79 replies to this topic

[Sandpit]

Varent, on 19 December 2013 - 12:32 PM, said:

I like this... though I will say it fails to acknowledge group number four...(and is also obviously from the group number 2 standpoint)

4) The general shooter player who has played battletech since the rough start and then gone on to enjoy the other games based around it that would very much like to FINALLY see a real shooting game with multiplayer context come to life based around this genre.

and that said... I know ALOT of people like this.... in fact several members of the guild I run are like this. I believe honestly that this is the nice middle ground to take.

MWO isnt a twitch shooter, many weapon systems are too slow, and in additon it takes many shots to kill a mech.

MWO isnt a complete slow strategy based game. Its fast and intense and exciting.

MWO isnt just based around kills. Its why conquest and base capping exist, to snub its nose at people just out for damage and kills and laugh at them.

Right now MWO is taking that nice middle ground between them all which im quite happy to fall into myself. Its all about being open minded and realizing there is a little there for everyone.

I would put that group in with war gamers and such though. They understand there's a lot more complexity to MW but at the same time aren't at twitchy as CoD style players.
It's the difference I equate to Black Ops and BF. CoD is very fast-paced twitchy shooter with minimal strategy. BF is still a bit on the twitch side but the size of maps forces the game play to slow down a bit and the 12v12 style leads to a slightly deeper strategy along with the addition of vehicles.

Hillslam, on 19 December 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

They'll be overwhelmingly those mouth breathing fat jiggling gloat pigs that online gaming so perfectly breeds. They sure as {Scrap} ain't "genetically bred for war superhumans". But they're going to seek out any in-game advantage like OP equipment to fuel that illusion.

Bwahahahaha!!!! mouth breathing fat jiggling gloat pigs! Someone needs to make a meme for this!

[Jaeger Gonzo]

Its seams like some here have very lack of imagination and dont know sh/it about lore, TT. If I get it good thay afraid that clans would beat everything... not sure why. Trying to input that ballance by nubers mean 10v12. Nope gentelmens that can be star vs company. To some that dont know nothing about BT I put it closer. THAT WOULD BE 5V12. And that would be fair balance. I dont know why you guys suppose that if you will have better tech you going to be in easy game mode. That will be challenge to be not simply overrun. So if we come to this that better not means win button, but actually can put you on disadvantage
position your main argument line fall inmediataly. We want that game to be BATTLETECH, you want it to be flatted dumb downed. We got enough games like this around. You want more counter strike, call of pity, we want more BATTLETECH. And thats the reason why development of this game ever started to happen, as thay promised us BATTLETECH, not some robo counter strike incarnation.
If thay gonny to hit BATTLETECH balls hard, thay gony to fall down sooner or later, as the rest of us will left, with bad fellings of broken promise and our hopes.

[Sym]

Thank you Jaeger

[Rifter]

The devs have clearly lost their drive to make this a battletech game, go try and operate a AWS-8Q now that ghost heat is in and let me know how fun that is. Thats one of the mainstay IS frontline mechs thats supposed to be scary delivering blast after blast of PPC fire, now its useless.

Now with the clans getting nerfed to IS Levels they have really stepped away from following the lore.

Whats the point is putting the battletech name on things if you arnt making a battletech game? Obviously just to use the name to sell product, which is why im out.

I signed up for a battletech game which is clearly no longer what is being developed here.

I mean seriously people should be scared crapless when a clan mech steps over a ridge and its just you in a IS medium with a friend or two. Now its going to be like oh its just a stormcrow or thor we can handle that with a hunch and a jager. Sorry to beak this to you but that IS NOT BATTLETECH.

Dont get me wrong im all for clans vs IS being balanced , say 12 IS mechs drop vs 5-7 Clan mechs(depending on BV or similar ranking system), clan repair cost being through the roof and parts being hard to come by, and very expensive to maintain, thats how they are supposed to be, they are not supposed to be nerfed to the point they arnt any better than the IS, thats just ridiculous and anyone who has read ANY of the lore would know that, clearly PGI employs no one who has even bothered to do any quick reading of any reference material on the name they chose to use to build there mech game.

[Sym]

This is what I've been saying all along. Going into this, I feel that some of us were lead to believe that this was going to be Battletech online not Gundam.

