337 replies to this topic

[tenderloving]

Me:

Quote

My biggest issue personally is with the LBX. This is a unique weapon that surely took more development time than converting the medium laser to a large laser, or an srm 4 to an srm 6. It's mechanics are different than every other weapon in the game.

Why would you spend dev time ($$$) on a system in your game only to make it useless? They have the data that shows that it is rarely/never used effectively. Why would they let it languish when a couple numbers changed on a spreadsheet will prop it up? Try SOMETHING for crying out loud. I am willing to live with an overpowered LBX until you can get it rebalanced.

The Response:

Garth Erlam, on 09 April 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

The hundreds of thousands of other players, though, aren't.

So you ignore the substance of my post and rebut the most superficial, unimportant sentence in the entire body. I'll bite, even thought the odds of you responding are slim to none, as is standard procedure once you've made a curt jab at someone's post.

These "hundreds of thousands" of players would LOVE an OP LBX cannon, because this silent majority skulking in the depths of the internet that make up the invisible bulk of your playerbase aren't savvy enough to know that the cannon is currently worthless. They already use this waste of tonnage, and they would welcome a buff. It would improve their gameplay experience immensely.

I really think it's awesome that you guys stand up for the mute, teeming masses that can only whimper their opinions voicelessly. Whatever psychic connection you have with them is truly a blessing, because otherwise the vast majority of the playerbase would be forced to silently accept the uneducated opinions of the ruthless and ignorant Closed Beta testers who clearly have no interest in a balanced, interesting game.

Thanks for remembering the little guys- the feeble hundreds of thousands of gamers that quietly use their perfectly balanced LBX autocannons every match in competitively viable manner, yet have no way to express their happiness with the current state of this weapon. You're really doing a service.

So with that said, since you only read the last sentence of a post anyway:

Does the hard data available support the following statement? "The LBX in its current form is a viable weapon in an environment where players are informed and competent, and it is regularly used EFFECTIVELY in mid-level and high-level play against opponents of equal skill."

Edited by tenderloving, 09 April 2013 - 01:45 PM.

[Shumabot]

Quote

Does the hard data available support the following statement? "The LBX in its current form is a viable weapon in an environment where players are informed and competent, and it is regularly used EFFECTIVELY in mid-level and high-level play against opponents of equal skill."

The fact that he just told you this game has hundreds of thousands of players should indicate that he's either very willing to lie or is just making this stuff up on the spot anyway. You shouldn't expect any sort of reasonable developer side metrics being given to the community. They won't be pretty, and they will just make people mad and demand balance changes that they don't want to spend the time doing sooner.

This is the guy that said dual coolant couldn't cool off two PPCs a few weeks ago.

Edited by Shumabot, 09 April 2013 - 01:49 PM.

[Teralitha]

Garth Erlam, on 09 April 2013 - 07:42 AM, said:

I don't hate my job at all

So, in terms of weapon balance, I tend to look at it like this:

CS 1.6: 24 weapons, 4 used competitively.
MWO: 26 weapons, at least 12 used competitively.

We're doing pretty damn good, less than 1.5 years from FLoC, if that's where we are now. I can build an energy boat, ballistic boat, or missile boat, and compete. Sure it ebbs and flows, but I'm damn proud of where are are in terms of weapon balance. There's a bunch of changes in testing, but it takes awhile.

And were we to just arbitrarily release something without properly testing it, you know..

Hmm... now compare that to MW4... Weapons total vs weapons used competitively

MW4, weapons used in competitive league play: (Just the Inner Sphere weapons...)

1. Large Laser
2. Medium Laser
3. Large Xpulse laser
4. Medium xpulser laser
5. Large Pulse laser
6. Medium Pulse laser
7. PPC
8. Flamers
9. LRM20
10. LRM15
11. LRM10
12. MRM10
13. MRM20
14. MRM30
15. MRM40
16. Artillery Beacon(at least until they were banned)
17. AC10
18. AC20
19. LBX10
20. LBX20
21. Ultra AC5
22. Ultra AC10
23. Ultra AC20
24. Gauss Rifle
25. Light Guass Rifle
26. Long Toms
27. Cluster bombs
28. Machine guns(yes they were actually viable in competitive play)
29. RAC2
30. RAC5
31. Hyper AC10
32. Hyper AC20
33. Heavy Gauss
34. PPC+Capacitor

I may be forgetting a few. Remember... this list are only the viable Inner Sphere weapons commonly used in competitive leagues. And represents about 90% of all the available Inner Sphere weapons.

