Hellboy561, on 20 January 2014 - 06:15 AM, said:
Personally I've never understood why the ER PPC has no minimum range but the standard PPC does. I know I know because of lore and stuff, but it just makes no sense in this game that a long range weapon get a longer range AND no minimum range when it is made ER.
Also to add more vareity to the matches maybe they need to introduce MORE weapons! ER Medium Lasers anyone? Rotary ACs? You know there is loads of tech that should be out but isn't!. How are we gonna fight the clans without more DAKKA!!
Good point, there is a world of difference between this style of game and TT, and for the sake of balance, TT really doesn't need to be followed unless it makes sense.
We need more variety in the game at large, when the game becomes "bring one of 3 - 4 weapons types/mech builds" to win, there is a serious problem with balance and lack of variety.
I know that LRM's have been over-powered in the past, but right now they are so inferior compared to other weapons as not to be used, I like the fact that I can use skill with cover to defeat missile spam, and they shouldn't be skill less to use, but I can't remember when you really
had to bring AMS in a 12-man, and it's been this way for 6 months+.
TT gives us a starting point, and the rest is trial and error. I really like Homeless Bill's ideas about weapons balance (what happened to the amazing post he had? I can't find it anymore ... maybe it was in the old Beta forums, I like his ideas on Elo too) I think unfortunately a big part of the problem is neglecting what is important to the community (i.e. weapons balance, CW & lobbies) and several "solutions" looking for a problem.
I applaud the attempt at trying to keep average matches from becoming a "PuG Stomp" as we had in Beta (Particularly Closed Beta) where it wasn't uncommon for the average team who just had coms to go against an entire team of unorganized players (read new and at a huge disadvantage experience wise) against a "premade" team of 8 who not only had voice coms, but some plan about what mechs to bring to do what role, good mech design, etc.
We have begged and pleaded for CW and lobbies, instead we get an overly complex and unwieldy Elo system which works great in a 1 Vs 1 chess match, but really can't properly address team dynamics.
The idea was to have similarly skilled players against the each other, and give a safe place for new players to go and not just get face rolled.
The reality is closer to mixing and matching teams attempting to make an average (never mind if that average is made with a very high Elo player combined with a very low Elo player to make an average score) but this really doesn't address the fact that being a team game, it's about the team working well together.
I had a fellow Skye Ranger frustrated about a recent match where no less than 3 players on his side had over 900 damage, and he couldn't understand why the other team had much less, and only one player with 500 damage and they won.
That can be explained by lots of different variables, but the simple fact that 3 players on his side had such an enormous amount of damage/kills usually indicates a very large gap between themselves and their teammates skill level.
There are days when you just can't get a break, and you are on the side that gets rolled in a 4-man, and other days, you get to be the steam roller.
This also encourages sync dropping to try and stack the Elo average in your favor. I don't generally like this idea, but I can completely understand those who are tired of being paired with new players and loosing matches more than not as a result, resorting to such measures.
I don't believe this is any less frustrating to the new player that is paired with top Elo players and gets rolled because the other side has a higher true average than a few high Elo balanced by several low Elo in the same team.
This also limits your "pool" of competitors. Now speaking on 12-man, why is it that it takes over 30sec to a minute many times just to "fail to find a match" and because of the Elo first, Match maker second, the vast majority of matches have an unbalanced drop weight? (this also happens a lot in 4-man.) Another huge frustrating side effect, is this somehow results in often seeing the same three maps over and over and over again for hours on end!
It's really no fun to be stuck in the same 3 maps against the same 3 teams, weather you are the Steam Roller or the Rolled.
Skill still is the main ingredient, and in 12-man weight isn't half as important as how you play, but all things being equal, most matches where there is a huge weight difference (300+ tons) one side or the other has a big advantage.
There is a reason so many of the player run tournaments MATCH WEIGHT.
We used to have a iron clad MM in Beta, why can't we have that now? I would be just fine with the idea of matching classes, i.e. just match class, not exact weight, i.e. Cicada = Hunchback, Victor = Atlas or w/e class for class.
Now enter Skirmish Mode, and combine that with a horrible lack of MM, Elo not working as intended, and now it's TDM.
I contend that much of the reason you are having extremely long wait times to get a match in 12-man in particular is the very small amount of people playing 12-man.
Why is that? Why is the new player not going there? Elo and MM? Weapons Balance? To be honest I don't know, I have been playing long enough that I am somewhere in the middle to high bracket, and when I am teamed up with enough players in the really high Elo, it takes me out of my Elo range and puts me against people that can do everything I do, just much, much better.
I have a cousin (23yrs old) that LOVED Mechwarrior Online. Even when he was getting face-rolled in the beginning, grinding things out in a trial mech (he just started playing over Christmas when he visited us), he even bought a couple of hero mechs, then after 1 - 2 weeks he disappeared.
I took him in and showed him the basics, gave him some advice on some builds to try, introduced him to mechspecs, etc. and we had some great fun in a few matches, but he got frustrated early on because of how the matches were nearly all one sided.
I found that if he was in a group of much newer players, closer to his skill level (4-man) he had the best chance at a game that might be close.
If he had myself and a couple other people with him who have played forever, his experience changed dramatically.
Typically either he wouldn't get a chance to shoot things before they died, or half the team would go do silly things and die leaving 4-5 of us to take on the rest of the enemy.
Neither of these situations were encouraging, and he has since left the game.
My nephew who loves MWO hasn't played since around a year ago is just too frustrated with the grind (he is 16, and doesn't have the same passion many of us older guys do about the IP) and unable to play against his peers, but at best he could be one in 4 higher Elo players, and at least have a 30% chance of not being the rolled team, but this was just too frustrating for him too and he's no longer interested.
TL:DR
We need these things for the new player experience more than anything. PGI is trying, and I applaud their efforts, I just think they are forgetting the basics and trying to do too many fancy things instead of fixing what is wrong.
1) Match weight first, Elo second (make this more of an team average based on the individual, don't match a brand new player in a trial mech with top Elo players, it only makes things less fun for all involved).
2) Balance weapons as well as we have in the past (It was never perfect, but it was much more balanced! bring back knock-down! Give mechs like the Awesome a place by balancing weapons! These things made MWO unique and more fun!)
3) Community Warfare. (We don't need more hero mechs, we need more
reasons to keep playing give us rewards for taking out opposing faction teams in ALL matches, not just 12-man, give us a reason to keep grinding once we already have nearly every mech and have mastered them all, in a word, loot!)
It's been great fun, but we are having the hardest time just keeping people playing, the turn-over and burn-out rate is tremendous.
I for one love MWO, I'm not going anywhere, but currently with no "end-game" we just have what most games had as an add-on feature as our main content, not the only thing to play.
Lets focus on 1 or 2 of those three and half of the complaints will go away.
6
? That would be hilarious, if nothing else.
