76 replies to this topic

[Thomas Covenant]

In other words, whether your best mech is a stock variant or a hero mech you payed for, you have an unfair advantage over 11% of players, with varying degrees of advantage, because you can pilot your best mech and they cannot(without paying for it).

Or vice versa most people have an advantage over you.

Everyone fits into these groups.

[SMDMadCow]

Thomas Covenant, on 22 April 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

In other words, whether your best mech is a stock variant or a hero mech you payed for, you have an unfair advantage over 11% of players, with varying degrees of advantage, because you can pilot your best mech and they cannot(without paying for it).

Or vice versa most people have an advantage over you.

Everyone fits into these groups.

10/10 Troll

[Iron Frost]

very flawed logic. many people will never try hero mechs because of the cost to decide if it's their favorite. look at you trying to act all smart and stuff.

Edited by Iron Frost, 22 April 2013 - 04:57 PM.

[Jetfire]

90% of the time my Cataphract C1 is my best mech 100% of the time.

I do not think you know what the heck you are talking about.

If Hero mech's were OP they should score significantly more damage, kills, assist and caps on average compared to the other variants. This is straight up solid analytics. Don't convolute the issue.

Hero mechs do not seem to be any more performance engines than the other variants. Some are certainly good, but all are lesser in significant ways in exchange for some interesting changes.

Edited by Jetfire, 22 April 2013 - 05:01 PM.

[Stoicblitzer]

OP hurts my brain

[Thomas Covenant]

Iron Frost, on 22 April 2013 - 04:55 PM, said:

very flawed logic. many people will never try hero mechs because of the cost to decide if it's their favorite. look at you trying to act all smart and stuff.

Correct, MWO includes no native method for a player to test-drive a hero.

Edited by Thomas Covenant, 22 April 2013 - 05:22 PM.

[lshtaria]

Without doubt my brain is full of fu...

[TOGSolid]

Thomas Covenant, on 21 April 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

I'M OBVIOUSLY RIGHT AND HAVE AN AMAZING POINT BECAUSE I PUT NUMBERS IN WITH MY WORDS

Edited by TOGSolid, 22 April 2013 - 06:04 PM.

[FrostCollar]

BladeSplint, on 21 April 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

Looks like someone's never driven an X-5.

I quite like the X-5, but it'***** a tough spot since the missile "fix." Still, it's a fun ride.

However, this ignores the real trouble of the poll that some have already mentioned: a large portion of all variants aren't very good and Hero mechs usually represent the worst a variant has to offer and never the only viable option. Also, since this is a game where any player can have four mechs and many of us forum-ites have shelled out for more, it is no surprise that many of us have multiple mechs we like. Thus, this percentage argument really isn't that useful.

[jay35]

Thomas Covenant, on 21 April 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

The 11% Argument:

11% is a number that is subject to a lot of things; but it is a number that exists, and you should know about it.

there are two 'perfect world' factors that would make hero mechs NOT pay to win items.
•if all mechs were balanced
•if all players had equal skill in all mechs

Neither of these I would argue, are the case.

11%?
As of April 21st 2013 there are...
MWO Mechs: 70, Standard Variants: 62, Hero Variants 8. 11% of Mechs are Hero Mechs.

if all mechs were balanced

There would be an 11% chance your best mech is a hero mech.

That doesn't follow. That assumes two things that cannot be rightly assumed: 1 - That across the entire playerbase exists an equal dispersion of preference across all the mechs.
2 - That all the mechs are viable all the time and thus deserve equal use.

[Natasha Kerensky]

WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?...

[Zakie Chan]

TL:DR

Social Science is not really science

[Thomas Covenant]

jay35, on 22 April 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

That doesn't follow. That assumes two things that cannot be rightly assumed: 1 - That across the entire playerbase exists an equal dispersion of preference across all the mechs.
2 - That all the mechs are viable all the time and thus deserve equal use.

Exactly, you cannot assume that.

But if every mech has an even chance of being better or worse than average, how does that alter the 11%? It could just as easily be higher or lower, but 11% is the base. Every mech has a 1/70 chance of being the mech you perform best in. Some mech layouts may work better for more pilots than others, but there is still an 11% chance that those are hero mechs.

Spoiler

Thomas Covenant, on 21 April 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

if all mechs were balanced

There would be an 11% chance your best mech is a hero mech.

if all players had equal skill in all mechs

There would be an 11% chance the best mech is a hero mech.

if neither of these were true, which is what I believe, than there is an unknown number that represents the truth. This number, high or low, will not be 0.

Edited by Thomas Covenant, 22 April 2013 - 07:06 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

SmoothCriminal, on 21 April 2013 - 10:11 PM, said:

So you're completely ignoring the fact that hero mechs give you bonuses to cbills and xp? The main reason people have a Hero mech in the first place.

Come on....

Awesome my founder mechs are pay to win! thanks PGI!

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Dirus Nigh, on 22 April 2013 - 07:03 PM, said:

Awesome my founder mechs are pay to win! thanks PGI!

If by "win" you mean "grind faster" then YAY! WE WIN ! ! !

