6 replies to this topic

[Falconer]

Well it's been quite some time since I wandered by these forums. Was surprised after I was told game went to open beta to see I had also been invited into the closed... oh well.

Just some feedback on the way the game plays out right now... I'll give due credit for it's beta status.

Some things I like.
I like the way beam lasers operate... the damage over time mechanic works much better than many other games I've seen. That much said, they should fire for longer and you should need to hold the beams on target longer. This would make them less effective against light mechs as you try and hold them steady on them especially if they're quickly dashing out of arc. That said, the beam mechanic does not work well for PPC's... they do too much in one big pulse, maybe if something more akin to the old slower moving energy ball flying down the field more like the AC type guns which also do their damage in a single big shot you need to lead.

Which goes to pulse lasers... pulse lasers firing their damage shorter bursts would be a great way to differentiate. In the board-game the entire point of pulse lasers was for use against small hard to hit targets. Getting more of their damage out in a smaller period of time is the best way to do this in a twitch game. It would mean that a light mech up against pulses would take a much bigger pounding than against beams.

Needing spotters for LRM IDF. I've always been a huge fan of steel rain. And I've always loved missile weapons for their flexibility just by swapping up ammo types. However, that said... both the spotting mechanics and the LRM's are badly broken. (touch on it in the dislikes).

The variable fire time mechanic is something straight out of the old solaris system. It works well for keeping DPS for underperforming boardgame weapons within viable ranges and making them usable picks. That said though... AC/2 or AC/5 should really only have half the DPS of an AC/10 or 20. Simply because you can fit two of them for the same weight when you have the option to do so...

I'm on the fence with the whole hardpoint mechanic though. It fits with the above point of with a single hard point you can only fit a single AC... or laser or whatever... so you're forced to go with bigger to fill out your tonnage. Though it does stop the old solaris VII problem of a 100 ton mech armed with as many MG's as space would permit.

Things I'm on the fence on:
Mech Xp and unlocks... needing you to have 3 variants to upgrade one core mechs more advanced pilot upgrades. Especially with a mech bay limited to 4.

Lock-on mechanics... I think the lock-ons should not be automatic hits. It's what singularly makes streaks so problematic and LRM's. Some kind of hit percentage should be in play based on mech size and speed. You get some 25 ton commando speeding across the field at 120kph... something similar to the old base-to-hit would work. Say a 10% chance per missile at the extreme in the wide open. Something simple... for every 25kph... -10% chance. if firing indirect -10%, then some kind of target sizing factor last.

Speed is not life due to the above... speed is only life close in where you can make angular rates really high and make twitch, fire arcs, and tracking an issue.

Putting more 'scatter' on normal shots wouldn't hurt either. Instead of always pin-point aiming where you aim. At longer ranges this would make a bigger deal for smaller targets.

On the fence on AMS mechanics... it's almost mandatory for surviving LRM swarms... don't know if it works against SRM's especially streaks as well. Need to play with it more to learn more. The high capacity is kinda necessary since it triggers for any hostile missile near you even if it's not aimed at you.

Dislikes:
If you don't have an organized gang... don't bother to play. This really needs to be fixed badly. Not only that the user interface is not friendly at all for finding and joining groups. Newbie mechs and singletons pretty much exist only to be meat for the other players to farm cbillls on. This is because the devs have pointedly broke core game mechanics and turned what should be quite playable mechs like the centurion into deathtraps. It's no fun being rofltstomped because your team is outtonned badly by the group of 4 atlas's chuging together over a hill into the scoring area.

Shake and blackout mechanics... they're too pronounced and give too much advantage to things that do it.

LRM and scouting mechanics. From the mechlab armor and structure is apparently doubled from book. Fine... But there is no excuse for an LRM-20 doing 40 damage if all the missiles hit! The damage is doubled AND the damage potential of a ton of ammo went up 300%!!! (board game... lRm's get 120 point of damage per ton... of which you'll normally score about 50 if you're good... when you hit, just over half the missiles normally hit). But here they're at two damage per missile! SRM's also had their damage increased but they stay close to the book 100 missiles per ton. So, in short... LRM's get too many missiles per ton and doubled damage per missile is too much! Also it would be better if they launched at say a 45degree arc... rather than firing straight forward along the ground like terrain following cruise missiles.

That said... if you double the amount of Armor/structure on mechs... the amount of damage per ton of ammo needs to be doubled as well. Otherwise you give energy weapons an undue advantage since they don't run out. if you can only chew through 200 points of damage ever with a purely ammo based mech you'll never due anything to the mech that needs 300 damage to go down. I think this is one of the problems in prior mechwarrior type games.

