1084 replies to this topic

[Rubidiy]

arghmace, on 12 July 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

I really do not understand this talk of people supporting or opposing changes based on what they play. Seriously, are there really players that only play PPC boats or LRM boats or pop tarts?

you're very lucky rhen. Or you just don't remember them. I definitely know a lot of player groups, who do nothing but ppc boating. Their only reasoning is "we want to win. We don't care". Their real reasoning is that they just cann't plat anything else. So my usual experience of playing MWo now is facing a lot of PPC Stalkers in my Blackjack or Quickdraw. So it's ok to me to take a Highlander or Stalker and to kick their butts, but this is what happened during last 12v12 tests. There were crowds of PPC assaults...
I can play that, but I cann't call it a Mechwarrior game.

[Aim64C]

Tarzilman, on 12 July 2013 - 07:40 AM, said:

I see that point, but life's no bowl of cherries. Losing is part of it. Whining however definetly is NOT fun!

I have not done much personalization to my account, here, but I run a signature in some other portions:

"The Queen must be served, Alice. The Queen, in all her guises, must always be served." - Caterpillar; "Alice, Madness Returns."

http://explorable.co...ueen-hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia....%27s_Hypothesis

If the Clans had a God - the Red Queen would be what created Kerenski.

I serve at the side of the Red Queen. My blood line will take yours as bondsmen.

Those who are not 'in it to win' will become the oil that fuels the descendants of the ambitious.

Quote

Belongs to the kind I (personaly) lose a game. If it was a good fight and my team didn't get slaughtered in a few minutes, then yeah, losing is also fun for me like winning! Als I want is a good (balanced) fight!

I have fun killing people and watching and learning from how others kill (or fail at it).

This isn't boxing or some watered down form of competitive martial arts. We drop into the boxes to kill each other and enjoy the rending of metal.

I'm not going to be a {Richard Cameron} about it and say: "ggclose" when you get roflstomped by my team. But don't expect people to respond well to "oh, we're just here to have fun."

That's what the 8-flamer blackjack build of mine is for. When I just want to "have fun."

I tried doing that with the 8 small pulse laser blackjack - but that turned out to be too damned effective at slaughtering people to just goof around and make noise with.

Then there was the 2x AC2 K2. That was cute.

[MadTulip]

this boating penality might be a short term solution where code is done yet, but i believe it can not be a long term solution.

best thing imo would be to allow each single hardpoint only to equip a certain range of say energy weapons. this would be a way to constrain boating, allow the 3 ppc awesome AND put more variety in mech desings meaning you can sell more of them and bring out even more which are still different. they would be closer to canon but still highly modable (highly in terms of someone who is used to using the "as is by canon" only). you could also add a constraints for all hardpoints on a given chassis (it has 6 E slots where only 3 of them can be of type PPC or ERPPC). we cant stay with the current hardpoint system forever as just new mechs will not be any different anymore. i would start working on a concept and maybe also discuss it in the public. i think its not necessary to put a lot of new constrains when you introduce this system. i would just over time pick out examples which are not balanced in the current meta and thus have a finer more mech variant specific screw to nerf a single mech chassis or groups of similar chassis or builds.

i guess "i bought this mech in this configuration and payed for it so it has to stay that way" might be an argument from the community, but by changing global weapon stats the chassis also dont stay the same. its realy no difference but just allows for more finetuning which will be necessary at some point.

someone said that the new system introduces 2 more variables which are to be balanced. i also think its not wise to try to solve that on a global scale. it would be more usefull to solve it on a per mech chassis scale. the hardpoint idea would do this. also the current concept could do it, but you would need to write one for each single mech variant. imo the hardpoint system would be more effective, easier to understand and would not introduce new variables.

Edited by MadTulip, 12 July 2013 - 08:23 AM.

[John MatriX82]

MadTulip, this is called hardpoint restriction.

With this current heat scale management through penalties, also certain stock builds are gone (AWS 9M, and 8Q) and not only those.

Or at least, they could think about introducing quirks also for the weaponry, allowing bonuses for each specific variant (as above, 8Q won't incurr in any heat penalty when equipping 3 PPCs, or 9M when equipping 3 ER PPCs or even with a lower heat production) this to outbalance each chassis and variant. With a move like this some chassis could become seen in a new light or at least be more used/useful.

