166 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

We'll have to agree to disagree Tor. You make a Star Wars game you have to make it feel like Star Wars and not Star Trek, and In Star Wars Only Jedi and Sith can wield a Light Saber, what amounts to a energy sword. But apparently Only a Jedi/Sith can push an ON button and swing for their life! And folks play/played the hell out of SWTOR.

As to you pointing out "meaningless" in your eyes, don't stop, I will disagree with you, but I won't try to silence you.

[Joseph Mallan]

ManDaisy, on 29 September 2014 - 07:20 PM, said:

Going by that logics, clans should lose 66% or 2/3s their engine heat sinks, not only 20%.

You Mean 1/3. as 2/3 of the engine is still functioning. And 2 crits of 10 is not 1/3 its 1/5 or 20%

[Tarzilman]

Scratx, on 29 September 2014 - 08:42 PM, said:

20% is still 20%. Let's see what it actually does in play before we go saying "It's too little!".

Remember, aren't we the ones continuously advocating for balancing to be done in small steps? Instead of big NERFINATOR-grade stomps?

Chill.

Just quoted it so that others, who may have read over it can read it again, because it's damn true.

[Iyica de Tylmarande]

It's not much of a penalty given that if you've lost one of your torsos, you've probably lost a 3rd of your weapons so will only need 2/3rds of your original cooling. But given the clanner's lack of choice in whether to fit an XL or Standard, too harsh penalties will make certain clan chassis complete jokes.

Edited by Iyica de Tylmarande, 30 September 2014 - 03:38 AM.

[Torgun]

Joseph Mallan, on 30 September 2014 - 03:07 AM, said:

We'll have to agree to disagree Tor. You make a Star Wars game you have to make it feel like Star Wars and not Star Trek, and In Star Wars Only Jedi and Sith can wield a Light Saber, what amounts to a energy sword. But apparently Only a Jedi/Sith can push an ON button and swing for their life! And folks play/played the hell out of SWTOR.

As to you pointing out "meaningless" in your eyes, don't stop, I will disagree with you, but I won't try to silence you.

I never played SWTOR, but were all the other characters that were not Sith/Jedi clearly less useful? Because that's what you're asking for, some mechs should have a clear advantage because lore said so. Going by that logic if you played as a Jedi/Sith in SWTOR you'd just run all over the other characters in a fight because the movies said so. Neither makes any sense when developing a game.

[Torgun]

Iyica de Tylmarande, on 30 September 2014 - 03:37 AM, said:

It's not much of a penalty given that if you've lost one of your torsos, you've probably lost a 3rd of your weapons so will only need 2/3rds of your original cooling. But given the clanner's lack of choice in whether to fit an XL or Standard, too harsh penalties will make certain clan chassis complete jokes.

They should make a balance pass over the clan mechs too since some are just flat out better than others. But this 20% heat sink destruction as you pointed out is just meaningless. Then again they want to sell the next clan pack, so trying to let the clans keep an edge to boost sales was hardly surprising. Just see how long they let the TW run wild before even looking at why the heck it's the most played Heavy mech despite it being only available for real $$$.

[Iyica de Tylmarande]

Torgun, on 30 September 2014 - 03:42 AM, said:

They should make a balance pass over the clan mechs too since some are just flat out better than others. But this 20% heat sink destruction as you pointed out is just meaningless. Then again they want to sell the next clan pack, so trying to let the clans keep an edge to boost sales was hardly surprising. Just see how long they let the TW run wild before even looking at why the heck it's the most played Heavy mech despite it being only available for real $$$.

To be fair. A lot of people will play the Timberwolf almost regardless of its performance just because it's such an iconic clan mech and perhaps the most well known battlemech of the franchise (at least in equal terms to the Atlas).

[Torgun]

Iyica de Tylmarande, on 30 September 2014 - 03:48 AM, said:

To be fair. A lot of people will play the Timberwolf almost regardless of its performance just because it's such an iconic clan mech and perhaps the most well known battlemech of the franchise (at least in equal terms to the Atlas).

