249 replies to this topic

[Vernius Ix]

Captain Midnight, on 28 November 2012 - 04:36 AM, said:

I appreciate that position Ciller but I just don't agree, the only skill required is letting off left trigger before you overheat and letting off left trigger if you don't see hit markers/lose lock.

That's skill? Really? That's not skill at all.

My problem isn't dying to them, it's that I used 3xLRM15s all day long today, won probably 9/10 games in an easy stomp, averaged 500+ damage in a premade where the other 3 guys were running optimal builds as well (If I was teamed with worse people who stole less damage I'd have been averaging 1000+).

My problem is that I want to play a game where the better player wins; the one who aims better. Not the one who holds down left trigger better. Right now with LRMs how they are it's a complete campfest and whoever has the more impatient puggers is very likely to lose, and if the game isn't decided by LRM use it's decided by SSRM use. It takes 10x as much skill to beat a LOWS user than to be a LOWS user and that's being generous to the LOWS user.

The players at the top of the scoreboards who decide the matches are always in LOWS mechs these days unless it was a truly epic pugstomp in which case my single LBX10 Cicada might have top damage (which has happened)

Since you seem to be slow let me break this down for you.

The TEAM that works best together should win every match.

The TEAM that can best use all facets of play (Maneuver, Target Priority, etc..) to continually harass the other team should win every match.

Just because a team has one or two exceptional players does not guarantee victory if they do not know how to work in a TEAM.

Got it?

[Purlana]

Platinum Booger, on 28 November 2012 - 07:53 AM, said:

Riiiiight.. Which is why over half of people who are shooting lasers can't even keep most of the beam duration on any part of the mech at all let alone a single component. Just watch people in spectator. Maybe your argument holds up for stationary vs stationary

Those people simply blow. Anything from a hunchback and larger is easy to hit with a laser.

Those same players probably fail at keeping missle locks as well.

Edited by Purlana, 28 November 2012 - 07:57 AM.

[Nightcrept]

Thontor, on 28 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

On LRMs, I do think it takes less skill to use them.

This is countered by many of their mechanics though...

They are very inefficient at dealing their damage, because the damage is spread out over the mech

They are very slow, easy to avoid getting hit by them.

They are the only weapon that warns you that they are incoming, combine this with how slow they are makes them even easier to avoid getting hit by them.

In order to fire at targets not in your line of sight, you need a teammate to keep your target in line of sight for the full duration of flight time..

They have a relatively long minimum range, meaning that once someone gets within that minimum range you are carrying dead weight.

They are mitigated by a passive defense system (AMS).. No energy or ballistic weapon can have its damige reduced passively (until we get reactive and reflective armor.. But that's a ways down the road.)

SSRMs on the other hand... are a different story. They don't spread their damage enough.. This is being addressed soon though.

I also think SSRMs should lose their lock quicker.. Like the instant your reticle isn't over the target there is no more missile lock.

They probably could use a cooldown increase as well.

Very well said sir.

[dario03]

I'm ok with LRM's especially since they nerfed their damage a little while back (would of prefered it stayed that way but a 0.1 buff isn't to bad). Yeah they don't need LOS but they are a support weapon with slow travel time and your warned about them when incoming.

But it wouldn't bother me at all if they took out streaks. The only reason I see for having them now is because of lag and bad netcode. If that wasn't there I don't think you should need a auto hit weapon for 270m.

[Juju Shinobi]

ECM may fix the problems of annoying missile boats everywhere, but it will become another thing which people will use constantly. Streak SRMs will prove to be obsolete for Scout Mechs which rely on them for easy hit and runs like I do. I just hope not every mech will be able to use ECM, specially the Cicada and the Jenner. If that were to happen.... good god its game over!

[Purlana]

JujuShinobi, on 28 November 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

ECM may fix the problems of annoying missile boats everywhere, but it will become another thing which people will use constantly. Streak SRMs will prove to be obsolete for Scout Mechs which rely on them for easy hit and runs like I do. I just hope not every mech will be able to use ECM, specially the Cicada and the Jenner. If that were to happen.... good god its game over!

Cicada and the Jenner are getting ECM. It has been stated...

[TRIUMPH]

Skill Ceiling.

[Joseph Mallan]

JudgeDeathCZ, on 28 November 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

Yes everyone will play ECM mechs only with lazorz and dumb SRMs6( hey I hope my STK-3F( will get one too

The 3F does not have ECM. The 3Fb does. It was a star league royal upgrade.

[Elkarlo]

As the Vote is swinging in the other Direction:
I want to nerf Gauscat.

