59 replies to this topic

[Siliconwolf]

Tickdoff Tank, on 02 April 2013 - 07:50 AM, said:

I prefer to hit what I aim at and not have my damage randomly assigned to locations of the enemy. Remember that TT rules were based around rolling dice to see what parts of a mech (or whatever) you hit. That does not translate well to an on-line game such as MWO. And that is why things MUST be changed in MWO compared to TT.

I think just about everyone that posts that PGI should just stick to TT rules forgets this. They focus too much on the numbers and not actually how the game is played. If I remember right, for each weapon you fired, you had to roll to see if you hit and then where you hit. Because the player now has direct control over both these factors, the weapon damage and other things much be balanced around that fact.

[Noth]

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Balance does not mean fair.

"Jaime Griesemer, design lead at Bungie, said in a lecture to designers that "every fight in Halo is unfair". This potential for unfairness creates uncertainty, leading to the tension and excitement that action games seek to deliver. In these cases balancing is instead the management of unfair scenarios, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all of the strategies which the game intends to support are viable. The extent to which those strategies are equal to one another defines the character of the game in question."

That quote applies here. Someone running an OP build against a balanced build in an unfair scenario, thus you must manage that issue through balancing. The unfair parts will come from skill and knowledge of the player rather than just running better gear.

[Syllogy]

Joseph Mallan, on 02 April 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

You know Neverwinter Nights is based of the Forgotten Realms TT AD&D Setting... Right?

Yeah, why do you think I compared NWN (An RPG that uses calculations straight from the D&D rulebook) to Mechwarrior (A First Person Shooter that looked to TT for inspiration, and then made necessary adjustments and changes to make the game fun.)

To top off that argument, I will submit that many times more players have played Mechwarrior as a Shooter than as a Board Game. There might be a reason for that.

[Burnsidhe]

HaraldWolf:

It's dead obvious you did not play in closed Beta.

They did that. They started with Classic Battletech numbers. That was their starting point. And they watched what happened.

Thirty second fights were *not* fun. Games were over much, much too quickly with the values from tabletop. It was maybe twenty seconds of movement, and ten seconds of praying you'd core the other mech before he cored you, and then the entire match would be over.

The difference between real-time combat and asynchronous tabletop combat are massive; there are a ton of to-hit modifiers in tabletop that simply *do not exist* in a real-time game.

Piloting and gunnery skill modifiers are the first things that come to mind. Movement speed modifiers. All of these, *on which the balance of the tabletop game depends*, are irrelevant in real-time play.

To say that any of the single-player Mechwarrior games were balanced is also a laughable joke. The only mission with which I had *any* trouble at all was the underwater mission in a Gladiator, and that's because one-shot kills are a pain in the ***.

[PappySmurf]

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Balance does not mean fair.

"Jaime Griesemer, design lead at Bungie, said in a lecture to designers that "every fight in Halo is unfair". This potential for unfairness creates uncertainty, leading to the tension and excitement that action games seek to deliver. In these cases balancing is instead the management of unfair scenarios, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all of the strategies which the game intends to support are viable. The extent to which those strategies are equal to one another defines the character of the game in question."

Im just sick of all the excuses why MWO is not fun like the older PC MechWarrior games were in fact MechAssault and MechAssault2 were much funer games also. Admit it Russ and Brian just went down the dark evil path of a shallow F2Play game platform that was just not right for the Battletech/MechWarrior IP.And just now know it and are trying to recover with CW.If CW becomes complex content rich stable and with tactics and fun involved MWO might just prove to be a MechWarrior game if not.=the MechWarrior community will be=

[Lyteros]

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Balance does not mean fair.

"Jaime Griesemer, design lead at Bungie, said in a lecture to designers that "every fight in Halo is unfair". This potential for unfairness creates uncertainty, leading to the tension and excitement that action games seek to deliver. In these cases balancing is instead the management of unfair scenarios, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all of the strategies which the game intends to support are viable. The extent to which those strategies are equal to one another defines the character of the game in question."

Halo is a single player game thus its balanced against other things, like player skill with the options at hand and a arbitrary level of hardship you must overcome to succeed. It is not fitting here at all.
BTW: the multiplayer gets balanced trough same equipment options etc.


