I don't see this Tender. Most Mediums are to light to be Well armored for a rue brawl, to heavy to be a great scout, They are by definition the middle of the road size. I am not insulting the Mediums I have a love for the Treb-K, Hunch-SP4, Just about every Centurion, but being Medium they excel at nothing but support just about everything.
Against an opposing balanced force mediums would be the backbone. The problem is the current system does nothing to prevent a "backbone" of 5-7 assaults/heavies with the rest as lights. In a system with some sort of scarcity (either through tonnage or BV) then mediums would shine because you get the most general effectiveness per ton.
The current system has shifted the average weight of a mech at least 30 tons higher than it should be. This leaves the mediums in a dead zone where they are neither fast enough nor beefy enough to contend. This is not a fault of the mediums, it is a fault of the game design. The devs have given equal weight to every class, foolishly assuming that some sort of natural balance will evolve where every class has a role.
When the Victor comes out, you'll start seeing Cataphracts and Jags disappear. The tonnage of mechs is going to continue drifting upwards, and taking anything other than a light or an assault will nearly guarantee a tonnage mismatch.
And please don't respond with some role-playing ******** about how the 19th Corinthian Regulars from Tuckfardia run all Assaults. This is a balance discussion, and for the game to be balanced and every class of mech to be useful there have to be parameters in place.
You have a very rose-tinted view of how things went in Closed Beta. If you think there would be "friendly surrenders" now to protect your opponents' expensive rides you are smoking something.
Oh no, they protected the lowly commandos and the occasional jenner.
Even then, there were executions to be had. My very first match was an execution. I chased an equally built Jenner. I legged him, and then after several collisions I decided not to give chase since I kept riding at 99% heat. Then the Jenner came back with his friends. I gave a distress call. No one answered; the dead couldn't talk. They legged me and despite my return fire, they calmly came up to me, surrounded me, gave a " " and there I saw that Jenner I legged. I was then torn limb from limb but who cares; I freakin' loved it! In what other game does that happen? None.
Now you get "Fight! Get back there coward!" Or you get "Stupid lights, only morons run lights." Or as the guy in the medium despite having more damage than anyone else, "only noobs run mediums."
Another good one. 4 MG, 4 flamer Jagermech. First to die. Called a noob. Got to listen to how everyone is a terrible player, "worst team ever", "Koniving sucks."
Then you look at that score. We had two poptarts. An LRM boat. I don't think any of them did all that badly, but I don't think anyone had the right to complain about poor performance either.
Edit: Before you say "buffed," that was pre-buff. Date it's posted on my profile should be sufficient enough for that, as it was posted before the buffing patch for MGs and flamers.
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Of course you will Tender. Victors will be the new hotness. Now if they limit the spare HP this may only be a short lived switch. I personally loved the Victor for a few decades. So I will be happy to field one. Then again I also want an Orion in my bays! it is a classic Get'r Dun Build.
How would tonnage limits or class restrictions work? People would just sit in q longer?
Pgi has gave us no reason to play anything less then assaults especially in pug matches.
The only thing that is going to help is private matches where player leagues can pop up and force player to play different classes.
There are plenty of ways to make tonnage or class restrictions work, for a competent staff at least.
Has holes for sure, but it shows that just a little thinking outside the box can do wonders. I'm sure there are people on this very forum with the time and dedication to come up with a matchmaking system that would be 100x better than anything PGI ever comes up with.
No artificial limit on the number of assaults per match will be acceptable - players want to play the mech they want. The proper balance is to boost C-Bill and/or XP to mechs under assault class or under 100 tons by weight. i.e. Atlas - no bonus, Highlander 10% bonus, Hunchback 50% bonus, Commando 80% bonus. At that point those players who are playing to build up C-bills will find it more profitable to maybe run that cicada or dragon instead of a Stalker or DDC. This wouldn't have to necessarily be a new "bonus" line item, it could be used to modify "salvage" accordingly.
Tonnage matching could be interesting however if the MM used asymmetrical teams to implement. Team 1 might have 7 players with more tonnage, team 2 maybe 9 players but less total tonnage. At that point making the choice to run an assault means that you are going to be short 2 legs on the battlefield.
I'll be the first to admit that while MWO and the TT game share common background, their implementation and play styles are worlds apart. That said, the (by necessity) limited nature of engagements in MWO tend to skew the purposes of most chassis. Most engagements didn't take place on a garrison's doorstep, and for the most part you didn't get air-dropped in either. You walked. That in and of itself ruled heavies and assaults out of a lot of actions. (Think walking across alpine in an Atlas takes a while? Wait until your engagement zone is 150km away... the enemy has likely done its thing and gone by the time you get there.)
