Scout Derek, on 10 September 2015 - 06:47 AM, said:
I've been hearing talk that the game is really unbalanced, and talk has come down to arguments about what it should be and what should not.
So I've taken it upon myself to ask you:
If Mechwarrior: Online is not balanced, then which previous Mechwarrior title was?
It's hard not to use other game titles such as this, and even similar ones (such as Hawken), but none are really ever like the Mechwarrior franchise, not similar in game mechanics, and not similar in weaponry.
But back to the question again, which Mechwarrior title was balanced if Mechwarrior Online isn't?
None of them...
BUT, that's because all the prior games, the Multiplayer was a secondary function. You primarily played Single Player in prior titles, multiplayer was a tacked on experience. A FUN tacked on experience, mind you, but tacked on none the less.
However MWO's failing is simple... it's online only, which means, to the vast majority of players, they expect balance.
You know, I fondly remember the days where, yeah sure we complained about imbalances, but if someone overused something we just kicked them... oh wait, WE CAN'T DO THAT HERE.
See here's the thing, when you get a multiplayer game like this, you have two choices, you either 1: Support dedicated servers were players can run the game on their own. or 2)Have to play by "THE COMPANY'S RULES."
In event 1, the playerbase govern's itself... if something is seen as OP, modderators or mod bots are put in place to keep an eye on the server to look for that broken mechanic being exploited and then action is taken. The problem with this style of multiplayer is that you easily fracture the playerbase, as some servers will decide on very, very odd rulesets [see CoD:WaW's "Tatctical crouch only" servers.] or Battlefield's no explosive servers. However, I feel the gameplay experience can be overall better with this kind of system in place.
Event 2... you're beholden to the company that owns the game to make the ruleset and to enforce it... which means if you have a slow moving company, and fast moving playerbase... exploits happen, and then get abused for long portions of the game's life [see the current situation we have.] On the positive side, you get no strange ruleset's that are counter to the game's intention [see the cod reference above] but on the negative, the playerbase has no way to police itself, and you are beholden entirely to the company to move to make balance adjustments... that could have easily been programmed into a server browser.
So there's good, and bad on both sides... I prefer option 1, which allows the most freedom [3025 era dedicated servers would be amazing!] but instead we get option 2, which leaves us beholden to a slow to act company in regards to "Balance"