XX Sulla XX, on 20 July 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:
Just thinking about a good way to balance teams better. Weight would help. But a stock Atlas is very different that a fully custom Atlas. So yo still end up with the balance being. But if the cost of the mechs including custom items like engines and modules is factored in it makes much more even teams mech wise. Although I would think at the moment there are not enough people playing to do this and not have to wait a long time for games.
Mech cost isn't good enough because, like others have said, expensive weapons that are TERRIBLE in the game right now, like LBXes and to a lesser extent ER LL would throw the metric off entirely.
A better way to weight mechs after tonnage would be by a common build's average damage output. It would put PPCs on top, followed by Medium Lasers.
So there's another reason the point system would appear strange: Medium lasers are one of the best weapons in the game due to flexibility in practice, causing a mech like the HBK 4-P to appear to an automated system to be one of the BEST MECHS GOD HAS EVER KNOWN!
And it isn't. It's subject to a boating nerf that it didn't deserve. Mediums are already largely irrelevant in this game due to their low health vs the firepower heavies and assaults can carry, and now mechs like the 4-P are unable to punch back as fiercely due to heat scale penalties.
edit: There's no real way to weight mech builds unless you actually sat down and began identifying good mechs. Like fighting game tiers, "what's best" would change as time passes, and in a game like this, as weapons are altered and
especially when more maps are added to the rotation.
The way tournaments are structured does not help to identify which builds are most-valuable because the builds people use during the tournaments are designed for less alpha-lethality anyway, vs the current meta that still favors alpha damage in spite of the heat penalty.
Finally, the tournaments give bad results because they tend to focus entirely on a single mech instead of normal play, where most players will make their mech as strong as possible.
I'm not sure where PGI is pulling their data from, but they should be looking at 8 v 8 drops to ID the top ELO builds if they want to make the ~best matchmaker ever~. If they ever add a pre-game lobby, then they'll need to look at the system
again because people will be able to make specialized teams instead of mechs designed for generalized situations.
Edited by Erata, 21 July 2013 - 11:44 AM.
1
