8 replies to this topic

[Haroldwolf]

Suggestions on How to Balance Clans Vs. IS Community Warfare

This post has many ideas I have already seen in other posts plus a few spins of my own.

First I think we would all agree that a PvP MMO can be tough to balance. Those that have been more successful did so by introducing some form of goal based PvP so that class balance wasn’t too critical. The completion of the goal brought the biggest reward rather than the number of mechs, soldiers, elves, trolls, orcs or dwarves you killed.

Tuning now to MWO, the balancing challenge is almost exponential because we have four weight classes plus several different chassis in each weight class. We’ve seen this the past year as PGI constantly tweaked weapons trying to bring FPS balance. Despite their best effort I have to say that PGI will never successfully balance MWO as a FPS.

Now let’s consider the Clans. The Clans were never balanced in the TT game or in the novels if you consider individual Battlemechs and OmniMechs and their equipment and weapons. In the novels the Clans were balanced versus IS by introducing the concept of batchall. Similarly on the TT game, BV was used by individuals to make reasonable matches and used by FASA in their scenario packs. Otherwise TT scenarios would be hopelessly out of balance in Clan Vs IS battles. I understand this first hand as a play tester for Activision on MW2 and Heavy Gear 1 and 2. I also did some external testing on MW4 for Microsoft.

How does that translate into MWO? I understand that one of PGI’s game goals is a level of balance where the MechWarrior skill wins that battle and not based on some uber build. Therefore, here are a few ideas that should work to provide balance. I think they are more appropriate for CW but could also apply to non-CW battles. Also as a disclaimer, the current development architecture of MWO may not support any or all of these suggestions, in which case the future of MWO is questionable.

• IS always gets an advantage in the number of mechs to drop. I know that 12 Vs 10 has been tested but don’t think that PGI was impressed by the results.
  
• More useful would be considering the use of a battle value to determine the “drop mix/ drop weight” in a CW scenario. There are several options here.
  
  • Use the original FASA Combat Value (CV) formula. Workable but simplistic.
    
  • Use Battle Value1 (BV1) – Better than CV but still needed refinement.
    
  • Use Battle Value2 (BV2) – better still but not quite there
    
  • Use a PGI custom formula using already calculated values stored with each mech. For example we see firepower and heat distribution in the mech lab.

• The IS always gets a 20% advantage in the BV for a drop.
  
• BV does away with 3-3-3-3 which isn’t going to work with stars and binaries anyways. Each team decides which mechs to bring up to the max allowed by the BV scenario and general drop restrictions. So if the Clan team wants to use up their entire BV in a single star that would be their choice.
  
  • BV could also determine the number of mechs in the opposing forces. This could be used to eliminate the need for 12 Vs 10 or 8 Vs 5 drop scenarios.
• This is most important; CW needs to be scenario based. That is that there are scenarios just like the FASA and Catalyst Labs scenario packs. The “attackers” and “defenders” come from the various mech companies doing the drop. This will bring back value to each mech class other than the need to turn a light mech into a brawler.
  Well, that’s all for ideas. If you have additional ones please post them here.

[Furniture]

An important point with BV is that the BV value was adjusted based on the piloting and gunnery skills of the pilot. Clan mechs weren't expensive only because their tech was good, it was expensive in BV because their pilots were gunnery 3 piloting 4. It could actually become a little complicated to use a BV system to balance matches. They'd have to do something like see what the player's accuracy stats were with the weapons he has equipped to reach a kind of gunnery skill stat for that mech, or maybe the win loss and kdr for that particular mech variant the pilot is dropping in.

[Haroldwolf]

Furniture, on 07 September 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

An important point with BV is that the BV value was adjusted based on the piloting and gunnery skills of the pilot. Clan mechs weren't expensive only because their tech was good, it was expensive in BV because their pilots were gunnery 3 piloting 4. It could actually become a little complicated to use a BV system to balance matches. They'd have to do something like see what the player's accuracy stats were with the weapons he has equipped to reach a kind of gunnery skill stat for that mech, or maybe the win loss and kdr for that particular mech variant the pilot is dropping in.

I don't know accurate the PGI ELO really is but that could be used for piloting skill.

[El Bandito]

TT BV does not take account for PPFLD, or higher weapon mount, or hitboxes. Some mechs are good at them, some not.

IMO, PGI needs to come up with their own version of BV per individual variants, per chassis. A Stalker-5M, by all accounts should have higher BV than a 15 tons heavier Atlas-D.