If you have competitive PvP games you need balance or your game is crap and people will not enjoy it.

On perfect imbalance: Perfect imbalance works when you're ok with 90% of the stuff never beeing used because only the FOTM ones are worth taking, it's ok if you like I-WIN Buttons and reduction of the game to the same crap over and over and over again. Also PI always leads to powercreep which kills a game.

It's not like PGI is going to release 2 new mechs each week which are now fotm and the best, while the rest are simply not played anymore.


Balance here means get the weapons balanced out in weight / heat / damage / range (since they cant or wont change weight due to standard mechs, heat / damage are left), then balance the mechs by hardpoints. After this ELO so veterans do not **** day1 newbies.

If you try the perfect imbalance approach you have the Artemis patch all over again, then they got nerfed, so the A1 Splatcat reigns surpreme, then Splash gets buffed and LRMwarrior online returned, after this srm + lrm got nerfed to the ground and you mainly get large wide maps out and gauss / ppc are the new way to play until next patch. Here youhave PI.

Does not sound like fun to me. And apparently not to most people in the forums.

TL;DR: Perfect imbalance is **** for 95% of the game principles and will never ever work in MWO.

Edited by Lyteros, 02 April 2013 - 08:36 AM.

[Utilyan]

In WWII the axis and allies didn't come together and say.....hold on its not balanced.


Folks who cry for balance can't cry for simulation when it comes to 3rd person view ect.


Some weapons are deadlier then others.

[Noth]

Utilyan, on 02 April 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

In WWII the axis and allies didn't come together and say.....hold on its not balanced.


Folks who cry for balance can't cry for simulation when it comes to 3rd person view ect.


Some weapons are deadlier then others.

Actually you can. It is not a black and white issue. There are varying amounts of simulation and balance.

[stjobe]

I used to play a PvP game with massive fights; hundreds of players on each side duking it out. It also had massive balance issues - like player classes that were supposedly equal in strength to another class actually wasn't.

That game started out with "perfect imbalance" - unique powers for different races and classes that had no mechanical counterpart in the other classes - and when that didn't work out, the devs tried to move to "perfect balance". They failed miserably. The powers that were "perfectly imbalanced" were reworked or removed without a care to the balancing within the class or between the classes - making whole classes obsolete or stupendously overpowered.

This got abused so badly it drove the game to its knees, in part because the devs were very slow to do anything about it (think six months between patches).

You may have heard of the game, it used a rather well-known IP. It was called Warhammer Online.

The game studio handled balance (and really the whole game) so badly the community coined the phrase "Mythic Fail" - it's what comes after Epic Fail.

So yeah, perhaps we don't need perfect balance or perfect imbalance, but we do need to have balance. Fights should be won on the battlefield, not in the MechBay.

[Grandmaster Ramrod]

This is why I play as late in the evening as I can. In my head, by that time all the childs have gone to bed and there's only the "older generation" on. People that know how to use more than 4 keys on their keyboard and can actually communicate. Says the guy with the rebellious fingers - seriously, the only reason this is tidy is because I have time to take. In game it's like "jgffadg alpha". But I try.


That being said, I have noticed an apparent trend towards one sided games becoming more common. One side wins hands down, maybe one or two mechs gone but overall a solid victory. Sometimes I'm on the winning side, sometimes I'm not, but it seems many matches are just too decisive one way or the other. My most enjoyable games are when it's a close fought, hard earned victory with both teams creating a great atmosphere in chat. This is what I want more of.


For the record: I have 2 or 3 friends I drop with occasionally, but most of the time I'm going in solo. I like to think I can hold my own - in a good game unless I get cored or do something equally stupid, I usually end up in the top half, if not at the top of my team. If it's a stomp and we win, it's generally upper middle. If it's a stomp and we lose, it's generally right at the top with one or two other pilots with a decent sized gap to the next (stroking your epeen feels good).



There's no hard data here I know, but this is just the impressions of a non-hardcore, semi-intelligent gamer who likes robots and lasers andmissilesandgunsandbangbangbang see you on the battlefield!

[PaintedWolf]

It IS good for games to be balanced. That does not mean games should be identical. Equal does not mean identical.

