111 replies to this topic

[Bloody]

ermm in strict terms , yes the old MW titles were more " balanced". BUt in terms of balanced it just meant that players could play whatever they wanted to far less restrictions and it created all kinds of optimized frankenmechs. But it was balanced, because all builds were allowed and players adapted as they had to. Kinda like RL really, i mean you either got with what works or you were killed and no one cared about the dead or the crying afterwards. Was it better? no, probably not. Was it fun? sure, but it certainly was not progressive. Did it allow for diverse builds? No, not really, certain weapon / playstyle choices were far superior than to the romantic brawl style.

[Bilbo]

Bloody, on 19 October 2015 - 03:21 PM, said:

ermm in strict terms , yes the old MW titles were more " balanced". BUt in terms of balanced it just meant that players could play whatever they wanted to far less restrictions and it created all kinds of optimized frankenmechs. But it was balanced, because all builds were allowed and players adapted as they had to. Kinda like RL really, i mean you either got with what works or you were killed and no one cared about the dead or the crying afterwards. Was it better? no, probably not. Was it fun? sure, but it certainly was not progressive. Did it allow for diverse builds? No, not really, certain weapon / playstyle choices were far superior than to the romantic brawl style.

What you describe is as far from balanced as I can possibly imagine.

[Roadkill]

TWIAFU, on 19 October 2015 - 02:26 PM, said:

My first drop in them was in Chicago, North Pier. Yours?

System 3: Walnut Creek Virtual World, 1995, ~5 total missions
Tesla (aka v.4): Seattle, Wizards of the Coast Game Center, 1997-ish, ~2300 missions
Tesla II (aka v.5): Kirkland, The Airlock, 2009-ish, ~1500 missions

IIRC, 14 Picards, 7 Teslas, 6 Bells, 14 Burtons all in version 4. Never could pass in the Owens or Kotori, and never got the chance to try in the Zanin Neko or Mischief.

I have 800-900 Red Planet missions in Version 4, too.

Berserker (Dallas) had more Bells during the version 4 time frame... I think he ended up with 9 total across BT and RP. Pharaoh (aka Bite Me) also pulled off 14 Burtons, but he had the Zanin Neko and Mischief instead of my Blackhawk and Nova.

[Bloody]

that is true but will it be better? Imagine if you threw out all the weapon quriks in M:WO and then told the players you can equip your mech which whatever you want, clan or IS tech from XCL engines, Endo and clan weapons. We would end up a rather small pool of mechs and a lot of other not designed for combat type mechs with low hard points and lack of mounts discarded to the thrash because the artist concept of what they look consigned them to the thrash can.

Balancing is needs a lot of subjective review and more importantly a plan by the devs on what they want in game, if they want a diverse spread of play styles and mech chassis as well as weight choices then you must have some nerfs and quirks to compensate for the artistic design ( simply because at this point there is no way for mechs to raise their elbows above their heads ). So while i still believe PGI is doing a terrible job at balancing the game , there will always be a need for subjective review

[Slepnir]

Most balanced?

Hands down MWLL. there is no mechlab, no broken combo meta as it should be.

Additionally when the do sanctioned chaos march events balancing is done with battle value.

Also there is better terrain & damage interactions.. critical leg and damage slows you like water, blowing a leg off causes the mech to auto fall.

[Bishop Steiner]

Roadkill, on 19 October 2015 - 03:54 PM, said:

System 3: Walnut Creek Virtual World, 1995, ~5 total missions
Tesla (aka v.4): Seattle, Wizards of the Coast Game Center, 1997-ish, ~2300 missions
Tesla II (aka v.5): Kirkland, The Airlock, 2009-ish, ~1500 missions

IIRC, 14 Picards, 7 Teslas, 6 Bells, 14 Burtons all in version 4. Never could pass in the Owens or Kotori, and never got the chance to try in the Zanin Neko or Mischief.

I have 800-900 Red Planet missions in Version 4, too.

