14 replies to this topic

[Nephero]

Here is a snippet of an Artical I read off Gamespot.com in relation to the game Destiny. I thought it interesting because it hit a sweet spot that I hope you guys are aware of. I know this has not the been the easiest game to develope, nor have you gotten the most amount of praise for your hard work and the work yet to be done, but just read and ponder on it.

"We have an evolving understanding of balance. In the past you might have characterized our idea of successful balance as getting it to the point where we could [stop working on the game] and it would be perfect. Nobody had to touch it anymore and it would just be a shining gem for all time. But the problem is, those games don't hold a community the same way as a living game like League of Legends or Dota 2. Those games can build these amazing communities around them because they're changing and evolving. There's a metagame that develops over time. The thing that was awesome before is not so awesome now. The thing that you didn't think about before is suddenly the best idea you ever had."
"That kind of dynamic balance where the game is ebbing and flowing, changing and circulating, we understand that and want more of that now. We want to build a game that's always exciting and entertaining, and not just exciting and entertaining because it achieved a final singularity point." - Tyson Green, lead investment designer

For the entire article head to http://www.gamespot....d/1100-6417896/

I want MWO to stay alive, but I don't want a 'final' game where the work just stops. I want that ebb and flow. That type of thinking gives way to a sucessful game. Just a thought.

Edited by Nephero, 26 February 2014 - 07:28 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

An Interesting perspective indeed.

[Nephero]

Thank you!

[SI The Joker]

I haven't gotten into either game but the question I have is this:

Does the development team listen to the community and make those changes accordingly? Or does the development team decide on their own what to implement and damn the community?

I like the perspective alot and agree with the wish. That does however, take a designer that's willing to listen.

Edited by SI The Joker, 26 February 2014 - 06:57 AM.

[Nephero]

In respect to your question SI The Joker, they have to do both. On one hand they have to deliver on the content that the community wants most. But on the other hand if you think about it, most people just want a game with 'stuff' in it. As a Developer you have to be able to Give the community what it wants, that it didn't think it wanted. That, is the most difficult task because in the development process to get there, you have to ignore some of your community. As much as a community can make a game better, it can equally destroy it if you are not careful. I want the game to surprise me with something new; though they have failed on some fronts, it is when they are sucessful that has kept invested since close beta. I played BF4 for a month and havnt touched it since, once because its a FPS and I already know what to expect to the point that nothing they do surprises me anymore, it's not just predictable game play, its the preictable content too... but it's what the community wanted most.

The only gripe I have about this game is on the Video blogs. Some of the Devs come across as either immature or unsure of themselves. It leads me to wonder if the game suffers due to childish work ethic as opposed to a crew of older guys that work well together and can make desicions.

Edited by Nephero, 26 February 2014 - 07:19 AM.

[Corvus Antaka]

nice!

[Nephero]

The article came from
http://www.gamespot....d/1100-6417896/

As I read I could not help but think of how their school of thought can be applied to this game or any game for that matter. It is more or less ideas I hope will be perfected in the near future if the MWO franchise is to consider itself a sucessful project. I don't play DOTA or LoL either, and I probably wont play Destiny if its not ported to PC, but it was a good read in relation to MWO regardless.

[Mechteric]

New mechs are supposed to be that kind of catalyst for change, for instance the Shadow Hawk and Griffin each have some great roles that put them above many other mechs when they came out...

But one problem I see is a lack of real options for brawling right now , which means even between these two diverse mechs and nearly every other mech (except lights that can just run medium lasers) you only really have two choices: mounts LRMs, or mount PPC/AC. SRMs really are holding back a large portion of this game that would open up so much more choice.

Also if the larger autocannons were made into DPS weapons instead of hit and fade weapons, that could also further separate AC's from sniper roles and where they should be in brawling and support roles.

[Varent]

Nephero, on 26 February 2014 - 06:46 AM, said:

Here is a snippet of an Artical I read off Gamespot.com in relation to the game Destiny. I thought it interesting because it hit a sweet spot that I hope you guys are aware of. I know this has not the been the easiest game to develope, nor have you gotten the most amount of praise for your hard work and the work yet to be done, but just read and ponder on it.