Light mechs should be harder to notice and lock onto at range. it's the only way to make them viable scouts. In any twitch game, the benefits accrue very quickly to the assaults why... in the board game speed is life... I can count on only 1 in 10 of shots fired at me to actually hit. In a twitch game that's more like half or more! So light mechs get screwed over simply because they can't use their movement and the 'quantum' nature of board game movement to stay out of firing arcs while they get hitscanned to death by big mechs. As it is, they're as easy to notice as a big mech and can't take the inevitable LRM hate which comes there way even with AMS equipped.

So in much shorter words... the bigger the mech the farther away sensors should pick it up. The smaller, the shorter. This would enhance the scoutting spotting mechanic. Instead of making large sniping mechs the best spotters able to tank some damage while dishing it out.

Heat mechanics are completely broken. Small lasers have a 100% increase in heat... from book, yet the same damage. DHS's are completely broken and render attempts at playing a laser boat dead letter. Seriously running + 4 SMALL LASERS should not over heat a jenner with dhs upgrade and extra's installed. Energy weapons really need their heat returned to book values. Balance them by changing their fire rate... not their heat. Even cold maps where heat dissipation should be enhanced to give energy mechs an edge over ammo don't seem to. (i can see making hot and cold maps where heat dissipation is slightly more or less effective than normal to give better conditions for various weapon types).

This may not be canon, but DHSs have always been the single biggest and most effective upgrade available to any mech in BT once available. I'd suggest that all mechs be equipped with them or this be cheap upgrade merely for balance sake. Because lets face it.. it's almost an i-win button for most designs. (excepting gauss boats... but the way the game works even lB/10 boats suffer from heat problems!). I don't think there can be any balance between single and double. This tech disparity is too much.

Too many chassis of the same weight and speed... and not enough difference. I rate as one of my mistakes buying a jenner. Why? Because the hit profile makes it too easy to blow it's cockpit or CT to hell! (that is also made worse by the streak problem). So having two 35 ton chassis tends to result in one superior one (the raven) just because it's harder to target essential locations on it! With artwork I can understand the limitations... but side torsos should be shaded more to at least equalize damge areas.

Game realy should try to put out a 20, 25, 30, and 35 ton weight chassis for the lights... (well maybe not a 20... never cared for locusts and the like). But with the customization you can pretty much build almost any mech type you like with any weight if so. The lack of 55, 70 and 75 ton frames is rather disappointing. Good canon mechs have been added in here since the unseen disappeared... stuff like the lineholder would work well (55, as well as giving an off the shelf medium with a reasonable speed without rebuilding it completely via customization at 5/8/0... variants with jj's would work well also). Flashman (75) and Grasshopper (70) would also be good candidates as non-unseen.

Speed more than weight determines role... fast heavies are nigh indistinguishable from mediums in board game play. Yet the selection includes lots of slow *** mediums who are nothing more than smaller inferior heavy mechs since they're all 4/6 mechs designed for slug fests and little ability to disengage once engaged in a fight. Of the chassis... we have a 40ton, and two 50ton picks again. Both the 50 ton picks are slow *** wannabe heavies at 4/6.

I tend to grade mechs as scout, skirmisher, strike, line, and assault... Scout lightly armed and fast with a lot of sensors and support electronics. Scout-killer, light & fast loading up on firepower instead of ewar. Strike/skirmisher... fast mediums and heavies... can take a hit and give one back, but highly mobile and able to outmaneuver groups of line mechs. line mechs, your 4/6 backbone units that form the main battle line/group, sluggers who take hits and give em out. Assaults even slower than line... but bring the firepower to back it up... once engaged not enough speed to disengage at all.

Edited by Falconer, 04 November 2012 - 01:54 PM.

[Lin Shai]

I'm glad you had the enthusiasm to write all that, but a lot of it is from simply not understanding a lot of the game having only played a few matches, and not reading any of the posts from the devs re: changes that are upcoming.

One that made me chuckle that illustrates that:

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

I rate as one of my mistakes buying a jenner. Why? Because the hit profile makes it too easy to blow it's cockpit or CT to hell! (that is also made worse by the streak problem). So having two 35 ton chassis tends to result in one superior one (the raven)

The Raven ... kinda isn't superior once you know how to play.

Edited by Lin Shai, 04 November 2012 - 01:56 PM.

[Lavrenti]

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

I rate as one of my mistakes buying a jenner. Why? Because the hit profile makes it too easy to blow it's cockpit or CT to hell! (that is also made worse by the streak problem). So having two 35 ton chassis tends to result in one superior one (the raven)

Sorry, I laughed even though I shouldn't have. The Jenner is probably the best light mech in the game right now, as evidenced by the swarms of the little sods that come out and dance around anything slower. I'm delighted to see a Raven on the enemy team, because at least I can hit the blasted thing when I shoot at it.

