129 replies to this topic

[Dimento Graven]

Kristov Kerensky, on 06 July 2015 - 01:19 PM, said:

Dimento Graven, MASC was in use before the Exodus, and the Clans kept development of it up and were using it all along, so PGI first adding it to the game on the Executioner is fine. There's not a lot of MASC equipped IS Mechs running around right now after all, it starts reappearing around 3047 or so, not many of the old SLDF Mechs with MASC still exist outside of ComStar's caches.

So PGI releasing it with Clan Omni's first, not a big deal, since the Hermes 3S is only a few years old and we don't have that yet ingame, and it's one of the few IS Mechs with MASC, it and the Flea 17, also out at the same time, late 3040s. Both of these Mechs were pretty much LosTech, the Hermes lost to attrition after the First Succession War and only coming back after the Helm Memory Core recovery, and the Flea only coming back after the Wolf's Dragoons re-introduced it to the IS, and then it wasn't found outside of their ranks until the exclusivity clause with Earthwerks ran out. MASC was LosTech until recently you know.

...

You're mostly right, I had to check the 3050 TRO to see that, and it'd been so long since I'd looked at it, I'd forgotten that effectively the Clan invasion had some few 'mechs with MASC at the same time the IS had rediscovered theirs.

HOWEVER, that doesn't make anything else I said wrong.

The only way to TRULY balance Clan vs. IS in CW is to change the drop dynamics so that Clans only have 2 stars dropping against 3 IS lances (obviously IS v IS can still be 3 lances vs. 3 lances).

Yes, I know PGI has stated that it's really really hard for them to set this up, BUT, goddamn folks, how many hundreds if not thousands of man hours have been burned trying to balance IS v Clan on a 12v12 only scale?

Seriously, all the tweaking, nerfing, quirking, retuning, et al, has been so much spinning of wheels.

Bottom line, the canonically speaking the balance between IS and Clan was that the IS had a lot more numbers to balance against the Clans' superior technology.

Without that, everything else is just silly.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 06 July 2015 - 01:53 PM.

[Scratx]

Kristov Kerensky, on 06 July 2015 - 11:48 AM, said:

Fup, that's why there are rules concerning non-participation, they were a direct result of the R&R and people trying to bypass the costs. We have people who do it NOW to avoid deaths, not realizing that the system doesn't care if YOU are connected or not when your Mech gets taken out, it still counts as a death on the KDR stat Been seeing that a lot lately btw, same players will usually go off on the team right before they shutdown and quit the match, makes me laugh, they didn't get any kills and got a DEATH!

And yes, there will always be people who try and abuse the system or grief others, regardless of what the system is. We had it when we had R&R, we had it after R&R was removed, and we still have it today, nothing that can be done about it but to punish the people who do it, hence the CoC covering these things.

R&R was effective at making you think about upgrades though, I often kept my Mechs without ES/FF/DHS simply because it was not cheap to fix those, although I never had any problems using ammo weapons, ammo costs aren't bad, unless you go nuts and take 2k+ rounds or such. ER lasers cost more to repair than non-ER lasers, so people didn't use as many ERs, Artemis upped the cost of repairing launchers AND ammo, PPCs were expensive, ERPPCs much more so, and Gauss, well, that was usually a big hit since those damn things always explode It made you think about what you put on a Mech, because everything has a cost AND everything had repair cost. Now, without R&R, people ONLY think about how much alpha they can put out, costs don't matter outside of the initial outlay, that's it, so get those DHS, put that ES and FF on here, grab that XL engine, run ERLs and Gauss, once you buy them, that's it, no more costs involved. With R&R, well, you can still do that, but the costs involved in upkeep now factor in, which makes the alpha only build not such a great idea.

Laservomit would actually be cut down, DHS are expensive to replace and you can't run laservomit without them now can you?

And the Clan costs..oh man, their hardware is more expensive across the line, and repair costs will eat them up since ALL OmniMechs have XL engines, plus you have the OmniPod repair costs to factor in there...

Yeah, R&R is a great tool to limit how people build their Mechs, it keeps the stock Tech from becoming obsolete, and it really does have a direct effect on the meta. Stock Mechs without DHS and ES/FF/XLs suddenly aren't so bad, R&R costs are pretty low for those, and they suddenly become more viable due to that reason.

