675 replies to this topic

[Myomes]

Cimarb, on 30 December 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

Exactly. Instead of balancing energy weapons (high heat, low space) with ballistics(low heat, high space), they opted for the insane heat balance system they currently have, where they are trying to balance ballistics with heat penalties instead of making them function as duration/burst weapons like they should be. Now, instead of fixing the root issue (instant, pinpoint damage), they are adding in all sorts of other adjustments to try to make clan tech fit the current mold without breaking it - even though the mold is already broke...

I completely agree with the heart of this argument: Top down design and overly complicated specific rules to fix core or root issues is a flawed system that ruins itself. It is never as robust, and about 20 times more likely to fail, as building from the ground up.Whenever you build anything in life, you start from a foundation. You even build that foundation on good ground. Sometimes you can introduce modularity, build a few parts here and there and put them on, but unless those modular parts actually FIT onto the underlying framework, you're going to start having instability issues. There are no shortcuts in life, and taking them just makes things worse and harder to fix in the long run. That goes for actual living and product development as well.They keep trying to take these shortcuts to "fix" problems that crop up due to the flawed foundations. Its going to topple.

[DrxAbstract]

Cimarb, on 02 January 2014 - 08:51 PM, said:

I don't care what ELO Varent is in, nor who/what he is playing. Any person in here that talks about their ELO (or anyone else's) can't be taken seriously in those type of comments, simply because ELO isn't even visible on our end - it may not even exist for all we know. All that matters to me is looking at the data and trying to work together to make a solution.

By that logic, you should ignore Varent's post because he cited his ELO as a supporting factor... Instead you choose to disregard persons other than the original instigator in an attempt to do what, exactly? Shoot holes in their reasoning because you fail to see the value of ELO as a factor. Nobody is citing ELO to brag. Whether or not it's 'visible' to us is irrelevant - it is a factor in determining to efficiency and functionality of weapons and a required consideration.

ELO is much like Arena Rating in Warcraft. Just take a look at Blizzard's woes when they tried to balance skills and abilities around their majority of average-player population - Those same abilities became ridiculously, overwhelmingly effective and in some cases overpowered in the hands of highly efficient players... Which suggests balancing weapons in MWO around 'average' conditions could prove disastrous. Currently, ELO and the relative associations are the only gauge we have to determine weapon performance based on 'skill' and environment... SRMs for example function like many weapons in low to mid range ELO - In the right situations they are useful and effective, however the higher you get the less useful and effective they become partly due to the decrease in occurrence of those same ideal situations and partly due to the general inefficient performance of the weapon. In a realm where room for error shrinks steadily and significantly, this lends power to other weapons like PPCs and ACs.

So you cant go around saying "I play in High ELO brackets, look what i can do with SRMs!" Only to have High ELO players show up and inform the audience it was not a High ELO bracket match, invalidating the statement and its respective point. Hence the problem we had with Varent's post.

You're not much of a data collector if you summarily dismiss important factors, or any factor, that is relevant to that data... And i'm not much interested in looking at your 'results' because they will be skewed, inaccurate... By all means though, ignore us 'trolls'. We dont care about data accuracy in the least /sarcasm.

Edited by DrxAbstract, 03 January 2014 - 06:25 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Unfortunately, we can't use Elo to gauge anything, because there is no way toknow your Elo. You might think that your 12vs12 man matches might often generate high Elo matches... but do they? The only thing we can see for ourselves that some people have good individual results in PUG games - we can infer that this might be due to them being better then most of their team and the opposite team. But even that doesn't need to mean they already have a high Elo - the individual result isn't counted, and you can get 3 kills and 800 damage and still lose a match. And since the match-maker will try to balance the Elos on the team, it seems not so unlikely to have this happen, since the enemy team should have something to compensate.
Or maybe not, because who knows if the whole concept of balancing team Elos even works, that would require that someone with an Elo of 75 and someone with an Elo of 25 working together are as good as two Elo 50 so that.

