60 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

again its flawed reasoning.

how is a bunch of medium mechs with ppcs any better than a bunch of heavies/assaults with ppcs? the game is still not going to be any fun with tonnage limits.

its ppcs and convergence that need fixing to make the game more fun.

[Splitpin]

No, disagree Khobai, ppc and convergence may be an issue, but weight/BV/class balance comes first, or should do. Lights or mediums with a ppc or two are not what people are complaining about, 3 or 4 Stalkers in a match with 6ppc each is. Without a balance of mechs we have no level playing field to even think about weapon balance. With a mech balance of some sort I think we may find weapon balance isn't too bad, not perfect but not too bad. It's a lack of mech balance that's allowed every Flavour Of The Month mech to dominate/be exploited and the devs end up like a dog chasing it's tail. If there'd been the old balance of 2,2,2,2 of each class maintained in the MM we'd not have seen 'exploiting' of everything from the GaussCat to the AC40 Jaeger and everything in between. Total lack of mech balance is at it's worst in 8 mans and part of the reason it's often hard to even get a match. Yet 8 mans would be the easiest place to actually implement one - I wish they would.

[Deathlike]

Splitpin, on 10 July 2013 - 09:42 PM, said:

No, disagree Khobai, ppc and convergence may be an issue, but weight/BV/class balance comes first, or should do. Lights or mediums with a ppc or two are not what people are complaining about, 3 or 4 Stalkers in a match with 6ppc each is. Without a balance of mechs we have no level playing field to even think about weapon balance. With a mech balance of some sort I think we may find weapon balance isn't too bad, not perfect but not too bad. It's a lack of mech balance that's allowed every Flavour Of The Month mech to dominate/be exploited and the devs end up like a dog chasing it's tail. If there'd been the old balance of 2,2,2,2 of each class maintained in the MM we'd not have seen 'exploiting' of everything from the GaussCat to the AC40 Jaeger and everything in between. Total lack of mech balance is at it's worst in 8 mans and part of the reason it's often hard to even get a match. Yet 8 mans would be the easiest place to actually implement one - I wish they would.

I honestly don't think there's enough mediums to go around. The ratio of heavies+assaults are probably at an all time high, with lights being added here and there... and then there's the mediums (which, from reports always seem to be running at lower ELO values for various reasons).

I also think incentives won't be enough to change that... redoing most medium mechs would have be a requirement (outside of just removing speed caps).

[Aoreias]

Seems like there are two seperate problems: 1) Heavy and Assault mechs are generally just better than lights/mediums. This is balanced in TT because of increased cost and dropship weight limitations. 2) PPCs/convergence are overpowered compared to other weapons, leading to a predominance of sniping and use of sniping platforms.

The problem with addressing 1 via dropship limits is that there's no way to put in dropship limits in PUGs unless you introduce queues, or do a MOBA-style mech selection.Queues *could* work, but it's a poor way to coerce players into playing lighter mechs. If you do a MOBA-style selection, what are people going to do who have 3 stalkers in a mechbay and no lights? Play a trial light? Trial mechs are *SO* bad as to make this comically unfeasible. MOBA-style selection also suffers from a time and unpleasantness overhead when it comes to choosing mechs. It's not a problem taking 2 minutes for champion selection in a half hour game, but spending 1 minute prepping for a 3-7 minute game is ridiculous.

Fix 1 by giving players a reason to play mediums more than heavies/assaults. You could increase speed, decrease hitbox size, introduce more game modes requiring more movement.

Fix 2 by increasing PPC heat, buffing SRMs, or any of the other numerous convergence suggestions.

[Khobai]

Lack of weapon balance is the primary reason for weight class imbalance. There is a direct correlation between a weapon being overpowered and the weight class that uses that weapon also being overpowered. When lasers were overpowered, the swayback was overpowered. When streaks/ecm were overpowered, ravens were overpowered. Likewise, now that PPCs are overpowered, heavy and assault mechs are overpowered. If all the weapons were balanced, then all the mechs that used those weapons, would also be much closer to being balanced. We were very close to achieving that balance last year, before PGI screwed everything up with ECM.

Tonnage limitations don't address the underlying problem though. It's just a bandaid for a problem that will continue to fester. If you want all weight classes to be equal, then weapon balance needs to be restored first, and convergence needs to be fixed so high damage alphastrikes are no longer the best option for destroying enemy mechs.

Also I agree the role of medium mechs needs to be strengthened a bit. Medium mechs need to go a speed that's in between light and heavy mechs. That's the only way medium mechs will ever be effective. Because right now a medium mech has 30% less tonnage than a heavy mech and only goes marginally faster which doesn't at all make up for the lack of firepower/armor.

