337 replies to this topic

[Shumabot]

Quote

TL;DR: If you want to make this game "simplistic" for "kiddies" like CoD, keep straight-upgrades that require little or no tactical thought or consideration whatsoever to equip and use.

In its current state mechwarrior online has less tactics and simpler gameplay than CoD:Black ops. The MWO community deludes itself when it pretends that having a complicated and terrible interface in their game makes it somehow more complex and deep. MWO has less than 10 competitive builds and less useful weapons than the average CoD game has types of shotguns. It has ~20 less game modes, a fraction the options for social play, a player skill tree that allows no customization whatsoever, and simpler controls. The "hurr durr cod kids can't handle it" mentality is just stupid, this game is about as deep as a puddle right now.

Edited by Shumabot, 10 April 2013 - 11:52 AM.

[keith]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

In its current state mechwarrior online has less tactics and simpler gameplay than CoD:Black ops. The MWO community deludes itself when it pretends that having a complicated and terrible interface in their game makes it somehow more complex and deep. MWO has less than 10 competitive builds and less useful weapons than the average CoD game has types of shotguns. It has ~20 less game modes, a fraction the options for social play, a player skill tree that allows no customization whatsoever, and simpler controls. The "hurr durr cod kids can't handle it" mentality is just stupid, this game is about as deep as a puddle right now.

CoD:black ops is also modded off the same engine as the CoD before it. alot easier to add in stuff to a mod then new stuff a game.

[Chavette]

Kristov Kerensky, on 10 April 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

Take LoL, in the early days, it was NOT balanced, hells it's STILL not balanced, if it was, they wouldn't be constantly making changes TO the balance.

They are making balance changes every patch to try keep everything on the same level. Out of ~85 chars about ~55 were used in the world championship. Compare this to competitive variants out of all variants.

They made it happen because they keep reacting, keep changing until its just right. On the other hand PGI likes to keep something broken for 1-6 months before acknowledging it, then another 2 months to change it.

Edited by Chavette, 10 April 2013 - 11:57 AM.

[Shumabot]

keith, on 10 April 2013 - 11:54 AM, said:

CoD:black ops is also modded off the same engine as the CoD before it. alot easier to add in stuff to a mod then new stuff a game.

Certainly, but that doesn't mean the game is "simpler" or "for kiddies".

Chavette, on 10 April 2013 - 11:56 AM, said:

They are making balance changes every patch to try keep everything on the same level. Out of ~85 chars about ~55 were used in the world championship. Compare this to competitive variants out of all variants.

They made it happen because they keep reacting, keep changing until its just right. On the other hand PGI likes to keep something broken for 1-6 months before acknowledging it, then another 2 months to change it.

At the time of the season 2 championships LoL had over 100 champs.

Edited by Shumabot, 10 April 2013 - 12:03 PM.

[Chavette]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

At the time of the season 2 championships LoL had over 100 champs.

They don't play the newest version, and I'm not talking about the finals either.

But if it was ~58 of ~95 would it change anything?

[tenderloving]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Certainly, but that doesn't mean the game is "simpler" or "for kiddies".



At the time of the season 2 championships LoL had over 100 champs.

Dude you're doing it again. You're arguing with someone who is on your side of the battle over a triviality.

[keith]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Certainly, but that doesn't mean the game is "simpler" or "for kiddies".



At the time of the season 2 championships LoL had over 100 champs.

but the point is, CoD games has more time to balance guns/game modes to get into the game. while MWO is build base code to get the game working

[Roland]

Greyfyl, on 10 April 2013 - 10:11 AM, said:

I think your memory is quite skewed to how you want to remember it. I was damn near impossible to find a FFP match the entire time I played the game from release until well after mercenaries came out.

I guarantee my memory is not skewed in this particular regard, despite the years of hard drinking.

My unit, specifically, had HRR NR3 up 24/7 for, literally, years.. going all the way back to the original release of Vengeance, through BK, and eventually Mercs.

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 10:37 AM, said:

Flamers don't heat up enemy mechs. They don't do anything except below MG damage and rapidly cause you to overheat. Ahh. Interesting how that works. You forced handicaps onto yourself and others because the game itself wasn't balanced without you forcing it to be so. That's how competitive pokemon works too.

Of course, MW4 wasn't even remotely balanced out of the box.

When it was first released, there was at least some semblance of weapons balance (although generally IS weapons were straight up inferior to their Clan counterparts, with a few exceptions).. but then with PR1, they moved hit detection to the server, which basically just made it such that Lasers > Everything else.

