167 replies to this topic

[MegaZordTrololo]

PGI planned for weight classes to be useful in specific roles, with Assaults providing a backbone to probing attacks by medium mechs and fire support from heavy mechs. In other words, PGI imagined that the roles of the different weight classes would be realised through varying types of positional play.

This clearly hasn't happened, the most effective way for teams to fight is to stick as a single tightly packed "blob". Mech's lighter than Assault's can't properly use their speed and maneuverability to flank without getting focused down very quickly by the enemy blob.

So, since the concept of role warfare has almost entirely failed, weight classes need to be balanced in the meta game. Assault's should be extremely expensive to run. It should take the profits from 10 (arbitrary number, would have to be tuned) drops in a medium mech to fund a drop in an Assault mech. The false rhetoric of "workhorse" PGI uses to describe Medium mechs would then have some accuracy, and the appearance of an Assault mech on the field would be rare and dreaded by all.

Edited by MegaZordTrololo, 03 June 2013 - 04:02 PM.

[Screech]

I can't see the placement of a artificial hurdle that keeps people from playing the mech they want as want as a good thing. Heavy and Assaults by and large are just more agile then they should be. The assaults need to be restricted in the areas they are able to traverse or at least hampered in their movement while covering these grounds.

[TexAce]

Back in closed beta when we had repair and rearms the majority did NOT complain about assaults being very expensive to pilot.
I don't know why they should now.

It's funny how people always say they want to feel like a real mechwarrior pilot but when it comes to the negative sides of piloting assaults in the lore, they suddenly want to have all the benefits at no costs.

Mech diversity and meta was much better back then.
But PGI seems to find R&R too hard for the majority of players, accommodating to the I-want-no-hurdles players they dumbed the game down. And now money is just rising, there is no strategical element in the game, where you have to manage your funds. Not at all.

Where did the "Thinking" part in this shooter go?

Edited by TexAss, 03 June 2013 - 04:44 PM.

[FupDup]

TexAss, on 03 June 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Back in closed beta when we had repair and rearms the majority did NOT complain about assaults being very expensive to pilot.
I don't know why they should now.

It's funny how people always say they want to feel like a real mechwarrior pilot but when it comes to the negative sides of piloting assaults in the lore, they suddenly want to have all the benefits at no costs.

Mech diversity and meta was much better back then.

I didn't play back during the RnR days but I don't particularly like the system myself. I'm in complete agreement that there should be some kind of way to encourage medium and light mech usage, but I don't think spacebucks consumption really solves that issue.



You see, humans are exploitative little gremlins that will use whatever they have to in order to win. We've seen it with all of the various metas this game has had: Gausskitties, lagshield, Cravens, Splatcats, Jagerbombs, ECM before it had over 9000 counters, all of the Lurmageddons, the current ERPPC arm's race, and anything else that I might have missed.

Making a heavy or assault cost more to run doesn't influence the outcome of the match. If a PPC Stalker is still more likely to make Billy Joe Bob win the match than a SHS medium, then he's going to keep driving that Stalker for as long as he can because losing isn't something most people aspire to do in a video game. Also, losing doesn't get as much money as winning, so losing match after match in an SHS medium or light isn't going to make much money compared to steamrolling SHS mediums while driving a PPC Stalker or Highlander.



Mediums and lights just need one or more distinctive, valuable, and enjoyable roles to fulfill on the battlefield that no other unit can do as well as they can (unfortunately, my imagination is not strong enough to come up with how to do this).

Edited by FupDup, 03 June 2013 - 04:45 PM.

[TexAce]

FupDup, on 03 June 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

I didn't play back during the RnR days but I don't particularly like the system myself. I'm in complete agreement that there should be some kind of way to encourage medium and light mech usage, but I don't think spacebucks consumption really solves that issue.



You see, humans are exploitative little gremlins that will use whatever they have to in order to win. We've seen it with all of the various metas this game has had: Gausskitties, lagshield, Cravens, Splatcats, Jagerbombs, ECM before it had over 9000 counters, all of the Lurmageddons, the current ERPPC arm's race, and anything else that I might have missed.

Making a heavy or assault cost more to run doesn't influence the outcome of the match. If a PPC Stalker is still more likely to make Billy Joe Bob win the match than a SHS medium, then he's going to keep driving that Stalker for as long as he can because losing isn't something most people aspire to do in a video game. Also, losing doesn't get as much money as winning, so losing match after match in an SHS medium or light isn't going to make much money compared to steamrolling SHS mediums while driving a PPC Stalker or Highlander.



