24 replies to this topic

[Aaren Kai]

When this beta first came out I was excited by the message of 'every mech will have a role on the field'. At first this felt true. Bringing a medium or light felt good, you had a role and could contribute.

Fast forward to ELO, remove weight matching, favor destroying mechs for XP, cbills etc... Heck capping is now frowned upon and gets you squat.

Now games are Assaults, Assaults, Assaults... Taking something less makes you a detriment to your team.

Now sure you can still take them, and some people do okay. I do it because I am just so bored of the current Meta.

Can we get an update on what is in store for us? Soon is not an answer. Thanks!

Edited by Aaren Kai, 20 July 2013 - 07:01 PM.

[Xaositect]

Tonnage needs to be taken into account by matchmaking so that ridiculously imbalanced drops like the one I was just in don't happen. I was just in a forest colony conquest drop where one team had seven assaults and a light (650 tons total, average 81.25 tons per 'Mech) and the other had two assaults, one heavy, two mediums, and three lights (435 tons total, average 53.375 tons per 'Mech). You can take a guess which team won easily. This needs to be fixed. I would post my screen capture but I don't have a place to host it online. The 'Mechs on each team were:

Team 1
VTR-9K
AS7-RS(C)
VTR-9K
AS7-D-DC
HGN-733C
AWS-8T
STK-5M
JR7-D(F)

Team 2
SDR-5D
HBK-4G
HBK-4P(C)
COM-TDK
AS7-D-DC
JM6-S
STK-5S
SDR-5K

[Wyatt Earp]

Xoa, I'm not really sure why, at this point of game development, that still happens. Honestly, it's stuff like this that make me worry that this game just may never be what I expected it to be. I hope I'm wrong. I made the decision to invest my money in this game early on. Not sure now what it's going to end up being.

[mack sabbath]

Hell we're still waiting for a PGI staffer to confirm we were misled on the PP program, and that those 12 mechs can't be sold, and mech bays can't hold another mech.

Forthcoming, these people are not.

[Wyatt Earp]

Well I'll be honest, I'm not far from scrapping this whole game. That saddens me because I was so excited to hear that someone was bringing this game back. I read these forums far more than I should, and there's a lot of people out here who have some great suggestions. I'm also hearing all the rumblings and frustration. Seems these rumblings are getting worse. Not a good sign.

We all have a limited amount of gaming hours to play with each week, and if PGI wants to have their share of mine, then they need to get this thing going, and soon. This game just isn't where I thought it would be at this point in time.

[Blue Hymn]

Xaositect, on 20 July 2013 - 06:17 PM, said:

Tonnage needs to be taken into account by matchmaking so that ridiculously imbalanced drops like the one I was just in don't happen. I was just in a forest colony conquest drop where one team had seven assaults and a light (650 tons total, average 81.25 tons per 'Mech) and the other had two assaults, one heavy, two mediums, and three lights (435 tons total, average 53.375 tons per 'Mech). You can take a guess which team won easily. This needs to be fixed. I would post my screen capture but I don't have a place to host it online. The 'Mechs on each team were:

Team 1
VTR-9K
AS7-RS©
VTR-9K
AS7-D-DC
HGN-733C
AWS-8T
STK-5M
JR7-D(F)

Team 2
SDR-5D
HBK-4G
HBK-4P©
COM-TDK
AS7-D-DC
JM6-S
STK-5S
SDR-5K

Oh yeah. I think I fought against you in that match. I was the only Awesome but - yeah. Tonnage was definitely way out of whack. xP

[Nryrony]

I do like the idea of even chances, no matter the weight class or tonnage.

Something like rock parer slicers lizard spock.

Lights beat Assaults and are even with Heavy's, but get killed by Medium
Mediums beat Lights and are even with Assaults, but get killed by Heavy's
Heavy's beat Mediums and are even with Lights, but get killed by Assaults
Assaults beat Heavy's and are even with Mediums, but get killed by Lights

To achieve this, turning rates and degrees as well as mech speed needs to be adjusted.

So that Assaults/Heavy's would have a bigger weak spot, possibly even a dead-zone if you are too close.

Especially Mediums but also Lights need to be more agile, so that you can actually doge stuff, even on an open field.

I guess JJs needs some re-balancing too, mechs are far too easy to hit when they jump. Its to slow and you can't doge stuff or change direction when you jump.

I just don't like the idea that Lights are only good for capping, Mediums are completely useless and Heavy's do OK at best.

Tonnage should not matter.

Edited by Nryrony, 21 July 2013 - 01:19 AM.

[GODzillaGSPB]

PGI basically screwed what was called "design pillars" in the beta again and again. By taking out weight matching, by adding modules that favor big mechs (coolant) or destroys the advantage of light mechs (seismic sensor).

And they can't even explain that with greed, simply because there is no need to invest any money in those two mentioned modules. You can get them for free. They destroy the balance for free!

