293 replies to this topic

[Coolwhoami]

Roadkill, on 16 January 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

Garth,

Thank you for your response. I understand what you're getting at and the trials/tribulations of game development.

I will respectfully disagree, however. The fact that ECM is used by virtually 100% of Mechs that can use it is a very clear sign that it is too powerful. As you said, exactly what about it is making it too powerful isn't clear, but if it were well-balanced then at least some people wouldn't use it even on chassis that are capable of using it. The fact that no one believes that any other piece of equipment makes sense on an ECM-capable Mech very clearly indicates that the cost/benefit of ECM is skewed.

Like just about everyone, I have my own ideas about how to balance ECM. But I'm more than happy to wait and see what you guys have in mind now that you've indicated that you're looking into it.

What are you disagreeing with? You essentially regurgitated his post and the explanations for it. Unless you are disagreeing with the fact that ECM is not intrinsically an automatic win unit, then I don't really know what to say.

[Corvus Antaka]

What do you mean you can't clone yourself and reply to every...single...post we make!!!

I DEMAND a refund!!!

[Solis Obscuri]

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

ECM being used on all ECM-able Mechs does show that it is overly powerful. The reason no changes have been made is it takes time to figure out what, exactly, is making that the reason. Is it the lock prevention?

Yes.

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

The 'cloak'?

The very worst effect is the cloaking. Kills Information Warfare.

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

The range it works at?

No

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

The weight?

No

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

Crit space?

No

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

Variants that use it?

It doesn't help that 3 out of the 5 variants that can carry it are the best SSRM/LRM boats of their respective chassis, and that they can neutralize return fire of guided ordinance.

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

That it makes LRMs incapable of lock?

Partially, but judicious use of 750m TAG largely mitigates this. (Though 750m TAG makes Narc even more useless than it was before.)

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

SSRMs?

Are still pretty broken.

[Mikhalio]

Damocles, on 16 January 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

Thread Title: "Devs ignore their players"

Dev response: "I do not."

Dev reply summarily ignored and buried by more garbage about ECM.

Damocles, on 16 January 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

Thread Title: "Devs ignore their players"

Dev response: "I do not."

Dev reply summarily ignored and buried by more garbage about ECM.

I think it was more like:

"Devs, what's with media outlets getting info before players?"

G: "hey yeah, lets be honest we really don't have much interest in current accounts, we need the player churn; watch our trending social media, and that gives us more google hits and media promotes"

"Wait, you mean we can media bomb the outlets they can't moderate, and derail the pump ?"

*Players take to facebook, and begin flooding their forum protests into the mainstream media channel.

G:"hey guys, please go back to your hole, designated as the PGI MWO Forum. Seriously, we watch the threads, honest. Just DON'T start disrupting what NBC and Yahoo Games reposts and trends"

*Players suddenly feel loved. PGI can continue jamming until 11pm on srs bsns.*

M:*points out the obvious for the whiteknights. (Wishes it was only this easy outside the video game industry to pump & run PR flack)*

Edited by Mikhalio, 16 January 2013 - 06:20 PM.

[BerryChunks]

Garth, you guys are trying your hardest not to nerf ECM. You guys have implemented "temp solutions" which require being a paying customer to get the Cbills and Exp you need.

You guys don't know that a large laser SRM 6 commando dies insanely fast to a 2 ssrm raven, for some reason, despite 2x2 missiles should not have nearly as much damage firepower as SRM 6, let alone SRM 6 + LL. hit detection problems, countered by a 100% hit weapon.

This atlas thread.

http://mwomercs.com/...-atlas-7k-like/

And eeryone is talking about the heat issue. But the heat issue was, and never will be, that the weapons themselves are heat problematic. The issue is that you guys doubled firing rate for a POTENTIAL double damage, but doubled armor for a SURE double defense, while keeping heat the same, apparently.

with faster firing rate, you changed the damage/armor dynamic.

with faster firing rate, but still the same heat coeffiicients, you encouraged people loading up 4-6 PPCs or 8 medium lasers to get off 2 alphas and try to just instant kill someone before getting shut down. It's more profitable to try and fail with this cheese, no matter how much you guys mess with heat.

