47 replies to this topic

[Tuhalu]

daimonos, on 26 November 2012 - 02:53 AM, said:

• Fix the many crashes to desktop, black and yellow screens of doom, and the 4fps memory leak.
  
• Reduce the 'lagshield' enjoyed by lights and fast mediums.
  
• Fix the HUD issues that leave players without a map.
  
• Further tweaks to weapon balance.

• A game-engine programmer should be the one to handle this.
  
• A network programmer should be the one to handle this.
  
• A general programmer could handle this.
  
• This is work for a designer.

There is more than one guy working at PGI and they generally have different skills. I'm reasonably confident that all these problems could be handled simultaneously, some of them by multiple people at once. People just have funny ideas about how long any one problem might take to fix and how much benefit extra people looking at a problem really brings.

Edited by Tuhalu, 26 November 2012 - 03:54 AM.

[Undead Bane]

LRM damage boost? Really? I'm melting 3-6 mechs/match with 3xLRM15 + 1LL + TAG on my LRM atlas. They are FINE now. If you think otherwise, please, learn to use them (though, what is easier to use?..). You, most likely, just waste your ammo on hitting buildings.

SSRMs.... They are fine too. Never had any problems with them in Atlas, other Cat (say, 2xPPC C1 or 2xAC20 K2), Cataphracht (snail-4x or 2x) or Jenner (i just run away). What am I doing wrong?

UAC5/AC5/AC2? Well, nuisance, but bearable. Either hide from them and THEN make holes while moving, or just get used to shooting while shaking. Shaking should be reduced a bit, though, IMO.

What seems a bit unbalanced so far: PPCs and AC20/10 (not sure about 10). They really could use some love, and PPCs should have a bit more of it. Despite them being somewhat an underdog, I have them in one of atlases as pinpoint hole punchers.
Also, MGs and flamers need love too (flamers are annoying now - you don't see **** when your cockpit is being burned, but nothing else).

Edited by Undead Bane, 26 November 2012 - 04:16 AM.

[Daimonos]

Tuhalu, on 26 November 2012 - 03:52 AM, said:

There is more than one guy working at PGI and they generally have different skills.

Hi Tuhalu, I'm a software engineer by trade and do understand the issues that you raise. If tweaks to weapon balance can be done without impacting any of the higher priority issues in my list, then, fine. While a 'designer' can tweak some values in an .xml file we do not know whether such a person exists at PGI. Most of my team's design work is performed by developers who also write code and fix bugs. Neither do we know if the right weapon balance can be made without code changes, or who is available to make those changes, or what else they might be working on.

Finally, I am suggesting that the designers who could be making weapon balance tweaks might want to hold off on that until the defects that I listed are fixed. In the meantime they could do something more productive, like work on matchmaking algorithms or community warfare or something else strategic.

[NoRoo]

I feel pretty good at the state of weapon balance currently. I'm not sure why people complain about the PPC so much, I've been integrating them into many of my mechs with great results, and I've noticed I'm not the only one, I see more and more people fitting them onto their mechs as well.

[Fajther]

I feel the same way the balance is the best it has ever been.

[shabowie]

Axeman1, on 25 November 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

LRM's still useless, uac 5 nerfed, streaks getting a nerf, leaving jenners to rule again, also leaving the only viable builds laser boats, this is balance? Man this game is boned.

LRMs are far from useless currently. UAC 5 aren't nerfed either, they still have the best DPS with or without being double shotted of all ballistics. Streaks need screen flash and shake reduced a bit is all. Jenners never have and never will rule. Laser boats are effective as they should be, but builds with a good spread of energy, ballistic and missile armament are superior in Alpha strike capability and sustained DPS for the most part.

Man your analysis of this game is boned.

Edited by shabowie, 26 November 2012 - 01:56 PM.

[Shadowsword8]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

Since the large energy weapons have gotten better with (Engine) Double Heat Sinks, I agree that it has impoved. But there are still too many imbalances.

I doubt many players still use DHS. Triple the amount of space means you won't put any on the legs of head, and some mech/weapon loadouts will allow only one or two free slot on the mech parts, further restricting the amount of DHS you can actually use. For a measly 1.4 multiplier. And that also rule out ferro-fibrous armor/structure.

I found out the hard way that I'll actually run cooler with standard heat sinks on my Atlas. At least I can stick more than a double-handful of them.

DHS have been severely overnerfed, which put large energy weapons at a signifiant disavantage compared to artillery.

[shabowie]

Shadowsword8, on 26 November 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

I doubt many players still use DHS.

LOL!

Just goes to show another reason why changes going unpublished in patch notes are a bad idea. They are dangerous for players who don't sift through the forums.

