769 replies to this topic

[Stormgut]

The lack of "x is just fine" options is screwing up your data. Why exclude it? Yes, it is implied that people think something is fine if they don't vote for either "overpowered" or "underpowered" but that means to GET that figure you have to add up the total number of people voting from the second section and subtract the too good/too weak votes from that.

This has a significant psychological effect on potential voters. I almost didn't bother voting until I just barely noticed you had the "LRMs are fine" option there at the very, very end of all the options, because it seemed like a biased poll. Who knows how many people will skim the poll and miss the "LRMs are fine" option after seeing a giant sheet of options they don't agree with, consider it a biased poll and skip it entirely?

You may have meant well but this will skew your results.

[steelblueskies]

how about a different tactic for balancing them.

limit the amount of ammo tonnage allowed.
turn them back into range envelope weapons for mixed load mechs, while enabling specific chassis designed for fire support using them to actually carry sufficient munitions to fulfill it's role.


then you can actually bump damage by whichever means back to a point where not boating them can have a utility but not be op, you can put the rearm at a sane level, have another metric you can balance(ammo tonnage hardpoints per chassis essentially), and actually allow certain designs to maintain their role, without turning any mech with launchers into a potential boat.

in such a scenario mixed load roles may be useful when used in coordinated groups, or as long range fire weapons while gap closing on mechs so equipped without those missile hps being useless. keeps a true fire support design like the cat meaningful as well.

Edited by steelblueskies, 14 November 2012 - 12:40 PM.

[IntruderAlert]

LRM's are fine. LRM damage to the enemy mech is fine...it is just not showing up in your final score.
What I mean is...you are doing more damage than what you are being credited for to the enemy mech.
Artemis is a Line of sight weapon...if you don't have line of sight on the enemy it shouldn't be as effective.
( however it is still having an effect and shouldn't). Using artemis with LOS makes an observable difference
to the amount of damage (more missles get through to the enemy).

I believe this has been identified in an earlier post. Missle weapons are not showing up with the correct amount
of damage done during the fight...making people "believe" they are not as effective as they really are.

-IA

[XvDraxvX]

steelblueskies, on 14 November 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

how about a different tactic for balancing them.

limit the amount of ammo tonnage allowed.
turn them back into range envelope weapons for mixed load mechs, while enabling specific chassis designed for fire suspport using them to actually carry sufficient munitions to fulfill it's role.


then you can actually bump damage by whichever means back to a point where not boating them can have a utility but not be op, you can put the rearm at a sane level, have another metric you can balance(ammo tonnage hardpoints per chassis essentially), and actually allow certain designs to maintain their role, without turning and mech with launchers into a potential boat.

in such a scenario mixed load roles may be useful when used in coordinated groups, or as long range fire weapons while gap closing on mechs so equipped without those missile hps being useless. keeps a true fire support design like the cat meaningful as well.

Certainly a "outside the box" thought i would not be opposed to testing this as a LRM Mech Pilot.

[Suskis]

boating is not wrong (if it was, they would have limited the number of hardpoints). if you're a LRM boat, you cannot defend yourself from close combat mechs. if you're a laser boat, you'll spend half your time shutdown. same goes with 4 PPCs. sooner or later we'll have 4 gauss mechs (ok, this is a nasty configuration). but wasn't the original Masakari a monster too? Yes, but how much will it cost your repair bill? also, when a munchkin design appears on the map, it comes with a bullseye painted on it. and we all have the same maximum armor amount limit.

[steelblueskies]

Suskis, on 14 November 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

boating is not wrong (if it was, they would have limited the number of hardpoints). if you're a LRM boat, you cannot defend yourself from close combat mechs. if you're a laser boat, you'll spend half your time shutdown. same goes with 4 PPCs. sooner or later we'll have 4 gauss mechs (ok, this is a nasty configuration). but wasn't the original Masakari a monster too? Yes, but how much will it cost your repair bill? also, when a munchkin design appears on the map, it comes with a bullseye painted on it. and we all have the same maximum armor amount limit.

when the nov 6th lrm arc was in, someone i knew grinding hunchback exp at the time took a hunch 4j, stripped it down. tossed in an xl 100 engine, 2 lrm20 and a tone of lrm ammo. that's boating as it stands now. being able to totally derp build a machine. if that same mech was delimited to say a maximum of 5 tons missile ammo, it would never have made that mech valid with such a junk build as it couldn't fit sufficient ammo to justify stripping all other hps out.

an a1 cat on the other hand ought to have significantly more missile ammo hps, on the order of a cap at 15 tons or so, supporting its intended load and roles.

the same logic could in theory be extended to all ammo using weapons as well, preventing boating pure gausscats by delimiting ballistic ammo not the guns, or ruining the gauss rifles, by say limiting it to four tons ballistic ammo or less.

