Chavette, on 12 June 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:
Prolouge:
What I name "dumbing down" or "holding hands" are these examples:
-Long ranged direct fire weapons and tactics are getting nerfed so cover is less needed. If brawlers can't 1v1 out in the open against them, nobody is brawling.
-LRMs are getting nerfed/buffed back and forth, and people only use it when its strong enough to not need guidance. If the LRM isn't viable soloing, people stop using it.
-I don't even want to bring up surprising and capping against HGN poppers as they aren't too good of an example because they had too little risk involved with a popping setup(they could brawl too well for being specialized), though I'll point out nerfing a piece of equipment to fix a mechs' OPness has a slew of side effects which I'm sure you're aware of now(2.5t assault jj-s sound like a better fix, since it will mess up their loadout or make em really slow but w/e).
The post:
People will always favor the play style that requires the least effort for the highest rewards.
This might be a shocker, but for the last two months brawling was almost as effective as ever, you just had to put a little more effort into it. Coordination, element of surprise, all that good stuff the average player have no idea even existed in mwo. And I don't really blame them, they don't really have a source on how to play the game outside from a tutorial for basic controls and monkeying what other pugs do on their same elo. How should they learn from that?
On the other hand, since we are talking about LoL alot, after 15 matches players are familiar with the current meta, and try pick a team accordingly for the highest chance of winning. Same with MMOrpg game parties. They didn't all figure it out themselves, they see it from the other players, teams, and then themselves gained the experience that it indeed works. It became part of the game culture, as most people want to win, and that specific setup has is the most effective.
Most naysayers argue it would force some cheese on all the game, and they couldn't play what they like. Its not the players' fault that some loadouts are abusively strong when used in proper coordination, its a simple game balance/design issue(ie. Ecm 3L some time ago), or poppers of the highest damaging tier.
How is PGI trying to form some game culture or teamwork incentive with no player brackets, featured livestreamers, 8v8 tournament support? They have all of these neat warfare gameplay levels planned, yet they are just letting people loose the same way a deathmatch only game would.
Instead, they just nerf everything in the world so Rambo Billybob can equip random weapons of his choice, hit W at the start of the game and have an equal chance of winning against every other play style in the game.
TLDR is prologue and the paragraph before the last one.
No. No No No No No No No. What you are suggesting is to take MWO towards being competitive, and that's legitimately as far from the spirit of Mechwarrior as you can possibly get. The entire point of a game set in the BattleTech Universe is to make you feel like you are in the Battletech Universe, not to allow the hardcore crowd to show off how awesome they are. The reason the game favors FOTM builds and Pubstomping right now is because it is legitimately impossible to do anything on your own, thanks to the ridiculously low level of power on smaller weapon systems. Small/Medium Lasers, SRMs of all kinds, MG's and AC/2's are all underpowered and the meta has shifted to High-Alpha builds because that's what larger weapons, such as PPC's, AC/20's, and Gauss Rifles are designed to do. The entire point of the weapon balance in Battletech is that larger weapons deal more damage per weapon, but less damage per ton with a longer maximum range than smaller weapons would have, with the exception of the Autocannon family which works in reverse, dealing way more damage per ton as the weapons get bigger but losing range at the same time. This would work fine if the smaller weapons were viable, because a Hunchback could go toe-to-toe with an Atlas at close range and have a chance at winning. Closed beta was actually more balanced in that respect, but the lack of heat penalties on alpha strikes caused those little guns to be too powerful and they got nerfed into oblivion. The result was that while smaller weapons still did huge damage, brawling still didn't work because you would get torn apart at long range and would not have enough armor to properly brawl once you got there. Once the alpha nerf happens, those weapons can be restored to about halfway between where they are and where they were and the player base will brawl again.
TL/DR:
Players will use complex builds if complex builds actually work. Fix the smaller weapons with alpha strikes nerfed, and complex builds will actually work. Therefore, fix smaller weapons and players will stop boating and start using varied weapon loadouts.
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