74 replies to this topic

[StalaggtIKE]

I would like to see something like this happen.

However here's the problems: What makes a player chose anything but the largest mechs, that can mount the largest weapons? The more viable teams already consist of mostly Assault and Heavy mechs, this change would only enforce it. Something would need to be done in order to ensure the viability of the smaller mechs, that are confined to the smaller weapons.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 07 November 2013 - 01:58 PM.

[Sybreed]

Everyone knows I'm in favor of hardpoint sizes. .. As a matter of fact, I've been one of the first to recommend it in early cb. I won't debate the merits of hp sizes as I'm on my cellphone, but here's a twist I could suggest that would both benefit pgi and players:

let's say you have a Locust that holds 2 small energy hps for its small laser. If you want to fit a large laser in there, you can pay a small amount to combine those 2 small hps into a single large hp. This way, customization still happens but you don't see stupid builds like a 4 ppc or 6 ppc stalker

[CeeKay Boques]

Thank you for making a whine balance topic so vague that anyone could post. That's very welcoming of you. I think that they shouldn't try to balance anything. Community Warfare bidding will fix all this, that's my vague opinion!

[Trauglodyte]

We've had this discussion many times before. PGI doesn't want our creativity stunted. If you want to go super fast while being both super deadly with weapons way heavier than intended and super fragile, that is your decision. They want us to come up with outrageous ideas which is why they never directly nerfed the Gauss Cat or AC40 Jager.

Now, should there be some restrictions? I would say yes just to keep things in order but where do you stop? Honestly, they never should have expanded the game like they did. Mechs were designed to go X kph, per TT, with Y amount of HPs. You only got ES, FF, XL engines and other t2 tech if you could 1) find it, 2) have someone equip it, and 3) afford it. But, how often do you see people without ES, XL engines, and/or DHSs? Its part of the reason why TTK is so high and yet we don't have anything, even as basic as heat penalties, to combat it. IF you die in seconds, its your fault for either piloting badly, getting out numbered, or not driving an Atlas. Derp!

Anyway, restrictions won't do anything except force Mech drivers into running empty mechs.

[Shadey99]

RedDragon, on 07 November 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

Actually... no, it's not.
http://www.heavymeta...com/bv_calc.htm

You don't have to do matched BV for single players. There are a lot of ways to implement it, e.g. limiting the total team-BV to a certain value. And regulating BV for single weapons or mechs would be quite easy, just give underperforming mechs a cut in BV and vice versa for FOTM-mechs etc. But the discussion about BV has been done to death. Fact is, we need a system to balance the game. And because the Devs decided to use a rather bad hard point system and much too open mechlab (IMO), they opened Pandora's Box regarding anything resembling balance. Given that because of their modifications to heat, damage and armor, not even stock mechs are balanced in any way, it will be next to impossible to achieve overall balance without any system of R&R or BV, in my opinion.

We actually had BT developer on here discussing this a few months ago.... Their may be a 'BV formula', but the base numbers are all pretty much whatever the developers felt like at the time. Which sort of explains why their has been 2 versions of BV.

As for the rest, you either balance per player or we must be able to select mechs after getting onto a team. It would take hours to match 12 players versus 12 players having to match the team BVs while people can randomly take any BV value. I mean how close in BV do you even expect to get? A locust is BV of 356 or 432, so even a difference of 300 BV coudl be crippling. This is even worse if your trying to match ELO.

RedDragon, on 07 November 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

And yes, R&R could work, if implemented properly. Punishing builds that rely heavy on ammo is bad (at least if that isn't balanced in another way to counter it), but making the play more costly for mechs with better equipment is a good start to making the game balanced.

Making R&R worthwhile, yet not crippling games is going to be nearly impossible... A single mech who decides to be optimized and go for the alpha meta instead of playing to R&R benefits (like many older players sitting on fortunes could do) could lopside entire games. So play for R&R benefits and lose or play with no regard for R&R and win. Seriously what do you think people will do? Losing tends to give very low rewards, because that is what people want (higher rewards for winning than losing) so how long can you afford to lose?

Fut, on 07 November 2013 - 12:52 PM, said:

Why can't you fit 10lbs of **** into a 5lbs bag?
Sometimes things just don't fit, Man.
I'd love to see some restrictions on the customization of Mechs.
Some sort of tolerance +/- as to what will fit in the hardpoint. Being able to squeeze an AC2 into a MG slot makes sense - cramming an AC20 into an MG slot defies physics.

Except I have 10 tons and my options are 6 tons or 10 tons and I only wanted one or the other?

Or to make this easy, I have a a basket that can hold 8 apples. I can either fit in 6 apples or 8 apples and there is no difference.

To make this battletech instead... I have 4 slots and 8 tons, a AC2 is 1 and 6 or a AC5 is 4 and 8. Now why exactly can't I stick a AC5 in that space again? Because to me it sure ******* looks like it fits.