A good balance is dynamic, it allows the game to change, it is fair in the sense that players have a chance to win with a variety of strategies, the vast majority of builds are viable if used correctly, you do not have clearly over-powered weapons like "Death Lazorz" that do 20 damage at ER PPC range and require 1 crit and 1 ton and generate 4 heat.

The problem is some players think balance entails stagnation and absolute equality as opposed to general. That is like arguing that since people are supposed to be equal before the law, we should have people who are supposed to be in wheel-chairs walking around with everyone else because they are "equal" and expected to run around, etc.

The notion is absurd, and all it does is impede game progress and development. The Battletech rules already by and large ensure that the MWO game will be balanced enough. Right now the most imbalanced thing is how anti-infantry weapons are relatively useless because there are no infantry, but that is an extremely minor complaint.

Overall the game is about as balanced as you are going to get. And a lot of players complaining something is imbalanced and needs an immediate patch to address need to give the situation time- because in 90% of cases there is a counter (the game is already made and fleshed out/balanced/tested and re-tested after all since the TT is already almost 30 years old and has been pretty balanced during this time. The biggest imbalance in TT right now is BV I think because it is not working as intended since it clearly biases games against Clans and makes no sense in the fiction- I very much preferred the old school Combat Value mechanism with some tweaks based on Resource Points. ) In the vast, vast majority of cases players just need time to figure out how to counter a specific strategy or design on their own or the counter will come in the form of equipment already developed in TT and not yet out in the case, for example- the Gauss Rifle was over-powered until Double Heat Sinks came into play. Right now ACs are relatively under-powered, but that will change with alternate ammo types, Ultra-models and LBXs. Anything nerfed or buffed now will probably mean these things need to get re-nerfed or buffed later when the balancing equipment for TT comes out in MWO.

There will never be a perfect balance, or absolute equality or Mechs being completely identical, and I hope there never is because that effectively removes are progress and creativity from the game. The game requires enough balance to be fun and functional for the majority of players. Going to extremes to create balance is ultimately self-defeating.

[PaintedWolf]

stjobe, on 02 April 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

So yeah, perhaps we don't need perfect balance or perfect imbalance, but we do need to have balance. Fights should be won on the battlefield, not in the MechBay.

Then why have a Mechbay? Just so we can cosmetic changes to what are effectively mirror matches? It is more correct to say matches should not be 100% determined by the Mechbay all the time, but having it play no role, or an insignificant role the majority of the time is just saying you don't see any strategy in Mech design and do not think creativity goes into the tactical equation.

As for Warhammer, I never got into it, and am not sure if the TT game is balanced at all, or how they balanced TT. It sounds like it can work very differently then MWO, and yes, it does not sound like they did a good job fixing problems.

In fact it sounds like they went to extreme to balance things out, and that is why it failed. And I find your claim that it started "perfectly balanced" very, very questionable.

"Oh geez once life was nice and people lived in perfect harmony and everyone was a perfect Mr. Rogers and then someone invented farming or electricity and it all went to pot. "

Whenever someone cries about some Golden Age in ancient history I always question their next claims about how "changes" "ruined everything".

Edited by PaintedWolf, 02 April 2013 - 09:05 AM.

[Noth]

PaintedWolf, on 02 April 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

Then why have a Mechbay? Just so we can cosmetic changes to what are effectively mirror matches? It is more correct to say matches should not be 100% determined by the Mechbay all the time, but having it play no role, or an insignificant role the majority of the time is just saying you don't see any strategy in Mech design and do not think creativity goes into the tactical equation.

It would still play a role. Different weapons and items would still act differently thus be better in some situations and worse in others. Yet there be balance because there is not one wepon that trumps all in nearly every situation.

[Vassago Rain]

Utilyan, on 02 April 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

In WWII the axis and allies didn't come together and say.....hold on its not balanced.


Folks who cry for balance can't cry for simulation when it comes to 3rd person view ect.


Some weapons are deadlier then others.

Yes, because germans and the british didn't come together and decide you can't use hollow point bullets and napalm to maim each other.

Wait, they actually did that, but I don't know what this would have to do with a shooting game on my PC. If my atlas is clearly inferior to your madcat, I'll go play a madcat, or more likely, a different game.

