130 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Farix, on 06 September 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

When did 26 < 9 become true?

Consider that most weapons are simply variations of what we have. So SRM2 is effectively the same as SRM4 in terms of overall functionality.

Here's a breakdown of actual weapons:
SRM (all sizes)
LRM (all sizes)
Lasers (Pulse Lasers are in the same bracket, includes TAG)
PPCs (ER and regular)
Gauss
AC (all sizes, including UAC+LBX)
Flamers
MGs
NARC (could be reclassified as projectile or SRM)

So, Vassago is actually right, strangely enough.

Now that I think about it, PPC/Gauss/AC can be merged into the same thing, because they literally the same projectile in a different form/speed/etc. (There's no special firing arc or anything differentiating them.)

Edited by Deathlike, 06 September 2013 - 03:36 PM.

[ryoma]

There are people telling us to quit the game because we try to make PGI aware of serious mistakes and to them I say, sod off.

Players informing PGI of these issues do so because
1. They want this game to live
2. They want this game to live up to the promises of its founding
3. They want a Battletech game, not Mech Assualt
4. They want to protect their investment.

Those who resort to ad hominem on either side are irrevocably trash, especially those that make threats. These forums are for communicating grievances and providing high fives to the devs based on their actions.

[Devils Advocate]

You're always supposed to balance from the top down. Is Starcraft 2 a failure because they balance out the gameplay at a professional gameplay level? You tell me. How about Street Fighter? Dota? You balance at the top and you let the bottom learn from tutorials or experience. Balancing from the bottom is total garbo.

Then again until we really have Community Warfare (if we ever have it at all) there's not much need for high level balancing. Hopefully one will come with the other.

[Royalewithcheese]

While I do have some sympathy for the "if I'm running around in a a dragon that I control with a joystick, how does balance at top levels affect me?" argument, it's important to point out that Elo at this point casts a very wide net, and it's not likely that you can tank yours to the point where decent/good players in strong builds will not be part of your game until the playerbase gets much, much larger.

It's also important to note that you're not the only person playing the game, and if hypothetical balance issues mean the meta is not fun for (say) the top 50% of the playerbase, those are people whose fun matters too.

(Also, if you're in the bottom 50%, it doesn't negatively impact your fun if PPCs generate a reasonable amount of heat or UAC/5s have a non-luck-based mechanic or whatever.)

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 06 September 2013 - 05:05 PM.

[Volthorne]

Vassago Rain, on 06 September 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

Yepp. This game has even less.

To be fair, in Q3A it was mostly Rockets, Railguns, and Shotguns being used, with the other 6 filling in as secondaries if you ran out of ammo or couldn't find one of the aforementioned three.

[ryoma]

Bombadil's response to this "so this is a very sad day for players hoping for balance or role warfare" was that "No it's not, starting with launch 12v12's will be 1pv only."

That poll was a huge cop-out that pretended to address community concerns while brushing them under a rug.

According to him it's ok that the pillar of design, role warfare, has been tossed out the window for any player without 11 buddies.

Remember, NGNG is payed by PGI for their streaming service. They are not paid for these podcasts or employees of PGI, they are only paid to stream. I do find it odd however that NGNG always tows the PGI company line, ignores big community questions, and attacks anyone who finds their coverage less than adequate.

For shame.

Source: http://www.nogutsnog...80.html#msg6180

Edited by ryoma, 06 September 2013 - 10:43 PM.

[JD R]

Where is the ******* End of the Vid where you see that the scouts moves 1PV for fight?

[Vassago Rain]

Volthorne, on 06 September 2013 - 06:36 PM, said:

To be fair, in Q3A it was mostly Rockets, Railguns, and Shotguns being used, with the other 6 filling in as secondaries if you ran out of ammo or couldn't find one of the aforementioned three.

Lightning is a really strong weapon, too, but it's not commonly available. The grenade launcher (the clonk) has the same problem. Both are devastating in proper hands, especially if the player can secure the spawn and ammo.

