18 replies to this topic

[Fate 6]

The game will never be balanced as long as a team can field so much total firepower. Mediums, lighter heavies (Dragon), and a few lights run into problems because they can be killed so fast by the combined firepower of multiple assaults and several heavies.

If we want role warfare, we need to start enforcing those roles. No more 3+ assault mechs per team. 2 at most would be acceptable. I realize we want people to play their own way, but it seriously hurts the game when the lighter mechs are simply unplayable in the face of so much weaponry.

This:

Asmudius Heng, on 22 May 2013 - 03:45 PM, said:

While having roles to fulfil is a good idea and i fully support it - the most important part of the game will still be mech murdering.

The more tonnage you have, the better a murderer you are. The increased agility of a mech the lower tonnage you go is of limited benefit now that HSR is in and so more guns is a good trade off.

Mech viability does need to be based not just on tonnage and number of guns, more objectives would be helpful - but in the end the real idea of medium mechs were that logistically they were cheap and easy to repair/transport etc.

R&R failed to do this well because the entire system of incentives did not work as intended and it promoted botting. However some sort of sense when it comes to mech tonnage and cost need to be looked into. The matchmaker should be doing this, but there are probably not enough players for it to really work.

I am hoping community warfare has this as a key feature. Then instant action drops would be the ghetto where people grind and troll - but CW drops are much more strictly enforced and mean that perhaps you cannot always take your stalker ...

I do not know how they can solve this for instant action drops though because people take what they want and tonnage goes up and up and up for BOTH sides so even if tonnage was equal its still full of fat boys.

Edited by Fate 6, 22 May 2013 - 04:15 PM.

[MrZakalwe]

Disagree strongly- Think the better patch is to continue working on the games balance until the different mechs are actually equal in what they bring to the team.

At the moment lights, heavies and assaults have a purpose (and lights would be stronger with streak changes to make them less torsokilling (THAT'S A WORD!)) and the need for spotters for your team's LRMs cements lights into having a role; scouts and spotters.

[slash b slash]

1-to-1 weight class matching should never have been removed.

[Corvus Antaka]

this is a huge problem. im seeing WAY to many matches with heavily mismatched tonnages. we need wieght balancing improved, AND we need tonnage based scoring that accounts for your wieght vs the enemy.

[MrZakalwe]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 22 May 2013 - 01:00 AM, said:

this is a huge problem. im seeing WAY to many matches with heavily mismatched tonnages. we need wieght balancing improved, AND we need tonnage based scoring that accounts for your wieght vs the enemy.

Currently assault mechs are overpowered and mediums are weak.

Sort that and you sort the weight issue.

[Syllogy]

No. The devs have been over this numerous times.

Stop asking for weight limits.

MrZakalwe, on 22 May 2013 - 01:05 AM, said:

Currently assault mechs are overpowered and mediums are weak.

Sort that and you sort the weight issue.

Don't go toe to toe with an Atlas while in a Hunchback, problem solved.

[Fate 6]

Syllogy, on 22 May 2013 - 04:40 AM, said:

No. The devs have been over this numerous times.

Stop asking for weight limits.



Don't go toe to toe with an Atlas while in a Hunchback, problem solved.

Sometimes you don't actually have a choice. If the enemy has 4 Atlases to our 2 and a Stalker, at some point I'm going to have to fight an Atlas. And it is entirely possible that I will have to fight it alone, as their team will simply live longer through more armor. Yeah "blah blah focus targets", doesn't make it any less frustrating that I, as a medium mech, can pop up over a hill and take 4 alphas from Assault mechs. There should never be that many in a game. The reason mediums don't have a role is because PGI has eliminated their role - cost effective, decent speed, firepower, and armor, but not exceptional at any one thing. Speed tweak, no cost to field a mech, alpha focused gameplay, GIANT models...all these things make mediums relatively pointless (I can't say they're entirely useless because I still have 1 chassis that does more than its weight suggests).

[Lupin]

EVERY game I have played today has ended up with more lights on one side.

Balance for weight is SO far out is just not funny.

I do not know what they have done to make it this bad.

[Ngamok]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 22 May 2013 - 01:00 AM, said:

this is a huge problem. im seeing WAY to many matches with heavily mismatched tonnages. we need wieght balancing improved, AND we need tonnage based scoring that accounts for your wieght vs the enemy.

You don't say....

http://steamcommunit...s/?id=139399196

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Artificial limits on drop weight are a bad idea.

Better would be to reward players for winning with a weight disparity (a low drop weight reward similar to MechCommander's).

Best would be to have the game modes reward objective play far more than simple murder. Create roles for the mechs to fill, reward them for filling those roles successfully, and suddenly you'll see people playing mechs that can do things other than murder people in a straight-up fight (whether sniping or brawling or artillery-ing or whatever).

