1392 replies to this topic

[Gogopher]

after reading ur post i have to disagree 1,3,8 and am rather ambivalent about the rest....

lrms are underpowered atm...but not ridiculously so...i like them were they are at as compared to beta...but i feel with the addition of artemis and then soon to come guardian they will suffer hugely...artemis simply isnt worth it in lrms but does truly excel in srms...so atm lrms are acceptable if barely but once guardian comes out, unless they are buffed they will simply suck

DHS are pathetic atm...they have given the advantage to smaller mechs or mechs that run few smallish weapons...assualt mechs suffer the most simply because they have the weight to carry the bigger guns but cannot do so because of heat issues that revolve around a lack of critical space....where as a mech with limited gun capacity has more than enough space to mount them

matchmaking is better by far than before but still is fairly poor and needs vast improvement...too many 2x4man premades are still able to slip into the game and even randomly grouped premades dominate...the matchmaking should only allow one premade per side and fill in the rest with loner...that way the most you will have is a 4man and 4pugs...or any lesser combination...right now if u are unlucky and are fighting a multi-premade you lose most of the time, unless you have your own premades luckily enough grouped

i heartily agree that lights are very very OP atm...however i dont feel that knockdowns alone will make up the difference...lights benifit from a huge lag shield that is seeminly unfixable atm...that alone adds a huge advantage...add that to the fact that jenners (imo the most dominate lights) only pay .5t for full jump capability vs 2.5t and you have mechs that are capable of complete mobility and weapon groups outside of their allowed tonnage

ammo cost is just one of those things....i havent noticed any issues around it and i make money in all my mechs...however that being said i have premium and full LFP mechs that give me a nice bump...money grind has been relatively easy for me (but i run mostly in 4mans) and i have been able to purch and outfit all founders lines to at least elite if not full master...however the reward system for trial players needs an overhaul since there is currently little incentive for them to win (no exp, no repair costs, and similiar CB's win or lose)

[Miken]

20DHS on Awesome 9M with 375 Standart Engine ("10 Engine DHS=20HS" + "10DHS*1.4=14"==34HS) barely enough for 2 alpha strikes by 5 medium pulse lasers...

Edited by Miken, 15 November 2012 - 09:08 PM.

[Rixsaw]

Sorry for the delayed response here, I was too busy winning matches tonight to get distracted.

Basically the people who are playing in the houses, think you guys who are posting so much are the QQ minority.

LRMs do suck. Go strap on 2 x LRM20 and dump a load of missiles then see how much dmg you get. I've done it, we had several teammates try it due to their having to level up the missile boat to get the K2 right.

You may be right about headshots, Since we don't have a practice field, its kinda hard to find the head on some mechs without somewhere to practice it.

I found the dragons head tonight so I'm pretty stoked. Its still hard as heck to hit, but atleast I know where to aim now.



I play light mechs, I'm not afraid of streaks at all really. I ignore them, until they core my rear, and then turn around kill em and move on. Occasionally they do enough dmg to kill me before I get em down, but its laughable to send a mech in with streaks wasting tons better used for real weapons.


All the balance to this point is not to make things more fair, as all options are available to all players the balance is more about setting the metagame, and currently its all ballistics and lasers.

I was still getting more kills and wins with my K2 than my A1, all that has changed now is that I simply don't play the A1 ... Ever... where before I would switch to it as a alternate from time to time, to mix things up. So i'd say have more missles hit instead of missing, but not as much as they did before. somewhere in between.

By Nerfing LRM and Streak to useless they are simply limiting options which were previously available.

Noone else enjoyed fighting against streak cats? I thought it was fun and exciting...

[Ewigan]

thx Kobura, i would like your post more then oncen, but only once is possible

added: WTF are "houses" ?
I guess not the one i live in?

[Xendojo]

I took you half seriously until you opened up about your mechs of choice. People who rock streak cats and gaussapults are primary targets for me, also they get zero respect. Dullest gameplay i have seen in this game is a gaussapult, with streak cats a close second.

