180 replies to this topic

[WarRats]

Don't get me wrong, I love going in the mechlab picking out new weapons and upgrading my speed. Trying out the new loadout. It should be really fun. But your opponent got to tweak his mech as well and he only plays to win. Everybody wants to win but not everyone wants to take the same rout.

The Problem is there are certain chasis and weapons that are better then the rest. You end up playing things that there are no good counters for. Like a lot of you, I am tired of running into PPC boats. To counter I would have to build the same way. I don't want to play the same way hence the fun level goes down. Makes me want to leave possibly fun game behind and go do seomthing else.

Why should I have to use the same thing as everyone else to try and win this game?

The Solution is less customization choices.

Now nobody is going to want to play the stock mech, but I do think all stock mechs should have a place in the game.

Right now they do not.

Each varient has its own fun play style but the problem nobody gets to experience it because of the few best loadouts for each mech.

I think all modifications should be standardised into refit choices.

I think every varient of a chassis should have at least 4 different refits possibly more.

All the refits should be designed around a realistic role for the varient. These refits are preset by the developers.

Start with two different field refits(Minor peformance tweak). One could lose a weapon and add armor. The other could be add some heat sinks. Or different main weapon something that makes it worth trying but not enough to completely throw off balence.

The other two refits should be factory(Major Role change or just overall upgrade). Use the lvl 2 tech(Double HS, Endo, ER, Streak, ECM) but limit it too the two possibly loadouots. They should still keep the flavor of the original varient. Or be geared towards a specfic role. These refits will cost the most to do.

Engine upgrades beyond the occasional XL will be mostly gone. The chasis determines the speed.

Maybe each faction could have their own refit of each varient that only a member of that faction can have access.

Why make these changes?

This will give every varient and chassis a reason to exist.

It will improve the gameplay.

It will encorage trying different chasis.

It will keep the game fun.

The Awesome should be THE ppc boat.

The Commando should be useful and able to harrass heavies.

The Spider should be the fastest and most manuverable mech.

The Dragon and Quickdraw should be THE fast heavies.

All lights should not have to move at 150 kph to be effective.

Heavy and Medium LRM mechs will be useful.

The Develepor will have more methods of balancing game play then just tweaking weapons.

Edited by WarRats, 20 June 2013 - 05:43 AM.

[Dock Steward]

Disagree. If heat and weapons were balanced, every mech would have a place on the field. Restricting customization is unnecessary if you can't build a broken mech with OP weapons because there are no OP weapons. Balance the heat/weapons, leave the mechlab alone. IMO

[WarRats]

There will always be OP weapons in the mechwarrior univerese. These are supposed to be rare. Since there is no way to limit the possible numbers of OP weapons the line has to be drawn at customization.

Edited by WarRats, 19 June 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[RG Notch]

As long as weapons aren't balanced you will never get variety. All you will get with less customization is more of whatever chassis is "best" for the meta at that point. But don't let that stop you from posting the 10,000th thread with the same silly idea. Balance weapons for variety.

[OneEyed Jack]

If you think that would balance anything, you are entirely delusional and have no understanding of the mindset from which power-gaming arises.

You could put any limits on the mech lab you wanted. You could limit it to this silly refit idea. You could even limit it to stock mechs only. THERE WOULD STILL BE SOMETHING THAT WAS CONSIDERED OPTIMAL, AND THE POWER-GAMERS WOULD FLOCK TO IT. You would not see any greater variety than you do now, and considerably less. Even if the game didn't become a ghost town (which I believe it would), the only people who you would be limiting would be the ones that either don't think of the power-gamer mindset, or those that deliberately choose to avoid it. Literally, the only limit you could possibly put in place that would balance it the way you want is if everyone played exactly the same mech, with no options.

Of course, all that is putting aside that such a drastic change has zero chance of happening this late in the process. Seriously, I am clueless why people keep posting this kind of stuff.

[Livewyr]

Limiting customization is a wonderful idea!

I want to see an even smaller variety of mechs on the field now, and I want to see the same 4 mechs/refits over and over.