Mediums and lights just need one or more distinctive, valuable, and enjoyable roles to fulfill on the battlefield that no other unit can do as well as they can (unfortunately, my imagination is not strong enough to come up with how to do this).

Look I didnt play games very much any more until MWO came and I got a closed beta invite.
I like challanging games. Games that make me sweat and think hard how to solve them. I like games being very hard.
This game was very hard. It really was a thinking mans shooter.

And it also happens that I never was the cheese-lover. Not in any game. It's just me but I tend to go with the underdogs.
And I also did it in MWO. I mastered all hunchs, then all awesomes. I have one Stalker, which has 4 PPCs and which I left to rot in my mechbay after I realized I had a K/D ratio of over 5 (yes FIVE) after 10 matches. This is no challange at all.

Now I have all trebs, all Phracts except the 3D and Jägers with LBX10s. I tried the Dual AC20 build and it was no fun at all. Too onesided.

And now the game evolved into THIS mess. And everything I once loved is just not here anymore, since you basically get oneshotted after moving one step.
Then I made this thread because I realised its not the pin-pointing, its not the constant alpha, it's the combination of pinpoint with alphas together with massive firepower only assaults have. And that's why we have so many assaults. And when we had R&R it was much better because there weren't so many of them out in the field. The overall damage dealt from all mechs in the match per minute was much lower.

Makes no fun for me anymore if it stays like this. No new mech (especially not another poptarting assault) or any map can help here. Something else needs to come really badly or this won't be mechwarrior anymore.

Just my bloody 2 cents.

PGI, just give me private matches where I can play with and against people who are like me and enjoy this piece of sh*t somehow.

Edited by TexAss, 03 June 2013 - 05:01 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

R&R was a good idea implemented badly.

The main problem was that people would exploit the system rather than playing the game which ruined other peoples fun each battle.

R&R has a place in CW but instant action it was not working ... as FupDup said, people will still take the mech that wins them games.

There needs to be balancing mechanisms for this game but it needs to be more than a single system. The entire ecosystem of what drives people to play and create diversity has to be pinned down and that is a big task not yet undertaken.

[tenderloving]

TexAss, on 03 June 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Back in closed beta when we had repair and rearms the majority did NOT complain about assaults being very expensive to pilot.

Really? Nobody complained? So PGI just pulled it because they wanted to?

The R&R system was the topic of 50% of the forum posts until they removed it. All the system did was create a massive grind. They might have been able to fix it, but like PGI does with most things they went scorched earth on it and didn't look back.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favor of Assault mechs being a rare and fearsome part of a team, but if you are balancing gameplay through currency then you have failed miserably as a developer.

Edited by tenderloving, 03 June 2013 - 05:01 PM.

[FupDup]

TexAss, on 03 June 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

Look I didnt play games very much any more until MWO came and I got a closed beta invite.
I like challanging games. Games that make me sweat and think hard how to solve them. I like games being very hard.
This game was very hard. It really was a thinking mans shooter.

And it also happens that I never was the cheese-lover. Not in any game. It's just me but I tend to go with the underdogs.
And I also did it in MWO. I mastered all hunchs, then all awesomes. I have one Stalker, which has 4 PPCs and which I left to rot in my mechbay after I realized I had a K/D ratio of over 5 (yes FIVE) after 10 matches. This is no challange at all.

Now I have all trebs, all Phracts except the 3D and Jägers with LBX10s. I tried the Dual AC20 build and it was no fun at all. Too onesided.

And now the game evolved into THIS mess. And everything I once loved is just here anymore, since you basically get oneshotted after moving one step.
Then I made this thread because I realized its not the pin-pointing, its not the constant alpha, it's the combination of pinpoint with alphas together with massive firepower only assaults have. And thats why we have so many assaults. And when we had R&R it was much better because there weren't so many of them out in the field.

Makes no fun for me anymore if it stays like this. No new mech (especially not another poptarting assault) or any map can help here. Something else needs to come really badly or this won't be mechwarrior anymore.

Just my bloody 2 cents.

