337 replies to this topic

[Tennex]

Zaptruder, on 09 April 2013 - 08:23 AM, said:

I like you Garth. You do a good job in a tough job. But it's plain to see that you're not fully informed or fully able to speak of the thought that goes into balance decision making process.

Good is good. But great is better. Why aim for 50%, when you can aim for full viability? Isn't that the goal here?

Why not embrace iteration, if experimentation and observation is the surest path of achieving a desired result?

The battle tech license was somewhat restrictive with their prescribed tonnage and crits... but PGI have a lot of lee-way to play with, outside of the fixed variables.

Rate of fire, speed of projectile, damage, heat, trajectory, etc.

Without adding or modifying additional weapon systems, those are all numbers that can be adjust to decimal places. So why not do it?

To an extent, I don't expect you to answer. I just hope that by quoting you, you are able to read and relay these concerns. ITERATE MORE.

hes just defending the games' success potential. he hasn't made a comment about the balance state of MG.

Garth is a smart guy to be able to do the job that he does. I'm sure he knows how underpowered MGs are.

Edited by Tennex, 09 April 2013 - 08:40 AM.

[tenderloving]

Tennex, on 09 April 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

hes just defending the games' success. he hasn't made a comment about the balance state of MG.

Garth is a smart guy to be able to do the job that he does. I'm sure he knows how underpowered MGs are.

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.

Edited by tenderloving, 09 April 2013 - 08:39 AM.

[jeffsw6]

Teralitha, on 09 April 2013 - 07:30 AM, said:

Heat is the reason why those weapons are useless. Heat effeciancy is far too good.)

I don't completely agree with you. With such high armor, it already takes a long time to kill an opponent with only lasers unless he is just stationary saying "core me!" If he is a Stalker, you hope he's not only stationary, but with his back to you.

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

MWO: 26 weapons, at least 12 used competitively.

When the developers say a badly-broken weapon is working as intended and not to be changed, and then make pretty big factual errors (where is the 6 ballistic SDR?) in their response to player questions, that lets us all know that they are not paying attention.

This is an easy problem to fix. If you're not going to fix it right now, it would be a lot smarter to say "this isn't a priority right now but..." and apologize to everyone who has to put up with a few dozen games in that SDR to master them, than to make an incorrect and foolish statement such as the one in the dev response.

You brought this forum QQing on yourselves. It is your job to aggregate these player concerns and try to have them addressed. Further, I'm guessing it's your job to proof-read the responses and go, "you know, maybe this remark isn't the best way to respond; we need to look into this further before we reply to this question."

It's good that you are making these errors now, instead of post-release. I hope you are learning lessons from them.

[Tennex]

CS is a bad example of a competitive game.

its not backed or being balanced regularly. Furthermore it is basically a mod.
The competitive games in current market. are supported by massive companies like blizzard with years and years of online balance experience.

[jeffsw6]

Do you know why there are a lot of viable energy-weapons? Because they are available in a variety of tonnages, ranges, and are useful in nearly every mech with plenty of good hard-points.

Remove every laser between Small Pulse Laser and Large Pulse Laser. What will that do? Make them as broken as the current selection of ballistic weapons for light and medium mechs.

[BigJim]

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

+100

But at the same time, those same players and teams tend not to indulge in the usual "waa-waa this/that/the other is OP" debate that we're all used to.
They tend to keep their heads down, and work with - well, what works.
They're too busy being successful to spend ages on the forums arguing that waterbombs - sorry - airstrikes are P2W, or that hero mechs are OP, or whatever.

Like all things in life, there'll be the odd rare exception, but as a rule of thumb the louder and more strident the criticism (this guy should be fired, that dev-team is clueless, x-doesn't even know his own game), the less it should be listened to imo.

Edited by BigJim, 09 April 2013 - 08:46 AM.

[tenderloving]

Tennex, on 09 April 2013 - 08:42 AM, said:

CS is a bad example of a competitive game.

its not backed or being balanced regularly. Furthermore it is basically a mod.
The competitive games in current market. are supported by massive companies like blizzard with years and years of online balance experience.

Doesn't the CS community self-police to some extent to deal with imbalances? I'm not sure that's the gold standard you want.

They need to look at League of Legends, where devs are constantly tweaking and will even disable champions when issues crop up. If something with the risk/reward profile of the current ECM was implemented on a champion in LoL, it would be hotfixed out or removed in the next patch.

