214 replies to this topic

[HarmAssassin]

Please reduce LRM damage to 1 pt per missile where it belongs. This is ridiculous, a light mech runs into you, then circles. Before you can kill him, his entire team targets you with LRMs and you're dead within 15 seconds (playing an Assault mech). A single mech can equip 50 LRMs, and fire three volleys before the first hits. @1.8 dmg per missile, that's 270 dmg... from one mech. Now multiply that by a few mechs firing LRMs, and the fact that many buildings and hills allow LRMs to pass through them (meaning no hope of cover) = incredibly over powered.

[Devil Fox]

I use a dual AC20 Catapult in flanking attacks with a wingman of any description, ran with SSRM Cats, Ballistic and Energy Cataphracts, Centurions, Hunchbacks etc... runs 5 ton of ammo and a standard 245 engine (tweaked to 65kph). I use small lasers to detect the lag hitbox of an actual mech but face to face I'm still able to core mechs in 2 or 3 salvos, even 1on1 with assault mechs is possible.

Their not weaker, but I'm finding that sometimes you clip/glace a target and that the splash damage is lost, eg I hit a jenner but might only go yellow or orange on the leg and side torso instead of the leg/core that should've occurred (love 1shot commando's). Best fun of my build is scaring the living **** out of guass cats, you trap them and they don't know what to do!

[DTheSleepless]

Malzel, on 28 November 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

It is, and each role is equally viable and useful to the team, but piloting a heavy or an assault is a privilege, not a right. Piloting an assault 'mech or an LRM boat is and should be expensive, because while you're wading through the enemy in your Atlas or raining Hell from safety of the back ranks in your Catapult A1, it's the scouts and mediums that are doing the hard work, keeping your Atlas' flanks clear and spotting targets for your Catapult.

Now, I'm not saying that piloting heavies and assaults takes no skill, because it does, but you can't deny that it's easy for those high-powered 'mechs to take home all the glory while the little guys often take more risks for less reward. I like how PGI has "soft capped" the big, high-powered builds by saying, "Sure, you can stack 2000 Artemis-equipped LRMs on that Catapult if you want to, but it'll cost you." That means you can have your fun for a few matches, but then you might have to step down off the pedestal of Godhood and slog through the mud with the rest of us once in a while.

Even with that said, I can still agree that re-arming could use some tweaking. I want re-arming to be a balancing factor so that the super-powered cheese builds have to pay for effectiveness, but as someone else said, (Hayashi, I think?) the 75% free "welfare ammo" means that most of us never have pay for ammo and do fine, and I don't like that. That's why energy weapons have all the tradeoffs that they do, because you never have to pay for ammo.

Would decreasing the welfare ammo to 50%, but lowering the actual cost of reloading to compensate be reasonable? I'm okay with some free re-arming, (I'm sure the factions and merc corps subsidize some of that!) but I'd like the free reloads to be low enough that players have to pay for some ammo if they want to be effective.

I disagree with you completely. The notion that piloting a heavy or assault and racking up kills is somehow easier than piloting a light smacks of elitism. I pilot Commandos well; I can't really pilot any other class to save my life. While I could probably handle a Streakcat given the sheer number of 10-year-olds running them, that's like saying you might be able to hit the broad side of a barn if you were piloting the Death Star.

The strength of MWO is finding what you like to play, finding your niche, and being able to fill it. Enjoy playing Assaults? There's no reason why the game's economy should be punishing you for that. Enjoy playing LRM boats? Fine! Awesome! Play them! As long as LRMs themselves are balanced, this isn't a problem. Using rearm and repair costs to balance the game is ridiculous, the game should be balanced as a matter of course.

[EmperorMyrf]

DTheSleepless, on 28 November 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

Using rearm and repair costs to balance the game is ridiculous, the game should be balanced as a matter of course.

It almost is, in that sense. An assault does have more firepower and thus more killing potential (at least, the speed at which it kills) meaning more earnings to compensate for the high repair and re-arm costs. The actual values might still need to be played with, but that's the vibe I'm picking up.

[Asatruer]

HarmAssassin, on 28 November 2012 - 05:46 PM, said:

Please reduce LRM damage to 1 pt per missile where it belongs. This is ridiculous, a light mech runs into you, then circles. Before you can kill him, his entire team targets you with LRMs and you're dead within 15 seconds (playing an Assault mech). A single mech can equip 50 LRMs, and fire three volleys before the first hits. @1.8 dmg per missile, that's 270 dmg... from one mech. Now multiply that by a few mechs firing LRMs, and the fact that many buildings and hills allow LRMs to pass through them (meaning no hope of cover) = incredibly over powered.

