578 replies to this topic

[AntiCitizenJuan]

If you're arguing that the high tier competitive players are the ones hurting the game, you seriously have no ******* idea what youre talking about.

You balance from the top down, otherwise you end up with a bad game with a low skill ceiling.

Look at Starcraft II. One of the most successful games of all time, played on a professional e-sport level and the champion game of the entire country of South Korea. Why is it so competitive and fun to watch/profitable? Because Blizzard balances around the Grand Master league, the players who know the game the best and are the best at it.

Balance around Bronze league scrubs and the game would be dead in the bed, and they'd just go back to playing Brood War.

[Joseph Mallan]

I have read a lot of posts...
To many to always associate a name to the posts though

[Mystere]

TehSBGX, on 24 July 2013 - 02:40 PM, said:

Competitive players aren't the problem. It's that so few weapons are actually good and in the case of the PPC op to the point of being game breaking. Competitive players simply use good weapons and with game balance being so poor, they just high light the problem not create it.

Again, the PPC by itself is not OP. Shooting six of them with pinpoint accuracy is.

[blinkin]

AntiCitizenJuan, on 24 July 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

If you're arguing that the high tier competitive players are the ones hurting the game, you seriously have no ******* idea what youre talking about.

You balance from the top down, otherwise you end up with a bad game with a low skill ceiling.

Look at Starcraft II. One of the most successful games of all time, played on a professional e-sport level and the champion game of the entire country of South Korea. Why is it so competitive and fun to watch/profitable? Because Blizzard balances around the Grand Master league, the players who know the game the best and are the best at it.

Balance around Bronze league scrubs and the game would be dead in the bed, and they'd just go back to playing Brood War.

you could not have picked a worse game to make me hate your views on this.

starcraft 2 is the poster child for everything "competitive gaming" has done to ruin the gaming industry. that game was designed by a committee based on a whole bunch of marketing data. it is a completely safe reskin of everything that is wrong with RTS gaming.

[MisterFiveSeven]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 July 2013 - 03:42 PM, said:

I have read a lot of posts...
To many to always associate a name to the posts though

Copied for reference

MisterFiveSeven, on 24 July 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

Alpha > everything else. I will change my loadout so that in however big of chunks the current gameplay mechanics will allow, I can place my shots for maximum effect. THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. If it's x4 chain-fired 2 by 2 ppc's, or mixed ppc/gauss, whatever.

THIS IS NO FIX FOR ALPHA. YOU MADE THEM SLIGHTLY LESS EFFECTIVE.

I love TT. I love large lasers. But, until there is something that prevents every weapon on a mech fired at once to hit the same spot, pinpoint damage weapons will always be better than duration or spread weapons. You are making extra, ARBITRARY, AND NONSENSICAL mechanics to change the opportunity cost of carrying a particular weapon. Alternatively, you can rebalance the weapons. Those are the only options.

I prefer the mechanic approach, I just wish they had picked one that wasn't so senseless, and if we're honest, intellectually offensive. Give me a reason, any reason, that by whatever space magic makes stompy robots go that this mechanic makes sense. Because if you don't, this will remain Call of Duty played in molasses.

Edited by MisterFiveSeven, 24 July 2013 - 04:04 PM.

[AntiCitizenJuan]

blinkin, on 24 July 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

you could not have picked a worse game to make me hate your views on this.

starcraft 2 is the poster child for everything "competitive gaming" has done to ruin the gaming industry. that game was designed by a committee based on a whole bunch of marketing data. it is a completely safe reskin of everything that is wrong with RTS gaming.

Which doesnt denounce what I'm saying at all. The game stays balanced enough for all 3 armies to be viable and different kinds of army variants to be successful. Balancing aorund bad idiots is bad. See: Halo Reach

Furthermore: The game is wildly successful, and is the premier e-sport for professional play.

Edited by AntiCitizenJuan, 24 July 2013 - 04:08 PM.

