235 replies to this topic

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Well they finally hit that final nail in the coffin for LRMs. It was a long time coming with all the nerfs it has gotten. It was already in the gutter as far as value/performance went, but still usable, and now they decided to throw it out entirely. The problems that the ECM create for the LRM user are so numerous that I'm not even going to try to list them all out. Worse yet is the complete lack of any counter. Does your Artemis help any? Nope. 2 tons down the toilet. Would a BAP help any? Nope. 1.5tons down the toilet. A device that completely destroys long LRMs, an already weak weapon, has no counter for it. Not even the NARC or Tag Laser is allowed to do anything against this retardedly(whoops!) designed device. LRMs are now, finally, hopelessly, useless. They were already bad... now there's just no reason to use them at all. I don't understand why they made the BAP such a useless PoS while giving everything possible to the ECM. Why couldn't they do it like MW 4 Mercs did it? BAP improved radar/missile locks, ECM handicapped them. It made sense and they logically countered each other. If you had one and the enemy had the other; then you'd detect each other at normal ranges with equal devices because they would cancel each other out. But instead of doing... anything like that here, they give the BAP absolutely nothing of value while giving the ECM everything imaginable including immunity to the very device that is suppose to be its counter!

It's ultimately clear that Piranha has 0 intention for you to use LRMs anymore. Time to put all mine away in the hanger bay and shelf the C1 and C4 variants entirely.(My C1 will likely get an Energy/SRM remake just to keep using its boost. But the other 2 will be left behind.) I was trying to stick it out and was proud to make it to the top ends of damage score sheets with my aging rare LRM missile Mech despite how bad they've become. But that's it. They are worthless now. Before the ECM, it was, "My LRMs are bad, but I can still get the job done." Now it's, "why bother?" The game often won't let you lockon, at all. When you can, it takes too long to be worth the damage dealt. When you finally do it, the target drops before the missiles get there, so guess what, they hit the ground again. If all else fails, the AMS shoots half of them down anyway. Why bother anymore?

Every team will have players running ECMs and you've no counter for them, so why bother? I hope you're happy Piranha, with what is probably the most stupid implementation you've done since this game's creation. Games now also revolve around players having an ECM because it is so brokenly overpowered that the 4 variants using it are highest pick in the game(and will be forever, not just now). Did people treat the BAP like this? Hell no. No one cared about that then, and no one cares about it now. See the difference? One is brokenly useless, the second is brokenly OP. Neither should be the case.

I should add that players like myself voiced our concerns about how bad it would be to launch the ECM like this when they first announced it. Did that accomplish anything... at all? Nuuuuupe.

Edited by Bluten, 04 December 2012 - 10:54 PM.

[Felix]

MungFuSensei, on 04 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

I've been in since early closed beta. I've had my share of boats. Now, LRM boats have for a while been strictly designed to kill through overwhelming force. This was never their intended purpose. LRMs are support weapons, intended to soften up hard targets before they reach the front lines. What are these hard targets? Assaults. If you can't keep a TAG beam on an assault, I advise you to walk away. You're pouting because you want a highly specialized type of mech to work in any situation, and I'm sorry, but square pegs don't fit into round holes. You have to mix up your builds more now. If you want to run a highly specialized mech, I suggest you get into a group of buddies and have one of them run a raven with ECM in counter and a TAG laser. That's one mech negating 2 ECMs right there. Otherwise add some SRMs to your A1s, or swap out a med/large laser for a tag in your other variants. ECMs haven't broken the game, they have drastically changed the playing field. Find a way to adjust before you declare them overpowered. It's been less than 24hrs, FFS.

And they have been nerfed considerably even before the ECMs were tossed into the mix. With my boat I would normally have maybe 1 kill and 6 supports as I sit back and help everyone in their fights to soften targets up, the last few games though? I am normally dead before I can land more than a handful of shots and I too have been in the beta since the early days.

I cant pilot a light for ****, I will freely admit this, so I have 'walked away' so to speak from that attempt and have been doing things I have been good at mainly running my support boat or playing close guard on assaults with my Yen.

And I would love to get in with a group of buddies, but my buddies dont have the rigs to run MWO and the online clan I am in is a PS2 clan. (Gonna be playing there until they fix the crappy ECM stuff here) so I generally rely on pick up games which suprirse no one uses TAG.

I suppose I could slap a tag on my Cat, but there is little point to mounting LONG RANGE missiles when I have to get into face stomping range to use the only counter as is.

So yes, they have dramatically changed the playing field, because they are overpowered pieces of crap which damn near everyone mounts because they KNOW its an I win button at 1.5 tons with no down sides.