Built in engine heat sinks are true 2.0s dude. An atlas with a 300 and 12 heat sinks in the engine gets 10(.2)+2(.14) heat dissipation per second. Thats 22.8 heat dissipated over 10 seconds, superior to the stock Atlas for less tonnage. Only heat sinks you add to the design are 1.4/.14 heat sinks.

Edited by shabowie, 26 November 2012 - 02:40 PM.

[FrostBear]

I agree with your comment, it feels very good at the moment, some still to do but it getts better and better.
To the sstr Cats, if you work in a team, its simple to blow them, if you get targetet, simply power down, and your mate fires, if the sstrcat changes target, he got to power down and you up. If there is no lock on, there is no missile hitting. It works for me and my Lance every time, and A1 Cats are simply Priority targets, and never ignore one.
Overall, PGI do great work, its not easy with so many hardcore tt, bt, and mw fans, and lot of newbs that dont know bt in any way. PGI, simply do your thing, and try to make best of it, but pls, do mm and tutorial for our newbs, they need it first.
Good luck all on the field.

Edited by FrostBear, 26 November 2012 - 02:40 PM.

[Tuhalu]

daimonos, on 26 November 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

Hi Tuhalu, I'm a software engineer by trade and do understand the issues that you raise. If tweaks to weapon balance can be done without impacting any of the higher priority issues in my list, then, fine. While a 'designer' can tweak some values in an .xml file we do not know whether such a person exists at PGI. Most of my team's design work is performed by developers who also write code and fix bugs. Neither do we know if the right weapon balance can be made without code changes, or who is available to make those changes, or what else they might be working on.

Finally, I am suggesting that the designers who could be making weapon balance tweaks might want to hold off on that until the defects that I listed are fixed. In the meantime they could do something more productive, like work on matchmaking algorithms or community warfare or something else strategic.

Paul Inouye is the Lead Designer for the game. I believe it would be reasonable to assume that at least he is dedicated nearly full-time to designing and leading design.

None of the "higher priority issues" on your list have anything to do with design that I can see. The overseer for those issues would be Technical Director Matthew Craig.

In theory, I agree that ultimate weapon balance has to wait until after all bugs are fixed. In practise, tweaking the game to keep the current state balanced enough to retain your unpaid play testers (ie. most of us players) is a really good idea. With insufficient testing by your upaid play testers, you tend to add to the game faster than can be fully tested. This is the major reason why PGI decided to go open beta in the first place.

I'm also not going to assume that the designers who look at weapon balancing are spending more than about a day a week working on it. A lot of the time they must simply be waiting for new metrics to come in and give them feedback on the latest state of the game. While we can't know without one of the designers telling us outright, I think they have plenty of time for other design work in any given week!

Edited by Tuhalu, 26 November 2012 - 02:48 PM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

PPC - underpowered: it spreads damage, occassionally passes through target with no damage, generates a crapton heat
ER PPC - see above but double the crapton heat (double the same way as double heatsinks are double)
AC2 - too much weapon knock, too high DPS compared to other autocannons, cooldown should be .75s (DPS changes from 4 to 2.67, HPS changes from 2 to 1.3)
AC5 - cooldown should be lowered from 1.7 to between 1.65-1.5 (increase DPS to 3.0-3.33), balist speed increased
AC10 - ballistic speed increase, weapon knock increased
AC20 - ballistic speed increase, weapon knock increased
UAC5 - cooldown increased to AC5 level (1.5s 3.33 DPS) and toggle to enable/disable Ultra mode. Ultra mode lowers cooldown by .5s (1.0s, 5 DPS)but every shot has a 20% jam chance.
LB10X - not as effective against lights as it should be. I would lower cooldown from 2.5s to 1s, and reduce damage from 10 to 4 (each pelet does .4 dam). The spread makes it much more effective vs. lights than other class mechs. The weapon knock would need to be reduced significantly as well.
MG - double damage, or increase cooldown from .01 to .25 and increase damage from .04 to .25 (DPS 1.0, same as sm laser)
SSRM2 - drastically reduce weapon knock, eliminate screen blur, completely revamp damage delivery. weapon should hit 100% each individual missile should check to hit a seperate location (H, CT, RT, LT, RA, LA, RL, LL)
Flamer - not sure how this weapon even works, but laughed my @$$ off when an ememy mech tried to flame me and accidently cored a jenner humping my leg.

[LethalMezzle]

Agreed. Look at what was a problem in the past:

• Medium Laser (and subsequently swayback) dominance
  
• 200 kph Commandos that could go from their base to yours in about 30 seconds.
  
• LRMs had practically no ammo, were unavoidable once locked on and yet still were rubbish
  
• AC/2s and AC/5s that were absolutely bloody useless
  
• Buggy Flamers that produced no heat
  
• Atlases that were laughably easy to kill because of an enormous head hitbox

Still a lot of work to be done but I for one am glad there are no Trollmandos anymore.

[Kyrie]

Lasers aren't really dominating due to hit registration issues IMHO. A hit from one large laser often does only 1 point of damage, for instance.