There is actually a philosophy regarding "Game Design Anti-Patterns" which are things that they strive to avoid:

http://na.leagueofle...ad.php?t=293417

ECM's current implementation falls under a couple of these (which I'm not going to explain):
Power Without Gameplay
Burden of Knowledge

Even if you don't agree with the decisions that Riot makes, they can always point back to one of these, and they are relatively consistent. (My post history on this forum can show you how critical I am and I am usually satisfied with Riot's explanations.)

Edited by tenderloving, 09 April 2013 - 08:53 AM.

[Pyrrho]

There is a 'shoot the messanger first then read the message' mentality that comes along with any changes to this game. Then you have the 'read the message but have horrid comprehnsion skills' crowd. Lost in the noise are some very general and valid critiques.

[Tennex]

tenderloving, on 09 April 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

Doesn't the CS community self-police to some extent to deal with imbalances? I'm not sure that's the gold standard you want.

They need to look at League of Legends, where devs are constantly tweaking and will even disable champions when issues crop up. If something with the risk/reward profile of the current ECM was implemented on a champion in LoL, it would be hotfixed out or removed in the next patch.

yeah. but its very difficult to balance guns that fill the same role. in a FPS like CS.

like in nature. only a few will come out in the top to fill a niche.


but MWO have very different types open. so it should naturally have more viable weapons. since there are multiple niches.

besdides in MWO you can mount multiple weapons instead of being confined to any one weapon. And there is the tonnage factor where light mechs can only mount certain weapons effectively. further opening up the number of niches.

Edited by Tennex, 09 April 2013 - 08:52 AM.

[Belorion]

Sifright, on 09 April 2013 - 08:23 AM, said:

well aren't you mister passive aggressive.

I am not really all that passive about my aggression.

[Tennex]

Belorion, on 09 April 2013 - 08:50 AM, said:

I am not really all that passive about my aggression.

so you are aggressive about your passions?

[Apnu]

What fights? The game balance and development has nothing to do with a small minority of forum-warriors flaming away here. People on these boards think they're involved in the process some how, but they aren't really. Anything I say is just noise to PGI. Maybe if enough people want a certain thing and it makes sense they'll do it, but I haven't seen PGI being particularly swayed by the rivers of ranting poop that goes on here.

For the record the game's pretty good and fairly balanced. There are somethings to be sorted out and PGI is making progress in that area. Blizzard spent years balancing StarCraft, why would PGI be any different?

People need to get a grip around here and learn a thing or two about patience and civility.

Now having said that, I'm going to put my flame retardant suit on, as I expect some chat-warrior to blaze away at me.

[Belorion]

Tennex, on 09 April 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:

so you are aggressive about your passions?

I would say that is somewhat accurate.

[tenderloving]

Tennex, on 09 April 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

yeah. but its very difficult to balance guns that fill the same role. in a FPS like CS.

like in nature. only a few will come out in the top to fill a niche.


but MWO have very different types open. so it should naturally have more viable weapons. since there are multiple niches.

besdides in MWO you can mount multiple weapons instead of being confined to any one weapon. And there is the tonnage factor where light mechs can only mount certain weapons effectively. further opening up the number of niches.

So basically the CS comparison wasn't really useful at all and probably confused the issue.

Edited by tenderloving, 09 April 2013 - 08:59 AM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I'm just glad he posted. This thread is much more interesting due to having the silly things he posted to reply too.

I might need to add that "boat quote" to my sig. haha it even rhymes.

Apnu, on 09 April 2013 - 08:57 AM, said:

Blah, blah, blah I'm a white knight and PGI can do no wrong.

Srsly dude?

[Tombstoner]

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..

Face--->palm

You just compared your game (cut and past weapon stats/ no cone of fire) to a game with cone of fire based on real weapons.
Then somehow come away with "We're doing pretty damn good" cause 12 of your weapons are competitive out of 26vs. 4/24

I'm done. I'm out. Its game over. Nothing we have to say matters since Garth consults with the best of the best.

One more legendary founder on the scrap heap: cored to the chest with skill based play that exploits perfect convergence.

[Sybreed]

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..

I'll be nitpicky here Garth, but are you saying non-boaters will never be competitive?

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Sybreed, on 09 April 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

I'll be nitpicky here Garth, but are you saying non-boaters will never be competitive?

Does sure seem to be the case, doesn't it?

And I don't really think that's what he meant.

But they do such a poor job communicating, that it's what we're going to harp on.

[Apnu]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2013 - 09:00 AM, said:

Srsly dude?

Wha? Trolling?


Snore.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Apnu, on 09 April 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Wha? Trolling?


Snore.

You are the troll in this thread sir, not me.

Go read most of the posts in the last few pages.

You are in our house.

Go make your own thread to white knight.