CW is coming so you can min/max your OP builds against other OP builds and gain XP with your friends on teamspeak.

I love taking down k2's with my founders HBK. Iv'e been using AC/20 against them since before AC/20 was viable.

PUGs and casuals will from now until forever be the majority of the player base if this game is to succeed, if you cannot see that then you are not paying attention.

Kobura got it right.

Pompous braggart. Just like all the other elitist players, you think your gausskitty and your 8man give you the right to bash on the lifeblood of this game, casuals and PUGs.

[Kobura]

I started as a PUG, I frequently PUG despite what my stats say, I love to offer genuine advice to those that are PUGging at the moment, and ESPECIALLY when one of the trial mechs starts to show a glimmer of will to communicate!!

I've scooped two teammembers from trial mechs already. Turns out teaching an entire PUG maps-worth of people how to group their weapons made it really hard on me all the sudden!

So satisfying to see people blossom when given a little illumination. That's really the spirit of the Iron Sharks, too... have fun by winning, good solid matches, with no stinky cheese, no ridiculousness, no exploits. A fair fight, a little luck, and some good mech-chess.

See you next time, Mechwarrior.

[Corvus Antaka]

LRMS may need a slight buff...however, even running a stock founders catapult I have had little issue with LRMS, and expect that once 8 mans come back LRMS will shine in organized groups again...this is wait and see.

Headshots are plenty easy imho. The atlas has a tiny box, but this is necessary or it again would be useless due to ease of headshotting. the cats large box keeps it from being a great brawler. I still see plenty of good players getting headshots, and get plenty myself.

PPC's are not so bad - they are instant damage vs damage over time. The core issue with PPC's is how the game handles heat dissapation, and how the gauss is simply always the better choice...something made even worse by the fact that the K2 - designed to carry PPC...ends up as a dual gauss mech in its machine gun ports. probably the gayest thing in MWO right now.

I'd wager to say that the biggest issue left is the gauss, and still think the easiest solution would be to give it heat like every other gun, thus forcing gauss mechs, like any other, to need heatsinks. OR....a much higher recycle time.

moving gunports is no help, in the future we will see mechs able to hold 3-4 gauss rifles, and with no heat this will turn into some ugly business.

I like the gauss now...1 gauss seems to be just fine. but multiple gauss rifles without any balancing factors vs any other guns is and will continue to be the biggest balance problem in the game...something that as time wears on will become a lot more obvious.

[Kobura]

One of my favorite things to do is identify an enemy Gaussapult, draw their aggro, and then poptart them into wasting gauss ammo.

While my squad closes on them. Not to kill, no! But to very painfully neuter. Spay the Cat, and leave it to limp the tale.

Usually we end up killing them accidentally though.

[Name60014]

Fun and fair doctrine? LOL. You didn't sound pompous until that line. Lagshield isn't 100% persistent. Sometimes I have to lead an enemy light, sometimes I don't.

I'm on board with teaching PuGs and not treating them like idiots but the angst and ardor about exploits is hilarious. Do you run 5 JJ in your Jenner?

[Taron]

Thank you for translating

[deforce]

so turn on your heat vision so you can see them too???

[Michel Hatchet]

Hey original poster,
Where do you draw the line on calling someone a PUG? I only play pick up games, I don't have a headset to use voice communications, but I don't use Trial mechs, and I have elite stats in my Hunchbacks... So am I a PUG? A Newb? I have been playing Table top since the Mid 1980's, but I don't play any other First person shooter games... So am I the target audience, or someone who QQ's to much? If the game is not targeted at more casual gamers like myself the paying coustomer base won't be there for you harrass and belittle, because their won't be a game anymore. Then you and your 'House Mates' will be free to nostalgicly discuss how fabulous you used to be a pugstomping. Pompous Twerp indeed.