[Tor6]

Competitive players need to stop sneaking into PGI's game files and making some weapons overpowered and some utterly worthless. Those jerks! >:V

[White Bear 84]

Anyone can boat. Anyone can run cheese builds, anyone can take advantage of in game mechanics and module items.

ANYONE.

If anything the problem is not competitve players - it is the fact that the matchmaker drops teams in unbalanced groups, ELO does not seem to have a meaning once in a group, so you could be dropping an all star 4 man against the softest pugs..

Basically. Matchmaking. Just terrible...

Basically. Boating; Anyone can boat, its just that the pro's do it better...

Basically. Need private matches, more flexibility over game mode and a quick shift away from the whole drop with whoever situation we have right now.

[XANi]

First, don't use 1v1 game as example for balancing team based game. It is WAY easier (but not easy by any means) to balance them.

If anything, MWO is more similiar to MOBAs, once you pick what you play you're stuck with it till end of the match, so if your build doesn't fit team or is countered by enemy build/tactic, tough luck. In SC2 you could just produce different units.

Also, balancing only based on "PRO" level can be bad too for example in LoL some champions are very powerful in hands of pro but only okay, or even bad in hands of of Joe Average.

And the opposite also happens, some champs are "easy to play, hard to counter" so in noobs vs noobs they own but better players just know how to counter them well and they are near useless in higher level play.

That's why on lower levels PPCs aren't as big problem, because ppl just can't aim well enougth to reliably hit non-stationary target

[Lykaon]

I would say I am not overly "casual" in my overall goals in playing MWo.

I look forward to community warfare and meaningful out comes from matches.I want to eventualy play in a dynamic community warfare system where players "compete" against each other to accomplish goals for what ever faction they serve.

The problem is I do not see the game being particularly dynamic or retaining my attention.If there is one single best way to play then this will be the constant means and outcome of play. The problem is we currently have the means to exploit weaknesses in the game's design to boil the entirety of the game to one best way played with a handful of best mechs using the tiny portion of best weapons.

As long as there is a simple way to achieve the best by using the least the situation will persist.That is why I have been questioning design choices made and suggesting change.

I am not sure if the intent of this post was to blame or point fingers at "competitive" players or that "casual" players are superior.

What I do know is that competitive games like MWo are reliant upon players continuing to participate in the game's content and I can sum up the entirety of the current content for you.

Put the most of the best on the ideal chassis.

This will always be the case for pretty much any game that allows players to customize combat abilities.Players will always solve for X where X is the optimal.

The problem is this game has so few variables that X is plain to see and using any other method is not as efficent as X.

There is no reason to,for example take a fast skirmishing mech over an assault mech optimized for pinpoint accurate alpha strikes.The alpha striker applies damage more efficently has superior range and can see the skirmisher coming with seismic.The game is not paper rock sissors it's Rock or bigger rock and some tiny pages of paper that try to cap before the huge rocks return to base and tear them in half.

[Stoicblitzer]

Wascally Wabbit, on 24 July 2013 - 02:35 PM, said:

so why continue using them? What's the point of continuing to do something that bores you?

Homeless Bill, on 24 July 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

Competitive players use cheesy builds because winning for them is more fun than losing. Winning with PPC sniping isn't necessarily fun for them, but it's more fun to them than losing with something else.

TL;DR: Competitive people are not the villains; they are currently the ones most vocally pushing for balance changes that are a mostly a direct nerf to what they run.

[Navy Sixes]

IceSerpent, on 24 July 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

I have to disagree - the problem is not that nobody uses LBX, the problem is that LBX is bad. Same goes for any other weapon or mech. It doesn't matter how many people use it or avoid it, that's just a symptom. What matters is how that weapon/mech compares to other weapons/mechs.

Given enough practice, any weapon can be at least somewhat effective. Play long enough, and you will run into players who excel with non-optical mechs and configurations. But they only got that way through practice: losing a lot of matches and learning from their mistakes. When you bully players in-game away from building the mechs they want to build and using the loadouts they want to try, you deny them the opportunity to become "that crazy dude who can tear your a** up with his LBX" or whatever. Probably they'll get frustrated along the way and come to the same conclusions you have. But they deserve to learn, grow, and figure things out as they will (for some of us, that's where the fun is). I'm not talking about the civil offering of advice, mind you. I'm talking about verbally attacking players for not building the mech you think they should or playing a map the way you think it should be played.