[WassonG]

part of LoL's major success is that there game is cater-made for balancing the quantity of characters and within there little 2D gamespace of DPS, DOTS and status altering abilities...metrics are readily available and fairly easy to quantify. But they maintain valid and good ideals of development, balancing and show clear signs of player-empathy.

MWO is a different beast...in fact it has very little in common with it's most similar competitor World of Tanks to be totally honest. Which is more balanced than people like to think...jesus, they're whole system of Tiers is a balancing issue.

Where MWO will get it's more interesting balancing mechanics for obviously OP weapons like the PPC will come from extra details that need to be added - something more the user needs to be cognizant of in order to avoid making errors that should come with risk vs reward of using more powerful weapons and or equipment....

Personally I think ECM needs to only work when the mech it's equipped on is moving at low speeds, and then can quickly work at 100% effectiveness when the mech is stopped - protecting his team from LRM locks, but leaving him vulnerable to direct fire if he isn't behind cover.

PPCs, if left how they are right now, since they have such a high rate of fire need a kind of individual lingering heat, which if allowed to accumulate will cause the weapon to produce inaccurate fire and bolts that do less damage, or as well something inacted to reduce overall PPC effectiveness that works in relation to how high the a mech's current heat threshold is at.

Streaks need simply to work by following the pilot's arm cursor. If you can't hold it on your desired target, then you aren't going to hit them quite simply. It would still be fun and effective, and less punishing for those being attacked. It's all about increasing your margin of error over conventional SRMs at the cost of ammo and raw damage. The tactics of there use basically remain the same, it just has some actual direct player input into how effective they work. This would really take the venom out of light vs light fights where Streaks really provide the user with a tremendous advantage.

LRMs do not need a buff in damage or behavior any more, they fulfill an adequate support role and my experience as of lately is that people are forgetting about them, getting caught out in the open and being ripped apart. What needs a small buff in my opinion is there travel speed. They are too floaty and obvious, the safe distance from cover the targeted has is too great - the margin of error for the user of LRMs is too low.

and then quite simply many of the ballistic weapons need simple reworking of weight and maybe even critical space to be more competitive with energy weapons, especially the PPC. They honestly are not terribly bad given there low heat and rate of fire, but weight is obnoxious, the ammo can explode, CASE doesn't work, they work strangely at close range...the investment is heavy given the obvious disadvantages they offer. What would you rather have, an AC10 with 45 rounds? or 3 large lasers that you can pinpoint alpha for 27 damage?

Edited by WassonG, 10 April 2013 - 01:06 PM.

[Shumabot]

keith, on 10 April 2013 - 12:35 PM, said:

but the point is, CoD games has more time to balance guns/game modes to get into the game. while MWO is build base code to get the game working

But that's not what I was arguing against, I was arguing against the idea that these games were somehow simpler and less complex, and that both they and their playerbase are inferior to this game and its own. That kind of elitism is poison.

tenderloving, on 10 April 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

Dude you're doing it again. You're arguing with someone who is on your side of the battle over a triviality.

I was just commenting on the impressive number.

[I am]

You know how you can tel MWO is falling apart? When the people you saw white knighting a month or two ago, have flipped sides now, a month ot two later.

[Roland]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

In its current state mechwarrior online has less tactics and simpler gameplay than CoD:Black ops. The MWO community deludes itself when it pretends that having a complicated and terrible interface in their game makes it somehow more complex and deep. MWO has less than 10 competitive builds and less useful weapons than the average CoD game has types of shotguns. It has ~20 less game modes, a fraction the options for social play, a player skill tree that allows no customization whatsoever, and simpler controls. The "hurr durr cod kids can't handle it" mentality is just stupid, this game is about as deep as a puddle right now.

I gotta agree with this to some serious extent (although I tend to think that Mechwarrior does in fact support high level tactical play.. or rather, would if it allowed longer games that didn't hinge on capturing fixed red squares).

CoD is a freaking good game. It's fun, and it provides a framework for competitive game.

A lot of folks seem to be under the mistaken impression that lots of complexity in the actual game mechanics are what make a game "deep", but I'd propose that real depth comes from the types of tactical and strategic moves that a game enables in its players. In some cases, complex mechanics can enable such things... but the classic example of a super simple game that offers incredible strategic depth is GO. The game is simple to play, but is by no means a simplistic game.