Did they forget about their plans? Have they given up on them? I don't know. It sure feels kinda odd. As if they don't know what they are doing...

[Kazma]

This weekend we have assault vs the world. Of course we have a huge amount of assaults running around now and Victor is now available for C-Bills too.
My SRM Centurion has become useless this weekend, can't get close enough with him because there's always a big group of assaults together, I'd die in a few seconds if I just try to shoot them...or maybe I'm just out of practice because I was running a sniper dragon all time

[GODzillaGSPB]

Kazma, on 21 July 2013 - 01:37 AM, said:

This weekend

No. Assaults were omnipresent for the last two weeks before this weekend. Yes, I know, people lveling up their Victors. But I saw lances of 4 Atlas. And it can't be that balance is screwed everytime they release a new mech. They have to balance it out. If they wont, there will never be balance as long as new content is added. How stupid is that?

[Red squirrel]

Aaren Kai, on 20 July 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

Soon is not an answer. Thanks!

I want a shirt with that sentence!

Xaositect, on 20 July 2013 - 06:17 PM, said:

Tonnage needs to be taken into account by matchmaking so that ridiculously imbalanced drops like the one I was just in don't happen. I was just in a forest colony conquest drop where one team had seven assaults and a light (650 tons total, average 81.25 tons per 'Mech) and the other had two assaults, one heavy, two mediums, and three lights (435 tons total, average 53.375 tons per 'Mech). You can take a guess which team won easily. This needs to be fixed. I would post my screen capture but I don't have a place to host it online. The 'Mechs on each team were:

Team 1
VTR-9K
AS7-RS©
VTR-9K
AS7-D-DC
HGN-733C
AWS-8T
STK-5M
JR7-D(F)

Team 2
SDR-5D
HBK-4G
HBK-4P©
COM-TDK
AS7-D-DC
JM6-S
STK-5S
SDR-5K

Although I ad great games with 4 SPiders against a bunch of assaults

[stjobe]

GODzillaGSPB, on 21 July 2013 - 02:00 AM, said:

No. Assaults were omnipresent for the last two weeks before this weekend. Yes, I know, people lveling up their Victors. But I saw lances of 4 Atlas. And it can't be that balance is screwed everytime they release a new mech. They have to balance it out. If they wont, there will never be balance as long as new content is added. How stupid is that?

Assaults (and heavies) have been favoured for way longer than two weeks - in fact, they've always been favoured just because they're bigger, more armoured, and mount more weapons. Then when R&R went the way of the Dodo together with weight-class balancing prior to open beta release, they just became the overwhelming majority.

Add HSR to that mix, and a slow but steady erosion of the light and medium roles (c.f. Seismic Sensor, not to mention the match reward system), and we end up where we've been for at least three months now, where I'm often the only 'mech on both teams under 60 tons when I drop in my lights or mediums.

PGI is aware of the problem as evidenced by Ask the Devs 41 - Answered, but it also seems they're simply counting on Community Warfare to save their bacon:

Quote

Stjobe: What are your plans for getting more lights and mediums onto the field?
The current game is absolutely dominated by heavies and assaults, to the point where I'm often the lightest thing on the field - both teams included - when I drop in a Blackjack. I'd love to hear your take on this, and your plans on rectifying the situation (if you have any).
If I may make a suggestion as well as pose a question: I suggest you take a look at your reward structure; it's almost completely focussed on what heavies and assaults are good at, and almost completely neglects to reward what lights and mediums are good at - and the rewards we do have for things like spotting and capping are a pittance compared to what you get for dealing damage and killing.
A: You pretty much nailed it on the head. Rewards, along with expanded roles for lights and mediums, along with some limitations on drop weights, will all contribute to a more diversified battlefield.

A lot of people like to play as heavy a 'mech as they can, and I don't think we should stop them from doing so, but we should also incentivize playing lights and mediums, if nothing else to get more entertaining matches. One way of doing this is to give lights and mediums bonuses to match rewards to balance the fact that they can't really mount as much weapons and armour as the fatties.

Edited by stjobe, 21 July 2013 - 02:32 AM.

[Cybermech]

Assaults and heavies are just far too easy.
The idea of every weight class has its place was a solid one.
This weight limits is not a solution at all, for bigger group drops and competitive play I could see it working.
It doesn't bring us any closer to the idea.

Agree something is needed to be done, who knows

[John MatriX82]

Yep the matchmaker accounts for Elo, not for weight/class balance. In these days thanks to the bette SRMS I've been re-employing my HBKs, Trebs and especially the Cent with a decent success ratio (and enjoyment) but then you happend to find my team with 3 mediums, 2 lights, 2 heavies and 1 assault (an Atlas) vs 6 assaults (3 of which 2xPPC+2xERPPC stalkers), 1 heavy and 1 medium getting wasted.