"We have an evolving understanding of balance. In the past you might have characterized our idea of successful balance as getting it to the point where we could [stop working on the game] and it would be perfect. Nobody had to touch it anymore and it would just be a shining gem for all time. But the problem is, those games don't hold a community the same way as a living game like League of Legends or Dota 2. Those games can build these amazing communities around them because they're changing and evolving. There's a metagame that develops over time. The thing that was awesome before is not so awesome now. The thing that you didn't think about before is suddenly the best idea you ever had."
"That kind of dynamic balance where the game is ebbing and flowing, changing and circulating, we understand that and want more of that now. We want to build a game that's always exciting and entertaining, and not just exciting and entertaining because it achieved a final singularity point." - Tyson Green, lead investment designer

For the entire article head to http://www.gamespot....d/1100-6417896/

I want MWO to stay alive, but I don't want a 'final' game where the work just stops. I want that ebb and flow. That type of thinking gives way to a sucessful game. Just a thought.

while I agree, there are a few distinct differences.

The biggest issue is both Dota and Lol appeal to a larger target audience then a game like mwo does. Mostly because of the 'cute' factor that many of there champions have wich pulls in a larger female group. Also the playstyle itself is VERY easy to pick up and put down. In addition to that the system used to code the game is very simple as well.

To further complicate that there is the level of skill needed to do alot of the things available in both games. Most shooting games are notorious for being higher skill cap games wich sort of opens up the door for many elite players to rise above wich further extends the gaps and makes people feel the game is more unbalanced as it is.

Now all this said I personally dont play Dota much but I do and have in the past played alot of Lol so ill address this section. Lol is very good at quite a few things that mwo could adopt. The biggest ones being the consistent updating and tweaking that Lol does to abilities and items. Lol is very good at making small minor tweaks and then allowing them to settle in for a month or so and then reviewing them. MWO would do well to adopt this model, however this would take them allocating resources to such an endeavor.

Lol is also very good at communication, something pgi has been notoriously bad with since they started the MWO franchise. I feel many gamers wouldnt have as much to rage about if pgi at leaast took a position on why they are doing what they are doing. Or when they make changes or tweaks, or are considering updates perhaps having more face time with the community.

the VLOG they started was a nice touch and a good step forewards. I feel they need more of those. I actually wish they would do two major things though.

1) assign a new community manager with the depature of garth (who was horrible at it) leaving a major gap that now needs filling. hopefully whoever they assign to it will spend more time perhaps leaving a few posts here and there to the community to explain the thoughts of the company and where they are moving forewards to.

2) assign players from the community as community ****. It wouldnt take much to give a few players little tid bits of info here and there. Dedicated players who spend alot of time on these forums and genuinly want to see this game succeed would probly dontate there time freely to help the company disseminate information.

just my 2 cents.

[Sable]

I realize the article is implying constant rebalancing keeps things fresh but that type of thinking is exactly why i have grown to resent the devs in League of Legends. Some of their champions perform at a balanced level, not to strong and not to weak. Then someone figures out how to use that champion very effectively, sometimes in a role they were not originally designed for, (burst mage in a support role) and they go in a change the damage values or even reworking the entire champion. In the 5 years i've played the game i've seen champions go from fun to play to devestatlying underpowered. Every season they change things up under the banner of "balance" but its gotten to a point that is rediculous and even feels like they are doing it just to shake things up when it had already got to that balancing point. This type of thinking is anoying to deal with constantly. Where new ideas of how the game "should" be played are introduced instead of giving the players the tools and letting them figure out how to use them best.