Also, to some large extent, I think that a lot of older gamers here talk trash about fast, twitch based shooters because, quite frankly, they no longer have good enough reflexes to play shooters... And sorry, I hate to tell you folks this.. but if you aren't at least competent when it comes to the hand-eye-coordination aspect of video games, you're gonna get smacked down in MWO too.

[Teralitha]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 09:40 AM, said:

Except the flamer is literally useless. It doesn't heat up enemy mechs. What you're seeing is the fact that this community doesn't understand its own game. At all.




"They only used those weapons because they were forced to by the league"

*swish*
*3 points*
*called it*

We werent forced to use them. All teams had a starting supply of clan mechs. It was everyone's choice to use them, or not. Any team that wanted clan mechs, could buy them, at inflated prices from the black market, with limited stock, or you raided other teams and stole theirs.

Nice try... oh it almost went in, but was blocked... game over you lost....

[Teralitha]

Greyfyl, on 10 April 2013 - 10:11 AM, said:

I think your memory is quite skewed to how you want to remember it. I was damn near impossible to find a FFP match the entire time I played the game from release until well after mercenaries came out.

Roland is correct. There were many FFP, NR servers. You must have had your filters blocking them.

[Stone Profit]

Tennex, on 08 April 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

I don't understand why the devs are so resistant to balance changes.

competitive games like league of legends, starcraft 2 make balance changes almost every patch.

Your post makes no sense. They often change the weapon balances. Just because they dont need to change them every single patch is not a flaw. if fact, it means theyre doing it right. Fail topic is fail.

[I am]

Kristov Kerensky, on 10 April 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

What I see from so many of these 'balance it!' demands are people who think they are playing something far different from a BTech based game, they want CoD or WoW style balance, where everything is countered by something else. Not how it works in the MW games, it has NEVER worked that way in them, and it never should. It's part of the game, it's always been part of the game and it should never be changed to fit the console kiddie perception that all things should be equal.

By console kiddie, I guess you mean every PC/console gamer, except the handful that play this game in it's current meta?

You position summarized. Everyone that wants a balanced online pc pvp game, is a skill-less child.



I'd say I am shocked by your ignorance, but after all the trollery Ive seen on these forums, I'd say it's more par for the course.

[FupDup]

Shumabot, on 10 April 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

In its current state mechwarrior online has less tactics and simpler gameplay than CoD:Black ops. The MWO community deludes itself when it pretends that having a complicated and terrible interface in their game makes it somehow more complex and deep. MWO has less than 10 competitive builds and less useful weapons than the average CoD game has types of shotguns. It has ~20 less game modes, a fraction the options for social play, a player skill tree that allows no customization whatsoever, and simpler controls. The "hurr durr cod kids can't handle it" mentality is just stupid, this game is about as deep as a puddle right now.

I used bad wording I guess (I have a habit of that it seems).


My point was that Kristov Kerensky's point was completely and utterly wrong. His argument was that buffing underpowered weapons into the competitive tier of equipment somehow makes this into what he calls "a kiddie console game." I wrote my wall o' text to point out that he had it bassackwards, and that having a wider variety of weapons in the competitive scene actually increases the depth of a game and not the other way around like he assumes.

I have nothing against console games (a console game is what introduced me to the Mechwarrior franchise in the first place and got me hooked on it!) or Call of Duty (I never even played CoD lol).

Edited by FupDup, 10 April 2013 - 01:50 PM.

[Teralitha]

Roland, on 10 April 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

What you may remember is that we played on both sides of the fence at various points throughout MW4's history. That included playing various IS units, and using primarily IS tech much of the time.

And yet, at the same time, every single thing I said is true.

As HJ in MW4, you weren't using a lot of those weapons you listed. That's not to say that you didn't use IS tech.. of course you did. But you didn't use THOSE inner sphere weapons. Because NO ONE used them.. because they were crap. Feel free to go back and look at the old NBT league weapons usage stats... you are misremembering things.

In MW4, you had access to advanced IS weaponry, like XPulse and Light Gauss. You weren't forced to use only 3050 era IS tech.

Maybe you guys secretly used terribad IS Missile configurations when I wasn't looking, but I don't recall ever seeing you guys fielding IS LRM's.

And why? Because if you were going to get engaged in a fight with missile mechs, and you were in IS mechs and they were in clan mechs, then you were gonna get stomped... because for a given weight, they'd have twice as many missiles. Missile engagements were a losing proposition for the IS.


Again, I believe you are mis-remembering.

What IS units ran in MW4 were IS LL.. because the IS LL was quite cool. It's range was reduced compared to the Clan ERLL, but it was much cooler. THe medium laser was just not really used much by comparison, by anyone. Again, go check the usage stats from back in the day (I believe they are still up on NBT's site).