Timberwolves should have the highest BV, for obvious reasons.

Edited by El Bandito, 07 September 2014 - 07:34 PM.

[xe N on]

This is a bad idea. BV won't work well in a fully customizeable system.

In addition, why the hell I would want to play a bad IS mech if I can play a overpowered clan mech? In TT one player controls mutiple mechs as ateam. In MWO you only control 1 mech as an individual. If that mech dies, you out of game. This virtually encourage player to always choose the best mechs. That is also the reason why we normally see less lights and mediums then heavies and assaults.

More over, the proposed system of overpowered Clan-mechs would exclude a mixed IS/Clan team as currently established in public queue, because anyone would play an overpowered Clan mech while IS mech would be obsolete.

Howeber, It could possible to balance overpowered clan mechs against IS mechs. In classical fanatsy games "pet classes" are balanced by weaker abilties that take account for support by their controllable pets.

IS mech could be balanced by alllowing them to use free and exclusively items like air strike, artillery strikes, UAV and KI controlled troops as ground forces, air forces and tanks that react on commands.

That would allow to keep the mech itself less powerfull then a clan mech while the player has the same power as someone who uses a clan mech, because of it's controllable pets and special abilities.

Any other attemps would finally lead to extinction of IS mechs, because no player want to be the punching ball for Clanners only able to win by "zerging" them.

Edited by xe N on, 03 November 2014 - 01:02 AM.

[kapusta11]

Bring PPC speed back to 1500
OR
Ghost heat CERML to 4 + put CERML and CLPL in same Ghost Heat penalty group.

Edited by kapusta11, 03 November 2014 - 01:26 AM.

[Lily from animove]

my idea:

change lasers entirely

make 3 classes of lasers: Pulse, Normal, ER.

Every type of laser, (S, M, L) deals the SAME amount of damage. the only differences are: Pulse reduces beam duration by 50%
ER generates more heat and gets extra range.

clan tech advantage here is already applying by the the fact that they have access to the ER lasers and IS not.
Sure not the cannon damage values, but the current damage and eat values break balance. Not only the balance between clan and IS, even the balance between clanmechs themselves. Clanlights have a bad heat management because of that. Big clanmechs don't care much, they have enough tonnage for extra DHS or even enough in their Engine already.

Also, such a system would be easier to understand for newbies.

I mean com on, a clan small pulse laser does more damage than a medium is laser. Not is that only away from canon values, it also seems a but "not small" anymore. yet the beam reduction is only 0,25 seconds. Thatd oesn't feels right. It woudl eb a lot better if its only 5 damage as well but instead geting 0,5 seconds beam duration. Same issue for the C-LPL 13 damage? seriously? better make them 11 as the CERLL and gie them 0,75s beam duration

also, ALL clan lasers should be in the same Ghost heat group some mechs just avoid ghostheat by slapping 2 large pulse or ER's instead of further Mediumd on and tadaaa, big damage but Ghostheat prevention.

Edited by Lily from animove, 03 November 2014 - 01:31 AM.

[Willard Phule]

Haroldwolf, on 07 September 2014 - 05:54 PM, said:

I don't know accurate the PGI ELO really is but that could be used for piloting skill.

How accurate Elo is?

Why, it's SO accurate that after your first 25 matches....regardless of how well or poorly you did....you get handed an Elo of 1800, placing you firmly in the mid-range.

You can't get much more accurate than a score you were given instead of one you earned, right?

[LordKnightFandragon]

Willard Phule, on 03 November 2014 - 01:37 AM, said:

How accurate Elo is?

Why, it's SO accurate that after your first 25 matches....regardless of how well or poorly you did....you get handed an Elo of 1800, placing you firmly in the mid-range.

You can't get much more accurate than a score you were given instead of one you earned, right?

God, mid range must be really damn bad then.....cuz I got strapped with alot of losing teams........I could say I didnt play well, and I kinda didnt...but it didnt help that they were all pretty much 12-0 wipes in under 4 minutes.....was never on a side that lasted long enough to really do anything. When I get sides that last awhile, I get scores like 770dmg, 3kills, 570dmg 1 kill, 444dmg....but give me my typical pug group and dear god.........thats when I get the sub 200dmg games....

I really wish elo would die in a fire.....or atleast have the thing give us an earned elo.....

The elo system has me wondering, what is mine.....it would be fun to see, if only on our stat page like we have now...