Wintersdark, on 11 May 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:
what does any of that have to do with cw? There is no Elo, and BV is totally impractical for countless reasons.
Okay, CW is not affected by Elo, but that means there's a lot less balance, and leaves the door open to use only certain 'Mechs, when all 'Mechs should be valid for use. The few times I've tried to play CW recently, and I've complained or asked others what the big deal was, I was either asked or, when I told them the 'Mech I was driving, invariably I would be told, you can't use that 'Mech if you want to play CW.
Introducing Battle Value would allow for balancing in not only PUG matches, but in CW as well. Where Elo is a personal measure of a MechWarrior's prowess, and is fluid, Battle Value is determined more by the strength's of the 'Mech, and then are hard-modified by a game-determined Gunnery and Piloting Skill-determined multiplier, generally a decimal multiplier. All of these values would then be placed in a bucket, regardless of whether it's the one 'Mech you're using for PUGging, or the Lance of 'Mech's you're using for CW. The requirement of being within 5% of one-another's bucket totals means that those of us who have sense, and understand you have to use multiple types of 'Mechs to succeed in a game type such as CW would force those without sense, those who use Heavies and/or Assaults exclusively, to change their loadouts to meet the requirements of the +/-5% of the bucket of the other team. Alternately, this means teams set in a particular way will only face teams set in a particular way.
Further, just as there are percentages showing how each of the weight classes are fairing for finding groups, now it would only be the most used Battle Value buckets. If a lot of Heavy and Assault groups are being played, those who prefer not to do so will find it difficult to find teams to fight, though it would not be impossible. The point is that the player groups would have more ability to choose the sorts of fights they wanted to, rather than being limited by Elo or tonnage.
Further, with an MWO-built Battle Value system in place, PGI would then be free to introduce other game modes, such as Reconnaissance, Objective-based Recon, Objective-based Missions and Skirmishes, Hide and Seek, Territory Control -I so hate the use of the term King of the Hill, as it's childish-, and other means of taking percentage on worlds to determine a winner and a loser, rather than just kicking the **** out of each other all the time. My God, people have to be getting bored with the single mode of play ALL THE TIME. Each of these mission types could have Battle Value ceilings placed on them, and then the groups fighting could work under that ceiling, but every single game would be limited only by the game type, rather than such a tiny scale as Elo, which none of us are, for whatever reason, allowed to see, anyway.
Further, introducing these new mission types might also allow for the current PUG maps to be used, and for PUG-only players, to actually participate in CW in an OpFor fashion, in random missions that would not, necessarily, take them very far from their PUG desires, but would also allow for Green and Regular quality units to be represented by the PUGs, giving CW regulars the variation in gaming that would come along with all of this. Admittedly, some of this could be accomplished without changing from Elo to Battle Value, but until Battle Value is implemented, the freedom you have, as a player, is severely limited to where you sit on the 2300 point Elo scale.
Battle Value would allow true Elite players to be combined with lower-level players, but not for the sake of carrying the team, but rather filling out the more realistic niche of variations in skill. Elite piloted 'Mechs have a much higher Battle Value than Green and Regular quality MechWarriors, so the enemy team Battle Value bucket has to fall within 5% of your team's bucket, which means that Elite player may actually allow the enemy to have more 'Mechs, or higher BV 'Mechs with lower-level pilots. As things are, right now, you're playing against players who fall within your Elo bracket, but they may be piloting thoroughly optimized or thoroughly crappy 'Mechs, and the technology being played, the weapons, speed, and armor, are every bit as important as the pilot using it. A carpenter with a rusty hammer without the knurled head or the tempered steel handle is going to have a tougher time driving a lot of nails compared to the guy with the new hammer and all the technological advancements. So, if you have an amazing pilot who hasn't the first clue how to design a 'Mech well, and I've see a lot of those, you've got a crap 'Mech with an amazing pilot, and that 'Mech will drop fairly quickly, regardless of who the pilot is. However, the Elite pilot with the amazing 'Mech is going to be absolutely killer with it. This is not reflected in Elo, now, but would be reflected, and adjusted for by the game, through simple bloody math, by Battle Value.
There are no real down sides to switching from a pilot-gauging system that was meant for a single player with sixteen pieces with limited movements against another similar player, rather than a team of players with billions of possible combinations of weapons, positions, elevations, and tactics without limitations, in Battle Value.
Edited by Kay Wolf, 11 May 2015 - 05:40 PM.
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