As for balancing in Mechwarrior i DO think that at a certain level it should feel like the game is "completed" balance wise. There is a long way to go right now figuring out how weapons should perform but down the line i do believe MWO should reach a point where things feel balanced overall. There are so many different types of mechs and maps that i don't believe one certain strategy or combination of mechs will become the go to thing to use. When the post showed up in the balancing section by Paul Inouye about him pointing a nerfgun at the Highlander this makes me realllllly nervous. I don't use the Highlander that often but i also don't think the mech by itself is the real issue. I think the high alpha potential along with the jump sniping ability is the issue. Its the way the mech is used that is the issue and THAT is what needs balancing. I'd hate to see the same thing happen here that happened in League of Legends, where they nerf 1 champion and people just move on to the next most useful one instead of addressing the actual problem. Jumpjetting high alpha builds are what seem to be the issue, so i'd rather they focus on adjusting jumpjetting in combination with the ability to fire large alphas and not an individual mech that can do it. There are going to be a lot more jumpjetting mechs eventually and if that isn't addressed it will just keep showing up.

With PPCs they were the go to weapon in the past because of how they performed. The 6 PPC stalker wasn't the lone reason they changed the heat values and added Ghost Heat, but the fact that everybody on every mech was using PPCs. And i hope this type of balancing stays true with future content. Addressing the real issues and not individual mechs. You can even still do the 6 PPC stalker if you want, its just a hell of a lot harder to use.

Edited by Sable, 26 February 2014 - 09:25 AM.

[Deathlike]

SI The Joker, on 26 February 2014 - 06:57 AM, said:

I haven't gotten into either game but the question I have is this:

Does the development team listen to the community and make those changes accordingly? Or does the development team decide on their own what to implement and damn the community?

I like the perspective alot and agree with the wish. That does however, take a designer that's willing to listen.

The answer here is the latter. If it appears that they are doing the former, it's actually the latter. Pulse lasers in general haven't gone far enough in tweaking, so if you thought the meta changed at the top, you'd be sadly mistaken. If you read Paul's post about his pulse laser update... he claims they are fine, but even before the pulse laser noise, he doesn't really say what he thinks was wrong... let alone now where he doesn't explain what he thinks is working fine. That's not even a discussion point. How do you discuss what is wrong when you don't even know how to articulate what are the perceived problems and solutions?

Edited by Deathlike, 26 February 2014 - 09:32 AM.

[Sable]

lol if something is performing better than it used too... is it really so hard to say "its doing better"? Not everyone feels the need to write out a detailed analysis of the why's. I prefer AMD processors to Intel, numbers wise intel processors go faster on paper but to me AMD processors "feel" faster in their actual performance. I don't know the differences in processor architecture all i know is how i "feel" it performs.

Edited by Sable, 26 February 2014 - 09:53 AM.

[Deathlike]

Sable, on 26 February 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

lol if something is performing better than it used too... is it really so hard to say "its doing better"? Not everyone feels the need to write out a detailed analysis of the why's. I prefer AMD processors to Intel, numbers wise intel processors go faster on paper but to me AMD processors "feel" faster in their actual performance. I don't know the differences in processor architecture all i know is how i "feel" it performs.

Usually discussions like that are quantifiable. That is why there are benchmarks. Nowadays, some sites are doing more thorough testing... like running an entire run with FPS tracking through the run. It's gotten better. This extends further to testing lag if you had an SLI/Crossfire based system, where now live recordings (think NVidia's Shadowplay or something like that) where we can actual visualize lag and stuttering where it was hard to decipher with just benchmarks. We've gotten a lot further about tracking it.

So, to say "you feel it's better", it has to be a bit more quantifiable or qualified a bit.I tried LPL and my performance overall didn't magically improve too much, as the heat generated is still the same as 2 med lasers, while consuming 5 more tons for a slightly shorter burst and a small range bump? Without stating the other math, I've reverted back to PPCs, because the heat on the LPL doesn't justify it's weight, despite it being 1 slot less than the PPC.

[Sable]

Sometimes weight isn't the factor, but hardpoints are and if you"re going to be in closer ranges during fights large pulse have more utility than a ppc, with less heat, and slightly more damage. They have a place now, as well as better performance at medium ranges. But i still don't see a problem with someone saying they are in a good spot for now.

[Firewuff]

This is exactly right. if I got "the perfect build" and played that forever I'd get bored very quick. weapon tweeks, changes to equipment all make me want ot go back and review and tweek and play more.

Keep up the changes, keep up the new content ... its all good