Costing more money, though, doesn't necessarily make the game require greater strategic thought. If assaults were expensive to run, the thought process would be:
1. Does this PPC Stalker make me more likely to win?
->
2. If yes, drive it if I have enough money
->
3. If I lack the money to maintain it, grind cash with something smaller until I can afford it


The way to make the game into more of a "thinking man's shooter" like PGI used to call it would be to make it so each strategy has very viable and powerful counters against them. Right now, the ERPPC spam strategy is relatively difficult to counter when the enemy is competent, thus dumbing down the game. Making them have powerful counters like viable flankers that can tear them a new one (mediums and lights, in an ideal world) or heavy artillery (Long Toms, Mortars, etc.) would make the poptarts have to think their loadouts through quite a bit more than they currently do. Poptarting needs to have a huge tactical weakness attached to it (i.e. they should suck balls in close combat or something) that would make them extremely vulnerable to more strategically-built teams.

Heck, maybe we could even use tonnage limits if we had to if we can't think of a way to make mediums and lights more fun and powerful.

Edited by FupDup, 03 June 2013 - 05:06 PM.

[oldradagast]

The sad reality is that assaults and certain heavy builds are about the only truly competitive mechs these days. Sure, it's good to have a few lights as scouts or in Conquest, but that's about it. Everyone else should bring their perfect convergence, high-alpha build and blow people away.

Heck, it's gotten so bad that games go by where even my Cataphract feels like it's made of tinfoil and I don't dare move from behind my rock because there are streams of PPC's everywhere. I'm not advocating blind-charging the enemy, but a game where people have to hide behind rocks all the time or their Killer Robot of Doom will be blown to pieces in a under 10 seconds really feels wrong to me.

[TexAce]

tenderloving, on 03 June 2013 - 05:00 PM, said:

Really? Nobody complained? So PGI just pulled it because they wanted to?

The R&R system was the topic of 50% of the forum posts until they removed it. All the system did was create a massive grind. They might have been able to fix it, but like PGI does with most things they went scorched earth on it and didn't look back.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favor of Assault mechs being a rare and fearsome part of a team, but if you are balancing gameplay through currency then you have failed miserably as a developer.

I'm not saying it was a great implementation, I'm just saying it made the matches much more diversed when it came to mechs.

Most of the complains about R&R back then were because some abused the system by carrying enormous amounts of ammo so they can get the 75% free refill resulting in no rearming costs for very expensive ammo.
The system was flawed. And I did much less too back then. Still it was more fun, especially as a medium mech pilot.
Of course losing money even when winning with assaults or heavies sometimes, was not a good thing, because it discouraged players.

@FupDup: I know what you mean, I just want all classes to be viable, and not feel like you fupped your team over because you brought a medium with you.

Edited by TexAss, 03 June 2013 - 05:12 PM.

[Und3rSc0re]

tenderloving, on 03 June 2013 - 05:00 PM, said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favor of Assault mechs being a rare and fearsome part of a team, but if you are balancing gameplay through currency then you have failed miserably as a developer.

What? There are plenty of successful games out there that balance the game through currency. Eve online and world of tanks comes to mind, I guess those devs failed miserably huh.

[CancR]

To be fair, think how many failed.

AVA
Battlefield ftp
Warzone
Arctic combat
Gotham city Impostors <-One of the most refeshing ftp fps this side of 2007. Wish it hadn't failed
Combat arms
Micro Volts
Tribes Ascend <- A reminder that with Mechwarrior, history is repeating it's self*

*That being a bunch of Call of duty fan boys buying a beloved property and ruining it for the sake of cash grabbing

[Taemien]

RnR doesn't fix mediums. The only reason mediums were used in RnR days was because the Atlas (with no ECM) and Awesome were they only Assault mechs. Jenners and Hunchbacks did very dirty things to those mechs back then. It had nothing to do with the fact an atlas cost more to run (actually due to the XL engine I used, my Jenner cost more to run than my Atlas).

You all keep suggesting ways to fix the issue by penalizing Assaults. That isn't going to fix anything. I have been saying this several times in this thread and no one is listening. You can't fix mediums by nerfing heavier mechs or making them harder to take. It won't fix the problem.

The only way to fix mediums is to make them do their jobs even better right now. This means lowering their profiles so they are just slightly bigger than lights. This will allow them to engage longer range targets and be able to survive a tad more. Then give them increased agility, near that of a light mech so they can engage in close range and avoid being hit.

Ideally I'd like to see a Medium mech who catches an Assault by themsevles will probably almost always win. Meaning they can simply stay out of the firing arc of the Assault until the assault is dead. And then have the agility and small profile at range to be able to duck out of cover shoot, and duck back before the assault can retaliate.