[44th GrayGhost]

Sorry but I don't think you get this game ... making lights harder to hit? Changing how missiles work? No, hell no.

Lights are already pretty hard to hit, and what's the point of guided weapons if they don't er ... guide? Light fast mechs are already quite capable of evading these in variety of ways.
There's no need to reduce lock range on lights either: They're actually pretty big all things considered, and their scouting advantage comes from their speed and the fact that you don't have eyes in the back of your head. And they should be pretty scared of going anywhere in front of you ... if anything, mechs need to be subject to collisions with each other and the environment, taking damage as they collide. That's where piloting skill will come back into the game.

Finally, this isn't tabletop. Don't expect it to work like tabletop.

Edited by 44th GrayGhost, 04 November 2012 - 02:09 PM.

[Jonnara]

Not to be insulting but it sound like you need much much more time practicing the scout role, hell even i do as well as the skill curve on it is bloody steep.

All the scouts in my clan barely if ever get hit by LRMs in fact they make missile boats waste a lot of ammo.

Another point is No lights should ever run into 3 Fatlas's that is a lack of awareness on the part of the pilot.

As for the centurion been a death trap, try any mech and walk out and engage in open areas.

[Scratx]

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Lock-on mechanics... I think the lock-ons should not be automatic hits. It's what singularly makes streaks so problematic and LRM's. Some kind of hit percentage should be in play based on mech size and speed. You get some 25 ton commando speeding across the field at 120kph... something similar to the old base-to-hit would work. Say a 10% chance per missile at the extreme in the wide open. Something simple... for every 25kph... -10% chance. if firing indirect -10%, then some kind of target sizing factor last.

Lock-ons aren't automatic hits. You need to maintain lock to begin with, otherwise the missile swarms stop tracking. There are many ways to break tracking, chief among them:

- Hide from spotter/launcher
- Force launcher to break lock (shooting him will often do that)
- Kill launcher/spotter

Even if the lock is maintained, the missiles are also prone to early detonations from impacting geography or anti-missile systems. (LRMs are the only weapon atm that have an active defense against it)

Hiding behind a hill or a building while the missiles are flying is a great way of making your opponent waste ammunition.

And then there's...

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Speed is not life due to the above... speed is only life close in where you can make angular rates really high and make twitch, fire arcs, and tracking an issue.

Putting more 'scatter' on normal shots wouldn't hurt either. Instead of always pin-point aiming where you aim. At longer ranges this would make a bigger deal for smaller targets.

...the fact that the faster you're moving, the less likely and harder it is for LRM swarms to track you, and you have better opportunities to find geography to block or evade them entirely.

AMS won't help you much against heavy LRM barrages, though when in a group an AMS umbrella will make a huge dent or stop entirely enemy LRM volleys.

The simple fact is that LRMs are actually fine, most players (especially new ones) just haven't learned how to deal with them or how hard it is to actually use them effectively. You'd be right if you said any monkey could use them, but any monkey can use a gauss, too, yet it takes skill to actually make it useful.

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Dislikes:
If you don't have an organized gang... don't bother to play. This really needs to be fixed badly. Not only that the user interface is not friendly at all for finding and joining groups. Newbie mechs and singletons pretty much exist only to be meat for the other players to farm cbillls on. This is because the devs have pointedly broke core game mechanics and turned what should be quite playable mechs like the centurion into deathtraps. It's no fun being rofltstomped because your team is outtonned badly by the group of 4 atlas's chuging together over a hill into the scoring area.

The Matchmaker is badly flawed but it does balance by weight class. It's not going to make a team all jenners and the other all atlases. If you have a light mech, the other team will have a light mech. If you have a medium, they'll have a medium, etc.

It's a WIP which will eventually take into account player skill, among other things.

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Shake and blackout mechanics... they're too pronounced and give too much advantage to things that do it.

Shake is fine, blackout mechanics are a bug. The engine uses HDR but when a mech gets hit a lot the brightness forces the engine to adjust the light across everything else... which in the end makes everything nearly pitch black except for those things glowing.

They really need to fix that...