The clan weapon versions list is also likewise about 90% were used in competitive play.

Garth... Id say your dev team has a long way to go to making all or most of your weapons viable in competitive play.

Dont compare MWO to CS, if you are doing that, then you guys are setting the bar very low and giving yourselves a false sense of accomplishment.

Start comparing your game balances and features etc. to previous mechwarrior titles instead, as this game is after all... MECHWARRIOR. Not counter strike.

Edited by Teralitha, 09 April 2013 - 02:23 PM.

[Teralitha]

CapperDeluxe, on 09 April 2013 - 11:49 AM, said:

Balance doesn't come suddenly but through careful design

Seen that before. Works for some pvp type games. But doesnt really apply to battletech and mechwarrior.. You CAN apply it to this game, but the game would be better without that line of thinking.

Edited by Teralitha, 09 April 2013 - 01:57 PM.

[Shumabot]

That list didn't contain nothing but jump jets and gauss rifles, so I'm pretty sure that's an inaccurate list of "competitive weapons" in MW4, a game that scraped the bottom of the barrel of a competitive community in the first place.

[Destroyer69]

keith, on 08 April 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

will only work for most stuff. different teams have different play styles=different ways to balance game. but yes in a nut shell they need to take balance feed back form more of the top teams/top players

A good software company would take in all suggestions to the dev team and work on the bugs before you lose players. Also take feedback from all your players, not just the pay to play ones.

Here is some feedback now: Please add an all assault mode with no base capture, or just no bases. This way it will be an actual 8 on 8 fight. You can keep the current assault mode and just add another that has no bases for those that want a straight up fight against all mechs.

Thank you for your time.

[Teralitha]

Shumabot, on 09 April 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

That list didn't contain nothing but jump jets and gauss rifles, so I'm pretty sure that's an inaccurate list of "competitive weapons" in MW4, a game that scraped the bottom of the barrel of a competitive community in the first place.

Yes this list is accurate. I was there. Were you? Seems you are just making assinine assumptions. Remember... public servers with no rules was not the competitive level of the game. If you did not participate in leagues, then you did not see the competitive play in MW4.

Would you prefer a competitive weapons list from MW3 instead? Im willing to bet real money its more than 12...

Edited by Teralitha, 09 April 2013 - 02:25 PM.

[Tennex]

Shumabot, on 09 April 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

That list didn't contain nothing but jump jets and gauss rifles, so I'm pretty sure that's an inaccurate list of "competitive weapons" in MW4, a game that scraped the bottom of the barrel of a competitive community in the first place.

only thing

Teralitha, on 09 April 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

Hmm... now compare that to MW4... Weapons total vs weapons used competitively

MW4, weapons used in competitive league play: (Just the Inner Sphere weapons...)

1. Large Laser
2. Medium Laser
3. Large Xpulse laser
4. Medium xpulser laser
5. Large Pulse laser
6. Medium Pulse laser
7. PPC
8. Flamers
9. LRM20
10. LRM15
11. LRM10
12. MRM10
13. MRM20
14. MRM30
15. MRM40
16. Artillery Beacon(at least until they were banned)
17. AC10
18. AC20
19. LBX10
20. LBX20
21. Ultra AC5
22. Ultra AC10
23. Ultra AC20
24. Gauss Rifle
25. Light Guass Rifle
26. Long Toms
27. Cluster bombs
28. Machine guns(yes they were actually viable in competitive play)
29. RAC2
30. RAC5
31. Hyper AC10
32. Hyper AC20
33. Heavy Gauss
34. PPC+Capacitor

I may be forgetting a few. Remember... this list are only the viable Inner Sphere weapons commonly used in competitive leagues. And represents about 90% of all the available Inner Sphere weapons.

The clan weapon versions list is also likewise about 90% were used in competitive play.

Garth... Id say your dev team has a long way to go to making all or most of your weapons viable in competitive play.

