6
What happened? Well, I took my Dragon Slayer for a ride, did 22 damage and got hit twice (and died). Yes, I can see your urge to say "l2p, noob". That's exactly what the opponents (5 Stalkers, 2 Highlanders and 1 Atlas) said.
I believe I'm not more than a medicore player, and I refuse to say I don't need to learn. But I'm not completely stupid. If ELO is actually functioning the way it is intended, then those "pros" where matched with me because my score contributed to a somewhat "equal" match.
After that (repeated) experience I started thinking about this game. Just to get it straight, I am a tabletop player, I have played all BT computer games (yes, I really am that old!) and I have read all novels. But no, I do not believe that a mech sim should be a TT clone.
What I do strongly believe, as someone working in the software industry, is that games should be one thing: fun!
So this is basically a thread which aims to give my opinion on the game and steal the best ideas of many others on these forums (kudos to you all) for making it the game we all want to play.
Dear reader, you have arrived here and are thinking "oh what the heck, this is too much text"? Then stop reading, there will be more.
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1) Getting started: The facts in MWO
I'm not going to stretch this out, it has all been said many times, so let's make it short:
- There are many heavy and assault mechs in every match
- There are many PPC's, Gauss, and to a lesser extent, AC20 in every match
- Of all mechs, Highlanders and Stalkers seem to dominate
- You can fit any weapon in any hardpoint, as long as you have enough spare slots and tonnage
- As boating is not restricted, weapons are boated - it is easy and efficient
- Heat is not a serious problem
- Alpha damage is preferable to continued DPS, as long as you are a "competitive player" (no, I resist the urge to start ranting - judging by the grammar of many of these "competitive players", they are no older than 15)
- Your aim decides where you hit (ping, hit detection and other problems left aside for the sake of discussion)
2) What I would not change
Most people start off by saying what part of the things I listed above they want to change, and how. I want to try a different approach by saying what I would not change:
Convergence is something many players complain about. Compared to novels and tabletop it is wrong, as computers or your dice decide if and where you hit your enemy.
But: MWO, or any mech sim, is neither a TT nor a novel. It is a computer game, a pvp game at that. There has to be a measure of human factor in the game to make players actually want to play it. The easiest way to achieve this is by creating a (partly) skill driven competition. I strongly believe that trying to solve the problem by introducing methods employed by first person shooters (adaptable crosshair) or anything like that will break the game, it will take away the fun, the goal to become better.
And, to be quite honest, we are talking about 31st century technology - the computers should be more advanced than today, shouldn't they? I know that in the novels the authors used the workaround of bad computers or too much processing load to keep a Kai Allard-Liao from headshotting every opponent. That's fair enough - but this is a game, not a book.
It needs aim to matter or it will become boring, so not fun - something no game should because nobody will play it.
Customization is another thing some people complain about. Yes, considering TT rules and the novels, IS mechs should not be customizable (only in very narrow margins).
But: Come on, don't kid yourself, you know it to be true - it is fun trying new builds, optimizing builds or just hanging around in mechlab fiddeling with some new paint. Nobody wants to give that up. I don't, you don't. And of all BT history and lore methods imaginable, hardpoints seem a sound solution to the problem of achieving balance while not ignoring lore (and still giving clans an enormous adavantage in the game - they simply shouldn't have hardpoints and should be able to mount anything anywhere, space and tonnage provided).
Long story short, if you insist on TT and novel rules in a computer game, it will fail.
3) What needs to be changed
Like many others, I believe some things can not stay the way they are if this game is to suceed.
Of all things, mech type balance needs to be adjusted. If you check the books, the TRO's, the TT rules, all of them agree on one fact: medium mechs are the workhorse of all forces. Lights should be common too. Heavys or assaults should be rare, very rare. Take the Awesome as an example. In the German version of BT, the mech is called "Todesbote", which translates to "Harbinger of Death" - when you read one the few novels actually containing a fight with one of those beasts, the author takes that name very literally. The other warriors fear that mech, because of 3(!) PPC's and 80t assault class - both are incredibly rare. It should be that way in a BT based computer game, too. Matches should contain mediums mostly because it is no way imaginable in the BT universe having 4 lances of assault only mechs fighting all over the universe at all times. It also eliminates scouting as a role, as many others have already mentioned. More important though, it is boring seeing the same matches with the same mechs and the same loadouts all the time - boring is not fun. Bad for a game.