I won't go into why R&R is a bad idea and so on, others are addressing.

But I'll point out that the three major cost drivers in the R&R we had were basically:

1 - Armor
2 - Missile ammunition
3 - XL engine

Of those 3, missile ammunition was especially nasty and the reason why a lot of people simply stuffed themselves with more ammo than they needed in the match just to let the 75% free reammo/repair keep them topped off enough to last them through the match. And avoid the ammunition bill in the process.

Needless to say, that was both lame and against the spirit of the whole system. Not to mention it also basically defeated the point of having R&R if people could simply avoid the costs.

We saw enough abuses and had discussions about that during closed beta... PGI saw fit to remove it. It's over and it's probably not coming back, ever.

[bad arcade kitty]

r&r it would be like - you play one real game, then you use some simple autohotkey script to farm c-bills in a trial lrm mech while you are doing something else to get the money back, then you play one real game again

so much fun for everybody

[Dawnstealer]

Aim64C, on 01 July 2015 - 04:34 PM, said:

The problem is that the Clans work great as a "OMGWTF" 'dungeon master' tool to pit a team of players against. They are blatantly designed to be overwhelmingly superior and to be a huge challenge to the Inner Sphere. Salvage loot from Clan encounters can be highly rewarding, yet a challenge to field and maintain within the strategic picture. Even when playing in much later years when Clan mechs and equipment are available for market purchase, they are exceptionally expensive to field, more difficult to locate repair items for, etc. They are balanced within the strategic picture, not the tactical picture, since a team of Inner Sphere mechs can keep on chugging at a lower cost with more reliable supply lines. They are not so great to include into an online multiplayer game while maintaining a semblance of lore accuracy, since everyone is competitive and Clan equipment/mechs are so blatantly superior that you have to be a purist to turn them down. Since there's little strategic element to maintaining my personal fleet of mechs that I can only pilot one at a time of, there's literally no penalty for fielding a Clan mech's advantages. Other than what can be arbitrarily imposed through attempts to balance the clans within a tactical picture. Since LRMs have been removed from the game, the insane advantage that Clans get from fielding LRMs goes away. They are more balanced in their direct fire aspects, though lasers still pack superior range (the decrease to duration is ... meh). The biggest advantage comes in the form of the Clan XL engine. This allows vastly more tonnage for weapons, higher speeds, or a combination of the two. Oh - and their Endo Steel only costs 7 critical spaces. Only way to get better than that is to go with Endo-Composite (and that reduces structure armor by half), which won't be available for a very long time. The XL engine is just the biggest advantage, there. That allows a lot of extra tonnage and mobility without the main drawback of an IS XL engine. Run a standard IS engine to try and preserve your endurance - and you've lost massive amounts of firepower. Run an XL IS engine and just by raw statistics, you'll suffer more defeats at the loss of a single side torso that a Clan mech would have survived. The only real way to balance around this would be to eliminate the penalty of side torso loss for Inner Sphere mechs - which means the only real reason to run a standard engine would be for the 6 critical spaces, and the yet-to-come light fusion engine would be pointless. Alternatively, an exception to the lore timeline could be made (as it was with TAG-enhanced missiles - those technically haven't been developed yet, along with several other things) to enable the light fusion engine. That's a 25% decrease in engine mass with the same profile as a Clan XL engine. My standpoint on balancing weapon systems remains relatively unchanged from what it was a few years ago. The Inner Sphere should reflect the dynamics of a larger market lacking central planning. Weapon systems are developed by various manufacturers that fall into various categories that the tabletop game described and generalized by range, damage, etc. Inner Sphere weapons should have various manufacturers with different specifications and improvements across each other. One manufacturer might have a medium laser that reaches farther than its competitors. One might have one that produces more damage. Another might have a shorter duration, and yet another might have one that produces less heat. Perhaps some of the ballistics could come with a critical point or two shaved off, or some tonnage spared. The clans, being fanatical socialists, don't have the diversity in their centrally planned and authorized systems - though they have 200 years of not having suffered nearly as much lost technology. Of course, even before the Clans were introduced, the game had serious balance issues that were never addressed. Many of these stem from a lack of diverse gameplay (the game play is overly focused on destroying players in other mechs, which means that it makes little sense to pilot anything designed for any other purpose), while others stem from weapon mechanics... and still others trace their roots back to a fundamentally flawed heat system. Part of the problem is that PGI is still trying to build a decent mechwarrior game, let alone balance the factions within it.

