1
After a good amount of played time, talking to a lot of people and reading a lot of stuff, I came up with this summary of ideas to balance the game, make it more fun and give it a brighter future ;):
#1 Maps:
Rework most of the maps.
Besides all the fancy Mech Stuff and Tank-Like movement, MWO remains a FPS.
And weapons in a FPS are only balanced if the environment is balanced.
Weapons are usually designed to be either superior on a given range, resp. situation and terrible on another, or to deliver a reasonable allround performance, without giving special advantages.
That means:
If the area where the weapons are used is constantly favoring a certain playstyle (F.e. sniping), other weapons will look inferior.
Since the dawn of multiplayer shooters, combining slow movement-speed and open maps led to inflationary Sniper-Rifle usage and camping.
And what do we got in MWO?
Vast and open maps and giant, clunky targets.
If this would be any other scenario, except Battlemechs, everyone would be running around with Sniper-Rifles all day and no one would blame the weapon itself, but the maps and the mechanics.
But unfortunately most players seem to be so dazzled by the fact that they are piloting a giant robot, that they don't see that they are still playing a Shooter with a new livery.
I consider canyon to be the most balanced map right now, since the canyons offer alternate routes to close the distance to a camping Snipe team.
Most other maps offer either little to no cover and huge plains, turning you into a sitting duck or doesn't offer reasonable alternate attack-paths, forcing you to go Leeroy Jenkins or to camp where you are.
Additionally, pretty much every map offers spots which are ridiculously easy to defend and give you vision and a clear line of fire over more or less half the map.
Alpine in particular is one of the worst maps I've seen in a online shooter in a long time.
It isn't only way too open, rendering every brawler build pretty much useless, it is also highly favoring the team which spawns next to the retardedly easy to defend mountain which offers absolute map control.
While you might not see this problem in a lower ELO-Game or in a solo Drop, experienced Players and especially organized teams will just stack on PPCs and turn the game into a camp-fest, while not leaving you a single opportunity to engange them in a close combat.
The only way of dealing with them is to do the exact same.
Bottom Line:
As long as the maps are highly favoring long range combat and camping, you can balance the weapons' stats as long as you like, you will never make brawling or allround builds a valid choice over snipe builds, as long as the enemy team knows whats it's doing.
#2 Weapons
Lasers and Ballistics
While Lasers seem absolute fine to me and doesn't need to be touched at all right now, most Ballistics need way too much tonnage and - above all - slots to be up to par with the dominating PPCs.
Since the TT is still the basis for the Loadout-balancing, doubling the armor, but increasing the ammo by only 20-25% per ton creates a situation where you have to deal double the damage with only less than one quarter of additional ammunition.
That means:
If you rely on the TT's loadout-values in terms of balancing, which PGI is obviously doing, Ballistic Weapons are less weight- and slot-efficient than they are supposed to be.
While you can build a Laser- or PPC-build in the same way you could in the TT, you have to cut important options if you mount weapons which require sufficient amounts of ammo.
Therefore ammo has to be increased by about 50% per ton to a total of 175%.
Splash-Damage
Unguided splash-damage weapons (SRMs and LB-10X) are more than terrible in the current meta game. While not only being limited to a combat range which isn't efficient right now (as explained above), they are also in contrast to the need of focussing the damage on vital components.
If you spread your damage over the whole enemy Mech you might need 8 times more damage to get it killed.
As a result, they are inferior to nearly every other weapon with pinpoint-Accuracy even on their optimal range.
To make up for that they should have to deal way more damage than they are currently doing.
SRM's damage have to be increased to 2 and their bulletspeed has to be doubled, since they are also stupidly hard to hit as a cluster, compared to other weapons.
The LB-10X has to be made lighter and smaller, since regarding its limited fields of application, it is a way too big commitment for a side gun and way too constrained for a main weapon.
Another option would be to make it even heavier but to include an alternate fire-mode to switch between normal AC/10 ammunition and lead shot, giving it an interesting amount of versatility.
LRMs
Though LRMs are heavily discussed, I think that they are fine how they are right now. If boated, they can deliver a fair amount of damage, while being a big commitment and as a side gun, they offer a nice effect by screen-shaking the enemy Mech and giving the option of indirect fire.
With lower damage they would be completely useless again and by increasing their damage even more, they would be too strong considering how they work and how skillless they can be used.
At the current state of ECMs however, they are still pretty weak, but this will be discussed later on.
Let's move on to the current FotM:
PPCs
(ER) PPCs are currently the Kings of the Battlefield.
They leave a lot of room for other stuff or more PPCs, thanks to their low weight- and slot-costs, are ridiculously heat-efficient compared to Lasers and the fact that they are less likely to spread their damage and are retardedly easy to hit thanks to having the highest bulletspeed in the game.