When rockets are plenty available, they are the only weapon you'll ever see used, because they give you a mobility advantage. Even if we pretend there's only rockets, shotguns, and railguns, all three are fundamentally different, while MWO guns are almost all the same, or can be split into three categories.

So what people are saying in this thread is true. Balance from the top. Bad Q3 players will discard machineguns right away, because they don't know how to track and melt enemies. They'll likely kill themselves while trying to rocketjump, and lightning in a new player's hands is one of the worst ideas ever.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 07 September 2013 - 02:46 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

Deathlike, on 06 September 2013 - 03:30 PM, said:

Consider that most weapons are simply variations of what we have. So SRM2 is effectively the same as SRM4 in terms of overall functionality.

Here's a breakdown of actual weapons:
SRM (all sizes)
LRM (all sizes)
Lasers (Pulse Lasers are in the same bracket, includes TAG)
PPCs (ER and regular)
Gauss
AC (all sizes, including UAC+LBX)
Flamers
MGs
NARC (could be reclassified as projectile or SRM)

So, Vassago is actually right, strangely enough.

Now that I think about it, PPC/Gauss/AC can be merged into the same thing, because they literally the same projectile in a different form/speed/etc. (There's no special firing arc or anything differentiating them.)

There are splash damage weapons, like both kinds of missiles. SRMs of all sizes are the exact same thing, just more tubes, as are streaks, and LBX uses the same mechanic. LRMs add a tracking system, and operate at ranges the other shotgun weapons don't. Same thing, still.

There's impact guns, which is all burst weapons. PPCs, AC20s, AC10s, gauss, AC2...

Then there's lasers. These apply damage over time, but they are all exactly the same hitscan DoT guns. Machineguns, all three types of lasers (pulses apply damage faster, ERs at a longer range), flamers...

MWO doesn't have any real variety.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Twisted Power, on 06 September 2013 - 10:08 AM, said:

First of all PGI is not balancing. What they are doing is purposefully breaking mechanics so that they do not have to balance them. IE: If something works well (maybe to well), instead of balance (because they have tried and failed) they now just introduce new mechanics to the game to break the item.

Unfortunate this is seeming to be the case more and more.

Honestly they don't even seem to try to balance them any more. They just look at how popular the weapon is and then break it more and more until it reaches the popularity point they want them at.

The PPC and ER PPC are prime examples. We have come full circle. Back in closed beta heat was set at 10 for PPCs and 15 for ER PPCs. It was at this point that it was clearly obvious that this was too hot for these weapons and no one used them. Popularity was close to equal to zero. Then they finally balanced them down to 8 and 11 heat, people started using them, they got really popular so the nerfs begin. First ghost heat and when that wasn't enough to bring the popularity down, they increased the heat to 9 and 13. That still wasn't enough so back to 10 and 15 we go. Honestly you can't call reseting them back to the broken state they were in 12 months ago balancing.

[Chrithu]

boomshekah, on 06 September 2013 - 02:14 AM, said:

What??? Are you serious?? That´s shocking news! You mean PGI is not developing this game around a handful of nerds who are ready to abuse every bug, every little unbalance that might exist to get an advantage, but are instead trying to open up the game and make it accessible to a much broader group of players?? What a stupid business decision!

You can be sarcastic all you want. Still it is NOT a good idea to balance a game around the average joe/noobs/beginners/whatever you want to call it.

I explained that in numerous threads. The problem isn't exploiting alone. The problem is that every buff you introduce is exponentially more effective in the hands of a good player which only increaes perceived imbalance between beginner and vet player. And every nerf introduced hits the beginner/noob/average joe exponentially harder than the vet which also just increases imbalance between the two groups.

Thus is it allways best to balance the game around the people that learned how to best use their weapons and mechs.

That does NOT mean though that there shouldn't be ways to make the learning curve for beginners less steep. But those shouldn't be reflected in balancing.

Just as an example: One thing I keep hearing after the latest patch is that PPC is now harder to hit with, which would make them a no choice for beginners. The answer to that should be a shooting range where you can safely practice shooting at moving targets. And not to reincrease the projectile speed.

