95 replies to this topic

[luxebo]

Yeah, I get your meaning. This should be changed in my opinion.

[Deathlike]

Trauglodyte, on 04 January 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

That's the point, Lux. PGI views hard points as actual mech currency. JJs are, in their eyes, the same as weapon hard points. So, mechs with a lot of JJs have fewer weapons. Mechs with few JJs have more weapons. To us, it makes no sense because our goal is to kill other mechs. But, PGI views JJs as a means to either get an angle on a target or as a means to get away from targets. Therefore, they have a lot of value to them.

There's a major difference between JJs and lack of JJs (Cataphract and Tbolt comes to mind). I could at least understand that.

When it is the Spider-5V (and the Quickdraw-4G), it makes absolutely little sense for the most part. There are other mechs that fit that category (Shadowhawk-5M, which I'm not that bothered by that too much) but something like the Victor-9K is a lot more troubling. The Dragon Slayer is the beneficiary of it for the most part, despite the fact that it inherits a Highlander like build (right side is where most of the direct fire weapons are, but helps with convergence).

In essence... there is no "real balance", despite putting someone in that position to actually "do the job".

[Andan]

I would love to see a point system in this game. Similar to how they will be doing things in mwtactics. It would make it harder to do pug drops but if every mech/weapon had a point value then it may balance things out. Heck then you wouldnt have to modify clan mechs either. The point limits would come into effect much earlier making the team heavy with clans or high ton mechs only able to take fewer of them. Also it would make the E-Sport side much more viable. The initial push to point everything out and get things established would be intensive, but it would draw more people i think. I think this system would work better than a tonnage limit. I also wouldn't base any of the points on xp/gxp modules upgrades. Those were earned and separate the experienced and dedicated player over the new. Sorry for grammatical and typo errors. Writing from my phone.

[luxebo]

Deathlike, on 04 January 2014 - 07:09 PM, said:

There's a major difference between JJs and lack of JJs (Cataphract and Tbolt comes to mind). I could at least understand that.

When it is the Spider-5V (and the Quickdraw-4G), it makes absolutely little sense for the most part. There are other mechs that fit that category (Shadowhawk-5M, which I'm not that bothered by that too much) but something like the Victor-9K is a lot more troubling. The Dragon Slayer is the beneficiary of it for the most part, despite the fact that it inherits a Highlander like build (right side is where most of the direct fire weapons are, but helps with convergence).

In essence... there is no "real balance", despite putting someone in that position to actually "do the job".

I think the 4G needs just a difference between the 4H. 4G has some quirks in torso twist and JJs, but it really does need something to set it aside, like an extra module and more tubes per missile hardpoint. 5V is just saddening. 5M is actually really good, the only problem is that all it's energy is on one side, and even then it's not bad. 9K used to be awesome before gauss changes (basically when I came in actually and then a patch switched the trials). I actually did damage with it stock, so that is something good. It's pretty good when pinpointing with gauss/ultra ac5 and some large lasers according to one of my friends.

[MustrumRidcully]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 05:08 PM, said:

alot of the issues are caused currently because of there being no true weight restrictions for drops.

I don't think imbalances within a single mech chassis or a weight class are something weight restriction for drops coud fix. If there is one okay Locust and 2 bad ones, how would a drop weight limit help here?

---

The only mech I looked any deeper at it in this terms is probably the Catapult K2. It used to be a beast in the world of single heat sinks thanks to its abilty to use Dual Gauss Rifles. It was still very competitive when DHS were introduced. But now, it competes directly with Jagermechs which have more hard points on every variant then the K2, and allow building pretty much everything the K2 can,just with better torso twist and high positioned weapons.
I think the K2 needs a little help. I really think it would be great if it could install 2 energy weapons in each arm. That would retain the "flavor" of the Catapults that their main weaponry is in the arms, and would make it notably different from the Firebrand.

[MustrumRidcully]

Trauglodyte, on 04 January 2014 - 04:20 PM, said:

The thing is that the Spider 5V is only short one energy hard point compared to the 5D because it has 4 additional JJs. That is part of PGI's balancing within chassis. Its why the BJ-1X has more hard points and a bigger engine cap than the BJ-3 while the 3 has more JJs. In PGI's "vision" of the game, JJs have carry more weight in terms of tactical power. It doen't really make sense but that is how they apply balance.