And then,with this system in place, you go into a 12vs12 man environment, and hope that the 12v12 mans all have similarly high Elo and are overall similar enough in skill that the 12v12 mans have a 50:50 chance to go either way - which means the Elo score of the players will not change much at all?

How many iterations of various games does one actually need to get a stable Elo figure that could mean anything?


I think there is a reason why Star Crafts match-making and league system requires test matches for teams and then treats that team as one single unit for match-making. Of course, such a system is okay for 2-4 man teams, but 12 mans? Ouch.

[Varent]

mongrel, on 02 January 2014 - 09:51 PM, said:

Howdy, I don't post much but I do have a couple questions in regard to AC & realistic ballistic profiles. I don't play them all tht much so bare with me.

• Do ac rounds have any "drop" at long range? (the don't seen to suffer much in my experience)
  
• Do AC rounds do less damage at long range?? (again don't seem to have any power drop at long range) I have had my face tore off at extreme range by ac 5 ultras more times than I can count.

Yes and yes. I could give numbers but I prefer real experiences. My best suggestion is next time you are on alpine go to the top of one of the hills and fire off of it at fixed targets. You will notice the drop significantly then and be able to follow it out and see how to better aim it etc.

Myomes, on 03 January 2014 - 01:05 AM, said:

If you cant aim your SRMs... I'll take leading a target for twitch based front loaded damage over having to track a target with absolute 100% accuracy to achieve any appreciable damage any day.

I believe he was reffering to srm spread, not leading the target etc.

DrxAbstract, on 03 January 2014 - 06:15 AM, said:

By that logic, you should ignore Varent's post because he cited his ELO as a supporting factor... Instead you choose to disregard persons other than the original instigator in an attempt to do what, exactly? Shoot holes in their reasoning because you fail to see the value of ELO as a factor. Nobody is citing ELO to brag. Whether or not it's 'visible' to us is irrelevant - it is a factor in determining to efficiency and functionality of weapons and a required consideration.

ELO is much like Arena Rating in Warcraft. Just take a look at Blizzard's woes when they tried to balance skills and abilities around their majority of average-player population - Those same abilities became ridiculously, overwhelmingly effective and in some cases overpowered in the hands of highly efficient players... Which suggests balancing weapons in MWO around 'average' conditions could prove disastrous. Currently, ELO and the relative associations are the only gauge we have to determine weapon performance based on 'skill' and environment... SRMs for example function like many weapons in low to mid range ELO - In the right situations they are useful and effective, however the higher you get the less useful and effective they become partly due to the decrease in occurrence of those same ideal situations and partly due to the general inefficient performance of the weapon. In a realm where room for error shrinks steadily and significantly, this lends power to other weapons like PPCs and ACs.

So you cant go around saying "I play in High ELO brackets, look what i can do with SRMs!" Only to have High ELO players show up and inform the audience it was not a High ELO bracket match, invalidating the statement and its respective point. Hence the problem we had with Varent's post.

You're not much of a data collector if you summarily dismiss important factors, or any factor, that is relevant to that data... And i'm not much interested in looking at your 'results' because they will be skewed, inaccurate... By all means though, ignore us 'trolls'. We dont care about data accuracy in the least /sarcasm.

I play with lords, I play with luna wolves, I play with remanent and the ghosts of acheron. I have no doubt of where my elo is. That said I was with 4 of my guild mates that are much lower elo and my elo was pulled down because of it.

Regardless.

Take away even half of that damage and its still respectable numbers. Seriously find something better to do.

That said, true experience and play testing trumps numbers because numbers are only usuable in static situations. Combat is not static.