I understand the "Skill" part...but do we really need to make skill the sole cornerstone of the matchmaker? As much as I hate WoT...they seem to have built a MM that does have problems but DOES set a BV on every item and Tank to try to balance out each game.
In computer games...ANYTHING can be done. It's weather PGI wants to step up to make it better.

We are already a year behind from the original timeline of what PGI said where we would be...and still no Community Warfare.
Stop trying to sell mechs and fix the game for what the people want.

Third person sucks btw!!! please removed it.

[Sandpit]

Rifter, on 21 December 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

The devs have clearly lost their drive to make this a battletech game, go try and operate a AWS-8Q now that ghost heat is in and let me know how fun that is.

Not any worse than I do in a 5LL stalker, except I'm not as good with PPCs as I am with lasers

[DevlinCognito]

Personally I wish they would keep Clans as pretty close to lore as possible. Keep the original disadvantages (hard wired armour, engine etc, maybe give them a lower choice of engines to put in each chassis), and each variant follows the same build rules as the IS do (Summoner Prime would have 1-2 ballistic slots, 1-2 missile and 1-2 Energy), each variant gives you differing choice of slots to build different builds. However when choosing a Chassis to drop in, you dont pick the variant to use until you see what the map is.

This way Clanners get their omni feel, as they get to pick their most appropriate build for the map, but IS chassis still retain some attraction. A Wolverine can choose to go between 20-100 kph, but is stuck with that loadout, wheras a Timberwolf can only vary its speed between 70-90kph, but can have a map specific loadout for more specialisation.

[Phantomime]

Varent, on 19 December 2013 - 08:46 AM, said:

This is the primary reason why you cannot use battle value.

Battle tech was a board game and designed with no pilot value in mind whatsoever. In addition to that the creators of battle tech came out later and admited they created an unbalanced system as well. (keep that in mind)

Putting a player in a mech with better weapons is going to give them an exponential advantage that cannot be quantified properly in this game.

As in any shooter there is always going to be players who are amazing crack shots and dedicate themselves to the game. Have enough on one team and it will be a tidal wave of overwhelming. Even if you try to balance it to something like 6 on 12 you will then have players of extreme sub-par value who will then get swamped by sheer numbers.

Trying to give one group a true tech advantage would be the worst thing this game could possibly do. Frankly when they said they were going to give the clans there own flavor but NOT make them overpowering, that was the moment I realized this game might actually survive. I was fully predicting it to die with the release of the clans if they released it on true battle value from battletech.

ANSWER:

Sure it can, its using all the stats collected from the game thus far (and that's WAY more data than the makers of Battletech EVER had access to via play testing) means that weapons and equipement and mechs can be quantified as a BattleValue (I agree, using the numbers directly from the original table top game is not enough here - new values need to be given based on MW:O)

as for making it impossible to quantify player ability.. please.. thats what ELO is all about.. every matchmaker in every MOBA functions off of looking at some version of player quality. so you take the player's ELO, turn it into a percentage against the average ELO of all players, and then multiple their mech BV by their player ELO percentage. bam. 'Pew Raiting'

EXPLANATION:

its really not hard. a good player would make better use of whatever mech they are using. a good mech build would be the sum of high battlevalue parts... done. No it wouldnt be perfect, but then no system is, it would be good enough though to make it possible to match similar players to games.

it would also be a way to figure out how to match good players in {Scrap} mechs vs bad players in amazing mechs. something that is rediculas is the idea that teams need to be balanced.. they dont. Clan mechs are supposed to fight outnumbered. its in the cannon. they are invaders. it makes sense. so why do we need to fight 12v12 unless its Clan vs Clan or IS vs IS?

50000 PR of clan could easily come from like 5 Clan mechs, where as the equivilent could be easily a full 12 IS mechs..

Clans can pack more firepower into a single mech, InnerSphere can field more mechs (more hp). its really not that hard to see that, yes, the IS would have a harder time 1v1, but 2v1, 3v1... clan mechs dont get anymore hp than an IS mech of similar tonnage, but they are more efficient, and have stronger alphas -that are equally nurfed (easily more so because they rely on it more) by ghost heat...

DevlinCognito, on 23 December 2013 - 03:42 PM, said:

Personally I wish they would keep Clans as pretty close to lore as possible. Keep the original disadvantages (hard wired armour, engine etc, maybe give them a lower choice of engines to put in each chassis), and each variant follows the same build rules as the IS do ...