It might actually make sense if the choise was a mech with no jump jets and one with 4, or a mech with 2 jump jets and one with 6. But beyond 8 jump jets, it's not really critical anymore. An extra module or something like that could help.

That said, any talk about modules might need to be delayed until the time they finish their module revamp.

[Trauglodyte]

Like I said, I don't agree with their thinking/weighting on JJs as actual weapon hard points. But, there are several mechs out there that follow those lines of thinking. The funny thing is that there is no real consistency among the mechs that have JJs. Just look at the BJ, SHD, GRF, and WLV. The non-JJ Wolv only gets one more hard point than the ones with 7 JJs but the SHD-5M has 1 less hard point than the others cause it gets 2 more JJs and the BJ-1X gets 2 more hard points and a bigger engine because it has no JJs. But, the CN9-D doesn't receive less hard points than the others due to its larger engine cap and neither does the RVN-3L over the 2X and 4X.

[Deathlike]

Trauglodyte, on 05 January 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

Like I said, I don't agree with their thinking/weighting on JJs as actual weapon hard points. But, there are several mechs out there that follow those lines of thinking. The funny thing is that there is no real consistency among the mechs that have JJs. Just look at the BJ, SHD, GRF, and WLV. The non-JJ Wolv only gets one more hard point than the ones with 7 JJs but the SHD-5M has 1 less hard point than the others cause it gets 2 more JJs and the BJ-1X gets 2 more hard points and a bigger engine because it has no JJs. But, the CN9-D doesn't receive less hard points than the others due to its larger engine cap and neither does the RVN-3L over the 2X and 4X.

The non-JJ Wolverine (6K) is the "speedier" 55-tonner, except that the difference between 360 and 375 is kinda negligible from a speed/tonnage standpoint.

The Shadowhawk-5M I'm not so bothered with it (as I've said before, it's a Trebuchet-7K+), although if you were to readd a hardpoint, it would be an energy hardpoint to the left arm.

TBH, the gross "comparison" of mechs is between the Raven-2X and the Jenner-K... just based on the JJ issue alone... and they have the same # of hardpoints (Jenner hardpoints generally more favorable) while the Jenner-K gets the 4th module slot and the Raven-2X is generally considered chop liver. Of course, they are 35 tons and are useless in the "tonnage saving/limits argument".

Edited by Deathlike, 05 January 2014 - 10:56 AM.

[Sandpit]

Ok here's the thing. Now if we pull hitboxes and modeling aside the variants on the chassis are all from TT Btech. Not much you can do about that.

There's always going to be a few variants that min/maxers gravitate to.
There's always going to be a few variants that meta humpers gravitate to.
There's always going to be a few variants that niche players gravitate to.
There's always going to be a few variants that some like for the simple reason that they like it gravitate to.

I don't think we have any disparities between variant design, what we DO have is disparity in use though.

Tonnage limits will help this in my opinion.

On the surface tonnage limits don't look like they would help this but if you're limited in how many of one mech type you can take due to weight limits then you have to start looking outside the norm in order to fill roles

Can't take that Catapult for LRM support, or Bmaster, or any other of the "normal" mechs used to fill that role because your team has a K2 or Jager or some such? Then you start looking at lighter mechs that can help fill that role such as the Treb.

That's a start at getting some "outside of the box" thinking when it comes to putting together drops.

[Khobai]

Quote

So, mechs with a lot of JJs have fewer weapons

Not really. Atlas vs Highlander for example. Atlases should have at least 9 hardpoints to make up for the lack of jumpjets.

[3rdworld]

Weight restrictions are not good for mech variation. I am not sure why people keep thinking adding weight restrictions suddenly makes other mechs viable. It doesn't.

[Deathlike]

3rdworld, on 05 January 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

Weight restrictions are not good for mech variation. I am not sure why people keep thinking adding weight restrictions suddenly makes other mechs viable. It doesn't.

I'd like to think people who make the absurd suggestion that "tonnage limits" will solve bad mechs like the Lolcust to be more viable have probably not trolled Lolcusts with a Commando (any variant is good enough to kill any lolcust variant).

[Dock Steward]

3rdworld, on 05 January 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

Weight restrictions are not good for mech variation. I am not sure why people keep thinking adding weight restrictions suddenly makes other mechs viable. It doesn't.