Which leads to the last point. If certain types of boating are clearly overpowered, Why not hardpoint limitations that are more like the Awesome mechs or the Centurion mechs or the Dragon mechs. They all have hardpoint limitations that are hard to work around, but basically you're trading a larger or smaller AC for larger or smaller missile packs or larger or smaller lasers.

These three mechs share the one obvious balancing limitation and fault that keeps any of them from min/maxing into some rambo killing machine: Hardpoints that determine changing weapon sizes of different systems, instead of allowing you to dump a few weapons to just mass one single weapon.

These mechs seem to follow the spirit of Battletech and stock variants and the limitations of mechs in keeping with the concept of battletech mech fighting, but really, all of this keeps any one mech from being the Uber mech. By having limitations, it encourages creativity and varied play. By giving limitless options, it hastens the min/max crowd into static, uninteresting, and stale mech builds that people who arent completely ******** eventually get bored of and move on.

Edited by BerryChunks, 16 January 2013 - 06:30 PM.

[Original ArchAngel]

They are working on things.. it is still beta and most of these people probably have day jobs.. so not all will be fixed in an hour..

They themselves made this website your posting on, and provided a space for you to voice your opinions and concerns.. why would they do that if they planned to not listen to any of us?..

I feel they read and fix things constantly.. I'm very happy with the progression this game has taken.. they have a lot of work to do, and we should appreciate the work they have done.. I've not paid any money yet.. so me complaining would be... well.. stupid.

[Noth]

BerryChunks, on 16 January 2013 - 06:20 PM, said:

And eeryone is talking about the heat issue. But the heat issue was, and never will be, that the weapons themselves are heat problematic. The issue is that you guys doubled firing rate for a POTENTIAL double damage, but doubled armor for a SURE double defense, while keeping heat the same, apparently.

with faster firing rate, you changed the damage/armor dynamic.

with faster firing rate, but still the same heat coeffiicients, you encouraged people loading up 4-6 PPCs or 8 medium lasers to get off 2 alphas and try to just instant kill someone before getting shut down.

they want heat to be more of issue than it was in TT. Also due to the real time nature implementing the heat penalties from TT would be rediculous. You'd have people constantly bouncing between them and the penalties changing almost all the time. It's just that much more info to clog up the net code and isn't needed to make you have to pay attention to heat. They aren't going to change the heat system to the point they have to re-balance the entire game when it current accomplishes the goal of making heat matter more than TT. Oh and those 2 alpha builds are builds that are easily countered because of the heat.

[BerryChunks]

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

This'll be my last post on the subject, as Paul mentioned what we're doing in regards to speaking to the changes.

ECM being used on all ECM-able Mechs does show that it is overly powerful. The reason no changes have been made is it takes time to figure out what, exactly, is making that the reason. Is it the lock prevention? The 'cloak'? The range it works at? The weight? Crit space? Variants that use it? That it makes LRMs incapable of lock? SSRMs?

So while total numbers used isn't an indicator it's fine, it does mean people won't just go to ECM because it makes you instantly win. In fact, many builds aren't affected by ECM at all (my Cicada, in particular, does not discriminate.)

So we use that, suggestions, feedback, numbers gathered, watching 8v8's, etc, and eventually we come up with ideas. Then we test them. Tweak them. Test them. Tweak them. etc.

So while I'd love to tell you what changes we've made, none are in stone and until I have something to tell you that won't be wrong as of 9am the next day, I will.

I hope you all understand, we don't do this to be cruel, we do it because there is, quite literally, nothing of use to tell you yet, beyond that we've gathered our data, your suggestions, and are going through testing them now.

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

This'll be my last post on the subject, as Paul mentioned what we're doing in regards to speaking to the changes.

ECM being used on all ECM-able Mechs does show that it is overly powerful. The reason no changes have been made is it takes time to figure out what, exactly, is making that the reason. Is it the lock prevention? The 'cloak'? The range it works at? The weight? Crit space? Variants that use it? That it makes LRMs incapable of lock? SSRMs?

