221 replies to this topic

[StUffz]

Cest7, on 20 February 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

ECM + SSRM + Light Chassis Vs. Light Chassis

Most OP thing in this game.

Hm, we hit hard with lrm boating yesterday regardless of ECM or not...

[Doc Holliday]

I'm still waiting for this in a patch:

- ECM: removed from the game pending a complete overhaul for balance purposes


In the meantime, Star Trek Online is proving to be quite fun.

Edited by Doc Holliday, 21 February 2013 - 07:06 AM.

[Twisted Power]

I just want to point out that with the new ELO there are MORE ECM mechs. The reason is that people want to make sure they win.

If people want to make sure they win, so they then get into specific mechs or use specific items (ECM mechs), there would be a reason for that.

You can use said mechs/item to gain advantages against people who do not have the mechs. You use said mechs/item to be able to counter others who have it.

It seems to me like in order to be competitive you need to have item. Not skill.

[Monky]

The health nerf helps a -little- bit, the PPC nerf is a gimmic with no practical use against anything other than an Atlas D-DC.

4 seconds on a lucky shot against a light buys you what, 1 SSRM salvo? LRM will lose lock before they hit, no other weapons systems need locks, sooooooo...

Additionally, against a D-DC I just dumbfire LRM's anyways, not like they can get out of the way.

[BR0WN_H0RN3T]

There IS a counter to ECM. It's called "ECM counter mode." Unfortunately that's reserved for ECM mechs as well. Boo!

[Bilaz]

i do agree that ecm is overpowered. it just gives you SO much for only so little. only thing that is keeping me from buing me one is that i dont play too much to afford one. For a teamplay that may be somewhat less of an issue - becouse main thing that ecm disrupts is tactical awareness. Which prevents you from planning and thinking whom to shot, where to go - you just shoot what you can, when you can - making it much more random for my liking. Not that i perform bad, becouse of this - it just feels wrong and irritating - its not ******* quake i play to stare at pixels and have 1-2 second openings for a shot.

I do admit that i was wrong about averyone and his mom playing only on ecm boat. Still i would like to see how ecm affecting wins and losses. how ofted team with more ecm wins over less ecm team? Well it wont mean a thing if its unrelated becouse a lot of factor contribute to result of match. But if there is indeed correlation that definatly means that something is wrong with ecm.

I humbly suggest some change on how it works making it someting less of a universal - "now you all suffer" - to a something that is only powerfull when operator knows what he's doing. For instance - make it not aoe, but targeted module. Like tag, or something. If you can tag me - you deserve all the percs you get, but trying to make something that dusrupts it for like 4-5 seconds ONLY if you can hit it - its like david against goliah, one is omipotent and affects everyone on all ranges, disrupting all systems - from targeting to map and missiles, other can only get limited functionality for a limited time IF he invests tonnage, effort and manages to outperform ecm user.

Hardly seems fair and belive me - not fun to lose, not becouse you made mistakes and failed to do something (which may leave you with warm feeling that you fought like a lion, but that was not enought) , but becouse ecm broke your team ablity to coordinate and support each other. Its equally not fun to win 7-2 only becouse you have ecm and use it well, becouse well its not your effort + skill won the match, but difference in equipment. So ecm is essential, but do it balanced already.

[LackofCertainty]

In my experience, the PPC buff combined with the better netcode has made a pretty noticable effect in reducing the effectiveness of ecm lights. Most amusing thing now is to pop them with a PPC, and follow it up with an SSRM salvo. (the ppc disable lasts long enough to allow a lock easily)

I still think ECM and SSRM's are a bit too strong too strong, but the ECM Light Deathboats have been mitigated quite a bit, at least for pugging. When I've taken my own ecm+ssrm light for a spin, I've felt a lot more fragile. I've found a lot more success just following my team's meds/heavies and providing ecm cover for them, instead of being the mech equivalent of the grim reaper, like I was in previous patches. (honestly, that's more what ecm lights should be doing anyway... Support play)

[Bilaz]

StUffz, on 21 February 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

Hm, we hit hard with lrm boating yesterday regardless of ECM or not...

With group you can hit hard with almost everything. Becouse you can invest in narc, tag, ecm and/or whatever else you fancy.