[Hayashi]

Rixsaw, on 15 November 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

From my experience, here are my observations of current metagame. Some small adjustments may be needed. 1. LRM's - LRM's are rather useless. If being hit by LRM, I generally ignore it unless there are 4 Catapults raining missiles on me. At that point I know that half the team has no short range weapons and I can proceed to closer range combat where they will quickly die. The flight path adjustment was needed, but the reduction in DMG was not needed. They should be buffed back to 2.0 per missile imho. I'm not really sure how TAG and Narc have any benefit, before the LRM's were changed,we used to have a tagger and 2-3 LRM boats mixed with brawlers. This gave players with different talents roles in the combat. As it is now, those players are liabilities. 2. Streak SRM2's - The current state of streak missiles is weak. They provide some benefit in making it harder for the target to aim, but generally produce less dammage than other weapons with a lower cost in ton's / heat. Part of the cost of the streak missiles is that they use a hardpoint. Maybe they were a bit over powered before when they homed in on center torso, but we never really found it to be much of a challenge to simply focus down the streak boat. People who run streak boats have to get close, and they can't put out the DPS to compete with a well balanced brawler. They had some mobility advantages with the jump jets or smaller mechs, but they required skill to pilot them successfully, and had heat issues as well as being a 1 trick poney so to speak. My suggestion is to find a middle ground from where they were to where they are now. 3. Lasers - I suppose lasers are fine as they are now, if you want to use them as a point of reference for other weapons They are simpler to fire, easier to aim, give away your position and are unable to sustain fire due to heat. There is a problem with the mech bay "Firepower" indicator as it does not take into account the rate of fire for the weapons you place on your mech, so many players may think large lasers to be superior to small lasers, when in reality they have vastly different rates of fire. I.E. Large does 9 dmg every 3.25 Small does 3 dmg every 2.25. Some adjustment to firepower might be helpful. AC2's suffer more from this disparity, as they only show 2 Dmg but in reality have the same Effective DPS as all the other weapons etc. 4. Auto Cannons - Most are arm mounted and thus have convergence issues. Until this can be fixed, we should probably just have the game fire them as if they were from the torso. There is no way to lead a target without putting your reticle in front of them, which will then change the convergence to a point in space 1000 meters away instead of the 200-300 that they are from you. Have it converge on your selected target distance may solve this problem. And people can learn to press r before firing it isn't that hard really (stop being newbs!!). 5. Gameplay. Gameplay has shifted from 8 man strategy play which involved larger more fun groups of friends to snarpy 4 man's trying to survive with the wrong mech for this map or the wrong weapon loadout for the team they are facing. Rather drull and not helpful. House cohesion and unity is turning into house chaos with 12 4 man teams doing 12 different things and noone getting together / bonding anymore. Fix this sooner rather than later or say goodby to the game. Lose the houses and there is no game. The Pugs can join a house, we are all here on the internet easily found, or they can get pug stomped. Its their own choice IMHO and those of us that put forth effort and time to organize shouldn't be punished for the whining that the lone wolfs have produced which resulted in this change. 6. Gamplay In-Game. Any testing currently being done and balance changes being made aren't really being tested against valid 8 / 12 man organized teams. So much of this may be wrong once 8 man returns. However it seems that LRM boats are out, Tag / Narc is gone, the game is all about rush the base and plow over anything in your way with an AC20. Mechs not able to fit an AC20 and plant it into your chest to fire, are using lasers due to their better heat effeciency now that we have double heat sinks. Dispite the current video on you tube which indicates PPC's are a great, they are in fact useless. They cannot sustain the rate of fire that a large laser can, barely out range it, and have projectile based firing issues.. 7. Long Range / Headshots. Head shots are too hard. They should be much easier. We are going the wrong direction on this one. If someone wants to expose their head to a double gauss rifle, then they should get it blown off. Visual range needs to be extended beyond the 950 meters we have now. Players who use heat vision can easily see targets that other players cannot. Not really sure how to fix the headshot issue, but it should be viable for a well aimed shot to hit the head. AFK players being impossible almost to headshot is kinda silly.