So while total numbers used isn't an indicator it's fine, it does mean people won't just go to ECM because it makes you instantly win. In fact, many builds aren't affected by ECM at all (my Cicada, in particular, does not discriminate.)

So we use that, suggestions, feedback, numbers gathered, watching 8v8's, etc, and eventually we come up with ideas. Then we test them. Tweak them. Test them. Tweak them. etc.

So while I'd love to tell you what changes we've made, none are in stone and until I have something to tell you that won't be wrong as of 9am the next day, I will.

I hope you all understand, we don't do this to be cruel, we do it because there is, quite literally, nothing of use to tell you yet, beyond that we've gathered our data, your suggestions, and are going through testing them now.

I'd like to see you get totally bum ***** in your laser cicada by streak spamming ecm ravens, and then see what you have to say.

Lasers > > > > > SSRM. Especially with terrible hit detection and netcode. Maybe it's because you only play on the internal network with no latency that you think things are fine.

[80Bit]

Josef Nader, on 16 January 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

If ECM is really that broken, the data will show it, not a bunch of whiners on the forums. If the Raven 3L is the most broken, OP chassis in the game, the numbers will show 3L pilots performing much better on average than pilots of other mechs. They have hard numbers to analyze. They don't really care about endless, breathless whine posts. These forums exist for bug reports and to build a community, not so they can farm a bunch of sweaty neckbeards for their ideas of how to "properly" balance the game.

Amen!

[BerryChunks]

Noth, on 16 January 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

they want heat to be more of issue than it was in TT. Also due to the real time nature implementing the heat penalties from TT would be rediculous. You'd have people constantly bouncing between them and the penalties changing almost all the time. It's just that much more info to clog up the net code and isn't needed to make you have to pay attention to heat. They aren't going to change the heat system to the point they have to re-balance the entire game when it current accomplishes the goal of making heat matter more than TT. Oh and those 2 alpha builds are builds that are easily countered because of the heat.

I said BT. Not TT. Also, just because you cant think of a real time conversion for your precious "TT talk" values to "real time sim" doesn't mean it's not possible. I've thought of one just off the top of my head already that has to do with a delayed timing effect, but you couldn't possibly think of that, because you prefer to run around going "THIS IS NOT TABLETOP WAA" as opposed to thinking about alternatives or how to convert Battletech, NOT TT, B A T T L E T E C H, turn based rules into real time based rules.

get a life.

The more they make heat "an issue" the more people will "throw dice" by loading down on Spammed weapons to get two luck shots in before shutting down. Or just stick with locking never fail missiles.


If you think they want heat to be more of an issue, why have they said "they're looking into heat reduction for PPC and large laser", hmmmm???

Here's the thing:

The more and more they push Heat ladening on individuals, the more and more it'll come down to groups edging as close to possible to each other and just trying to focus fire and one shot the other team's mechs.

You see, when the individual can't fire even just 2-3 PPCs continuously, despite loading down with the max possible DHS, what essentially happens is that the individual has to wait on firing for a while. theoretically, a nice "management" system for skill to factor in, however, look at this...


The more players you have shooting a single target, the less heat management each player needs. In fact, you want to spend shots as fast as your weapons cooldown to bust the enemy as fast as possible.

This is what leads to "mech brawler online", with no tactical sense, no diverse gameplay, just stale ""hide behind the wall and bum rush when they get close enough, alpha alpha alpha with those SSRM SRM AC PPC". This practice leaves large lasers very much out in the cold, since a "good" mech, by player standards, is one with a million hardpoints to spam Medium lasers onto for the uber alpha laser style.

Edited by BerryChunks, 16 January 2013 - 06:45 PM.

[Grraarrgghh]

BerryChunks, on 16 January 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

I said BT. Not TT. Also, just because you cant think of a real time conversion for your precious "TT talk" values to "real time sim" doesn't mean it's not possible. I've thought of one just off the top of my head already that has to do with a delayed timing effect, but you couldn't possibly think of that, because you prefer to run around going "THIS IS NOT TABLETOP WAA" as opposed to thinking about alternatives or how to convert Battletech, NOT TT, B A T T L E T E C H, turn based rules into real time based rules.

get a life.

