there's player experience to consider, but the 'player experience' of "I ******* HATE SNIPERS THEY'RE EVIL FILTHY AWFUL CHEATERS NOBODY SHOULD BE ABLE TO HIT MY QUADRUPLE AC/20 35KPH STONE RHINO AT ALL EVER FOREVER OUSIDE OF 300m BECAUE I WANNT GET CLOSE AND LET IT RIP BECAUSE I FIND THAT FUN AND I DON'T THINK I SHOULD HAVE TO PUT EFFORT INTO IT!!!!" is not, in fact, a valid balance concern. That player is absolutely entitled to feel that way, but they are not entitled to force the Cauldron and PGI to do something about it.

Long range high damage loadouts exist. Their weakness is DPS. I know, I know - you hate the term "DPS", because sNiPeRs ArE uNfAiR(!!1!). But it's the truth. A sniper that gets pressed in close is at a severe disadvantage because it simply cannot output enough pressure to deal with a brawly build. This is how it HAS to be. You cannot simply get rid of all viable long-range armaments, no matter how much you and other Railgun Despisers might want to.

Deal with it.

Edited by 1453 R, 02 September 2025 - 11:20 AM.

[Void Angel]

Moadebe, on 02 September 2025 - 06:59 AM, said:

Just stop.

With this whole comment here just stop.

That doesn't make them a liar. That doesnt make them dishonest. That makes them right in their eyes. You just fail to see things from a different perspective. Much like many people. Thats just being human. We defend what we think is right.

No. Lol, no. This whole diatribe is a bunch of straw-man nonsense logic. You're opining about a romanticization of "people being human" and ignoring the actual stuff that's been happening in this thread. You even have the gall to hand-wave away all my arguments as my inability to see someone else's perspective - when you and your boy seem unwilling to countenance any "perspective" other than your own. Just saying "perspective" isn't a magic spell to get you out of having to justify claims you make - and the fact of the matter is, game balance is about numbers, gameplay is about numbers - and your own subjective prattle about "fun" is also about numbers! Even Frostee's original nonsense complaint relied on numbers - you just don't want to do the work of looking at the numbers, and instead just rely on how you feel about them. But while you may try to confuse facts with feels, it just amounts to yet another straw man. By the way, the fracking Axis Powers defended what they thought was right, for crying out loud! Doing questionable or dishonest things because you're super sincere about your desire to be right doesn't excuse misbehavior.

When someone engages in bad-faith argument, runs laps with the goalposts, and then tries to shift the burden of proof, it doesn't matter if they think they're justified. Their feelings don't make facts, and they made a numerically, empirically incorrect claim, which I challenged - and then they tried all sorts of misbehavior to justify their knee-jerk screaming fit. Frostee said "the numbers don't matter" - but they do matter. Frostee proved that himself, when he tried to retcon his own argument by smuggling in numbers! He chose to be dishonest; chose to lie and misrepresent his own posts, and mine, in order to pretend to be right.

[Void Angel]

Frostee6, on 02 September 2025 - 12:09 AM, said:

you quoted me false again, "what can strip off almost all of the armor from a side torso from an unsuspecting medium mech", where is the statement in this for ALMOST ALL medium mech?
you are fixated on wrongly quoting me, and not arguing about the points i made, and calling me a liar

You're just... throwing angry shouting out there at this point, aren't you? I mean, you did misrepresent my posts multiple times, tried to move the goalposts, tried to retcon your own argument while attempting to win a point... your arguments have not been honest. But hey, maybe you were just sloppy, and suddenly pretending to have specified "SINGLE SHOT" when you hadn't before wasn't a real lie.

But this... I'm not sure I can parse this quote. Are you trying to accuse me of misquoting you because I only quoted the part about side torsos - in response to your complaint about my not using the term "side?" Nobody's misquoting you, little guy. Partial quotations are fine so long as important context isn't left out. If I had, for example, done what you're trying to do - play on a technicality of something excluded from the quote to misrepresent what my opponent was saying... well, that would be dishonest - lying, even - but including only the part relevant to the subject at hand isn't "misquoting" you.

You tried to count both sides of the splash damage when we're talking about whether a single railgun round can strip most of a single component - the side torso - from a medium 'mech. Splash damage does not hit the same torso as the main damage. So in your complaint, that the Railgun strips almost all of an "unsuspecting medium" 'mech's side torso armor - splash damage doesn't matter. You can't just include it arbitrarily when you want to inflate the numbers you said don't matter.

For the rest of it, yes, an aware pilots can twist in order to mitigate some - but not all - of the incoming damage. Sometimes. As I pointed out literally a page or two ago, that actually depends. For example, it matters a lot whether your target is staring directly at you, or if you're hitting it from the side; you also have to look at ping and response times. Average human response to visual stimuli is 220ms, according to the literature; if average ping is 80ms, that means that you can expect 300ms from the target before he begins to respond... But this level of theorycrafting requires us to use those pesky numbers you claim don't matter - but love to selectively cite without their full context. In fact, your argument relies on those numbers (it's still wrong, but it's numerical.) In any case, pings vary based on the server and player, nor can we really assume average response times in a selected FPS sample - AND tactics and other player behaviors matter - so we have to rely on the game telemetry that PGI and the Cauldron have, but we do not. Rather than just point to feelings.

Plus, people are comparing the Railgun to entire loadouts, as Quicksilver pointed out, because it weighs as much as other 'mech's loadouts. So it's utterly reasonable for people to compare it to dual HAGs, Dual Gauss, etc. But I do find it telling that as soon as people start comparing reasonable substitutes, suddenly all the math matters, and you can't just compare one weapon system to entire loadouts, and what about convergence, and...

PGI does and should care about players' feedback concerning what they enjoy - but you weren't challenged on your subjective idea of fun, no matter how desperately you try to reframe the debate that way. You were challenged on the false claim you threw in - and you lost, because the numbers don't support you. Your treatment of data - alternately sneering at it, demanding it, and misrepresenting it - says more about you than it does about game balance or how much "fun" people are likely having. If you want to dismiss people as "clowns" who have done the work to look at the railgun rationally, might I suggest cleaning off your greasepaint and removing the rubber nose?