Edited by John MatriX82, 12 July 2013 - 08:20 AM.

[Tarzilman]

Aim64C, on 12 July 2013 - 08:09 AM, said:

I have not done much personalization to my account, here, but I run a signature in some other portions:

"The Queen must be served, Alice. The Queen, in all her guises, must always be served." - Caterpillar; "Alice, Madness Returns."

http://explorable.co...ueen-hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia....%27s_Hypothesis

If the Clans had a God - the Red Queen would be what created Kerenski.

I serve at the side of the Red Queen. My blood line will take yours as bondsmen.

Those who are not 'in it to win' will become the oil that fuels the descendants of the ambitious.



I have fun killing people and watching and learning from how others kill (or fail at it).

This isn't boxing or some watered down form of competitive martial arts. We drop into the boxes to kill each other and enjoy the rending of metal.

I'm not going to be a {Richard Cameron} about it and say: "ggclose" when you get roflstomped by my team. But don't expect people to respond well to "oh, we're just here to have fun."

That's what the 8-flamer blackjack build of mine is for. When I just want to "have fun."

I tried doing that with the 8 small pulse laser blackjack - but that turned out to be too damned effective at slaughtering people to just goof around and make noise with.

Then there was the 2x AC2 K2. That was cute.

Uhm, yeah. Ha ha, nice dude. Maybe, you forgot, this is a game?

Edited by Tarzilman, 12 July 2013 - 08:24 AM.

[Wizard Steve]

Looks like it's time to dust of the old A1 again.

<sigh>

And I thought they were trying to discourage boating.

[Deathlike]

Rubidiy, on 12 July 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

you're very lucky rhen. Or you just don't remember them. I definitely know a lot of player groups, who do nothing but ppc boating. Their only reasoning is "we want to win. We don't care". Their real reasoning is that they just cann't plat anything else. So my usual experience of playing MWo now is facing a lot of PPC Stalkers in my Blackjack or Quickdraw. So it's ok to me to take a Highlander or Stalker and to kick their butts, but this is what happened during last 12v12 tests. There were crowds of PPC assaults...
I can play that, but I cann't call it a Mechwarrior game.

In my time using a BJ and QD.. I used PPCs. Believe it or not, they both excel at using them.

That doesn't mean it's great for the meta.

Edited by Deathlike, 12 July 2013 - 08:33 AM.

[Jakob Knight]

MadTulip, on 12 July 2013 - 08:11 AM, said:

this boating penality might be a short term solution where code is done yet, but i believe it can not be a long term solution.

best thing imo would be to allow each single hardpoint only to equip a certain range of say energy weapons. this would be a way to constrain boating, allow the 3 ppc awesom AND put more variety in mech desings meaning you can sell more of them and bring out even more which are still different. we cant stay with the current hardpoint system forever as just new mechs will not be any different anymore. i would start working on a concept and maybe also discuss it in the public.

someone said that the new system introduces 2 more variables which are to be balanced. i also think its not wise to try to solve that on a global scale. it would be more usefull to solve it on a per mech chassis scale. the hardpoint idea would do this. also the current concept could do it, but you would need to write one for each single mech variant. imo the hardpoint system would be more effective, easier to understand and would not introduce new variables.

Would you say that making the DRG-1N hardpoints such that it's arm could only carry a single AC/5, AC/2, or Machine Gun, the Torso missile launcher an LRM10 or LRM5, and the arm and torso were limited to either a single Medium Laser, Small Laser, or Flamer each would improve the number of times you would see people use this mech? Because this is what you are advocating at it's core, and the flaw in the argument that limitation enhances diversity.

Limitation, by definition, opposes diversity because it limits what you can do. Thus, it channels people into specific niches and encourages conformity. If you want diversity, you -remove- limitation, not increase it. Having the only limitation on that DRG-1N be what its weight and critical spaces allow would have many, many different versions of the Dragon on the battlefield, rather than it being discarded because the limitations make it undesirable and too restricted to use.