[Foust]

Dock Steward, on 19 June 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Disagree. If heat and weapons were balanced, every mech would have a place on the field. Restricting customization is unnecessary if you can't build a broken mech with OP weapons because there are no OP weapons. Balance the heat/weapons, leave the mechlab alone. IMO

I don't think it is that simple. Weapons and heat are only part of the balance equation. If there was a single chassis that everyone used then you could balance weapons in that manner. That is not the case here.

It is the reason that the game is so weight heavy right now. It is simply the most optimal of the all the available options, given our current game modes.

[Acid Phase]

@ WarRats: I'm not going to bash your idea, because I also think the same. I made several threads over the same topic. Customization IS being abused by many gamers, but I can't blame them because PGI allows it to be that way. I frankly can't keep trying to beat this dead horse anymore because if they were to implement restrictions, it should have been done since the beginning. I'm done trying anymore. If you want to know what has been discussed over the same topic please read this thread that I have started a while ago.

[MaddMaxx]

Here is a question.

You have weapons with 20,15,10, 9, 6, 5, 2,1 damage respectively. Now you have a weapons platform that could only, for arguments sake, take only 4, max 2 of some, but 4 the same for others. Everyone knows which ones are which. Build!

Yup. Same result for most who wish to win. You must either neuter the platform, or the weapons. Neither is a desirable solution.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 19 June 2013 - 05:55 AM.

[Adridos]

Dock Steward, on 19 June 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Disagree. If heat and weapons were balanced, every mech would have a place on the field. Restricting customization is unnecessary if you can't build a broken mech with OP weapons because there are no OP weapons. Balance the heat/weapons, leave the mechlab alone. IMO

Actually, you can't balance weapons without restricting mechlab and you can't hope for a variety in mechlab without balancing the weapons themselves.

Trying either one without the other is foolish, my friend.

[WarRats]

Yes there would still be a few mechs that are better at destroying things then others.

But the game would be more role based because the refits are controlled by the developers.

There would be no more 4 ppc stalkers. 2 LRM 20s would be about as many missles as you would ever see on an LRM boat.

There would not be as big of difference between the top of the line and bottom of the barrel.

Therefor it means there would be more balence.

[Felbombling]

OneEyed Jack, on 19 June 2013 - 05:36 AM, said:

Of course, all that is putting aside that such a drastic change has zero chance of happening this late in the process. Seriously, I am clueless why people keep posting this kind of stuff.

Everyone is more or less getting to this point, but I think it is a strange mix of hope/frustration that fuels these posts. I give it about a 5% chance that any positive changes happen that will curb heavy weapon boating. I mean, Paul did a two week 'investigation' into the situation and came up with the heat penalty solution. Since Open Beta the player base/testers have been trumpeting all kinds of reasons for the current meta game before the meta turned into what it is, so I have very little faith that the development team sees any problem whatsoever with the current game.

[Dock Steward]

Adridos, on 19 June 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

Actually, you can't balance weapons without restricting mechlab and you can't hope for a variety in mechlab without balancing the weapons themselves.

Trying either one without the other is foolish, my friend.

You certainly can balance weapons without touching the mechlab. The main things I see people complaining about right now are the lack of effectiveness in Brawler weapons (LBx, SRM's, PL) and the boating of PPC's. There are LOTS of other complaints, but those 2 come up the most, I'd say.

Make Brawler weapons more effective - damage buff for the SRM's, IDK what to do with the LBx:( - and find a better balance for PPC's. The PPC issue is certainly a divisive one. I personally don't see a problem with boating as such, but the PPC could probably use a heat nerf.

Would making those changes balance the game? No. But it would be moving in the right direction.

Side note: If the ultimate goal of this game is to pit these IS mechs against Clan mechs, then balance is going to be FAR different when the Clans are introduced from what we think it should look like now. This is something few people seem to keep in mind.

[Target Rich]

Been playing MW titles for over 30 years now. The core of the FUN of Mecha is having a wide range of options in loadouts...so that you can have that mech perform a wide variety of roles.

This hardpoint restriction crap came as an overreaction by the MW4 development team to "boating" in MW3. They set up one of the absolutely most insanely STUPID hardpoint restriction setups ever seen...a setup that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the basic battletech that the game was supposedly based upon.