MustrumRidcully, on 03 January 2014 - 06:49 AM, said:

Unfortunately, we can't use Elo to gauge anything, because there is no way toknow your Elo. You might think that your 12vs12 man matches might often generate high Elo matches... but do they? The only thing we can see for ourselves that some people have good individual results in PUG games - we can infer that this might be due to them being better then most of their team and the opposite team. But even that doesn't need to mean they already have a high Elo - the individual result isn't counted, and you can get 3 kills and 800 damage and still lose a match. And since the match-maker will try to balance the Elos on the team, it seems not so unlikely to have this happen, since the enemy team should have something to compensate.
Or maybe not, because who knows if the whole concept of balancing team Elos even works, that would require that someone with an Elo of 75 and someone with an Elo of 25 working together are as good as two Elo 50 so that.

And then,with this system in place, you go into a 12vs12 man environment, and hope that the 12v12 mans all have similarly high Elo and are overall similar enough in skill that the 12v12 mans have a 50:50 chance to go either way - which means the Elo score of the players will not change much at all?

How many iterations of various games does one actually need to get a stable Elo figure that could mean anything?


I think there is a reason why Star Crafts match-making and league system requires test matches for teams and then treats that team as one single unit for match-making. Of course, such a system is okay for 2-4 man teams, but 12 mans? Ouch.

True, but you can get a rough idea of your elo based off who you tend to drop with while solo or with people of 'roughly' equal skill. Obviously not an exact number but an idea.

Edited by Varent, 03 January 2014 - 07:09 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Effective DPS of any weapon in MWO is near impossible to properly calculate unless every shot is fired inside its Optimal range. With damage drop off, any shot fired outside its "optimal" range skews the damage potential immediately.

If anyone can provide data that is ALL within any chosen weapons "optimal" for 100% of the time, then that data can be gauged accordingly. Otherwise, skewed data is skewed, no matter how well formatted it is.

[Varent]

Almond Brown, on 03 January 2014 - 07:29 AM, said:

Effective DPS of any weapon in MWO is near impossible to properly calculate unless every shot is fired inside its Optimal range. With damage drop off, any shot fired outside its "optimal" range skews the damage potential immediately.

If anyone can provide data that is ALL within any chosen weapons "optimal" for 100% of the time, then that data can be gauged accordingly. Otherwise, skewed data is skewed, no matter how well formatted it is.

Hence my suggestion for playtesting in relatively controlled environments. Obviously wouldnt give you exact damage values but can perhaps give a better idea of things. I still am pushing for this. I would love alot of us to get together on both sides of the argument and really put together a good study.

[DrxAbstract]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:

I play with lords, I play with luna wolves, I play with remanent and the ghosts of acheron. I have no doubt of where my elo is. That said I was with 4 of my guild mates that are much lower elo and my elo was pulled down because of it.

Regardless.

Take away even half of that damage and its still respectable numbers. Seriously find something better to do.

Please point out where anyone claimed you're a bad player or your personal ELO was in question. We pointed out it was not a high ELO match. Outside of personal insecurity, how do you come to the conclusion we're talking about your ELO? Ontop of that, point out where anyone said you did horrible damage. I asked why you didnt do more, but did anyone say you did poorly?

If you want a serious discussion of weapon balance then leave your pride and irrelevant screenshots at the door... Speaking on perspective, pointing out this concept that you havnt yet grasped leaves little i deem 'better' to do with my time.

As for ELO in actual 12v12s, it is more of a factor in games that have not been arranged for competition oriented battles. As Varent said, it is doable and a rough estimate can be made. With ELO you're typically a direct or general counter to someone on the opposing team. If you're consistently matched against players recognized for their skill as opposed to novelty, it wouldnt be much of a stretch to conclude your ELO is similar to theirs... To a lesser extent the number of Meta builds and other variants present can be used to reach a general idea of your personal rating in the weight class you're using.

For example: I run into several players i know are very good when playing Lights and Assaults, however since i rarely play Mediums or Heavies, the list of names i run into in those weight classes are usually not familiar and there are usually no notable performers. Dropping solo or as a 4man also affects this. I can say that when matched against players of reputable ability, Streaks, PPCs, ACs, Medium and ER/Large Lasers are represented substantially more than LRMs and much less SRMs.