ANSWER:
the problem here is that this is not how they have built the game.. they actually built it wrong. what we have is the custom mech builder from Battletech but attempting to make it work for InnerSphere mechs. This allows IS mechs to be WAY more powerful than they should be - even more so than Clan Omnimechs - which is wrong, by cannon atleast..

CANNON (fluff):
InnerSphere Mechs are stock, you buy a varient, thats it. no tweeks to weapons, engine, hs's, armor allocation. Imagine World of Tanks where you can put any gun on any tank so long as it was big enough to carry it..!! that's what MW:O has done to Battletech. and only now are they realizing that, "oh {Scrap}.. omni mechs are like, just bad comparitively;" or just painfully more complex using this system..

An Omni-mech, has parts of it that are stock, like ALL InnerSphere mechs, but unlike them, they have SOME parts that can easily be swaped out for others. Currently we can do this with ANY part of an InnerSphere mech, our only restriction (imposed by MW:O) are hardpoints.

PROBLEM:

so the easy fix would be: make 'Omni hardpoints' on Omni-mechs... this seems fine, until you look at how people have already abused the hardpoint system - mechs with bad hardpoint layouts dont get used, and the ones that great layouts get turned into machines of alpha-striking death.

SOLUTION:

The critical problem with this is that PGI and MW:O didnt go farther than stating that a hardpoint is 1 of 3 things - Ballistic, Energy, or Missile ('Omni' could be any of these things if it was used), but this allows you to pull off a 1 crit 0.5t machine gun, and put on a 9crit 16t AC20 (or whatever)... even MICROSOFT saw this issue and created hardpoint size boxes (using possibly the best mechbay UI in any MechWarrior game, atleast for weapon placement..)

so again, the easy fix is to simply do some variation of the same, create Size Catagories for the hardpoints - even 'Small,' 'Medium,' 'Large' would work fine.

-things like: SLas, SPLas, MG, Flamer, AC2, SSRM2, SRM2, LRM5, NARC... would fall into the
'Small' Hardpoint catagory.
-the MLas, MPLas, AC5, UAC5, LRM10, SRM4, SSRM4 would fall into the 'Medium' Hardpoint catagory (or you could put anything 'Small' in it.)
-the 'Large' hardpoint catagory could be used for anything.

this fixes a mechs trading their MG's for Gauss's, AC5's, AC10's, AC20's ect. it also keeps the number of LLas and PPC down, as well as reducing the power of an 'Omni' (medium) slot in both the right and left torsos of a mech - currently, if these were ballistics, they would almost defiantly be ac10's or ac20's...

Edited by Phantomime, 23 December 2013 - 06:16 PM.

[Captain Stern]

I am a 25 yr gamer of Battletech and MechWarrior. I have loved the many versions of MW because it offered TWO things. 1) An in depth mech bay.. allowing me to spend hours building my "perfect" mech..so my engineering skills had a real impact on game play. 2) Arcade action- my reflexes and timing also meant something. Real time games play out different than tabletop.
I do not like nerfing clan tech to IS levels, but I understand the NEED to balance the game. If you offer a more powerful choice, people will chose it, and after a while, it will be the only choice.
If they try to "Balance" IS with Clan by removing engineering choices...they will be removing an essential part of what the game offers..a chance to build a unique character, with out a leveling system. I know, there are skill trees. But truthfully, who has not maxed them out on there favorite mech ? After everybody is at the top, its still the same as if you all started there.
I play for a chance to prove I am better, more skilled, than the other players. I HATE 12 vs 12, because if I launch with some poor players, then I'm overwhelmed by 3:1 odds- not much to prove there. In a smaller game, your skill makes MORE of a difference.
Yes I know, I could join a clan/team...Not my interest, I DON'T CARE how good the other guys are, I want to improve my skills. Yes I understand Team play is another skill set...but telepathy is hard enough in real life, never mind with out a functioning team speak. Quite frankly, most of the time, I would prefer not to have some punk tell me how to play, cus he's my "commander". Nevermind because he can afford to play 16 hours a day, while I have to hold down a job/life.
I LOVED the older games, BECAUSE they were balanced...everybody could use the same tech, everybody could map out there own mech...there was no Level 90 vs level 2 {Scrap}.
In short, I believe they will have to balance the clan tech against IS tech, not 5 vs 12...talk about un-fun. Un fun= no money= no game. ***** all you want, if they don't make the game fun for most people, there is NO game. I don't care if a few people say they would prefer to play in some other way, if it does not make money...there will be no game.