[Troggy]

Exactly. And if all Ravens, Commandos, and Spiders were allowed to have it, then the light game would become more interesting and balanced. As is only the 3L and 2D are utilized.

http://mwomercs.com/...iders-need-ecm/

--
Troggy

Brown Hornet, on 21 February 2013 - 03:51 PM, said:

There IS a counter to ECM. It's called "ECM counter mode." Unfortunately that's reserved for ECM mechs as well. Boo!

[Inertiaman]

Sticky me please - let's face it everyone seems to have some feedback on the matter. Might as well save them a scroll.

[arghmace]

Make Guardian ECM do what it's supposed to do.
Add Angel ECM to the game.
Add Null Signature (and/or Stealt Armor) to the game.

Fixed.

[Twisted Power]

I see what they DID! I know 50-50 WEEKEND!!!!!

Because founders and hero mechs have no ECM. I guess they are trying to limit the amount of ECM mech players this weekend and increase hero mech sales at the same time!

So the busiest days this week don't get overloaded with ECM in combo with their new ELO matchmaking that has increased ECM usage.

As I work in sales and marketing in NYC. I can at least respect the marketing for PGI. Just as good (for them) and bad (for you) as Apple. Deny anything is wrong, push out products that make you forget the features you don't have or don't work. You can't sell me though (thats why I do not own apple products). Marketing does not work on me, I buy what I want. Damn do I want mechs. (without ECM in its OP state) I will pay for you to fix the damn thing.

[Troggy]

Nope. Founders and Heroes are mostly good variants. And they have the solo tourney. They are trying to equilibrate the Elo system for the 'good' players, because k-factors mean that they need the most game in to hit their static score. Extra money for good variants only, means people won't just use this to grind all the crappy Ravens and Commandos and futz up their ranking systems.

Plus they throw paying customers a bit of a bone, earning some essentially free good will for something that helps them out anyway.

It seems like a pretty smart move,

--
Troggy

Twisted Power, on 22 February 2013 - 06:36 AM, said:

I see what they DID! I know 50-50 WEEKEND!!!!!

Because founders and hero mechs have no ECM. I guess they are trying to limit the amount of ECM mech players this weekend and increase hero mech sales at the same time!

So the busiest days this week don't get overloaded with ECM in combo with their new ELO matchmaking that has increased ECM usage.

As I work in sales and marketing in NYC. I can at least respect the marketing for PGI. Just as good (for them) and bad (for you) as Apple. Deny anything is wrong, push out products that make you forget the features you don't have or don't work. You can't sell me though (thats why I do not own apple products). Marketing does not work on me, I buy what I want. Damn do I want mechs. (without ECM in its OP state) I will pay for you to fix the damn thing.

[Critical Fumble]

ICEFANG13, on 20 February 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

Yeah ECM is still unbalanced. Why not have it all be balanced rather then try to make a complex web of counters that in the end may be balanced?

Or at least, you know, finish the counter web before adding the thing in.

I didn't like the LRM blackened sky from before ECM, but I really don't like that LRMs are no longer long range weapons - LRM+TAG is.

I hated SSRM cats, but the SSRM Ravens and Commandos are the same thing, only faster and they kill you slower. They also conveniently render anyone else's SSRMs inoperable unless they have ECM available as well. Or PPCs now, if you can manage to hit all of the ECM mechs in the area in a window of four seconds - wait, a little less than three seconds if you actually want to get that salvo off - good luck with that.

I never hated being targetable when I exposed myself, or always being able to tell where my team was. I also never hated being able to target exposed enemies or their being able to tell where their team was at any given time.

This hard counter philosophy is going to make the game convoluted - not deep.

[Inertiaman]

Troggy, on 22 February 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

It seems like a pretty smart move,

--
Troggy

Good points but I'm not convinced creating an artificial baseline gets you any good data.

[rmz]

Just finished playing some 15 or so games. ECM is not as prevalent as I would have thought. Which is good. Yet ECM wins games. Which is bad. I've seen two ECM Ravens killing 4 other mechs. I have been pummeled to nothing in my FLAME by SSRM boating COM and I couldn't do squat. I've been shielded by D-DC and our team annihilated the other which unfortunately didn't have one ECM.

