Steinar Bergstol, on 29 August 2015 - 11:20 AM, said:
The problem isn't effective. The problem is when something is _so_ effective it basically breaks the system and the intent behind the system. This is not a new thing in gaming. It's not exclusive to Battletech or Mechwarrior by a long shot and has probably pretty much been a thing since the first cavemen competed to throw sticks or stones the farthest and one of them refused to play with anything other than the most aerodynamic stick or stone possible. It's not that one part is worse at the game than another, it's rather different opinions on what constitutes fair and sportsmanlike play. The pick-a-random-stone-off-the-ground caveman might feel one should rely only on ones own innate abilities and do well no matter the quality of the stone while the aerodynamic-or-bust caveman feels that only the best equipment should be used because anything less is limiting your natural abilities. The two are both valid philosophies in their own right, but they have never and will never play well together because to one side one is a numbercrunching l33t tryhard who'd murder the intent of the rules for an advantage while the "tryhard" sees the other side as idiot traditionalists who wouldn't know a good idea if it bit them. The problem, basically, arises when you mix the two and expect them to play with eachother in a way both will approve of.
It's exactly this.
In most Tabletop games, the Game Master has a counter to this problem: GM Perogotive. IE they can dictate what is, and what is not, allowed at their table.
See, GM's tend to be the exact same kind of number crunching tryhards that they often have to deal with. And I don't exactly mean this in a bad way, see to be a proper GM, you have to know ALL the in's and outs of a given system. To know the RAW [Rules As Written] readings of the rules, and to adjust those accordingly to what fits for the campaign/game you're attempting to offer your players.
The problem in a game like MWO, is that, the rules function as RAW rules... or Rules as Written... Rules as Written, are INSANELY exploitable. As an example let's use battletech's build rules.
By Battletech's build rules, mechs function essentially like gun-bags... you have an empty chassis, and you can put whatever you what, wherever you want, so long as you have the critical space within the mech to hold it, and the engine to power the mech.[I'm simplifying a little bit, but you get the picture here] So that means, that you could take the basic chassis of a hunchback 4G, remove the AC20 and lasers, and replace the lasers with machine guns and the AC20 with a PPC if you wanted. And there's pretty much 0 rules in the basic ruleset that say otherwise. And with the advanced rules of Battletech, it would be a very, very costly change, due to having to reconfigure the hunch to house the PPC and route ammo feeds to the Machine Guns which would require a ton of internal work for your tech. HOWEVER, with the Rules as Written, there's nothing stopping you from slamming a small engine and 2 gauss rifles on a Hunchback.
What WILL stop a player from doing this however, is the GM looking at the idea behind the build, and smacking said player upside the head for trying to game the system. As clearly, that's so far outside the base concept of what a Hunchback is made for that it hurts.
We don't have that control here in MWO... PGI makes the game, they are essentially the GM for all intents, however they're running their game RAW because they've homebrewed the rules... and we players, have found the exploits in the rules, namely the build system... and since PGI doesn't want to toss in sized hardpoints [which would help reign in the idea's behind some builds], Then the players are free to make obscene laser light's and PPFLD heavy's and Assaults.
It all boils down to the "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." argument I've been having with people here since closed beta... I mean hell, think of the Awesome battlemech. Even in 3051, it's considered one of the more dangerous battlemechs because it mounts 3 ppc's and the heatsinks to use those 3 ppc's at a fairly regular pace, it's firing ability of 3, 3, 2 [3 turns, 2 with full ppc's, and one with only 2] before going heat neutral, was devastating, and very few heavy's mount 2 ppc's [cheif among these being the Warhammer and Marauder battlemechs].
I'm not saying we should be all playing stock mechs, but I do think that we ARE given too much freedom in how we build, especially in regards to battlemechs. Clan Omni's are another issue entirely.
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