[EGG]

Clan tech was always a pretty questionable design decision from a long time ago.

Some of the other attempts to give BattleTech a shot of life were Jihad and DA. I don't hear much gnashing of teeth over their absence.

[Sandpit]

EGG, on 24 December 2013 - 05:34 AM, said:

Clan tech was always a pretty questionable design decision from a long time ago.

Some of the other attempts to give BattleTech a shot of life were Jihad and DA. I don't hear much gnashing of teeth over their absence.

I'd agree to an extent. The clans have been around so long they're ingrained into the IP as a core theme. DA and Jihad just weren't nearly as popular and the whole clicky tech phase didn't catch on like the clans did

[Pz_DC]

Hello all. Loged in just to say my few words about clan tech balance - cant understand why better tech need to be balanced with weaker ones. Clan tech was made to be better tehn IS ones. No reasons to change it. Trying to balance ALL is useless waste of time - there allways will be players favorites i.e. "more balanced ones". Anyway. In any game.

Edited by MGA121285, 24 December 2013 - 12:30 PM.

[Sandpit]

MGA121285, on 24 December 2013 - 12:21 PM, said:

Hello all. Loged in just to say my few words about clan tech balance - cant understand why better tech need to be balanced with weaker ones. Clan tech was made to be better tehn IS ones. No reasons to change it. Trying to balance ALL is useless waste of time - there allways will be players favorites i.e. "more balanced ones". Anyway. In any game.

Mainly because it's an MMO. All things have to have some sort of balance to make it a fair playing field. I didn't say even, I said fair.

[xhrit]

The only way having asymmetrical technology levels between IS and Clan factions would be to limit the way Clan tech is used.

For example, only allowing the top ranked clan players to field heavy and assault clanmechs, and making the top ranks in the clan faction be a limited supply - example only 1 Kahn and 1 sakhan, 10 galaxy commanders, 20 star colonels, 50 star captains, and 100 star commanders allowed in the entire game for each clan. Any clanner who is not ranked at least star commander can only use a medium or light clan mech.

The way it is in lore - all clan mechs are officially the property of each Clan which can be redistributed at will by the leadership.

[NRP]

I think the Clan tech provides PGI the perfect opportunity to try a completely different heat scale paradigm (for Clan mechs only): Relatively low heat capacity and relatively high heat dissipation (Clan heat sinks are smaller crit-space-wise and also more efficient). Because most of the Clan tech seems to be "ER" based weaponry, this type of heat scale would prevent alpha striking but would allow the Clan stuff to keep up a comparable DPS level. I would rather PGI try this approach than screw with damage, beam time, weight, etc, and I would definitely prefer this approach over adding complicated systems (such as ghost heat) on top of complicated systems in order to achieve some semblance of balance. However, PGI seems to love complicated systems, so I'm not sure they'll go this route.

[Airwind]

Have to agree here about pilot skill. That basicly throw most BV stuff out of the window. Unless all pilot went through hardcore mechwarrior pilot classes that won't be the case.

For it to even closely resemble tabletop and use BV, then aiming would have to go. It will be akin WoW/fallout3 in which you select your target and maybe its section and start mashing the button. All shots would then be based on percentage of accuracy. Manufacturers of weapons can then even come to play with all the different accuracy/heat etc. This to me would be how it could be done.

With that said, mechwarrior is still a great game in its state. You just need to throw out the tabletop mentality and enjoy this game as it is.

[frag85]

One thing I always bring up when discussing this with my mech friends and what I feel would be the best solution is to just field less Clan mechs. Instead of 12 v 12, something like 12v8,

I think it is a terrible idea to have completely nerfed Clan mechs/weapons. At that point you are only fielding mechs with different aesthetics. Going through another big balance phase is just going to annoy the hell out of the players and fans.

Edited by frag85, 13 January 2014 - 03:10 PM.

[wanderer]

EGG, on 24 December 2013 - 05:34 AM, said:

Clan tech was always a pretty questionable design decision from a long time ago.