[Taemien]

I personally like how ECM has been implemented, however the one thing I would change with them is allowing LRMs and SSRMs to still be able to lock. However you would need to put the targeting reticle on the target itself rather than in the targeting box. This would give LRMs the ability to lock on, at 1000 meters without a spotter, but would require LOS.

This way ECM would still disrupt their capabilities but not entirely neuter them.

[Tennex]

Phingers, on 04 December 2012 - 10:06 PM, said:

Seriously unbalanced.

1.As players are learning they are switching to those mechs that can use ECM. At this stage early tactics the team that aint all wearing ECM will be stomped.......it will be driven home by the 8 man teams who target the few players with ECM first.

2. Any lock missiles are useless currently in game as everyone switches to ECM teams. Currently Missiles are pathetic.

3. the game is DE_EVOLVING currently into slug fests with the teams with less lag easily able to dominate laggy teams with the SLUG FEST OF LASERS AND BALLISTICS in your face from a SEA of Atlas, Cicada and Ravens

As a founder I have gone from having fun....to face palming, smacking my head into keyboard.

wait you'd rather have LRMs flying at you that you can't do anything about/even know hwere its coming form. than a bunch of mechs circling around eachother trying to maintain optimal firing range for lasers and ballistics?

Truth is every organized team is going to bring a ECM mech. Its just too easy to have maybe one or two per team coverin gfor the rest of the team. especially sinc eeven the atlas can equip it. and stand in groups of 4 or so with 1 person carrying ECM.

LRMs and SRMs are pretty much useless now. (i dont really mind that much though, LRM right now is a terrible game mechanic) They need to figure out a way to have LRMs/SRMs still function but at a drastically reduced effectiveness,you know, for the sake of cannon since it is a widely used weapon in cannon.

Edited by Tennex, 04 December 2012 - 10:51 PM.

[Felix]

Tennex, on 04 December 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

wait you'd rather have LRMs flying at you that you can't do anything about/even know hwere its coming form. than a bunch of mechs circling around eachother trying to maintain optimal firing range for lasers and ballistics?

Yeah they dont maintain 'optimal firing range'

They rush in and bump into one another while firing as fast as they can because god forbid you get a lock and find out where your enemy is weakened and targeting that area.

You know how I avoided LRMs before? If I am being targeted, quick power off then back on, breaks their target lock and allows you to get into cover.

I didnt need a retard module to help me avoid LRM fire.

[Tennex]

Felix, on 04 December 2012 - 10:52 PM, said:

Yeah they dont maintain 'optimal firing range'

They rush in and bump into one another while firing as fast as they can because god forbid you get a lock and find out where your enemy is weakened and targeting that area.

You know how I avoided LRMs before? If I am being targeted, quick power off then back on, breaks their target lock and allows you to get into cover.

I didnt need a retard module to help me avoid LRM fire.

oh yaaaay mexican standoff everbody stand behind something. cuz **** brawling. god forbid you have to twist your torso while walking in another direction to kill a mech. just stand behind a rock and lock spam

Edited by Tennex, 04 December 2012 - 10:55 PM.

[GatorG]

As it is less than a day in I think it is too early to judge it (I like playing LRM boats and I saw artemis was OP from the start, this just as a notification that I am not happy about LRM nerfs). If it turns out the ECM is too much I would like to see BAP turned into an answer. My suggestion is that a BAP equipped mech reduces the ECM bubble to 90m and increases it's targeting range into the bubble to 400m, so a .5 and x2 thing, possibly father increased by the module. What this would encourage is more team cooperation and building with plans that involve more that, "OK we have a scout or 2 and everyone else has lots of guns, let do this." I was running my DC with EMC tonight with a buddy using his Scat, and, imagine this, if he told me that he needed me to counter an EMC, and I did, he still got kills, and so did our LRM boat. I did work best with 2 DCs, but it was at least somewhat effective with just 1. So imho it is not OP, if the community as a whole (and the Devs) decide otherwise, I think my BAP suggestion, or something along those lines, could solve to problem and assist in the goal of encouraging more team play.

[Scar]

That was obvious even before the patch that PGI' game-designers made ECM in the wrong way - too many functions in the one tiny module.

I like much more how ECM is made in MWLL - it's reasonable and very balanced. Actually, there are two ECM modules in MWLL:

GECM - it's a self-defence module, simple and lightweight to be suitable for Scouts.
AECM - it's a collective ECM module, heavy and pretty similar by its functionality to the current MWO ECM.

Finally, the AECM have seen the battlefield only in the 3052.