1/2. I'm piloting a LRM15/SSRM2/Medium Pulse Catapult atm, and anything that can possibly close in to me (80 KPH) will never have either enough firepower or armour to win in a one-on-one fight, even with how weak LRMs and SSRMs are at the moment (yes, I think they're underpowered too). As long as I can keep between 180m and 270m from you, you're looking at 61 damage every 4 seconds or so - that is, 20 damage in that time to your Centre Torso, repeatedly, and they track you too so I hit even with lag. I like the idea of putting them back to 2 damage and keeping current missile spread, but calling all LRM users liabilities wouldn't agree with the endgame statistics placing me among the top 3 nearly every game, and being either #1 or #2 on top damage dealt. They're very hard to use effectively in their current nerfed state, but I wouldn't call them useless, still. LRMs just need to be used as close to 180m as possible without going under.

3. I wouldn't think lasers are fine. The Large Pulse specifically is pretty terribad in terms of damage against heat... the heat system needs a bit of a rework to make the larger varieties viable. Right now, most people still use smalls, mediums and medium pulses in quantity.

4. Agreed.

5. They're working on it!

6. Rushing the base is a sure way to get your lights and mediums killed. I'm not sure what kind of games you play, but even in my PUGs people usually play a bit more cautiously than that, and the few exceptions are quickly removed from the game by the respective opposing teams. And while the PPC is still pretty bad relative to Gauss or Large Lasers, the AC/20 is also terribad at the moment for generating way too much heat. Most people slap on a Gauss or Ultra AC/5, not an AC/20, in the manner you described.

7. Catapults and Cicadas are extremely easy to headshot. I'd agree for raising Commando, Jenner and Atlas sizes, but wanting to raise the size of the Cat/Cicada headbox further is really absurd.

[Ragor]

Just one note, just a tad offtopic:

Really interesting how the OP defines 'metagame'.^^

Did you actually ever check what 'metagame' is?

[Redbull102]

How to start...
maybe a little about me.

I am from Europe, my Ping is around 108-136ms.

The last time I played Battletech ( TT ) was more than 10 years ago. I played it often and enjoyed my crusader most. ( That were the good old times before FASA lost their rights on some of the classic mechs ). It was in these times that I played Mechwarrior 2 ( DOS 5.0 and memmaker) with a cable versus a friend ( LAN Parties came later ). Have you ever tried how high you could get with jumpjets in Mechwarrior 2? There was the Mercenaries addon for MechWarrior 2 too.
Years went by, and I had some fun with Mechwarrior 3 and MechCommander.
I avoided Mechwarrior 4 because of the Leg Hitzones, if one destroyed Leg kills the mech, that is no longer Mechwarrior. Heard nothing good about MechCommander2 so I skipped it.


To MWO:
You have a game that could become a great game, but now it is not.

I prefer missile weapons, was yesterday really happy, when I thought you fixed them, but today the game proved me, that I was wrong. The LRM thread is now 34 pages long with no response from the devs. Streaks are broken too, again nothing from the devs.
SRM have a delay when you fire, AC too, PPCs are delayed.
Laser fire when you want them to fire, but now comes Ping + other things in game, like hitboxes not where the enemy mech is.

So I create a list of things I like and things I dislike :

Pos :

# It is a MechGame.

# I have a MechBay where I can change the Mechsetups.

# Different enviroments ( crater / ice )

Neg :

# LRMs broken.

# Double Armor and Light Mechs.
I have no Problems to run in my Commado with a 195XL engine and do 700+ damage to the enemies. The Battletech TT Commando Armor was :
RL/LL: 6 intern + 8 armor
RA/LA: 4 intern + 6 armor
RT/LT: 6 intern + 6 front/3rear armor
CT: 8 intern + 8front/4rear armor
Head: 3 int + 6 armor

That was a light mech!
One hit of a PPC could rip an arm of, not to mention a AC20.