And 2/2/2/2 makes for very boring games. It completely eliminates the need to scout the enemy team composition. Plus, if the game was balanced properly there would be no need to impose a tonnage limitation like that anyway. If lights and mediums are viable in their own right then people will play them without being forced.

Edited by Khobai, 10 July 2013 - 10:49 PM.

[TheFlyingScotsman]

Steel Claws, on 10 July 2013 - 06:45 PM, said:

Lets not go there.

I am fine with them balancing drop decks by weight as much as possible however.

We MUST go there. A lack of weight limitations is one of the core problems with balance right now. Completely free and open player limits results in certain chassis and weight tiers becoming unviable in the presence of others, especially since BT and associated stats are designed with most mechs present being mediums. Obviously, people should be able to play what they want, but the ugly truth of it is that if everyone can use assaults and heavies without any incentive to do otherwise, they wont do otherwise.

It's the obvious choice between a wall of armor and FP vs a smaller mech that requires careful attention to piloting and better use of less weaponry. Every single game is just a pile of assaults, one of which might break 400 and do something useful, but the rest of which just die around the 100 damage mark. It isn't that they are not good, it's that there is far too much firepower on the field, and players feel that they cannot survive outside a heavy/assault, because there are too many heavies and assaults. If limits and/or incentives to playing more balanced mechs and builds more often exists, this catch-22 will be greatly assuaged, and players will gravitate away from cheese/boat builds and weight stacking.

[Alymbic]

Trying to work out how many ppc's a team could fit into that weight bracket if they really tried.

I think its lots.

[Khobai]

Quote

A lack of weight limitations is one of the core problems with balance right now.

Yeah but its the wrong way to balance the game. You dont want people to pilot light mechs because the game forces them to. You want people to pilot light mechs because they WANT to. If light mechs were equal to assault mechs then people would play light mechs without having to be forced.

[Sug]

Khobai, on 10 July 2013 - 10:52 PM, said:

If light mechs were equal to assault mechs then people would play light mechs without having to be forced.

1 to 1 they are not equal but I'll take the equivalent tonnage in lights over an Atlas any day.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I have several PPC + Gauss Boat Medium Mechs... and I feel bad.

I think the Gauss/PPC Meta is due to the concept of "Fleeting Shots," and really the only way to counter it is to give the other, lighter ballistic weapons a little less heat and a burst-fire function that clumps damage into a short-enough burst for it to be used for fleeting shots.

Fleeting Shots are really the core of this "metagame," not just tonnage (in my opinion)

The PPC and Gauss combo works as a function of heat Efficiency + Damage Impulse over long range. It lets you take fleeting shots with high power. That's how you're "supposed" to do it... if you think about it, Long-Range DPS Brawling is fun, but tactically silly -> it exposes you to lots of weapons fire and you're tanking damage in between your volleys. A Hull-Down Alpha shooter is not tanking damage between shots, not taking any short-ranged fire, and he does not have to remain visible except for once every 4 seconds.

If the other Autocannons such as the AC/2, AC/5, and AC/10 had a bursting feature that let you take more effective and damaging fleeting shots, then you'd see more of them on the field. If the lasers had a shorter burn time, I'd use them more, too. Right now, though, you can't "pop" a target hard as it goes in-and-out of view for a fraction of a second with AC/2 or LLs, and those fleeting shots are a terrible thing to waste.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 10 July 2013 - 11:33 PM.

[Haradim]

While I can see weight limits working fine for arranged/lobby games (and fully expect they will be built into custom matches and CW), I cannot see it being consistent enough for the random matchmaker. Players looking for random games will expect all player slots to be filled for each team, and ideally a reasonable distrobution of mech classes, all ready to go in under 30 seconds. And they may not be willing to accept bizarre matchups the way someone opting-in via a lobby would (e.g., 4 Assaults vs. 12 Lights, which is an extreme but possible scenario).

The matchmaker is likely going to remain biased towards starting as many matches as possible with as many players as are available, as quickly as possible, which means keeping empty player slots to a minimum. Weight limits would thus likely be a lot like Elo: somewhat constrained, but quick to fall back into expanding the allowed criteria to make sure matches say more-or-less 8 vs 8 or 12 vs 12.

[Snowhawk]

Maybe this 3 things would help:

Give us a tonnage limit (assaults should be a rarely and useful unit... and not a standard unit for Assault Warrior Online)

Increase slightly the heat for Ppc's and Er-Ppc's (Even light mechs are running around with Er-Ppc's)

Improve the lousy matchmaker... (self-explanatory... lol... )

[Chrithu]

My suggestion to fix the high range + high alpha meta would be to increase the downsides of the pinpoint high range high damage weapons. In my view Gauss is ok because it is a glass cannon basically. But PPC's as it stands have still too little of a refire rate and too little heat buildup considering their damage potential over range in comparison to Large Lasers or AC 10s.