And ER-PPC Awesome Boats, because when you go with your LRM Boat into a Fire position where you can fire
and won't hit the Ground they can fire at you from 1,100 km outside of your Missle Range.
In Colony it's especially annoying, when you go on the Hill infront of your base you got always sniped....

And they are at nearly 1km and mostly you can't lock them.
So the Gauscats and ER-PPC Cats needs a Range Nerf. And shooting without look on a Mech should reduce Damage as well.. And then the pesky Enemies go even in Cover after 4 secound fly and another 1k C-Bills of Artemis Rocket Ammo is vasted. ( I need for a full restock 30k C-Bills which means 800 C-Bills a 30 Missle shot)

And i can go on and on,
the hardest time for LRM boats was when a lot of Ac/2 Cataphracts were around....

A LRM Boat have a Hard Time when the Enemy Team goes close to High obstacles,
stick together in Anti-Missle Teams, have a Long range Sniper around,
which shots a freestanding LRM Boats and lightmechs are killed fast.

An enemyteam which does that will drop my Damage to around 200-400 depending on loose/win.

An Enemyteam which doesn't will give me 700-1100 Damage done.

The problem is not the Lockon Weapon or anything else, it is: Will poeple Complain and whine till the Game is gone.

Eve-online was whined to death... because poeple didn't want to think about countermeasures in first place,
and didn't want to bother with "other" Gamemechanics. Excample would be the Minmatar Vagabound. I was flew bymyself a Vagabound and knew the Weaknesses of the Ship. I was 5 Times attacked by an infamous Vagabound before it was nerfed in Speed etc. I was even attacked by an RA "Ace" which had already 6 BS of our Alliance eliminated. I never lost a Ship to a Vagabound and got 4 times the Vagabound down (even the Ace). But it was nerfed several times because the poeple whined their *** off because they didn't realise how to defend against fast low orbit Ships in the first place. Till the Vagabound was never used by PvP Gamers again and they went on other Ships to kill Poeple. And the Poeple whined then over this Ships... so the Nerfing Srew went on and on...

MWO is PvP pure. And there are plenty Ways of avoiding Missle Bombardments... as there are plenty
Ways of avoiding Snipers or how to deal with Energyboats etc. Poeple will always be ****** up in some way till
they learn how to avoid this and that. By whining over EVERYTHING we will end up with ONE SETUP for ALL Players.

In Eve-online there were times, when you didn't fly this or that single Setup you would be ****** up in PvP. Do you want that we all drive Atlas with AC/20 2xSRM6 3Large Lasers and plenty Heatsinks? And till you can afford it you will simply loose in the Game .

THAT would be WoT: 2 Attack of the Killer Robots Tanks. The Side with the highest overall Tier wins.


Edit.:
Atm the Side which is better balanced wins. I had game where we had 5-6 Missles Boats and we simply lost... because the other Side hat 2 Missle boats 1 Scout and 4-5 Brawler... the Missle Boats gave Support (and earned the Damage) and the other Missle Boats simply couldn't lock on fast enough... as they had no logon.

Edited by Elkarlo, 28 November 2012 - 08:56 AM.

[8CH Trooper]

The argument shouldn't be about whether or not LRM's and SSRM's need to be skill based, it should be about the lack of counter measures this game has, give us smoke generators to break lock and obscure vision, give us flare launchers to distract incoming missiles, give us ECM's so that jenner doing the circle the wagon thing isn't able to keep a constant lock on you so his team mates can rain down LRM's on you. Now, before I get a barrage of comments like" this never happens if your in a premade" or "learn how to play" or "run for cover in your 100 ton mech", this about a logical progression of the game, if PGI is going to retain lock on weapon systems there needs to an effective counter measure, even the vehicles in BF3 have the ability to produce smoke as a counter to missile locks. This isn't about completely negating missile locks, the counter measures would only be effective for a set amount of time and there would be a cool down period between uses, this is about balance without the extreme nerfing that PGI has a history of.

[Bobzilla]

Nightcrept, on 28 November 2012 - 07:37 AM, said:

Simple. Lazors once aimed are fire and forget, they have no ammo limit and can be used to pin point a target.
Lrms are a general area weapon. You must hold your lock so they aren't true fire and forget and are easily avoided.
ssrm's are a bit different but I simply don't think they are that powerful.




In the case of LRMS you must keep lock which means you need line of sight. Generally that means your going to get hit by a gause a few times and or chased down by a jenner. If you attempt to fire non line of sight then your depending on your team mates which if your pugging means they are most likely in a death spin and your going to end up hitting your team mate a long with your target.