I'd say an easier balance between Clans and IS is one that pointed out in this thread:

http://mwomercs.com/...iticism-for-cw/

But as far as weapon balance goes? Make Clan weapons do less damage overall, but more consistent damage of longer ranges. IS weapons would do more damage at closer ranges, but would see a rapid drop-off in damage as the range increases.

So Clan mechs would want to stay out of brawling range because the IS would have an advantage there, IS mechs would want to get as close as possible as soon as possible to take away the Clan advantage. So it's even fluffy.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Dimento, I purposely didn't touch on the balance issue, just wanted to touch on the MASC thing. I was like you at first, why the hell didn't we get MASC on our IS Mechs first damnit! Then I remembered, oh..yeah..we didn't have many of them..oops

As to the balance thing...10 vs 12, looks good on here doesn't it? And it's how so many people think it should be done because, well, that's what they've been TOLD was an even match up.

Problem is, take 10 Clan Mechs against 12 IS Mechs and you end up with a slaughter of IS Mechs, horrible slaughter. 1 Clan Mech is more effective in TT than 2 IS Mechs of the same tonnage, that's how OP the Clan Tech really is. We fought the battles of Tukayyid with the listed forces, ComStar got their asses handed to them SO badly it wasn't funny. There weren't enough of them left to defend a portable toilet, which is something the Clans would have fought them for btw, Clan Mechs don't include toilets, IS Mechs do, just a little fun BTech factoid for ya.

FASA had the Clans stopped at Tukayyid because, and they did it via Plot Devices, that's it, because they knew the Clan Tech was such that ComStar had no chance in hell and the Clans would roll the entire IS without much of a problem, unless the IS started playing really dirty(as we did in our campaign, we used nukes), so they used Plot Devices.

Now, if we drop 6 Clans against 12 IS, what happens in MWO? Simple, it's a slaughter of the Clans. Do that in TT and it's a fair fight however. PGI has SO neutered the Clans that 10 vs 12 wouldn't be good, due to how the combat in MWO works, that 2 man advantage pretty much always means the IS will win. Now, if PGI would put the Clan Tech where it SHOULD be, well, we couldn't have Clan Mechs in the non-CW ques with IS Mechs, the disparity would be SO bad that it wouldn't be fun for anyone. Not to mention that few of the playerbase would be willing to play as Inner Sphere, gamers are gamers, most of them wouldn't use the inferior bs Tech, and that's a fact.

Bumping Clan Tech up enough that 10 vs 12 is viable, again, same thing, Clan Tech is now OP, can't allow it to be used vs IS Tech outside of CW, which means we'd have the same issue with people dumping IS for Clan, they'd rather use the obviously OP toys, gamers are gamers after all.

SOME of us would play IS regardless of how OP Clan Tech was, TT OP or just enough to do 10 v 12 OP, we don't care, we're hardcore IS players. But there aren't enough of us to make that a viable solution, so PGI did what they did.

Best bet, remove the Clans totally, make it IS Tech and that's it, they could even bump the timeline up so all the Church of the Munchkin toys from the Jihad/Dark Ages are added, and that would be fine. No one has ever been able to balance the Clan Tech vs IS Tech, IS toys from the Jihad/Dark Ages aren't as good as Clan toys, they are always better, they just started upping the pure damage for each side to stupidly high amounts to that no one cared But IS vs IS, yeah, you can balance it out easy enough, everyone has access to the same exact toys, done!

[Sjorpha]

Kristov Kerensky, on 06 July 2015 - 01:19 PM, said:

Sjorpha, trying to force people to use stock over upgrade by making the upgrade worse, and trying to force comp players to use lesser toys, if that's not crazy, I don't know what is.

It's not crazy, it's just a different opinion than your own.

I don't think competitively viable single heat sinks would be "forcing" anyone to do anything. Quite the contrary, a competitive player using an IS mech is currently forced to use double heatsinks because that is the only competitive options. If both were viable the comp player would have more options than he has now, he would be less forced in his actions.