I find the current MWO hardpoint restrictions absolutely insanely STUPID. It requires you to spend just an amazing amount of time grinding multiple variations of a single mech just to get these stupid layouts functional. That is foundational to the World of Tanks economic system that has been ported into this game which is designed to fustrate the living heck out of the player...thus causing them to spend lots of hard cash buying premium accounts and lots of gold to get decent playability.

Just wait until they stick you fools with the World of Tanks repair and resupply cost modules. MWO is easy to grind right now...but with the WOT economic system...you will find your cbill earning eaten up by reloading ammunition and repair after each match...and if you do NOT win the match...and if the MWO team mirrors the WOT matching system...it is virtually impossible to gain much over a 50 percent win rate for PUG's as the matching engine penalizes the good players by matching them with newbies in the upper level tanks...or mechs in our MWO world.

Mech Warrior is based on chasing that "ultimate" loadout....the more options you make...ah la Chromehounds....the more players get addicted...the more teamwork happens as units work out those best loadouts....

Having hardpoint restricted "stock" type of mechs is good for the "tin foil hat" crowd like yourself...but the majority of casual players...who PAY for the game...want to have FUN...and hardpoints spoil that fun.!!

Oh...BTW...Battletech has always encouraged BOATING. And those boated mechs are vunerable to other boats....and on and on...hardpoints do not prevent boats...particularly as in the current iteration of MWO...they merely fustrate....

[tenderloving]

Dock Steward, on 19 June 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Disagree. If heat and weapons were balanced, every mech would have a place on the field. Restricting customization is unnecessary if you can't build a broken mech with OP weapons because there are no OP weapons. Balance the heat/weapons, leave the mechlab alone. IMO

If you balance a weapon to be effective in quantity of X, it becomes overpowered at some multiple of X. This is simple math. There is no way to balance weapons without restricting the number of duplicates that can be mounted or used simultaneously. This is irrefutable.

PGI recognized this by restricting boating of small weapons. For whatever reason they did not extend this logic to large weapons, and we are paying the price.

Edited by tenderloving, 19 June 2013 - 06:18 AM.

[Syllogy]

It's human nature to attempt to min/max.

You can go so far as to restrict mechs to stock loadouts, and you'd still have the same end result: A lot of people playing very few variants.

[Dock Steward]

tenderloving, on 19 June 2013 - 06:15 AM, said:

If you balance a weapon to be effective in quantity of X, it becomes overpowered at some multiple of X. This is simple math. There is no way to balance weapons without restricting the number of duplicates.

PGI recognized this by restricting boating of small weapons. For whatever reason they did not extend this logic to large weapons, and we are paying the price.

If weapon A is balanced, truly balanced, at quantity of 1 then it will remain balanced at quantity X. If weapon A is ever so slightly off balance at quantity of 1 then that lack of balance only becomes more apparent as quantity increases. You don't see one PPC as being off balance, but the fact that 6 PPC's are way off balance proves that even the 1 is.

Edited by Dock Steward, 19 June 2013 - 06:20 AM.

[Acid Phase]

Syllogy, on 19 June 2013 - 06:17 AM, said:

It's human nature to attempt to min/max.

You can go so far as to restrict mechs to stock loadouts, and you'd still have the same end result: A lot of people playing very few variants.

Taking that under consideration, I would've definately opted for a PvE. Much of what is going on day in and day out is not fun to the serious gamer in MWO. I enjoy variety. Many don't care for it. All you see is just one trick ponies out there. It's tedious and boring.

[IIIuminaughty]

OP just bad! nuff said *drops mic*

[tenderloving]

Dock Steward, on 19 June 2013 - 06:18 AM, said:

If weapon A is balanced, truly balanced, at quantity of 1 then it will remain balanced at quantity X. If weapon A is ever so slightly off balance at quantity of 1 then that lack of balance only becomes more apparent as quantity increases. You don't see one PPC as being off balance, but the fact that 6 PPC's are way off balance proves that even the 1 is.

Your statement makes no sense. If 100 PPCs are off balance that means that 1 PPC is off balance? Where do you draw the line?

Are you implying that 1 PPC is overpowered? How do you make 1 PPC strong without making 6 PPCs overpowered? You really can't.