Every thing you describe here could be said about any other weapon. Except where you need los for LRM's, which you don't. And yes you have to aim in the general direction to maintain that lock, but don't you usually aim in the general diretion of your enemy when you play? So really you said nothing at all about what i said; that lock on weapons are easier to use.

[Ryolacap]

Lock on missiles need to be put into check
A. Cover only works about 30% of the time.
B. seems like more missiles hit than should - AMS is almost useless
C. In the tabletop you still had to roll to hit the same as a cannon - Then after their was a roll for the amount of missiles
D. Shutdowns don't disengage the lock fast enough not to get hit by 3-4 volleys
E. "Long Range" weapons that are not missiles are close to worthless against the missile boat and everything is worthless vs a streak boat.
The typical response from pro lock-on weapons, most likely abusers themselves, seems to always be - Run, Hide, or bring all your friends. Unfortunatly the game is not won like this.
And you definatly dont need line of site with locks since you can use others line of site.

Edited by Ryolacap, 28 November 2012 - 09:13 AM.

[FerretGR]

Captain Midnight, on 28 November 2012 - 06:21 AM, said:

Someone finally came out and said it, they don't want to try hard they just want to use missiles. No skill required, just the way we like it. This game is such a good simulator it simulates me being good at FPS!

I'm not much of a missile user, ie. I don't run a C1 or a single LRM boat, so that criticism doesn't fit me. But I'll still defend missile users from whiners like you.

Whatever you're good at, you're not very good at this forum stuff, that's for sure. Respond to the rest of my post instead of the single line you cherry-picked. I think your point is farcical and I think your problem is that you lack the skill to play in a game where the other team has access to missiles. The problem is you, not the missiles.

You want this, you want that, you want blah blah blah. You get this game, and this game has missiles. It always has and they always played the same role. After 20+ years one would think you'd have learned to deal with it. I want a game with missiles, because if all we had were lasers, this game would be boring as ****. What about what I want? Why is that any less important than what you want?

Edited by FerretGR, 28 November 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Quote

What about I want?Why is that any less important than what you want?

This I learned over 3 decades ago! When I try to make something be MY way, who do I ruin said thing for?

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 28 November 2012 - 09:14 AM.

[Voridan Atreides]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 November 2012 - 05:46 AM, said:

Someone needs a nap. This is a combat sim. Not Basketball. We have taken a lot of pains to make it so we have the ability to kill with a blink of an eye. Will you be QQ like this when WoB uses a Nuke to destroy your whole side? Seriously Making war is easy. Killing is easy. Grow up and face your imminent death with dignity. Whether it's coming from a laser or a missile barrage.

Honestly, you'd think some of you never died in a game before!

I think your just biased towards Jenners..i mean...considering you have one lol...

[Nightcrept]

Ryolacap, on 28 November 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

Lock on missiles need to be put into check
A. Cover only works about 30% of the time.
B. seems like more missiles hit than should - AMS is almost useless
C. In the tabletop you still had to roll to hit the same as a cannon - Then after their was a roll for the amount of missiles
D. Shutdowns don't disengage the lock fast enough not to get hit by 3-4 volleys
E. "Long Range" weapons that are not missiles are close to worthless against the missile boat and everything is worthless vs a streak boat.
The typical response from pro lock-on weapons, most likely abusers themselves, seems to always be - Run, Hide, or bring all your friends. Unfortunatly the game is not won like this.
And you definatly dont need line of site with locks since you can use others line of site.

A. Wrong. If your in cover no missile in the world will hit you currently unless they are using artemis which I believe still changes the flight path.

B. Again not true. If your moving and at range beyond 600 meters most of the missiles will miss. The ones that do hit will hit you all over and not core you out.

C. This isn't TT.

D. Dunno. I don't generally shutdown when I get a missile warning.

E. That is not true. A gause cat or gause cannons in general have a longer range and are far more deadly then a LRM boat. And compared to other mech builds the LRM boat is very specialized i.e. a min range. If you can find the LRM boat you can kill it. Streak cats are annoying.

Our response is not run and hide or bring friends. The concept is simple. A lrm boat can only hurt you if you run out in the open on a battlefield like superman. Now if your a jenner or other super fast mech that is fine as you can outrun most of the missiles but otherwise you just can't nor should you be able to do that.

Lrm boats are very easily countered and only as good as you allow them to be. You can even manipulate them into killing their own team mates fairly easily if your a brawler. (I used a bad lrm pilot to kill two of his own team mates in the game just before I posted this.)