Furthermore they cover the optimal combat range in this game by being superior from 800m to 90m.
Even if not fired in a "one-shot"-Alpha, they still deliver a hard impact and encourage sniping and camping, while moving in and out of cover.
Thanks to this playstyle and the open maps, Overheating isn't a big deal since you can pick your shots and move into cover if getting too hot:
While a high cadency, the result of a good heat-efficiency, comes mostly into play in a brawling situation, where you need to deal more DPS than your opponent in order to survive, you can easily prevent your enemy from closing in, by stacking PPCs, coordinating the team and abusing the maps as mentioned above.
Their only weakpoints are hitting fast and small targets and very close combats.
It is the #1 Sniping weapon in this game, by delivering the highest pinpoint-accuracy (by Bulletspeed) at one of the biggest impacts/shot. It takes very few room, considering its effectiveness and is also more than viable on encounters up to only 50m (which is basically facehugging).
This makes it the ultimate weapon considering how the gameplay of focussing single components, along with the open maps and the slowness of most of the targets is designed.
To make other weapons a viable choice again the damage has to be reduced to about 8, considering how many of them you are able to mount.
Also the Heat has to be increased by one and the minimum Range has to be set to an absolute value of about 180m, while delivering ZERO damage to closer targets.
To make up for that the maximum Range could be increased by 100.
Also the Bulletspeed has to be reduced by 500 to make hitting targets at least a little bit of a challenge, compared to any other weapon in the game.
This would turn this weapon into a commited Snipe-Weapon, instead of the jack-of-all-trades it is right now. Still superior on long range, but useless if caught off guard, like in ANY OTHER GAME.
Instead of reducing the damage, another idea would be the solution this guy posted:
(Pater Mors, Post #5)
http://mwomercs.com/...crazy-ppc-idea/
#3 Boating:
If weapons and maps would be balanced, boating wouldn't be a problem.
If I stack up on a single type of weapons, I stack their advantages, but also their disadvantages.
A good example is the LRM boat: While being strong on long range encounters, you are a helpless victim to everything closer than 180m. You can also be countered pretty easily by a sufficient amount of AMS or an ECM, rendering you pretty much useless.
Another example is the 2xAC/20 Jager: Though technically not being a "boat", it is a commitment to a single type of weapons. I know that there is much hate going on against that build, but from my experience it is in fact nothing more than a Noob-Basher.
While being very strong against unorganized teams, where everyone does what he wants and runs around where he likes to, you are usually able to move your Jager into its dreaded striking range.
Against teams who know how to abuse the maps, play together and focus their fire, you will have a very hard time with this loadout.
Since it is limited to an effective attack range of about 500m, where the shots are already very hard to hit in the right place, thanks to the slow Bulletspeed of 900, it will usually be shred to pieces without ever getting within 300m and below.
Boating Lasers on the other Hand is not an option for many light and medium Mechs, but an imperative: While having a very narrow tonnage limit, medium and small Lasers are the only way of achieving a useful amount of DPS. This comes at the price of a limited range and a high probability of spreading the damage.
On the other Hand, boating Large Lasers on bigger Mechs creates heat-intensive allround builds, which can be outplayed by torso-twisting, are hard to aim precicely and force the switch to chainfire in order to prevent overheating in a brawling situation, reducing the DPS and focussed damage a lot.
PPCs however can also be boatet heavily, thanks to their low weight- and slot-costs, as explained above.
Boating PPCs is not OP because boated PPCs are OP. It is OP because single PPCs are OP.
If the PPC would have sufficient drawbacks to make up for its advantages, boating would be the same sort of tradeoff like it is with any other weapon.
Currently you are able to deal the highest amount of focussed damage in the shortest possible time over the optimal range in this game.
As soon as this stops and reasonable drawbacks are added (as suggested above), boating PPCs will become a serious commitment to a special range and situation, as any other boat already is.
That means:
Boating is only a problem as long as stats and the gameplay are not delivering sufficient drawbacks to make up for a weapon's advantages.
#4 Alphas:
High Alphas are only a horrible threat, if all the weapons which are fired simultaneously have the same behavior:
As long as you fire f.e. 2 Lasers, 1 AC and 1 set of LRMs, the damage will most likely spread over the target, since the Bulletspeed and flight pattern of the projectiles differ and would require different aiming points in order to land in the same spot.
The newly implemented Heat-System, which punishes the simultaneous fireing of the exact same weapons, will not change most of the current problematics:
While fireing 4 PPCs at a time will now create a significant amount of additional Heat, firing 2 PPC and 2 ER PPCs won't.