We sort of have a start for that with Conquest, but since it lacks rewards for uncapturing enemy points or capturing neutral ones it often still devolves into a big fight in the middle of the map. Base Capturing on Assault is a very bare-bones implementation.

A good starting point would be to give a cbill bounty for being in a capture box on Conquest when it changes color (red to yellow, or yellow to blue). Also, new game modes such as escort or attack/defend have a lot of room for new roles to be implemented.

[Asmudius Heng]

While having roles to fulfil is a good idea and i fully support it - the most important part of the game will still be mech murdering.

The more tonnage you have, the better a murderer you are. The increased agility of a mech the lower tonnage you go is of limited benefit now that HSR is in and so more guns is a good trade off.

Mech viability does need to be based not just on tonnage and number of guns, more objectives would be helpful - but in the end the real idea of medium mechs were that logistically they were cheap and easy to repair/transport etc.

R&R failed to do this well because the entire system of incentives did not work as intended and it promoted botting. However some sort of sense when it comes to mech tonnage and cost need to be looked into. The matchmaker should be doing this, but there are probably not enough players for it to really work.

I am hoping community warfare has this as a key feature. Then instant action drops would be the ghetto where people grind and troll - but CW drops are much more strictly enforced and mean that perhaps you cannot always take your stalker ...

I do not know how they can solve this for instant action drops though because people take what they want and tonnage goes up and up and up for BOTH sides so even if tonnage was equal its still full of fat boys.

[Fate 6]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 22 May 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

Artificial limits on drop weight are a bad idea.

Better would be to reward players for winning with a weight disparity (a low drop weight reward similar to MechCommander's).

Best would be to have the game modes reward objective play far more than simple murder. Create roles for the mechs to fill, reward them for filling those roles successfully, and suddenly you'll see people playing mechs that can do things other than murder people in a straight-up fight (whether sniping or brawling or artillery-ing or whatever).

We sort of have a start for that with Conquest, but since it lacks rewards for uncapturing enemy points or capturing neutral ones it often still devolves into a big fight in the middle of the map. Base Capturing on Assault is a very bare-bones implementation.

A good starting point would be to give a cbill bounty for being in a capture box on Conquest when it changes color (red to yellow, or yellow to blue). Also, new game modes such as escort or attack/defend have a lot of room for new roles to be implemented.

Ultimately I still care about my K/D though. Sure, it's not super important, but I don't want to simply not fight people. I play Mechwarrior to fight the bad guys with big robots. I shouldn't be forced to not fight simply because the enemy can field so much firepower. It isn't even necessarily a weight balance issue so much as a total weight issue - if both teams have 7 assaults and a medium, those mediums are going to be instantly vaporized.

Asmudius Heng, on 22 May 2013 - 03:45 PM, said:

While having roles to fulfil is a good idea and i fully support it - the most important part of the game will still be mech murdering.

The more tonnage you have, the better a murderer you are. The increased agility of a mech the lower tonnage you go is of limited benefit now that HSR is in and so more guns is a good trade off.

Mech viability does need to be based not just on tonnage and number of guns, more objectives would be helpful - but in the end the real idea of medium mechs were that logistically they were cheap and easy to repair/transport etc.

R&R failed to do this well because the entire system of incentives did not work as intended and it promoted botting. However some sort of sense when it comes to mech tonnage and cost need to be looked into. The matchmaker should be doing this, but there are probably not enough players for it to really work.

I am hoping community warfare has this as a key feature. Then instant action drops would be the ghetto where people grind and troll - but CW drops are much more strictly enforced and mean that perhaps you cannot always take your stalker ...

I do not know how they can solve this for instant action drops though because people take what they want and tonnage goes up and up and up for BOTH sides so even if tonnage was equal its still full of fat boys.

This, so much this

Edited by Fate 6, 22 May 2013 - 04:13 PM.

[codynyc]

slash b slash, on 22 May 2013 - 12:42 AM, said:

1-to-1 weight class matching should never have been removed.

HAVE no reason why they took it away...

[slash b slash]

When there was 1-to-1 weight class matching you could at least be certain that when you took a medium, the other team would have a medium also. If you took a light, the enemy would have a light. Nowadays when you take a medium, you can be certain the other team has an extra heavy or assault. If you find yourself to be the only Assault on your team accompanied by two Dragons and the rest are mediums and lights, you better pray that the lights are smart enough to just go cap, because you won't survive the LRM and PPC thunderstorm the enemy will unleash.

As others have stated before, the goal of the game is to murder Mechs and heavies and assaults are better Mech murderers, so many people take them. They have the armor to take tons of dmg and the tonnage to equip quite some hard-hitting weapons and the heatsinksand ammo to go with them. And there is no proper reason to take a medium.

