165 replies to this topic

[MavRCK]

The highest levels of gameplay are the key to good balance and the future of MWO.

It's like saying, high level mathematics espoused by Ph.D and Nobel Prizes winners is all ********... it's the 2+2=5 math used by ******, reject bums comprising 70% that's the important mathematics to mankind.

W. T. F.

PGI ignores the high echelon players at their peril - what's the point of getting good at this game when the better you become the more boring the game becomes? If players can only look forward to frustrating one-dimensional play, why improve, why invest into this game?

Depth is the key to the longterm viability of this game.

I remember hanging around the offices of Barking Dog - not far from PGI now - and listening to those developers struggle to find balance between weapon systems... only it didn't take them 3 months to change things which were obviously broken... maybe it's because counter-strike had players like me making it obvious...

OH WAIT, PGI HAS KAOS AND PARAGON ET AL. MAKING IT OBVIOUS.

LOL..

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

Make lights smaller and easier to kill but harder to hit. Also give us better mouse control and visual control so we CAN hit the little buggers more reliably. It will be more fun for all of us. I'm a light mech and Atlas pilot. And I would love to blast away at those little chickens from my towering death machine. Or as a light it would be nice to realistically run past a group of mechs and not expect my entire *** to be shot off.

Yes. Practically the way the game is set up, with the size of the mechs, this is the only thing that could happen, evasive maneuvers means stay out side of weapons range, hide behind buildings, avoid their lights, and hope they don't have PPC. I still get a fair kill but it shouldn't be SO easy to kill me. I'm supposed to be fast and maneuverable and legitimately hard to hit, not due to lag or anything. So rework the hitboxes and make the mechs the proper size would do a fair bit to help change the game for lights. AND mediums.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

Well who needs medium/light for scouting?Quickdraw doing ~100 kph and can get 2 ERPPC+some streaks with BAP for light hunting.Get two of them and rest Stalkers/Highlanders with gauss/PPC combo.There you have viable competitive team.

[Mercules]

3rdworld, on 02 July 2013 - 07:26 AM, said:

His point: Listen to NGNG, Ross says he sees a few PPC mechs but doesn't see them as a problem.

Last night, in a pug drop 1 team had 5 PPC stalkers. In 8s it is much worse, every mech not a light generally uses PPCs for their main damage.

Ross draws conclusions based on his experience, but his experience does not match reality.

So you can either balance the game based on lower ELO players, in which it may seem fairly balanced at the moment. Or you look at the higher levels and it is a complete mess.

You mean "Russ" as in Russ Bullock?

I would argue even LIGHTS should be carrying PPCs and in fact put it into practice... but what do I know? I don't play in 8-man so I can't possible know the game as well as them much less better. I don't face the same level of competition so can't have a valid and working idea of how the game plays. Maybe if I spent more time patting myself on the back for playing "competitive" MWO I could also get the names of some of the people involved in it wrong and other simple facts.

Here is a clue for you. It is a complete mess from the top to the bottom of Elo scores. Doesn't matter how you play you will run into massive amounts of PPCs and other pinpoint weapons like Gauss and AC/20s. It is the soup de jour of current MWO.

Still beta, it will change.

[NamuhRepus]

Straylight, on 25 June 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

I think part of OP's point is that competent Light and Medium pilots are rare, because taking that same competency level into a Heavy or Assault yields proportionately better performance.

That is to say, bigger 'mechs perform better, regardless of how skilled the pilot is. There's also a tipping point (right around 70 tons) where tonnage not only augments skill, but compensates for it. If I make a mistake in my Spider, I'm toast. I can post 300 damage, 3 kill matches, but I have to play nearly flawlessly in order to do so. In a good Heavy or Assault, I can be sloppy, slow to react, oblivious to my surroundings and generally act like a sleep-deprived lunatic and still pull four or five kills out of a match.

This isn't really due to inherent imbalances between mech types, either. The imbalance lies in the game's reward structure: the roles that Lights and fast Mediums excel at--spotting, reconnaissance, harassment, base capping, and so on--yield FAR fewer rewards than simply slugging it out with the other team. Bigger mechs are better at that, as they should be, but the game's overemphasis on this makes them proportionately more valuable than they should be.

Lights performing their intended role absolutely wins games. What it doesn't do, though, is pay well. What's worse, is almost all of the rewards that Lights are good at earning aren't individual rewards, but team rewards. A Raven that spends the entire game tagging targets, providing ECM coverage and sensor data, capturing resource nodes, and generally doing what a Raven is supposed to do makes 60-80K CB and a few hundred XP. The Cataphract that just rushes straight into the brawl makes everything the Raven does (because those rewards are all shared by the team) AND an additional 100K CB and 1000 XP for damage, components, kills and assists.


We'll see if CW and better gametypes changes this. As it stands, though, it IS a problem that needs to be addressed.

You get spotting points, which happen more often in lights then heavy and assults, though i agree caping and stuff should bring points too. Though i don't agree that a skilled player in a light means there even better in an assult, since its different play styles, different skill sets, i find, any way. I can honestly say i die more in an atlus then in a jenner, and get less assist kills, since it takes such a differernt mind set to accuratly play as those two mechs.

[DoRkZiLLaa]

DocBach, on 25 June 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

Light 'mechs have an edge over mediums for their smaller hit boxes and wonky damage registration. Mediums that move slower than 90kph are easily 1 shotted in the current assault 'Mech PPC meta.

P00k is very much right in his assessment.

My poor Cent is clocking in at 80kph. I'm definitely feeling it. Been the first death on my team a couple times the past few days, and when i scroll through the survivors and see that everyone has all ppc's and gauss rifles, it shows why.