425 replies to this topic

[EmperorMyrf]

The stock mechs aren't awful. Someone said in here to adapt to your mech instead of adapting your mech to you, and I think that's a perfect way of saying it. Sure there are a handful of really painful-to-use mechs (honestly the 4J and 9M are both excessively hot) but the majority of them are quite nice.

Obviously custom mechs will win in the end because now the player has the ability to shape the mech around the his/her greatest strengths, which is essentially the entire point of the mechlab.

Edited by EmperorMyrf, 03 December 2012 - 07:56 AM.

[BFalcon]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 December 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

I am trying to come up with a viable comparison in other genres, but it's difficult. The Trial Mechs are kinda like having to use WW2 planes to fight Jet Fighters, but that's not the correct comparison - WW2 planes were awesome in their time frame, and if you had a WW2 only mode in a flight sim, people would probably love it. There isn't anything in the real world that really compares to this. Maybe having a racing game where the default cars do not have enough fuel to make more than 3 laps and you need 30 laps to win, and everyone that customizes lowers his top speed by 30 kp/h to add enough fuel to last 10 laps?

Not really fair - the Trials ARE OK - provided you can adapt to the style they need - GENERALLY.

The high heat mechs, like the Awesome 9M, suffer from the DHS nerf more than most... those are the problem mechs and should NEVER be offered as Trials, just as no mech heavier than a Medium with an XL engine should.

The problem comes not from the stock mechs, but the choice of stock mechs with the current setup.

[Super Mono]

Because of the doubled armor and increased fire rate of all weapons the balance is completely screwed for every stock mech. Every customized mech takes more ammo and heatsinks and either less weapons or a large number of smaller weapons.

Russ trying to tell us we're all wrong and that the problem is due to player skill and not the drastic balance changes between TT and MWO is distressing. Does PGI not understand its own game?

[John Norad]

Captain Midnight, on 03 December 2012 - 07:29 AM, said:

I kinda got scared for the future of the game when I heard Russ said that honestly.

Yes, it does sound a bit disconnected, doesn't it?

The reality is that both mech efficiency and skill are different when you compare a newbie with an experienced player. People like to pick just one of them as an argument, which is inherently flawed and hints at a certain agenda, or carelessness.

[buckX]

OpCentar, on 03 December 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Yes trial mechs are bad vs highly customized variants but are they really that bad when matched vs other trials?

I think they will be fine if they match trials vs trials only.

Trial mechs are as good as trial mechs. That's a bold tautology.

MustrumRidcully, on 03 December 2012 - 07:44 AM, said:

Are wer sure Russ is actually ever playing his own game?

It's important to remember that the variants the devs drive are all awful. I don't know whether it's some effort to convince people that bad variants and weapons are good or what, but recall that Russ uses that silly Dragon with a Large Pulse Laser.

When they go up against stock variants, it may well be that they don't seem bad in comparison.

Edited by buckX, 03 December 2012 - 07:58 AM.

[Erik Jast]

EmperorMyrf, on 03 December 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

The stock mechs aren't awful. Someone said in here to adapt to your mech instead of adapting your mech to you, and I think that's a perfect way of saying it. Sure there are a handful of really painful-to-use mechs (honestly the 4J and 9M are both excessively hot) but the majority of them are quite nice.

Obviously custom mechs will win in the end because now the player has the ability to shape the mech around the his/her greatest strengths, which is essentially the entire point of the mechlab.

It's all fine to adapt but it is no fun to stand there doing nothing while you keep taking hits because your female copilot keeps warning you that you have high heat levels.

[pesco]

Scratx, on 03 December 2012 - 07:53 AM, said:

[...] because you also have access to tech that's usually (but not always) not deployed on trials, you can make them generally better, too.

Therefore, to people used to custom mechs, the trials are horrifying.

Thanks, my point exactly.

Quote

But the real problem, and why trial mech newbies are just outright stomped, is the matchmaker. Newbies in freakin' trials should never be matched against pros in custom mechs.

You are confusing a kludge to hide the problem with its solution. See my remark above: "the existence of such a system would very much confirm that there is a problem".