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

LRM and scouting mechanics. From the mechlab armor and structure is apparently doubled from book. Fine... But there is no excuse for an LRM-20 doing 40 damage if all the missiles hit! The damage is doubled AND the damage potential of a ton of ammo went up 300%!!! (board game... lRm's get 120 point of damage per ton... of which you'll normally score about 50 if you're good... when you hit, just over half the missiles normally hit). But here they're at two damage per missile! SRM's also had their damage increased but they stay close to the book 100 missiles per ton. So, in short... LRM's get too many missiles per ton and doubled damage per missile is too much! Also it would be better if they launched at say a 45degree arc... rather than firing straight forward along the ground like terrain following cruise missiles.

That said... if you double the amount of Armor/structure on mechs... the amount of damage per ton of ammo needs to be doubled as well. Otherwise you give energy weapons an undue advantage since they don't run out. if you can only chew through 200 points of damage ever with a purely ammo based mech you'll never due anything to the mech that needs 300 damage to go down. I think this is one of the problems in prior mechwarrior type games.

Armor was doubled because matches ended too quickly. LRMs and SRMs were bumped up to take that into account, I suspect, but if _all_ weapons had their effectiveness doubled, it'd be a pointless change. One thing you cannot forget when comparing vs TT is that in TT you can't target individual components. It's randomly determined. Here, it's not. You can aim at a cockpit and shoot it out if you like. So it's quite possible to not need to do more than lightly damage a mech overall to take it out of a fight.

As for LRM firing arcs, you'll note they vary depending on range. Under 300m they are practically direct fire. Over 300 meters they'll use an arcing path that depends on your and your target's height.

And LRM ammo... well, considering how much ammo is wasted on hills and even misfires...

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Light mechs should be harder to notice and lock onto at range. it's the only way to make them viable scouts. In any twitch game, the benefits accrue very quickly to the assaults why... in the board game speed is life... I can count on only 1 in 10 of shots fired at me to actually hit. In a twitch game that's more like half or more! So light mechs get screwed over simply because they can't use their movement and the 'quantum' nature of board game movement to stay out of firing arcs while they get hitscanned to death by big mechs. As it is, they're as easy to notice as a big mech and can't take the inevitable LRM hate which comes there way even with AMS equipped.

When you're in a 140kph Jenner you don't need AMS almost all of the time. And if you need it, you probably already screwed up.

Anyway, lights' only real threat are LRMs and Streak SRM's at the moment. Hitscanning to death usually isn't a big threat because of their lag-shield. (you have to lead your targets, and did I mention that those small and fast little buggers are really hard to hit?)

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Heat mechanics are completely broken. Small lasers have a 100% increase in heat... from book, yet the same damage. DHS's are completely broken and render attempts at playing a laser boat dead letter. Seriously running + 4 SMALL LASERS should not over heat a jenner with dhs upgrade and extra's installed. Energy weapons really need their heat returned to book values. Balance them by changing their fire rate... not their heat. Even cold maps where heat dissipation should be enhanced to give energy mechs an edge over ammo don't seem to. (i can see making hot and cold maps where heat dissipation is slightly more or less effective than normal to give better conditions for various weapon types).

This may not be canon, but DHSs have always been the single biggest and most effective upgrade available to any mech in BT once available. I'd suggest that all mechs be equipped with them or this be cheap upgrade merely for balance sake. Because lets face it.. it's almost an i-win button for most designs. (excepting gauss boats... but the way the game works even lB/10 boats suffer from heat problems!). I don't think there can be any balance between single and double. This tech disparity is too much.

PGI has made it clear they have in mind a particular "heat balance". It's a work in progress at the moment and I'm not going to dwell in this matter.

Suffice to say there are some stock builds that are close to non-viable with current heat model, but for the most part they merely run hotter than most players like to run, which inevitably means adding in heat sinks and stripping out high heat weapons for most custom mechs.

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Too many chassis of the same weight and speed... and not enough difference. I rate as one of my mistakes buying a jenner. Why? Because the hit profile makes it too easy to blow it's cockpit or CT to hell! (that is also made worse by the streak problem). So having two 35 ton chassis tends to result in one superior one (the raven) just because it's harder to target essential locations on it! With artwork I can understand the limitations... but side torsos should be shaded more to at least equalize damge areas.

Each chassis has their own niche. And... oh, my, I really don't want to laugh here but you make it hard not to. The Jenner is considered the best light mech for a reason. You just seem to not have realised why yet.

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Game realy should try to put out a 20, 25, 30, and 35 ton weight chassis for the lights... (well maybe not a 20... never cared for locusts and the like). But with the customization you can pretty much build almost any mech type you like with any weight if so. The lack of 55, 70 and 75 ton frames is rather disappointing. Good canon mechs have been added in here since the unseen disappeared... stuff like the lineholder would work well (55, as well as giving an off the shelf medium with a reasonable speed without rebuilding it completely via customization at 5/8/0... variants with jj's would work well also). Flashman (75) and Grasshopper (70) would also be good candidates as non-unseen.