Fixing hit detection on SRMs wont change their horrid spread and limited situational use. Why use them when you can plug away at safer distances under cover with more accurate, pinpoint damage weapons? You cant make PPCs a stream weapon and Ballistics would need a significant cockpit shake reduction if you make them burst-fire. Cockpit shake alone is why PGI's current solution for Clan Streaks is going to be terrible - I'm sure many of you are familiar with the effects of a streak kintaro/shadowshawk chaining their 4-5 SSRM2s, which by translation is an SSRM8-10. Picture a mech with just 2 SSRM6s...

AC2 cockpit shake multiplied by AC20 damage and impact... The game will still boil down to whoever gets the first and consecutive shots off because you wont be able to see anything, just like the old days before AC and Missile shake was reduced.

By reducing Beam duration you make them more effective while at the same time reducing the survivability of Lights and Mediums that rely on long beam duration to avoid, spread and otherwise minimize damage, but by contrast would making Ballistics burst-fire counteract this effect or compound it by providing additional opportunities to adjust aim and score hits? The UAC5 and AC2 are the two best ballistics to determine this, and experience suggests the former rather than the latter.

[Varent]

DrxAbstract, on 03 January 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

Fixing hit detection on SRMs wont change their horrid spread and limited situational use. Why use them when you can plug away at safer distances under cover with more accurate, pinpoint damage weapons? You cant make PPCs a stream weapon and Ballistics would need a significant cockpit shake reduction if you make them burst-fire. Cockpit shake alone is why PGI's current solution for Clan Streaks is going to be terrible - I'm sure many of you are familiar with the effects of a streak kintaro/shadowshawk chaining their 4-5 SSRM2s, which by translation is an SSRM8-10. Picture a mech with just 2 SSRM6s...

AC2 cockpit shake multiplied by AC20 damage and impact... The game will still boil down to whoever gets the first and consecutive shots off because you wont be able to see anything, just like the old days before AC and Missile shake was reduced.

By reducing Beam duration you make them more effective while at the same time reducing the survivability of Lights and Mediums that rely on long beam duration to avoid, spread and otherwise minimize damage, but by contrast would making Ballistics burst-fire counteract this effect or compound it by providing additional opportunities to adjust aim and score hits? The UAC5 and AC2 are the two best ballistics to determine this, and experience suggests the former rather than the latter.

Statements were made about elo, it wasnt what you said, it was someone else. I was citing your statement for the purpose of damage etc. Which I still feel is quite valid and I can give about a 100 other example if ya like.

Now you take srms for the overall weight differential. They also use less heat. And when in close they defeat ppc, is why you would not take them. Ive actually gone toe to toe with ac users and won most of the time. I will say however that I do tend to lose to uac5... but I accept that as a chance probability since they can also jam. I may lose to ac2 as well depending on how good of a shot they are. But I dont tend to lose to ac20 or ac10 while Im using srm and medium lasers. I may just be good at torso twisting or timing things. Im unsure.

Frankly I feel cockpit shake is fully valid. If you get caught out and in a bad situation you deserve to die in an inglorious way. Also keep in mind they have a cockpit shake module now wich is pretty effective.

Lastly I would agree to perhaps a shortder duration on large lasers. since that would make a little more sense for the weight. But keep in mind it might also inadvertently buff light mechs as well *shrug* Pick your poison.

[Hillslam]

Beams need some sort of pilot impairing effect like missiles, ACs, and PPCs have.

IF you're squaring off against a beam boat (STK or BLG, etc) you have no problem holding a pinpoint counterfire. You need only kill them before you die. If you're up against any other weapon class you're going to be dealing with shake, blinding smoke, cockpit flickering, etc.

IMO this puts beams at a significant disadvantage when combined with their beam damage delivery requiring holding it on target.