Also 2xAC/20 or 2xGauss isn't affected.
A very easy solution to this problem, instead of complicating the game by this new stupid system, while achieving nearly nothing and ninja nerfing balanced light and medium builds, is to force a firing delay between multiple weapons in the game except Lasers and Missiles (for obvious reasons).
If multiple weapons are fired with a forced delay of 0.25 seconds by default (because the reactor cannot handle those energy spikes, blah, blah,...), components have to be hit sequentially instead of in one big blow. Thus firing 4 PPCs into the exact same spot would require 1 whole second of concentrated aiming.
If weapons would be mixed, f.e. an AC/5 with a PPC, the DPS would pretty much stay the same, because after one cycle was fired the different cooldowns will have adjusted.
Lasers and Rockets wouldn't be affected and could be added at any time to the firing cycle, given their cooldowns ready.
Additionally the game would look much better and be more fun to play, since Mechs would spit out a constant stream of bullets, rockets and lasers, instead of firing their whole load in one big blast, while walking around, doing nothing most of the time and waiting for their cooldowns to finish again.
#5 Modules and Gimmicks
While most of the modules and gimmicks are fine, two of them have to be reworked:
a) The Seismic
This module is the ultimate must-have, no matter which mech you play or which weapons you fit.
You see all enemy movement around you, which makes it pretty much impossible to get caught off guard.
As being considered as a legal "Wall-Hack" by many people, it is way too strong as it is right now.
The easiest way to tune this Module down, without rendering it useless, is to tweak the amount of information it delivers by not making every move visible but only check the position of enemy mechs in a fixed interval.
If you have watched the second Alien movie (which you should do right now, if you haven't!), a system similar to the Motion Trackers used there would be a fine solution.
F.e. every 10 seconds a circular pulse with your mech in its center, expanding over the range of 400m, which reveals the position of enemy Mechs around you for 1 or 2 seconds at the time the pulse reached them on the minimap.
Now you have to wait about 9 seconds to see again where they went. If you have missed a pulse, your bad, pay attention.
No more precise knowledge of every move, but still very useful. Problem solved.
B)ECM
Currently the ECM is also a must have for every team, since it delivers pretty much absolute protection against LRMs, rendering an AMS useless and encouraging camping.
It turns LRMs into direct fire weapons since you need to keep the targets tagged in order to make anything happen, which is not only killing the LRMs advantage of breaking entrenched positions, but also very hard to pull off.
The solution?
Pulses again!
Make the ECM send out a pulse in the same way as explained for the Seismic above, f.e. every 15 seconds.
As soon as the pulse reaches a friendly Mech, all targeting data of this Mech will be wiped and he has to be targeted again, like if he moved freshly into the line of sight.
LRMs have a given window of opportunity to be fired off, but are still hindered to develop their maximum effectiveness, since they require to be locked on again after a given interval.
Ta-dah! Problem solved.
#6 Balancing Mech-Usage:
Another big problem is the inflationary usage of Assault and Heavy Mechs.
I opened another thread with an idea to solve that problem and I don't want to flood the forums with reposts:
http://mwomercs.com/...w-sub-gamemode/
#7 Ease of use
There are some minor issues with this game which are just annoying or have to be worked around by macro-usage, though they are very easy to fix:
- Add check-boxes to the game options which activate an automatic rebuy of used consumables after each match, one for CBills, one for MC.
- Add a new toggle button to switch the firemode of Ultra ACs between "Safe Mode" and normal, so that players have the option of firing them only off cooldown. This can currently already be achieved by a macro.
- Give the Tag-Laser an on- and off-switch. Regarding how it works it is the most logical thing to do and it can also already be done by using a macro or by jamming coins into the keyboard.
- Tweak the visual(!) effect of the JJ-shake down, because it is annoying as hell.
#8 Minor Balancing:
- Add ER Variants of Small and Medium Lasers to give light and medium Mechs more diversity.
- Tweak the aiming penalty of the JJ-Shake down for light and medium Mechs as you promised.
- DO NOT implement 3rd Person view. The Cockpit View is one of the major features which makes this game stand out over other titles. Do not give that up.
- NEVER make any Laser have a higher HPS than a PPC!
- DO NOT implement a cone of fire for firing while moving! This will take a lot of dynamics from the fights and will mostly hurt light and medium Mechs. Being able to fire accurate while moving is ONE core feature which makes this game stand out and deliver action packed fights.
If tl;dr:
Go troll somewhere else.
At all the other guys:
Thx for reading.
I am German and English is not my native language. Keep that in mind before going full Grammar {Godwin's Law} on me. Thx.
Edited by Stat1cVoiD, 19 June 2013 - 04:27 PM.