SSrms are a completely different issue and I don't use them much to be able to comment on their op or not.

[KuruptU4Fun]

I'm going to assume you haven't been thru any sort of military training, and I'm not going to make a big argument out of it. Grenades are made for the lowest common denominator, yet they are effective in combat. Artillery is a support weapon and effective in combat. Ground to ground missiles are not effective because artillery does a better job by using area of effect. It lays damage to an area that is most likely acquired by Line of Sight. But also uses soldiers to call in fire by them giving co-ordinates, the same concept as the missiles we use in game. BUT today's military isn't driving 2-4 story mechs, and an artillery round that is more likely going to hit the ground and explode is not going to be effective against that building sized mech. GtG missiles (like the BGM-71 TOW) are highly effective against tanks. But 1 missile at a time against a multi-story mech would not be, hence the reason for LRM racks.

[Matthew Pryde]

Just to weigh in for the OP, I use Lasers and AC's a lot more these days instead of LRMs because they're way easier to hit a target with, especially a light. LRM's are just too tricky, hard, and come with a ton of rules, when I had the time to play more, I was solid LRM, but now it just requires too much effort to do minimal damage, if LRM's are really killing you, might not be your game bro.

[T a z z]

I'm bored so I'll bite

I'm a Catapult pilot who has used almost every weapon in the game at one time or another. Sometimes the weapons I used were called OP (GaussCat) and other times I was mocked for using such silly weapons (PPCS /w single heatsinks). Over this time period I've seen many weapons become the flavor of the day, only to have someone figure out a method to counter this style without the devs having to swing the nerfbat left and right. It's the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors scenario.

Some players insist a build should not be possible because it's not 'canon'. Yet, rarely do they consider how much custimization was possible in TT. Others seek to create balance via kneejerk reactions without allowing the community time to react. And even more view the game based solely on what target they can't kill effectively. Not enough players, take a second to step back and ask what they are doing wrong... and why THEY caused themselves to fail.

Take LRMs in this case: a canon weapon designed to support via indirect medium to long range fire spreading the damage across the oppenent creating weak spots on the target for allies to exploit. As a Catapult pilot, I've played matches where both teammates and I used the same LRM15x2 for the entire match achieving vastly different damage totals. What caused this damage difference if no skill is involved?

The truth is, my fellow teammates lacked the skill and understanding to be effective with LRMs. A player sitting at 1km+ blindly depending upon allies for targets firing and forgetting LRMs will fail to hit any intellegent target. At this range, often the user does not have enough information to determine if the target is already behind cover. What more, any decent player can simply step behind cover resulting in a wasted shot. Lastly, there are more advanced techinques which allow for LRM avoidance without cover at this range.

Instead, a skilled LRM pilot engages his targets keeping a safe but effective range while being situationally aware so he does not get caught offguard. I fire the majority of my LRMs at 200-400m with a clear knowledge of which will hit and which will miss as they are coming out the launcher. While any oppenent could easily step in 100m and destroy my ability to fire, my SKILL in piloting the mech keeps me aware and allows me to continue to fire by dancing with my targets to regain my range when required.

TLDR: If you are a player getting killed by LRMs by my teammate sitting at 1k, you lack skill. If you are a player getting killed by my LRMs at 200-400m then I have enough skill to avoid your fire and control the fight.

[Garrath]

I do particularly well with certain LRM builds but there's one noticable difference with how I play them to how I see others play them. I'd say 60-70% of my volleys are on LOS targets, and often ones i've moved to get flank/rear shots on. This is of course particularly dangerous for a missile boat because of their vulnerabilities in both mobility and short range defense. It's a case of risk/reward, indirect fire boaters do not pull NEARLY the numbers I get and others who have this playstyle.

To put things in perspective, I have 12 mechs in the garage, 2 are LRM boats, one streak cat, the rest are brawlers/scouts. In the brawlers I have no problem getting 500+ damage etc barring bad teamfails. I tend to preffer las/p-las over acs.

In certain LRM configurations I do get some results above the curve and i'm honestly surprised to see an LRM dmg buff. I often pulled 800+matches and have broken 1300, but I NEVER see results even close to that from behind-cover boats. Risk vs Reward.

Anyways, to the OP, regardless of your view, and whether you want an arena game or our BATTLETECH game, there is a huge difference in effectiveness between a good missile pilot, and a bad.

Edited by Garrath, 28 November 2012 - 09:46 AM.