209 replies to this topic

[Vodrin Thales]

Ghogiel, on 07 October 2013 - 05:38 AM, said:

Statistically, it's extremely unlikely you are high Elo with less than 200 matches played.

It would also be equally unlikely that he is particularly good with such a small number of matches played. In my merc company we find that most new recruits start getting decent with about 1000 matches played or so. Very few are above average until they have somewhere close to those number of matches played.

[MisterPlanetarian]

Lack of full spectrum weaponry. Some are Clan tech, others are not due for a decade on the timeline. Others are not

LBX 5/20
Light/Heavy Gauss rifles
UAC 10/20
Rotary AC, Heavy Machine guns.

Arrow IV missile systems,
Streak SRM 4/6

Er ML/SL
X-Pulse Lasers
Plasma Cannons


An ECM fix, no more disrupting enemy mechs. Enhance it's stealth properties like it should do. Let more light and medium mechs mount it. Ghost heat need to be exempt from some mechs, like on the Awesome and Catapult -A or other pure energy/missile boats.

[Sir Wulfrick]

The one thing that seriously vexes me about MWO at present is the match maker. Usually I drop with one or two friends with whom I usually play. I suppose you could describe us as a 2 or 3-man "premade." With just over 900 games played I doubt that my ELO has crept above 1400. My W/L is 1.40 (favourable) and my K/D is 2.09 for assault mechs. I never play any other weight category, not because other weight classes are inferior but because I've always (since circa 1987) been an Atlas pilot. That's just what I like to drive.

For some reason ~85% of games are a horrible massacre one way or the other. Reasonably balanced games are becoming very rare. I'm happy to accept losses against frankly better teams where I think our side has tried hard, but all too often the match becomes a slaughter in one direction or other. There are the rare occasions when I get 7 kills in my AS7-K (it's happened, amazingly) and pull a magic result out of the bag, but these occasions are rare enough. I've no idea what the answer is. I suspect that some sort of battle value system coupled with *some* measure of individual skill could be effective, but the current situation is not.

As for playing solo, i.e. pure PUGing, that just isn't fun any more. I'd suggest that there's a desperate need for some effective method of communication for PUG players, otherwise pure PUGing will continue to be a severe impediment for the enjoyment of new players.

I think that many of the perceived issues in MWO at present (pop tarts, LRM effectiveness, or lack thereof) and PUGing misery are largely due to the ineffective nature of the match maker. Personally I'm less concerned about weight balance. If I'm in a lance of 4 assault mechs and we come across a lance of genuinely skilled light mech pilots, often as not the assault lance will be doomed. I don't think that weight balance is quite as large an issue as it's perceived to be. I think the real size of the problem is inflated by deficiencies with the match maker.

I'd also advocate caution in relation to enforcing strict weight parity limits for drops. Obviously medium & heavy mechs should be more common than assault mechs, however please spare a thought for those of us who pilot assaults not because they're FOTM but because that's what we like to do, and is what we're good at. If it gets to the point where I'm having to wait 10 minutes at a time for a match just because I'm an Atlas pilot... I have many other uses for my scarce gaming time.

[Shadey99]

Xaositect, on 06 October 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

3. There's no incentive to keep your 'Mech from being destroyed in a battle. Afterward, it's completely repaired at no cost to you. I didn't start playing until after paying for repairs was taken out, but it seems like this wouldn't be unreasonable to put back in. I'm not saying repairs should be prohibitively expensive, but I think there needs to be some sort of repair cost.

4. Hit detection and collision detection. Lights should be hard to hit, but not THAT hard to hit. I was in a drop the other day where my team lost because what showed as a clean AC/20 hit at point-blank range to the right back torso of a Jenner failed to register. This would have likely destroyed the Jenner, or at least damaged it severely, but because the hit failed to register, the Jenner destroyed the Victor or Highlander or whatever it was. Hit detection seems worst on Spiders, and it seems to me like the Spider needs to be physically bigger- they seem to be thinner than the Commando, which is five tons lighter.

I'm only going to address these two points...

Teams are already way to shy to actually go out and fight, they would rather hide and cower taking pot shots unless they are grouped in one big blob. Punishing people for dying would simply make this more common. It would be like this "Go out and suck up the damage for me, I don't want to get hit....", "No you go out!", "No you!" enemy team sneaks up on them and they all die horrible deaths.