[Rakashan]

Ok, so clearly you don't get it. Back to first principles.

First, you want the truth. What truth? What is it you are trying to measure? Whether or not Hero mechs are pay to win? (This is what I take from reading your attempts but that is not entirely clear and I don't want to make incorrect assumptions here.)

The way you derive information about a subject like this (if you want to be scientifically rigorous) is to establish your hypothesis (Hero mechs are pay-to-win). Then establish a metric (what is "winning") and then measure real performance against your metric.

In the game today "winning" is not clearly defined. It might be grinding C-bills. It might be win percentage. It might be kills. There is a loose correlation between these things, but it is far from direct. C-bill awards reward more than just kills and it is possible to out-earn someone while getting fewer kills than they do. It's possible to get a better match score than any player on the other team while being on the losing team. So the first question which is not addressed is "what is winning". Without addressing that you can't proceed. Never mind that problem, you move on to your assumptions.

Your first assumption is that if all mechs were "balanced" a pilot would have his best games in a specific chassis and 11% of those are hero mechs so 11% of the population is being required to buy a hero mech in order to get their best games. The idea that all mechs *can* be "balanced" is a mistake. We know that the game is built around specific mechanics and while role warfare is supposed to make all mechs viable most players feel that Mediums in particular have little or no place in the role warfare system today. In spite of that, Light mechs see even less action than Mediums which suggests that in player opinion they are less likely to contribute to the players goals (arguably what they think of as winning at any given time).

Your second stab is to imagine that all players have equal skill which actually has very little to do with what mech is best for a specific pilot. You might be able to argue about specific weapon types (better with Lasers or Ballistics, etc.) but that has more to do with loadouts and less to do with chassis. You *might* be able to make a link between specific chassis and specific weapons types which then could be linked to whatever people actually want to accomplish in game but this leads to multiple layers of abstraction which are detrimental to your experiment and should be eliminated if they can be.

And then your crowning claim... Regardless of your assumptions you are sure that "The TRUTH is out there!" and it is a number which is non-zero. Since you have yet to actually specify what you are measuring this claim has no meaning although if it boils down to a question of how many players will have their greatest success in a specific chassis you should probably be looking at other factors.

Now, if we review some basics about the game mechanics and the current meta you can see a couple of things. First, there are different weapons with specific mechanics which reward specific behaviors. Second, you have rigid mechanics for "survival" with damage and armor and critical slots. The current meta rewards focused damage. That means hitting the same point with multiple shots, either by repeated fire of a single weapon or, more typically, through the use of high alpha pinpoint strikes. In other words, the existence of builds which combine multiple weapons into a single shot which delivers all its damage to a single location minimizes the need for repeated shots and long-term accuracy. I.E. why worry about hitting and holding a target 5 times with a Large Laser when you can hit them once with 3 linked Gauss Rifles. (There's a reason that the 732 is a very popular pop-tard build and it has to do with the ability to deliver 45 points of damage to a single location in one alpha strike.)

Following this logic, the ability to deliver a 45 point blow to a single location means the ability to destroy any component on a light mech in one blow or the ability to severely damage a heavy or assault mech with that same shot. This favors heavies and assaults as does the fact that heavies and assaults are the only mechs with the ability to carry such high-alpha loadouts.

For almost all goals that exist in-game, it's unlikely that the Death's Knell is the best mech for your goal. The same can be said of all other Commandos. It is more likely that you are interested in an Ilya, a Heavy Metal or a Pretty Baby if you want a hero mech and that a HGN-732 will suit your purposes if you want a non-hero mech. In other words, abstracting your idea to assume that mech chassis are in any way balanced is clearly false and reduces your thought experiment to a joke.

TL;DR - Establish your hypothesis. Determine what metrics can be used to evaluate it and then collect some actual data instead of making a claim that relies on assumptions which are clearly and easily invalidated.

[Thomas Covenant]

Well I definitely feel I am on to something if someone is passionate enough to create such a wall of text to depute it, well done sir.

Rakashan, on 23 April 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

The way you derive information about a subject like this (if you want to be scientifically rigorous) is to establish your hypothesis (Hero mechs are pay-to-win). Then establish a metric (what is "winning") and then measure real performance against your metric.

fair enough.

winning = victory

Clear? I do believe the 11% applies to other categories that you have mentioned in your two posts, but lets focus on that one.

In the current version of the game there is almost no way a Hero Mech can help you win, almost. And 'unfortunately', that problem will likely get worse.
Elo, is the current safeguard, before Elo, I would say Hero mechs were clearly a pay to win item for the 11%. But now it only reveals itself in two cases, currently. These are small cases, currently. Tournaments that keep track of performance like Assault vs the World is one(ex. if you are piloting your best mech, you will do better). The other is fighting a static opponent. Since we can't set up a private match very easily at this time, this problem remains dormant for now. To be clear, if you are fighting a certain player, or team, you will do better if you are in you best mech, clearly. Now sure, with role fair, your team may be better off if you pilot a mech that isn't your best, but you're chances are only improved by having your best mech at your disposal.

If either of these cases increase, which is likely, then the margin of victory gained by the 11% for paying for their best mech grows.