It's clear that good players will exploit whatever is the strongest and continue to play whatever is the strongest because they clearly know what it takes to win a game. While they may not know how to "balance" a game, they can offer valuable insights on what is currently truly OPed and what needs to be buffed. You can leave the finer details to PGI if you think they don't know how to balance it.
Whereas your average player who may know how to "balance" a game does not truly know if a certain weapon or tactic or area in the map for one team is OPed and will offer the wrong suggestions. For example, suggesting that PPCs be nerfed (which I think is a terrible idea since it's the playerbase that needs to adapt and not ***** out. Good players would easily just take the sheltered route, get in close as a team and destroy them since PPCs have absolutely no sustain. Pick the correct area as well so you can bear more local firepower. But of course that never happens in PUGs since most people play games to "relax" and their brains shut down when doing so.)
But yes, it's a shame that PGI takes 4-6 months to balance anything as compared to what I think is one of the most balanced games (League of Legends) which balances a lot more often and accepts a lot more input from the pro players.
In any event, PGI should choose their pro players carefully if they decide to go down this route as currently I see almost nothing wrong with what people are crying over in the forums, X weapon OP, Y Config OP, This OP, That OP, when it's the playerbase that refuses to change and adapt, insisting in flavour of the month builds and guides on how to configure a mech (LOL).
Also, you'll never get rid of "Elitism". The way I see it, people who dislike "Elitism" claim having Public Elo would propagate a sense of entitlement, spread noobish attitudes. However, what is wrong with being entitled and having knowledge of how well you fare as a player ? I don't see people going around, "Hey noobs, look at my 2500 score, suck that". Even if they did, they would get bored pretty fast don't you think ? Seeing as how games that are far more popular (see League again), have public Elo, I don't see the issue. Sure you may get people saying, "Sorry bro, I'm playing with other friends now (meaning your Elo sucks, I don't want to play with you)", but such things are true.
Ask yourself instead, if Elo was a definite measure of skill, would you, as a 2000 Elo player play with a bunch of guys at 1200 Elo continuously and lose continously 10 times in a row ? (You certainly would have a higher chance of losing in any event). Don't lie to yourself. It's only natural to want to play with people of a similiar skill level so having a somewhat balanced game is possible instead of a walkover like what we see now because PGI is calculating player skill wrongly as well as having way too loose weight matching. In my heavies/assaults I can easily one shot a light or down his center in 1 second after he shows himself. (But buffing lights/meds is a thread for another time altogether. Yep, PPC/AC20 OP).
Basically, people who dislike "Elitism" claim it would hurt normal people's (themselves) abilities to find a group. In fact, it's highly likely they know that they're sub par or average players and would instead prefer to keep their "crappy" stats hidden and play with people better than themselves so as to give themselves a higher win ratio.
Yep, I said everything no one would say because it's not socially acceptable.
Edited by TheTrap, 12 June 2013 - 11:57 PM.
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