322 replies to this topic

[Krivvan]

Gamuray, on 17 February 2015 - 08:46 AM, said:

Specialist teams are effective when working together to create the situation they desire. But are at a loss if they can't create the desired situation. (luckily, most teams want similar situations due to generally using similar things, aka meta..ish)

Generalist teams are effective no matter the situation, but must always ALL be working together at once, and are slightly less effective in each situation. The benefit being it doesn't matter what situation they end up in, they'll still put up a good fight, and they can try to see what situation the opponent needs, and just make sure they utilize other situations to combat it.

Teams use the specialist strategy because they can fodder off the people they don't need in the situation, and are at peak efficiency when they get want they want. They also don't need to focus on preventing the enemy from getting what they want, they just need to have what their team wants.

Generalists can fodder anyone equally if needed, and will never suffer a huge loss from it, but will always lose more than a specialist's fodder. They also have to scout out the situation the enemy wants, and prevent it.

You're actually right in the sense that there are generalist and specialist teams, but that only comes up during organized matches, and even then, being a generalist team does not mean bringing generalist builds. It's far more effective to make a generalist team by doling out specific roles to different people than it is to expect everyone to do a tiny bit of every role.

Edited by Krivvan, 17 February 2015 - 09:52 AM.

[Alexandrix]

As i've said a million times before,so long as you can load ppc's into hardpoints that originally had small lasers....ac20/gauss into machine gun ports....and alpha strike them into a pixel perfect converged pinpoint location....then cramming everything you can onto one mouse button and alpha striking to victory is all MWO is ever going to be.

that's just how it is gonna be until some big changes are made.unfortunately it seems the majority of interest lies in pumping out more over priced mech packs for that $$$,rather than making the changes needed to make the game something other than point and click CoD/CS:robots edition.

Edited by Alexandrix, 17 February 2015 - 09:59 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Demoncard, on 17 February 2015 - 09:41 AM, said:

Role warfare, mech quirks, etc. Anything else is suboptimal in a team setting.

By all means, carry a small, medium and large laser, an AC5, an LRM 5 and SRM 2 if it stops you from running out and soloing.

You're right about the thunderbolt build. It needs to burnt alive. There are a lot of unimaginative people picking up on the fact that if their entire team perches on a hill, and they each fire a single ppc at a target, it will die, and they can do it again with their other PPCs not on cooldown. It's the cheapest way to win. I don't think I'll ever be that desperate for cbills or loyalty points, not even when I was with Kurita.


That's not how it works. You're able to engage at any range, but you're going to be weak at all of them. You're assisting in the sense that you're accumulating assists, but you're not helping your team as much as someone in a dedicated role might.

Using general builds is a way to wuss out and make sure your build is usable (in the same way a featherduster is usable against a tank) in any circumstance, rather than being forced to communicate or move into position. You're going to be doing very little compared to when you run a so called "specialised" build and actually perform your role.

Sorry but my Grunt training tells me you are wrong. So a Mech with 2-3 PPCs and 2 Mediums and a SRM is a bad build? That is a general build, designed to be good at multiple ranges. An Archer 2 LRM20s, 4 Mediums and it is a great Heavy.

[NeoAres]

People are pointing out that there is too much customization in the game. I would like to tweak that to say that there is too much ability to boat large weapons. There are three tug-of-wars happening here that need to be addressed when talking loadout balance: snipers vs. brawlers, boaters vs. mixers, and DPSers vs. Alphaers

I propose a scaling of hardpoints, similar to what MW4 had. There are two ways of doing this:
1. Do an exact copy of the MW4 hardpoint system, where hardpoints are different sizes and you can fit, say, 3 medium lasers into the same hardpoint as a PPC. This is a nice idea for balancing snipers and brawlers, and for balancing DPSers vs. Alphaers, but it doesn't really help the boaters vs. mixers battle.