[Stormgut]

So I've continued running LRMs in my HBK-4SP and my C4 Catapult. I'm mostly running these loadouts out of curiosity to really see what works and doesn't work with LRM mechs; they aren't my primary setups. The damage feels about right, although variance I see on solid hits is more than I'd like: sometimes it seems to do very little, other times the target just gets torn to pieces. This might be by design, but it's pretty weird and off-putting when both hits look like they should do about the same damage.

One thing that definitely does need attention is the rearming cost. Rearming is fairly steep for standard LRMs, and just prohibitively expensive for Artemis. You can sort of deal with this by just using the free 75% reload every round but that seems pretty cheesy and exploitative, as well as rough for LRM users to be the only ones considering going that route.

Another thing that would help is making LRM travel time significantly faster over longer distances. Mechs in the open are still getting pretty torn up from my experience, even with AMS, but if you are more than about 350m away it takes an awfully long time to ensure that the LRMs make it all the way to their target. To make sure that AMS still performs at the same level, I'd recommend heavily increasing LRM travel speed until it gets within about 250m of its target, then dropping down to current speeds.

Personally I've run into plenty of custom LRM builds on enemy teams, including Atlas and Awesome builds, and they are doing just what I would expect: forcing me back into cover if I advance too aggressively, crushing me when I get caught in the open, and helping their brawlers take me down much more quickly. If I'm currently in my own LRM machine and the enemy chooses to ignore me when there is a brawl going on, they get crushed.

Honestly when I run my LRM builds the only major problem I've been having, aside from rearm costs, is what seems to be residual pre-hotfix hatred for LRMs that causes entire lances of opponents to make a beeline straight for me, ignoring all the brawlers on my team who slaughter them while they're trying to chase me down. It never works out for them but it gets pretty tiresome when I'm trying to evaluate the state of LRM damage.

[EtherDragon]

Thanks for the comments, guys. I think people are pretty smart and can figure out the poll... Changing it now would invalidate the current results.

[Konner Duko]

well i worked with a mech without artimis for a goor 4-5 hours. once i put artimis on i knowticed a huge change in hitting a enemy just think that the damage is a little to low at this point. you can get a mech's armor all nive and yellow quick but gettin it to go to red in any place takes way to many rounds and with a cat with 2 lrm 15's i can spend at least 3 tons of ammo on an atlas without getting a location red.

p.s. untill i put artimis on the missles i could not hit any light mechs runnign full tilt afterward i was getting hits.

[Sybreed]

right now my biggest complain about LRMs is that they don't do enough damage unless boated (I hate boats)... but I can see why it'd be hard to find a good balance between a good weapon that does just enough damage when not boated and an OP weapon when boated.

I guess changing some hardpoints could do the trick.

Edited by Sybreed, 14 November 2012 - 02:41 PM.

[Bitey001]

Chuckie, on 14 November 2012 - 06:05 AM, said:

What they need to QUIT doing is making a LOT of changes at ONE time. IF they felt the LRMs were OP due to a glitch in the arcs fine. Fix the ARC, then see what the damage is like.. Don't nerf the arc, and the damage, etc.. then you don't have any idea what change you make totally screwed up the balance.

Right there with you buddy.

The 90-degree full head-shot damage Artemis patch was what borked everything with the LRM. LRM was working as intended (largely) pre-Artemis. Heck, I would have even been ok with a damage nerf down to 1.5 from 2.0, IF they left the !(@# LRM mechanics alone and didn't totally jack the spread on them. I think that was reasonable and everyone would have been ok with that change. But LRM as it stands now is totally inconsequential and that's not how the game was meant to be played. You're not supposed to see brawlers way out in the open going at it with no regard to LRMs.

It's totally *#$(*ed with the way the game is played. People largely don't have to use terrain or peak out and fire from behind buildings anymore. They just run out in the open and slug it out or race around in lights.

There are WAY, WAY more critical things PGI should be working on in this game besides running around with the nerf/buff bat on weapons at this point. I don't care what people say. Gauss is OK. LRM WAS OK (pre-Artemis patch). Neither of these was all THAT ridiculous pre-Artemis. If anything needs a buff/nerf fix it's the damn PPC. PGI should be focusing all their efforts on their netcode, core gameplay options (hint: there are none right now), and the match making/community play issues. Don't waste your time screwing around with weapons if they're not broke at this point.

