27 replies to this topic

[Tezz LaCoil]

I've been seeing less and less Medium 'Mechs on the Battlefield lately. Less than is warranted by the simple fact that they have less armor and armament of a Heavy. I've also noticed how big they are compared to things like Cataphracts, and even Atlas 'Mechs. I think, personally, that the problem is connected. 'Mechs like the Centurion are scaled horribly wrong. A Centurion should not be the same size as a Cataphract. Centurion has much less in the way of tonnage. Fix the scale. It's messed up. Or if it's considered correct, grab some Technical Manuals, and note the difference. The reason Mediums are not as useful as they should be is simple: They are too big. Get the scale right, and a lot will fall into place, I believe. In fact, I'd almost say that the bigger 'mechs are too small, even. The Tabletop formula isn't working. Walk away from it. The story can be canon, but your 'Mechs are going to have to adapt to be balanced based on the lack of certain limitations within a first-person simulator in the modern era.

Edited by Prower, 04 September 2013 - 07:31 PM.

[Blackfoot]

Its been a while since you've read the forums I take it.

There has been thread after thread about it already.

Yeah, alot of the mechs sizes are totally wrong, but PGI has said it is too hard to go back and rescale them.

[Billygoat]

Blackfoot, on 04 September 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

Yeah, alot of the mechs sizes are totally wrong, but PGI has said it is too hard to go back and rescale them.

On one hand, I understand this. They are under pressure and this would be a lot of extra work that impact other stuff.

On the other hand, I sure wish when I made a huge screw up at work I could just go to my boss and say "Sorry boss, I botched this badly but it's too hard to go back and fix it so I'll just leave it like this, kk?"

[Tezz LaCoil]

Blackfoot, on 04 September 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

Its been a while since you've read the forums I take it.

There has been thread after thread about it already.

Yeah, alot of the mechs sizes are totally wrong, but PGI has said it is too hard to go back and rescale them.

Yeah, there was a reason I stopped being on the forum. Too much useless harping about nothing from new players, and too little interaction with people who knew what they were talking about. This is the last reply I'll be making on this thread. It's up to PGI on what they want to do with that information. And if it's too hard to fix, then they should grab their nuts and do it anyways.

[KrazedOmega]

Prower, on 04 September 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

I've been seeing less and less Medium 'Mechs on the Battlefield lately.

It's the opposite for me. I've been seeing a lot more Medium and Heavy mechs and less Assaults. I've also been having a pretty good run with my Hunchbacks lately.

Mech scale is a pretty well known issue. I'm not sure PGI will actually do anything about it though.

[YueFei]

I think the problem is primarily that the maps are too small.


Imagine if the American Gridiron Football field was much narrower than it is now. Say, only half of the current width. You would see much less in the way of fast and agile players, since there isn't enough room to use your speed to get to the outside edge. The field would be filled with big heavy stocky dudes.


Currently several Medium mechs are only just barely faster than Heavy mechs. This slight speed advantage does not help much tactically once you're engaged. But it does help strategically. A 3 meter/sec speed advantage translates to only a 60 meter difference in 20 seconds. That's the difference between 92 kph (my Hunchback) and my Catapult (82 kph). But over the course of a minute, that's a difference of 180 meters, which starts to be a more meaningful difference in distance travelled.


The problem is that with the way the maps are setup these days, a full minute of marching you travel nearly a kilometer and a half. Some of these maps are only about 3 kilometers across. =/


I like how in River City you can start shooting each other as soon as the match begins, LOL.

[Corvus Antaka]

we need better gamemodes. the super slow conquest timers made things a lot worse and blobby with assault mechs.

[Stormwolf]

Medium mechs can't be viable in MWO because:

1. There is no repair and rearm, mediums would give you the best performance here for kinder repair bills
2. No faction mechs, mech availability or drop weight limits. Mediums are supposed to be most common mech type, assaults the rarest.
3. It's too easy to customize mechs, everybody min maxes their heavies and assaults. The footsoldier mediums usually can't overspecialize to such a degree

Edited by Stormwolf, 05 September 2013 - 12:27 AM.

[Wolfways]

Mediums should be the fastest brawlers, but PGI gave that position to the lights who should be hit-and-run/scout mechs.

[Kitane]

Weight limits are on the way and they already demonstrated how the system will work.

It's going to be a nice boost for medium mechs, the average weight of a team dropping into random queue will have to be within certain range (roughly 45-65t).

[Jman5]

PGI says they try to stick with the lore in terms of size, but they will eventually go back and tweak some of the more egregious problems.

They're wrong to stick with lore, but whatever it seems they've made up their mind. At least my hunchback is decently sized for his weight.

[NinetyProof]

The issue is pretty simple ... economics.

You make CBills / XP based upon preformance ... the longer you live and the more damage you do the more of each you make.

Of course, the more fire power you have, the more damage you *should* do, and the more armor you have *should* translate to the longer you live, and, by extension allowing you to do *more* damage, and ergo make even more CBills / XP.

Weight limits *could* force players to take mediums, but it's never good to "force" players to take mechs they don't like ... they will simply stop playing the game. Weight Requirement is a "good" thing in general, but a TERRIBLE way to deal with mediums not being present.

The proper way to deal with mediums not being present is to "fix" the reward system and boost what mediums get in particular ... then players will *want* to grind mediums ... instead of being "forced" into them.

