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June 17, 2025, 12:27:55 PM

we're back, baby

Quote from: Ironwood on May 28, 2013, 01:35:21 AM

Quote from: Merusk on May 26, 2013, 05:56:02 AM

LRMs on their own cant seem to kill things now. Which isn't terribly balanced. Took the stalker 5m out last night, I've got 2 20 and 2 10 rack launchers on it. Had an atlas charge me in a valley on the new map where I had a clear LOS and got a TAG on him from 750m. I fired at least 5 full salvoes on him before he got to within 180 and raped me with his ac20 or gauss.

Nothing on him was darker than heavy damage so it would have taken 3 more salvos at least. I've had similar problems on smaller mechs. The only kills i get are if im sniping a kill from someone else or a lucky cockpitting. You're a target softener and supressor, not much more, so expect the resurgence in full of ppc & gauss machines in pugs. You can't take on that sort of role without support.

I think something is broken with LRM's - the games I'm in LRM spotters are utterly wrecking shit. Total destruction. And yet there are some, like Merusk, that field complaints like this. Certainly my Highlanders carry some LRM racks and enjoy a good old smackdown - I think that we'll probably find that LRM15's don't work and LRM20's are overpowered or something stupid like that.

Hm you may be on to something. I'm going to swap them out for LRM 15s and see what's what.

I didn't have enough 15s so I loaded just 10s. Yeah, those are what's broken. 1 kill 4 assists only 186 damage but I fucked some people up bad on the same map. Seems that the 10s cluster more than the 20s so their damage is more concentrated. Time for more tests

Did further testing in the TG last night and confirmed it's the LRM10s and that they have a tighter spread. When testing with a Jenner and 1 LRM 10 I noticed all damage indicated CT or L&R Torso, no arm or leg splash. (Why a Jenner? Because fuck you for not letting me select a map for TGs and fuck running alpine peaks in a stalker to test things)

When I swapped a single LRM20 into a catapult the damage was all over the place on the mech. Head, all torso, arms and legs, I also saw significant splash of missiles on the ground, hitting nothing.

I don't have the scratch pad I was using with me here at the office, but the run down is this:

Stalker 5m, 5 LRM 10s will kill anything in the TGs in a max of 3 volleys. Mechs with a bigger center torso will die in two vs. something like a cent which took 3. They all died quick, without TAG (though I did have ARTEMIS).

1 LRM 20 on my catapult at ~500m couldn't even get the first layer of CT armor on an Atlas to red. It was a dull yellow, it's right arm was a light red, nothing on it was to the 2nd layer of indicator.

Jenner with the LRM 10 took a max of 7 or 8 volleys (no notes here) to kill an Atlas and two to kill a Cicada at ~500m.

Being the testing grounds, this does assume perfect conditions and mechs standing still w/o AMS. Considering the poptart/ stand-still nature of some builds and how few folks run AMS right now this means missiles can be HIGHLY effective if you use the smaller launchers. I didn't try the 5s to see if they're even tighter. I might do that tonight.

LRM20s probably would be even more ineffective in a match because there will be one or two AMS to swat missiles and mechs will be moving. That means more will hit the ground or be spread-out even more because of the missiles shot-down. This matches my own in-game experiences of trying to kill a mech in a flat-out stretch with LRM 20s, it was useless.

Verdict: Just not worth it to run the 20s, stick with the 10s and possibly chain fire them so they are more clustered.

They are : It's LRM5's I use on my Highlanders. They do a nice wee peppering.

Trouble is they're EVEN MORE affected by AMS, since a grouped AMS Enabled mechs will take out the lot of them.

Looks like there are so many issues in the missiles spread still. For example, if you shoot Streaks at bigger 'mechs they hit all the 8 parts, but if you shoot them at smaller 'mechs they tend to always hit the CT. There's a video on the forum that is totally depressing, with lots of streaks fired at a Commando always hitting CT, and the best defense the fanbois could come up with is: "Pffft everyone knows the Training Ground does not represent the actual game, things work differently in a match".

So yeah, I am pretty sure the mechanics behind the missile spread are still quite fucked for all missiles and have a bias towards certain racks and against certain 'mechs, but not enough people have been running enough tests yet to make it blatantly obvious and undeniable.

OH.. that reminds me of one REALLLY fucked-up thing I found.