Ultimately, even if we instituted a full removal of all customization, players would still use the battlemechs that offer the most of what they want, and this would simply mean only seeing many of one or two mech models that offer that more than others. You would see only Atlas', Catapults, Jagermechs, Jenners, and Spiders on the battlefields, with everything else discarded. The only way to prevent players from gravitating to whatever mech they felt offered the best of what they wanted would be to remove the choice of mech they piloted from them altogether.

This is why I oppose this idea. It does not work.

[jakucha]

Kaldor, on 12 July 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

I still think PPCs need to go back to 10 and 15. Honestly, leaving them at current heat still makes them very powerful, and will not really change anything. 2 PPCs and a gauss will still be a great build under this system and will still rule the day.

The thing about the Gauss is it has many more downsides than the PPC despite having more range and damage. The Gauss rifle weighs over twice as much as PPC, takes over twice as many slots, takes ammo, has much less HP, and has a chance to blow up of course. Combine all that with the fact that the Gauss rifle is considerably slower than the PPC and you get a very reduced pinpoint alpha ability at range unless you're hitting a non-moving target, in which case even lasers would do pinpoint.

I doubt the new heat scale is meant to fix all the current meta problems, and I'd rather test it on the test server before jumping to conclusions at any rate.

Edited by jakucha, 12 July 2013 - 08:38 AM.

[Aim64C]

Rubidiy, on 12 July 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

you're very lucky rhen. Or you just don't remember them. I definitely know a lot of player groups, who do nothing but ppc boating. Their only reasoning is &quot;we want to win. We don't care&quot;. Their real reasoning is that they just cann't plat anything else. So my usual experience of playing MWo now is facing a lot of PPC Stalkers in my Blackjack or Quickdraw. So it's ok to me to take a Highlander or Stalker and to kick their butts, but this is what happened during last 12v12 tests. There were crowds of PPC assaults...
I can play that, but I cann't call it a Mechwarrior game.

I see a lot of PPCs flying around in almost every match. There's a few who get creative and have a 4 UAC5 phract or something. I think a lot of the people I play with are the ones who don't care to buy a specific mech 'to be competitive' - but are more than willing to go along with weapon metas.

I keep playing with different weapons because it's boring as sin unless you're playing as a light, screaming into the fray of a battle with your hair on fire and lasers blazing.

The dual AC5 blackjack is a fun little deal. Depending upon who I drop against - it's surprisingly effective. I've trumped our LRM boats on a few occasions with it. It's powerful enough to matter but just light enough that a lot of people seem to ignore it until it's too late. "Ah, I got hit with something... oh, it wasn't a 4 PPC alpha, my torso is still intact. I'll keep shooting this guy over... where did my torso go?"

The 6 medium pulse laser BlackJack is also quite fun. You thought the AC40 Jaeger was scary? Take four points off of that alpha, remove ammunition restrictions... oh, and it's coming at you at 110+ kph.

I've actually found that build to be the bane of light mechs. If it can't core them, it can usually leg them in short order - and death follows before the streak-spammers can really get very far along in the auto-core process.

It's a bit risky to take against heavier opponents. In that role, it tends to work best to hang along a flank and then hit someone to tries to flank or who tries to break contact from your brawlers (where you make sure that pesky red armor and the internals beneath it go away).

It doesn't change the fact that I'll occasionally be insta-killed by a high-alpha PPC volley or something - but I think I'm relatively high enough in the ELO stratification that a lot of people are very proficient in what they do (... at least I seem to be dropped against competent opponents more often than not... I wish the same could be so confidently said about my team...), but either refuse to subscribe to the ultra-competitive PPC meta or who try, but are just 'okay' at it, as a lot of the high-alpha PPC and gauss+ppc builds that tend to play along with us are just not as good/accurate as the rest of us are with more reasonable 2 PPC builds and the like.

I know some of the people I run against would be absolutely unfair in a 4+PPC (or 3PPC+gauss) stalker. A lot of those who do play with those builds amongst the teams I tend to drop with tend to under-perform compared to what the design is capable of and the relative piloting/aiming skill of the rest of the players.

[Mokou]

Yep, now my AWS with only 3xERPPC have HIGH (30) alpha.
But HM with 2xERPPC+GAUSS have not high (35) alpha...
Thx PGI... (actualy i need some tests with this new system, but i have bad feelings 'bout this).

