418 replies to this topic

[Night Fury76]

Well Asyres make a poll that proves more than 140 players will quit over fixed hardpoint sizes to prove your point. Fool

[Tastian]

Lyoto Machida, on 07 October 2014 - 11:23 AM, said:

This! I don't know why some people can't see this. Maybe they just want to play the same mechs over and over and use different loadouts on the same variants. I've got over 100 variants and would love to see all of them useful in SOME capacity (which is far from currently true).

What am I supposed to do with three useless Trebuchets? I guess I could sell them for C-bills but I consider it a sunk cost already.

Again...why take a Hunchback over a Shadow Hawk if tonnage limitations are not going to be implemented? That HBK better get some serious quirks to make it close to worth taking over the 5 ton heavier SHD.

Exactly. Hardpoint size limitations is not JUST a fix for Ghost Heat; it's encouragement to use different mechs. The Vindicator and Panther were special because they were small mechs with a PPC. But we can now put 2 of them on Ravens and Cicadas - why would we ever want to run a Vindicator now? The Awesome was truly awesome because it was an 80 ton mech specializing in 3 PPCs. But we can do that with much smaller and faster mechs. The fact of the matter is that MWO has TONS of mechs and TONS more coming. But 85% of them are garbage. Why bring an AC20 Huncback when a Shadowhawk can do it better with jump jets? The answer is because the Shadowhawk is NOT suppose to have an AC20. Same with Gauss Rifle on the Timberwolf. It wasn't suppose to have one. It would not kill diversity; it would encourage diversity of chassis on the field. Otherwise, let's all just bring Timberwolves; cause they can pretty much do everything.

Edited by Tastian, 07 October 2014 - 11:57 AM.

[IceSerpent]

Asyres, on 07 October 2014 - 10:43 AM, said:

I don't, but I think we can agree that it's bigger than the (currently) 2290 people looking at the forums. The reality, however, is that margin of error is largely a function of sample size, and here the sample size is minuscule.

Sorry, can't agree on that. First, total number of people browsing the forums includes a lot of "guests", and we don't know if those are members of the community that didn't bother to login or just random people checking out MWO (i.e. not playing at all).
Second, we have no idea how many people play the game and never visit the forums - could be 5 or could be 50,000. Not knowing the size of the playerbase means that we have no way of knowing whether sample size is miniscule or huge.
On top of that a case can be made that folks who don't bother voting don't care about the issue, in which case that sample size becomes 100% of players who at least give a broken dime about the proposal.

[TrentTheWanderer]

The big problem here is that this is a fix to a problem that has been carefully engineered. PGI wants to force players who want to win into their "Top tier avatars" which are primarily available with cash. By releasing a new top tier avatar for cash-only every time the last one becomes available for C-Bills they can milk money out of the player base and continue capitalizing on old battletech nostalgia. Players are resistant to fixing the game because they've already sunk cost into their top tier avatars and they don't want anything silly like role warfare, class balance, or gameplay getting in the way of all those wins that they've paid so much for.

I appreciate that you're trying to help, but do realize that Russ and PGI don't want your help, they're sinking the ship just fine on their own- and all those in here telling you "Everything is fine don't change anything11!!1!!1" are perfectly comfortable going down with it (and with all those dollars they spent getting flushed when MWO closes its doors).

Edited by TrentTheWanderer, 07 October 2014 - 12:05 PM.

[Phobic Wraith]

Tastian, on 06 October 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

Not much time to post, but people seem to forget that individual chassis are not the problem. In fact, no chassis is a problem, and hardpoint limitations on something that is not a problem doesn't fix the problem. The problem is our weapon systems. Was the 6 PPC stalker bad? (trick question, the 6 PPC stalker was a joke) The 4 PPC stalker was popular because it boated PPCs so well. EVERY mech was running PPCs. Why? because PPCs were good - arguably better than any other weapon system. People forget that with the 4 PPC stalker we also had the 3 PPC Cataphract 3D, and the 3PPC, 1GR Highlander 722. Not because those 'mechs had hardpoints that were too big, but because they boated PPCs the best. In this scenario, if PPCs were still in their prime meta state, adding hardpoint size restrictions would simply mean an exodus to whichever chassis boated PPCs next best. Likely an Awesome of some sort (har har).

A lack of variety on the field mostly isn't caused by a bad chassis, it's by under and overpowered weapon systems. Adding hardpoint restrictions will not make for more variety because our weapon systems don't make for more variety. And I even suspect that it's not the weapons themselves that are a problem, but the mechanic that makes them more or less pinpoint, but that's another matter for another post.