Please note, I am distinguishing between forum discussion and in-game behavior. You go into the Game-Balance forum and click on the "[Item X] is OP/Garbage; Worthless Developers, Please Nerf/Buff" thread of the week, you should know what you're in for. I'm talking about dead players who tell those running sub-optimal builds to "kill themselves" or "uninstall."

And a few months down the line, if those players stick it out and kill with that sub-optimal build, the same competitive player will, rather than ask "Wow, how did you make that work?" dismiss it as a 'cheese build.'

I'm not saying that's you, Ice Serpent, but it does happen. And it's not productive or solving anything. It's discouraging new players from staying, which is going to kill this game way faster than anything PGI can do about whatever game mechanic you think needs patching.

There's nothing wrong with being a competitive player, so long as you acknowledge that there are other reasons to play the game, and they are just as valid as yours. Overly competitive players are more problem than solution.

[Leafia Barrett]

So, you know how I posted that guide on assembling models for posing? Well, I just want to go on record saying...

Getting the fingers prepared for posing is a different beast entirely. All bets are off. Expect to spend about 3-4 hours minimum just setting them up. The fingers are connected to the forearm in one big lump, so you have to detach each piece of each finger individually, then pose it. This is about as painful as you'd expect.

[Kaldor]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 July 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

With the Highest K/D record on my Alt account!

..muttering something under my breath about easymode builds....

[Joseph Mallan]

Kaldor, on 24 July 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

..muttering something under my breath about easymode builds....

I shoot, they die. Thats how it has been for close to 30 years. I found a good build for doing that in this game. It is still 35 points shy of my Stone Rhino from TT. Just like in combat, I DON'T want you to have a chance to shoot back. Could be bad for my complexion.

Also AC40 is TTs AC20 so I am fine with how hard it hits. Even if I have to use twice as much weapon to achieve it.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 July 2013 - 05:12 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

One thing I can say about this thread, is that eleven pages sure did give me a headache.

At any rate, the snail pace in addressing the source of current game imbalances is certainly exacerbating the problems we got right now.

In my opinion, the devs need to look at Heat Capacity (way too high) and Heat Dissipation (too slow even with DHS) before they can properly address weapon balance issues (which seems to be relevant to this discussion), since those two are possibly the most important factors in why most, if not all players, end up choosing high instant damage over high DPS builds on average.

[Feetwet]

I run what I want to run. Are they optimal, some are some aren't. Win or lose I generally do pretty well no matter the build. Do I like to win sure who doesn't. Will I do anything to make that happen...not really. I don't mind competitive players, there is always going to be someone better. Just please for the love of good stop b@tchin about what I'm running. I'm playing how I want to play. If elo freekin worked we wouldn't be in the same dang match to begin with. Respect your fellow players.

S

[FearTheAmish]

my response to this whole post
http://www.sirlin.ne...win-part-1.html

[Joseph Mallan]

Feetwet, on 24 July 2013 - 06:30 PM, said:

Respect your fellow players.

S

I was part of a custom 10,000 BV battle. Each team had 10K fill your ranks. I went a fair mix of heavies assaults mediums all had Gauss and PPCs and I had some Lights for scouting and Harrassing. My Enemy came with a fairly heavy team capped with 5 Stone Rhinos. All had 1/2 G/P. I was shocked to see they all had 3 Gauss and 12 MGs(but no MG ammo).

My reply to this obvious gaming the system, "Huhn, Wish I'd thought of it!" I went into the fight and was summarily smoked. It wasn't illegal just played the system. 6PPC Stalkers... I could do that... If I wanted to.

To me, its how we should approach the game.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 July 2013 - 06:44 PM.

[Psikez]

Once again the solution is the commando with 1 small laser. Then all our mechs can be even!