Some of the other attempts to give BattleTech a shot of life were Jihad and DA. I don't hear much gnashing of teeth over their absence.

We're nowhere near 3070/3145 era anyway. Talking about that being part of this would be like wondering when they're adding the Gulf War to a WWII tank simulator.

That being said, this is the first game that can get it right- and that's not by making everyone the same with +1 here and -1 there.

Fewer players per team. Better tech per 'Mech. Anything else is just Red vs Blue, giant robot edition- and the next inevitable step will be allowing IS players to slap Clan tech into IS chassis, because really, they're just variations on a theme. Then we MW4 all over again, the same game with different shapes.

Turn around, go back to the drawing board, and stop desecrating lovely artwork with these technological turds of statistics. Clan 'Mechs that fight like Clan 'Mechs. 5v8 and 10v16 play. I have no reason to buy a single Clan 'Mech at this point, because none of them will offer me anything significantly different in terms of gameplay.

Edited by wanderer, 13 January 2014 - 03:23 PM.

[frag85]

Phantomime, on 23 December 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

ANSWER:
the problem here is that this is not how they have built the game.. they actually built it wrong. what we have is the custom mech builder from Battletech but attempting to make it work for InnerSphere mechs. This allows IS mechs to be WAY more powerful than they should be - even more so than Clan Omnimechs - which is wrong, by cannon atleast..

CANNON (fluff):
InnerSphere Mechs are stock, you buy a varient, thats it. no tweeks to weapons, engine, hs's, armor allocation. Imagine World of Tanks where you can put any gun on any tank so long as it was big enough to carry it..!! that's what MW:O has done to Battletech. and only now are they realizing that, "oh {Scrap}.. omni mechs are like, just bad comparitively;" or just painfully more complex using this system..

An Omni-mech, has parts of it that are stock, like ALL InnerSphere mechs, but unlike them, they have SOME parts that can easily be swaped out for others. Currently we can do this with ANY part of an InnerSphere mech, our only restriction (imposed by MW:O) are hardpoints.

PROBLEM:

so the easy fix would be: make 'Omni hardpoints' on Omni-mechs... this seems fine, until you look at how people have already abused the hardpoint system - mechs with bad hardpoint layouts dont get used, and the ones that great layouts get turned into machines of alpha-striking death.

SOLUTION:

The critical problem with this is that PGI and MW:O didnt go farther than stating that a hardpoint is 1 of 3 things - Ballistic, Energy, or Missile ('Omni' could be any of these things if it was used), but this allows you to pull off a 1 crit 0.5t machine gun, and put on a 9crit 16t AC20 (or whatever)... even MICROSOFT saw this issue and created hardpoint size boxes (using possibly the best mechbay UI in any MechWarrior game, atleast for weapon placement..)

so again, the easy fix is to simply do some variation of the same, create Size Catagories for the hardpoints - even 'Small,' 'Medium,' 'Large' would work fine.

-things like: SLas, SPLas, MG, Flamer, AC2, SSRM2, SRM2, LRM5, NARC... would fall into the
'Small' Hardpoint catagory.
-the MLas, MPLas, AC5, UAC5, LRM10, SRM4, SSRM4 would fall into the 'Medium' Hardpoint catagory (or you could put anything 'Small' in it.)
-the 'Large' hardpoint catagory could be used for anything.

This is pretty much what I have been arguing with friends since the start. While 'stock' mechs would be too straight forward, allowing total customization for hardpoint 'types' gives too much power to the user. Having Small, Medium and Large hardpoints would prevent somone from removing small lasers and stuffing Large lasers or PPCs in their place. The only time you you can't do this is when you have a head laser like a Hunch, or a CT energy where you can't fit something as large as a PPC.

Edited by frag85, 13 January 2014 - 03:33 PM.

[wanderer]

frag85, on 13 January 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

This is pretty much what I have been arguing with friends since the start. While 'stock' mechs would be too straight forward, allowing total customization for hardpoint 'types' gives too much power to the user. Having Small, Medium and Large hardpoints would prevent somone from removing small lasers and stuffing Large lasers or PPCs in their place. The only time you you can't do this is when you have a head laser like a Hunch, or a CT energy where you can't fit something as large as a PPC.

Incidentally, this would also serve to give significant differences between Clan and IS 'Mech construction.