Generally, the IS Gauss was outpaced by the Light Gauss, since the LG gave the IS something which allowed them to punish the clan mechs from well outside any of the clans' weapon range. The standard gauss had the same range as the Clan ERLL, which was essentially the best weapon in the game, which made it less useful.

There may have been certain situations where you chose to take the heavier standard gauss, but in general the IS Light Gauss was a better weapon and much more widely used by units in the game (including yours, if I recall).

Again, recall that we were an IS unit most of the time.. so we had tons of experience fighting with IS tech... although we also captured a ton of clan tech and had access to that as well.



No man, it really wasn't. The benefits in terms of recycle time and heat were essentially trivial compared to the huge tonnage difference.

An LRM20 weighed 11 tons... a Clan LRM20 weighed 6. The clan version was better. Period. You are fooling yourself if you think otherwise. There's no "preference" there. The clan version was simply better.



Or people who wanted to hit targets consistently.. I mean, hell, your team was mainly playing from freaking Australia, wasn't it? You should know how much the ancient netcode affected games with non-laser weapons.




Negative, although LA hired us once we became a merc unit. We were their house merc for a while, which was hillarious due to the ridiculous mountain of money and mechs we eventually acquired.


When you were in clan space, you had Stalker leading you, if I recall... HRR always had close ties to Stalker, and all the AK guys, as we had played a ton with them going back to the old TFS/UTS league (prior to NBT).

And actually, going back to that league, you can clearly see that there really was limited balance in terms of weapons when you tried to mix clans and IS tech... because in the mixtech leagues, it was much more clear what the "good" weapons were. And seriously, no one ever used IS LRMS when given the option to mount clan missiles in the same mech. Ever. Not once.

Ok Roland... believe what you want, I think I know better what I used than you would since I was driving my own mechs.. Werent those weapon usage stats only for the public servers? Plus they stopped recording them long before the league ended.

Stalker gets way way too much credit. He was present for 1 single drop in the taking of that clan homeworld. He was a great strategist, but he wasnt the one fighting those battles. He wasnt even that great of a pilot(his own words not mine) AK members filled in when we were short, in 2 drops. Thats it. Sorry but PA's lasted alot longer than 2 drops. I know alot of the league didnt want to give us credit, but oh well. In his whole time as a member of HJ he lead league battles maybe about 20 times. I lead 100's. Maybe even 1000's Including all of the PA that capped that clan homeworld. I did it using my own strategies, not his. Stalker didnt even think we had a chance and didnt bother showing up. Thats the real truth of it.


As for everything else... agree to disagree. We did our own thing, you did yours. Stop telling me what I did or didnt do, I think I know better than you what I did. I regret not having opportunity to face your teams more in NBT. Our goal was not to conquer the inner sphere, but the clans. Im not trying to sling mud at you or your team, I respected LA's skills, but it doesnt mean you were better.

This is a new game, and we have lots of new pilots, as Im sure you do.

Edited by Teralitha, 10 April 2013 - 02:02 PM.

[Noobzorz]

Stone Profit, on 10 April 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

Your post makes no sense. They often change the weapon balances. Just because they dont need to change them every single patch is not a flaw. if fact, it means theyre doing it right. Fail topic is fail.

They don't change the weapon balance very often at all. I remember during the StarCraft 2 beta when the overlord went through three or four full unit redesigns (including a rollback) within the span of two weeks. This last patch didn't even make any balance changes.

Hell, it took macross missile madness to get them to do something about LRMs, and then they arguably overreacted, nerfing them into obsolescence.

They're doing a good job, but they aren't taking enough risks for a beta. They should be tinkering with MG/Flam/LBX/LRM every single patch until they get it right. The balance isn't anywhere near refined enough to get concerned about breaking the delicate relationship all your tools have with one another.

[Stone Profit]

Noobzorz, on 10 April 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

They don't change the weapon balance very often at all. I remember during the StarCraft 2 beta when the overlord went through three or four full unit redesigns (including a rollback) within the span of two weeks. This last patch didn't even make any balance changes.

Hell, it took macross missile madness to get them to do something about LRMs, and then they arguably overreacted, nerfing them into obsolescence.

They're doing a good job, but they aren't taking enough risks for a beta. They should be tinkering with MG/Flam/LBX/LRM every single patch until they get it right. The balance isn't anywhere near refined enough to get concerned about breaking the delicate relationship all your tools have with one another.

Disagree.