165 replies to this topic

[Corison]

ECM has to be one of the worst implemented features I have seen in a long time. We shall see what they do with it over the course of the month.

Honestly it feels like the dev’s are acting like 12 year old children that just got their tails spanked by LRM or SSRMS so have to remove them from the game.

[Writhenn]

Hotthedd, on 04 December 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

Always will? Why is that? Canon? TT rules? Because ECM as it is now is neither canon nor TT rules based.

http://www.sarna.net...rdian_ECM_Suite

Let me guess, your LRM's and streaks are forcing you to use something actually skill based? Like aiming and brawling? My apologies.

[Felix]

Corison, on 04 December 2012 - 08:00 PM, said:

ECM has to be one of the worst implemented features I have seen in a long time. We shall see what they do with it over the course of the month.

Honestly it feels like the dev’s are acting like 12 year old children that just got their tails spanked by LRM or SSRMS so have to remove them from the game.

One nerf after another, I think whoever is in charge of balancing this game really needs to be fired lol

[hammerreborn]

Shouldn't this be two different polls? One for the balanced for pug/team or not or the overall >.>

[Hotthedd]

Writhen, on 04 December 2012 - 08:01 PM, said:

http://www.sarna.net...rdian_ECM_Suite

Let me guess, your LRM's and streaks are forcing you to use something actually skill based? Like aiming and brawling? My apologies.

I do not boat LRMs OR Streaks. I Brawl in my Atlas-D, and enjoy playing the support role in my swayback. The Guardian ECM suite should not be an IWin button for whichever team has more of them. End of story. Without an effective counter that is available to all, OR making Guardian much more expensive/harder to get, this game will surely devolve into ECMWO.

[Stormur Herra]

Oh, also for every well fought tactical battle where I tried to hunt down the enemy ECM and outplayed him, turning the tide of battle and whatnot (or had that thing done to me), I've been in 3 matches where one team just base rushed and won without firing a shot. No strat at all, just... nothing.

[Veevslav]

ECM should be set at longer lock on times and reduced detection ranges. 25% flat increase and 50% detection ranges.

[Shard Phoenix]

It was so nice to play a few games without being spammed to death by LRMs and SSRM's.

I also noticed in a couple of my games this evening, that PuG's were actually moving as a group instead of all going off to die 1 by 1. It seemed as though my little Raven 3L was some kind of glue holding the team in a formation. That in and of itself is worth the price of admission, ladies and gentlemen.

Not to mention having ECM equipped actually let me use my Raven as it was intended, and being a sneaky scout was actually enjoyable because I could use more than just the terrain as cover.

[Bear44]

i love ecm. it feels like the matches last longer now. and forces alot of players to use manual aimming weapons, hence, forcing skills to be used.

[Xelah]

Centurian Brawler player. LB-10X as favored weapon.

ECM so far has struck me as "super terrain cover." By that, I mean prior to ECM, in order to shake the enemy when things got too dicey, a pilot would have to have some skill in evading the enemies and lure the scouts chasing him back to friendly mechs where they could be destroyed or driven off. After this though, I've been on TS with friends advising me to focus fire on Delta, except that there is no delta in my HUD and I have a one in eight chance of picking the right mech to shoot at. There is no skill to getting out of withering fire anymore; just run to the nearest ECM and anyone that wasn't firing at you before has no idea which one you are.

While I'll admit that not getting mauled by LRM fire is nice, it was nice when they nerfed the damage and made them useless too. That isn't balanced though. The only long range threats I expect now are gauss rifles, and if I take more than one shot from somebody's gauss, I'm doing it wrong.

Blocking transfer of target information is interesting, but broken. In order to get the target information, a mech must be within 250m of an ecm shielded mech. Once they cross the line at 180m, they can't share this information with their team. That's 70m of space where you can stand to be useful to your teammates. Many atlas builds can cover this in 7 seconds, never mind the lights.

This is probably the worst new content I've seen for any game since the "Engineer Patch" for TF2 where both sides of any given game were made of nothing but engineers for weeks.

[Jetfire]

LRM and Streak boats non-viable you say... ECM OP you say... Yeah, LRM boats should be non-viable without someone jamming for you. Same for streaks. LRM Boats and Streak Boats are not a good norm for the game. ECM is a big balancing agent and it is muscling its way in to force a new balance. It is disruptive tech, it is supposed to be so.

[SteelPaladin]

Jetfire, on 04 December 2012 - 09:00 PM, said:

LRM and Streak boats non-viable you say... ECM OP you say... Yeah, LRM boats should be non-viable without someone jamming for you. Same for streaks. LRM Boats and Streak Boats are not a good norm for the game. ECM is a big balancing agent and it is muscling its way in to force a new balance. It is disruptive tech, it is supposed to be so.

Thing is, it's not just boats. Once again, a fix to try and curb boating hits casual users of the weapon much harder.

Lots of canon mechs use LRMs or SSRMs as secondary supporting armament rather than a primary battery. While it might be worthwhile to invest the effort to overcome ECM for a boat (since they can bring a pretty hefty amount of firepower if the shield goes down), it's rather pointless for mechs that don't boat.