Mech armor was doubled to try and mitigate the ability of mouse aiming to burn through the armor of one location faster due to not having to deal with the random hit-location system of TT. Since LRMs and SRMs are still scattering around hitting many different hit locations without the focused damage effect that mouse aiming provides all the other weapons, LRMs doing less than 2 damage and SRMs doing less than 3 damage has them doing less damage here than they are in TT.

[Tanus Dimitrov]

I have noticed that the Ac/20 has been disabled/crit'd a lot quicker lately. At least in an Atlas it seems to be the first thing taken out, even with armor still in-tact. This has happened in at least 10 matches so far.

[EmperorMyrf]

Asatruer, on 28 November 2012 - 06:59 PM, said:

Mech armor was doubled to try and mitigate the ability of mouse aiming to burn through the armor of one location faster due to not having to deal with the random hit-location system of TT. Since LRMs and SRMs are still scattering around hitting many different hit locations without the focused damage effect that mouse aiming provides all the other weapons, LRMs doing less than 2 damage and SRMs doing less than 3 damage has them doing less damage here than they are in TT.

I get the feeling the values aren't doubled because they hit probably far more often than they did in TT. If you're in the open, you will get hit by at least 1 missile 100% of the time, ignoring super fast mechs and AMS. And you can still aim with SRMs, meaning your miss rate could potentially be 0. At any rate, a good call.

[Koningswulf]

You devs said you should improve the Ac20 but after this patch it seems even worse than before.
It is still fragile like a gauss (a gauss should be way more fragile)
A AC20 really should have stunning effects like screen blur and cockpit shake,
but it doesnt do any shake of opponent, even a AC2 does that for heavens sake!!!
The DPS is now similiar to other ballistic weapon considering the long cool down and you only have a
limited amount of ammo and very high heat 6 compared to other ballistic weapons
AC 20 the should be terror of the game is now pretty much below average and actually
it is now rather bad compared to other weapons.

I have removed it from my mech and started using other combos.

just my 2cent.

Edited by Koningswulf, 28 November 2012 - 07:25 PM.

[HarmAssassin]

LRMs and SRMs are incredibly overpowered right now. Getting hit by SRMs blinds the target, and if using 6 Streak SRMs, you have the case of damage that doesn't miss, and automatically blinds the target.

In case you haven't noticed the number of players equipping nothing but LRMs (and lots of them) is increasing dramatically since a couple patches ago. People have realized that all you need to win is one scout and the rest of the team firing LRMs.

To test this I made an Awesome with 4 LRMs. In the first game I used it in, I got 5 kills. FIVE KILLS on forest colony. The fact that LRMs are indirect fire (meaning the person firing them never has to expose themselves to enemy fire), means that LRMs need to do less damage than any other weapon or they quickly become too powerful. Also, LRMS do not have random hit locations as they did in the table top version. LRMS strike the torso's FAR more often than any other body part.

A 600 pt armored Assault mech shouldn't be killed in 15 seconds from a kilometer away. It is becoming less and less desirable to play assault mechs in this game. Between the lag shield of the Jenner and LRM overkill, assault mechs are becoming endangered. I played for over 5 hours today, and in that time I'll bet only twice was I in a game in which I wasn't the only assault mech (yes I realize the double negative). Of all those games, only twice was there a second assault mech in the game. Everyone is now playing light mechs with Streak SRMs or heavy mechs loaded with as many LRMs as they can carry.

Edited by HarmAssassin, 28 November 2012 - 07:56 PM.

[Ryebear]

The Cataphract arm movement range change is quite extreme. It feels like we lost 10% overall angle of attack. Can the torse twist range by increased to accommodate?

[Valaska]

I've personally not noticed a difference.

[Vertrucio]

I don't think there has been a difference for a long while. It's mainly just patch placebo.

But I am saying the AC/20 needs a looking at. Used in Dual configuration in the K2, they're nasty though, which makes me not want them buffed, but single configuration, like the Atlas's side gun (which I still use because I like them) it weirdly ineffective. Then again, I mainly fire them at the current zombie mechs. The AC/20's performance against lights is actually really good for me.

[Alaric Wolf Kerensky]

Shismar, on 27 November 2012 - 01:05 PM, said:

Sure the change was from 1.7 to 1.8? It feels more like the old levels of OP LRM. A single salvo wasted my Hunchy in River City. Took out torso and arm on one side and did not leave much the cat I was fighting had to push trough with armor mostly gone.

Later games went o.k. Maybe a freak occurrence but I usually do not die in 5 secs when facing a single mech and no headshot.

P.s.: Have AMS for whatever it is worth.

Yes, they did re-buff the already wickedly OP LRM. My up-armored Catapult lost all CT armor and its entire left side from a single salvo from an LRM 40 Atlas.
Even my Atlas (which has 104 pts of front CT armor) got cored through by a couple Catapults with LRMs in about 7 seconds.

