Shredhead, on 04 June 2014 - 09:17 AM, said:
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But the problem of viability here (in case of T-Bolt vs Phract) is one of geometry and weapon positions. How do you rate shoddy geometry or weapon hardpoints against armor value?
And why should every mech be viable in the high end game? That's not possible, ever. There will always be a meta, all you would do is p*ss off people that invested time and grind to get to their mechs. How about, instead of nerfing everything to death, open up the fields through (positive) quirks to handicapped chassis, buffing underwhelming weapons and use indirect means that widen skill gaps (like the heat for JJing/fall damage to legs, or a rework of the movement restrictions) to allow for more tactical variety?
Take for example SRMs. Fixing their hitreg problems will make them viable again, which opens the field for more variety of chassis, especially mediums. Same goes far a rework of those shoddy movement restrictions, just to make two examples.
Exactly. And all a developer can try to do is to offer more variety, more choices. There will always be a meta, but in a game with so many different weapons, there are possibilities to offer more variety than just 2 or 3 weapon combos.
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Ok, first, viability:
In a perfect world all weapons/mechs would be viable. the determining factor in their use would be how good a particular pilot is using a given weapon/mech. For instance my play style works towards faster mechs with beam weapons. Other with different skill sets may gravitate towards slow mechs that have a big punch. The skill sets used between those are different.
But as we all know, no game is perfect. I cant think of a single game that accomplishes this unless it is exceedingly simple.
So then how you define viable. Well everyone is different of course, but in the end a weapon is viable when X% of the community feels like they can use it without hindering themselves. NOTE: That does not make it optimal, and people whose only goal is optimal will always go for the best weapon even if the advantage is minor.
this is further exacerbated by the inclusion of weapons/mechs who may have a hard skill point. PPC's reuqire X amount of skill to use well. That skill level is higher against faster moving targets. And because of the all or nothing nature of the weapon, less skilled players may find them LESS userful than higher skilled players. An average player trying to hit a fast moving light mech will always prefer lasers over PPC's for instance.
This means that what is true at higher Elo's is simply not true at lower Elo's. They are different games.
so now PGI has to balance not only weapons and mechs, but also 3-4 general categories of player. LRM's are dealy at low Elo's and useless at the highest. If you made them viable in the highest Elo's they would be the only weapon used at lower ones. Same with lasers.
so viability is a moving target, and honestly different for each player.
BUT, in the general sense, if a weapons can be used by 90% of players without making those players feel hindered then it is viable IMO.
Game balance is as much art as science. You have X number of variables to adjust for each item being balanced. MWO happens to have a lot of variables available which is both good and bad.
sometimes those variables can be changed easily (weapon dmg), sometimes it is impractical (mech geomentry/size). Sometimes it is limited by outside factors (remaining close to canon, meta factors like TTK)
In the case of armor limits, you have a variable which serves multiple purposes. It can be used to give a mech a certain feel (tough to kill, easy to kill, etc). But it can also be used for pure balance. (this mech is not very good, lets give it a boost).
If the CTD has advantages (better hitboxes or sizing) over a T-Bolt, changing the armor is one way to make up for that. It is not directly related from the standpoint of the specific advantages, but it 'makes up' for the clear deficiencies of the T-Bolt.
Same goes with hardpoints. The 3D has a better load out with the current meta than the 1X. This is a point everyone agrees on. Lowering the armor on the 3D would make up for that. You could also raise the armor for the 1X, but all mechs are given max armor for their tonnage if I remember correctly so that is not an option here.
Now the art form in game balancing (and one frankly PGI is not very good at IMO) is finding the right string to pull on each mech/weapon to rase its viability.
If you pull the string on a weapon (make lasers better), it impacts every mech which uses lasers. Some may become OP. Which would mean you would need to tweak down that particular chassis/variant or make it OP. But if you do that you may need to tweak other variant of the same mech or other mechs in the same tonnage or maybe even other mechs in the same weight class.
combine that with ALL the variables available to MWO and you can see why balance is so hard.
IT CAN BE DONE THOUGH. At least it can be done better than it is currently. Armor point balancing might not be optimal, but it has some serious advantages:
1) It is variant specific
2) The changes can be minor or major.
3) It has a dramatic impact on TTK and thus viability.
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all of that said, this is a thought excercise because PGI will never adopt armor point as a balancing varaible. Just like they will never make changes to get rid of FLD. (of which there are literally hundreds of suggestions)
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