1
Belorion, on 26 July 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:
3) Restrictions make the game less dynamic. I do agree that a lot of these current hot topics are coming from the Stalker boats, but that is already being addressed.
This is a common misconception, I believe, and one that I myself once held. I've always been a fan of the mechlab. I don't want to play stock mechs. I like being able to construct and tweak my rides.
However, when considering things like build variety, we must remember that any given mech build is not constructed in a vacuum on its own. Every build exists within the greater mechwarrior universe at large, and competes against other mechs in that universe. As such, builds actually have the tendency to effectively invalidate other builds, by being flat out superior to them.
To illustrate this, consider the limiting case, from earlier mechwarrior games like MW2, where there were effectively no restrictions at all on mechs that could be built. Imagine that in MWO, you could mount literally any piece of equipment on any mech, anywhere you want as long as you had the critical slots.
How would this impact gameplay, and the viability of various mech designs?
The only feature which would separate mechs in that case would be the physical shape of the mech. All mechs would effectively become "gun-bags". While more designs would be possible in the mechlab, most of them would end up being flat out inferior to other designs which mounted the exact same loadout in a chassis that had better hit boxes. Decisions of which mech to drive could essentially be boiled down to only three factors:
Weight
Geometry
Arm location (a subfacet of geometry, essentially where your weapons are going to shoot out of... high up like the stalker, or waist high like the atlas)
While many more configurations would be possible, since any chassis could mount any loadout, the actual number of viable configurations would dwindle significantly, because the game would boil down to a handful of optimum weapons loadouts, mounted on the one chassis that had the best geometry characteristics.
A mech like the stalker would, in many ways, effectively just become the single best assault mech. It'd be able to mount ECM, negating one of the chief advantages of the Atlas DC. It'd be able to mount JJ's, negating the advantages of the Victor and the Highlander. It'd have high mounted weapons and a small profile, giving it geometrical advantages over the other assaults. It'd be the best assault in many ways (barring potentially new configurations which needed just more raw tonnage to mount, which could be the case).
Certainly, when comparing mechs of equal tonnage in such a system, it becomes most obvious that complete flexibility would actually reduce the game's variety. If you have two mechs with equal tonnage, the one with better geometry would just be better, since everything else then becomes equal.
At the #saveMWO townhall last night, a player named Maus made some very insightful comments in this regard, that I think bear repeating. I'm not going to be able to recall them exactly, so I'll paraphrase and try to not butcher them too much.
In order to foster actual mech variety on the field, you need to give players a REASON to bring different mechs. Those mechs need to all have advantages that make them uniquely useful. The reason you rarely see Awesome's on the field, is because there's very little reason to bring them. They don't actually do anything better than other mechs, because their weapons loadout can effectively be put into other mechs with better geometry.
One way to help develop these unique capabilities in different mech chassis and variants is to impose some sort of hardpoint restriction. We do not need to go into the details of such a system here, and get in a fight over it, but merely note that such changes could potentially help add variety to the set of viable mechs we see on the field.
By restricting the loadouts that a given mech can carry, we then create an advantage for other chassis which can mount different loadouts.
For instance, imagine that a mech like the stalker (or highlander for that matter) could only mount 2 PPC's, and we didn't have the recent heat changes. Those mechs both have fairly significant advantages over the Awesome. The Highlander can jump and pack a Gauss rifle. The Stalker's body profile is far superior for sniping, and tends to be much tougher to take down.
Restrictions on the hardpoint capacity for mechs like the stalker and Highlander, while removing the configurations on those variants which run 3 PPC's, suddenly ENABLE the usage of an Awesome variant that carries 3 PPC's. That mech may suddenly become viable, because while it has geometry deficiencies compared to the other chassis, it would then have an ability that they cannot perform.
This is the really key issue here. By placing restrictions on mech configuration, you then give players a choice. They are then able to make more complex decisions, weighing various aspects and capabilities of various mechs and choosing one for a particular role, rather than simply picking "the best" mech in that regard.
Again, this is merely meant to be an example. The specifics of the builds mentioned here are not meant to be a basis for serious discussion regarding those particular configurations or mechs, but rather just an illustration of how removal of some choices can actually enable more choices for players overall, when we look at the larger mechwarrior game as a whole.
Ultimately, hardpoint restrictions are only one type of restriction, and perhaps not the best one to achieve our goals as a community. But I think the fact remains that in order to create a game with a wide variety of possible mech builds and tactics, we actually need to restrict the mechs that we build. If every mech can do everything, then a handful will rise to the top and be the best, and effectively negate all the others. But with well designed restrictions on mech construction, many different options can co-exist, because they all perform unique roles within the game.