If you're firing missiles at the rear of a mech, you'll never, ever, ever kill it. No matter how big. It took me 20 volleys with an LRM 10 from 500m to kill a Jenner when I was behind it.

I first noticed it when I tried to blow-up a commando and it took me 5 volleys when prior tests had shown a consistent 2. I realized I'd been firing from behind the commando and began to try it on others. Yep, consistent hyper-reduced damage on the most vulnerable part of the mech.

Fucked doesn't even begin to cover that one.

Interesting. So when we hear 'Incoming Missile' we should show them our arse ?

That's....quite the idea.

Oh My.

Got 15 wins in 3 and a half hours. PUGs are so fucking exhausting at times.

In other news, I invested lots of money for a 400 XL Engine for my Pretty Baby. Now I have the equivalent of a charger, an assault that runs at 90 kph. Quite fun to always be the first to show up behind enemy lines and shoot them in the back. Too bad I had to sacrifice a little bit of damage in the process. Not sure it's a solid build, but it's fun.

I find XL's in my heavy mechs to be just depressing. With the Gauss and PPC shite, your game is over if you get any of the torso areas cored.

That is absolutely true and I used to hate them. Then again, people are so obsessed with CT that I very rarely die due to XL side torso damage. With the Awesome especially, seems like everything goes to the CT anyway.

I've played so many matches in my AWS-9M, with XL 380...side torsos are not what get you killed in an Awesome. Its the giganto CT.

Fair enough. Don't own one myself, so I'll take your word for it. Highlanders and Atlas's don't fare well with them. Even my Cataphracts try not to use one.

Also, Hero 'mech coming next Tuesday is a Jagermech named Firebrand, with "From Hell" written on it.

Wait, are those PPCs ??

Sure look like it from my K2

We finally got the Rifleman, for real.

Whoever put up the Koreanese videos deserves a Heart

great gameplay, he's constantly talking about cost/benefit in regards to damage dealt and received and that really talks to me as a finance guy Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

.

Llyse, 25 wins, WE CAN DO EEET!

The 25 wins, I did it. Took me 7 hours of uninterrupted playing swamp poop

I am lucky cause I still love the game, but to win 25 I am pretty sure I had to drop about 60 times if not more. And ultimately I don't give a fuck about the 3050 hologram, I guess I still like the game enough to use any excuse to keep playing. Also, I made about 10M Cbills while at it.

I am sure you guys can do it in half the time as a team.

They say a fix to missile spread, both LRM and SRM, is coming with next Tuesday's patch.

Meaning they'll be as usless as LRM20s and we're back to "Macro'd UAC5/ AC20/ Gauss/ PPC or go home"

I really hope not. If nothing else, the recent change should show them how vital it is that there's a counter to that shit and missiles is it.

I'm more afraid that based on the predominance of that playstyle and that all the Hero Mechs of the last month have accommodated it that it's a pet playstyle of one of the devs. Meaning it will never go away and he's one of those twats that grouses, "LRM Coward, face me fucknut" while poptarting.

Which reminds me of the most annoying thing I enountered last night.

Two of our Jenners ran to their base. Meantime, we get utterly, utterly fucking owned by a whole group of 8 mechs who appeared to be using NOTHING but PPC, Guass and AC20. I shit you not. It was brutal how quick we died.

They then taunted 'hey, knock off that cheap base stealing shit' since they would NEVER have got back in time. Alas, we clearly had two young, nice Light pilots who decided not to cheese and head back to engage them.

Where they got utterly smashed by cheap heavy Hitting Shite.

I could have cried.

Instead, I went with the moral high ground and with adult aforethought said 'Fuck You Noobs' and logged off.

Yeah, I hate that shit. It's not a death match it's a victory condition, they should have guarded the base.

I enjoy taunting them back when capping with a, "Well you know right where I am, so YOU come to me"

Absolutely agree. As much as I like to see huge robots shooting each other, this game has potentially a lot of room for strategy and it's great to see that differences in playstyle and rules of engagement eventually pay off. It's what in the end will force people to use more than just Assaults when Community Warfare will hit. And I love to see those fuckers go home with less money because they played it as an Unreal deathmatch.

Yeah, but that said, when you run straight to the base and win in 5 seconds, you earn less than a straight up loss.