[ryoma]

This is especially saddening considering how many skilled players come to the forums to discuss balance problems along with good solutions.

[Syllogy]

Vassago Rain, on 06 September 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

Yepp. This game has even less.

Are you saying that 26 weapons is less than 9?

[Deathlike]

Syllogy, on 10 September 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:

Are you saying that 26 weapons is less than 9?

He's actually saying that we have 3 base weapons, which happen to have 26 variants total.

Kinda like mastering 13 chassis, and 42 variants total...

Yea, it is kinda unexciting when you look at it that way. 3 is less than 9 after all.

Edited by Deathlike, 10 September 2013 - 09:37 AM.

[Almond Brown]

tenderloving, on 06 September 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

Guess what: MWO isn't a unique flower, no matter how much you want it to be. It's a competitive online multiplayer game, and there are core concepts that apply to all such games that determine the quality of the design.

If you think that PGI is in uncharted territory here, you're wrong.

I will let the fact that you never answered the question speak for itself. MWO is what it is because the Dev wish it to be that way. All the hate and perversion will not change that. The mere fact that so many spew nothing but vitriol about the game but persist in doing so simply shouts volumes.

Either play what is provided or move the **** on. Your noise is not helping...

[Almond Brown]

Farix, on 06 September 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

When did 26 < 9 become true?

It was just a very poor attempt at humor and was thusly ignored. Carry on.

[Almond Brown]

Fooooo, on 06 September 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

Do you really use all 26 weapons in MWO ?

To me it seems at least 20-21 of them are basically useless, meaning they pretty much don't exist in my mind.

So yeah, Quakes 9 is larger than MWO's 26....at least imo.

Not everyone "pigeon holes" themselves with the oh so prevalent Lemming style "FOTM" builds you know. You should diversify some.

[Almond Brown]

ryoma, on 06 September 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

stuff

These forums are for communicating grievances and providing high fives to the devs based on their actions.

And when those High Fives start coming, and not quickly get shot down by the same bunch with the Grievances, we can start a real conversation. Until then, all PGI can hear is just "your noise" versus "their noise" and no one gets SFA accomplished.

[C E Dwyer]

Vila deVere, on 06 September 2013 - 03:33 AM, said:

This post is why this game is turning into Mech Assault Online.

What do you expect, its where the money is, within a year you'll see a large proportion of abusive console players in PUG's its on the increase allready, half of them try to preserve this stat thing and so fail to teams that push as a unit, but an influx of new noobs that will spend spend spend, is what PGI want, its time to make that choice.

You get to play mech assault with ones that looks like BT ones or not..

I do completely agree, btw that the founders have been lied to bait and switch and some of us are still here, there isn't going to be a wake up moment where PGI go wow we got it all wrong, we had better make a niche game where only about five hundred people can ever play it well.

Should founders and old closed beta people be angry, yup we sure should, but it is really down to a choice of dealing with it or uninstalling.

Every day around my early evening its just not worth logging on to pug with the clueless now. I was extremely bad once but I allways had a clue about ok when I go over that ridge I'm going to be shot to hell so don't do it, but this new lot go over that ridge get shot to hell and thne blame the team.

I'm not quite ready to uninstal, yet, as I desided, I plkay this free now, but it gets closer with every week

[C E Dwyer]

ryoma, on 06 September 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

There are people telling us to quit the game because we try to make PGI aware of serious mistakes and to them I say, sod off.

Players informing PGI of these issues do so because
1. They want this game to live
2. They want this game to live up to the promises of its founding
3. They want a Battletech game, not Mech Assualt
4. They want to protect their investment.

Those who resort to ad hominem on either side are irrevocably trash, especially those that make threats. These forums are for communicating grievances and providing high fives to the devs based on their actions.

I do tend to agree, but, they are not listening so it does really just give us the option or dealing with it or pulling the plug, I'm half way there with pulling the plug on my wallet, and not touching another game that IGP publish