I don't have a conclusive and working solution to this problem. Many have suggested R&R - I liked that idea at some point but I think PGI was right to take it out of the game so it can attract more players and not build enormous roadblocks for newbies. Another possible solution is weight balancing, but that would not change anything since 4 Stalkers would be matched to.... 4 other Stalkers. I could imagine forcing groups to consist of 3-4 Mediums, 1-2 lights, 1-2 heavys and 1-2 assaults. It would make more players choose other weight classes. I don't really like the idea of forcing too much in a game, since it's always prone to reduce the fun in the game but I don't have a better solution - do you guys?
PPC's (and to a lesser extent, Gauss and AC20) are the other thing which needs changing. I don't know how Michael Stackpole or any other author in the BT universe would react if you told them. But honestly, medium mechs sporting 2 PPC's as standard, even Spiders running around with PCC's? That is plain and simple stupid.
Try to think back - PPC's are actually a quite rare weapon. A few mechs have 1, usually as "the big gun", e. g. the Battlemaster. Two famous mechs wield two of these frightful cannons (Marauder and Warhammer). And just one mech in this timeline sports a whopping 3 PPC's: The Awesome. The same applies to Gauss and AC20. All three of these weapons are fairly uncommon and are not boated on a regular basis.
So we can conclude, MWO is not Battletech when it comes to weapon balance and distribution. I myself prefer more "lore-like" builds, balanced around one major weapon backed up by secondary weapons. But that's just me - fact is, most players do quite painfully obviously not prefer such builds.
There have been many solutions offered by many players, starting from adjusting other weapons to make them more interesting (SRM) than PPC/Gauss/AC20, or ending with limiting the game to stock only (in general, or as a game mode).
Again, no solution is perfect. I strongly believe that just tweaking some values will not change anything. If the heat of PPC's (or when firing more than X at the same time) is raised, players will drop one of their PPC's for some extra heat sinks and continue to play. It really doesn't matter whether it's a 50 or 60 damage alpha - you are dead after two, one way or the other (at least in an assault class mech, you're still dead in a light or a medium after 1 alpha).
Tweaking other weapons is desirable anyway due to a number of other reasons, but it will not solve the problem. Even if some players persistingly claim otherwise, as long as your opponent is not absolutely incompetent, you will not get near enough to use those buffed SRM before he has alpha'ed you twice. It has been mentioned in other threads - you should balance around the best players, not the worst. And if you do, that's the conclusion - better SRM will not render PPC/Gauss/AC20 invalid.
Two solutions seem to have the least bad side effects: hardpoint limitation (small, medium and large weapons; or any other way preventing sticking six of the most rare weapons on one of the most rare mechs in the whole BT universe) and greatly increasing heat penalties. I strongly advise on not choosing one of these, but both. It doesn't break stock build rules (and makes the Awesome desirable again, despite it's profile as major drawback) and actually adds more thinking, tweaking and trying out to the game. Just think back - applied to the current MWO scale, your mech should already lose top speed at something like 20% heat when considering TT rules - it doesn't need to be that tough a penalty, but heat should matter significantly.
That, in turn, raises the level of simulation and therefore encourages players to adapt, become better and think more - it makes the game more entertaining, more fun. As long as convergence stays untouched, as stated above. Boats are still there, but limited to a few chassis with drawbacks, encouraging balanced lances, builds and tactics involving using what you have (not sitting on a ridge sniping for 5 minutes). And it still leaves enough customization options to make mechlab fun.
4) Conclusion / TL;DR
At the moment, MWO is pretty far away from TT or novel lore. It doesn't need to be 100% canon and it shouldn't, since computer games are not TT. Plus, computer games have different technical and logical rules to follow.
But: All games should be fun - I, like many others, want a new, fun Mechwarrior game. The solution is not one change, but a few: Heat, hardpoint restriction and matchmaking need adjustment.
Convergence and customization, though not canon, are good for the game and should stay that way.
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