I do not mind powerful builds which actually take skill to operate, such as SRM, Gauss, and large AC builds. However, LRM boating takes next to NO skill to operate. You just get in range, make sure you have room for your missiles to launch, lock on, and pull the trigger. And with a 1000m range, it is so, so easy to rain death from a very safe distance. It is the only weapon with excessive buffs to range (50%), damage (80%), and ammunition capacity (50%). Compared to the SRM, it is rather sad that you have no range increase, no ammunition increase, and only a 25% damage buff (while also having a severe nerf to grouping, even with Artemis). And SRMs are the weapons that actually require you to get close to the enemy and aim.

[ExAstris]

The problem with LRM balance.

Since this thread is littered with posts about LRMs, and they seem fairly divided on whether or not LRMs are massively overpowered or massively underpowered or just right, I thought I would share a few thoughts on the mechanics and why people have such divergent opinions.

Imagine two combatants each with 10 hit points. One carries a one damage weapon that is garunteed to hit his opponent, the other is carrying a two damage weapon with an equal fire rate that he must aim to hit his opponent. Suppose the skill of the second player is such that he will hit, on average, 50% of his shots. This is a balanced scenario.

Suppose now that we introduce a third player into the match. Player 3 sucks. He picks up weapon number 2 but can only manage a 30% hit rate with it. He occassionally gets kills, but he gets rolled by players one and two most of the time. Player 3 then swaps to weapon number 1. He now has a garunteed 1 damage weapon and now plays competatively with players 1 and 2.

Player 4 joins. Sees that player 1 and 3 are both using the same weapon and decides to try it. He performs just as well as the other three. Eventually he tries the other weapon (probably because its shiney). Turns out player 4 is a boss. He has a 70% hit rate with that weapon. He proceeds to sow the fields with the corpses of his fallen foes.




This is obviously an analogy, but the gist is that LRMs are like weapon number one, they perform in a way that is fairly independent of the pilots targeting skill. Sure, the pilots skill will still contribute in terms of fire-discipline, mech build, strategic positioning, and aim with his secondary array, but largely his potential is capped by that weapon. And lesser pilots have their battlefield effectiveness artificially bumped up to nearly that level when using that weapon as well.



So this is the actual problem with balancing LRMs. They can't be useless, and they can't dominate every battle. Given the widely divergent skill of players in MWO (seriously, I've seen people with inhuman aim (and no aimbot), and pilots who litterally could not even hit a hunchback at close range with lasers), there will always be players whose skill is not at the level the LRMs are balanced to.

Again, it isn't that LRMs are not balanced at all, its just that they can only be balanced to a certain level of skill. LRMs are death hoses to noobs who jump in an assault mech thinking bigger is better and waltz into the open with the teenage aura of invicibility. For the pros, LRMs are imprecise, unreliable, overly-counterable support tools that handicap the application of raw skill.


For me, if I wanted to use LRMs competatively, they would have to be buffed. Does that mean that PGI should buff them? Not necessarily. For every great pilot who died more often to convential weapons during the Artemis-Folly than they did the blot-out-the-sun-storm of LRMs due to brilliant defensive maneuvering, quick hosing of scouts, and proper charging of boats... there are dozens of aweful pilots who can't lead targets, park on the crests of hills for dozens of seconds, always attack enemies by moving in a straight line at them, and still haven't figured out how to group their weapons efficiently.

In Conclusion:
When LRMs are useful for competative pro play, 90% of the player base will have no fun. When LRMs are balanced to the average player, there will always be players who think they are overpowered easy-mode, and players who think they're just not worth taking.

Thus: LRMs are both overpowered and underpowered.

[MustrumRidcully]

Asatruer, on 28 November 2012 - 06:59 PM, said:

Mech armor was doubled to try and mitigate the ability of mouse aiming to burn through the armor of one location faster due to not having to deal with the random hit-location system of TT. Since LRMs and SRMs are still scattering around hitting many different hit locations without the focused damage effect that mouse aiming provides all the other weapons, LRMs doing less than 2 damage and SRMs doing less than 3 damage has them doing less damage here than they are in TT.

But was that the only reason? Weapons also have 2 to 4 times the DPS as they did in the table top?

I feel that it was a combination of both factors in the end.

One thing doubling armor neatly ensures is - a single AC20 to the head isn't instant death. That can be quite important, regardless of the rate of fire, and is definitely a question of mouse aiming. People would complain a lot about head shotting Gauss Cats and what-not if the first salvo would be the kill shot - it gives no time to react.

But doubling armour also helps against people dealing 60 damage to one location in 10 seconds rather than 20 damage... It helps making your mech generally still feel like a heavily armored beast.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 28 November 2012 - 11:34 PM.

[ElcomeSoft]

I took on a Hunchback with an AC/20 Phract build... I never saw the round leave the torso mount but my opponent did. I was packing 2 LL so did some damage to him but only very little.

