46 replies to this topic

[GalaxyBluestar]

what is it you want op? no customisation, kill ecm, stop the boating from rocking your game play? there's always going to be some stacking for mech designs and annihilator primary, maurauder 2 MAD-4H, Salamander primary, battlemaster and many other IS mechs would all like to say hi from the bottom of their stacked weapon configs.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 21 February 2013 - 01:26 AM.

[aptest]

Inyc, on 21 February 2013 - 12:17 AM, said:

6 PPC stalkers or 4 PPC Catapults, or Gauss / AC Phrac, Catapults. Splat Cats, Splat Cents...

See a trend? Everyone is using high burst direct damage. I wonder why.

naa, last week it was LRMs on anything that could pack'em. it's just a FOTM thing created by the changes in the game (PPC buff, alpine, trench-bucket) that will last momentarily until the meta stabilizes again.

[Inyc]

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 February 2013 - 01:26 AM, said:

what is it you want op?

Variety.

aptest, on 21 February 2013 - 01:33 AM, said:

naa, last week it was LRMs on anything that could pack'em. it's just a FOTM thing created by the changes in the game (PPC buff, alpine, trench-bucket) that will last momentarily until the meta stabilizes again.

I don't see how LRMs could ever be considered OP as long as cover keeps working. And I don't see how they have any use as long as ECM stays as it is.

[Angus McBeef]

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 February 2013 - 01:26 AM, said:

what is it you want op? no customisation, kill ecm, stop the boating from rocking your game play? there's always going to be some stacking for mech designs and annihilator primary, maurauder 2 MAD-4H, Salamander primary, battlemaster and many other IS mechs would all like to say hi from the bottom of their stacked weapon configs.

We could always go with the proposal from CB when everyone got mad over missile changes. We'd just need to replace all game modes with mech pillow fight mode, no damage. After the medium mech speed nerf, we had this one, too: no engine, everyone just has the canopy open and yells insulting things at each other from stationary mechs.

[Khobai]

Quote

High burst damage has been the name of the game for a good long time in MWO, even for the brawler builds.
This is truly nothing new.

Yep. The single most unbalancing thing about MWO is the fact players can aim all their weapons at a specific location. Which wouldn't have been a problem if the armor ratios weren't still based on the random hit locations in the tabletop game. I'm not sure how PGI is going to balance clan tech but its pretty obvious that they're either going to have to lower damage or increase armor because x4 CERPPCs is 60 pinpoint damage... which is enough to kill even an Atlas in two volleys (or at least take it to red internals).

Edited by Khobai, 21 February 2013 - 01:45 AM.

[Inyc]

Angus McBeef, on 21 February 2013 - 01:37 AM, said:

We could always go with the proposal from CB when everyone got mad over missile changes. We'd just need to replace all game modes with mech pillow fight mode, no damage. After the medium mech speed nerf, we had this one, too: no engine, everyone just has the canopy open and yells insulting things at each other from stationary mechs.

Or we could keep going as is and end up playing Call of Duty with a throttle. If I could, I would only ever play Alpine because at least that feels like Mechwarrior.

[Angus McBeef]

Inyc, on 21 February 2013 - 01:41 AM, said:

Or we could keep going as is and end up playing Call of Duty with a throttle. If I could, I would only ever play Alpine because at least that feels like Mechwarrior.

ARGH every thread people talk about Alpine. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to play on it once in between the usual 32768 river city night matches.

[One Medic Army]

Realistically there aren't that many weapons with a low enough cool down to deal damage as DoT rather than burst:
AC5, which has terrible DPS compared to the other auto cannons
UAC5, the king of DPS, but jams like mad and uses so much ammo
AC2, which had issues with fire rate behaving consistently last I heard
MG, which does pure DoT, but only enough to scratch the paint
LRMs streamed from a NARC tube
SRMs streamed from a NARC tube

Lasers all have a decently long cool down, as do other weapons.
It's generally best to front load your damage as much as possible and then concentrate on spreading/avoiding incoming damage while you wait out your cool downs. Just the nature of the game.

[Thorn Hallis]

Inyc, on 21 February 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

Obviously stacking 6 of the same heavy weapon is canon.

Indeed it is, as the rules of Battletech make such a build possible.

[Captain Midnight]

Inyc, you claim you want a tactical game but it sounds to me what you really want is to play COD and be tacticool. If creeping around as carefully as possible to get an advantageous position, then unleashing a deadly volley on your opponent (at the risk of dying to their deadly volley if you aren't sneaky enough or make a mistep) sounds pretty damn tactical.

Running around a corner, seeing 5 mechs, and then NOT dying would be COD with a throttle. I'm pretty sure this current gameplay is pretty damn tactical and you just don't know what you want. Maybe you'd be happier playing COD than you think?

Edited by Captain Midnight, 21 February 2013 - 01:56 AM.

[Ursh]

Hrm, they could have something like limiting the number of high energy weapons that could be fired at the same time.

They could call it a capacitor limitation, or something like that. Say that you can fire one ppc or erppc per 100 engine rating at the same time.

So you'd need a 300 engine to fire 3 ppcs at the same time. Set it to a 3 second capacitor cooldown, which would sync it with the next volley.

That would be the end of 4+ ppc builds. You could figure out a similar system for large lasers.