Please don't limit hardpoint sizes. While it may, effectively even, replace a need for heat scaling, it will not create a blissful utopia where Orions, Ravens and Dragons can play with all the other 'mechs on an even battlefield. Some 'mechs will still do it better than others and a shift in chassis popularity doesn't guarantee diversity. Change isn't always change for the better and in this case, it won't be.

At this point, I don't like heat scaling, but limiting build possibilities is considerably more restrictive and the player base will ultimately come to that conclusion as well. Let's wait for this quirk pass shall we? I think it'll be better than we expect.

Edited by Phobic Wraith, 07 October 2014 - 12:20 PM.

[Tastian]

TrentTheWanderer, on 07 October 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

The big problem here is that this is a fix to a problem that has been carefully engineered. PGI wants to force players who want to win into their "Top tier avatars" which are primarily available with cash. By releasing a new top tier avatar for cash-only every time the last one becomes available for C-Bills they can milk money out of the player base and continue capitalizing on old battletech nostalgia. Players are resistant to fixing the game because they've already sunk cost into their top tier avatars and they don't want anything silly like role warfare, class balance, or gameplay getting in the way of all those wins that they've paid so much for.

I disagree with this 100%. If that were the case, PGI would have never implemented Ghost Heat or the more recent Jump Jet nerf; or the Gauss charge up, or change the projectile speeds of PPCs and ACs. They do care about balance. And PGI makes the most money when people buy more mechs with real $. If mechs just become copies of previous mechs, less people will buy them. Why buy ANY mech at all if another mech already does it. If mechs had more differences (obviously Quirks will help) then people will try out more mechs and future mechs will have a more useful role.

[Tastian]

Phobic Wraith, on 07 October 2014 - 12:10 PM, said:

Please don't limit hardpoint sizes. While it may, effectively even, replace a need for heat scaling, it will not create a blissful utopia where Orions, Ravens and Dragons can play with all the other 'mechs on an even battlefield. Some 'mechs will still do it better than others and a shift in chassis popularity doesn't guarantee diversity. Change isn't always change for the better and in this case, it won't be.

Do we really want an even playing field? We don't have one now. The Dragons are terrible but Orions and (non ECM) Ravens can still be saved. In fact by restricting hardpoints on mechs, people may even turn to mechs like the Dragon, Orion, Trebuchet, and Vindicator to get unique builds they like.

[TrentTheWanderer]

Tastian, on 07 October 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

I disagree with this 100%. If that were the case, PGI would have never implemented Ghost Heat or the more recent Jump Jet nerf; or the Gauss charge up, or change the projectile speeds of PPCs and ACs. They do care about balance. And PGI makes the most money when people buy more mechs with real $. If mechs just become copies of previous mechs, less people will buy them. Why buy ANY mech at all if another mech already does it. If mechs had more differences (obviously Quirks will help) then people will try out more mechs and future mechs will have a more useful role.

If you notice, you are disagreeing with my statement while simultaneously reinforcing it. All of those changes you are mentioning shifted the meta towards Cash-only content for the era in which the changes were made. For more than a year all content releases have been new ever so slightly better versions of the last predominant meta. Sure, eventually balance problems are being "fixed", but they're being immediately followed by new and more severe balance changes which greatly favor new cash-only content.

I appreciate that you really enjoy this game and you're trying to help, and I think your approach if implemented would make the game better and solve a lot of the issues that have been programmed into it, but I also think you are one of the few people who WANT the game fixed and PGI isn't included on that list.

They still need to sell their next IS exploitation pack with the Marauder.

[Phobic Wraith]

Tastian, on 07 October 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

Do we really want an even playing field? We don't have one now. The Dragons are terrible but Orions and (non ECM) Ravens can still be saved. In fact by restricting hardpoints on mechs, people may even turn to mechs like the Dragon, Orion, Trebuchet, and Vindicator to get unique builds they like.

I think you're missing the point. Most players don't run builds they like, I think we can agree that most players run good, effective builds they like. Limiting hardpoint sizes won't make any chassis better. It will shift effective weapon loadouts to the next best chassis that can run those loadouts. And that will likely be the same, if not a fewer number of chassis.

[IceSerpent]

Phobic Wraith, on 07 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point. Most players don't run builds they like, I think we can agree that most players run good, effective builds they like. Limiting hardpoint sizes won't make any chassis better. It will shift effective weapon loadouts to the next best chassis that can run those loadouts. And that will likely be the same, if not a fewer number of chassis.