Dont compare MWO to CS, if you are doing that, then you guys are setting the bar very low and giving yourselves a false sense of accomplishment.

Start comparing your game balances and features etc. to previous mechwarrior titles instead, as this game is after all... MECHWARRIOR. Not counter strike.

sunds like PGI needs to do some werk.

PGI is taking the baton from a complex shooter. where weapons are effective across multiple tonnages
not a simple shooter.

Edited by Tennex, 09 April 2013 - 03:01 PM.

[Ialti]

HRR Insanity, on 08 April 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

It's because they don't play the game well and have no ability to accept feedback from players who actually do play at a high level.

Grab anyone from the one of the tournament teams, or anyone with >70% win rate... ask them how to fix the game.

Sane answers nearly every time.

Grab anyone from one of the tournament teams, or anyone with a >70% win rate... ask them if they pug.

[Shumabot]

Teralitha, on 09 April 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Yes this list is accurate. I was there. Were you? Seems you are just making assinine assumptions. Remember... public servers with no rules was not the competitive level of the game. If you did not participate in leagues, then you did not see the competitive play in MW4.

Would you prefer a competitive weapons list from MW3 instead? Im willing to bet real money its more than 12...

Did the leagues mandate and force specific loadouts and team comps? Were those weapons in the leagues in the hands of losing teams? You just blasted off nearly every weapon in that game, and I know for a fact that the majority of them aren't even close to competitively implemented. There are a few weapons on that list with numerical superiority in every category virtually every weapon under them which would intrinsically eliminate two thirds of that list from existing in competitive play.

Then again, saying there were "competitive mechwarrior IV leagues" is kinda like saying there were "competitive dawn of war leagues" or "competitive civilization 3 leagues". They existed and they were jokes.

Edited by Shumabot, 09 April 2013 - 03:36 PM.

[Roland]

Teralitha, on 09 April 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

Hmm... now compare that to MW4... Weapons total vs weapons used competitively

MW4, weapons used in competitive league play: (Just the Inner Sphere weapons...)

1. Large Laser
2. Medium Laser
3. Large Xpulse laser
4. Medium xpulser laser
5. Large Pulse laser
6. Medium Pulse laser
7. PPC
8. Flamers
9. LRM20
10. LRM15
11. LRM10
12. MRM10
13. MRM20
14. MRM30
15. MRM40
16. Artillery Beacon(at least until they were banned)
17. AC10
18. AC20
19. LBX10
20. LBX20
21. Ultra AC5
22. Ultra AC10
23. Ultra AC20
24. Gauss Rifle
25. Light Guass Rifle
26. Long Toms
27. Cluster bombs
28. Machine guns(yes they were actually viable in competitive play)
29. RAC2
30. RAC5
31. Hyper AC10
32. Hyper AC20
33. Heavy Gauss
34. PPC+Capacitor

I may be forgetting a few. Remember... this list are only the viable Inner Sphere weapons commonly used in competitive leagues. And represents about 90% of all the available Inner Sphere weapons.

I think you are misremembering some stuff there. I corrected the list by crossing out everything that wasn't really used.

For instance, IS LRM's. No one used these. They were trash. If you wanted to launch LRM's, you generally ran clan mechs... because the IS LRM's were simply too heavy by comparison.

Medium and small lasers were pretty much garbage in MW4... because they had been nerfed to essentially uselessness in an attempt to prevent what we saw in MW3, which was medium and small laser boats. This meant that, in general, folks were using Large Lasers.

I left PPC's on the list, but in reality these weapons, as well as gauss, were only employed by a few select teams... because the netcode was so poor that you really needed to be an expert to use them... and even in those cases, you were putting yourself at a huge disadvantage compared to folks using instant-hit lasers.

I left the Longtom up there, but there were only a tiny handful of folks who ever used that weapon. I know because I was one of them. You know how many other teams I saw use Longtoms against us? Ever? ONE. The Lyran Alliance in NBT ran the LT... they were actually the ones who convinced me to figure out how to use it effectively. Other than them, I never saw any other team use it, ever, throughout the entire lifespan of MW4.

Likewise, the UAC's in MW4 were pretty much trash, due to the dual shot firing of them.. that, combined with the screwy netcode, resulted in the second shot generally missing or at least not hitting the same panel. Again, very rarely ever saw anyone use them in game. Folks were generally running LBX.