Take a standard Centurion for example. All of the non-YLW variants load an LRM10 in addition to 3-4 other non-locking direct-fire weapons. That kind of a load out comes off as a waste now. Do you want to just drop taking the risk that a third of your armament is going to be useless for most/all of the match? Do you want to invest the time, tonnage and effort to use TAG just for one LRM10 and the chance that maybe somebody else on your team might benefit? Or do you just want to rip the launcher out and replace it weapons that you are guaranteed will be useful no matter what the ECM status of your enemy?

ECM punishes "dabblers" in locking weapons far more than it punishes boats. Unless you're in a pre-made and can plan your team's loadout, it's much safer to just abandon locking weapons as secondary armament and replace them w/something guaranteed to work.

Edited by SteelPaladin, 04 December 2012 - 09:19 PM.

[NoFish]

ECM seems fine to me except when it's on the Atlas D-DC. We already have the heaviest armored mech in the game, with one of the best layouts for LRM's, there's no need at all for it to have stealth, as well, and having it negates an important support role. Who needs a Commando when you can have a 40-LRM-with-Artemis toting Atlas do the same thing.

If, for some reason, the D-DC is allowed to continue having ECM, then it needs to be properly pidgeonholed by it's slot layout, the way the AS7-K is.

[OVBlueGhost]

I answered No to the poll, since the counter(s) to ecm is more ecm and better coordination, however neither of these options is available to free-to-play players. (Yes yes I know I could join the teamspeaks but most people won't, and some can't)

ECM in its current form is hopelessly broken:
You're in a team game in which focus fire is already massively powerful and the majority of pug players have no voice coms, so here we have an item which makes friendlies vanish off radar, is there a 2 vs 5 brawl I should be supporting happening round the corner? Who knows!

Even when you have a team with voice, ECM makes it impossible to call targets since all targeting info is now gone. The counter? Have more ECM in the brawl, coordinate someone out of the brawl with tag (or sitting in an impossibly tiny range). Quite how the devs failed to notice that the counter was either stacking the same mechanic (which of course will lead to ECM wars) or vastly harder to pull off than just fitting ECM, I have no idea.

To me this smells of MWO going the way of HoN and other pay-to-win games in which new content is always brought in OP in the hopes that people cave and pay for it. If they weren't charging for content & getting 'founders' to loan them I'd be more forgiving that they ruin the gameplay every patch of their beta. If they want lots of people to use stuff and thus help test it then gosh, maybe they could put ECM on a trial mech.

For students of gaming history this model of free to play has not worked out too well in past attempts.

Edited by OVBlueGhost, 04 December 2012 - 10:23 PM.

[Xelah]

I've been slogging it out with my mechs that have ECM and my mechs that do not off and on for the past 12 hours. I've decided this: I'm not playing anymore until ECM is nerfed. I mean like REALLY nerfed. So, I'll see you all in.... a couple weeks? PGI is getting no more money from me until such time.

[Razorin Faust]

Let me bath into the glorious tear of screaming streaker and LRM Boat. Then we will talk about fixing ECM.
For the moment, I enjoy brawling inside a blanket. While the cheesy cat looked at me with useless streak and got pummeled to death by AC/10 and SRM.

[Strelitzia]

ECM requires a bit of finess and teamwork to use.
Combine the coordination of 4 player premades with ECM and it is definitely way unbalanced if they get matched against a full PUG. Not saying Teamwork itself is OP, but the ECM mechanic multiples the power of good coordination manyfolds. Consider things like the fact you can't see friendlies on map but people on voice can continue to coordinate and the problems are clear.

Unless 4 premades are always matched against other 4 premades, it will be stacked even more ridiculously in favor of premades than it was before.

No equipment should be so powerful that it's basically REQUIRED to be successful in an "even" matchup. Especially if it matches random people none of whom might be carrying it.

Edited by Strelitzia, 04 December 2012 - 11:15 PM.

[VXJaeger]

I think that if ECMs disrupt modes range would be dropped to 90m, and countermode increased to 250m, it would be in balance. Also BAP should be given an feature to "overload" ECM at some period of time, so it will be malfunctional ("blinking" effect).
As a Jenner D-pilot ECM doesn't bother me too much, annoying though, but listening LRM-whimps whining is getting into nerves

Edited by VXJaeger, 04 December 2012 - 11:21 PM.

[Shiney]

Try playing without ECM and see if it's balanced. It's new, you HAVE to have it on your team to be competitive.

[Baed]

ECM seems vastly overpowered. In every game I played where the other team had more ECM we lost. If we had more ECM we won. As someone who plays a lot of PUG matches it takes a lot of the fun out of the game. If I had a team to coordinate with on what each peron was going to bring it might be more fun. As it stands though, it is vastly OP, especially in a PUG match since it seems not to balance it at all.

It needs to be less powerful. If it merely blocked knowing where the enemy was it would be ok. Taking away all the ability to see where my team is though seems to be fairly game breaking.