[Shadey99]

Sybreed, on 07 November 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

let's say you have a Locust that holds 2 small energy hps for its small laser. If you want to fit a large laser in there, you can pay a small amount to combine those 2 small hps into a single large hp. This way, customization still happens but you don't see stupid builds like a 4 ppc or 6 ppc stalker

Unless you get to pick where you want your hard points this would not help a Locust much. A normal LL Locust has the laser in the CT, but that is a single energy hard point currently. In fact on the 1V and 3S there is only a single energy hard point and the 3S is the most common variant to run a single LL. The 3M is the only one with paired hard points and those are in the arm, not a very safe place to mount your only gun even if your more likely to lose a leg than an arm in a Locust.

The same sort of issue holds for many other mechs... How about the Shadowhawk? I combine 3 ballistics to get a AC20 (and therefor only one variant can run one)?

As for the rest... Critical space and weight are the balance factors we already have limiting weapons and the hard points we can use. No current mech can max every hard point it has with the biggest weapon of a class that the hard point is.

Edited by Shadey99, 07 November 2013 - 03:18 PM.

[Christof Romulus]

Awwww man.
I thought this thread was going to be about mechs causing global warming.

I went and got my crazy hat and everything.

[Sybreed]

Shadey99, on 07 November 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

Unless you get to pick where you want your hard points this would not help a Locust much. A normal LL Locust has the laser in the CT, but that is a single energy hard point currently. In fact on the 1V and 3S there is only a single energy hard point and the 3S is the most common variant to run a single LL. The 3M is the only one with paired hard points and those are in the arm, not a very safe place to mount your only gun even if your more likely to lose a leg than an arm in a Locust.

The same sort of issue holds for many other mechs... How about the Shadowhawk? I combine 3 ballistics to get a AC20 (and therefor only one variant can run one)?

Yup, only 1 variant can fit an ac20, that actually gives a specific role to that variant. What's the point of having so many variants if they can all do the same thing

[wintersborn]

RedDragon, on 07 November 2013 - 11:48 AM, said:

The real problem is that people think they are entitled to have a mechlab and when they get one, they scream bloody murder about balance. There won't be any kind of overall balance as long as people can freely modify their mech. If we had a stock only mode, it would be possible to balance most of the weapons and allow for a wide range of useful mechs, because most configs would be unique. But as it stands now, the Devs struggle to balance the mechs versus the weapons, and they will have more work with every new mech/variant and every new weapon that is added because it could tip the whole system over. And that is something they don't seem to get.

Perfect balance? your right it will never happen with a game like this due to the mech bay.

Although the mech bay is the sole reason many of us even play this game, without it MWO offers nothing more, better or different than other game.

[Sandpit]

Another thread that boils down to "My way is better. I can't/don't/want to be competitive with the current mechanics in place so noone else can be so I'll make a new thread on an old subject that has dozens of threads already in existence instead of posting there"

Balance is decent, not perfect (because I've yet to play a game that has perfectly balanced game play all the way around), but decent. I run energy boats and do fine with ghost heat. I run ballistic, SSRM, LRM, srm, and everythign in between mechs and do just fine. I run assaults, heavies, mediums, and lights and do just fine. I run boats, balanced ,mechs, scouts, etc. and do just fine.

If you're having a problem with the mechanics and not doign as well it MIGHT not be the mechanics....


I understand voicing your opinion about somethign when you don't like it or disagree with it but posting the same exact topic in a anew thread every single time you want to just clutters the forums and makes it difficult for other players to find topics that just might concern something other than 3pv, ghost heat, ballistics, poptarting, spiders, and seismic refunds. I just about summed up the entire front page of every section on the forum because everyone feels their idea and opinion needs its own thread.

[RG Notch]

What did that poor horse do to you people that you insist on beating it's sad weary corpse still. That ship has sailed. It's like the remove ECM people. Or the TT heat scale people. or my favorite the remove Ghost Heat guys.

None of those things is coming or changing no matter how much you post it, no matter how eloquent your arguments. It'd be sad if it wasn't funny. It's that whole insanity thing, keep saying the same thing in different ways and this time they will listen.

It's not like I don't agree some of these changes would be for the better, it's just if you've been here long enough you ought to know they aren't changing. PGI knows best, even when they don't.

[Pjwned]

I would be fine with something like hardpoint restrictions if there were more weapon systems to choose from, but just slapping on a change like that right now would just be a giant pain in the *** for everybody except the heaviest of mech pilots.

[Shadey99]

Sybreed, on 07 November 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

Yup, only 1 variant can fit an ac20, that actually gives a specific role to that variant. What's the point of having so many variants if they can all do the same thing

How do you balance a AC20 or Gauss with this though? It makes no sense if we adopt your system and then say if we have 3 ballistics slots (Battlemaster arm), but we cannot mount an AC20... Which is the case of the Battlemaster 1D. The hand articulators block it from mounting the AC20 though not the Gauss... and if we then need 4 ballistics slots for a AC20, but 3 for a Gauss we would have to vastly adjust all existing mechs... Which could now chose to hold 4+ AC2s instead.