I don't need new mechs. I don't need nerf/buff bat on weapons. I didn't need Artemis. This game needs more gameplay options, more maps, better netcode, less lag shield, and match making that allows random pugs to play other randoms and 8-man to go against 8-man. These are the CRITICAL make-or-break things this game needs right now. The rest is all superficial.

Edited by Bitey001, 14 November 2012 - 04:09 PM.

[wuzy]

Other: I do pretty well with my LRM w/ Artemis now once mastering them.

Problem is they cost WAAAY too much to rearm. This issue needs to be at the top.

Edited by wuzy, 14 November 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[ExAstris]

Yeah, given that PGI doesn't run a test server for the public to check their patches and balance changes before going live, it would make sense to make incrimental balance changes at this point.

Additionally, this is a PC game, waiting 30 seconds for a micro-patch once couple of days is not a big deal, and you don't have to deal with all the liscencing BS that comes with putting patches/updates out for console games.

I would recommend to PGI that they keep track of which changes are balance changes, and which changes are cosmetic, functional, content, etc additions. Then when they release a major update with tons of balance changes, they can go to their list of changes that actually effected balance and roll back the problem makers. Then if they still have a problem, they'll know it was actually a bug (like the verticle dive LRMs and the absurd clustering they gained from doing so), and not the intended mechanics they had in mind.



At this point, game-functionality actually kills my enjoyment far less than the balance of the actual game's mechs and weapons. I can deal with only being able to make one change at a time in the mech lab. I can deal with having to restart the client every time I buy new items. I can deal with having to restart the client every 6-10 matches due to memory leaks.

What I can't deal with is when the actual game is no fun because the balance of weapons and mechs is attrocious. I'm tired of light and medium laser-boats-online. It would've been funny for a couple days, but its a major incentive to just not boot the game up again until the next update rolls around that attempts to adress these balance issues.

[Maleki]

Xerxys, on 13 November 2012 - 11:58 PM, said:

Most people can't shoot Gauss and hit the broad side of a barn. You can get cored easily from this, but they also don't carry 1000's of rounds. They can't core a mech hiding behind cover. LRMs were hitting everything and wiping them out in one or two salvos and not even cover was helping.

Sorry but I think LRM's cored me a total of once over the streach of their "overpowered" phase. Its so insanely easy to xcom it in this game to counter missles. Gauss and PPC still scared me way way way way way more. Plus lights of course with their power to phase though objects now. Lights are the path my son...

[Maleki]

For those that may no know, the XCOM it crack is about using cover. Its amazing how many thousands of LRM's I've seen plow into a cliff or building beside me.

[Sybreed]

Maleki, on 14 November 2012 - 08:43 PM, said:

For those that may no know, the XCOM it crack is about using cover. Its amazing how many thousands of LRM's I've seen plow into a cliff or building beside me.

an interesting choice of words, I stopped counting the number of times a Mutton crit and killed one of my veterans through heavy cover..­

[ARCTICF0X]

LRM was way overpowered before nerf.

Games filled with nothing but LRM boats said it all.

I think its slightly underpowered now, but prefer it to how it was. Slight increase now is needed, but no way near what it was. Unless we change name to LRM online instead....

[EnigmaNL]

LRM's are nerfed too much. I don't even bother taking AMS on my mechs anymore. Evading them is super easy, even with Artemis LRM's and if they manage to hit you it's not really a problem when you're in an Atlas.

[LtPoncho]

LRM - the M is for MISSLE, as in a high explosive/incendiary device. It's not LRG - Long Range Gravel. Currently it's like throwing a handful of rocks into the air and calling it a LRM strike.

Kind of on par with a fluorescent tube strike. Dem effects!

The player who launches LRM's are usually vehemently swarmed for a kill almost as soon as they launch the first salvo. You should tell a player they are bringing rocks to a gun fight before they drop.

Edited by LtPoncho, 15 November 2012 - 06:40 AM.

[LtPoncho]

Maleki, on 14 November 2012 - 08:35 PM, said:

Sorry but I think LRM's cored me a total of once over the streach of their "overpowered" phase. Its so insanely easy to xcom it in this game to counter missles. Gauss and PPC still scared me way way way way way more. Plus lights of course with their power to phase though objects now. Lights are the path my son...

I miss the days when Mechs with wild pilots ran into things and fell down go boom - not so much the Dragon bowling days (miss that Beta Meme Thread).