2. A more original variation. Categorize each of a mech's hardpoints as Level-1, Level-2, or Level-3. Each hardpoint can only fit one weapon system, but a heavy weapon can only be mounted on a heavy weapon hardpoint. For instance, say a TWolf has, on each arm, a Level-3 Energy slot and a Level-1 Energy slot. The Level-3 slot is capable of carrying any energy weapon, but the Level-1 slot is only capable of carrying certain weapons--say a medium/small laser or a TAG (a Level-2 slot would be able to carry a ERLL or LPL but not a ERPPC). The TWolf would thus only be able to carry 2 large energy weapons on its arms, while the other two arms would have to be close range weapons. This would, even better than ghost heat, force mechs to limit the number of large-scale weapons they could carry, while at the same time not open the door up to ridiculous quantities of small weapons.

As an added bonus, this hardpoint system would open up all sorts of possibilities regarding the differentiation of similar mechs, particularly the clan mechs. By making hardpoints more than just the "simple" hardpoints they are now, we can make mech quirks obsolete and lure mechs closer to their stock loadouts without confining them to certain weapon systems.

And, by restricting the most powerful weapons (PPC, AC20, Gauss Rifle, LRM20) to the rare Level-3 slot, we can severely restrict the number of mechs that can carry multiple instances of such weapons and the placement of those weapons on the mech.

Edited by NeoAres, 17 February 2015 - 10:03 AM.

[Krivvan]

Alexandrix, on 17 February 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

As i've said a million times before,so long as you can load ppc's into hardpoints that originally had small lasers....ac20/gauss into machine gun ports....and alpha strike them into a pixel perfect converged pinpoint location....then cramming everything you can onto one mouse button and alpha striking to victory is all MWO is ever going to be.

You are completely ignoring that the builds you're referring to aren't even the builds that people complain about being boated.

Laser boat Firestarters? They'd be the same with or without sized hardpoints. Same with Jenners. Just like they should be.

Stormcrows and Timbers would be entirely unaffected by sized hardpoints.

You're basically only going to restrict a build like the K2 which isn't popular right now.

[Dock Steward]

Alexandrix, on 17 February 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

As i've said a million times before,so long as you can load ppc's into hardpoints that originally had small lasers....ac20/gauss into machine gun ports....and alpha strike them into a pixel perfect converged pinpoint location....then cramming everything you can onto one mouse button and alpha striking to victory is all MWO is ever going to be.

that's just how it is gonna be until some big changes are made.

Right. We should all just be forced to run those Infantry-killing Machine Guns because, hey, there's a ton of Infantry running around.

[Koniks]

OP, you're not going to encourage bracket builds without fundamentally changing the underlying game mechanics.

But why are bracket builds desirable anyway? This is a 12v12 game. Not a solo or co-op PvE against the enemy hordes. (And even in other MMOs, you mostly see min/maxed purpose builds without too much complaint.)

Let's posit a round robin scenario. Your ideal team is what, 12 bracket builds? So 12 mechs with some lasers, ballistics, and LRMs. Able to do some damage at all ranges.

They're up against:
-a fast brawling team with SRMs, pulse lasers and AC20s.
-a purpose-built sniping team with primarily Gauss, ERPPCs, and ERLLs
-mid-range laser vomit, maybe with some AC5s
-a generalist team that has 4 brawlers, 4 snipers, and 4 mid-range mechs

I think your generalist team loses all of those matches. Each of those teams will probably be better able to get to its optimum range of engagement than your generalist team. And when they get there, they will be able to put out more damage.

Even the generalist team that divides into separate roles is better. Mostly because the only way the bracket builds can match the firepower of the specialist lances is by having all 12 mechs in position to fire.

[Krivvan]

Joseph Mallan, on 17 February 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

Sorry but my Grunt training tells me you are wrong. So a Mech with 2-3 PPCs and 2 Mediums and a SRM is a bad build? That is a general build, designed to be good at multiple ranges. An Archer 2 LRM20s, 4 Mediums and it is a great Heavy.

The build you described is a bad build, yes. A single SRM means you don't have enough to ever justify going in to brawl. You're just going to be a tiny bit better when it comes to a brawl but at the cost of being worse at other ranges.

For that build to be good it needs to be 2-3 PPCs, and several Medium Lasers, or 2-3 PPCs and several SRMs.

A single SRM is pretty much never justified just as a single medium or small laser is rarely justified. Exceptions like cLPL exist because they mesh well with cERML.

