Aphoticus, on 04 August 2014 - 05:24 AM, said:
Greetings,
I have been reading a lot of the forum posts on groups, balance, etc., and I noticed there is a Catch 22 going on; refering to a type of unsolvable logic puzzle.
It goes like this:
MWO needs players, people get fed up with mechanics, balance, game play, group queue or whatever it is that angst them, and leave which leads to more balance, game play, mechanic related perceptions of inequality.
The more that leave, the more these disparities widen; when a new patch that has favorable content comes along, there is a brief moment of awe and good game play, that slowly de-evolves back to having perceived issues as certain aspects of the content is re-evaluated.
This leads to people taking breaks, leaving again for extended periods of time, leading back to more and more seemingly game breaking perceptions of content and game play experience.
When one comes to the conclusion that their angst is an issue, and others begin to see it, and then a fix comes along whether well done or not, there is a moment of interest and more people are playing, things seem to work out for a time, then something else comes up.
At first, the new 3/3/3/3 was providing some really nice games, and even with the injection of Clan, games were close; then the MM, having to deal with people leaving due to a small subset of bad games or their perception of bad game content/mechanics, the MM has a harder time bringing a good group together, and it slowly dessolves again into a stomp perspective (this is just one example of many aspects that could cause a similiar revolving door).
I guess what I am trying to say is, I wish people would stop leaving and taking breaks, and gut it out as this will provide a better picture of what PGI might need in the forms of statistical data for more informed changes then leaving (taking that stastical part of the equation out) and posting on a forum they rarely read (unless they post strictly on the feedback thread but continue to play). This is not to say that those who post on general are not without merit, I just hope that they are sticking around more than what appears to be exodus fuel.
This is just an observation and is only from my perspective.
Many of the issues people have are with PGI's choice of "fix" and the side effects.At times it seems like they are either incompitent or out right trolls.
Example: People complain about the "poptart" meta.PGI adds in increased leg damage for falls that ironicly has more effect on mechs that don't even have jump jets!
We can look at several "fixes" applied to the game in relation to pinpoint front loaded alpha strikes.
There was a time when the meta was Stalkers with 4+ PPC or ER-PPC Highlanders with Gauss rifles and 3 PPCs etc.We all suffered through a meta that was becoming stale even way back then.The key mechanic being exploited by these builds was front loaded pin point damage coupled with group fire.Simply put,pile on as many PPC/ER-PPC Gauss rifles or ACs into one weapon group and alpha spam for 30+ damage applied to one mech body location.This was and still is THE go to method of dealing damage.
So what was done by PGI to rectify this problem? Was anything done to the exploited mechanics? Was front loaded damage or weapon convergence altered to effect a repair?
NO
We got Ghostheat that was applied to nearly every weapon assuring that second tier weapons stay second tier and the kings of damage the front loaded pinpoint guns stay on top.The grand total effect of this "fix" was players altered what front loaded damage weapons they used.Paul set a number of 30 as acceptable pinpoint alpha damage and we all need to like it regardless of if it actually makes the game playable for mechs under 70 tons.
Then gauss rifles were allowing 35 point alphas...We then got gauss charge mechanics to "fix" this.Again nothing done to the core mechanics being abused.But now gauss rifles are nerfed..yeay yippie ...erm...
PPCs were being paired with autocannons and the fequency of 30 point alpha strikes was a bit to much for Paul's taste so...PPC/ER-PPC heat was increased.Still nothing done to front loaded damage mechanics but now we have ER-PPCs so hot that a single ER-PPC can't be heat neutral with 18 double heatsinks...great!
AC10s and AC20s were low enough in heat to pair with the now hotter PPC/ER-PPcs so we now see projectile speed desyncs for these ACs so they are not pairing well with PPCs.As a result we see the AC10 become nearly exstinct due to it's now poor accuracy. We have nerfed AC10s ..awesome way to fix the problem.
Eventually at around this time high tiered play was well entrenched in the pinpoint front loaded alpha strike + Jumpjet meta.At higher Elo group play it was common place to see entire teams of Highlanders and Victors with maybe a CTF-3D or two and light mechs with ECM.Essentially the entire game at thetop tier was difused down to 4 chassis and 4-5 weapon choices.
Players were really starting to hate poptarting so,a solution to the problem of pinpoint alpha strikes was needed once again so...reticule shake was added,but only when the jumpjets were under thrust.The net result was players needed to slightly adapt their poptart techniques to 100% circumvent the "fix" overall this reticule shake effected mechs that used jumpjets in brawling mobile combat more than a poptart.And of course still nothing done to the core issue of front loaded damage.
The we had enhanced fall damage and then jumpjet performance nerfs then jump jet heat enhancements.In the end jumpjets are now useful for two things.
Jumping over 1 meter tall obsticals
And poptarting!
After all of the above we still have pin point front loaded damage as an outlaying effect that is far above the norm.All of this previous effort amounted to next to nothing but weapons and equipment nerfed to near unuseable levels.
And now we have Direwolves with 2 Gauss rifles and 2 clan ER-PPCs that need to be "fixed" and the solutions Paul has posted as ussual have absolutley nothing to do with the triggering mechanics of front loaded damage and everything to do with nerfing specific weapons.
There is no catch 22 at all.What we have is players who do not fully grasp the what the cause of a problem is.They know they hate poptarts and having their mechs destroyed in a 2 hits but they don't know what the cause is.
These same players complain but can not convey what the root issue is because they don't know.So they focus on some periferal effect of the core issue like jump jets.Poptarts don't work well at all without front loaded damage but,jumpjets is what the masses focused on.Now we have garbage jumpjets that ironicly still allow fairly effective poptarting.
PGI effects a "fix" like the list I gave you that actually does nothing to effect repairs on the core issue and focuses on the periferals like jumpjets.
Players think "nice! problem solved" and praise the Devs and play the game for a while and like it because they are under the delusion that doing things to jumpjets fixes front loaded damage.Eventually players learn to circumvent the "fix" and it's business as ussual.
The players who thought they finally got their problem fixed realize all they got was nerfed equipment and complain or take a break or out right quit.
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