Berserker (Dallas) had more Bells during the version 4 time frame... I think he ended up with 9 total across BT and RP. Pharaoh (aka Bite Me) also pulled off 14 Burtons, but he had the Zanin Neko and Mischief instead of my Blackhawk and Nova.

man, lol, you remember that stuff way more than me, I got like 3 dozen missions in 1993, and was never able to get near a pod after. Looks like the latest are running a MW4 Mod?

[LordKnightFandragon]

Maybe no MW title was balanced, they were all mostly PVE, so it didnt matter.

Frankly, I cant wait for the day this game even hints at or releases PVE in some form or fashion.

[Bishop Steiner]

LordKnightFandragon, on 19 October 2015 - 05:05 PM, said:

Maybe no MW title was balanced, they were all mostly PVE, so it didnt matter.

Frankly, I cant wait for the day this game even hints at or releases PVE in some form or fashion.

really wish they would do that before Steam.

[Void Angel]

Bishop Steiner, on 19 October 2015 - 03:20 PM, said:

and yet virtually every FPS ever uses them.... and no, they aren't a punishment..they simply require higher skill levels to overcome.

The rest of your post, is too emotionally charged for me to touch, as emotion overrides reason.

Sorry. The game is what it is. Pretending otherwise, white knight or black, is just silly.

The changes people keep pushing aren't going to happen, it will never be a SimLite. It's a FPS with a really super simplified targeting system.

If addressing that as the reality is being snide, etc, whatever.

"Every FPS ever?" Please.

Plus, your attitude is snide - there's no getting around that, or hiding in "well, text doesn't deliver emotional content well." Nor playing dishonest little ad hominem games - everything you say is snidely pessimistic. Your posts in this thread drip with self-pity, arrogance, and disgust. If you don't want to respond to parts of a post that weren't actually addressed to you, you can simply refrain from commenting. Resorting to passive-aggressive sophistry games where you excuse yourself because "you're just too emotional to think straight, Void" is jaw-droppingly hypocritical. If you want to avoid opinions where emotion is overriding reason, you'll have to avoid yourself.

On the other hand, thanks for agreeing with me, I guess? I did explain why the pie-in-the-sky, "it would be so easy to..." changes that the professional forum rioters are pushing won't happen - in the part of my post you hand-waved away.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Bloody, on 19 October 2015 - 03:21 PM, said:

ermm in strict terms , yes the old MW titles were more " balanced". BUt in terms of balanced it just meant that players could play whatever they wanted to far less restrictions and it created all kinds of optimized frankenmechs. But it was balanced, because all builds were allowed and players adapted as they had to. Kinda like RL really, i mean you either got with what works or you were killed and no one cared about the dead or the crying afterwards. Was it better? no, probably not. Was it fun? sure, but it certainly was not progressive. Did it allow for diverse builds? No, not really, certain weapon / playstyle choices were far superior than to the romantic brawl style.

You have actually just said they were not balanced at all. When only one small subset of builds/weapons work, and everything else is cannon fodder (cough*poptartmeta*cough,) that's a sign that those builds/weapons are much stronger than reasonable alternatives - this is not balanced.

[Bishop Steiner]

Void Angel, on 19 October 2015 - 05:31 PM, said:

"Every FPS ever?" Please.

Plus, your attitude is snide - there's no getting around that, or hiding in "well, text doesn't deliver emotional content well." Nor playing dishonest little ad hominem games - everything you say is snidely pessimistic. Your posts in this thread drip with self-pity, arrogance, and disgust. If you don't want to respond to parts of a post that weren't actually addressed to you, you can simply refrain from commenting. Resorting to passive-aggressive sophistry games where you excuse yourself because "you're just too emotional to think straight, Void" is jaw-droppingly hypocritical. If you want to avoid opinions where emotion is overriding reason, you'll have to avoid yourself.

On the other hand, thanks for agreeing with me, I guess? I did explain why the pie-in-the-sky, "it would be so easy to..." changes that the professional forum rioters are pushing won't happen - in the part of my post you hand-waved away.

Are you getting enough sleep?


