subgenius, on 18 July 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:
Sure people will learn to work around things and find perfect optimizations as time goes on (happens in every game) but that doesn't mean a system is broken. I'm definitely not claiming any kind of perfect knowledge either, but it gets old when the same group of posters keeps repeating their conviction that the core mechanics of the game are broken and that pretty much any change PGI makes (aside from implementing their pet cause of course) is DOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
The problem with this implementation is just how much overhead is put on PGI.
This isn't a situation of imperfect balance - where the PPC is the most optimum weapon under certain circumstances and the Guass Rifle under others. It's a situation where the PPC wins hands down in almost every situation except a few that are so minor that it's not really worth considering.
The reasons you choose to not go with PPCs are out of principle (you don't want to play with PPCs) or out of practicality.
In any game - there will never be perfect balance (See: The Red Queen Hypothesis -
http://www.enn.com/w...e/article/46130 ,
http://en.wikipedia....%27s_Hypothesis ,
http://psychology.wi.../wiki/Red_Queen ). There, generally speaking, -should- never be a 100% optimum build, strategy, structure, etc. All of those should be shifting and changing to counter each other.
The problem, here, is that PGI has removed the player adaptation and element. It's now all on PGI to determine what builds have risen too far above the others and need to be hit with a hammer. (After Wheel of Stupid - this becomes Whack-A-Meta). Keeping all of these builds 'balanced' across each other with this type of system is realistically impossible. Some players will accept the penalty because the rewards are just too good (especially when another build that trounced this one gets hit with a hammer). Other players are going to chain-fire for limited impact.
There's going to be the need to consider alternate 'chain fire durations' to some weapons or combinations.
It's going to be one huge mess that requires far too much centralized response from the developers. Because the underlying systems and mechanics aren't properly balanced, a lot of the attempts to balance the game using this are going to fall horribly short or fall into the 'way too extreme' category.
Yes - a lot of the people who are opposed to it do have their own ideas on the issue. It's hard not to as a thinking person to not propose a solution.
Yet, a dissimilar argument is also used: "Oh, so you don't like it? What's your great idea to fix the game, then?"
There's a saying in the Navy: "The problem with being an officer is that a sailor hardly ever knows what he wants, but he always knows what he doesn't want."
The game is, actually, doomed because a launch date has been set and many core features are missing from the game. Do you feel like an Inner Sphere pilot? Do you really feel like a MechWarrior?
Let's be real - the gameplay of this game, even if it were honed to as close to perfection as it could get, would not be enough to keep players around on its own. It wasn't for MAG.
There has to be a story or a gameplay experience so unique and refreshing (such as minecraft) that players want to get involved and hang around. There has to be an environment.
Because there really isn't any (unless UI 2.0 is a hell of a lot bigger than I suspect it is), the launch of this game is going to be a flop. Critics will be given the green-light to review and it's going to pull a 6.0-6.5 average on metacritic.
That's going to be a rating that lasts for years, even after gigabytes worth of patches and additional content. While rating isn't everything - it is, most certainly, a critical thing to consider - since they are going to be rating the game you claim is 'full and complete.'
That's the ultimate problem with MWO right now. They need to scrub their launch date and not even mention it until pilot and weapon training is in place, CW is in place (and debugged), and there is a real atmosphere to the game's meta (so that people can actually start to become attached to their houses of the inner sphere and really begin to 'feel' the Battletech universe - which will be what keeps people around). Some kind of sensible weapon balancing would be a good idea - but at this rate I'd settle for something that stands to actually represent the MechWarrior and Battletech that has captured the hearts and minds of a waning generation of gamers.
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