Heffay, on 22 January 2015 - 04:21 AM, said:
Battletech has a BV system that is essentially the same. And it suffers from the exact same problems. It's incredibly easy to game. The meta will shift to low TV builds that have incredible synergy. And that can't be fixed then, because if you muck with the TV of any individual component, it'll ruin ALL the other builds that use one of the components.
Almost all modern competitive games who rely on matchmaking based around skill, not gear. LoL, DOTA, WoW, SC... I haven't seen anything about HGA having some sort of player ranking system. They really need one.
MWO uses ELO, and yet there is plenty of stomps.
Hawken also uses an ELO system, now you can see where that went.
On the other hand, World of Tanks, probably one of the most competitive PvP games out there, uses a Tier system (matchmaking based on gear), and I encounter much less stomps on that game than MWO. Every tank therefore has a certain tier or rank, and constantly balanced to fit that rank. The matches though have a tendency to see more of the lower tier tanks get wiped out early, then let a small elite group of higher tier tanks carry the rest of the game to the end.
War Thunder uses a BR or Battle Rating system, which is also gear based, but BRs also go up and down, based on server statistics on K/D and survivability (length of time it stays in the game). While highly controversial, its the one game that I engage that has the least stomps, and the situation is so fluid, you can have the tides of war reverse and counter reverse, and a near victory turn into defeat all of sudden.
Under the BR system, if one plane or tank is a bit too strong, or has overly strong synergy to its tier, the BR would rise correspondingly with its K/D ratio and game survivability. When the BR rises, it will face increasingly stronger and more advanced planes or tanks. If a plane or tank proves too weak for its tier, then its BR falls where it will be matched with increasingly weaker competition. The advantage of the BR system is that the attributes of the plane or tank is preserved, and the only thing War Thunder has to do is to adjust the said vehicles to be more authentic to their historical counterparts. These adjustments are made when they are able to find more historical documents and data, then adjusts said plane or tank to the new data. Thus in War Thunder they don't boost or nerf for "balance" but to adjust in terms of improving historical accuracy, then let the floating BR adjust the vehicle to a rightful tier. The system can be rage inducing, as its not perfect, and many things seem too powerful for one group, too weak on the next as the BR doesn't respond quickly enough, though War Thunder always tends to have microupdates and patches very frequently. But overall, War Thunder doesn't have that predictability in MWO in that sense that you are going to win or lose.
Back to Heavy Gear 2, I remember the matches, but I dont' remember the game having the ugly stomps that MWO has. However, it has a problem with stacking just like Mechwarrior 4, which happens when players are allowed to choose their teams and they often choose the teams that they know have good players. And that problem occurs in all these earlier PvP games and this created the matchmaking ELO system or forced randomization of each team. But I also the fact when I was playing HG2, good players would voluntarily switch to one team or another just to balance the teams out.
I remember the 1K, 5K and unlimited battles. I also remember that at a certain time, due to the way the Japanese internet priced themselves (free unlimited at certain hours, usually midnight to 3AM Tokyo time), the Japanese players would all come in, and there were lots of them. They usually set up 3K TV games but some would also participate in the "west" unlimited TV battles.