Just think of it like this. You would essentially be unable to use both your Medium Lasers and your single SRM at the same time. That just means your build is flat out worse than someone that can fire several medium lasers at you or several SRMs at you.

Bracketed builds are just bad design. This applies to even other video games where you don't want players to play "a little bit of everything" builds, you instead have them play Snipers, Medics, Assault, or etc. or Support, Carry, Jungler, etc. You'd be laughed out of a game for suggesting players in MOBAs should put together builds that use items that buff every stat just a tiny bit just to prepare for every single possible scenario.

Edited by Krivvan, 17 February 2015 - 09:59 AM.

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

Phil Tackett, on 17 February 2015 - 09:35 AM, said:

CS' popularity is a very double sided coin. There are just as many gamers who despise it as there are who love it.

The competitive matchmaker is very popular in CS:GO. The difference is that people actually mostly prefer the 5v5 setting in the competitive queue instead of the 10v10 casual.

Now let's think about MWO. There will always be competitive players who want to play in that setting giving their best at the game and there will be those who like to take out their LRM5 Streak-2 AC2 Large laser Atlas out for a spin. In my opinion best way to implement this to MWO after VOIP comes in is to create 8v8 competitive (ladder) queue available for those people who enjoy it as the 12v12 casual queue would be left to those who just want to play some big stompy robots in whatever builds they desire.

But then again the population is small and it's widely spread around the 24-hour day cycle so the change could lead to empty queues and very long search times. The good that comes out of this that tryhards can try hard in competitive setting 8v8 while the casual / BT fanbase would keep their calm among themselves seeing a bigger decrease in powerful meta builds.

There are of course issues like balance after that... but one can only dream.

[Krivvan]

NeoAres, on 17 February 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

People are pointing out that there is too much customization in the game. I would like to tweak that to say that there is too much ability to boat large weapons. There are three tug-of-wars happening here that need to be addressed when talking loadout balance: snipers vs. brawlers, boaters vs. mixers, and DPSers vs. Alphaers

I propose a scaling of hardpoints, similar to what MW4 had. There are two ways of doing this:
1. Do an exact copy of the MW4 hardpoint system, where hardpoints are different sizes and you can fit, say, 3 medium lasers into the same hardpoint as a PPC. This is a nice idea for balancing snipers and brawlers, and for balancing DPSers vs. Alphaers, but it doesn't really help the boaters vs. mixers battle.

MW4 had the exact same situation where mechs that boated weapons were flat-out superior to mechs that ran bracketed builds. If anything it was worse because it invalidated entire chassis more.

Edited by Krivvan, 17 February 2015 - 10:00 AM.

[Sarlic]

Krivvan, on 17 February 2015 - 09:56 AM, said:

The build you described is a bad build, yes. A single SRM means you don't have enough to ever justify going in to brawl. You're just going to be a tiny bit better when it comes to a brawl but at the cost of being worse at other ranges.

For that build to be good it needs to be 2-3 PPCs, and several Medium Lasers, or 2-3 PPCs and several SRMs.

A single SRM is pretty much never justified just as a single medium or small laser is rarely justified. Exceptions like cLPL exist because they mesh well with cERML.

Just think of it like this. You would essentially be unable to use both your Medium Lasers and your single SRM at the same time. That just means your build is flat out worse than someone that can fire several medium lasers at you or several SRMs at you.

Bracketed builds are just bad design. This applies to even other video games where you don't want players to play "a little bit of everything" builds, you instead have them play Snipers, Medics, Assault, or etc. or Support, Carry, Jungler, etc. You'd be laughed out of a game for suggesting players in MOBAs should put together builds that use items that buff every stat just a tiny bit just to prepare for every single possible scenario.

See? This is exactly what goes wrong.

You are thinking as a invdual.

A generalistist is not.

[NextGame]

I hope you all realise that no matter what system happens to be in place, theres always going to be a tiny handful of "best mechs" to run and build that people will use.

So whats the point in reducing people's ability to customise as they do at present other than to annoy people who currently run sensible builds?

[Ultimax]

Sarlic, on 17 February 2015 - 06:46 AM, said:

I don't call them specialists in any way. Sure, brining in a wubbee build involves a certain risk.
Generalist have more options to decide. They can harash, flank or even be supportive.