For the LRM boats, they could introduce an ammo jam system when you're firing launchers out of hardpoints that don't have enough tubes for them. Make it like the UAC5, for example. If you're firing 60 missiles out of a total of 26 tubes *4xLRM15 Stalker* then there's an extremely high probability of a jam, resulting in incomplete volleys and a disabled launcher for five seconds. Honestly, it would make sense. I've seen Cataphracts firing 2xLRM15 out of the 4 tube slot on their left arm.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Inyc, on 21 February 2013 - 01:36 AM, said:

Variety.

yes now that's a little problematic as human nature wants the best at the quickest possible. stacking allows this as one weapon group is easier to get more damage sooner than three. thing is that's mech warrior and all the games have gone through this. anyone thinking mwo will be an exception to this needs to stop and think, so long as you can have something other than stock you're going to find stacked weapons and the same uber stuff coming to the surface like formular 1 racing.

on the plus side the more mechs we get the lesser the sameme min maxers will be in each match. so hold on inyc, next year will see lots more different mech and configs on the field, just give pgi some leg room for more content to come up okay.

[Inyc]

Captain Midnight, on 21 February 2013 - 01:56 AM, said:

Inyc, you claim you want a tactical game but it sounds to me what you really want is to play COD and be tacticool. If creeping around as carefully as possible to get an advantageous position, then unleashing a deadly volley on your opponent (at the risk of dying to their deadly volley if you aren't sneaky enough or make a mistep) sounds pretty damn tactical.

Running around a corner, seeing 5 mechs, and then NOT dying would be COD with a throttle. I'm pretty sure this current gameplay is pretty damn tactical and you just don't know what you want. Maybe you'd be happier playing COD than you think?

No I want something more like Mechwarrior, where you run in or away shooting some LRM, maybe getting in a few good PPC / LL / AC shots when you close and then some medium lasers before you finish up with glorious giant robot melee.

Instead I get the Fire Support cats running at people to Splat them and Stalkers yoyoing over hills coring you in one shot with Atlases standing on top of hills, uncaring, as they rain down LRM and AC/20 death because, lucky them, the enemy team isn't packing 5 ECMs like their team is.

This is nothing at all like my table top MW. The only thing I can remember being this wacky is 3rd edition Warhammer 40K with everyone packing 6 troops at minimum strength carrying as many heavy weapons as possible. Or LoL games with full teams of stealthed Sunfire cape stackers.

I can only pray that the smaller maps are phased out in favor of Alpine sized ones because at least that one is MW.

Edited by Inyc, 21 February 2013 - 02:14 AM.

[Pliskeen]

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 February 2013 - 01:59 AM, said:

yes now that's a little problematic as human nature wants the best at the quickest possible. stacking allows this as one weapon group is easier to get more damage sooner than three. thing is that's mech warrior and all the games have gone through this. anyone thinking mwo will be an exception to this needs to stop and think, so long as you can have something other than stock you're going to find stacked weapons and the same uber stuff coming to the surface like formular 1 racing.

on the plus side the more mechs we get the lesser the sameme min maxers will be in each match. so hold on inyc, next year will see lots more different mech and configs on the field, just give pgi some leg room for more content to come up okay.

That's just plain wrong, more mechs won't add more variety, it just will encourage to replace the current ones in case they're better. If a new mech has better engine capability, or better twist features and the hardpoints required for a specific current build, this one will replace the older one, it's just a no-brainer.

MW4 had weapons requiring 1-4 hardpoints. I don't see what was wrong with that system. Current one renders some variants totally useless, and hinders variety on the game, having available mechs being pointless. Why would you use a 4G when a K2 can wield a double AC/20 with better torso twist and more armor at the expense of a bit of max speed.

[Bhan Zor]

Lyrik, on 21 February 2013 - 12:49 AM, said:

High burst is the fastest and most reliable way to kill a mech. Also is easyer to just use 1-2 different weapons instead of 5

Small maps with a lot of cover are favoring Splatcats. Big maps with not that much cover are favoring the 6PPC Stalker.

I really don't see your problem.

The problem is, that PGI wouldnt be the first company to step into the trap of allowing the game to boil down to a few cookie cutter builds and end up in a dull stalemate with no easy way out other than a full re-balance. I'm not saying this situation is lurking around the corner right now, but in the long run it can become an issue for many players who then may wander off elsewhere.

This isnt really about finding ways to counter these cookie cutter builds or laugh at them when they drop on the wrong map with it. In my opinion its about avoiding trends before they damage the game in the long run.

I'm just hoping they acknowledge the risk and have a plan for their game to avoid it.

Edited by Bhan Zor, 21 February 2013 - 03:13 AM.

[Wingbreaker]

Pliskeen, on 21 February 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

MW4 had weapons requiring 1-4 hardpoints. I don't see what was wrong with that system.

You clearly didn't play MW4 very much, if you couldn't see what was wrong with its system.



SEEMS LEGIT.

[Onmyoudo]

I bloody love Nova Cats.

[Fiachdubh]

Had not actually noticed, the Streak Cats don't seem to be as bad as they used to be, maybe its all that ecm goodness.

[Odanan]

So Booboolicious, on 21 February 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

Is everyone enjoying playing the BETA of Mechwarrior Online?

Jeah, PGI has been working their ***** off this new year.

Mmhmm....

This is not a problem of the game being beta. This is a problem of Battletech is general.

Stacks of weapons will ALWAYS be more effective. It's naive of the developers of the Battletech (not PGI) to never notice that. They released a bunch of unnatural mechs that wouldn't work in real combat situations. The "jack-of-all-trades" issue is specially true in a real time game (like all Mechwarrior titles), where you don't have all the time in the world to make decisions.

It is just dumb to have mechs with 3, 4 even 5 types of weapons. It makes the mech non-optimal.

The only game that addressed the boating problem is the MW:LL, by increasing the heat of staked weapons. Is it a solution based on reality? - No. Is it works as a balancing mechanics? - Yes.

BTW, if you have no contribution to the discussion, why don't you move along?

[Khobai]

Quote

You clearly didn't play MW4 very much, if you couldn't see what was wrong with its system.

What youre neglecting to mention is that the damage on lasers was reduced significantly in MW4 to counteract the fact they can be boated.