AntiCitizenJuan, on 25 April 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:
All signs of MW:O's recent imbalances point right back to the concept of Hardpoint Sizes.
Mechs would be not only easier to balance, but also more unique in their own ways as some variants may have different Hardpoint Layouts.
It has been discussed to death. But for a reason.
Would you support the idea of Hardpoint Sizes? Or are you just going to keep on rolling your cheese builds until the game ***** the bed?
Would they really be easier to balance?
The problem with any hard point system that you just need to wait for the right stock configuration that requires hard points that can be abusive with a different build. Hard points don't really protect you from that, because there is never a guarantee that a problematic mech won't come around eventually.
If you make the hard point sizes to restrictive, you will make people simply unable to modify their mech in a meaningful manner.
I think it would be better if hard points are limited to one purpose only: Making mech "feel" right, so t hat a mech with a giant shoulder-mounted gun doesn't change in a mech with 2 giant arm mounted guns and an empty shoulder, and stuff like that.
The balance should be reeinforced by designing balanced weapon stats and weapon mechanics so that no weapon configuration has undue synergies and benefits.
Shumabot, on 25 April 2013 - 05:31 PM, said:
Boating should only be materially possible on mechs that are designed to boat, such as the cat with lrm 20 tubes or the atlas with energy weapons. A mix of large and small hardpoints functionally stops boating for 95% of mechs. This is presuming PGI understands balance at all in this game.
But if boating is a better choice then non-boating, then the boat-mechs will simply be superior. That's no real help IMO.
Boating is good for several factors:
1) All weapons behave the same. Same cycle time, same durations, same ammo types, same ranges. That's all great and makes it much easier to handle these weapons - you only need to account for one weapon behaviour.
2) When yo uhave the same cycle times, you can shoot weapons together. And since the game features convergence, you really want to fire your weapons together, because it's the best way to ensure you really hit the same spot at all times.
If it was actually impossible to fire weapons together and there was always a 0.25 second delay minimum or something like that, then boating would have much less benefit here. (I am not saying this is a form of implementation I support). Since you have to aim each shot with each weapon seperately, the trend would go to use less weapons instead of more, and mixing different weapon types with different behaviours being less punishment, since you have to aim and fire each weapon seperately anyway. A reasonably competent player will be able to handle different projectile speeds of 2 or 3 different guns, and he doens't lose the benefit of converging multiple weapons since no one has that benefit.
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 26 April 2013 - 02:33 AM.
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