Which always struck me as odd.

That's true. Like, why do you run straight for their base, what's the point? Although in some cases that's a good way to break the advancing enemy line forcing someone to run back early. I like to play rearguard sometimes, specifically laggin' behind in order to eventual early light 'mech.

This game makes me so damn angry. It was sooo much fucking fun and then they fucked it all up. They just needed to keep it simple, but no, fucking nerds can't ever keep shit simple. Keep it simple and then bust all their effort into community tools and activities was what they should have fucking done.

Quote from: Pennilenko on May 30, 2013, 06:51:50 AM

Yeah, it could be better but it could be completely unplayable... Had a shortish session with Schpain and another Welsh friend and I'm on 14/25 so happy with that.

I hope LRMs get balanced so that 10s don't flat out beat 20s but not to the old days of poptarts. I like a balanced breakfast please.

Quote from: Pennilenko on May 30, 2013, 06:51:50 AM

Nerds like numbers and things that give them more numbers to play with. They forget that sometimes keeping things simple is better for fun. Look at all the Clan-lovers who don't realize the 3025 era was the most balanced and fun if you like even match-ups.

Then give them more numbers : Negative Numbers that involve heat, for fucks sake.

To keep it up with the stuff from top players, here's an interview with Koreanese.
I enjoy reading how these people see their own crazy achievements.

Quote

Koreanese might be a name you’ve heard in the past few weeks, and for good reason: he took first place overall in both the Medium and Heavy divisions for the Spring Clean ‘Em Up event. Not only that – he took first for six out of seven days in both divisions! He’s no one-trick pony, either; he only ended up competing in the Medium division because someone accused him of being useless outside of a sniper.

He’s an active member of the community, both on the Comstar NA Teamspeak server and on the forums. His clan, DV8, made it to the playoffs of Run Hot or Die Season 1 and is currently competing in the Last Mech Standing tournament. If you’re interested in how he pulls off his amazing rounds, he’s got a great set of tutorials that I highly recommend (whether you’re new or a veteran player).

Although he’s one hell of a competitor, he’s also an easy-going guy that’s a pleasure to drop with. Hell, he was even nice enough to stop competing for a day so other people could win. His performance has been met with amazement, outrage, and a copious number of Hula Girls. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: What were your goals going into the tournament?

I wanted to try to win Heavies. I wasn’t going to compete in the Medium division at all until some guy said all I could do was jump snipe. When that happened, I decided to win Mediums in my 4P.

Q: Did you intend to win as many days as you could?

Yes. I wanted my name up there on the leaderboard.

Q: Do you prefer brawling or sniping?

Brawling by far. I don’t enjoy sniping. It’s sad that the game has turned into this sad state of hide and seek.

Q: What is the most satisfying experience in the game for you?

Killing a Highlander poptart in my 3D one-on-one. They have more armor and firepower, so taking down a superior jump-sniper is very satisfying.

Q: Were there any players that tried to mess with you?

BananaNutMuffins. Any round he dropped against me, he would make killing me his only goal. Sometimes he would even hide until just the right moment and make a suicide rush.

Trolling your clanmates to pieces is the kind of good-natured fun every group needs. Even I have to admit that any round I dropped against Koreanese, I did what I could to kill him or pin him down. In the end, though, BananaNutMuffins, myself, legions of trolls, and the other competitors were ultimately unsuccessful in putting a stop to Koreanese’s heroic week of carnage.

Q: Did you have a rival for the tournament?

Koreanese recounted that the only serious challenge he encountered came from Clan Snow Raven’s Dustmuffins. He made an impressive run on Day #2 of the tournament to steal first in Heavies. After an absolutely beastly game, he ended up with 1,199 points for the day (the second highest daily score of the entire tournament in any weight division). Koreanese buckled down, grinded through the night, and finally got his payoff: a round with 7 kills, 1 assist, and over 1400 damage that pushed him over the edge.

My first kill was an Atlas – every shot right in the center torso; I don’t think I missed a shot the entire round.

Koreanese reclaimed the #1 spot on the daily leaderboard with the highest single-day score of any weight class: an incredible 1217 points.

Q: How many hours did you invest in the tournament?

Too many.

He explained that the day Dustmuffins gave him a run for his money was particularly grueling: a 12-hour day working construction, a marathon gaming session until 5am, followed by another 12 hours of manual labor.

