452 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Orzorn, on 14 February 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

I'd like to think (hope) I do, but I'm willing to listen to opposing views provided they're actually willing to discuss the issues like a human being. My own corp mate, Vlad Ward, gave me a good debate, as he believes ECM isn't really that much of an issue. The difference is he actually talked it out, and I ended up agreeing with several points.

I'd favor bumping LRM speed to 200m/s but damage down to 1.3. More consistent but less crushing if that makes sense. Just like any other weapon. If I have decent aim with my AC10 I expect to put 10 points on the guy within range. Similar concept with LRMs. If I get a lock and fire my LRM 15, I expect to drop 10+ points on him unless he gets to cover. Otherwise why not just get something with a ballistic hardpoint instead? This logic is what created the OP but avoidable LRM issue we have right now. The desire to balance it differently from all other weapons.

NARC needs at least 60 seconds or else why bother with the ECM counter? Loading a NARC is going to cost you weight, ammo and a missile hardpoint. What's it getting you? 20 seconds of better accuracy? 2 shots, maybe 3? You need to make it more like 6 to 8 shots if the guy doesn't get to cover. Limit NARC ammo in response.

This would make NARC and TAG more valuable to pugs, not less. Helps coordinate your team. Even if I'm not boating LRMs or any missiles at all seeing that guy with the yellow target mark or blinking red mark is going to let me know that's someone I need to focus fire on.

Make sense? More diversity, better pug and team experience. Just not one that exponentially increases the power of one while decreasing it for the other.

Edited by MischiefSC, 14 February 2013 - 05:23 PM.

[Orzorn]

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

I'd favor bumping LRM speed to 200m/s but damage down to 1.3. More consistent but less crushing if that makes sense. Just like any other weapon. If I have decent aim with my AC10 I expect to put 10 points on the guy within range. Similar concept with LRMs. If I get a lock and fire my LRM 15, I expect to drop 10+ points on him unless he gets to cover. Otherwise why not just get something with a ballistic hardpoint instead? This logic is what created the OP but avoidable LRM issue we have right now. The desire to balance it differently from all other weapons.

Understandable. LRMs move like boats out of water, so PGI seems to have taken the stance that when they hit, they hit hard. That doesn't work well when they're boated to hell and back, though, because they lead to one-shot scenarios from 1000 meters out without much effort on the part of the boater. As long as they had scouts they were golden. That's part of why people cling to ECM as much as they do. Trench warfare with LRMs wasn't exactly fun either. Faster LRMs with less damage would be more reliable, and less frustrating (for both sides of the coin). It would also be a better support weapon, because your damage gets on point faster.

Quote

NARC needs at least 60 seconds or else why bother with the ECM counter? Loading a NARC is going to cost you weight, ammo and a missile hardpoint. What's it getting you? 20 seconds of better accuracy? 2 shots, maybe 3? You need to make it more like 6 to 8 shots if the guy doesn't get to cover. Limit NARC ammo in response.

Naw, no need to limit the already pathetically limited NARC. I'd be willing to concede a longer NARC time, as you do make a good point about people needing a reason to take ECM, especially one that didn't counter missiles like it does now. Imagine if we just nerfed ECM's missile counter to dust right now. People wouldn't even bother with it, because people don't bother with NARC or BAP anyways (because they're not good).

Quote

This would make NARC and TAG more valuable to pugs, not less. Helps coordinate your team. Even if I'm not boating LRMs or any missiles at all seeing that guy with the yellow target mark or blinking red mark is going to let me know that's someone I need to focus fire on.

Make sense? More diversity, better pug and team experience. Just not one that exponentially increases the power of one while decreasing it for the other.

Yes. My ideal goal is one where every piece of equipment sees about as much time as the others. When I sit down to make a mech and decide I want some equipment, I should have to seriously think it out. As it stands, go ECM or go home (except Artemis). BAP and NARC are hurting the most, right now.

[Thorqemada]

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Notice what? Any negative poll will receive more votes - people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature. Why would they?

The thing is that ECM needs only minor fixes to get in line with the overall game balance.

Fix 1: TAG works allways - ECM only affects the ability to transmit the target data to teammates - its benefits work for all Mechs able to fire guided Missiles at the highlighted target.

Fix 2: A direct LOS allows you to get a lock on - without TAG you receive no bonusses, the lock on time is 2 times longer and the lock breaks 2 times faster.

Fix 3: Either Teams get their IFF back or you must allow an option to colour all Mechs in a specific Team colour so its possible to differentiate friend and foe (as of now Mechs in each team look usually identical).