ECM still wins games. Period.
I am still awaiting the day it gets removed/fixed... either this or I will finally succumb and buy an ECM mech...

[Tolkien]

Murrdox, on 20 February 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

...
I get that ECM needs to be in the game, because PGI basically gave everybody free C3 Computer nets,
...

Murrdox, I have to take exception to this statement as I don't believe it's actually true. It seems to be a tired old canard trotted out by defenders of ECM (note I am a heavy user of ECM, but not at all a defender of it).

Let me clarify why I am saying this.

On tabletop the two opposing sides were controlled by a single player each. Even in double blind, when one of your mechs spotted an enemy your whole "team" of mechs knew where they were and could be moved in for the kill (if you wanted to). Likewise indirect fire could be called in even without TAG or C3 - these two were necessary for Arrow IV artillery and/or Semi-Guided LRMs.

Also, a C3 computer made it so that you had an easier roll to hit the enemy.

So, C3 is not needed to do many of the things people point at when they try to deceive you by saying we have C3. Part of the reason people might be fooled is that we *do* have guided LRMs which are a consequence of the choice taken to make them a lock on weapon by default and to have them move so damn slow so as to make them totally ineffectual as a line of sight weapon against anything but a stationary target.

So in short this is a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid, and not actually about free C3 or some such - just the outcome of not addressing the underlying targeting/guided/unguided weapons design.

1) LRMs were designed as lock on weapons, so they were made slow so you would have a chance to dive for cover. Early beta was dominated by LRMs since they could home in on lag shielded lights that were silly enough to stay out in the open.
2) ECM was a band-aid to prevent you from getting locks in the first place thereby making mechs wandering around out in the open, plainly visible immune from LRM fire. Even those pesky still hard to hit lights.
3) PPCs have had an ability added to temporarily knock out an ECM. If fast moving lights could be hit reliably in the first place, this wouldn't be needed.

[Twisted Power]

I have to agree Tolkien about the PPCs. If you are hitting a light with PPC's enough that their ecm remains off most of the time, they will die via PPC fire before a missle volly could reach them.

Edited by Twisted Power, 22 February 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Marcus Tanner]

ECM is still by far the best use of tonnage, so much so that I would bring it every time even if there were no LRMs or streaks in the game.

Incidentally, LRMs and streaks are also too effective. Me and my <10 fps make it to the top of the leaderboard far too often to be explained away by 133t skillz on my part, such as they may or may not exist. I don't think I'm *awful* at this game, but I don't think I'm good either and particularly not while wearing the cement shoes of a cheap netbook's processor and graphics card.

Murrdox, on 20 February 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

I get that ECM needs to be in the game, because PGI basically gave everybody free C3 Computer nets,

I'll join the dogpile of people noting that this is simply not correct. However, I'll add a detail that appears to have been missed after this comment:

Murrdox, on 20 February 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

I think you're partially correct. In Battletech, you can indirect fire LRMs at a target using a spotter. However I'd say that equates to firing your missiles unguided into the air, using telemetry information provided by a spotter. On the contrary, having a C3 Computer lets a spotter give you an actual target lock. But these are really just semantics.

Not only do you not need C3 in order to indirect spotting, but C3 does not work with indirect fire attacks at all. If you're using indirect fire, C3 does not help at all.

Murrdox, on 20 February 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

If MW:O eventually implements C3 Computer networks, I have a hard time imagining how that would work.

An aimbot, a target lead reticule or a special zoom mode are the things that have come to my mind.

Doc Holliday, on 21 February 2013 - 07:05 AM, said:

In the meantime, Star Trek Online is proving to be quite fun.

Agreed.

Brown Hornet, on 21 February 2013 - 03:51 PM, said:

There IS a counter to ECM. It's called "ECM counter mode." Unfortunately that's reserved for ECM mechs as well. Boo!

ECM counter mode doesn't help when they're farther than 180m away, and it doesn't stop them from sneaking up on you.

[Alilua]

ECM is why I play this game once or twice a month from everyday. It is just too much of a game changer and pgi hasn't fixed the imbalance it causes.

The community has been very vocal on this issue for months now. I just hope for the other players this issue gets addressed and fixed soon.