[Tezcatli]

Prower, on 04 September 2013 - 07:54 PM, said:

Yeah, there was a reason I stopped being on the forum. Too much useless harping about nothing from new players, and too little interaction with people who knew what they were talking about. This is the last reply I'll be making on this thread. It's up to PGI on what they want to do with that information. And if it's too hard to fix, then they should grab their nuts and do it anyways.

If they do that. Then they have to take the people working on new mechs off their projects to fix each one. But would it really be as bad if we got at least 1 rework every two months or something?

[Vodrin Thales]

YueFei, on 04 September 2013 - 11:44 PM, said:

I think the problem is primarily that the maps are too small.


Imagine if the American Gridiron Football field was much narrower than it is now. Say, only half of the current width. You would see much less in the way of fast and agile players, since there isn't enough room to use your speed to get to the outside edge. The field would be filled with big heavy stocky dudes.


Currently several Medium mechs are only just barely faster than Heavy mechs. This slight speed advantage does not help much tactically once you're engaged. But it does help strategically. A 3 meter/sec speed advantage translates to only a 60 meter difference in 20 seconds. That's the difference between 92 kph (my Hunchback) and my Catapult (82 kph). But over the course of a minute, that's a difference of 180 meters, which starts to be a more meaningful difference in distance travelled.


The problem is that with the way the maps are setup these days, a full minute of marching you travel nearly a kilometer and a half. Some of these maps are only about 3 kilometers across. =/


I like how in River City you can start shooting each other as soon as the match begins, LOL.

The problem with this idea is that players want to be fighting, not marching. If you made maps large enough to take advantage of these small top speed differences you would have a great deal of down time maneuvering during matches, and most players will not enjoy this. Do you remember the amount of complaints about large map size when Alpine came out?

Mediums are second class citizens, but this game is based on a game system (battletech) in which medium mechs had no advantages over heavies and assaults other than being cheaper. The only way we will see more mediums used is if players are forced to play them through tonnage limits or something similar.

[Qrbaza]

I run mainly HBK and im pretty good with it. If HBK was smaller and faster it would be overpowered imo. Mediums dont play like lights and most certainly not like heavy or assault. It takes some thinking and constant change of tactics on the fly (depends on situation). I addapt based on map and type of enemy im facing. I like where HBK is and i dont want it to be changed any bit.

[semalferuzA]

Weight limits are absolutely the solution.

If you think the size of the maps is the problem I'm going to have to disagree. Unless you are expecting matches to conclude with zero fighting heavier compositions are more likely to perform better. Once both sides have whittled each other down it's easy enough for the team with the weight advantage to be spread thin since they not only have more firepower/toughness per mech, they should also have more surviving mechs.

Medium mechs are big enough and slow enough to be easily shot. So why not bring a heavy or a light instead. The speed difference between a 70-75 kph heavy and a 85-110 kph medium is often not relevant in my experience.

Edited by semalferuzA, 05 September 2013 - 04:04 PM.

[YueFei]

Vodrin Thales, on 05 September 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

The problem with this idea is that players want to be fighting, not marching. If you made maps large enough to take advantage of these small top speed differences you would have a great deal of down time maneuvering during matches, and most players will not enjoy this. Do you remember the amount of complaints about large map size when Alpine came out?

Mediums are second class citizens, but this game is based on a game system (battletech) in which medium mechs had no advantages over heavies and assaults other than being cheaper. The only way we will see more mediums used is if players are forced to play them through tonnage limits or something similar.

Most of warfare is the maneuver phase. To me, that is more interesting than the actual gunfire. Lawrence of Arabia never had a force that could go toe-to-toe with his foes, but he kicked their ***** with maneuver, speed, and surprise.

Keep in mind that there is a lot of infrastructure that goes into supporting an army, its equipment, food, etc. That infrastructure occupies an area many many times larger than that army can practically encompass. You *could* spread all of your forces out, but an enemy would simply concentrate and punch through in several key areas. You can concentrate all your forces into one big spearhead, but an enemy can fight a delaying action with a much smaller force while destroying multiple objectives that you've left undefended, leaving your force to wither without fuel, ammunition, spare parts, etc.

Look at the enormous effort expended in wars to deceive the enemy as to your intentions, whereabouts, avenues of approach. The Allies in World War 2 constructed inflatable tanks so that enemy aerial reconnaissance would think the armored thrust would come from a completely different direction from the real attack.


We need properly sized maps and multiple objectives, and that speed becomes a real advantage.

[The Boz]

A 250 ton lance deployment limit/750 ton team limit would go a long way towards balancing the different loadouts and match-ups.

[MyszTrap]

people need to learn how to play med mechs... ive only been playing since the start of summer and most matches I am top or in the top 3 for damage in my blackjack , huchie or cicada. latest high score being with a 2 ppc 4 mef laser blck jack and going 800 damage one tound and 720 the next. tho I do agree wieght restrictions will be nive since going against an all assault team is stll rough.

[Kaspirikay]

Billygoat, on 04 September 2013 - 07:44 PM, said:

On one hand, I understand this. They are under pressure and this would be a lot of extra work that impact other stuff.

On the other hand, I sure wish when I made a huge screw up at work I could just go to my boss and say "Sorry boss, I botched this badly but it's too hard to go back and fix it so I'll just leave it like this, kk?"

Join software development, it happens all the time.