Here in MWO I run between enemy mechs, if they hit me with an AC20 I just contiune running.
Cannot eat many AC20 hits, but can survive some. That feels wrong!


With a Jenner it get even worse, 2 MLaser + 4SLaser kill Awesomes.

# Med Mechs
As long as you have no Cicada, or SSRMs you will be often fast killed by light mechs.
Against other medium/heavy/assault mechs you can do a lot of damage, often kill some enemies.
Should be other way! A Med should be able to kill lights with no problem, versus an other med it should be a close call, and versus higher tonnage enemies a lost mech.

# Delayed Weapon Fire
One of the most annoying things in game. Targetting a fast enemy Rear CT with a AC, hit fire, enemy begins to turn hard right, now my AC fires and my ammo was wasted because I could not turn as fast as the enemy. Sometimes it feels like 1 sec or more.

See a enemy jenner in moving out of cover at high speed at 180m, jenner turns toward me, I have his CT targetted, fire all my weapons. 2 MedPulse Laser hit his front CT but my 3 SRM6 are delayed.... Jenner moved through me and just as he is disappearing the 3 SRM6 fires....
Later my Cent was destroyed by this jenner.

# Streaks missing
Sometimes I can do a lot damage with streaks, and sometimes not. 3 of 4 locked streak missiles misses a raven, 2 of 2 misses a standing Atlas...
1 Streak Launcher + 1t. Ammo = 2.5 tons = 5 Damage when both missiles hit.
1 Med Laser = 1 ton = 5 Damage that you even can control -> Focused fire at the rear CT of an enemy. Streaks are only seen often because they ignore the lagshield and hit the enemy hitbox, when they hit.

# High Repair Costs
Commando with XL + Endo + good weapons = you earn a lot credits (Repair ~30k)
Jenner with XL + Endo + good weapons = you earn little credits (Repair ~60k)
Cent with Endo + weapons = you earn little credits (Repair = ~60k)
Cent with XL200 + Endo + weapons = ( Repair ~75k)
Fast Centurion +XL +Endo +artemis = You lose money.

Centurion is only 50tons. The FIS High Tech we have now is only mid tech.
The Clan Tech will be the real high tech and I hope to salvage some parts. ^^

And I use the free 75% ammo, if I would buy ammo, I would sometimes need more than 130000 Credits after a fight with one of my Centurions. So I will not buy a heavy or assault.

# Matchmaker
As a player who does not want to join a clan, I am thrown into games with 8 clan players on the other side.

# Matchmaker
I get from time to time 6 versus 8 games or 7 versus 8 games.
When then some players disconnect it will be fast a 4 versus 8 game.

# Disconnects
Started client, in my first fight, running behind a enemy, try to fire, crashed to desktop.

# Mechbay
It is almost every second time when I try to modify a mech, that the client freezes when saving the design.

# Double Heatsinks
1.4 feels wrong to me.

# Accuracy of PPCs and ACs
Why do they not aim at the point I have my mouse at? If the PPC or the AC needs time to aim where I am pointing at, it should be shown to me. Like a small circle moving towards the position of my mousepointer.
If a PPC or AC have a spreadvalue, it should be shown with a bigger circle.

# Ping and Hitboxes or why the game feels ( to me ) like North America versus all
I have seen players with pings below 40ms doing things I can only dream of.
If someone got a lagshield they are screwed too, but things like headshots are a impossible thing to me. I aim for the head of a cent, see my Laser hit, and when I look at the enemy armor, I see the RT flashing. So I aim further ahead and see that I miss, aim a little deeper and hit CT.
AHHHH!
40ms Player sees me, turn his torso around, aim at me, and headshot me with doublegaussguns.

Because of the 100+ms ping a small target like a head is almost impossible to hit for me.
In more than 780 games I never headshot an enemy.

The most enjoyable games for me are, when all player have a ping around 110ms.
So that none got an advantage.

If there are some low ping players in an enemy team, and they act not like braindeads, they will earn the victory for their team, same counts if there are some low pings in my team, then my team wins most times.