Flea is on the way, I think, and there's already a Commando. There isn't anything in the 30 ton range, though.

Also, the value of chassis' is not just weight, but also how many hardpoints, which type and where they're located. And sometimes even subtle details such as how many missile ports. So, no, you can't take any Awesome, for example, and duplicate every other 80-tonner mech config in existence. I believe they intend to turn out a mech per month, though, so they'll fill out the tonnage range eventually.

Falconer, on 04 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Speed more than weight determines role... fast heavies are nigh indistinguishable from mediums in board game play. Yet the selection includes lots of slow *** mediums who are nothing more than smaller inferior heavy mechs since they're all 4/6 mechs designed for slug fests and little ability to disengage once engaged in a fight. Of the chassis... we have a 40ton, and two 50ton picks again. Both the 50 ton picks are slow *** wannabe heavies at 4/6.

I tend to grade mechs as scout, skirmisher, strike, line, and assault... Scout lightly armed and fast with a lot of sensors and support electronics. Scout-killer, light & fast loading up on firepower instead of ewar. Strike/skirmisher... fast mediums and heavies... can take a hit and give one back, but highly mobile and able to outmaneuver groups of line mechs. line mechs, your 4/6 backbone units that form the main battle line/group, sluggers who take hits and give em out. Assaults even slower than line... but bring the firepower to back it up... once engaged not enough speed to disengage at all.

Well, I think the current mech selection and available (or shortly-incoming) gear makes almost, if not all, of those roles possible. Is there any particular one that isn't?

(note, however, that some of those roles are only effective, or vastly improved by, when you're in a group. Random pick-up games are a bad place to be at with highly specialized mechs that require teamworkt)

[Falconer]

I think some people need to step back and realize... I intended this as feedback as someone who's coming at this game for the first time. Who has a lot of experience with previous mechwarrior games and the board game AND RECOGNIZES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO. The point *IS* learning how the game is different and looking at those differences to see if they're productive. One of my major dislikes of all mechwarrior games is that it comes down to done thing... find the biggest chassis for the speed you wish to go... and arm it to the teeth. You only need to catch a light in front of you for a few seconds to make it's life miserable since they lack the protection to withstand an alpha from anything large. To those ends... lights live in the 'sims' by being small and sneaky... not from their ability to simply move fast and not get hit like they do in the board game.

Just to give an example... my comments on missile damage and armor doubling... So it was okay to double missile damage such a large amount and increase ammo capacity but not touch the other weapons? Then people wonder why mechs dies so fast when the 'doubled' armor is matched by the 'doubled' damage of one class of weapons. Right now AMS is practically required on all mechs because the threat is so large.

Right now you have a base of die hards who are used to it... and are feasting on the fresh meat coming in in their tricked out mechs. I don't begrudge too much of that. You see it in posts here on how bad the PUGs are and the like... much of that breaks down into two things. Not understanding the mechs, the weapon tech, individual mech strategy, and finally map specific strategy and features.

Pretty much to say, I want to see pirahna do well with this. But as it stands now... I don't see their deviations as being exceedingly good as i haven't seen them solving probems but creating others. And breaking things more than fixing them. You'll note i took time to praise the laser implementation. I always hated the classic stuff 8 clan ERML's on a mech... then hitbeam scan to instantly blow off limbs since this is a FPS and players' twitch ability control where and how often they hit instead of the dice. Take it simply as a first impression post.


Interesting the number of people talking about lights being hard to hit... I've seen none of that. They're not all that hard to hit in my experience unless you've been blacked out or shaken up. I've had little to no trouble shooting other light mechs. Or gunning them down while in larger mechs. Most of my time seems to be spent either reconning for the missile boats... or chasing/killing other lights harassing them. Trying out the newbie stalker the 2LL worked perfectly find on them I noticed. Maybe it's more a problem with the servers and latency?! Pirahna hasn't done a good job siting their servers for good pings. Or it's people who don't understand how networks work running file sharing programs and similar at the same time as playing and complaining about crap pings.

Something a lot of the old hats need to realize... unless a game like this attracts new blood and paying players it won't last. If the new user experience is as generally bad as i noticed. (granted it is an open beta)... then I doubt that will happen. Many people wil form their first impressions off this open beta and not come back. So it's reasonable to ask if the game was ready for beta when they did it.

Just to give people an idea of what i'm mostly running around with... JR7-F... fully upgraded... 2ML/4SL 11DHS, AMS nearly full armor. Strategy focus on scouting early and staying close to the main groups.