You have actually just said they were not balanced at all. When only one small subset of builds/weapons work, and everything else is cannon fodder (cough*poptartmeta*cough,) that's a sign that those builds/weapons are much stronger than reasonable alternatives - this is not balanced.

got an easy solution for ya Void.... just place me on your ignore list, never have to hear my "snideness" again. Wouldn't want to damage your apparently delicate sensibilities. I'll make it even easier by putting you on mine.

SMH.

[Void Angel]

Again with the hypocritical ad hominem nonsense. Go to sleep. You'll be smarter in the morning. Good grief.

[Bishop Steiner]

Void Angel, on 19 October 2015 - 05:46 PM, said:

Again with the hypocritical ad hominem nonsense. Go to sleep. You'll be smarter in the morning. Good grief.

Whatever you say, whatever you say. Enjoy your soapbox.

[Tarl Cabot]

LordKnightFandragon, on 19 October 2015 - 05:05 PM, said:

Maybe no MW title was balanced, they were all mostly PVE, so it didnt matter.

Frankly, I cant wait for the day this game even hints at or releases PVE in some form or fashion.

About the closest one could come to balance would be the first two MPBT games, with MPBT Solaris (second out of the three) but that would have been due to no mechlab. The first one, GEnie EGA 3025, was primarily PVE with the occassion PVP on Solaris but with that being rare, nothing major needed to be done.

Alphas happened but weapons did not fire all at the same time, they would cycle down, fire 1/2/3/4/5/6 rapidly. All weapons were hitscan, even the LRM/SRMs but their damage would be spread out in groupings. Head armor was increased, destroy one leg and a mech fell down, ya had to stand back up, destroy BOTH legs and a mech could either use alternate viewpoints to fire arm mounted weapons up/down/left/right sides. People learned to torso twist like there was no tomorrow. Primarily flat terrain so there was no real hill humping. Formations were used, Echelon left/right, head at this degree at this speed, fire long range weapons and fade back, primary target called. Jump jets WORKED!!!!.

When the game first went live the House Leaders and community had in place no heading/legging, this was before tweaks were made to make it more difficult for headshots and and leg destruction kept the mech flat on the ground, unable to do anything. That lasted for a few years until cockpits and legs became fair game again. When everything became fair game, not only the tactics but also the mechs that were being used changed.

MPBT 3025 was not online long enough for things to come to a head, but it being a MW4:merc clone, it had the issues of firing an alpha and everything hitting the same pixel (shudders). For it being a purely PVP environment (no AIs yet) even running with stock mechs it would have had similar issues as MWO but it was closed down, along with all the other non-inhouse EA games, but it came to a head.

If MWLL had introduced its mechlab, it would be facing similar issues. Of all the previous games, MWLL and MWO would have been in the same boat. MWLL would likely have had to make other changes, just as MWO had done and will likely continue to do. It is difficult to translate the boardgame to a simulation/FPS, PGI has already made some major changes and hopefully they will continue to do so.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 19 October 2015 - 06:15 PM.

[Dakkss]

Void Angel, on 19 October 2015 - 05:46 PM, said:

Again with the hypocritical ad hominem nonsense. Go to sleep. You'll be smarter in the morning. Good grief.

lol wut. You're the one who keeps berating Bishop for everything he says and how he says it seemingly just because you don't agree with him.


I forgot about MW:LL. I liked that probably the most for online play because it kept a lot of the simulator-features of the old MW games that MWO ignores like weapon recoil, weapon impact, collisions, stackpoling, rear cameras/searchlights, and lots of other things that make MechWarrior what it is. A Mech Combat Sim, not a twitch point-and-click.

Edited by Dak Darklighter, 19 October 2015 - 06:19 PM.

[Nightshade24]

Night Thastus, on 10 September 2015 - 07:26 AM, said:

Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries was EXCELLENT!

It did have what some other's mentioned, that lighter 'Mechs were really not worth it, but it was tons of fun. LRM's were useful in combat, SRM's caused enemy 'Mechs to overheat, and lasers were pretty decent. I felt it was pretty balanced.