Q: What are your favorite maps?

Cold maps. Even Alpine doesn’t bother me; a couple of my highest scoring rounds were there.

For the tournament, he ran a CTF-3D with 3 regular PPCs and a HBK-4P loaded up with medium lasers, so it’s not surprising he’d prefer things on the chilly side.

Q: What mode did you play for the tournament?

I set it to any. I didn’t really see much of a difference; I just wanted to drop as many times as I could, and setting it to any help cut down on wait time.

Q: What was your strategy for pulling off those scores?

I played extremely aggressively. I was the first one to fire on the enemy team, and often the last as well. Running cool ensured I was going to have high damage and kills at the end. That’s about it.

Q: What do you do when you’re just playing for fun?

PUGing and 4-man drops with random players in TeamSpeak. Back in the earlier days, I would just PUG-stomp with Clanmates, but it gets boring.

Q: What additional game modes do you want, if any?

1v1. It’s all I want. I’d really like to see a 1v1 tournament.

The most interesting part of Koreanese’s tournament experience to me was the backlash. There’s always a crowd that spends as much time whining about the tournament as others do playing it, but I’ve never witnessed such unwarranted hatred towards a single player.

On the MWO forums, there was no shortage of cynics, and there was even a thread dedicated to his supposed cheating on another site (thread deleted / forums down for the past week). Many spoke in his defense, but it was a shame to see so many attack a legitimate accomplishment with no facts to back up their assertion.

Based on our conversation, this was clearly the most frustrating part of the experience for Koreanese. It’s one thing to have a few underhanded posts about you tacked on to a random thread; it’s another to have entire threads dedicated to how you’re a cheater.

Koreanese was far from silent, often defending himself with videos and screenshots anywhere he was being accused, but the naysayers were unrelenting, even going so far as to insist he proved his own guilt by defending himself. It’s a sad state of affairs, and Koreanese said that it’s made him hesitant to participate in similar events in the future.

The final verdict on whether or not Koreanese cheated?

Spring Clean ‘Em Up was an inside job…

All joking aside, it’s sad to see so much jealousy and animus towards an impressive feat of marathon gaming. PGI did a thorough investigating of cheating during/after the tournament to punish players that had gamed the system. The only confirmed instance of cheating I saw during the Spring Clean ‘Em Up tournament can be found here, and that player’s conduct was addressed. PGI’s official response:

After Com Guards thorough investigation, we have gathered enough hard evidence to prove that the allegation of deliberate sync dropping is patently false. None of the top participants show any evidence whatsoever of coordinated solo or group launching with the intention to benefit or otherwise influence the battleground outcome.

However, that is not to say that everything went without problems. There is a second allegation, that some groups spontaneously colluded to boost a single individual for one individuals personal gain. This is against the spirit of the tournament, and as such, a number of Pilots guilty of such actions will be ejected from this tournament entirely once the investigation is completed.

Q: Was it worth it?

No, but it was fun.

Q: What would you say to the haters and those that accused you of cheating?

Watch my videos!

Q: Anyone you want to give a shout-out to?

My mom.

A lot of people will say that anyone with enough time can get lucky and win these kind tournaments, but I’d say the Spring Clean ‘Em Up event proved them wrong. There were thousands of players grinding it out; there was only one capable of dominating two entire weight classes for six out of seven days, and that player is Koreanese.

Author’s Note: I apologize for this being published shamefully late. I waited initially to get a few words direct from Garth or Paul about the accusations of cheating (neither responded), and then real life got busy.

Interesting stuff, in my opinion, from the lastest "Ask the Dev" #39.

Quote

Levi Porphyrogenitus: Has PGI considered removing splash damage from missiles altogether?

A: Yes we have, but have elected to balance them differently. Currently the splash damage on all missiles is set to 5cm (effectively removing it) and will investigate if it should change any further in either direction.

Mizore: The Seismic Sensors module is very strong at the moment. Any plans on changing it the way, that at least light and medium mechs can move nearly undedected for example at a speed of 50kph or below? In my opinion this would strengthen their role as scouts or harassers.

A: Yes. We’re tuning right now, expect tweaks mid-June to bring it in line a bit. More details forthcoming.