Additionally, to those who think that a medium should not absolutely eat an assault for lunch in the hypothetical 1 on 1 scenario... they are supposed to do just that. (Don't take my word for it, Sarna even says so. It takes a little driving, but all things being equal, a medium can reliably put down a heavy or an assault.) Assaults specifically need supporting units to protect them. Plus, assaults aren't simply expensive in upkeep... they were also just plain old rare due to small production runs. This limits spare parts availability, unlike the mass-production runs of lights and mediums.
Most of this means very little in MWO currently. Heavies and Assaults have greater-than-designed mobility (twist range/speed), and mediums probably have more limited mobility than they should. Rectifying this might not SOLVE the problem, but it would squeeze some of the toothpaste back down into the bottom of the proverbial tube before it hemorrhages out of the end and is lost forever.
I will admit, though, that I am biased towards lights and mediums. My opinions should be taken with that caveat in mind.
I (and many others) will be for the forum warriors mechwarrior deserves, not the forum warriors PGI wants.
just so we are on the same page, If i am dropping against the Davion Assault Guards as my Kurita Pilot, I will expect them to be 70% Assault/Heavy, 25% Mediums and 5% Lights. They are an Assault RCT. They are THE Assaul RCT of the House. That isn't fluff it is game design.
just so we are on the same page, If i am dropping against the Davion Assault Guards as my Kurita Pilot, I will expect them to be 70% Assault/Heavy, 25% Mediums and 5% Lights. They are an Assault RCT. They are THE Assaul RCT of the House. That isn't fluff it is game design.
Yeah.
But that RCT wont be around EVERY FREAKIN PART OF THE COMBAT AREA ALONG THE WHOLE FRONT
Yeah.
But that RCT wont be around EVERY FREAKIN PART OF THE COMBAT AREA ALONG THE WHOLE FRONT
Absolutely true! But this is where players and Lore have to work together. Those of us who get into "Canon" units need to play them close to how they are written. I would expect to see 0 Assaults in the Davion Light Guard RCT and maybe 5% Heavies if they are fast enough.
Absolutely true! But this is where players and Lore have to work together. Those of us who get into "Canon" units need to play them close to how they are written. I would expect to see 0 Assaults in the Davion Light Guard RCT and maybe 5% Heavies if they are fast enough.
I have seen you long enough on theese boards to know that you do not believe in this.
Well played nonetheless.
Actually the issue was frequent repair-free farming for minimum amounts of cbills. Make the farming aspect completely pointless with the forced repair and rearm, and the farming aspect is completely gone. Also in lore lights and mediums were the way most things went due to how expensive heavier things were. If you can play assaults well in non-boating builds it was easy to make in excess of 700,000 cbills with a threatening repair bill of over 200,000 minimum should you perish. If you boated and super-upgraded everything but perished you'd come out of the match losing money. This made it the "Thinking Person's Shooter" it was advertised to be; teamwork, coordination, tactics, communication, everything mattered. Nothing rode on the 'poptart' to win the match for everyone.
Heck, if you ran a boating build such as 4 ER PPCs, well you'd have to win or you'd break the bank. Typically you didn't win as a boater. If you were seen boating, team members ACTUALLY offered to protect you as you were both taking a HUGE risk to help the team, and because if they helped you, they also helped themselves.
There's also a reason most trial builds have between 1 and 2 tons of ammo for each weapon. In lore, that kept them cheap and affordable. Otherwise if they were beefed up and lost, it'd be a huge blow to the military budget.
Right now we have missions with 7 assaults and 1 light with the ever so great weight matching of the new ELO substituting half of those assaults with heavies, 2 lights and 2 mediums.
In what way is that fair?
Matches went very different back then, and quite friendly. Surrenders were accepted against impossible odds. Captures paid enough that no one complained when it happened. In fact they paid more than total annihilation. One or two people deliberately stayed back or were assigned to defend bases. After all, base defense was ideal for newer players as damages were light, it taught aiming, and gave them a clear cut goal. Tactics were extremely important. All in all MWO was a better game during repair and rearm.
A min/max build at the time was defined as having a full array of weapons with 2 to 3 tons of ammo per weapon, much like a trial build. Minimum cost, maximum output. Try a blackjack. That was a fairly typical rig with AC/5s instead.