Are you kidding? The meta in multiplayer was popstart extreme. You see people in highlanders , gladiatiors, kodiaks, etc, mounting as much ER PPC's, ER large lasers, and Clan gauss as they can fit, jumpjets, ecm if able, and have a half ton of armour able to do between 50 to 70 points of alpha... for you guys in MW: O... all previous MW games (or at least MW4) had no armour inflations, an atlas would get around 50 front (or in MW: O who shared front and back... about 60?) in the CT... the only thing preventing 1 shot kills was a MW4 mechanics that puts it on the last 1 health on structure waiting for a 2nd shot...
I should also mention anything not a 90 tonner or smaller would get hit so hard that if they didn't die, it would force there mech into the ground literally and leaves you exposed for a 2nd shot for like 5 seconds or so...

Also I should say tonnage creep is very high for MW4, as soon as you get 8 assault mechs (enough for 1 person each to have an assault in your company) you will never use ligjt, medium, or heavies ever again unless it's solaris which forces lights only, mediums only, heavies only, assaults only, and mixed... and to get to the higher chassi syou need to already have to get X ammount of wins in the lighter catagories...
Even on missions where heavies would be better on paper such as escort missions... I still won every mission in MW: O using an atlas,fafnir, direwolf, or kodiak that is applicable and in instant action I could solo the missiosn that in campaign you would never have time to get...

Clan tech creep is also high... ER PPC has flat out better over IS PPC, Clan gauss is flat out superior to IS Gauss and IS light gauss only advantage is more range for less damage for same tonnage. Clan LRM's was 50% or more lighter then IS LRM's... etc...
it's always a race for best clan tech in MW4... Even in solaris... you see ALL of the named people there with their custom mech with clan tech with some IS exclusive stuff, ranging from a catapult C1 with 1 clan er large laser and 1 IS x-pulse large laser... or a fafnir with 2 clan er large lasers and 2 heavy gauss... or alexh eight with a mauler with 6 UAC 2... or alice newkirks direwolf with 6 UAC 5... etc... AI's creep for clan tech and so do you normally...



And last but not least the Clan ER large laser... it was very OP in MW4 vengence and mercs... it had one of the best damage to ton ratios as well as damage to heat ratios and huge range...
It makes nearly every weapon obsolete as it has better DPS, HPS, Range, etc... the Clan ER large pulse laser had slightly better stats besides 1 thing: it's a pure DPS weapon, in MW4 the pulse laser was well... more pulsy-, it shot 3 damage per shot but had very high rate of fire... it was very hot though especially compared to it's ER large laser friend.

This weapon is the go-to weapon in campaign for any MW4 title... it was common enough to spam as well as have on many mechs... Ghosts or what MW: O players call poptarters is not practical in campaign so ER large laser spam often goes there...



However when we are talking about mektek version of MW: O... that's a completely different story... they increase RoF for many IS weapons to make DPS there advantage and also added new weapons to fill gaps and nerfed the ER large pulse laser and made IS LRM's much more lighter as well as give IS the option to have explosive LRM 20's and Incendiary SRM's replacing the regular SRM's (same tons, slots, damage, but now does lots of heat damage)...


MW4:M Mektek version however is still far from as balanced as MW: O.... vastly improved to the older MW titles but not that much to the newest ones... should mention that scouting, spotting, recon, EW, etc is non-existant in MW: 4...



Re-reading your comment. It feels like you are not familiar with vanilla MW4 at all...
SRM's didn't do heat before mektek... and LRM usefullness is questionable. Can't indirect fire in MW4 and also does less damage then it should... only minor ammount but still... also LAMS takes out virtually all LRM 5 and 10's... even if you spammed say 15 of them it will take virtually all out due to the mechanic.... However I must say the LRM's direct power is what I feel clan LRM's should be like in MW: O...


Edit: not targeted at you, targeted at MW4: mercs... sorry if I sound abrasive/ aggressive... recent stress hasn't really made me a nice person lately...

Edited by Nightshade24, 19 October 2015 - 07:03 PM.