[Oy of MidWorld]

Agreed.

Furthermore I think collisions must be back in the game.

[TigrisMorte]

Tuhalu, on 26 November 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

Paul Inouye is the Lead Designer for the game. I believe it would be reasonable to assume that at least he is dedicated nearly full-time to designing and leading design....

No, no, no, He is a designer. So he is busy putting a fuschia cape on the next hero mech (Pink! That's salmon you peasant!), needlessly rearranging the office furniture (again), and pointing out that the world isn't worth living in if it doesn't match the latest cover of Vogue.

[GalaxyBluestar]

okay for those of you talking about lrm's i'lll sum up my experiences.

lrms, they need lock on... for every moment of their flight! that's ten seconds or more of holding a reticle over a locked on target to ensure they don't plumit into the ground and chase the target down. that means i have to rely on radar not cutting out and it does every second sometimes.

that's why salvos fly sideways cause even the game engine can't handle how it all happens so quickly, here's the list of events; quickly the lock on's made {all tag does is control this part of the procedure speeding it up and ignoring all other tagrts}. fire missle imput command, game now engauges missles to home on target, lose lock on and red light thanks to shoody radar even when target is in LOS,game has to disable homing on target and let missles crash. this all happens in a second or twoand it's rediculous! i dare you to get that wonderfull phenominon when you fire and the missle are halfway in their arc which is about 3 secnds into the attack, then you lose the target lock on after they've stepped on a $^^*# or something. but before you're missle creat a crator beside them you get the lock on back and suddenly your whole slavo makes a 90 degree turn and smashes their right arm like a vacination jab. it's the most hillarious glitch ever! so that's why lrm's are terrible, tag's shouldn't be the be all and end all in targetting, they shouldn't be essential they just increass efficiency.

btw the flamers function should have the low damage output the mg has now but spread. mainly it should raise temprature of your battlemech 3x faster than it does now forcing shut down they should be killers for close range but have to be pretty much point blank to work.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 26 November 2012 - 07:58 PM.

[Riffleman]

Warma, on 25 November 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

I actually feel this way. To me, absolutely nothing seems overpowered at the moment and only PPC/LPL and the ER energy weapons feel underpowered. The game feels more fun than at any previous instance in time.

If I really wanted to complain about overpowered weapons, SSRM might be a culprit. However, in my experience it seems that an SSRM Cat still loses to a brawler mech of equal weigth (in addition to having less range), so I guess it's fine.

Is there anyone else who is as content?

Well thats your opinion and your entitled to it, but personally I felt balance was much better served when a jenner running into you at 140 kph with the lagshield not reducing 90 precent of the damage they take to zero actually FELL OVER. There should be a price for gotta go fast in tiny misquito.

[Dracol]

I would love to see a buff to Ppcs, but that's becuse I use em to great effect

[Sprouticus]

Riffleman, on 26 November 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

Well thats your opinion and your entitled to it, but personally I felt balance was much better served when a jenner running into you at 140 kph with the lagshield not reducing 90 precent of the damage they take to zero actually FELL OVER. There should be a price for gotta go fast in tiny misquito.

That is game balance, not weapon balance. The two are related, but not the same.


For me, I am not a fan of frustrating game effects (knock, shutdowns, knockdown), but I will put up with them as it DOES allow the devs to balance based on things other than range, damage, speed, etc)


And for the rose colored glasses crew....

trollmandos
dragon bowling
9x SL hunchie-P rushes
81 kph/4 SRM6 awesomes
4 SRM6 catapults
LRM AMMO being obscene
LRM range being super short
Artemis patch LRM's
11/06 LRM nerf & streak nerf.
Ac2 being total crap
AC5 being total crap
Stupid manual unjam UAC5
Even worse, NO jam for UAC5
Flamers doing insane heat (yes, they did at one point)
MG build ruling the battlefield (ok just kidding on that one!)


The weapons balance still needs some work. And it will need further tweaks when the bugs start getting fixed. But PGI is VERY much on the right track.

Dracol, on 26 November 2012 - 08:15 PM, said:

I would love to see a buff to Ppcs, but that's becuse I use em to great effect

Same here with Ac20's. I can ruin someones day with them now, I cant wait until they get a buff.

[Taizan]

Tuhalu, on 25 November 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

The game is more balanced than it used to be, but there is something off on almost every single weapon. Plenty of work left for the designers to do!

Having something off on almost every weapon, is some kind of balance as well :-D

On a more serious note, the combat and weapons do "feel" balanced with a certain room for finetuning left over. As in any game there will always be one or the other FotM builds/mechs but in general I am having fun.

The major disgruntling factor for most (from what you see on the forums at least) I'd say are not the weapons or mechs, but the game breaking bugs, size/variety of maps and the lack of advanced teamplay features.