[Erik Jast]

John Norad, on 03 December 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

Yes, it does sound a bit disconnected, doesn't it?

The reality is that both mech efficiency and skill are different when you compare a newbie with an experienced player. People like to pick just one of them as an argument, which is inherently flawed and hints at a certain agenda, or carelessness.

Perhaps they play only on teams so their teammates cover up for their lack of ability. In one game, I was matched up with some others that had really nice matching color schemes. I was able to get two kills with my Awesome after their armor was chewed up quite a bit.

[NoRoo]

Completely disagree with the premise of the OP. Trial mechs are pretty good.

[beniliusbob]

If you give new players amazing mechs, they are still going to be new players and they are still going to get wrecked.

I played with the trial 9M yesterday and got 3 kills with those ER PPCs in Caustic friggin' Valley. Didn't do so well when I played with the 4J, but I have trouble setting up LRM shots (I've never really used them).

They really aren't that bad if you're not bad.

[EmperorMyrf]

Erik Jast, on 03 December 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

It's all fine to adapt but it is no fun to stand there doing nothing while you keep taking hits because your female copilot keeps warning you that you have high heat levels.

never said it was easy. I do think that the trials are quite capable of killing, but I don't think it's a good learning environment for new players. Unless of course, they're all matched together which is happening soon anyways.

[RussianWolf]

The way I see it it like buying a car.

If you are 16 and just got your license, you likely can't go out and buy a new 350Z to go race your friends. Instead you get a used stock Civic and do your best to upgrade it as you go.

In Mechwarrior, few can afford an Awesome with all the upgrades out the door. They have to go with whatever the General Issue Mechs are for their military. Maybe they make a name for themselves and can ask for custom setups later, but their superiors tell them what to drive in the mean time. Mercs would have a bit more freedom but only to the point where their cash allows, and Mercs are hard pressed to compete with the Military (usually a generation or more behind).
And a rookie Merc would have the same restrictions as in the Military. The boss puts them in the least expensive machine available so they won't lose their shirts if the guy sucks. He has to prove himself before getting to load out his equipment his way.

Are the Trial Mechs great? No. But they are the same as you would get if you bought them and didn't have the funds to upgrade. They are General Issue. They are the first things you'd get to put your butt in if you joined a Merc crew with no real reputation.

I do agree that the heat system seems flawed, but that's for all Mechs. The ballistic weapons that in previous games were fire all day with no heat will overheat your Mech here.

[Dechan Fraser]

No one thinks it's fun to constantly overheat or run out of ammo, so that shouldn't be the experience you give to new players.

[DoRkZiLLaa]

Fetladral, on 03 December 2012 - 07:27 AM, said:

The trial mechs themselves arn't bad it's that when compared to bought (and maybe customized mechs) they are bad. But being stuck with them does teach you how to deal with all the limitations and actually manage your heat. Because well I was stuck with the trials till I bought my catapult.

Wrong. They are not "made bad" in comparison to custom mechs. They are less specialized, less tailored to you and your playstyle, and less optimized than a custom mech. So in that sense, they are "worse". But I drop in a trial every so often and do fine in them. The skill barrier isn't hardware, It's taking what you are given FOR FREE and using it in the method it was designed for. (READ: MOTHERF***ING FIRE DISCIPLINE)

[Alex Wolfe]

Redshift2k5, on 03 December 2012 - 07:17 AM, said:

The issue with underpowered trial mechs/new players will be solved in phase 3.

Will phase 3 magically fix heat dissipation, so that heat sinks stop lagging 1.5 tier behind weapons? Will it fix ammo loads, which are often insufficient to down two mechs on trials because of double armor, after which the weapon becomes 7-10 ton glorified paperweight?

T1 overheats with singles very easily (evidence: trial anything), needs dubs or an extreme load of singles.

T2 overheats with dubs (evidence: trial "awesome" can't shoot half its weapons twice before shutdown, cools down 20 seconds on FC). Would probably need clan freezers in bulk to remain operable, currently nothing can shoot ER weaponry, and nothing would want to shoot pulse weaponry for their heat generation.