# Missing parts
See Jenner running around with flying arms, centurion misses centertorse when destroyed...

# Not enough Infos about the game.
A complete official guide is missing, I know that there is not much final. But I have read a lot in the forums here and I often do not know if I can take that infomation as serious info, or if it is nonesense.
-> Read that MGs should have a higher chance to damage modules, once they hit internal structure.
-> Read that MGs damage modules less, since every MG Hit causes very little damage and Modules have a lot of own HP.

# Forum chaotic ( to many subforums )

# No FallSpeedIndicator in the Game UI, I have to guess if I fall to fast and get my legs damaged, or not. Falling to slow can make you an easy target for the enemy.

# 1 Jumpjet is enough, 5 will give you no bonus.

# Flamer, only see Mechs with Flamthrower overheating themselfes.
A 4 Flamer Mech was not able to overheat me at the crater map ( I had 12 doubleheatsinks and could not stop laughing when I saw this ). My Heat Indicator did not move 1%!
I even stopped to make it easier for him.

# You say this is a team game, but there is not enough in game to coordinate a random player team. Game needs some shortcuts for instant teammessages, like:
DEF BASE, CAP ENEMY BASE, FOUND ENEMIES (+ Sektor). There will be some idiots who will spam them, but having none is even worse.

Right now even Premade Groups can play your TEAMgame only as TEAM if they use tools like TS, Skype or others... 3rd party tools.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you read this, and that you are able to fix or change all of this. Because this game can be a lot of fun.

Best wishes
Redbull102

Edited by Redbull102, 16 November 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Stickjock]

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this one...

Weapon Balancing

Matchmaking <- as of now, Premade groups are limited to 4 players... so you are NOT dropping against an 8 player premade group anymore...

Known Issues

Quote

Hit Detection/Network Movement Code

We are rolling back some networking code fixes. This will address many of the hit box issues currently in the live environment. The rollback does not fix the problem entirely, and we are working hard on improving the overall experience vs performance. This is a long term engineering task and a top priority internally.

Anywho, there are a few areas to get you started... most things you touch on (almost all of them) are either known issues or are currently being worked on/tweaked by the Devs...

[Andrew Kase]

Dude you make gauss rounds shoot from MACHINE GUN ports, wow your not exploiting anything..... Go scout a fire with no heat sinks. Also 100% agree with my fellow Iron Shark, Kobura. I Can be an arrogant ******* as well, but i think i've done enough in my life to deserve to be sometime, you know not just playing war. Also, your "House" verse our Iron Sharks, would be a lot of fun, FOR US. My last and only question
DO YOU EVEN BATTLETECH!!!

[Name60014]

You can still coordinate an 8 man drop. The matchmaker doesn't always fill the team with a single 4 man and 4 PuGs.

Dev's latest weapon balance thread says nothing about energy weapons beyond PPC. Last change to energy was an increase in heat after DHS. They didn't address firing delay. The netcode thing is going to be a work in progress forevah.

A lot of his points are valid and backed up by other people's experiences in game, reports on the forum, and tickets sent to support.

Especially regarding latency and the lack of regional servers.

[TigrisMorte]

bingo.
Battletech this is not. They abandoned the proven math for "not enough action." without understanding that you increase fire rate while decreasing damage and heat equivalently. I hit hunchback with AC20 in right torso, dead to rights at very close range, went yellow. My mechwarrior cried.

[Redbull102]

Stickjock, on 16 November 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Anywho, there are a few areas to get you started... most things you touch on (almost all of them) are either known issues or are currently being worked on/tweaked by the Devs...

The more feedback they get, the better they know what each player ( in this case me ) want.
Yes you are right, If only one player post all the things, they will know them.

But the more player give them feedback about things they like or dislike, the easier it becomes for the devs to choose a path to improve the game for all.


Best wishes
Redbull102

Edited by Redbull102, 16 November 2012 - 02:15 PM.