65 replies to this topic

[Vlad Ward]

Teralitha, on 28 February 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

I believe every chassis and varient should have a purpose on a team, and be desired in competitive level team play, not just a few... like it is now.

Name a successful game where that's actually happened without external player influence (leagues, stock-only servers, etc).

inb4 Chess.

[Psikez]

Vlad Ward, on 28 February 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

Name a successful game where that's actually happened without external player influence (leagues, stock-only servers, etc).

inb4 Chess.

Go

[Vlad Ward]

Psikez, on 28 February 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

Go

Checkers

[Teralitha]

Vlad Ward, on 28 February 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

Name a successful game where that's actually happened without external player influence (leagues, stock-only servers, etc).

inb4 Chess.

You want to give up on MWO? I still have hope that PGI will pull their heads outa their ***** someday....

[KingNobody]

Mmmmmmmm cheese

[Lord Ikka]

I think it would be damn near impossible to make every chassis viable as a "competitive" Mech. Some Mechs are simply not the best front-line combat units, but are nearly ubiquitous in the armies of the Inner Sphere.

[Captain Midnight]

Psikez, on 28 February 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

Go

Games like Chess and Go don't work as examples because the games are played mirrored, as well as the fact that white has a statistical advantage even Chess and Go are not balanced games.

A better example would be a game like starcraft broodwar. That is probably the most balanced competitive game ever made for the computer, and in my opinion it is more competitive than games like Go or Chess because it requires physical skill as well as mental. Even still, Starcraft does not have perfect balance and every race had at least one unit that never saw play, ever.

[Elessar]

Teralitha, on 28 February 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

I believe every chassis and varient should have a purpose on a team, and be desired in competitive level team play, not just a few... like it is now.

Well, a "purpose" can also be, to scout or to give fire support ...
insofar, if it is about "every mech/variant should have a role that it can fulfill in a battle" and not about "every mech/variant should have equal chances to defeat every other mech/variant (if played by players of the same skill level)" I have to agree with it

[Corvus Antaka]

Good poll, and the results are right on the money imho. To many variants have been made obselete by ECM, highly indicative of the power of ECM. But ECM is supposed to be powerful!

imho the SSRM and the ECM effect on SSRM issue is the #1 reason for this when it comes to useless light mechs.

[Elessar]

Captain Midnight, on 28 February 2013 - 10:33 PM, said:

Games like Chess and Go don't work as examples because the games are played mirrored, as well as the fact that white has a statistical advantage even Chess and Go are not balanced games.
...

In Go a player can take a handicap, by giving the other player an advantage of several stones, which are placed on the board at the beginning of the battle. Insofar it can be finetuned to be balanced according to the skill level of the 2 players

[p00k]

you will never make all mechs as competitive as all others. and it isn't worth trying. some will be better than others, period.

good builds will proliferate, and more people will use them, until it becomes common enough that newbs call them cheesy. all good builds will eventually be labelled cheesy, and all non-cheesy builds are inevitably inferior

take the light mech situation. the 3L raven is considered cheesy, because it's good. because it gives its user an advantage over other, inferior builds. but before ecm the king of lights was the jenner d, which was cheesy. because it was better. before that, when netcode was more reliable, the jenner f was king. etc etc

or look at catapults. the splatcat is now considered cheesy. before ecm though splatcats were rare, since most a1 pilots took streaks. and then there was the ac20 and gausscats, which are now still potent but rarely considered cheesy even though they haven't really changed

bottom line, cheesy simply means good+popular. it'll never go away because there will always be a build that is better than others, and better builds always proliferate and become popular

[Teralitha]

p00k, on 28 February 2013 - 10:59 PM, said:

you will never make all mechs as competitive as all others. and it isn't worth trying. some will be better than others, period.

good builds will proliferate, and more people will use them, until it becomes common enough that newbs call them cheesy. all good builds will eventually be labelled cheesy, and all non-cheesy builds are inevitably inferior

take the light mech situation. the 3L raven is considered cheesy, because it's good. because it gives its user an advantage over other, inferior builds. but before ecm the king of lights was the jenner d, which was cheesy. because it was better. before that, when netcode was more reliable, the jenner f was king. etc etc

or look at catapults. the splatcat is now considered cheesy. before ecm though splatcats were rare, since most a1 pilots took streaks. and then there was the ac20 and gausscats, which are now still potent but rarely considered cheesy even though they haven't really changed

bottom line, cheesy simply means good+popular. it'll never go away because there will always be a build that is better than others, and better builds always proliferate and become popular

Yes splatcats were rare... and why? No ECM to protect them....