So... Lets take our new Misery with 3 ballistics hard points instead of 1 and it's new 3xAC2 loadout... Or the Atlas D-DC with as many as 4...

Why go through all this and not just keep a functional long lasting critical space and weight limitation we already have?

[Otto Cannon]

I love the way someone always says 'why can I fit an autocannon in a machinegun slot?' when they could equally say 'why was a machinegun in that massive autocannon slot?'. If there's enough crits then it fits. We already have hardpoint sizes, deal with it.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Shadey99, on 07 November 2013 - 11:49 AM, said:

Crit size limits (and generalized hard point size limits) have been brought up before. Personally I don't support them, the mechs that would be hurt the most are lights and mediums which already have issues. Why Should I not be able to mount an AC5 in a 3C Cicada which has 3 ballistics hardpoints (designed for MGs)? Why should I not be able to chose a Locust with a single LL instead of a ML? To make it crazier some say a AC5 should be the 'size' of a MG, yet not an LB-10X or AC10 (or a Gauss or AC20). Why should I not be able to build a Hollander Cicada if it fits?

Most lights and mediums don't have the ability to mass lots of small guns (not enough hard points), so the only option is larger guns. It is very easy to find yourself with 5-8 free tons of weight and no way to mount anything else to fill that space on these machines. I mean lets take a Spider 5D, max armor with ES, FF, and DHS and you have 10.14 tons of open weight to use. Do you mount 2 LL (trimming armor)? Do you mount 3 MPL (6 tons and leaving you at .64 tons left with a single JJ and 3 extra DHS) ? Or what about 3 ML builds with ~7 tons of hard to use weight? With space restricted hard points the later is more likely than the former.

because if you want a small mech with a big weapon than wait for that mech to come along like the panther for ppcs and the hollander for gauss, those mechs have no reason to be added with such free customisation now and we're seeing the fruits of such concepts HERE.

we could justify having more mechs and mechs carrying off their intended rolewarfare if designs had a few more hardpoints but limit them in slots. sick of duo highlander poptarts? give them an hard point then cut down their slots so they can't fit 2 ppc's or 2 ac5s. want an ac20 on a light mech? GIVE US URBIE and stop forcing us to use the raven or cicada like a derp.

but no you guys screamed my customisation i should have it all. so now we have omnis with no point to try others as the spreadsheet warriors find one mech to rule them all instead of one role mech being taken out by another role mech etc etc. it's what a bunch of us argued a year ago and they catered for people like you. so don't whinge when the next splatcat or next ppc stalker rules you all. that's customisation the freedom for everyone to reach the top and junk the rest.

[Sandpit]

The true inconvenient truth of the matter is that even if you gave forced everyone to drop in the exact same mech with the exact same loadout on a completely flat map with no terrain, there would STILL be someone complaining about how something was "op, broken, unfair, etc."

[Khobai]

Quote

I'm not a part of that group, nor do I think it's likely that they'd make such a drastic change at this stage

Its not drastic at all. Its quite simple actually. You just have large and small hardpoints. Its not any more complicated than that.

Where ghost heat on the other hand, actually was drastic, convoluted, and doesnt even accomplish what it set out to do.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 07 November 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

Its not drastic at all. Its quite simple actually. You just have large and small hardpoints. Its not any more complicated than that.

Honestly, I think that critical slots would be a much more straightforward and intuitive hardpoint sizing mechanism. Personally I'd also assign a limit of how many things can go in that space also, so you can't mount 10-12 MGs on a Hunchback for example (it wouldn't really be overpowered to do so, just goofy).

[Deathlike]

Christof Romulus, on 07 November 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Awwww man.
I thought this thread was going to be about mechs causing global warming.

I went and got my crazy hat and everything.

Al Gore's head in 3050 said:

Buy my green energy efficient mechs!

[Khobai]

Quote

Honestly, I think that critical slots would be a much more straightforward and intuitive hardpoint sizing mechanism.

Not sure what you mean. You mean like an Atlas might have 5 ballistic slots and an AC/20 takes up 4 ballistic slots while an AC/5 takes up 2 ballistic slots? That would get really confusing since we have critical slots too... unless you also got rid of critical slots like MW4 did.

If you ask me MW4's system was the best. Because it got rid of critical slots completely. You just had hardpoints of varying types and sizes. That was the best and most streamlined system to date and MWO took a huge step backwards not implementing it.

But as far as fixing MWO's system goes, I think small and large hardpoints would work the best. Because it doesnt require a major overhaul of the current system. All you have to do is decide how many large weapons you want each mech to carry, and give them that many large hardpoints, and its as easy as that. You not only eliminate boating of large weapons but you also restore mechs like the Awesome back to their rightful place as the only mechs that can boat ppcs.

Edited by Khobai, 07 November 2013 - 05:42 PM.