Also, the toys wouldn't be lesser toys if they weren't...you know...lesser toys, just sayin.

The current situation is that single heatsinks are not even part of this game, they are a 1.500 000 cbill tax on new mechs, that's it, that's all single heatsinks are reduced to, a whole category of equipment taken out of the game because reasons. Basically anything would be better that that. Repair and rearm would change this but only for new and bad players, to everyone else it would still be complete non-content and a cbill tax.

How is that interesting, and how is it not more interesting to have a piece of equipment useful rather than useless?

The other games you mention are all boring games to me, my interest is for MWO to be a fun game. I'm not sure why I should care about how they are doing but in several cases the brainless upgrade systems are a big part of the reason why they are boring to me. Hawken is also stone dead in addition to being a bad game form the start. I don't really see the relevance.

Bad design in other games isn't a reason for bad design in MWO. Bad design in the past isn't a reason for bad design now.

What is and isn't battletech for me comes down to the universe and lore, not the games exact mechanics and design decisions from the past. High tech vs low tech factions exist in many games without needing them to be unbalanced, it is quite possible to work out a balanced framework while still keeping high vs low tech feel. So the clans were OP in former games? Doesn't mean they need to be that now, they can just feel more high tech and have different pros and cons than IS. Double heatsinks were a strict upgrade in past games? Doesn't mean they must be now, its better to make them an interesting and strategic choice that is sometimes a good idea and sometimes not.

I admit there are ways to incorporate tech progression into multiplayer games in a reasonable way, for example robocrafts tiered system. The more complex and powerful robots you build the higher tier it becomes and the matches are divided by tier. The tiers are designed so that the combat in lower tiers are simpler and ties in with the learning curve of the game, so while all players can build robots for all tiers, it naturally flows that new players play the tier they feel reasdy for in addition to having unlocked the relevant blocks. And well, that's a very sensible system. It is of course a much more consistent game framework than MWO, and with a much more complex metagame with more options and strategies, but it is one good example of combining tech upgrades with a sensible PVP free to play MMO. I'm hoping MWO will approach that level of strategic complexity in the future, but I'll take what I get as long as it's fun and immersive.

Dominons 4 and many other strategy game lets you upgrade as the game progresses, but everyone starts off on a reasonably even footing and the tech race is really a race that everyone has a chance to win each game.

Both of these examples have one thing in common, and that is that any low tech option still has a proper place in the metagame. In Dominions it is during the early stages of each game and in Robocraft it is in the lower tier matches.

The low tech options in MWO has no place, at all. They are never ever relevant or useful. I'm open to different solutions to this, but it does need to be solved.

Edited by Sjorpha, 06 July 2015 - 04:04 PM.

[Ashvins]

NeoAres, on 01 July 2015 - 03:42 PM, said:

Now can the clans have their lower arm actuators back when using PPCs/ballistics? That's just one example of a silly, arbitrary clan nerf in the current system (oversized clan chassis, silly omnipod hardpoints, and overzealous IS mech quirks are other notable ones). By keeping balancing features properly compartmentalized instead of ridiculously arbitrary, we can actually achieve some semblance of balance in the present without us or PGI having to worry about the effect of new content in the future (like, say, the the Blood Asp).

I agree with most of your post but this part is lore not PGI.

(Pulled from Sarna.net)
Despite their benefits in flexibility and maintenance, OmniMechs have distinct limitations in regard to cost and logistics. OmniMechs are not fully modular. An OmniMech's structural components (its engine, internal structure, armor and any equipment installed on the base chassis of OmniMech) are "hard-wired" and cannot be modified outside of a total redesign of the 'Mech.^[30] While customization of these components is theoretically possible in the field, it is avoided as it hard-wires all the 'Mechs components and effectively transforms the OmniMech into a standard BattleMech. While they can be considered structural components, the lower-arm and hand actuators are themselves Pod-mounted and easily removed to provide additional Pod Space in the arms. However, the mounting points for them in the arms are also utilized by larger bore weaponry such as Gauss Rifles, Autocannons, and PPCs, so the lower-arm and hand must be removed to carry these weapon types on OmniMech arms, hampering the close-combat abilities of these configurations.^[8]

Sorry loss of lower arm and hand actuators is Lore not PGI.