If the TW performed like the Summoner and vice versa, would it still be the most played Heavy? I really doubt it.

[Iyica de Tylmarande]

Torgun, on 30 September 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

If the TW performed like the Summoner and vice versa, would it still be the most played Heavy? I really doubt it.

I still play the Summoner just because it looks good. But I personally still would.

[Torgun]

Iyica de Tylmarande, on 30 September 2014 - 03:58 AM, said:

I still play the Summoner just because it looks good. But I personally still would.

That's basically the only reason anyone would play the Summoner instead of TW, when you really want to be competitive it's TW all day every day.

[Vassago Rain]

The number of heatsinks lost will obviously increase after the first week.

[Zyllos]

FYI, I am not sure if anyone noticed...but the amount of heatsinks destroyed is based on the base engine heatsinks (10 for 250, 9 for 225, ect) plus any equipped internally (1 extra for 275, 2 extra for 300, ect).

This means if a Clan mech has a 200 XL, it will lose 8 x 0.2 = 1.6 Heatsinks (2?).
A 325 XL with a full complement of heatsinks (13) will lose 13 x 0.2 = 2.6 (3?).
A 325 XL with only the base 10 heatsinks will lose 10 x 0.2 = 2.0.

But this is hard to really see because Clan mechs can't modify their engines or heatsinks to the engines. But it's an important point.

Edited by Zyllos, 30 September 2014 - 06:12 AM.

[Tastian]

I was thinking that the punishment was light also. Losing 50% of your weapons but only 20% of your engine heat sinks doesn't make sense at all. I would be fine with losing 50% or 66% of your engine heat sinks with a side torso loss.

HOWEVER. Baby steps are better then massive nerfs without testing. Look at the CERLargeLaser and Jump Jet nerfs. Those were massive nerfs that are now being scaled back a bit. I'd rather they test 20%, then 40%, then 50%, and then MAYBE 66% in small increments until it feels right.

[DaZur]

MW:O "Pillow-Fight edition"...

I hate beating this dead horse but I cannot rationalize the forgoing logic that everything must be equal. We are playing Mechwarrior... a universe that at face value is intrinsically imbalanced, especially when baring consideration of the Clans.

"Balance" does not mean "parity"... It means "equity".

This eternal demand for beige and vanilla is mind numbing....

Edited by DaZur, 30 September 2014 - 06:19 AM.

[Scratx]

I'll just add to the "I lose 50% of the weapons but only 20% of the heat sinks???" crowd, any heatsinks that would've been placed externally on the side torso or arm that just got blown off are also lost.

So let's go with baby steps and see how it plays out instead of crying out for Paul's Nerfinator.

[Jeb]

I just love the fact that people are using "but they already lose 50% of their weapons so this doesn't do anything" as an argument... so the clan mech is at 50% of it's firepower already (or maybe less if it loses an arm with it's heavy weapons), and people actually think that is when they need to be balanced...

Your probably all right that it's not going to be a big change because the Clan Engines are not the problem from what I can see... maybe on paper they look way better, but in game, once you lose a ST, your ususally so beat up, your going down fast the next engagement you get into anyways... In my games, most my kills and damage are done before losng a ST... so any changes to the mech at that point don't make a huge differance...

Edited by Jeb, 30 September 2014 - 06:37 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

DaZur, on 30 September 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

MW:O "Pillow-Fight edition"...

I hate beating this dead horse but I cannot rationalize the forgoing logic that everything must be equal. We are playing Mechwarrior... a universe that at face value is intrinsically imbalanced, especially when baring consideration of the Clans.

"Balance" does not mean "parity"... It means "equity".

This eternal demand for beige and vanilla is mind numbing....

The Clans cannot be far superior like cannon states because given the type of game we are playing, it would be poor game design. In a PvP environment like this, they need to be different but equal.