Will they become OP? To some, yes. But only if they are on their game around Assaults. If caught with their pants down, the assault will simply 2-3 shot them. Just as they do now. It will just be harder and that is the goal here.

A good medium pilot should be the most feared thing on the battlefield. Only then will it become the workhorse design. Heavies and Assaults should support the mediums, not the other way around.

[Koniving]

TexAss, on 01 June 2013 - 05:22 PM, said:

How do you plan to counter this?

Repair and rearm would be how I'd counter it. With forced repairs, and no freebies.

[Und3rSc0re]

CancR, on 03 June 2013 - 05:46 PM, said:

To be fair, think how many failed.

AVA
Battlefield ftp
Warzone
Arctic combat
Gotham city Impostors <-One of the most refeshing ftp fps this side of 2007. Wish it hadn't failed
Combat arms
Micro Volts
Tribes Ascend <- A reminder that with Mechwarrior, history is repeating it's self*

*That being a bunch of Call of duty fan boys buying a beloved property and ruining it for the sake of cash grabbing

Can you give some examples of the games balancing through currency? Looks to me just a bunch of fps pay to win titles, which there is no balance through currency just people buying better weapons that the free to play people cant buy.

I have played tribes ascend and it was trash to me, only unique thing it had was the skiing. Else it just felt like UT2004 but updated graphics and a lame skiing mechanic which will only bring in the hardcore tribes fanbase which still play it i bet. I knew that game would fail from the beginning but i see potential in mwo. It can have so much depth to it.

Also to everyone saying the rr didnt stop x from happening or x was happening anyway was because the rr system was trash to begin with, which i have seen people repeat in almost every rr thread and not a single rr hater would even acknowledge it was a trash system. I repeat it is not the repair rearm system it is the way repair rearm was implemented.

Edited by Und3rSc0re, 03 June 2013 - 06:41 PM.

[Deathlike]

Considering I just had a match vs PGI members (just 2) and fielded almost like two Steiner Scout lances on both ends... there is a real problem.

Edited by Deathlike, 03 June 2013 - 07:52 PM.

[FupDup]

As an aside, if a Steiner Scout Lance is four Atlai, what is a Steiner heavy lance? Omegas? Orcas? Ares seems like it would be considered a medium mech.

Edited by FupDup, 03 June 2013 - 06:46 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

A thought on R&R also.

WHY do people drop in instant action?

1. To have fun playing the game
2. To WIN the match
3. To grind Cbills

R&R made point 3 difficult if you wanted to do the other 2. Point 3 was easily abused. Point 2 is very problematic because the win means very little for each match without CW and a reason to win. Winning was about cbills mostly then but then people got frustrated they could not run better mechs and simply tried to find an even ground - then those with heaps of money would just run optimal builds also.

The game needs to address all 3 points in instant action and R&R cannot do that well because it relies on punishing people, not incentivising them.

Level 1 tech is so bad it is not FUN to play especially when you get slammed by a fully upgraded mech. It is not fun to be on the reciving end, there is nothing you can do about it tactically you just need to take it sweet.

MEhanics need to make things fun for all, or as many as possible and R&R cannot do that in instant action.

Only when people accept certain restrictions on drops will there be some semblance of balance - or there needs to be some in game incentives to attract people beyond bigger tonnage.

EDIT: also think about this. If you run a cheap mech and get hammered without doing much but still make money while the other guy won but made very little. Who had fun?

Edited by Asmudius Heng, 03 June 2013 - 06:59 PM.

[Und3rSc0re]

Man i cant wait for clan weapons and clan assaults to come out, its gonna make the game so fun without rr whooo. Also madcats, madcats everywhere. This is what you will see if there is no rr or no heavy balancing of currency mechanics guaranteed.

Edited by Und3rSc0re, 03 June 2013 - 07:21 PM.

[FupDup]

Und3rSc0re, on 03 June 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

Man i cant wait for clan weapons and clan assaults to come out, its gonna make the game so fun without rr whooo. Also madcats, madcats everywhere.

Walking cockpits that will make the Catapult's head hitbox look like an Atlas's monocle.


Anyways, after looking up a bunch of Clan weapon C-Bill costs they appear to be identical to their IS counterparts. The difference is that Clan energy weapons and missiles tend to have a higher BV (ballistics are equal BV despite their huge advantages). Clan mechs just cost a lot more because of Omnitech, XL, FF, and/or Endo Steel being used on almost all of them.

Also, RnR only makes sense for lone wolves because otherwise the military organization/house/Clan/whatever would be paying the bills.