Hotthedd, on 17 May 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:
Time IS money. Some weapons are already better than others. Upgrading equipment is easy, I have no time invested in that ERPPC. Having to sell my beloved Hunchie 4SP because everyone is using Clan mechs would be a shame.
The current direct-upgrade scheme is a bad system as it is, the only reason it isn't very obvious yet is because the cost is fairly small. This kind of stuff belongs in singleplayer games, not player-versus-player multiplayer games.
Hotthedd, on 17 May 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:
Why do some people still use PPCs when ERPPCs are clearly better? This part of your argument is a straw man. The problem you illustrate is a matchmaker issue, not a tech issue. HOWEVER, 8 trial mechs vs. 5 I.S. maxed out mechs is more balanced, and I believe this is how PGI intends to balance the early Clan vs. I.S. battles.
ERPPCs aren't clearly better. If anything, they're clearly worse in a lot of cases. They generate 5 more points of heat. That makes it a tactical decision of whether to equip them. "Is the extra range worth the heat increase?" is what players have to ask themselves when mounting them. A similar question is asked by a player when mounting Artemis. "Is what I gain worth what I lose?" Tactical decisions add gameplay depth. Direct-upgrades, however, are not tactical decisions. They make it shallow. Most players play to win, so they equip what they think will help them win. With sidegrades, the winning gear is not made very clear, requiring the player to think it through and experiment a little. With direct-ugprades, the game makes the decision
for you by clearly outlining what is superior. No thinking required.
It's also not a straw man, because you want IS weapons to be "entry-level" and I brought up an example of entry-level items being used in-game
right now and the flaws associated with them. 8 vs 5 for trials versus min-maxed will still result in the min-maxers roflstomping them, because they can fire more than once per minute without overheating, dish out good damage, absorb more hits, move faster, have all of the pilot tree efficiencies unlocked, and pack themselves with modules. And, to top it all off, the players in the min-maxed mechs will have a lot more individual skill as well (only nubcakes or I guess alternative accounts of veterans use trials)--and maybe they'll even be on teamspeak, giving them another force-multiplier.
5 v 8 for Clan versus IS probably won't work either. 5 v 8 assumes that Clan mechs have the same effectiveness compared to IS mechs as they did in TT. Problem is, there are a lot of new variables in MWO that mess this equation up. Clanners in MWO will probably be either a bit stronger in MWO or a bit weaker. We have no way of knowing that it's gonna equal out the same way it did on the gameboard. And, even if the magic ratio is found along with the holy grail, then there is another issue: splitting up friends. I'm a powergamer so I'll grab whatever mathematical superiority I can get my hands on the first moment I can do so. But, what if I have a friend or friends that like to play IS mechs? Are we supposed to not be able to enjoy our favorite factions if we want to work together on the same team?
Hotthedd, on 17 May 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:
I am not sure if you are aware of this, but any business model that does NOT base itself on people playing for years is doomed to failure. Are you saying that you have no intention of playing this game 2 years from now no matter what? Of course Clan mechs will be available to purchase with MC--you just will not be able to drop in it as an I.S. pilot, you will need an alter ego of some sort that plays as a Clanner. Having the grind for an I.S. pilot to acquire enough clantech to max out his ride should take 2 years, as it fits with the canon timeline. Clantech should not be allowed to be purchased with MC or C-bills by I.S. affiliated pilots, hence "salvage points" or whatever alternate currency the devs decide on.
By the time years have passed, most people have gotten long bored of a game and moved on to the next mainstream blockbuster title. This is especially true to the F2P genre, which is designed to entice people to take a free test-drive of the game but the fact that they don't have to pay to play makes them feel less obliged to keep playing (if you pay for it, you'll want to get your money's worth). As for my own playtime, this game is already getting stale and I'm getting a tad cynical about how development is being handled. I might boot it up from time to time but it's nowhere near good enough right now to keep me playing it in sprees like I do with other games. Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, is a game that I've sunken 1562 hours into and keep coming back to over time. It's all about quality: something that MWO needs improvement on.
Even if quality were improved, taking years to unlock a few items is just bogus, especially when those items are literally must-have in order to compete with everybody else who does have them. In TF2, weapons keep coming out all the time and I don't have them all. I don't need them all, however, because the stock weapons and the ones I already have are very competitive against them if not better in a lot of cases. To be fair, TF2
does have a couple of direct-upgrade items as well; but, fortunately, most of them are just melee weapons, which tend to have very little impact in a game with guns. And they're easy to acquire as well by either random drop, crafting, or direct purchase. New weapons there just give you new options and playstyles to tinker with except for those few exceptions. Clan weapons would not be like that if we go by the book.
Edited by FupDup, 17 May 2013 - 06:37 AM.
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