For the Clans, folks ran ERLL, ERPPC's, LRM's, LBX, and maybe Clan Gauss.

For the IS, folks generally ran LL's, PPC's + Cap, and Light Gauss... No one EVER ran standard gauss, because you had light gauss.

Some of those weapons were only in the game for a portion of the lifespan too.. like MRM's weren't originally there.. cluster bombs were in briefly, and then removed...

Really, the weapons balance in MW4 was pretty freaking terrible compared to MWO in its current state. Lasers absolutely dominated everything else due to the netcode.

Shumabot, on 09 April 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Then again, saying there were "competitive mechwarrior IV leagues" is kinda like saying there were "competitive dawn of war leagues" or "competitive civilization 3 leagues". They existed and they were jokes.

Eh, at the time, the leagues were of a decent size for the state of online gaming. The larger leagues were running with over 10 thousand players.

Certainly not the same as modern games, but remember that this was back around 2000, when broadband internet was still rolling out.

[SpiralRazor]

Purplefluffybunny, on 08 April 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

It is such a subjective topic. Only PGI have the data to see the larger picture. Even then I imagine it can be a tough call!

You dont need access to the data to see the larger picture if you umm....actually play the game for an extended length of time. With LoL, ive pretty much seen all the major balance changes coming at least two weeks before they happened.

[tenderloving]

SpiralRazor, on 09 April 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

You dont need access to the data to see the larger picture if you umm....actually play the game for an extended length of time. With LoL, ive pretty much seen all the major balance changes coming at least two weeks before they happened.

This. PGI acts like we've never played games before and don't know the difference between a good one and a bad one. Sure, there is a lot of noise on the forums, but it's pretty easy to separate whining from legitimate feedback

I keep going back to the missile issue: This was an easily verifiable in-game bug that the players detected, even though it was something that should have been spotted very early by PGI. People complained about them, you couldn't go into a game without 4 or 5 missile laden mechs spewing hot death everywhere, but the evidence was ignored until a PLAYER did the job of the devs and collected the data.

This is why we don't see much hard data from the dev team; they know what we can do with it, and that we are better at parsing and interpreting it objectively than they are. For whatever reason they think it's in their best interest if they try to trick us into thinking that they know things we don't, and that these issues are actually subjective and isolated without precedent in gaming history. They would like us to believe that we are operating in a vacuum and breaking new ground so that nothing we know applies.

We've done the same thing with machine guns, and the LBX, and with ECM but they pretend like we don't know what we're talking about, and that there is some silent throng of gamers with more valid opinions that want something different.

Edited by tenderloving, 10 April 2013 - 02:58 AM.

[Zaptruder]

tenderloving, on 10 April 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

This. PGI acts like we've never played games before and don't know the difference between a good one and a bad one. Sure, there is a lot of noise on the forums, but it's pretty easy to separate whining from legitimate feedback

I keep going back to the missile issue: This was an easily verifiable in-game bug that the players detected, even though it was something that should have been spotted very early by PGI. People complained about them, you couldn't go into a game without 4 or 5 missile laden mechs spewing hot death everywhere, but the evidence was ignored until a PLAYER did the job of the devs and collected the data.

This is why we don't see much hard data from the dev team; they know what we can do with it, and that we are better at parsing and interpreting it objectively than they are. For whatever reason they think it's in their best interest if they try to trick us into thinking that they know things we don't, and that these issues are actually subjective and isolated without precedent in gaming history. They would like us to believe that we are operating in a vacuum and breaking new ground so that nothing we know applies.

We've done the same thing with machine guns, and the LBX, and with ECM but they pretend like we don't know what we're talking about, and that there is some silent throng of gamers with more valid opinions that want something different.

The bolded is factually incorrect. A couple of things happened in quick succession that caused that issue.

A fix that revealed a bug that ended up causing an imbalance issue, which led to a meta-game change resulting in the massive overexploitation of LRMs in every game - where as having only one or two missle mechs in a game was painful but bearable (and the norm prior to the fix).

The meta gameplay change is not something that they could've detected through testing alone; but is probably the most critical factor in determining how negatively something affects the player experience. If LRMs were as powerful as they were during LRMpocalypse 3, but only used by 1 player every few games, the problem probably wouldn't have been perceived as a real problem.