[jay35]

TwentyOne, on 28 February 2013 - 06:30 PM, said:

But theoretically a team with 4 ravens and 4 splat cats would basically NEVER lose.

False.

Edited by jay35, 01 March 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[Teralitha]

Vlad Ward, on 28 February 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

Name a successful game where that's actually happened without external player influence (leagues, stock-only servers, etc).

inb4 Chess.

Well I think those still still apply. It would be nice if we could customize our matches from a game lobby, and ban certain chassis and tech from the match if we dont want it. Much like league of legends ranked play, Where both teams get to pick which champions they want removed from the match.

[Abivard]

These mechs are not people with feelings and egos, they won't grow up maladjusted to society because no one picked them for their team. A spider K with 4mG's and flamers no JJ's should be viable against any other possible light mech config? C'mon do you really think that? That is what will have to be possible in order to make every mech 'viable'. Or we could get rid of mech lab, which isn't in TT like we have here, and only allow stock mechs, at which point they could all be made viable.

Maybe if PGI simply got rid of the none 'Viable' variants would not that make this issue Moot? Sure our choices would be limited then, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Spinning Burr]

Which mechs are currently NOT viable in competitive play? The Awesome 9M with 3 ERPPC's and 3 streaks has become one of my top producing mechs. The cicada 2A with 6 pulse med lasers is still my best assassin. My spider 5D is the best true scout in the game, can put up a mean fight as last man standing and is almost always last mech to die on the field. My treb 7M can do anything I ask it to do except face A1 splatcats. My cent 9A has found new life as a durable mech (yes I said durable) running a 275 standard engine and toting srm6x3. It doesn't die like cents are supposed to. Even Pretty Baby makes for a hilarious troll with standard 385 engine and flamers. Don't even bring up Dragons. They have a fierce support group here that insist that they are deadly, and that if you aren't effective in them then you must be a bad pilot.

So I ask again, give me examples of mechs that are considered weak without opposition on these forums?

[Psikez]

Abivard, on 02 March 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

These mechs are not people with feelings and egos, they won't grow up maladjusted to society because no one picked them for their team. A spider K with 4mG's and flamers no JJ's should be viable against any other possible light mech config? C'mon do you really think that? That is what will have to be possible in order to make every mech 'viable'. Or we could get rid of mech lab, which isn't in TT like we have here, and only allow stock mechs, at which point they could all be made viable.

Maybe if PGI simply got rid of the none 'Viable' variants would not that make this issue Moot? Sure our choices would be limited then, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

I want my cake armed with 12 machine guns even if its a pretty inefficient cake

Spinning Burr, on 02 March 2013 - 01:24 PM, said:

Which mechs are currently NOT viable in competitive play? The Awesome 9M with 3 ERPPC's and 3 streaks has become one of my top producing mechs. The cicada 2A with 6 pulse med lasers is still my best assassin. My spider 5D is the best true scout in the game, can put up a mean fight as last man standing and is almost always last mech to die on the field. My treb 7M can do anything I ask it to do except face A1 splatcats. My cent 9A has found new life as a durable mech (yes I said durable) running a 275 standard engine and toting srm6x3. It doesn't die like cents are supposed to. Even Pretty Baby makes for a hilarious troll with standard 385 engine and flamers. Don't even bring up Dragons. They have a fierce support group here that insist that they are deadly, and that if you aren't effective in them then you must be a bad pilot.

So I ask again, give me examples of mechs that are considered weak without opposition on these forums?

All of the best pilots started in dragons =P

[verybad]

I would say that Cheese AND Skill and ECM are the most effective combinations. Cheese builds run by people that are good are monsters in the game.

It's not a cheese or skill anser so much as the most effective combination. It would be nice if there were more effective builds in the game.

[Abivard]

The reason so many variants exist is due to RP background considerations, the houses didn't buy from each other, they had to make the stuff in their own spheres, they had budgets and committees designing stuff, with kickbacks and bribes and corruption, faulty parts and varying tech levels, politics intruded at every step, some mechs were nothing more than quaker-guns on legs. And almost every IS mech is outclassed by any of the Clan mechs.

At some point their will be player controlled matching, pgi said they will not make in game options for player controlled player chosen parameters. But if you get social and all band together into some kind of artificial league, you can play the way you want, but if you have your way, anyone who feels otherwise will have absolutely NO CHOICE but to play by your limited rules.

The case for all mechs viable is a Dog in the manger attitude!

[Mazzyplz]

takes high ammounts of skill and experience to counter cheese.

so yeah it is a game of skill at least for the ones who play with the "second class" mechs.