I could see how it could help a bit. Right now there's not much reason to play a Cat K2 with 2 PPC's and 2 AC/5's when you could take a Highlander with that same build and get JJ's and more armor on top of it. If, however, a tonnage limit meant that Highlander didn't fit on the team, the K2 could then be a viable replacement. Medium's can do all the things Assaults can do, just not nearly as well, but if you can't fit those Assaults onto the team, then those Medium's become much more viable. I definitely think this argument holds some water.

[Sandpit]

Dock Steward, on 05 January 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:

I could see how it could help a bit. Right now there's not much reason to play a Cat K2 with 2 PPC's and 2 AC/5's when you could take a Highlander with that same build and get JJ's and more armor on top of it. If, however, a tonnage limit meant that Highlander didn't fit on the team, the K2 could then be a viable replacement. Medium's can do all the things Assaults can do, just not nearly as well, but if you can't fit those Assaults onto the team, then those Medium's become much more viable. I definitely think this argument holds some water.

^ This

Nobody is saying it's a "savior"

It's a step in the right direction. If those heavier builds can't be taken you HAVE to look at other mechs in other weight classes to fill those holes. I don't see some can't see this.

[Deathlike]

Sandpit, on 05 January 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

^ This

Nobody is saying it's a "savior"

It's a step in the right direction. If those heavier builds can't be taken you HAVE to look at other mechs in other weight classes to fill those holes. I don't see some can't see this.

Just not with a Lolcust or a Spider-5V for serious matches.

Edited by Deathlike, 05 January 2014 - 11:55 AM.

[3rdworld]

Sandpit, on 05 January 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

^ This

Nobody is saying it's a "savior"

It's a step in the right direction. If those heavier builds can't be taken you HAVE to look at other mechs in other weight classes to fill those holes. I don't see some can't see this.

Because it isn't.

Jenner
Shadow Hawk
733C

Tonnage limits just control how many of those 3 you need to bring. No more, no less.

I don't see it, because I actually play tonnage limited matches. My views reflect the reality of MWO.

[Sandpit]

3rdworld, on 05 January 2014 - 11:56 AM, said:

Because it isn't.

Jenner
Shadow Hawk
733C

Tonnage limits just control how many of those 3 you need to bring. No more, no less.

I don't see it, because I actually play tonnage limited matches. My views reflect the reality of MWO.

And yet you have tons of players that don't use any of those mechs, myself included (except I do run a 733C once in a while and my Shawks because well I paid for them and like running them sometimes)
But 90% of the time?
Stalker
Bmaster
BJ Champion
Tbolt
and then whatever I feel like buying at the time for a new mech

I see TONS of different mechs used outside of the 3 you listed and outside of Atlas, Phract, Jager, etc.

THAT'S the reality of MWO for me because that's what I see.

[Deathlike]

Sandpit, on 05 January 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

And yet you have tons of players that don't use any of those mechs, myself included (except I do run a 733C once in a while and my Shawks because well I paid for them and like running them sometimes)
But 90% of the time?
Stalker
Bmaster
BJ Champion
Tbolt
and then whatever I feel like buying at the time for a new mech

I see TONS of different mechs used outside of the 3 you listed and outside of Atlas, Phract, Jager, etc.

THAT'S the reality of MWO for me because that's what I see.

It may have more to do with the ELO bracket that you're in, which is coloring his opinion.

[Dock Steward]

Deathlike, on 05 January 2014 - 12:06 PM, said:

It may have more to do with the ELO bracket that you're in, which is coloring his opinion.

I was under the impression the Elo Bracket was basically a myth. That in any given game you get a wide array of Elo scores and that personal Elo has no effect on what the individual Elo scores of the oppostion are. At least in so far as PUG's go, any Elo score player is just as likely to see enemies of any Elo score, and team averages were all that mattered. Well, team averages and, of course, given player pool.

[Sandpit]

Deathlike, on 05 January 2014 - 12:06 PM, said:

It may have more to do with the ELO bracket that you're in, which is coloring his opinion.

My experience when it comes to things like this?

it's usually 12 mans. For some reason 12mans are viewed (by the 12 mans that is) as the "competitive" version of MWO.