Zelda Dislikes PPCs

Good stuff

The one thing the entire community and PGI can agree on is, we need more variety and more people interacting with that variety. Never heard anyone deny that.

But I will stay adamant in my belief that poptarting is actually fun as hell. Honestly I think everything is fun as hell in this game. Oh, cept anything that kills me. FUCK now I'm in an infinite loop paradox...

 

Limiting LRMs is a bad idea IMHO. They would be absolutely useless on even more mechs thanks to AMS.

Yao, I don't think that's a good analogy, because FPS games are designed around you having one weapon and this game is designed around you having many. Those sniper rifles are usually 1-hit kills anyway (at least, the only ones in the game that people end up using), so having multiple would be superfluous. Using Counter-Strike as a metaphor, I think Gauss+PPC builds = AWP, AC/5 boats = Scout. LL boat = M4, balanced build of SRMs, MLs, and AC = MP5. You can choose the MP5 or the scout if you want a challenge or are broke, but if you want to win you go M4 or AWP. Similarly, you can make "creative" and "balanced" builds, or you can min/max the boat and alpha.

Soy, I agree that poptarting is fun, but it does need a nerf. Adding cockpit shake will fix it more than nerfing the base weapon systems (arguably that nerf did NOTHING but make heat management easier when boating PPCs). It will still let you poptart at close range but make it less effective at long.

 

Obviously, if they change poptarting, in any aspect, the point is to make it more difficult. Not to make it obsolete. The very notion of that obviously alludes to the fact that players who happen to be better at it, will still be more functional and efficient at poptarting.

The point being, stratify it more along skill or interaction-based mechanics in order to thin out the playerbase and make the risk vs reward more potentially harmful for bad players doing it or doing it in bad ways. Prevelence will go down and thusly the overall feel of the game will be alleviated of the tarting stranglehold.

 

Poptarting itself is viable, just like sniping from cover in any game. But the returns are so great and the risks so minimal it gets abused by everyone wanting easy kills. Then we have matches of entire teams of poptarts hopping up and down farting at eachother.

Its just the nature of sniping in 99% of games. Hell I do it too since I pug mostly and I'm not going to go wading into the open by myself. If the fight breaks into a brawl I'll usually go throw myself in happily.

 

Poptarting was never a problem imho, again it boils down to players. I was in one match in Alpine in my AC40 Jager - that's not a long range build. Normally I would just have hung out with the poplers until some lights of the other team showed up, because wandering off alone in a heavy or assault usually ends in tears. But this time someone said "let's go brawling" and me and 2 others just tagged along. We flanked the enemy poptards, and engaged at our terms. We won the match.

The problem is never the builds. There's always FOTM. The problem is people who just can't be bothered to apply different tactics in a tactical game.
Like all that LRM hate, well, bring AMS, if even half of the team has it LRMs hurt a lot less and become what they were originally intended for: A means to support the own team, to soften up the enemy team before the mechs clash - not to rake in the top kills while watching the rear left flank.

So this is my thesis: You can apply all kinds of changes, good and bad, to the game. But unless you give the players a good reason to change, nothing will really happen. You'll just piss off a lot of people.

Unfortunately this goes pretty far towards the game design, and changing that is not going to happen fast. No company with their product close to release will add any major last minute changes. Unfortunately, once the product is released and looks like it's doing well, the willingness to make substantial changes is rather going to decrease rather than increase.

The place I'm looking for salvation right now is the upcoming new content - that might yet turn out to become a game changer.
Once fractions are in and you can actually work towards something, I'd expect the serious players to get more organized.
I'd expect to see more Teamspeak servers, for example. I think I've seen info on a "House Steiner TS" on the official forums, regrettable nothing for FRR so far.
As soon as you play in a team, making team builds makes sense. Until then, pack the best you can cause you're pretty much on your own if you only play PUGs.

 

AC40 Jagers shouldn't exist. AMS and LRMs are fine now that Devs fixed an error on their part implementing the new buffs. Stop defending that state LRMs were in for a few days. The builds are a huge problem with it since they lame the gameplay in the way of these tactics you speak of. If the other side has nothing but poptarts, ppc boat stalkers and LRM boats then what do you think other team will have to bring?

 

Fherot, I think LRMs were only overpowered when cover couldn't be used effectively, but during the time they did 1.8 damage I did not find them overpowered because of how easy they are to counter. Right now I consider them underpowered because they seem to be unable to hit lights moving at full speed (they hit behind them) and tend to get glancing blows on mediums (usually just hitting the arm if they're running sideways). I also think that LRMs are the one weapon you HAVE to boat to be effective with, because LRM5 will get chewed up by a single AMS, an LRM15 will get chewed up pretty easily by a Stalker 5S or a couple with AMS, but your LRM50 will get most of the rounds through it.