[Felix]

Tennex, on 04 December 2012 - 10:54 PM, said:

oh yaaaay mexican standoff everbody stand behind something. cuz **** brawling. god forbid you have to twist your torso while walking in another direction to kill a mech. just stand behind a rock and lock spam

I had no problem brawling before they decided to cater to the droolers who couldnt figure out how to avoid LRM fire using their brains.

I have died ONCE to LRM fire in my Yen Lo Wang, god forbid ya have to use your brain to avoid one aspect of the enemy fire.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Tennex, on 04 December 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

LRMs and SRMs are pretty much useless now. (i dont really mind that much though, LRM right now is a terrible game mechanic) They need to figure out a way to have LRMs/SRMs still function but at a drastically reduced effectiveness,you know, for the sake of cannon since it is a widely used weapon in cannon.

You should mind that. That's a terrible design flaw and imbalance issue. Also, they could have made the BAP partly counter or fully ignore the ECM(At least for you alone) if they cared at all. But they've either dropped this into the game with no regard to balance or simply don't care how stupidly OP it is. Since LRMs have only seen dark days since this game was created, I'm guessing they don't care. I knew my days as a missile rack were numbered... but I milked them for all the fun to be had. Now it time's to retire the role... on account that it's not only been nerfed to the gutter, but now buried too.

Edited by Bluten, 04 December 2012 - 11:02 PM.

[Dr Killinger]

ECM seems fine for me except that it hurt LRMs a lot. I would maybe restrict locking on to an ECM mech to personal LOS, and maybe increase lock on time.

[Felix]

Bluten, on 04 December 2012 - 11:01 PM, said:

You should mind that. That's a terrible design flaw and imbalance issue. Also, they could have made the BAP partly counter or fully ignore the ECM(At least for you alone) if they cared at all. But they've either dropped this into the game with no regard to balance or simply don't care how stupidly OP it is. Since LRMs have only seen dark days since this game was created, I'm guessing they don't care. I knew my days as a missile rack were numbered... but I milked them for all the fun to be had. Now it time's to retire the role... on account that it's not only been nerfed to the gutter, but now buried too.

I am fairly sure their outlook now is 'we got their money, screw em if they dont like it!'

I am genuinely surprised that they didnt charge their MC points for ECM, or make it unlock at elite level to force people to buy more mechs

Dr Killinger, on 04 December 2012 - 11:03 PM, said:

ECM seems fine for me except that it hurt LRMs a lot. I would maybe restrict locking on to an ECM mech to personal LOS, and maybe increase lock on time.

having ECM block arcing missiles but allowing them to be used just fine within their personal LOS would make far too much sense and be far too fair

Edited by Felix, 04 December 2012 - 11:06 PM.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

GatorG, on 04 December 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

As it is less than a day in I think it is too early to judge it (I like playing LRM boats and I saw artemis was OP from the start, this just as a notification that I am not happy about LRM nerfs). If it turns out the ECM is too much I would like to see BAP turned into an answer.

It's not too early to judge it. In fact you could have done that pre-release if you read over its intended design functions and were clever. It very clearly needed nerfs or solid counters before it was even released. I also said the BAP could have been a counter.(And is in other games) This is the worst thing I've ever seen them do. They need to either seriously nerf this thing or greatly buff the BAP.

[Xocoyol Zaraoul]

This reminds me of the Level 2 (now known as advanced tech?) tabletop tournaments that chose to idiotically balance by tonnage instead of BV (Battle Value) and the C3/ECM wars that were ever eternal for anyone hoping to be competitive, as anyone not fielding ecm would be obviously smashed to pieces by C3.

Moving on...

I think part of the problem is that ECM is currently exaggerated due to it being the latest "toy" so everyone wants to test it out. As time moves on, the "problem" will die down a bit especially given only a selection of mechs can use ECM.

Edited by Xozoyol Zaraoul, 04 December 2012 - 11:08 PM.

[p00k]

Tennex, on 04 December 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

wait you'd rather have LRMs flying at you that you can't do anything about/even know hwere its coming form. than a bunch of mechs circling around eachother trying to maintain optimal firing range for lasers and ballistics?

i would
lrm's are easy to avoid as long as you take the time to remember "oh hey the other team has lrm's, maybe i should stay near one of these bazillion bits of cover that's more than enough to shield even an atlas and that i have plenty of time to get behind in the ~3seconds it takes for the lrm's to get to me". short of a full lrm boat team, and even then really only on caustic (and sometimes even on caustic) lrm's were useful against people who didn't know any better, and worthless against people who did. i don't think i ever got my armor into the dark orange much less red in a 48kph atlas before i closed in, they were just that easy to avoid.