Edited by Mokou, 12 July 2013 - 08:41 AM.

[East Indy]

Two facts of life, PGI:

1) BattleTech's appeal lies in slower-paced, give-and-take combat
2) Your own game's longevity (micro-trans revenue) depends on 'Mech uniqueness

So you need to fix the following:

1) Players firing as much crap as they can at once, usually at the same pinpoint
2) Players using the "open ended" Mechlab to paradoxically make only a handful of builds to accomplish the latter

Please, figure it out in time.

[Master Q]

Every time we talk convergence we get some nincompoops talking about "OMG YOU WANT TO MAKE THE FIRING INTO A RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR."

These are people whose internal processors are operating on 4-bit logic in a 64-bit world.

Let's explain convergence simply:

Perfect convergence: Everything hits a crosshair. Put the + on a target, all weapons go there. This is THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with MWO right now. Perfect convergence is what makes alpha-strikes with the ballistic weapons so deadly.

Now let's take that away. Make the weapons fire relative to their crosshair.

Put an Ac20 in left and right sides of the Jager. Go ahead. Fire and the o's now represent the actual hit spots. They go there EVERY TIME. There is no "random number generator." They just spread properly, e.g. they do not automagically converge.

o + o

Put that on a mech with the crosshair near the center. Congrats, you hit the LT and the RA, or vice versa. Want to plant each AC in the CT? LINE THE SHOT UP FOR EACH ONE AND FIRE THEM INDIVIDUALLY.

Presto. Balance to the game, restored.

And no random number generator involved.

Chance that PGI will listen to this? None. They need a quick rundown in First-Order Optimal strategies and why they are bad for game design. Perfect Convergence is what's creating all the FOOs that are killing this game.

[BlueSanta]

FuzzyLog1c, on 11 July 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

I love how PGI's poll effectively forces us to declare that either "I'm impatient and myopic" or "I trust PGI to balance the game in a timely and effective manner."

How about the fact that they're asking us about our opinion through a poll, when there have been player-created polls about third-person that they have totally dismissed?

[Jakob Knight]

East Indy, on 12 July 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

Two facts of life, PGI:

1) BattleTech's appeal lies in slower-paced, give-and-take combat
2) Your own game's longevity (micro-trans revenue) depends on 'Mech uniqueness

So you need to fix the following:

1) Players firing as much crap as they can at once, usually at the same pinpoint
2) Players using the "open ended" Mechlab to paradoxically make only a handful of builds to accomplish the latter

Please, figure it out in time.

I dunno. The appeal of Battletech for me was always figuring out how to counter my opponents' tactics and strategies and how quickly I could eliminate the enemy/accomplish my mission with the lowest losses on my own side. Slower, give-and-take combat was the hallmark of unimaginative jocks who thought it was all about lining up and slugging it out until the last mech dropped.

And calling the mechlab 'open ended' is a bit of a joke, if you've ever seen true mech customization. It is very restrictive at the moment, and if anything needs to be opened up more. Quite the opposite, I think the ability of players to customize their mechs to a wider extent than just being stuck to the baseline models is a strength of MWO, not something to be 'fixed'.

The problem is with the missions in MWO (kill all the enemy, or capture a flag only), which promote limited configurations, not the mechs or weapons.

[Grandmaster Ramrod]

It seems to me the wrong approach has been taken to achieve reduced alpha strikes.

You're punishing players for doing something rather than giving good reasons to do something else.

Negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement.

Make it so it's actually an attractive prospect to mix up the weapon systems, chain fire etc rather than outright punishing those who don't.

You need to let people alpha as much as they want but provide solid reasons for taking other weapons.


Ain't that good with words, probably not getting my point across as well as I'd like; basically don't punish stuff you don't want to see, rather reward stuff you do want!

[Aim64C]

Tarzilman, on 12 July 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Uhm, yeah. Ha ha, nice dude. Maybe, you forgot, this is a game?

That just means the penalty of failure is not death. Thus, one has the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.

Why you would get enjoyment out of a shooter where you are not killing things is beyond me.

You were the kid who went to a steak house with his parents and ordered the grilled cheese all the time, weren't you?

