578 replies to this topic

[FrDrake]

Feetwet, on 25 July 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Uac20...yikes.

I'm going to laugh so hard when the UAC/20 gets a 24 heat penalty if you double tap it.

[Joseph Mallan]

Vincent, why aren't those better players changing the Meta themselves and bringing less PPCs? AC10s are good weapons for instance. If the "competitive" players bring less PPCs and win, then others would follow what ever is kicking their ash if they cannot think for themselves.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 25 July 2013 - 01:09 PM.

[FrDrake]

Vincent Quatermain, on 25 July 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

I play in a unit with several hundred active players with a wide variety of player skill levels. You can definitely tell who the high-Elo players are, and every last one of them will tell you that the meta is stale because the balance is way off, particularly because PPCs are too good relative to other weapons.

These are not outliers. These are the people who are in the best position to know what the current balance is. They also only want to make the game better by INCREASING the amount of GOOD options. This would help everyone, regardless of Elo.

Wow what unit has 100s of active players?

[Joseph Mallan]

FrDrake, on 25 July 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

I'm going to laugh so hard when the UAC/20 gets a 24 heat penalty if you double tap it.

Hunchback IIC 2 UAC20... BOOM BABY never had such a double meaning!

[Feetwet]

FrDrake, on 25 July 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

I'm going to laugh so hard when the UAC/20 gets a 24 heat penalty if you double tap it.

Actually they will just set the jam percentage to 99.

[Eddrick]

I wouldn't go so far as to say "Competitive player cause balance issues". But, they certainly make imbalances obvious. Especially, when they bad mouth others for not abusing the system in the same way. I do believe that Competitive players and Non-Competitive players can coexist in a balanced environment. I fit somewhere in the middle. I like competitive play. I just don't take gaming seriously enough to care very much if I lose.

[Mawai]

As a casual player who is not particularly competitive, I mostly disagree with the statements in the original post.

Competitive players (which can be both casual and hard core), make use of existing characteristics in the game system to improve their performance. Min/maxing occurs in any game, by any player, and the builds that are used do not cause the imbalance, they are symptoms of it.

However, "perfect" balance just will not happen. There are too many interacting game systems such that it is not really possible to balance every weapon against every other weapon under all possible circumstances.

(e.g. LRMs may be overpowered on the Alpine map with wide open sight lines while being ineffective on River City which has a lot of cover. Trying to balance LRMs against other weapons based on their performance on these maps won't work. However, balancing LRMs assuming some sort of cover will leave them OP when cover is not available)

Due to the way weapons fire converges on the point at the center of the aiming reticle, fire may end up concentrated on one point. This makes it advantageous to use groups of identical weapons that fire at the same time so you can do more simultaneous damage to one location on the opposing mech. No matter what is done to the individual weapons this will always be true due to the nature of weapon aim as it is currently implemented in MWO.

None of these items have to do with competitive or casual play. It has to do with characteristics that are intrinsic to the game itself.

[3rdworld]

Joseph Mallan, on 25 July 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

How would I know if they were or were not a Competitive team? I haven't gone 8 man in months. I thought only the elite went into 8man land!

A comp match is when you talk to another team, decide what mode / weight you are going to play. Then you play that match or series,

ie. Monday we are playing BlackStone Knights best out of 5. 375 / 475 / 575 tons. If u need match 4, the team that is down picks the weight. If u need 5 the next team picks.

That is a competitve match.

You would know if they were a comp team, if you ever played comp matches. The comp community is pretty small, and you fingure out who plays for who pretty quick.

Edited by 3rdworld, 25 July 2013 - 01:27 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

3rdworld, on 25 July 2013 - 01:24 PM, said:

A comp match is when you talk to another team, decide what mode / weight you are going to play. Then you play that match or series,

ie. Monday we are playing BlackStone Knights best out of 5. 375 / 475 / 575 tons. If u need match 4, the team that is down picks the weight. If u need 5 the next team picks.

That is a competitve match.

Ok No, We did not do that. BUT it does not mean we did not drop v Competitive teams. MM Still random drops to an extent even at the 8man level. And unless those player just quit a match... Which is kinda not competitive to me.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 25 July 2013 - 01:29 PM.

[3rdworld]

Joseph Mallan, on 25 July 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Vincent, why aren't those better players changing the Meta themselves and bringing less PPCs? AC10s are good weapons for instance. If the "competitive" players bring less PPCs and win, then others would follow what ever is kicking their ash if they cannot think for themselves.

we do. This season of marik has a "no PPC" rule that applys sometimes, amoungst others. No JJs is another.

[Joseph Mallan]

3rdworld, on 25 July 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

we do. This season of marik has a "no PPC" rule that applys sometimes, amoungst others. No JJs is another.

That make sense sir! House Marik has to buy PPCs from House Kurita Steiner. Everyone knows that!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 25 July 2013 - 01:44 PM.

[Purgatus233]

WVAnonymous, on 24 July 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

This is why I have called for "All Trial Tournaments". For you acolytes at the Church of Skill.

And some trial mechs are better than others, and will be used to dominate the others. This is obvious... isn't it?

I suspect the problem is, as many have observed, that the ballistic/energy weapons are too precise. Accuracy is a variable of the player, but precision is the behavior of the weapon itself, always hitting precisely where it is aimed, and of course having multiple weapons all hitting precisely at the same spot when they are all fired... simultaneously.