This is me in an AC/2, AC/5, 4 medium laser, SRM-6, LRM-10 Atlas with Basics only and a standard 300 engine. I come out with 6 kills. I carry 1 to 2 tons of ammunition per weapon. Double-heatsinks but of course. Welcome to repair and rearm's min/max build. Btw, I was 3 tons short in armor 90 tons of equipment, just for the lols. Recorded by Lordred for Exterior view goodness. This is against multiple current-day cheesebuilds with the exception of a multi-PPC rig and/or LRM boat, with a failing team and a commando following me more as a camera than a fighter, so we even had the team disadvantage.
It doesn't take much to win.
This was another economy friendly min/max build when the stalkers came out. Two SRM-2s, 2 LPLs only. This was when LPLs did the heat of modern day ER PPCs, and quite clearly I had to get within range. This happens to be my very first build, NO BASICS. Multiple Atlases as enemies. Oh, and don't forget my first Stalker was the "inferior" 3H.
Upcoming is a fully in-game training system with a free cash dump to get your first mech, thereby bypassing the whole trial system. It's supposed to teach you combat, even show you third person during training so you know what it means when they say you are a "walking tank with a turreted-torso." It's supposed to walk you through throttle decay on and off, armlock on and off, targeting, everything people had to learn the hard way the old way.
The system works just fine in world of tanks (though I hate that game and its ridiculous learning curve). You can't run if you don't repair the tank and rearm it. Though you could bring another tank just fine. I don't see why it can't work here if implemented in such a way it can't be exploited.
How do we overcome the new player, fresh out of cadet Camp and his ONLY Mech that gets wrecked and he has yet to bank funds to repair? Force him back into Trials until such time he gets a second "real" Match and hope they survive at least?
Something like this is probably the best way to fix it. Nobody is forced to do anything, but players are nudged in a certain direction.
Many other games give xp/credit boosts to encourage players to spread out their choices. Maybe the payouts could swing from 125% to 90% depending on the class you are attempting to run.
Worst case scenario, offer free repairs when the mechwarrior's cash goes negative or remedial training that'll pay out a sum that will push the player back up to a positive number when performing poorly but clearly trying, in order to keep them on their feet. Though except in terrible connections, I have yet to see anyone perform that badly.
A Welfare system. Genius. Why not a Tax on those that have to be distributed amongst those who don't, to assure ample cannon fodder for those who can.
I have been playing MWO since it came out of closed beta. I don't get on the forums for the very reasons I see here. A lot of people (not everyone) whining that there are to many of this or to many LRM boats, etc, etc, This game still has balance. There is counter for every mech and every build out there that I have seen. If anything, I think there are to many lights. Assaults and Heavies are the easiest to counter especially those LRM boats, they melt like butter up close. The biggest thing I have seen over the past couple months is a lot of players have very very poor marksmanship. Last night appeared especially worse as I took out 4 mechs and got hit maybe 3 or times, minus the missle hits.
How do we overcome the new player, fresh out of cadet Camp and his ONLY Mech that gets wrecked and he has yet to bank funds to repair? Force him back into Trials until such time he gets a second "real" Match and hope they survive at least?
Trial system ends in July. No more trial mechs. Ever.
You get a full training tidbit and 8 mil cbills handed to you at the door. "Here ya go, buy your mech and have fun." Could even do a 25 matches free repair and rearm tidbit while they learn in actual matches in the low-end of the ELO spectrum.
I have seen you long enough on theese boards to know that you do not believe in this.
Well played nonetheless.
On the contrary. I expect the Canon units to heed the Canon unit design. You have never read about me complaining about the MM mismatches either. I am on record saying that we have to be ready to play v the total mismatch, cause in combat it happens, in Canon it happens, and when the Clans arrive with Light Mechs that are 25% faster than our Lights with better armor protection and more powerful weapons, we need to ready for the devastation that comes with them.
I will say I am not a proponent of us having access to all the Mechs. Some of them are universal, but not many Houses have Catapults or Spiders or Jenners. So some of the Mech choices should be House specific or house variant only, unless "captured" in combat. No I am not suggesting players losing their ride. But the possibility of the 5th Alliance Guards getting a copy of say My AC20 Jager if I fall on the field and Maxx's team is victorious over us. Now what they do with it after that is up to them.
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Joseph Mallan, on 04 June 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:
" and there I saw that Jenner I legged. I was then torn limb from limb but who cares; I freakin' loved it! In what other game does that happen? None.