(PS I don't pilot stalkers, but I no longer fear them, because I know I can rattle the pilot with paltry AC2s if need be, and thats just not right)

[DrxAbstract]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 08:03 AM, said:

Statements were made about elo, it wasnt what you said, it was someone else. I was citing your statement for the purpose of damage etc. Which I still feel is quite valid and I can give about a 100 other example if ya like.

Now you take srms for the overall weight differential. They also use less heat. And when in close they defeat ppc, is why you would not take them. Ive actually gone toe to toe with ac users and won most of the time. I will say however that I do tend to lose to uac5... but I accept that as a chance probability since they can also jam. I may lose to ac2 as well depending on how good of a shot they are. But I dont tend to lose to ac20 or ac10 while Im using srm and medium lasers. I may just be good at torso twisting or timing things. Im unsure.

Frankly I feel cockpit shake is fully valid. If you get caught out and in a bad situation you deserve to die in an inglorious way. Also keep in mind they have a cockpit shake module now wich is pretty effective.

Lastly I would agree to perhaps a shortder duration on large lasers. since that would make a little more sense for the weight. But keep in mind it might also inadvertently buff light mechs as well *shrug* Pick your poison.

To be completely transparent, cockpit shake, while a nice addition to the 'experience' of being in combat simulation, is more of a detractor to MWO. You're playing a game where getting shot is going to happen, but it should not be a debilitatingly neutering experience, nor should it be a factor regularly exploited as part of a strategy in playing a Mech. Between cockpit shake and blinding smoke it's going to frustrate and repel new players more than it will teach them to stay under cover - suffering the ill effects of taking damage should be the driving factor behind the desire to improve, not hiding out of fear of being blinded and killed without getting a shot off. Does it bother me personally? Not really - I know my crosshairs stay perfectly still and where they're pointed. Newbies dont.

If you want burst-fire ACs i will direct you to Mech2 Multiplayer, where the Ultra ACs and even the LBXs were used in this fashion and taking Assault mechs apart in seconds was commonplace... and that was with Lag Shooting and multi-directional Jump Jets... but they did have extremely limited ammo.

I'd rather they fixed damage registration in MWO before adjusting weapon values - Alternating firing dual PPCs and an AC20 off cooldown to watch every other shot not register damage is rather amusing but ultimately disappointing... Also makes discussing weapon balance and data collection futile.

[Varent]

DrxAbstract, on 03 January 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

To be completely transparent, cockpit shake, while a nice addition to the 'experience' of being in combat simulation, is more of a detractor to MWO. You're playing a game where getting shot is going to happen, but it should not be a debilitatingly neutering experience, nor should it be a factor regularly exploited as part of a strategy in playing a Mech. Between cockpit shake and blinding smoke it's going to frustrate and repel new players more than it will teach them to stay under cover - suffering the ill effects of taking damage should be the driving factor behind the desire to improve, not hiding out of fear of being blinded and killed without getting a shot off. Does it bother me personally? Not really - I know my crosshairs stay perfectly still and where they're pointed. Newbies dont.

If you want burst-fire ACs i will direct you to Mech2 Multiplayer, where the Ultra ACs and even the LBXs were used in this fashion and taking Assault mechs apart in seconds was commonplace... and that was with Lag Shooting and multi-directional Jump Jets... but they did have extremely limited ammo.

I'd rather they fixed damage registration in MWO before adjusting weapon values - Alternating firing dual PPCs and an AC20 off cooldown to watch every other shot not register damage is rather amusing but ultimately disappointing... Also makes discussing weapon balance and data collection futile.

I agree with most of this for the sake of the newbie factor in cockpit shake. But I also would rather not have that taken away. I strongly feel there needs to be more of a game mode that is tailored to newer players, perhaps with an MWO light feel about it that makes such players moer easily adjusted into the game.

