Posted 08 April 2013 - 04:39 PM
Anyone else get this feeling like there's a couple of camps in PGI with differing views on game balance? There's stuff like lasers and ballistics that with a couple exceptions (LB10X, MGs pretty much) are pretty well balanced to each other. You can bicker some about relative value but the truth is any balance system is going to have 'high end' and 'low end' or else there's no real reason to pick one over the other.
Then there's the whole team stealth shield ECM hard counted by ECM, wacky PPC pointless disruption, BAP nearly useless by comparison, totally blocks LRMs stuff and the LB10X stuff and MGs and Flamers that just makes you **** your head and say 'no, wait, what?'
Like this floating idea that 'we need to mix it up/make it different/add some wacky stuff in there to be COOL' when in truth that's absolutely NOT what you want to do.
Balance the weapons and gear directly to each other. Regardless of mech, player skill or anything else. Balance the gear by weight, cost, crits, damage and heat. Balance equipment in a similar fashion and mechs in a similar fashion. BT already did this pretty well but needs tweaked some for FPS play. Then let the players create the odd builds, new applications, interesting teamwork and the like. Build CW to be what's amazing and different. This totally out of place twisting of a few items to make them wacky and cool for the kidz just isn't working and is never going to work. It's detracting from the game and is absolutely not going to be fixed by 'we'll just change this thing over here' sort of stuff or 'other counters' or the like.
Balance it all directly to other items of the same sort. Not 'well if someone on your team has....' or 'if you do X while jumping on one foot and singing the...' Don't do it. I get the appeal of it from a development standpoint. It goes to a bad place though. It's already lame and showing clear sign of rabies. I know it's hard and it hurts but take it out back with a shotgun and put it down, give little Timmy a hug and tell him it's all going to be alright, then balance it back directly and let's all move on.