PaintedWolf, on 02 April 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

Then why have a Mechbay? Just so we can cosmetic changes to what are effectively mirror matches? It is more correct to say matches should not be 100% determined by the Mechbay all the time, but having it play no role, or an insignificant role the majority of the time is just saying you don't see any strategy in Mech design and do not think creativity goes into the tactical equation.

As for Warhammer, I never got into it, and am not sure if the TT game is balanced at all, or how they balanced TT. It sounds like it can work very differently then MWO, and yes, it does not sound like they did a good job fixing problems.

In fact it sounds like they went to extreme to balance things out, and that is why it failed. And I find your claim that it started "perfectly balanced" very, very questionable.

"Oh geez once life was nice and people lived in perfect harmony and everyone was a perfect Mr. Rogers and then someone invented farming or electricity and it all went to pot. "

Whenever someone cries about some Golden Age in ancient history I always question their next claims about how "changes" "ruined everything".

There was no balancing involved, only a shifting scale of who's the big dog at any given time. Battletech is well known for the powercreep.

[FupDup]

Utilyan, on 02 April 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

In WWII the axis and allies didn't come together and say.....hold on its not balanced.


Folks who cry for balance can't cry for simulation when it comes to 3rd person view ect.


Some weapons are deadlier then others.

Horrible comparison is horrible. Video games =/= real life wars. The closest IRL things to PvP games are sports.

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 08:12 AM, said:

Considering that tabletop wargames were invented in 1812 by the Prussian military as a simulation of real life actual combat; they translate to real life actual combat just as good as any other genre of game.

http://en.wikipedia....l_%28wargame%29

Those are supposed to simulate the commanding of large-scale battles and armies (Real-Time Strategy genre of games), not one-on-one or squad-based robot fights.

Edited by FupDup, 02 April 2013 - 09:59 AM.

[stjobe]

PaintedWolf, on 02 April 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

Then why have a Mechbay? Just so we can cosmetic changes to what are effectively mirror matches? It is more correct to say matches should not be 100% determined by the Mechbay all the time, but having it play no role, or an insignificant role the majority of the time is just saying you don't see any strategy in Mech design and do not think creativity goes into the tactical equation.

The point is that balance should be such that there's no one build that totally dominates every other build - be that within a weight class, a single 'mech chassis, or a weapon category. Of course the MechBay should be part and parcel of the game, but its not there the matches should be determined.

PaintedWolf, on 02 April 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

As for Warhammer, I never got into it, and am not sure if the TT game is balanced at all, or how they balanced TT. It sounds like it can work very differently then MWO, and yes, it does not sound like they did a good job fixing problems.

In fact it sounds like they went to extreme to balance things out, and that is why it failed. And I find your claim that it started "perfectly balanced" very, very questionable.

You misread. I said they started out trying to achieve "perfect IMbalance" (and they never did achieve that either), but then changed their mind, trying to go for "perfect balance". And failed.

And the players fled in droves.

But don't take my word for it, here's what Wikipedia says about player numbers:

Quote

As of September 30, 2008, WAR had sold 1.2 million copies and had 800,000 registered users.^[30]

As of October 10, 2008, Mythic Entertainment announced that 750,000 people were playing Warhammer Online.^[31]

As of December 31, 2008, the number of active WAR subscribers had decreased to "over 300,000 paying subscribers in North America and Europe."^[32]

As of May 5, 2009, Electronic Arts executives confirmed in an investor conference that they have 300,000 subscribers as of the end of March 2009,^[33] shortly after the company reported a loss of $1.08 billion in the financial year for 2009.^[34] Consequently, the number of servers was drastically reduced^[35] in order to consolidate the remaining population. The total number of servers was reduced to 13 and the number of role-playing servers was reduced to 1.^[36]

Since this date, several servers were stopped, particularly in Europe, and there remained only 9 servers : 4 in the USA and 5 in Europe (including 2 in German & 1 in French).

As of February 9, 2011, 2 other U.S. Servers and 1 German server have been removed, leaving a total of 6 servers worldwide (2 in the US, 4 in Europe).^[37]

Since December 14, 2011, the game is now down to 3 servers, one for the US, one for Germany and one for the rest of Europe not including Germany.

[Wildstreak]

Tickdoff Tank, on 02 April 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

http://www.penny-arc...rfect-imbalance

Worth watching.