Most of the games in your signature are terrible with the exception of Shogo.

[Solis Obscuri]

Mikhalio, on 16 January 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

10 threads on the front page lamenting F2P hand-me downs, or handicaps for players (limit Tier 2 mechs aka Clans, SSRM, ECW).

2 threads about their botched patch
1 thread about their choice to not inform their community of news releases, but focus on pumping further subs in mainstream outlets.

1 thread white knighting PGI's dedicated staff.

Now lets go look at the forum Nico built for quality feedback:

- 3 threads asking for pretty paint jobs
- 10 threads about light mech nerfing
- 2 threads whining about night-mode

0 threads about constructive balancing or bug reports.

Not much value add being generated by the fanbase at the moment if I only had 30 min. to forum check in a srs bsns day between the hours of 7 am and 10 /11pm Vancouver time.

Yep, no bug reports or feedback on the new content of features at all.

Keep up that "rigorous" amateur analysis!

Edited by Solis Obscuri, 16 January 2013 - 06:51 PM.

[Coolwhoami]

Other than that the netcode is crap, which makes SSRMs highly preferable in this current meta (and thusly ECM to maintain SSRM lock), I imagine that given the hilarious amount of uproar you are all making about ECM, they will not get much opportunity to rebalance the unit if they overnerf it (Because you will flip out about it, like you are now). Therefore, if I was in working on making such changes, I would want to be absolutely sure that they are appropriate and make sense to the game, so that large future tweaks would not be necessary.

[Nekki Basara]

Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

a free bobblehead of me agreeing with your assertions.

TBH man, this is all they want. You could basically just slap the cowskull on any of the other bobbleheads and it'd work fine.

We here at the Word of Lowtax trust you to try your damnedest to get this job done right.

Expedite that bobblehead for me plz.

ETA:

BerryChunks, on 16 January 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

I said BT. Not TT.

Wait. I'm not sure I understand the level of stupid in this post. Are you somehow implying that Battletech is NOT the TableTop machine-sheet wargame we've known and loved since 1984? If so, please do elucidate.

Edited by Nekki Basara, 16 January 2013 - 06:54 PM.

[LaserAngel]

BerryChunks, on 16 January 2013 - 06:20 PM, said:

Garth, you guys are trying your hardest not to nerf ECM. You guys have implemented "temp solutions" which require being a paying customer to get the Cbills and Exp you need.

You guys don't know that a large laser SRM 6 commando dies insanely fast to a 2 ssrm raven, for some reason, despite 2x2 missiles should not have nearly as much damage firepower as SRM 6, let alone SRM 6 + LL. hit detection problems, countered by a 100% hit weapon.

This atlas thread.

http://mwomercs.com/...-atlas-7k-like/

And eeryone is talking about the heat issue. But the heat issue was, and never will be, that the weapons themselves are heat problematic. The issue is that you guys doubled firing rate for a POTENTIAL double damage, but doubled armor for a SURE double defense, while keeping heat the same, apparently.

with faster firing rate, you changed the damage/armor dynamic.

with faster firing rate, but still the same heat coeffiicients, you encouraged people loading up 4-6 PPCs or 8 medium lasers to get off 2 alphas and try to just instant kill someone before getting shut down. It's more profitable to try and fail with this cheese, no matter how much you guys mess with heat.

Which leads to the last point. If certain types of boating are clearly overpowered, Why not hardpoint limitations that are more like the Awesome mechs or the Centurion mechs or the Dragon mechs. They all have hardpoint limitations that are hard to work around, but basically you're trading a larger or smaller AC for larger or smaller missile packs or larger or smaller lasers.

These three mechs share the one obvious balancing limitation and fault that keeps any of them from min/maxing into some rambo killing machine: Hardpoints that determine changing weapon sizes of different systems, instead of allowing you to dump a few weapons to just mass one single weapon.