That doesn't negate the rest of the charges you're laying against them - it's just good to get facts right so that salient points are tossed out with the proverbial dirty bathwater.

[tenderloving]

Zaptruder, on 10 April 2013 - 03:37 AM, said:

The bolded is factually incorrect. A couple of things happened in quick succession that caused that issue.

A fix that revealed a bug that ended up causing an imbalance issue, which led to a meta-game change resulting in the massive overexploitation of LRMs in every game - where as having only one or two missle mechs in a game was painful but bearable (and the norm prior to the fix).

The meta gameplay change is not something that they could've detected through testing alone; but is probably the most critical factor in determining how negatively something affects the player experience. If LRMs were as powerful as they were during LRMpocalypse 3, but only used by 1 player every few games, the problem probably wouldn't have been perceived as a real problem.

That doesn't negate the rest of the charges you're laying against them - it's just good to get facts right so that salient points are tossed out with the proverbial dirty bathwater.

The problem existed. It was visible in the hard data. It was ignored until a player did the testing and pointed it out. While it's true that meta-changes take a while to signal an issue, this was a testable problem that should have been caught in about 3 minutes.

You arguing with me is an example of how good PGI been at muddying what should be crystal clear waters. Now we've both spent more time discussing semantics than we have focusing on what they need to do to improve the game.

Edited by tenderloving, 10 April 2013 - 03:57 AM.

[Shadowsword8]

Ranek Blackstone, on 08 April 2013 - 07:26 PM, said:

Lets take ECM. Now, ECM is something that gets a lot of people up in arms, but I don't have any issues with it. I run a mech that lacks missile hard points, so ECM jamming doesn't do anything to counter me.

ECM still jam your radar, which reduce your situation awareness. Sure, being jammed can tell you there's an enemy close. But without it, you might have been able to, as an example, see that another mech besides the ECM light was flanking you, and turned in time to avoid heavy damage on your rear.

Claiming ECM is fine because it doesn't affect you is is wrong. It does. It's also a pretty selfish argument since it basically claim that what ECM do to mechs who do hard missile hardpoints isn't worth talking about.

Quote

...
An LRM boat though has a VERY different take on ECM because it slashes his ability to make war when he can't get targeting info for his missiles and is forced to use TAG to compensate and hope the ECM mechs stay away. Is ECM OP now? Maybe to him, but it's not OP to me. So who's right and who's wrong?

You are the one who's wrong. The instant you stop thinking about the game as a whole and only consider your own situation, you lose any credibility to discuss about game balance.


Ballistics don't have anything decent to fill the low damage, low range, low requirements. MG should fill that role. They were supposed to in the first place, but they're more like "no damage" at the time. Obvious fix, remove the complicated crit multiplier mess, boost straight dps to about 0.5 dps. That way, 6 MG + 2 tons of ammo (5 tons total) is worth taking, and having a dps close to a single large laser, but not anywhere near OP status.

Edited by Shadowsword8, 10 April 2013 - 03:57 AM.

[Belorion]

Shumabot, on 09 April 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

They're losing players and have admitted to having a lot of trouble keeping new players around.

Link?

[tenderloving]

Belorion, on 10 April 2013 - 04:01 AM, said:

Link?

http://mwomercs.com/...095-3rd-person/

Somewhere here and a few other places.

[John Norad]

Lonestar1771, on 08 April 2013 - 06:51 PM, said:

Egos.

Pretty much this I guess.

And screw those damned statistics and metrics. Common sense, math and simple skill at balancing will cover most issues just fine, probably even better than when relying on metrics.
You know, metrics are also always depending on the current state of the game, so they might show you something completely misleading.

Of course if it looks perfect on paper, that doesn't mean it will be perfect ingame. BUT looking perfect on paper is a great starting point.
And to be honest, stats in MWO so far never looked perfect.

[Belorion]

tenderloving, on 10 April 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...095-3rd-person/

Somewhere here and a few other places.

3rd person isn't about player retention its about expanding the player base. Those are two totally different things. Next link? Moreover I don't see anything in the op about player retention. Maybe I am missing it. Feel free to post the specific line.