Mokey Mot: When are brawling weapons going to see some love (pulse lasers in particular)?
Ranged warfare is in a good place at the moment; as shown by it's current popularity. But I feel it is narrowing the gameplay a little too much; there is no real advantage for brawlers to expend the effort of getting close at the moment. I don't think you can just go nurfing ranged weapons though, as balanced builds are actually quite nice to pilot now.

A: While nothing specific is coming at the moment, we’re going to be coming full circle on weapons soon, where beams will be looked at and tweaked if necessary.

Geist Null: When is the next city map or heavy forested map due out? the high heat, low temp open area maps have gotten a lot of play recently, I’m ready for somewhere focused on maneuvering and light/medium play styles

A: We have an Island Urban map in production right now. Due out late summer/early fall.

Prosperity Park: Are there any longer-term plans to add a Deep Water penalty to the movement speed of Mechs traveling through significantly-deep water?

A: We’re adding some new movement code that will make mechs behave more realistically when traversing rolling terrain. Once in, we can examine adding water friction if we feel it will add a benefit to gameplay.

Brilig: Are you considering changes to convergence to address issues with boating/alpha striking? Or is heat scale the only option that you are exploring?

A: We’re looking at different ways to improve balance. Nothing specific to talk about just yet.

FupDup: Will you ever increase the C-Bill and XP rewards for non-killing/damage-dealing roles to be closer to the rewards of those aforementioned damage roles?

A: We are working on refactoring in game rewards to be more granular and role/group/faction based.

Alistair Winter: Will we see a third game mode in addition to Assault mode and Conquest mode this year? I don't mean a variant with respawn, I mean something completely new.

A: With Community Warfare yes.

Arkatrex: Will it possible to get cockpit effects during getting heat / overheat? Like blurring, sweat drops or something like that? The mech pilot should be affected from that much of heat

A: It’s on our list of graphical additions.

Will9761: Is there a chance that you could add a numbering system with the Damage Display HUD so you could see the amount of hitpoints your mech's armor has in combat?

A: After launch we plan to refactor parts of the HUD. This is on a list of improvements along with color options etc.

M0rpHeu5: Why don't you put MWO on steam?

A: We’re doing an analysis now.

Trufast: How are you planning to do matchmaking in terms of tonnage and elo when it comes to merc fights and dropship mode? Will the mercs fighting for a planet just have to bring the gorgonzola, or can they enjoy some edamer and not get brutalized by a full assault top elo team? And regarding dropship; will it be weight matching drop by drop, total tonnage of your 4 mechs, or none at all?

A: I’m going to delay answering this until we get closer to launch. We plan to use the test servers to help determine what this ultimate looks like. Stay tuned.

James Heywood: After playing War thunder recently I noticed they had a post match replay option which you could save to your HDD. Is there a chance we will see this function added in the future? since many players like to make fan vids and recruitment videos, this would be a major help and a great way to advertise MWO through youtube etc.

A: Yes, sometime in 2014.

MustrumRidcully: Can you explain a bit about the patch release process?
I don't want to come off as overly critical or something here, but:
We've had at least two patches where missile flight paths were broken and one where missiles' splash damage interacted together with the hitbox change to make them overpowered, forcing hot fixes. Did the QA miss these issues, or did you find them too late to change anything for the build? You changed missile damage despite having flight paths and splash damage being off. I would expect the damage change would be tested, which would - unless it isn't done in game - necessitate testing the flight paths as well. How do these things fit togehter?

A: All of the above can happen and has. We have an extremely aggressive release schedule, one that sees a feature completed no more than 4 weeks ahead of going live. We’ve been working towards increasing this gap to allow for better testing and soak time. A new set of test servers will come online in the next 4 weeks. These will allow us to test major features and minor tuning adjustments at scale. Scale meaning player loads similar to our production servers. Between IGP and PGI we have finite resources and hardware. It’s almost impossible for us to replicate live conditions at scale. A lot of issues only rear their heads when we have 1,000s or 10,000s of players playing. With each month that goes by, we are able to improve our processes, and testing to improve quality and delivery of content.

Pretty promising stuff.

I got my 25 wins and am loving the centurion even just with a simple AC/10

Hey sorry Llyse. Noticed your message only this morning when I woke up. Seems like you always start playing when I am going to bed. Can't blame anyone but the planet for that.