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Caveat:
First let me start by saying that I am an average player. But I play with players of many different skill levels, and thus end up playing some of the best players in the game in the highest Elo's quite often when I am in 4 man's. It usually does not go well for me, but I enjoy the challenge none the less. My point being that I see the game from different perspectives depending upon who I play with:
Now that that is out of the way...
I think we have all seen the threads in this game where perfectly reasonable people come to conclusions that are 180 degrees in opposition regarding balance. Now, the knee jerk reaciton to this is to dismiss the person posting, or assume they have an ulterior motive or poor cognative skills. And while I do think that some people do tend to support balance changes that serve their own playstyles, I would argue that there is more to it than simple self interest or narrow mindedness.
It boils down to this: PGI is not trying to balance 3 games, not 1.
Playing in the lowest Elo's(the underhive) is so completely different than playing at the hgihest or even the mid tier Elo's that you might as well be talking about a completely different game.
Let me give a couple simple examples:
Damage mitigation at the lowest Elo's really doesn't exist. People stand still. People do not torso twist. People stand in the open and don't use cover. At the mid tier, players are often aware of these things, and use them sometimes, but like myself either are not always the best at it, make mistakes, or panic in the heat of the moment and forget (especially torso twist).
conversely, the ability to concentrate damage due to good aim, etc goes UP as the Elo rises. The worst players have bad aim, even when standing still or against very damaged opponents. At the lowest Elo's they may not even be aiming for damaged areas.
What does this mean for balance?
1) High DPS weapons are extremely effective, even if that DPS is spread over many shots. this is because you can focus that DPS because the opponent is not trying to mitigate damage. Same goes for weapons like LRM's that concentrate damage if you are not smart (moving slow, out in the open, tagged, direct LoS, etc).
2) Concentrated damage is more important than DPS at the highest Elo's. This means that entire classes of weapons become useless. The extreme end of this spectrum is the PPC/AC5/AC20 meta.
In the end, almost every single major thread I have seen in the last few months can be explained by this somewhat massive discrepancy.
- LRM's are(not) OP.
- AC2's are (not) OP.
- SRM's are useless(useful) after the changes
So next time you look at a balance change, try to think about how ALL of the players are impacted. Fast LRM's made it really tough for poor players. But for the best players it is still virtually useless. The AC2 was rarely used at the highest levels, was a viable weapon in the middle, and was OP at the lowest levels. Thus the change made little sense to people at the top or middle of the spectrum, it was needed for those at the bottom to enjoy the game. PGI is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to many of these decisions. Do they balance for the top of the spectrum, the middle, or the bottom?
In the end, neither the worst nor the best players are wrong. Each persons opinion is valid. You can tell someone to just 'stay in cover', but reality says that a lot of players just don't have the skill to do what it takes. Things like torso twisting to spread damage are advanced skills in this game.
We can discuss whether PGI should care about the best players or the worst or everyone. We can talking about what the minimum basic skills to have are when discussing balancing. That is great discussion to have. But to ignore the fact that the game plays VERY differently from the lowest to highest skill levels is not helping the balancing process.