Edited by Ashvins, 06 July 2015 - 04:31 PM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Sjorpha, you do realize that the low tech faction in the BTech universe is the Inner Sphere, right, and that the Clans SO overpowered them that the only reason the Clans didn't take over the entire Inner Sphere is Plot Device, right? The GAME, the actual TT game, has them so OP that there's no way for the Inner Sphere to win. We did the Tukayyid Battles, ComStar lost, lost so badly that it wasn't funny. FASA simply wrote it differently because...pick a reason, it doesn't matter, FASA said it was so, that's all. Even in the novels that's what was happening, the Clans were simply roflstomping the IS until, suddenly, ComStar is able to stop them!

You don't like the upgrade system, fine, you aren't the majority, and they've spoken repeatedly with other games doing quite well using upgrade systems, including WoT, which is where PGI has stated they draw most of their design plans from, so guess what? It ain't going anywhere, it's a proven attraction and it creates revenue, and that's what matters.

[Sjorpha]

Kristov Kerensky, on 06 July 2015 - 07:29 PM, said:

Sjorpha, you do realize that the low tech faction in the BTech universe is the Inner Sphere, right, and that the Clans SO overpowered them that the only reason the Clans didn't take over the entire Inner Sphere is Plot Device, right? The GAME, the actual TT game, has them so OP that there's no way for the Inner Sphere to win. We did the Tukayyid Battles, ComStar lost, lost so badly that it wasn't funny. FASA simply wrote it differently because...pick a reason, it doesn't matter, FASA said it was so, that's all. Even in the novels that's what was happening, the Clans were simply roflstomping the IS until, suddenly, ComStar is able to stop them!

Yes I realise they did such an incredibly bad design decision with their implementation of clans that they had to brute force the history writing without a single shred of credibility.

A perfect example of the kind of thing that newer iterations of an IP should fix. That is why you make new versions of games, to improve on the old ones and correct mistakes.

Quote

You don't like the upgrade system, fine, you aren't the majority, and they've spoken repeatedly with other games doing quite well using upgrade systems, including WoT, which is where PGI has stated they draw most of their design plans from, so guess what? It ain't going anywhere, it's a proven attraction and it creates revenue, and that's what matters.

I think claims about what "the majority" likes or not are problematic for two reasons. First it is very hard to know what the majority likes, and second the majority may not be good at knowing what it is asking for or for making the right decision.

Democracy is not a good path for obtaining quality in creative work, I know this very well since I work in the film industry. If you want to create a product that many people like, the way to do it is counterintuitively NOT to look at what many people like, but to follow the creative vision of a very good artist or small creative team all the way.

Another problem is that there IS no upgrade system in MWO.

WoT, Robocraft and so on has proper upgrade systems where you climb tiers as you upgrade. It's not my favourite solution but it works because the different tiers make every upgrade on the way actually playable in it's given level of the game.

MWO, in contrast, has no tech progression over time. What is has is good options, bad options and completely obselete options, all existing in the same "tier". You don't progress from single heatsinks to double, you simply pay the cbill tax as a hidden cost to make some of the mechs playable, that is bad game design because it is essentially non-content.

There are two solutions to this, either create a proper upgrade system where players progress in tech over time and climb tiers in the matchmaker as they do, which would require a complete redesign of the game, or you keep everything in the same tier and make all options useful.

The least you should do if you want to contest my position is to explain how you would make all content in the game, like SHS, meaningful in some way or the other. Your position may be that R&R would accomplish this, and I have disputed that earlier, if you want to continue that line of argument you can go back to my answer about R&R and explain why you think I'm wrong about that.

[Sir Wulfrick]

Mystere, on 02 July 2015 - 02:22 PM, said:

Well OK, but not really. All I'm talking about would be moving the time line forwards to counter-invasion + say 2 years, by which time most elite mercenary units have a good stock of salvaged clan tech, and the invading clans would also have access to ample IS tech. Wouldn't be anything not supported by lore.

Grey Ghost, on 03 July 2015 - 11:43 PM, said:

Lawl, does that include those sweet 7crit Endo/FF and free CASE all over the Mechs?

No. Maybe I should have clarified: I'm not talking about omni-pods, just weapons, ECM & BAP units and heat sinks.