12 replies to this topic

[CG Anastasius Focht]

I was thinking back to my TT days and this idea struck me as a form of team balance.

What we did was assign a max tonnage for the game, ie 400 tons each, and then we fielded whatever mechs we wanted within that limit. one player might take two Atlas's Two griffins and two hellspawns.
Another might take 12 locusts and two victors.

In essence the heavier the mechs team A fields the less players on that team, the team fielding lighter mechs can have more players

An interesting trade off, but one that is ton for ton fair.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

I think that a better idea would be BV, especially once the Clan's come on board. It will also depend on how they set up the lobby and how many mech's you have to choose from,

[Black Sunder]

[CG]Anastasius Focht, on 24 November 2011 - 03:03 AM, said:

two hellspawns.

Not even invented yet in this time.

[DocBach]

tonnage is the great equalizer many believe it to be - lets look at 'Mechs in the same tonnage bracket

Ostscout - Wolfhound

Charger - Awesome

BNC-3E Banshee - BNC-3S Banshee

all are the same weight, but some are incredibly more potent.

[Kudzu]

http://mwomercs.com/...dpost__p__41353
http://mwomercs.com/...dpost__p__41602

[Phades]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 24 November 2011 - 04:33 AM, said:

I think that a better idea would be BV, especially once the Clan's come on board. It will also depend on how they set up the lobby and how many mech's you have to choose from,

Not a fan of mech assault style chess boards. This also eliminates the entire concept of salvaging and mech hangars. Furthermore, no one wants to be assigned to the "gimp" mech that will always exist.

[Kudzu]

Phades, on 24 November 2011 - 10:43 AM, said:

Not a fan of mech assault style chess boards. This also eliminates the entire concept of salvaging and mech hangars. Furthermore, no one wants to be assigned to the "gimp" mech that will always exist.

http://mwomercs.com/...dpost__p__42116

[CG Anastasius Focht]

Black Sunder, on 24 November 2011 - 06:19 AM, said:

Not even invented yet in this time.

Yeah thats was the first 45 tonner i thought off, to round out the 400 ton example. substitute the phoenix hawk, blackjack hatchetman or vindicator etc

[CG Anastasius Focht]

Speculation like this really is just that until the game comes out and we see how it works, I'm just trying to think outside the standard X number of players Vs X number of players model.
We've all heard phrases like "balance the teams ppl" in game in reference to teamstacking.
With a tonnage based system its not an issue if team A has 6 mechs and team B has 10.

Some workarounds to the drawbacks mentioned (sorry if i miss any)

Its true that some players might get stuck with smaller tonnage slots, but the reverse can apply. for example lets say the max players on a team is 10 aside, and the max tonnage per team is set at 50 tons per player, max tonnage 500 tons, Those players who run mechs less than 50 tons , say the Panther, actually free up tonnage (and player slots) for the other players.
The order in which you get "dibs" on choice could be based on your time spent on the server, and score from previous game.
Thus if i'm first to join a team i get first choice in tonnage, or if i took top score last game the same.
This would dovetail nicely with damage multipliers using smaller mechs, ie the smaller the mech i play in the first game the better my score the more likely i am to have a higher choice ranking in the next.
Also the last player finding they have a small tonnage slot to choose from could use teamspeak or similar Vcoms to convince the one or more of the other players to drop a chassis class to let them field something more effective.
The salvage issue could be dealt with by making it not a free choice of any mech in the tonnage range available to you, but any mech in your personal stable that fits the tonnage range left at your turn to choose a mount.

Not suggesting this would should or could be a way to balance teams in MWO, it is just speculation until the game hits our screens.

But it would create scenarios where say 4 assaults in a city map get taken out by 10 mediums/lights using hit and fade tactics

Edited by [CG]Anastasius Focht, 24 November 2011 - 01:40 PM.

[Kaemon]

Tonnage only won't work because they will have to limit the # of mechs per round to alleviate lag/performance issues.

It'd be great to have 25 vs 25 in a pub, you'd better get a box of tissues for your computer, cause it's going to cry trying to keep up, also you'd have to gauge your instance battle parameters based on your expected total player base, nothing says a dying game like pub rounds that consistently don't fill up.

Any matchmaking system they employ has to account for anything in the game that give a 'tactical advantage' (don't we have a tm for this yet?), otherwise it's going to suck.

So MM has to at the very least account for the 4 pillars of the game, role specialization, pilot attributes 'trained', mech tonnage/loadouts (which probably means you can't change it once the match setup starts...boo....) and most importantly player skill (based on record/achievements/games played).

This is where other games really fail, they have all this data, but don't properly utilize it.

Will it add time to the MM setup? yeah but we're talking ms, not human time (so you won't really notice).

Will it make some seemingly weird matches if we don't have an easy way to see your teammates and their skill levels....yep, but once it's explained, people should get a feel for it.

Now of course that directly messes with the whole 'fog of war' idea, since you can normally just check the leaderboard to see which of the enemy is left in battle (and some games even show the vehicle they have).

MM is one of the biggest concerns of the game, bad pub = bad PR.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Not to mention that there are an awful lot of gaming clans that have played MW in the past and will come back here as organised teams withs optimised lances. I still think that they will match up on BV as that is based on weight, loadout. and tech level. This can make for asymetric numbers.

[Phades]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 25 November 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

Not to mention that there are an awful lot of gaming clans that have played MW in the past and will come back here as organised teams withs optimised lances. I still think that they will match up on BV as that is based on weight, loadout. and tech level. This can make for asymetric numbers.

This will invariably lead them to face off against another group where they will hit the "oops sorry, we need to drop someone since we have "too much experience" since BV accounted for that too.

Edited by Phades, 25 November 2011 - 11:35 AM.

[Tierloc]

You can't play this game type in open scenarios.