These mechs seem to follow the spirit of Battletech and stock variants and the limitations of mechs in keeping with the concept of battletech mech fighting, but really, all of this keeps any one mech from being the Uber mech. By having limitations, it encourages creativity and varied play. By giving limitless options, it hastens the min/max crowd into static, uninteresting, and stale mech builds that people who arent completely ******** eventually get bored of and move on.

Oh boy the Atlas K, LRMs, and heavy energy weapons? The stock Awesome 8Q is a walking oven and even with 20 DHS it is barely viable for long range support. Use LRMs with TAG instead kids.


http://mwomercs.com/...11#entry1745411

http://mwomercs.com/...25#entry1745825

http://mwomercs.com/...71#entry1748671

http://mwomercs.com/...15#entry1749415

Role warfare barely exists. It's all big brawlfest of short ranged weapons or you get people trying a 6 PPC glass cannon. And this is coming from the guy that has the most fun in his Hunchback 4SP brawler.

Edited by LaserAngel, 16 January 2013 - 06:59 PM.

[Novawrecker]

Grraarrgghh, on 16 January 2013 - 08:00 AM, said:

Everyone who cries about ECM is a baby who hasn't played a competitive round in their life.

Although I do agree with you, and the admis will have a field day with me for saying this, but I do find this statement coming from you as very ironic seeing not so long ago this was your, very, passionate stance about ECM:

Grraarrgghh, on 09 January 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

No you don't GET IT.

ECM makes the game HARD which is UNACCEPTABLE.

Grraarrgghh, on 09 January 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

It's impossible to defeat!

But I digress ....

Edited by Novawrecker, 16 January 2013 - 07:04 PM.

[Grraarrgghh]

Jesus ******* christ you're stupid.

[Coolwhoami]

Novawrecker, on 16 January 2013 - 07:00 PM, said:

Although I do agree with you, and the admis will have a field day with me for saying this, but I do find this statement coming from you as very ironic seeing not so long ago this was your, very, passionate stance about ECM:

But I digress ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

[hammerreborn]

Solis Obscuri, on 16 January 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

The very worst effect is the cloaking. Kills Information Warfare.

How is the cloaking killing Info Warfare, other than making it a key factor in it? I mean, how hard was info warfare when as soon as you stepped out of your spawn you could see all 8 members of their team and loadouts? With ecm scouts are required (or heat vision, really) to see where the other team is, what they are running with, and what their loadouts are, and are also key to obtaining TAG locks for long range support.

There was no such thing as Info Warfare before ECM.

Quote

Lasers > > > > > SSRM. Especially with terrible hit detection and netcode. Maybe it's because you only play on the internal network with no latency that you think things are fine.

Someone needs to learn his greater than and less than symbols.

[Solis Obscuri]

hammerreborn, on 16 January 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

How is the cloaking killing Info Warfare, other than making it a key factor in it?

Team 1: I have Information Warfare!
Team 2: I have Information Warfare!
Team 1: I'm turning ECM to "Disrupt"
Team 2: Hey I think I see something but... can't get lock...
Team 1: LOL
Team 2: Hey, where'd half my team go? They're not displaying anywhere...
Team 2: Crap, we're at 0-4 now? Where'd everybody... Aww crap, 8 guys are rushing over the ridge!
Team 1: ROFL

hammerreborn, on 16 January 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

I mean, how hard was info warfare when as soon as you stepped out of your spawn you could see all 8 members of their team and loadouts?

Sorry, I don't remember when the spawns were located that close in.. .Oh, more hyperbole, right.

hammerreborn, on 16 January 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

With ecm scouts are required (or heat vision, really) to see where the other team is, what they are running with, and what their loadouts are, and are also key to obtaining TAG locks for long range support.

Yeah, that's what all scouts used to do before ECM.

But scouts without ECM can't do any of those things (well, unless they can maybe type really fast in team chat while they're getting Streaked to death...)

hammerreborn, on 16 January 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

There was no such thing as Info Warfare EZmode before ECM.

Fixed

Edited by Solis Obscuri, 16 January 2013 - 07:21 PM.