I can only use LoL as an example and say they have a starting mode that has drastically increased buffs all around to items and abilities that make it more player friendly. Perhaps have a few games for new players on a smaller map with less people and some things taken out. Then give a warning and explain that the gaming experience will change outside of those matches

Now for older players... as I said, take the cockpit shake module if your worried about it. It works well actually.

And yes they need to in my opinion fix ALOT of things until you can talk weapon balance. CW... hit reg.... etc.. etc...

[Mcgral18]

Myomes, on 03 January 2014 - 01:05 AM, said:

If you cant aim your SRMs... I'll take leading a target for twitch based front loaded damage over having to track a target with absolute 100% accuracy to achieve any appreciable damage any day.

You can't aim them on a single component because they have a rather large cone of fire, without artemis at any rate. The size of an atlas at 150M.

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

You can't aim them on a single component because they have a rather large cone of fire, without artemis at any rate. The size of an atlas at 150M.

Use artemis. >.>

When you use artemis its a nice solid ball of missles that is pretty good up to 150-180.

[Joseph Mallan]

Hillslam, on 03 January 2014 - 08:06 AM, said:

Beams need some sort of pilot impairing effect like missiles, ACs, and PPCs have.

IF you're squaring off against a beam boat (STK or BLG, etc) you have no problem holding a pinpoint counterfire. You need only kill them before you die. If you're up against any other weapon class you're going to be dealing with shake, blinding smoke, cockpit flickering, etc.

IMO this puts beams at a significant disadvantage when combined with their beam damage delivery requiring holding it on target.

(PS I don't pilot stalkers, but I no longer fear them, because I know I can rattle the pilot with paltry AC2s if need be, and thats just not right)

Lasers have no impact... physically. They can destabilize a Gyro if enough weight comes off, but that is the only thing beam weapons should do...

[Varent]

Joseph Mallan, on 03 January 2014 - 09:14 AM, said:

Lasers have no impact... physically. They can destabilize a Gyro if enough weight comes off, but that is the only thing beam weapons should do...

pretty sure there is enough in lore,canon, and bookfodder for a slight blinding effect to a cockpit hit.

[Mcgral18]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 09:11 AM, said:

Use artemis. >.>

When you use artemis its a nice solid ball of missles that is pretty good up to 150-180.

But artemis doesn't fit in the head, which is nice to have. I just bring 5-800 missiles to make up for it.

[Joseph Mallan]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 09:15 AM, said:

pretty sure there is enough in lore,canon, and bookfodder for a slight blinding effect to a cockpit hit.

true... but not shudder.

[Cimarb]

mongrel, on 02 January 2014 - 09:51 PM, said:

Howdy, I don't post much but I do have a couple questions in regard to AC & realistic ballistic profiles. I don't play them all tht much so bare with me.

• Do ac rounds have any "drop" at long range? (the don't seen to suffer much in my experience)
  
• Do AC rounds do less damage at long range?? (again don't seem to have any power drop at long range) I have had my face tore off at extreme range by ac 5 ultras more times than I can count.

Yes, ballistics drop off at range. I'm not sure the exact ranges, but like Varent said, go to alpine and practice with them - you can actually use the drop off to hit over cover sometimes, lol.
All weapons drop off in damage. You can see the range in your hud just to the right of the weapon - anything past that does reduced damage. Ballistics get a x3 range multiplier, though, so they do full damage out to their optimum range (270 for an AC20) and then reduced damage all the way out to 810 meters. All energy weapons (and I believe SRMs) only have a x2 range modifier, so a lasers maximum range is only twice the optimum range.

DrxAbstract, on 03 January 2014 - 06:15 AM, said:

By that logic, you should ignore Varent's post because he cited his ELO as a supporting factor... Instead you choose to disregard persons other than the original instigator in an attempt to do what, exactly? Shoot holes in their reasoning because you fail to see the value of ELO as a factor. Nobody is citing ELO to brag. Whether or not it's 'visible' to us is irrelevant - it is a factor in determining to efficiency and functionality of weapons and a required consideration.