Spiders are physically taller than commandos, and equally wide, but thinner in body structure. Commandos basically look like shorter fatter Spiders. This is why it's easy to shoot between a Spiders legs, while the same things is rare for a Commando.

[Equalizer]

Oh boy, where to begin...

- Spiders!

- Ghost heat - I can't believe this failed experiment is still in game. No, seriously - it is one of the worst ideas in the long, sad history of bad ideas and it still got implemented on top of that

- The heat system in general, with its ludicrous low dissipation - even 20 DHS barely manage heat intensive loadouts like 2 ERPPCs/LPLs or 4 MPLs. Try squeezing some DPS out of those? - well, you MAY be able to fire 2-3 times, depending on the map, and then just run around cooling off while the opposing AC boat tears you apart with almost zero heat. WTF?!

- The PPC projectile speed nerf - these were the only weapon that allowed me to hit stuff with some semblance of consistency and now they're {Scrap}. On the other hand, the Gauss rifle now allows me to consistently hit stuff but... see below.

- Gauss rifle charge mechanic - we played with it, we didn't like it, now please PGI, can you just remove it and increase cooldown to like 6 sec or find some more adequate solution to achieve the thing you hoped to achieve with the charge-up.

- The movement mechanics change - I shudder to think how many times I've died because I was stuck against a ledge ankle high. Come on, these are giant stompy robots and due to their stompiness they should be able to traverse obstacles like fist-sized rocks and such!

- The hit reg problems - ACs, Gauss and lasers are mostly fine, but everything else is basically useless with the 130-ish ping I have. Err, did I mention Spiders?

- Most other things, mentioned by previous posts. And Spiders!

[MisterPlanetarian]

Extra Credists did a great episode on balance called Perfect Imbalance.

http://www.youtube.c...bnlKb8kA70#t=11

Not all of it is relevant to MWO obviously but they bring up some good points, especially if you strive for perfect balance.

[Daeqar]

WarZ, on 06 October 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

Positional rubberbanding. Walking next to ally mechs, then getting teleported around each other cause the game cant figure who's where. Being in a brawl and getting rubber band teleported around each other and into terrain because the game cant f'ing figure out who's where. Your brawling - you are about to pull the trigger, you got the enemy mech lined up in front of you and *poof* he's behind you, or you're behind each other, or your face planted into a wall ... alpha wasted / shot wasted. Happens often in tight fights and when its the thing that kills you, its f'ing infuriating.

^^^ This... Positional rubberbanding for me is a big problem. I mostly use very fast mechs up close and personal, and even though my ping is only 40 to 70, it is very irritating to be trying to execute precise movements only to snap position somewhere else, frequently facing the wrong direction, against terrain, and in harm's way. It's even worse than if the enemy mech rubberbanded. HSR implementation has gone too far.


My other biggest issue is C-bill generation (or build costs) are too much of a grind in order to try and develop new builds. It is absolutely horrible if a newish player is not happy with their mech (entirely common because they are new and make bad choices) and cannot afford what they think they need to be competitive and have fun. It should not take 2 months of grinding just to have a solid semi-fun-to-play platform to start grinding with. Much of the appeal of this game is frankly wasting C-bills trying stuff out, even if it doesn't work out. That's not at all possible right now, and it takes away fun and makes the game too grindy.

[Zyllos]

Sidekick, on 07 October 2013 - 08:55 AM, said:

One thing that hasn´t been issued yet:

The modification system
While interesting at first glance, it streamlines mechs and gameplay too much, making mechs with bad silouette (Awesome, Trebuchet, Hunchback) less viable. It also pushes a easy to obtain FOTM-mentality that favours the next easy High-Alpha-Build.
While I am aware that the mod system is part of the Mechwarrior-PC-Lore and is in it since... ever, MWO clearly shows that it is really a large hinderance. Modified mechs couldn´t be used in a matchmaker balancing "Battle Value", and balancing by weight is completely impossible.

Every try to balance the modification system has failed thus far. And while there are some mathhammer-pros out here claiming that they know the formula to get it right, I seriously doubt that this will fix the problem.