Fix 4: The detection range is of ECM covered Mechs is based on their electronical Noise, Size (Weightclass), Engine.
Non ECM Light Mechs with small engines, no BAP, no Modules would covered from a ECM field to a close detection range of 150m while the Atlass D-DC can be detected at far 350m for example.

Alternative Fix: ECM needs to weight 7 tons and 7 slots.



PS: The game is in many points fantastic or has the potential to be fantastic and i am happy you (PGI) were bold enough to bring this wonderfull IP back to live.
What other game with only 4 Maps and a bit of PVP would make me spend around 400 bucks playing it month after month and still makes feel the urge to log in and play more?
That is only MWO!



The more its a mistery to me why you cant see that ECM is way out of touch with the overall game balancing and a game altering experience for way to few (say none) drawbacks and an Anti PUG Measure???
I dont get it...

PPS: I tested myself the ECM Cicada and Raven and my success rate in this Mechs is boosted by 50% to 150%.
I was able to bring my 1:1 W/L and 2:1 K/D to some 1,5:1 W/L and 5:1 K/D ratio in a 100% PUG scenario.
ECM that is that powerfull is too powerfull !

Edited by Thorqemada, 15 February 2013 - 02:21 AM.

[ArmandTulsen]

For the love of all that is good and noble, just make ECM as it should be in TT.

Nobody can use the medium change argument here (turn-based =/= real-time FPS). They took something from the universe and completely changed the way it's supposed to function.

Edited by ArmandTulsen, 14 February 2013 - 06:35 PM.

[Spectre250]

Frankly, I do not see the problem. I usually run a missile boat, so I have a dark place in my heart for anything packing ECM, but I find the shift ECM forces to be a bit more fun. Sure, it gets hard to even get a lock, but hey, at least it keeps everyone on their toes.

Of course, I would not complain if the AOE radar cloaking went away...

[BirdToes]

If this were a political vote, the Anti-ECM candidate would win by such a landslide he'd have a clear mandate from the people to either nerf ECM into the ground or get rid of it entirely.

But it's not a political vote, and this isn't a democracy.

[Teralitha]

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Notice what? Any negative poll will receive more votes - people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature. Why would they?

And an equal number of players that quit and leave without saying a word so the 2 groups cancel each other out, and what you have left is the poll, and that makes it valid.

Do you really think that if a poll was titled... ""The amazing ECM who loves it????"" Poll yes or no....

That the results would be different? You and the developers are suffering from a case of denial....

[Teralitha]

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 02:00 PM, said:

running customer feedback polls consumes a lot of time. Sorting thousands of them on a weekly basis eats a lot of zots - resources, be they billable hours or other expenses. Code it, test it, implement, maintain, support.... payroll is a huge source of red ink for any business. You need to make sure that spending that money is going to get you money back in some form or fashion or you're not much of a business.

Forums help, having your own testers helps a lot as well but the problem with both of these options are very inbred responses.

People on the forums feed misinformation back and forth like it's the only lollipop and they're a bunch of 6-year-olds in a trailer park. Postmodernism feeds into this, cognitive bias, forums are a pretty muddled lens to view your consumers experience though but it helps.

In house testing has its own pitfalls. Your opinions are skewed by your own bias of where you know the developer is taking it vs how it's performing. It's like an artist critiquing his own work.

Customer service feedback though.... most professional resources for it give the customer a bunch of metrics to rate on a 1 to 5 scale, with an additional +1 for 'was your issue resolved to your satisfaction' resulting in a 1 to 6 scale.

Almost all scores are either 1s or 6s. Sometimes a customer has a great experience but still rates all 1s because of something someone said to them 3 years ago. Sometimes they rate it all 1s because the 6 year old cell phone they have won't stream netflix or because they don't like the manual that came with the DVR they got for free.

Most of the drama on forums is performance art and not valid customer feedback. Sorting that out can make the most warm hearted, honest and open, thoughtful and considerate person in the world start looking for a clock tower and a rifle.

Whoever we are, our opinions are not facts. They might be some sort of personal truth but they are not fact. The opinions of your friends are not facts. As a given rule whatever your opinion is you're probably the minority not the majority. The only way to become the majority is to water your opinion down or your criteria of what constitutes 'we agree' down so much that it's virtually worthless save as aggregate data that can be skewed to support any position.