No. That is a CCG mechanic that does not apply to every game of any kind, it is also a cheap excuse not to fix something that is wrong. Even CCGs acknowledge when something is wrong despite the silly Perfect Imbalance stuff.

Syllogy, on 02 April 2013 - 08:31 AM, said:

Yeah, why do you think I compared NWN (An RPG that uses calculations straight from the D&D rulebook) to Mechwarrior (A First Person Shooter that looked to TT for inspiration, and then made necessary adjustments and changes to make the game fun.)

To top off that argument, I will submit that many times more players have played Mechwarrior as a Shooter than as a Board Game. There might be a reason for that.

Probably be better to compare MWO to Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) the MMO version of D&D that works more like a FPS than NWN, not exactly but closer than NWN.

Utilyan, on 02 April 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

In WWII the axis and allies didn't come together and say.....hold on its not balanced.


Folks who cry for balance can't cry for simulation when it comes to 3rd person view ect.


Some weapons are deadlier then others.

Doesn't change the fact that some things need fixing.

[xhrit]

Lyteros, on 02 April 2013 - 08:33 AM, said:

Halo is a single player game thus its balanced against other things, like player skill with the options at hand and a arbitrary level of hardship you must overcome to succeed. It is not fitting here at all.
BTW: the multiplayer gets balanced trough same equipment options etc.

Every Halo title ever made has included comprehensive multiplayer.

Halo is widely regarded as a balanced e-sports game. In 2006, Major League Gaming was the first televised console gaming league in the United States, with their Halo 2 Pro Series being broadcast by USA Network.

It should be noted that not every weapon in Halo is balanced against every other weapon. Some weapons are hands down more powerful then others. And yet Halo as a whole is balanced, because it gives every player the same opportunity to acquire and use those weapons.

Halo multiplayer is balanced by allowing the same equipment options for every character - THE SAME AS MECHWARRIOR.

Every character starts on the same level, with the same blank slate. From there the game may become imbalanced, but that is something that happens during gameplay. Imagine two teams of eight players each dropping the the exact same stock mech. One team, decides to stick togeather, while the other decides to split up.

The game is suddenly not fair, since one team will be fighting eight 1v8 fights.

Not fair in the slightest. But perfectly balanced.

Edited by xhrit, 02 April 2013 - 02:00 PM.

[Mackman]

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Every Halo title ever made has included comprehensive multiplayer.

Halo is widely regarded as a balanced e-sports game. In 2006, Major League Gaming was the first televised console gaming league in the United States, with their Halo 2 Pro Series being broadcast by USA Network.

It should be noted that not every weapon in Halo is balanced against every other weapon. Some weapons are hands down more powerful then others. And yet Halo as a whole is balanced, because it gives every player the same opportunity to acquire and use those weapons.

Halo multiplayer is balanced by allowing the same equipment options for every character - THE SAME AS MECHWARRIOR.

Every character starts on the same level, with the same blank slate. From there the game may become imbalanced, but that is something that happens during gameplay. Imagine two teams of eight players each dropping the the exact same stock mech. One team, decides to stick togeather, while the other decides to split up.

The game is suddenly not fair, since one team will be fighting eight 1v8 fights.

Not fair in the slightest. But perfectly balanced.

But the draw of MechWarrior is the amount of customization allowed. Having a blatantly overpowered weapon, configuration, or mech variant will kill that customization. That's what people are talking about when they bring up balance.

There should be multiple light mechs who can be equally effective at doing what lights do (and what lights do should be meaningful and impactful).

There should be multiple medium mechs who can be equally effective at doing what medium mechs do (and what mediums do should be meaningful and impactful).

There should be... you get the point. In a game like this, "balance" means having multiple, impactful options and choices in each match, with a wide choice of mechs.

[Ialti]

xhrit, on 02 April 2013 - 08:12 AM, said:

Considering that tabletop wargames were invented in 1812 by the Prussian military as a simulation of real life actual combat; they translate to real life actual combat just as good as any other genre of game.

http://en.wikipedia....l_%28wargame%29

Video games, believe it or not, aren't 'real life actual combat.'
And 'real life actual combat' is not a 'genre of game.'

Hate to burst your bubble, but there it is.