The following match the situation is the same, I try a third one and the matchmaker screws again ==>> guess what? I start to bring assaults as well, since otherwise no matter how you good are with your mediums, you can't beat 2-300 tons more in the other team, unless you chose to perform a cap race (and I like to fight).

[aniviron]

We will never have a game where every weight class is viable. The people who take big smashy robots can't deal with their expensive fatlases losing to anything under 80 tons (Okay, this is a bit of a broad generalization. But there are enough of them to make it true enough to matter). Don't believe me? Even now, in a game where having two lights is better than average, you still see a few threads every week in the game balance forum, "Lights are too durable," "Lights are hard to kill," "Lights are easymode OP!"

And as long as people can drop 20m cbills on an atlas only to find out that it doesn't make them automatically better than a jenner that only takes 10m to outfit, assaults will always be better. Admittedly, at this point it's also partly just because everyone has been playing for so long that money is not an issue, and when each game is packed with 10-14 assaults/heavies, the game will be balanced around heavies and assaults, because those are the only gameplay issues that get "tested" and posted about on the forums. When games with that much tonnage on the field become normal, then lights and mediums get the shaft, as balancing has to occur around the assumption of a normal game.

The problem stems from the fact that in TT, assaults are just... better than lights. It's the place where PGI have stuck to BT canon the best. Thing is, in TT you could balance your opponent's four atlases by taking 12 lights, and the fight was fair. Not only that, but the pilots of the 12 plastic miniatures on the light company didn't mind losing their 1-on-1 fights, because they are plastic figurines and not people. In MWO, however, we have retained the part of the game where assaults are better than lights, without keeping the part about battlevalue. The end result is tonnage matching, which works after a sense, even if it is boring as it means largely symmetrical battles (when it works) instead of delightful asymmetry. But while ensuring both teams have one player piloting a worthless mech may be balanced, it doesn't mean that it's fun for the players who are getting killed with little to show for it.

I don't claim to have any ideas how to fix this either. A cone of fire might help, but it introduces an unacceptable amount of randomness into the game, as far as I am concerned. Similarly, every other solution I can think of involves reducing the amount of damage that can be put downrage quickly and accurately- I'm talking lasers and autocannons as well as ppcs, and again, I don't think that is good for the overall health of the game, as shooting popguns at one another all day is rarely entertaining. If role warefare were really a thing that mattered, that would go a long way towards helping the issue (imagine having to attack a moving objective- lights get in faster, and can create value for the team by skirmishing against soft targets that are hard for slower movers to hit) but really, it would still not be enough. At the core of this game is mech combat, and as long as some mechs are worse than others, there will be balance issues. Going back to my previous example, why send in light fast mechs when you can just take three gauss rifles and make up for speed with a nearly 2km range? Even when you add on objectives, this is still a game about gigantic war machines blowing one another to bits with lasers, and if half the mechs always lose to the other half in combat, even with objectives, the ones that win fights will always be the most important. I think the Conquest game mode says about all it needs to, in this regard.

[Chemie]

Lack of tonnage limit and high reward for taking an assault is at least part of the reason for the PPC meta in the game. When you have every mech carrying 4 of high alpha pin point weapons (PPC/Guass/AC20) this makes them more OP. If you only could have 2 assaults, those weapons would have less impact (and flankers could counter them without getting killed by another 4 of them)..

I think the matches were more balanced back with no ELO and ton matching.

Bottom line, I think the solution is to have a set drop limit (too many and the match maker would have too many queues). Let's say 2-2-2-2. You can drop in a an assault but if everyone does, you might have a longer queue wait. To be honest, I think lots of people want to drop in something else but current incentive is to go big or go home so they do (until they get bored and just go home).

[Aaren Kai]

Well I don't want to see mechs nerfed. I just want to see incentives. How about a cbill bonus for taking less than an assault if you win? I would also love to see RnR again but that is not happening it seems.

Or how about a modifier for differences in tonnage?

Something like ...

If you do 50% or greater damage on a target that dies
Then your targets weight class minus your weight class is equal to the modifier to your cbill & XP gain.

Where Lights =1 and Assaults = 4. And negative differences are ignored.

[Warge]

Aaren Kai, on 20 July 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

Can we get an update on what is in store for us?

Expext new formula from Paul. Formula that prevents PPC-boating overweighted matches.

[King Picollo]

I've not been playing long and genuinely thought there was a weight balance it always seemed that way. Last couple of days though I've seen much more Assaults.

I hope that's not a trend, i tend to play conquest and on the larger the game tends to be won and lost on the couple of light mechs doing all the capping.

Maybe increase the capping bonus.

[pencilboom]

Warge, on 21 July 2013 - 04:32 AM, said:

Expext new formula from Paul. Formula that prevents PPC-boating overweighted matches.

Yes..Yes..From Paul..