Marec, both groups in your story - poptart snipers and your AC40 jager - were using high alpha builds. You have the higher alpha in general, they have the higher alpha at range. I find that if your weapons can go 270, your use of cover to approach the enemy is fine. But it doesn't matter what range you are, your HPA (high pinpoint alpha) build is going to be what you use to win. Try it in a AC/2 Jager and while you still might win (depending on your enemy's skill in the brawl) I bet you'll have more heat problems and do a lot more damage to the components you're not aiming for.

 

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about, what I was referring to with that Treb build: Wether you use PPCs, Gauss, Autocannons, Lasers, Missiles or Sharp Rocks ... ALL builds are leaning towards Alpha because that is what you can do in this game, within the game mechanics and within the limits of our biology (not all of us have a piano player's fingers, some of us rather hit "top row of keyboard" instead of "1" : Point straight and shoot the moment you have lined up your guns and the target. A second sooner or later, and you'll just miss.

You call it pinpoint damage, but that's only half of it: The point is that an alpha can deliver the maximum damage your guns can provide during that moment when your aim is on target. You can deliver pinpoint damage fine too with a high-DPS Dakka-Dakka (for example), provided you find a way to keep your guns right on target the whole time (like shooting the other guy in the back for a few seconds).

And for that very reason - how can I play well with what finger agility I have and what builds the mech bay provides - it will always be alpha builds unless there is a good reason to use something else. Penalties don't count. They just frustrate players and make them go away.

 

I'm talking pinpoint alpha. You can have a high alpha with SRMs and you'll do a lot of damage, but the pinpoint damage of PPCs and Gauss will win out.

Dakka-dakka typically won't pinpoint unless you and the target are both fairly static.

While I agree with you that penalties aren't always a good thing, I think overheating can be a little harsher without making too many people upset, and PPCs can generate more heat. For the most part, though, I agree that the focus shouldn't be on penalizing high alphas, but about making it less attractive, and I think making the burst a smaller chunk of the enemy's health (via more health) would work for that.

 

Every build that's viable should exist. Because if you start banning a build all you really achieve is to make the crowd move on to the next seemingly uber build. Will Dual Gauss 3Ds be next on the list ?
AC40 Jagers are not a suits-all build. They suck against well-armored enemies. I usually waste a lot of ammo on Heavies and Assaults, barely stripping any armor off. They are deadly if left alone, being able to actually line up the guns, check the paper doll and shoot the weakest point. Mediums and lights who carry a lot of guns, a pitance of armor and huge engines - well they die quickly, especially lights with a kleenex for rear armor who think that they can outrun an AC20 shell in a straight rush.
But an AC40 isn't carrying a lot of ammo. Once those 28-42 rounds (14-21 doublettes) run out you're lighting things up with 2-4 medium lasers, is all. A Highlander, Atlas or Stalker can kill an AC40 Jager just fine, same is true if you get caught in swarm of light mechs.
There is no build that shouldn't exist. Next month we'll see a new flavour, and the month after. It's part of the meta game to keep rolling new stuff to counter old threats. But isn't that part of the fun ?

That's understood. Very true, too (I shitcanned a 50 Firepower Missile build for my Jager-A because it felt "meh"). What I am talking about that not loosing half your damage or more like you do e.g. in a Dakka when you try to keep 6 guns, spread over torso and 2 arms, on a moving target while moving yourself.
For an alpha build, the damage delivered is somewhat near the rated power of the weapons.
With a DPS build, this old player wouldn't score nearly as much - 50% of the rated damage, tops, if that much. The rest would send some rocks flying or scare the moles.

(BTW: Somehow this thread begins to feel like everyone is preaching to the choir. We all seem to feel that there needs to be some change, but what exactly that might be... ^^)

 

First round post JJ nerf.

3 kills.

All while JJing.

This is great step in right direction.

 

Eh, I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet (won't until later tonight) but I honestly think they overdid it. In order from best to worst idea I saw as far as nerfing them (IMHO)...
1) Crosshair shake (harder to accurately hit at long range, possible if skilled)
2) Cockpit shake (effective way to make it harder, but also annoying for regular JJing)
3) Higher heat costs while JJing (would slow their DPS but not affect the overall strategy)
4) Nerfing alpha strike capability (honestly I don't like it overall, but it would be an effective deterrent against poptarting if you couldn't shoot all your weapons at once)
5) Randomized Accuracy (I don't like this because it makes it more luck and less skill)
6) More fall damage (good deterrent, bad paradigm for lights)

I think just doing Xhair shake would have been better. I think they've done what games always do, which is see a problem and totally overreact. Just like how I've been saying they should double armor again and then upgrade the lighter ACs, if they took that idea and increased armor ten-fold and tripled the output of AC/2s, they would be going in the opposite direction.

 

Yeah but they went overboard by slapping 3 nerfs on them. Imho they can double the crosshair shake, if they remove the cockpit shake - it gives me motion sickness to use JJ now :blush:

 

I was afraid that would happen to people. It will be worse for spectators who have no control (like spectating someone who is running in a light at 3x zoom).

Maybe they'll slightly unnerf it like LRMs. Which brings me to my next question: should LRMs be able to hit lights? I've noticed that lights moving full speed avoid LRMs simply because the missiles land behind them.