From my point of view, a stock-mod-system featuring mechs with stock loadouts and upgrades would improve following aspects:
- The need to collect a wider selection of mechs
- role warfare
- viability of different mechs
- High-Alpha-Mechanics
- Ghost Heat and other Band-Aid*
- Matchmaking (by using and adapting a BV system)

And: I know that this will not happen. Most of the players love the mod system while ironically, they hate the meta asprung from it.

*Apparently, the plural of Band-Aid is banned here. What the *****?

Hell, you don't even need to do that.

You could just make Hardpoints have categories that limits the "full" customization of mechs but does still allow some modification.

But this is one of my top 3 issues with MWO.

[AC]

Zyllos, on 07 October 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

Hell, you don't even need to do that.

You could just make Hardpoints have categories that limits the "full" customization of mechs but does still allow some modification.

But this is one of my top 3 issues with MWO.

agreed. Tying a critical size limit to each weapon slot would be the easiest fix. We could get rid of every bandaid like Ghost Heat, Gauss Delay, and JJ shake over night.

[Hisashi No Oni]

Well the rest of you said it all and I agree with most of the above. I will add what I think is vital at this moment in the game (ie Phoenix) And that is scaling. Having Mediums the same size as an Atlas is just ridiculous. If you want role combat you need the Mediums and there is little incentive to run them at this point.

[Iskareot]

Faith restored from many... A WORKING ELO system / Separate pugs from premades as that is clearly an issue if you read through these posts. All others are second to this.

[Daekar]

I have to partially agree and partially disagree with what people have said so far.

1) Matchmaking - It's not great, but dear God it's better than it used to be. I can't tell you how much it meant to separate out the 12 man groups. Sometimes we get rolled, but I haven't felt the "holy {Scrap}, that was a premade" feeling in a while now. I would like to see closer matchups in tonnage, or even a tonnage limit, because I'm getting tired of seeing teams with nothing but Stalkers, Jagermechs, Highlanders, Victors, and Atlases.

2) Content - I've actually been impressed at the rate at which they have released new content. I guess some people have higher expectations, but since the core game is so good I don't really care.

3) Ghost Heat - I love this mechanic. The alpha-striking madness was going to be the death of the game thanks to the pinpoint damage that came about in the translation from tabletop to FPS. Anything that can decrease poptart high-alpha sniper peek and shoot builds is good. It's annoying that my 4x LrgLas K2 is a little nerfed, but I can deal with that easily by splitting into two weapon groups and only alphastriking when necessary and feasible.

4) Economy - I love not having repair and reload. It was great in single-player mech games but it really doesn't fit well in MWO and I'm glad they got rid of it. Would LOVE to see module prices come down. Pretty please?

5) Hit detection - is much improved but still needs work. According to what I've heard on NGNG this is an ongoing project and will continue to be worked on.

My #1 frustration is not the game, but the players. Pugging is miserable if you land in a team full of people who scatter immediately or feel compelled to walk into a well-laid meat grinder rather than perform a flanking maneuver. This is pretty much the only aspect of my MWO experience that results in negative emotions.

[Psydotek]

Weapon convergence & pinpoint accuracy
No "stock only" mode

[LORD ORION]

Problem 1: Double Armor
It causes 2 fundemental problems

-People don't learn from their incaution
-Focus fire from multiple mechs becomes twice as effective as it should be

Put it to normal Battletech armor levels. The games will naturally begin to increase in duration as people stay in cover.
Long range weapons will hurt and reduce blatant overruns, which is probably the most aggregious design flaw with MWO. (where the time to breech armor allows you to go into full ****** mode and simply run through the open absorbing fire with your pack to focus-demolish mechs)

For certain not everybody wants to play like this. But if you make it a game mode, it is all I would play (and many people would be with me)

Problem 2: NARC

Narc does not last long enough. It should last the entire match, or until the location it is attached to is destroyed.
Normal missiles fired at a mech under the effect of NARC should have the same effect of ARTEMIS. (This includes SRMs)
If you have Artemis, NARC should have no effect. (your missiles are tied to your fire control system and will not pick up NARC signals, you need line of sight for your bonus)
TAG / NARC should not stack. That is to say tagging a narc'd mech should have no additional effect.