Isn't that what I said?

You are trying to cover multiple ranges or combat roles.

Sarlic, on 17 February 2015 - 06:46 AM, said:

Specialists can only walk- along with the group and do one particular thing only within range when they fail, they fail miserably. I get your point, i am not talking about brawlers.

Brawlers are specialists, they are not the only specialists.

Specialists, as I'm saying it does not equate to "only brawlers".

Sarlic, on 17 February 2015 - 06:46 AM, said:

If you want to play your specialists build, go ahead, but dont expect any sympathy for me on a chassis which still have their hardpoints to be desired.

Who asked for sympathy?

You are the one making a thread complaining about how other people want to play their mechs.

Play your mech how you like, try not to tell others how to play.

Sarlic, on 17 February 2015 - 06:46 AM, said:

We need rolewarfare. Things would be apart from this, different.

If every mech is a generalist than no one has a role.

Being a specialist is having a role. Having many players be "generalists" is diametrically opposed to "role warfare".


So it seems you are not entirely clear on what it is you actually want.

Tombstoner, on 17 February 2015 - 06:48 AM, said:

My catapult build says otherwise.... 2x lrm 10's and 4 medium lasers. its very dependent on team mates.
If half of a team carried one lrm 10 thats 60 missals ruining someones day.

Your build also probably has a crapload of tonnage devoted to Ammo. Possibly Artemis? TAG?

That's not a generalist build, that's a specialist.


4 back up lasers doesn't suddenly make you "a generalist" - it means you (rightfully) got tired of getting rekt when other mechs got inside your 180.

Roadbuster, on 17 February 2015 - 07:05 AM, said:

Because the specialized builds don't require teamwork.

That's nonsense. Please don't use your bias and present something you erroneously believe as a fact.

Roadbuster, on 17 February 2015 - 07:05 AM, said:

They are also easier to use than a build with 3-4 different weapon systems instead of 1-2.

Easier to build? Anyone can put a jumbled mess of weapon systems onto their mech.

Easier to play? Yes, of course. That's the entire point.

Do you think you have to do the hokey pokey before you can fire a gun? In essence, you pull a trigger.


"Simplified" and "Streamlined" don't automatically mean "bad" or "dumb", the goal is to reduce the number of choices your brain needs to go through to maximize your reaction ability (as well as dedicating your build to be very good at a specific thing).

If you don't want to play that way, don't.


The world is full of specialized equipment, specialized machinery, specialized weapons and people filling specialized roles.

I struggle to understand why some gamers find this unacceptable.

[Joseph Mallan]

Krivvan, on 17 February 2015 - 09:56 AM, said:

The build you described is a bad build, yes. A single SRM means you don't have enough to ever justify going in to brawl. You're just going to be a tiny bit better when it comes to a brawl but at the cost of being worse at other ranges.

For that build to be good it needs to be 2-3 PPCs, and several Medium Lasers, or 2-3 PPCs and several SRMs.

A single SRM is pretty much never justified just as a single medium or small laser is rarely justified. Exceptions like cLPL exist because they mesh well with cERML.

Just think of it like this. You would essentially be unable to use both your Medium Lasers and your single SRM at the same time. That just means your build is flat out worse than someone that can fire several medium lasers at you or several SRMs at you.

Bracketed builds are just bad design. This applies to even other video games where you don't want players to play "a little bit of everything" builds, you instead have them play Snipers, Medics, Assault, or etc. or Support, Carry, Jungler, etc. You'd be laughed out of a game for suggesting players in MOBAs should put together builds that use items that buff every stat just a tiny bit just to prepare for every single possible scenario.

Then you don't understand real combat tactics.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Welcome to 20 years of MW gaming, where putting the most useful singular weapon type on a Mech is what it usually devolves to given any amount of time.

MW2, outside of planetary league play, you saw mainly just pulse laser boats, that's it, that's all anyone played in all the ladders and non-planetary leagues. Hell, even in the planetary leagues, you saw lots of that build.

MW3, exact same thing.

MW4, exact same thing.