anyways, ecm is here, and who knows what pgi will do. maybe they'll overreact and nerf it into oblivion (nov8 hotfix), or maybe they'll leave it alone for months and then overnerf it (gauss), or maybe they'll slowly tweak it incrementally (autocannons), or maybe they'll wait a few months, break it, unbreak it, then render it worthless (streaks). or maybe they'll leave it as is (flamers/mguns/erppc/erllas/narc/etc etc still worthless). or maybe they'll take it out of the game altogether for a while, and claim it'll make a reappearance (collisions). or maybe they'll just remove it as an option for good (engine limits). who knows what they'll do? they've proven inconsistent at best when it comes to what they choose to tweak how.

for the time being though, if you're not taking ecm, you're essentially handicapping your team. no, not everyone has to run ecm atlas ddc's with a few ecm-capable scouts.

just those that like to win

[HighlandCoo]

I thought the TAG was unaffected by ECM?

[Xocoyol Zaraoul]

EDIT: Never mind

Edited by Xozoyol Zaraoul, 04 December 2012 - 11:25 PM.

[Redmond Spiderhammer]

I'm reluctant to say this because i did like the concept at first, but I have to say that tonights games have been no fun at all for me. Its all new and we are all still figuring it out, but this is honestly the first time I am considering not playing.
One thing that might make people think a bit about ECM and give it some downside to weight against the (too) significant advantage it brings, would be to have it negatively affect friendly guided missile fire as well, or perhaps just missile systems installed on the ECM mounting mech.

My honest opinion is that it shouldn't affect direct fire LRMs at all and should maybe make streaks behave as normal SRMs... I just don't know if that is doable. I also don't know about the ECM cancelling mechanic. The thing already works differently from TT rules so why not just let any ECM in counter mode cancel block all ECM within its 'bubble'.

I'm not stuck on TT values but I think TT flavor should be maintained. That flavor was to 'reduce' the effectiveness of advanced coms and guidance systems, impair sensor systems, and counter the Beagle active probe. Like streak missiles, the current implementation makes them too valuable, especially for the weight.

I like the 'hiding' mechs on the radar feature, but I think if you can see a mech you should be able to actively(not passively) target it, even if that targeting doesn't bring you all the data, or the data is delayed. If you are in the ECM bubble you shouldn't be able to share that targeting nor should the mech show up on radar. If the targeting mech is out of the bubble then that should place the ECM mech unit on everyone's radar, though they still would not be able to target.

In short, I'd like to see it be a useful, but not essential piece of equipment

[OVBlueGhost]

So lots of people in this thread are complaining about LRM and Streaks being useless and, have to admit I removed all my LRMS & Streaks without even launching them today, my Cat now mounts 6 srmx6s and I've kicked out 900 damage a few rounds so thats O.K.

But I think there are other worse aspects of ECM, namely how ECM plays in public games where no one is on voice. In a brawl the team with less ECM / Counter ECMs does not get radar vision of friendlies, this means even when your team does pick a tile to group up in if you do not have visual on your allies you have no idea where they are or what is going on. The only clue you have that anything is up is suddenly your allies start dropping off radar and then you're notified that currently you're being jammed.

This is a terrible mechanic basically without voice coms the team with ECM superiority gets full info and the team with fewer ECMs has no idea what the hell is going on. I did have two games in which a non-ECM team won the brawl under ECM today, so its not insurmountable but even in these brawls it was chaotic and frankly not much fun. There is a good possibility that these games were not 8v8 due to crashes etc.

As an absolute bare minimum allies who are nearby need to be visible on radar, I would say allies need to ALWAYS be visible on friendly radar because without in game voice removing this makes it impossible for your team to help you, which given this is a teamgame (as everyone keeps banging on about) makes it basically impossible to "play", in the brawls where we were victorious the inability to get good locks or a$$es my position had me just aimlessly running at full speed and unloading a few shots into anything un-friendly I passed.

Edited by OVBlueGhost, 04 December 2012 - 11:22 PM.

[VoltarDark]

I have played 8 hours tonight with all kind of mech : LRM boat, ecm raven, centurion, atlas and i find the game more balanced and a lot more interesting. LRM still kill and and atlas with a ecm friend can survive a lot more.

Take the time to adapt and you will enjoy it.

Btw,you can always direct fire you lrm by targeting the ground where your target stand, no need to lock to kill. I have make 2 kills tonight without any lock on.

This game is getting hotter then ever, but we must adapt this is a hard game for intelligent minds, not a brainless shouter.

Thanks devs for a great game.