At this rate, Clan weapons will likely need Eldar heat sinks, on loan from WH40K.

Bottom line: not a single stock design works with heat sinks designed to make that very same setup work. Heat is broken, and people have always been repeating it. Too bad the people up top remain blissfully unaware there even is an issue in the first place.



P.S. Will we even HAVE phase 3? People are leaving, new ones recoil from NPE. Just a heads-up.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 03 December 2012 - 08:18 AM.

[LaserAngel]

That poor trial Awesome would be viable if we weren't drifting toward LRMWarrior Online and all those heatsinks meant something for more than one ER PPC. You can only really continuously fire one ER PPC on that thing. Increased fire rates, the heat system, and the brawling mentality really hurt those heavy, hot energy support weapons.

I was dropping with two great Awesome pilots last night. On a PPC + Streak 2 + MPL 9M and another in a Large Laser + Streak 2 build. PPCs worked but you had to stay at range and I'm not talking about 90m. 30 damage per salvo with the ability to fire 2/3 alphas of 30 damage worked against something slow or stationary at range. They cooldown just too fast and allowed you to fire again. Increase the damage slightly and maybe the cooldown. The heat should stay high but it takes an experienced fire support player to manage them.

[DoRkZiLLaa]

Dechan Fraser, on 03 December 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

No one thinks it's fun to constantly overheat or run out of ammo, so that shouldn't be the experience you give to new players.

Conversely, if anything it encourages experimentation with builds. "Oh, this free piece of junk doesn't have enough ammo? Looks like that's the first thing on my shopping list..... after a 'Mech, of course." They then either pay to play the game, or grind and complain on the forums about the grinding and the trials.

[shintakie]

BFalcon, on 03 December 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

Not really fair - the Trials ARE OK - provided you can adapt to the style they need - GENERALLY.

The high heat mechs, like the Awesome 9M, suffer from the DHS nerf more than most... those are the problem mechs and should NEVER be offered as Trials, just as no mech heavier than a Medium with an XL engine should.

The problem comes not from the stock mechs, but the choice of stock mechs with the current setup.

Pretty much any stock mech with an XL should never be given as a trial mech with the exception of maybe (very slightly maybe) a light mech. Every other mech is too large of a target to have such a significant weakness to have. On a skilled or partially skilled player it isn't that big a deal because they've learned about twistin their bodies to avoid damage on one area. A new player wont have those skills at all and because the game still doesn't bother to tell you even the most basic stuff about items and equipment they'll lose their LT and explode and have absolutely no clue why that happened.

Segway. I get why PGI doesn't want to add in the tooltips for absolutely everythin since balance is ongoin right now, but for the love of all that is holy at least put super important stuff into the tooltips. XL engines should say that if you lose your LT/CT/RT you will die. PPCs with a minimum range are gimped, but if you plan to keep it for the love of all that is holy put a tiny five word description on it "Does little damage below 90m." UAC/5 should at the very least mention jammin, if not double tap. LRM's should mention their minimum range (it bothers me how many people I've had to tell that LRM's don't do squat when they're close. This shouldn't be my job to do PGI!).

On topic again! There are very very few trial mechs I've played that I actually enjoyed. The C1 catapult was incredibly terrible because it has squat for ammo so its LRM launchers are barely a nuisance and it had jack all for heat sinks so its 4 ML were effectively dropped to 2 unless I planned to overheat constantly. The Commando trials all have paper armor to the point that you can leg one with a single salvo of hits on any custom mech at any time. The Cicada variants have the same issue as the Commando variants. The Awesome variants, aside from the 3M, would be decent except you're just givin your opponents an Atlas to fight against you and the trial Awesome pilot must have a much much higher skill level than an Atlas pilot in order to make that fight remotely fair.

But yeah, the 3M is a death trap and whoever allowed that mech to even be in the trial rotation needs to be slapped.

[Lord Ikka]

The full quote is better than edited quotes. Read the full thing for his opinion on what 2 things they have to do with trials...

[SaberCut Moffat]

Nobody #^^%ing cares what happened on mittens' website.