Real weapons have precision issues. If you put a rifle in a holder and fire 100 rounds out of it at a target, there will be a spread around which the shots will land. Small deviations in heat, air, wind, etc. will move the rounds around a bit, and some rifles are less precise than others, of course. The devs are really only playing with a couple of "dials" they can twist right now, such as heat, and damage, and fire rates. There is potentially an entirely new "knob" they could create which is weapon precision, a randomized deviation from the aimpoint which can increase or decrease depending upon mech speed, number of weapons fired, etc. A salvo of four weapons could cause more deviation than firing them in sequence (and should) for instance, and jumping or running should cause increases in weapon deviation.

Just a thought, probably not original but it's the solution that has occurred to me several times to reduce the temptation to "boat" precision weapons.

And, as a general philosophical statement, you never blame people who exhibit group behavior. Blame the system for incentivizing that behavior. If you want different behavior, change the system.

Edited by Purgatus233, 25 July 2013 - 01:48 PM.

[Vincent Quatermain]

FrDrake, on 25 July 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Wow what unit has 100s of active players?

Headhunters of Davion . . . over 200 counting active reserves, plus a bunch of cadets and recruits who don't have official rank yet.

[Rasako]

DaZur, on 24 July 2013 - 08:37 AM, said:

Maybe "cause" is a poor descriptor... Maybe "magnify" would be a better one.

Do you think the present high-alpha meta and incessant forwarded premise to mitigate it would be as verbose if not for the maxim that not using the mechs and the weapons associated with it is "doing it wrong"?

competition is in every human being in some way shape or form, some people play games to be competitive and what you're asking for is for people to play the game to have fun without letting their desire to win get in the way.

In a perfect world it might work but in reality people are always going to look for ways to come out on top over their competitors and video games are no different. As for competitive players highlighting problems? I dont ever remember the ac40 builds ever being considered a viable competitive build yet complaining about that was all the rage not long ago. The REAL problem is that people just like to **** and moan about whatever ruins their "fun".

[Vincent Quatermain]

Joseph Mallan, on 25 July 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Vincent, why aren't those better players changing the Meta themselves and bringing less PPCs? AC10s are good weapons for instance. If the "competitive" players bring less PPCs and win, then others would follow what ever is kicking their ash if they cannot think for themselves.

Because reality is not formed by consensus you hippie.

You cannot make the AC10 as good as a PPC no matter how hard you try. While yes, good players can make an AC10 "work" -- they will still do even better with a PPC. This is reality. I cannot make the AC10 an optimal weapon any more than I can fly by flapping my arms or bend spoons with the power of my mind. The PPC will remain objectively better than the AC10 until PGI changes that.

[Mackman]

Vincent Quatermain, on 25 July 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

Because reality is not formed by consensus you hippie.

You cannot make the AC10 as good as a PPC no matter how hard you try. While yes, good players can make an AC10 "work" -- they will still do even better with a PPC. This is reality. I cannot make the AC10 an optimal weapon any more than I can fly by flapping my arms or bend spoons with the power of my mind. The PPC will remain objectively better than the AC10 until PGI changes that.

I wanted to say this, but I didn't want to believe that someone with that high of a post count was really implying that if enough people believe something, it became true or viable somehow.

"The meta" is what it is because pro players have found what works and what doesn't.

Have they overlooked a couple things? Probably. Every now and then someone will try something that no one has thought of before, and it might work well enough...but then it becomes part of the meta, because that's what the meta is.

But have they overlooked anything as major as what JMallan is suggesting? Almost certainly not. To a large extent, the competitive meta is a sign of which weapons are objectively good, and which are objectively bad, and only PGI can change that.

[Rippthrough]

Joseph Mallan, on 25 July 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Vincent, why aren't those better players changing the Meta themselves and bringing less PPCs? AC10s are good weapons for instance. If the "competitive" players bring less PPCs and win, then others would follow what ever is kicking their ash if they cannot think for themselves.

No they wouldn't, they would just die by the hands of the other players up there. Since we are all fighting each other...

[Joseph Mallan]

Mackman, on 25 July 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

I wanted to say this, but I didn't want to believe that someone with that high of a post count was really implying that if enough people believe something, it became true or viable somehow.

"The meta" is what it is because pro players have found what works and what doesn't.

Have they overlooked a couple things? Probably. Every now and then someone will try something that no one has thought of before, and it might work well enough...but then it becomes part of the meta, because that's what the meta is.

But have they overlooked anything as major as what JMallan is suggesting? Almost certainly not. To a large extent, the competitive meta is a sign of which weapons are objectively good, and which are objectively bad, and only PGI can change that.

Some of what you are saying is true and some of it is not. DocBach took a Cent with AC10 2x MedLaers, 1 SRM6, Dubs to 6th place in a tournament to show what Competitive can be.

What I disagree with the most is if you can set rules for a competitive drop you can state no more than X PPCs per Mech. Then the opponents can only bring that. You want a league you set the rules not the game maker. And second if you are as good as you say you are maybe you could show the followers how to beat these Mega builds. Me I will contiue to not use them cause frankly I don't like em much.

Objectively good is 6 PPCs? Really? That is beating someone over the head with a mountain don't you think? A PPC is unquestionably the most powerful Energy weapon. That is its place. It should be more powerful than a Large laser. But the developers(FASA) did not put 6 PPCs on any Mech? Why? Probably cause they knew it would be to powerful.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 25 July 2013 - 02:32 PM.

[FunkyFritter]

The goal of balancing a game is to make the disparity between the optimal strategy and the average strategy as small as possible. Competitive players will always do whatever they can to eek out an advantage, the problem with the game currently is that the best builds are way too good when compared to everything else.

[KhanHeir]

When you see a good person, think of becoming like him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points. - Confucious > Sun Tzu



In short, When life gives you lemons you make lemonade.

When piggy gives you no hardpoint size restrictions, you build heavy alphas.