I think you're missing the point of what limited hardpoints are supposed to do. The idea is to replace ghost heat, which was intended to limit certain kind of boating. This has very little to do with existence of meta, which is a result of broken weapon balance. In short, the problem with single weapon being good should be fixed by tweaking overall balance, while a problem with mounting too many of those good weapons should be fixed by hardpoint sizes.

[Tastian]

Phobic Wraith, on 07 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point. Most players don't run builds they like, I think we can agree that most players run good, effective builds they like. Limiting hardpoint sizes won't make any chassis better. It will shift effective weapon loadouts to the next best chassis that can run those loadouts. And that will likely be the same, if not a fewer number of chassis.

Help me brainstorm this train of thought then. If you place hardpoint size restrictions on all mechs, can you think of where the meta build shift of power will go from/to?

[Phobic Wraith]

IceSerpent, on 07 October 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point of what limited hardpoints are supposed to do. The idea is to replace ghost heat, which was intended to limit certain kind of boating. This has very little to do with existence of meta, which is a result of broken weapon balance. In short, the problem with single weapon being good should be fixed by tweaking overall balance, while a problem with mounting too many of those good weapons should be fixed by hardpoint sizes.

Exactly my point. The cost of adding hardpoint limitations to gameplay will be much higher than the cost of leaving heat scaling in. It's not a good substitution. My post was about the side effects. Not hardpoint sizing being ineffective. I'm sure hardpoint limitations could be made to replace Ghost Heat, maybe even effectively. I never denied that. but it won't make gameplay better.

[IceSerpent]

Phobic Wraith, on 07 October 2014 - 12:46 PM, said:

Exactly my point. The cost of adding hardpoint limitations to gameplay will be much higher than the cost of leaving heat scaling in. It's not a good substitution. My post was about the side effects. Not hardpoint sizing being ineffective. I'm sure hardpoint limitations could be made to replace Ghost Heat, maybe even effectively. I never denied that. but it won't make gameplay better.

Not sure what you mean by cost. Cost to us (players) is nothing - we would still be able to use any build, except for ones deemed problematic (the whole purpose of GH was to prevent those builds, although it's doing a lousy job). Cost to PGI is not very high - they would need to add a "size" property to hardpoints and add code that checks for size mismatch when you try to mount a weapon.

There are no side effects. The only effect is that targeted builds are no longer possible, which is the whole purpose of it.

It will make gameplay better for three reasons:

1. GH is very convoluted and new players don't have a clear indication that it even exists, let alone how it works. Sized hardpoints are self-explanatory - everybody understands a concept of large objects not fitting into small boxes.

2. GH doesn't really prevent all the builds it should prevent - the only reason we don't have a 100t mech packing triple AC20s is that we don't have a mech with right hardpoints for that, such a build would be perfectly feasible even with GH in place. Sized hardpoints simply don't allow a build that we don't want to exist - can't create it at all.

3. GH encourages chain-fire, which results in people having to continously face the opponent in order to maintain dps, which means that their survivability relies solely on frontal armor instead of things like torso twisting and using cover during reloads. This leads to the heaviest mech that is still fast enough to track moving target being the best mech (decreases variety) and makes most engagements deteriorate into squaring off and pulling the trigger until one of the opponents drops dead - about as boring as it gets IMHO. Sized hardpoints don't prevent you from alpha striking, so spreading incoming damage remains in play.

[Victor Morson]

Night Fury76, on 07 October 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

Well Asyres make a poll that proves more than 140 players will quit over fixed hardpoint sizes to prove your point. Fool

And I suspect if all the near-future changes actually happen, it might bring back ten times that number of players in returning pilots.

This whole concept had overwhelming support in 2012-2013 and still does with those people who got sick of the terrible meta the current hardpoint system pretty much insures.

Phobic Wraith, on 07 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point. Most players don't run builds they like, I think we can agree that most players run good, effective builds they like. Limiting hardpoint sizes won't make any chassis better. It will shift effective weapon loadouts to the next best chassis that can run those loadouts. And that will likely be the same, if not a fewer number of chassis.

Except that's now how it ends up working out at all.

The trick is designing the hardpoints for each 'mech to have a couple areas where it shines over all others. For example I'd be cool with a variant of the awesome having 4 big energy slots, meaning it wouldn't be very good boating medium lasers, but good at boating big ones. Then having more smaller slots on the Stalker, to allow it to boat lasers easier mixed with smaller missiles on most variants.