Balancing consumer experiences (for a game or otherwise) is hard, sucky and thankless work. It consists not of finding what makes people happy but what people hate the least. Everyone will assume that whatever they slightly dislike at the moment is, in fact, the worst thing. Ever. That ever happened to anyone. Ever. In the whole history of forever.

Until it gets changed.

Then it's even worse.

nice story bro, now tell us what you voted, and keep it short pls.

[MischiefSC]

Teralitha, on 14 February 2013 - 08:45 PM, said:

nice story bro, now tell us what you voted, and keep it short pls.

Was having a conversation with someone.

I thought I posted my response a ton of pages ago?

ECM makes the game way less enjoyable for me. Read some or all of the half dozen exchanges I've had in this thread and others as to why.

[Rahnu]

Teralitha, on 14 February 2013 - 08:21 PM, said:

And an equal number of players that quit and leave without saying a word so the 2 groups cancel each other out, and what you have left is the poll, and that makes it valid.

Do you really think that if a poll was titled... ""The amazing ECM who loves it????"" Poll yes or no....

That the results would be different? You and the developers are suffering from a case of denial....

Precisely.

It takes time to measure out the numbers when you have a steady trickle of customers just outright quitting, but this poll is here and now. And while the sample is indeed self-selecting, it is the best representation you've got of players who actually have a vested interest in the game (i.e. are likely already paying customers or are future paying customers, as is evidenced by the attitude the forum in general has against "freeloaders").

You can't afford to just wait until you see a measurable decrease in players before you take action. By then, it's too late. They're gone. They're spreading their negative impression of the game and things just go downhill from there. Just look at GW2's PvP, for one particularly egregious example (HUGE numbers at launch, down to what is quite literally a triple-digit player base).

Do you really think you'd see intensely different results if you made this a mandatory poll? What if the results became even more slanted? What about all those players who already quit and wouldn't vote in the poll anyway because, after all, they no longer login to the game?

In the end, you have too many "what-ifs" to account for, so all you've got is this poll. And the results are far, FAR too slanted to be considered coincidental.

And the idea that the forum-goers are predisposed to negative feedback is clearly flawed, something you can very obviously see from other polls on this very forum where forum-goers are defending many other aspects of the game. It's not that forum-goers are slanted towards negativity - it's that they're more passionate customers, and have a stronger interest in the game itself (after all, it takes a certain kind of mindset to want to post on this sort of thing in the first place). That means they WANT to see the game succeed more than anybody else. Ignoring their feedback or brushing it off is absolutely the worst mistake you could possibly make, and I strongly urge you, PGI, to reconsider your stances on this issue.

[Teralitha]

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 03:17 PM, said:

We're all wrong sometimes. I'm wrong often. I don't promise that I won't make mistakes but I do try to make good on them.

Perhaps ECM isn't wrong though, based on the business model.

Here's the thing about the current F2P model of MWO. It's a steep buy-in that's going to draw in your top few percent of spenders. These are people who are investing and I would wager statistically more likely to be parts of organized teams either now or the future. Everyone else is just content for these guys to play with. You're providing the other players an F2P environment specifically so that 90-some percent of the people in the game are creating content (read that as targets) for the remaining tiny percent. Team members that don't up-convert into paying subs are still creating richer content than non-team F2P subs in terms of their impact on your prime customers.

So it doesn't matter if F2P pugs hate ECM. So long as you're churning less than you're onboarding you're still generating content for the people who are actually paying subs.

Make sense? That's what I meant about it not being a model I'm familiar with. You don't need to make F2P be fun, just fun enough to shake the wheat from the chaff so to speak. You make the challenges driven to motivate those who would join teams anyway to invest and join teams. Everyone really can just quit - eventually. After they've been replaced by another F2P sub.

Does that make sense? Hence the nature of the responses. Even if I spend money to buy MC if I'm not joining a team and providing richer content for the core prime subs I'm an outlier, an exception and not the rule. I'm only a minor value-add customer If I churn out they've still got more money if I spent any than if I didn't but when they're projecting revenue it's off their prime subs not people like me.

So it would indicate, at least to my absolutely ignorant of the facts perspective it's important to say, that the business model truly is a 'join a team, buy MC or **** you deadbeat' sort.

Which is fair. They need to make money or they're not a business they're a charity. Their significant others deserve roses on Valentines Day and those are not cheap. Baby needs a new pair of shoes and a G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip.

The pricing model though indicates doubling down on a core segment. The rest of us are just content generation for them.

Actually I believe its the small % of high end users (premade teams that pay) that despise ECM the most.... regular pug matches are more bearable as there are fewer ECM mechs used.