On other thing to note. I never liked how RnR was implemented and in a small way it was P2W as it hindered people without Premium Time to fully upgrade their Mech, as the cost to RnR your Mech after you died and lost the match was horrendous. But it was a balancing mechanic that was removed without replacement.
At that time when you ran an assault and you spent quite some ammo and took an extensive amount of dmg, your repair bill was pretty high, taking a big chunk out of your paycheck and lowering your profit per match. At the same time a medium Mech pilot could lose his Mech and still make a bigger profit. So there was an incentive to run mediums and lights, they were better at making money.
Now it is the otherway around. Heavies and assaults do a ton of dmg (dmg = c-bills), score most kills (kills = c-bills), many assists (assists = c-bills), do most component destructions (component destruction = c-bills) and they are better at winning (by killing everybody; winning = c-bills), because they are a lot more durable and heavily armored. So again no incentive to run anything else.

So I propose two things:
1. Bring back 1-to-1 weight class matching, so the other team is equally gimped when you bring your medium and an all-assault team will face an all assault team 100% of the time. And I don't care if I have to wait 5 minutes for a match after I hit launch as long as it will be fair and balanced and not what we have now.
2. Implement a weight class modifier to match earnings, incentivising the use of lighter Mechs, e.g. 20% more c-bills when you use a light, 15% more c-bills when you use a medium, 5% for heavies and 0% for assaults.

Discuss.

[Truesight]

Well you could also implement drop fees, the more tons you drop, the more money you have to pay.

This will also make AFK/OOB Player think if they loose money on a drop.

Or R&R....

[MrZakalwe]

I really don't like the logic in this thread.

Problem: currently the team with more assault mechs in has an advantage.

Some solutions have been proposed in this thread.

1 to 1 class matching: increases weight times and wont work in premade games for community warfare; relies on a large pool of randoms to draw from. Also means that 4 man premades will nearly always face large numbers of pugs which is not good for anybody.

Bonus CBILLS for damaging heavier mechs than you: Again useless in community warfare as then the aim is to win rather than to grind credits.

Repair costs: Target new players unfairly and do absolutely nothing for CW premade 8 (soon to be 12) games. Punishes certain builds oddly. Bad idea all round.



Or (and this idea doesn't seem popular here) they could continue trying to balance the game until all weight classes are more or less as useful as each other.

so yeah the last solution is
Balance the game.

[o8oo Anarch]

I feel the problem with RnR/drop fees/maintinace costs etc is that it really punishes new/poor players. Not everyone can be a gaming god and these would drive away non-awesome players which is bad, everyone is entitled to have fun and some folks can't help sucking.

Weight limits or balanced drops seem a bit fairer but could well push up the waiting time for matches as you've got to wait for the right combo of mechs to hit launch. Some times I find it struggles as it is to quickly find me match.

The problem seems to come from 'taking meds puts ur team/earning potential at a disadvantage'. Other classes seem to have their niche (lights scout/spot, assaults kill/tank, heavy support the assaults) meds niche is 'cost effective' but without RnR this fails to be true.

So my conclusion is: Give meds a viable role and all is solved. What this could possibly be... I have no idea? :S

What could mediums new role be? Please enlighten me good folks of MWO.

[FunkyFritter]

Enforcing weight limits is a band-aid solution. If the majority wants to pilot assault mechs forcing some of them into mediums means those players are having less fun, never something that should be sacrificed for an abstract concept like role warfare. If the game needs more mediums tweak them so they're comparable to assault mechs in terms of usefulness.

[Lykaon]

Sure why not,as long as doing so does not result in excessive waits to find matches.

I however disagree that in organized play lights and mediums are a detriment.A short while ago I was a part of a three man team.We initially brought out a mix of whatever needed XP grinding and played super casual.As a result we found ourselves on a bit of a losing streak.

So we pulled out the big guns (2 Highlanders and a Stalker) We improved our ratio some but still a three man team pitted against a 4 man and teamed with painfully suicidal puggies was not cutting it.

So my plan was stop playing the assault mech racket.If the enemy composes their forces of 6 or more assault mechs with alpha strike builds why should anyone opposing this play into that game.Why should we present large slow moving targets for the enemy to focus down with optimized alpha strikers.

Next drop was A Raven a Spider and a Cicada with cap acceleration modules.Now we were dictating the terms of the fight. Come to us or get Capped.

If players get over the culture of capping is wrong and realize that Assault has two objectives 1) Kill all enemy Mechs 2) capture enemy base! then assault mech heavy teams becomes a weakness.Or at the very least someone needs to defend rather than poptart all match long.