It goes on and on. If slotted properly, this increases the value of each 'mech into a niche. Again, this has worked great in the past so history is on the side of hardpoint limitations here.

Edited by Victor Morson, 07 October 2014 - 01:26 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Eddrick, on 07 October 2014 - 10:08 AM, said:

A meta will always exist. It's inevitable. All you can do is try to keep the meta from being dominent. A decent balance allows for counter-meta play.

The trick to a good meta is to make sure you have several metas.

Frankenmechs will never be very good, even if people want them to be. But the problem with MW:O is there's always been like, 3 viable play styles if you want to be meta, where in a lot of top games, there are a HUGE number of ways to play while remaining competitive.

And that's what I'd like to see happen here, for sure. If they ever put that "pick which 'mech you want after you know the map" thing in, it'd increase this idea further.

[Victor Morson]

Johnny Z, on 07 October 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:

I have had a chance to consider this idea more. Although there are mechs like the Catapult that seem to demand sized hard point and many other examples, I am not sure if its a good idea or not. lol Seriously, would it limit load outs to much is the main concern.

I don't see why; I think nearly every Catapult would remain capable of similar builds, except without every single one mounting PPCs; the K2 might be the hardest hit (to the point I'd be OK with leaving it the ability to carry AC10s), but on the flip side, the K2 would be the only Catapult capable of carrying PPCs meaning it would finally be exactly what it is supposed to be.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Lordred, on 07 October 2014 - 12:02 AM, said:

I really do not want to get into this with you, so I will deflect us back to the topic on hand

lol k thanks for giving up the argument and admitting Im correct by "not wanting to get into it"

comparing a game a decade old with the budget WoW has with a game a year old with this tiny a dev team lol

Good joke.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 07 October 2014 - 01:38 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Victor Morson, on 07 October 2014 - 04:20 AM, said:

Counter-point: WoW wasn't left in a totally screwed up state after Blizzard ignored 93% of their playerbase on issues while claiming they were just a minority. So they didn't have to.

MW:O needs some radical, radical redesigns. I don't care if it's "been out for years." It's never made it past beta stage, really, and it's time to fix that.

WHEN exactly are they supposed to do that? The devs are finally ACTUALLY working on CW right now.

When are they supposed to entirely redesign mech creation?

I mean is this like that final fantasy game where they took it down and relaunched it?

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 07 October 2014 - 01:40 PM.

[Sybreed]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 07 October 2014 - 01:40 PM, said:

WHEN exactly are they supposed to do that? The devs are finally ACTUALLY working on CW right now.

When are they supposed to entirely redesign mech creation?

I mean is this like that final fantasy game where they took it down and relaunched it?

frankly, for a lot of people, CW won't change a thing if the game is still the same old boring meta, hence why a lot of us would like to see a rework of the mechlab beforehand.

[Postumus]

Zack Esseth, on 06 October 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

The only thing coming from changes to come Hardpoint size restrictions is going to be less diversity on the Field.
...

I don't buy the less diversity argument against hardpoint sizes. We have enough mechs now that there will be plenty of overlap in any playstyle or build type, even with hardpoint restrictions. Also, in many cases, the mechs with the most advantageous builds after hardpoint restrictions have geometry or other issues that provide a balance.

To illustrate this point, lets assume that hardpoint restrictions are implemented, roughly based on stock builds, and ghost heat and the PPC nerfs are rolled back (remember, there are no more 4x PPC stalkers anymore). Now, based on the meta the last time we had this state of the game, the build with the most PPCs wins, right? After hardpoint restrictions, that is the Awesome, either the 8Q or 9M, with 3 PPCs. The Awesome has low slung energy hardpoints and a torso the width of a barn, which is more than balance enough.

Now, if you didn't feel like taking an Awesome to get your long range direct fire fix, you still have options. In the Assault class, you have two Atlas variants, the RS and the K, that can each take two PPCs and an AC/10 or Gauss, respectively. If you can settle for 2 PPCs and more speed, you can also take a Banshee, Battlemaster, or a Catapult K2.

Tons of choices, and everything in the assault category has large energy hardpoints at about the same level, so it isn't an easy choice based on mech geometry. Instead, it comes down to tradeoffs between speed, armor, heat efficiency, and backup weapons, like it should be.

Edited by Postumus, 07 October 2014 - 01:48 PM.