I just thought it was the Cataphract... as my YLW's AC/20 never has any issues dismantling Hunchies.

I may rebuild my AC/20 Phract and give it another test.

[MustrumRidcully]

ExAstris, on 28 November 2012 - 11:04 PM, said:

In Conclusion:
When LRMs are useful for competative pro play, 90% of the player base will have no fun. When LRMs are balanced to the average player, there will always be players who think they are overpowered easy-mode, and players who think they're just not worth taking.

Thus: LRMs are both overpowered and underpowered.

Maybe there is way to make LRMs more "skill-based"? What if there was some kind of "lock-on" mini-game?
1) You target a mech and press the "fire" key.
2) A virtual representation of the mech appears (maybe just a generic "paper doll", with a size as appropriate for the mech within half its actual distance. That representation otherwise moves like the mech does.
3) You now have 1 second to hold onto that target.
4) Now your missiles fire. The number of missiles that hit, and the spot they hit, is dependent on how well you aimed during that 1 second. If you hold your reticule for 50 % on the mech's head, 50 % of the missiles will hit the head. If you held it for 20 % outside the mech, 20 % of your missiles will miss. If you held it for 30 % on the mechs left torso, 30 % of your missiles will hit there.
5) Artemis improves the hit chance by lowering the time to lock to 0.75 seconds, and halving the percentage value of all misses. (So if you hold the target for 25 % on CT, 25 % on the LT, and 50 % missed, 37,5 % will hit the CT, 37.5 % the LT, and 25 % will miss.)

After the shot, you don't need to maintain a lock, just ensure tha tthe target stays on your radar (or your allies radar) until the missiles are within 100m.

[Asatruer]

MustrumRidcully, on 28 November 2012 - 11:33 PM, said:

But was that the only reason? Weapons also have 2 to 4 times the DPS as they did in the table top?

I feel that it was a combination of both factors in the end.

One thing doubling armor neatly ensures is - a single AC20 to the head isn't instant death. That can be quite important, regardless of the rate of fire, and is definitely a question of mouse aiming. People would complain a lot about head shotting Gauss Cats and what-not if the first salvo would be the kill shot - it gives no time to react.

But doubling armour also helps against people dealing 60 damage to one location in 10 seconds rather than 20 damage... It helps making your mech generally still feel like a heavily armored beast.

I used to mostly think the doubling of armor was due to the tripling of the RoF, but with every patch that comes out where the heat system is not markedly improved and/or DHS get hit with the nerf bat, the more I think that PGI really wants people to not normally take full advantage of the tripled RoF they provided. So now I mostly think the doubling of armor was due to mouse-aiming and convergence. Though, still the doubled armor does help mitigate for those instances when a pilot decides to burn the candle from both ends to burst more DPS than their heat can effectively be sunk.

What I really want to know is why the scattering LRMs and SRMs got a sizable damage buff, but the LB-10x did not.

Blinder, on 28 November 2012 - 11:56 AM, said:

LBX AC's- "benefit" was easier to hit with "side effect" of packet damage... the somewhat better chance to get a crit was a small perk and perfectly well represented in a game like this by just spreading the damage around. The main trick is just getting a decent mechanic for representing that spread without making it a traditional FPS shotgun... dunno, saw a comment about them that sounded like a bad turn to me.

The whole "crit seeker" aspect of boating lots of little weapons, or scatter weapons in TT was likely a side effect as you say, and personally, I see no reason for MGs or the LBX to get a special gimmicky critical bonus that I see some people calling for.

As for making the LBX not like a traditional shotgun, if PGI made its cluster round more like how I (and I know some others) interpret it to mean, it shoot a solid canister out of the barrel that would then when it gets to be within some reasonable distance from the target, explode its pellets forward scattering them all over the target mech. It would be a lot harder to code, but would be worth it in my opinion. One of the big tricks would be figuring out the proximity it would have to explode at to make sure the pellet scatter is not too tight, or too spread out. The key advantage this has, other than making it not shotgun like, is that it would have full effectiveness up to is effective range of 540m, since the spread of the pellets would not start until it was within say 180m. This would a bit more accurately represent the fact that in TT, the LBX does not have a reduced amount of pellets that hit at farther ranges, but rather simply an increase in the over-all hit chance.

[sarkun]

To everyone complaining along the lines: "The whole enemy team fires LRMs at me and I die in seconds! Nerf LRMs!"

THIS is the way it's supposed to be! If an ENTIRE TEAM focuses fire on your mech, you die. Period. Doesn't matter if they focus lasers, Acs or LRMs. This is the way the game is supposed to work.

[Kmieciu]

Betty should sound more like this:

http://w221.wrzuta.p...GhdbHp/heatlevl