[Fitzbattleaxe]

Teralitha, on 14 February 2013 - 09:06 PM, said:

Actually I believe its the small % of high end users (premade teams that pay) that despise ECM the most.... regular pug matches are more bearable as there are fewer ECM mechs used.

But ECM actually makes a difference in a pug match. If you have a team, you're more likely to be using voice communication, which negates many of the problems with ECM.

[Teralitha]

BirdToes, on 14 February 2013 - 07:54 PM, said:

If this were a political vote, the Anti-ECM candidate would win by such a landslide he'd have a clear mandate from the people to either nerf ECM into the ground or get rid of it entirely.

But it's not a political vote, and this isn't a democracy.

Looking at the poll bars... it coincidentally is shaped like a slide.... Those who love ECM are the smallest number.... with a steady increasing nunber of votes down to those who hate ecm. I wonder if the OP planned it that way....

[MischiefSC]

Teralitha, on 14 February 2013 - 09:06 PM, said:

Actually I believe its the small % of high end users (premade teams that pay) that despise ECM the most.... regular pug matches are more bearable as there are fewer ECM mechs used.

Well, if it wasn't profitable I'm confident that they'd have changed the model. ECM favors organized teams and punishes pugs. In pug matches it's just luck of the draw - it's why I've taken to just playing ECM mechs except when I'm leveling. At least then I know my side has at least one ECM mech.

Most of the written responses on ECM seem to be from organized team players - one of the biggest 'it's not a big deal' responses comes hand in hand with 'just coordinate better on teamspeak, what's the problem?'

I trust that PGI makes decisions like any other business. You don't just give the customer what they want because that is generally just most stuff for free.

The business perspective tends to be 'how much money will you give me for X content?' The consumer perspective tends to be 'How much content can I get for X money?'

It's an important difference. PGI is making money. If they were not then you'd see a change in their business model, not doubling down on it (like the recent paint changes imply. It's only cost-effective if you've bought bunches of additional mech bays, etc. It's more expensive for everyone EXCEPT the people who spend a lot).

It's pure speculation though and I'm the first to admit that. Just that the concept plays out when combined with how balancing seems to be going - it's there to cater to the organized teams at the expense of pugs.

[Drenzul]

Saw a Dev playing last night

Surprise surprise, he was playing a ECM Raven

Well at least he was playing it decently unlike a lot of the players I see

[Gammanoob]

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Notice what? Any negative poll will receive more votes - people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature. Why would they?

Garth has a point, maybe we should make a poll with more positive options.

"How much do you love ECM?"

Option 1: Compleletly
Option 2: ECM is the best feature of the game
Option 3: ECM is great but could be even better
Option 4: ECM has been nerfed and needs to be returned to its former level of awesomeness


--------------

Actual suggestion time, is there any way that polls can be added ingame or to the launcher? For example right after you log in to your account the "poll of the day" shows up.

That way people could offer there opinion on an issue and it would reach even those poor lost souls who haven't found the forums yet?

Edited by Gammanoob, 15 February 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[Teralitha]

Lets see if we can get to 1000+ votes. The weekend is almost here... lots of voters may show up.

Edited by Teralitha, 15 February 2013 - 09:47 AM.

[Nightcrept]

I disagree with the idea that players only vote negative.

If you view the lrm balancing threads the votes did change as LRms were nerfed and then buffed. And once they hit a good balance the polls reflected that most players thought lrms had become balanced.

[StalaggtIKE]

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Notice what? Any negative poll will receive more votes - people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature. Why would they?

"They don't mind"; that's kind of low expectations. Wouldn't the goal be to have people loving the features? The question becomes who is target audience: is it the newbs, pugs, premades or 8vs8man? Are they all the target audience? Are we neglecting a few? How many of these groups generally like ECM? How many of these groups generally dislike ECM? How can we make the majority love it?

This thread is missing out on 8vs8. Here's how they feel about ECM: 8VS8 GETS BORING. The thing is, it's not even an ECM thread, it's just that many have concluded that ECM is the culprit. Interesting read for whomever wants a different pov.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 15 February 2013 - 12:27 PM.

[Tennex]

Fitzbattleaxe, on 14 February 2013 - 09:14 PM, said:

But ECM actually makes a difference in a pug match. If you have a team, you're more likely to be using voice communication, which negates many of the problems with ECM.

so if it doen't effect teamplay. is completely overpowered in Pugstomps. unfair to new players, and doesn't make sense in value per tonnage. why hasn't it been nerfed.