I don’t usually make these serious posts on the forums but I feel the need to speak here, the mortar nerf was one of the worst nerfs I have ever seen in CM history and I think it seriously speaks lengths about how we do our nerfs and how we need to actually start nerfing things and not just effectively removing them or making them so annoying to use nobody even wants to touch it. We didn’t just make mortar bad we made it borderline backwards to use. Mortar results in five times as many FF hit incidents then it ever will actual hits due to stale coords becoming even worse than before and that’s if by God’s great grace you actually manage to fire the thing after half a million “too close” “too far” and “terrain unreachable” messages. We made an artillery weapon something that has to now be used as a Frontline friendly fire factory.
I will briefly explain the last round I did using mortar, on LV-624 just for reference which is a very easy map to traverse. Spawned in and grabbed mortar before deploying, after that I slowly trudge to the front after gathering my bearings and necessary supplies. I reach the front and deploy my mortar a good distance away from the front, it takes a bit but I get the mortar set up and radio for coords. But oh wait that’s right nobody relays mortar coords anymore because the thing sits rusting in FOB half the rounds so I go and get them myself. After getting the coords I typed them in and try and load a camera shell, I am swiftly met with the “Too close” message forcing me to back away wasting another five minutes. Finally I find a decent spot but I am ambushed by a runner while setting the stupid thing up. It actually ended up dying because as I chased it off a corpsman finished it off with an M39. Finally I type in my coords and fire the camera shell, after it finally deploys I check it and to my horror xenos are just barely hanging outside of caves so I offset my coords and prepare to fire. I load an incen shell and send it, by the time it hits Marines have already pushed xenos into caves and I nearly kill a PFC with FF. That concludes the last mortar round I had and likely the average mortar round of all those who are cursed to use it. As a matter of fact I consider that quite the success as I was able to fire it and take out a weed node or two while only burning one rifleman alive.
Now I ask you is this how we do our nerfs people? Was this the best fate for mortar, turning it into a joke and shell of what it formerly was? Was mortar even THAT overpowered to where we had to take its spot in the marine arsenal and effectively turn it into a tool that self antags itself? Ask yourself those questions and I want you to seriously look me in the eyes and say yes to all of them. I loved mortar and dare I say it wasn’t really that amazing. I’m not like seriously outraged about this or anything I just find it annoying that not only we let stuff like this happen with little resistance but also that people in the community who probably didn’t even touch mortar before the nerf let alone after it will stand on the hill that “Mortar is still a viable weapon for marines” like its still even a weapon. As a little side note here I don’t want one of those dumb excuses like “Marines are as strong as they have ever been!” to justify blatantly ripping a features core out and as well as this I just want to say, xenos are as strong as they have ever been as well but we won’t ever see a solid xeno nerf in our lifetimes, and I’m sure as hell we wont ever see a nerf for xenos equal to the joke that is the mortar nerf.
In conclusion stop nerfing so horribly, nerf doesn’t mean “Make horrible” it means Balance in accordance with the current game meta. I appreciate all of our contribs and maintainers but you guys make a solid share of bad calls when it comes to stuff like this.