Jakob Knight, on 12 July 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

Would you say that making the DRG-1N hardpoints such that it's arm could only carry a single AC/5, AC/2, or Machine Gun, the Torso missile launcher an LRM10 or LRM5, and the arm and torso were limited to either a single Medium Laser, Small Laser, or Flamer each would improve the number of times you would see people use this mech? Because this is what you are advocating at it's core, and the flaw in the argument that limitation enhances diversity.

Limitation, by definition, opposes diversity because it limits what you can do. Thus, it channels people into specific niches and encourages conformity. If you want diversity, you -remove- limitation, not increase it. Having the only limitation on that DRG-1N be what its weight and critical spaces allow would have many, many different versions of the Dragon on the battlefield, rather than it being discarded because the limitations make it undesirable and too restricted to use.

Ultimately, even if we instituted a full removal of all customization, players would still use the battlemechs that offer the most of what they want, and this would simply mean only seeing many of one or two mech models that offer that more than others. You would see only Atlas', Catapults, Jagermechs, Jenners, and Spiders on the battlefields, with everything else discarded. The only way to prevent players from gravitating to whatever mech they felt offered the best of what they wanted would be to remove the choice of mech they piloted from them altogether.

This is why I oppose this idea. It does not work.

MechWarrior 3 is an interesting example of what happens when you don't embrace restriction.

MechWarrior 4, I believe, had it the most correct in terms of balancing restriction and customization. It wasn't perfect - but many of the chassis had a personality that allowed you to play and experiment with it while keeping it from abusing the weapons that were more challenging to balance within a world of limitless customization.

The reason the current system is so broken is because 2 medium lasers can become 2PPCs (and, arguably, should, depending upon what mech you're using and what your play style is), while a PPC cannot become 2 or 3 medium lasers.

Drawing inspiration from Mech4 with a bit of ingenuity and common sense, one can enable you to put a few medium lasers in the arms of the K2 while preserving the distinctiveness of mechs like the Nova and Super Nova (I can only imagine the PPC spam that would come out of those mechs.... not to mention, the Nova comes packaged with a 84-point alpha assuming we're going with TT values, here).

I mean... we could play with a completely unrestricted mechlab. 3-gauss highlanders will be fun to deal with using SRM-60 stalkers or 12 medium pulse laser cataphracts.

I mean... it opens up more opportunities to turn what you're in into some kind of counter to whatever the meta tends to be... but, I'm not sure it really works to improve the overall game experience over the woes of the current hardpoint system.

Though the variant system is kind of annoying. Only a few variants really have distinction - the recent Victor being among the worst offenders.

[L Y N X]

How will PPC and ER PPC boating be affected? Based on what I read, it seems plausible that a 4 ppc config of 2x PPC and 2X ERPPC can alpha with no heat penalty...

I think you should group PPC as a class and ER - nonER as varients of the weapon class, but that's just a Paying Beta Testers' opinion...

[MadTulip]

Jakob Knight, on 12 July 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

... the flaw in the argument that limitation enhances diversity.

If we have twice as many mechs as we have now there will be close to no room for variety among the hardpoints anymore. I therefor suggest to restrict so that the diversity of different mech chassis can get bigger. Ofc that means to first take them away by restriction and then reintroduce them. it just stretches it out more over more mech chassis. i would like to see it closer to tt where you can exspect a certain setup by the variant name of the mech.

[MrMadguy]

Mokou, on 12 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Yep, now my AWS with only 3xERPPC have HIGH (30) alpha.
But HM with 2xERPPC+GAUSS have not high (35) alpha...
Thx PGI... (actualy i need some tests with this new system, but i have bad feelings 'bout this).

Yeah. That's what I want to tell. My AS7-RS with 4xLGL with 36 alpha, which should be holded on target for 1sec in order to do full damage and very hard to be shooted from distance, is not ok and should be punished. Can we ever call shoot "Alpha", if it longs for 1sec? But! Same build with 2xLGL and 2xPPC, i.e. 38 alpha - is 100% ok and has no penalties at all. What? Don't you think it's delirium? I just feel like I'm restricted and forced to use specified build, not what I like and what matches my playstyle.

Edited by MrMadguy, 12 July 2013 - 09:13 AM.