[Cybermech]

Your talking about 2 different subjects here and that is were your wrong.
Tonnage won't change the PPC fest at all.

Livewyr, on 10 July 2013 - 07:03 PM, said:

PPC spider, Jenner, cicada, blackjack hunchback, quickdraw, catapult, cataphract, Victor, awesome, highlander, stalker, atlas. What exactly is tonnage limit going to do?

That is not someone trolling.
That is someone pointing out the flaws in your logic.
What your talking about is lots of assaults = less fun and which I agree.
But I don't think tonnage is the problem, its having the "slow" mechs becoming not so slow when upgrades are unlocked.
This has made the assaults top dog alone.

Livewyr has pointed out that you can use PPC's to great effect on any weight class.
Raven 2x with 2x erppc is actually a lot more effective then people think.
Heat changes should help reduce the overall DPS of the weapon.
It should also make PPC's in close combat more problematic.
If you can use a weapon like a sniper rifle and a shotgun in any FPS that is a major issue.

[Khobai]

Quote

If you can use a weapon like a sniper rifle and a shotgun in any FPS that is a major issue.

Its only an issue if every other weapon is a pistol. Weapon balance is entirely relative. You can have weapon A be a sniper rifle and shotgun and weapon B be an assault rifle... and both weapons can still be 100% balanced with eachother.

In the case of ERPPCs though, theyre outright better than all other weapons in the game.

[Adridos]

• 450 Tons per Team maximum
  
• No more than 2 Assault Mechs per Team
  
• Only one mech per variant allowed per team (no 2 Jenner K, but a Jenner K and a Jenner D is allowed)
  
• Minimum of 12 players in a team (8 players + at least 4 reserve members)
  
• Teammembers must be registered per team by name
  
• Comsumables, modules and pilot skills are allowed and unrestricted
  
• Mechs must be completely stock (Ammunition, heatsink, weapon and armor placement included)
  
• Only stock mechs with tier 1 technology allowed.

This lineup makes for balanced and fun matches even in the current state of the game and while impossible to implement into normal matchmaking, at least the 8-mans should have the option to do it (you know, a pregame screen where you fill out the whole team until you match the rules and only then are you allowed to join the queue).</p>

[Lugh]

Victor Morson, on 10 July 2013 - 07:48 PM, said:

You are right though that less assaults = less abrupt deaths.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Many Heavies bring the same amount of firepower with slightly less armor.

Khobai, on 11 July 2013 - 03:04 AM, said:

Its only an issue if every other weapon is a pistol. Weapon balance is entirely relative. You can have weapon A be a sniper rifle and shotgun and weapon B be an assault rifle... and both weapons can still be 100% balanced with eachother.

In the case of ERPPCs though, theyre outright better than all other weapons in the game.

No they are not. The Gauss, The AC 20 and the UAC5 are all superior weapons to the ERPPC.

[Mxyl]

All they need to do is use class balancing at 1 to 1 ratio, which is kinda of what they use to do until the ELO fiasco, nothing like having 4 lights, 2 meds a Hvy and an Assault, going up against 8 assaults mechs, fun fun fun.....

The single biggest problem with MWO is balance which is a concept that has evaded PGI from day 1 and the trend continues....

[James Warren]

Mxyl, on 11 July 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

All they need to do is use class balancing at 1 to 1 ratio, which is kinda of what they use to do until the ELO fiasco, nothing like having 4 lights, 2 meds a Hvy and an Assault, going up against 8 assaults mechs, fun fun fun.....

Yeah, I did prefer it that way, although you still had matches where one team had 4 Awesomes and the other had 4 Atlas D-DCs (which were assault flavour of the month at the time). This is why weight balancing is ideally better than weight class balancing.

Did anyone say that weight balancing would fix PPCs? We know they are slowly being addressed. Its a different issue altogether.

We'll still see predominately assaults after PPC/alpha strike fixes because assaults will still pack the most firepower and boast the greatest K/D ratios.

And there'll still be people picketing the forums for the humble medium mech, as it marches solemnly towards extinction. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic but you get the picture.

All I want is a few different game modes that encourage different types of mechs and strategies.

[Adrienne Vorton]

OP:

You do realize that weight has nothing to do with the PPC overuse? every mech can - and indeed does alot at moment - carry at least 1 or more PPC´s (some variants not included)...

i see jenners, hunchies, phracts, stalkers, atlas´, even spiders with PPC´s... gauss is not a real issue anymore, and even heavy ballistic weapons are useable in alot of chassis across all weightclasses...

weightlimit would change alot, but for sure not the usefulness of certain weapontypes...