ELO is much like Arena Rating in Warcraft. Just take a look at Blizzard's woes when they tried to balance skills and abilities around their majority of average-player population - Those same abilities became ridiculously, overwhelmingly effective and in some cases overpowered in the hands of highly efficient players... Which suggests balancing weapons in MWO around 'average' conditions could prove disastrous. Currently, ELO and the relative associations are the only gauge we have to determine weapon performance based on 'skill' and environment... SRMs for example function like many weapons in low to mid range ELO - In the right situations they are useful and effective, however the higher you get the less useful and effective they become partly due to the decrease in occurrence of those same ideal situations and partly due to the general inefficient performance of the weapon. In a realm where room for error shrinks steadily and significantly, this lends power to other weapons like PPCs and ACs.

So you cant go around saying "I play in High ELO brackets, look what i can do with SRMs!" Only to have High ELO players show up and inform the audience it was not a High ELO bracket match, invalidating the statement and its respective point. Hence the problem we had with Varent's post.

You're not much of a data collector if you summarily dismiss important factors, or any factor, that is relevant to that data... And i'm not much interested in looking at your 'results' because they will be skewed, inaccurate... By all means though, ignore us 'trolls'. We dont care about data accuracy in the least /sarcasm.

As I said in my post, I don't consider Varents personal claims at all. I also don't think his personal claims should be used against him. Talk all the {Scrap} you want - I'll just ignore it and focus on the topic, just like I have pointed out to him on a couple occasions. I'm not here for an ego match - you are ALL better than me for all I care - but I do want to have a discussion about the issues at hand without having someone personally attacked because of ego.

MustrumRidcully, on 03 January 2014 - 06:49 AM, said:

Unfortunately, we can't use Elo to gauge anything, because there is no way toknow your Elo. You might think that your 12vs12 man matches might often generate high Elo matches... but do they? The only thing we can see for ourselves that some people have good individual results in PUG games - we can infer that this might be due to them being better then most of their team and the opposite team. But even that doesn't need to mean they already have a high Elo - the individual result isn't counted, and you can get 3 kills and 800 damage and still lose a match. And since the match-maker will try to balance the Elos on the team, it seems not so unlikely to have this happen, since the enemy team should have something to compensate.
Or maybe not, because who knows if the whole concept of balancing team Elos even works, that would require that someone with an Elo of 75 and someone with an Elo of 25 working together are as good as two Elo 50 so that.

And then,with this system in place, you go into a 12vs12 man environment, and hope that the 12v12 mans all have similarly high Elo and are overall similar enough in skill that the 12v12 mans have a 50:50 chance to go either way - which means the Elo score of the players will not change much at all?

How many iterations of various games does one actually need to get a stable Elo figure that could mean anything?

Exactly. I could care less what ELO you, me, or anyone else is in. The only difference is if you are dropping in a coordinated group (like Varent and a lot of you probably are) or solo (as I am). Even that doesn't matter much, though, because you are going against other people dropping the same way and supposedly in the same ELO/ego bracket.

[Cimarb]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 09:15 AM, said:

pretty sure there is enough in lore,canon, and bookfodder for a slight blinding effect to a cockpit hit.

There IS precedent for energy weapons to cause heat on the target, though....

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 09:19 AM, said:

But artemis doesn't fit in the head, which is nice to have. I just bring 5-800 missiles to make up for it.

It doesnt... true... but I take that as cost benefit... accuracy is... huge....

Cimarb, on 03 January 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

There IS precedent for energy weapons to cause heat on the target, though....

I would say if you fire past armor and hit into internals hell yes. Outside on armor no. Would be neat to see that added when you expose internals and spike heat.. but I think PGI is moving away from that since they didnt impliment that on flamers... not sure why...

*personal gripe*