Whatever weapons do the most damage in the least time and can be packed onto a Mech of any given size will be used to create the 'perfect' Mech. Previous MW titles, those 'perfect' builds didn't change much because there was usually little, if any, changes to how the weapon worked ingame over the game's lifetime(patches/updates/addons). MW2 only had patches to fix serious game stopping bugs, the OTHER bugs weren't touched and still exist, same with it's sequels, GBL and MW2:Mercs. And the exact same thing with MW3 and MW4 and their addons. Seriously, this is how every MW title has been since MW2, online competition ends up with people finding these builds and using only them, it's the REAL metagame in a MW title..what's the uberMech configuration, finding it, perfecting it.

One good thing for MWO so far, we have no outstanding UberMech to date, just Flavor of the Month winners, like most MMOs have. Get used to it, because the FotM is bit easier to stomach than an UberMech that EVERYONE in competition MUST use in order to even have a chance.

[FupDup]

Something I just want to chime in about is that sized hardpoints don't do anything to boating. In case you forgot, a crapton of stock mechs are built to boat right out of the box. The Clans have even more of them because their tech made it easier to do so.

If you want to argue for sized hardpoints as an additional method of distinguishing chassis/variant strengths/weaknesses, or perhaps even creating more differences between Battlemechs and Omnimechs (i.e. use it to help keep Clan Battlemechs from totally obsoleting Clan Omnimechs), that would be valid and achievable.

...But expecting it to stop boating is stupid.



Also, this isn't a "problem" unique to MWO or previous MW games. It's a "problem" of Battletech itself. Boats have always been superior to throwing on 8 random weapons, even in Tabletop itself. You take your LB 10-X + Flamer + SRM2 + Small Pulse Laser + AC/2 + LRM15 + Large Laser loadout and I'll crush it into the ground with a PPC and/or Gauss and/or laser boat.

Somewhat generalist loadouts like having 2-3 weapon groups were fine, but have 6+ weapon groups was never effective and probably never will be.

Edited by FupDup, 17 February 2015 - 10:48 AM.

[Felbombling]

PGI could go a long way to fixing this problem with something as simple as a 'stock load out bonus' of some sort, be it XP or earnings. Then, as you upgrade the Mech, you could upgrade the weapon systems. LRM 5 to LRM 10, for example, or Medium Laser to Medium Pulse Laser. Autocannon 5 to Ultra Autocannon 5/Autocannon 10. If you take a Mech like the JagerMech and drop all the small Autocannon to paired Gauss Rifles, you lose the whole bonus or portion thereof. Incentivise the play and original 'feel' of the Mech, as intended. Nothing saying you can't play with a min/max load out, but at least make it look appealing to play stock or close to stock.

Of course, many players will just gravitate to the Mechs that are superior or have superior potential in stock configuration, but I'm for anything that snuffs out the cheesy builds.

[Krivvan]

Joseph Mallan, on 17 February 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

Then you don't understand real combat tactics.

As if real combat tactics have any application in this game. It's the "real combat tactics" people that also are obsessed with the idea of gigantic flanking movements when flanking with big mechs is a terrible idea in this game.

Edited by Krivvan, 17 February 2015 - 10:52 AM.

[terrycloth]

You know what my best generalist build is? It's the 4 LL stalker with all the rest being heat sinks. Good at most ranges.

I've got another stalker with 4LL and some LRMs. It's a little worse because to get those LRMs it had to use fewer heat sinks and a smaller engine, but chain-firing LRM5s at people is enough fun that I'll still play it even though I have to worry about overheating more.

I've got a third stalker with just 2 ERLLs, and the rest shoved into MPLs and SRMs. It works well at point-blank ranges (MPLs and SRM6s are relatively low heat), but I had to group the MPLs on each side with the SRMs on each side to make the weapon groups manageable, so at longer ranges (100m or so) it tends to miss with one or the other. They also don't recharge in sync with each other which turns it into a DPS loadout when it could have been an alpha loadout.

So, it's sort of a graduated scale, most to least effective, based entirely on how many different kinds of weapons I tried to use.

[Joseph Mallan]

Krivvan, on 17 February 2015 - 10:48 AM, said:

As if real combat tactics have any application in this game.

They work pretty well. But getting folks to actually follow combat doctrine is often like herding cats.