There was a reason many TT guys like the older pre-vlan eras, there was no Clans to muck up their balance. There is a thread going on now about how 3025 is often their favorite and on more than one occasion they site the Clans made a mess of things.

If Clans are far superior, what is the motivation to run IS? Just the challenge of it isn't good enough for 90% of any game community. CW where 90% of the gaming populace is Clan would kind of break things.

Even if we buffed the clans and dropped 12v8 or so (remember we buffed the Clans to their superior beauty), why would I still want to be IS? I have 33% less chance to earn rewards (c-bills and xp) because I have 33% less targets and if I get caught 1v1 in a match I am guaranteed to lose. You can buff IS rewards, but you can't buff KDR and and total kills.

It just isn't good multiplayer game design.

Good games known for excellent balance do well because of different but equal. StarCraft is a great example. Each faction (Zerg, Terrain, and Protoss) are radically different but equal. If the Protoss was way superior, everyone would pick it and it would break the game.

IS and Clan need strengths and weakness that compliment each other that makes both appealing and unique, but never superior to the other.

It breaks cannon, it messes with what I learned playing the old games, but it is the sacrifice made for player balance in a purely multiplayer game with what we have to play with.

Many will disagree I suppose, and they have good reason, but they don't see how badly it can break the entire game.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 30 September 2014 - 06:54 AM.

[KraftySOT]

To be fair, theres plenty of games with asymmetrical balance where the opposing teams "stuff" is just simply better.

Ask anyone from WoT or War Thunder or WWIIOnline what its like playing against FW190s, IS2s, Tigers, etc...

They fix this issue with "tiers". Which of course also drops most players into the least effective stuff first, ensuring theres a good distribution of the crappy stuff, along with the best stuff.

We kind of missed that boat however.

[Maxx Blue]

So, I know there are some folks that hate to hear about 'How it works in TT'...but here is how it works in TT: For each engine crit, you gain 5 heat at the beginning of each turn. So, one crit, 5 heat, two crits, 10 heat. Ok, now that we have that out of the way, here is the actual effect that rule tends to have on the game: It keeps heat-heavy loadouts from being able to fire non-stop once they loose a side torso, and forces you to take risks with heat penalties that you would normally avoid.

Russ's post doesn't address the second effect, but it does start to address the first. Here is the problem that you get with clans: Say you have a stock Nova prime in TT: You can generate 60 points of heat by firing all your lasers, which is significantly more than the stock heat sinks will cool every turn, so you can only fire about seven at a time and not build up heat. If you loose a side torso, it will blow off six lasers, but only four DHS. Without engine crits, you could still shoot five medium lasers every turn without building heat, and you could actuall fire the sixth about every other turn. So, even though half the mech is gone, it's average firepower only dropped by about 20%. A Stormcrow prime with a missing side torso pretty much can't ever overheat, if you don't have engine-crit-heat being generated. So, in TT, one of the big effects that engine crit rules had on clan mechs (and IS mechs with light fusion engines) was to help make sure that their damage output would drop when they lost a side torso.

What Russ talked about is an attempt to port that same balance idea to MWO. The idea is to make sure that mechs which can use light engines and still survive a side torso loss, don't stay just as powerful, or close to as powerful, once that side torso is gone. Think about a stock Nova Prime in MWO. If you loose a side torso, it doesn't actually matter that you lost half your weapons. The only reason your DPS goes down is that you lost a couple of heat sinks. With this change, loosing a side torso will affect your cooling even more and bring the game closer to feeling like your mech really did get cut in half.

It isn't perfect, and there are builds where it will, literally, make no difference depending on which torso is lost, but it is an attempt to start making mechs feel like they are falling apart as they get damaged rather than the go-go-go-explode feeling we tend to get now.

Edited by Maxx Blue, 30 September 2014 - 07:07 AM.

[KraftySOT]

At least in this game, the locust, can in theory kill an atlas.

Whereas an M3 stuart, will never, ever, ever, ever kill a Tiger. It just cant penetrate its armor. Ever. So were definitely more forgiving in that regard.