Problem 3: LRMs not fast enough, should only do 1 damage per hit.
Should move around 450m / sec
When you are getting locked by a mech WITH LRMs, there should be an audible warning tone during the lock phase. (this should not be the case if getting locked by a mech without LRMs, or if you are already locked)

I came back for 2 weeks / 300ish matches after a 3 month vaction to see if things had been improved.
They are just as bad as ever (ghost heat, lag shields, double armor gameplay stupidity, hit scan problems, $$$ overpriced) and I am on my way out again, so your post is both timely and opportune.

[Symbiodinium]

This is less a balance issue and more of a gameplay issue: Center torsos are too large (or too underarmored) for most mechs. It gives rise to a high-alpha metagame in two ways: 1) promotes use of XL engines, increasing total weapon tonnage, because side torso deaths are less common and 2) there's little incentive for fine-scale decisions in a battle, to tactically dissect mechs by targeting weaker arm/torso sections, reducing their weaponry and making a real fight of it. Much more common is the "point large guns at center mass until they die" style of fighting, which is frankly dull. Not necessarily imbalanced, just boring. If not for a bit of laser splash many heavy/assault mechs die with perfectly intact side torsos, arms and legs. The game would be more interesting if one had to seriously consider gradually grinding away and incapacitating the enemy by removing arms and side torsos before finally hitting the center torso for the kill.

[-Deliverance]

Double armor is a bummer, From a purely TT to FPS conversion I can see why they had to double the armor. To allow games to last longer. If they had kept it to close to TT as possible it would make the game more interesting as now you would have tactics to be used instead of just running straight into the hornets nest.

The other issue I still have a problem with is that LRMs, should still be like Table top where there is a chance that missles will miss the target.

And being damaged to your front armor when clearly you are being shot from behind.

[Sephlock]

Imperius, on 06 October 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

ECM, Ghost Heat, Lack of robust collision system, LRM's are basically useless (poptarts, lack of scouting pugs, ECM), C-Bill Nerf, Poor hit boxes

Those (I tweaked your list a bit).

Also, lack of dakka . THIS GAME NEEDS MOAR DAKKA! RAPID FIRE AUTOCANNONS! RAPID FIRE LBX! LONG BEAM DURATION LASERS (albeit with increased damage to compensate for the beam duration) to get that Stackpole laser effect (beams raking across armor)!

Basically: Cooler lasers (not heat wise, but awesomeness wise), faster firing autocannons (I'd accept damage-per-round nerfs in exchange for this, and they could leave AC/20s alone, and maybe AC/10s also), pulse lasers that aren't terrible (and get rid of that sound that is so terrible that people are starting to develop stockholm syndrome towards it).... and missiles that are viable (just filter out any posts/threads that contain the word "missile", "LRM", or "SRM" and leave everything as-is after super buffing them.

[shadN]

1. I used to love this game! Now I am truelly losing my interest. I wouldn´t have thought that to happen.

2. ECM is a game breaker. _Literally every time_ one team has significantly more ECM mechs than the other, especially DDCs, they are going to win.

3. We need a weight limit so assault mechs become more scarce on the battlefield.

[Kahoumono]

Perfect weapons convergence at all ranges is the primary balance problem for me. Ghost heat and strange gauss firing mechanism only papered over the cracks. In addition to the PPC travel time nerf the devs have closed the engagement range of the battles. Its no wonder that the dual PPC + high calibre AC + SRM combo have made a comeback, especially with the poptarts.

Hit detection is another major issue, the spider is too easy an example. Hitting objects in the air also needs some work as the damage is often spread out because of the wonky hit detection.

Matchmaking/weight balance is a third issue for me. I can't really stress enough how four PUGs are not equal to a four-man premade. The developers themselves say information warfare is an important aspect in this game and chances are if you are in a pre-made you have gone to the trouble of setting up comms. This isn't an issue with being social, its a have and have not issue. If you do not have comms you are at a disadvantage because in game chat is too cumbersome to communicate in the middle of a fight.

Lest we forget about ECM, it alone can still change the result of a match at 1.5 tons its way too powerful.

[New Day]

CBs