[CptGier]

Tarl Cabot, on 19 October 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

If MWLL had introduced its mechlab, it would be facing similar issues. Of all the previous games, MWLL and MWO would have been in the same boat. MWLL would likely have had to make other changes, just as MWO had done and will likely continue to do. It is difficult to translate the boardgame to a simulation/FPS, PGI has already made some major changes and hopefully they will continue to do so.

Neverwinter nights translated a boardgame into a PC game, its actually pretty fun. While it does play out in a sorta turn based fashion, not to the extent of like Xcom or something, you can clearly see I swing, he swings, other mob swings, other mob swings, I swing.....

It seems to work pretty well.

Sure, it might not work to hot in a game like Mechwarrior, but it can be done if the devs are skilled enough.

[Void Angel]

Be very wary of assuming that anything we want from the game is denied us only by a hypothetical lack of talent and skill on the part of the developers. Many of the unfulfilled wants you see from the "hitting with the rulebook" part of the crowd aren't a matter of incompetence, but of proper design.

See, it depends on how closely you (or your intended audience) want your end product to resemble the original. Neverwinter Nights was a turn-based game dressed up to look like real-time. Everything is still based on D&D turns - other people are acting at the same time you are via the initiative system. MWO isn't like that, and so the amount of tweaking that needs to be done is much higher - and the turn-based BattleTech format is totally incompatible with an FPS. It's because the turns abstract everything you do, while the FPS format lets (and makes) you do it yourself.

Then you have the Clans: totally imbalanced hardware piloted by fantasy space elves that were superior to all but the absolute best of the best of the best of the Inner Sphere. How do you translate that into a team v. team game where population imbalances between factions can be a real problem? You can't really just use Battle Value, because then Clan Assault (and Heavy) pilots have a hard time finding berths. But if you use asymmetric team sizes to find balance, the Clans will have more appeal, hands-down: for the minority of strict lore-junkies they were thematically the best warriors with the best gear; for the competitive scene, being in the cockpit of a more powerful individual war machine seems superior to having to rely on a larger group. Even for majority, casual players, which would you rather do - drag down your betters with numbers, or stride the battlefield like a demigod, shod in endo-steel and caparisoned for war? Yes, there will be some players who choose the Inner Sphere for various reasons, but the advantages to the individual player in a Clan machine can be expected to cause a demographic shift. And hellow, match timer (anyone play Alliance PvP in vanilla WoW?)

Any attempt to outright simulate the boardgame will be detrimental to this one. This doesn't mean you should just jettison it all! But the boardgame is a starting point and thematic reference, nothing more. You don't want to make up weapons, or introduce equipment that's too outside the timeline, or deviate so far that the technology is unrecognizeable. But you do want to make a viable, balanced game first, and adhere to lore second.

[LordNothing]

Tastian, on 10 September 2015 - 06:51 AM, said:

In my personal experience, previous mechwarrior games had tonnage creep. The greater the tonnage, the greater the fire power, the greater the mech.

balance is different in single player oriented games, which many previous titles were. in single player games you want to have players climb a tech tree of sorts (mechwarrior 2 didnt really have one, they did have mission tonnage limits though). you want the late game mechs and weapons to be a bit op (of course this usually goes along with increasing difficulty). so when you did play those games in multiplayer, the heavy stuff always reigned supreme. of course to prevent everyone from running assault spam, some servers would have tonnage limits, so you could have games in other mech classes. it was crude but effective.

in multiplayer everything pretty much has to level out all the time. two mechs with equally matched pilots should be able to dual out down to 5% before one of them dies. i think pgi has made some bad decisions with things like mech tiers and quirks, and to a much lesser extent clan/is balance (its very close to almost be insignificant, and has more to do with laser vomit than clan tech). so the global re-balance is certainly going in the right direction. its gonna be closer to the kind of balence a multiplayer game should have. we might end up with the best balance ever attained in a mechwarrior title, but right now i dont see it.

ultimately comparing a (primarily) single player game to a multi game is apples to oranges. you want to enforce equality in multi while in sp you want a sense of progress throughout the game. if you employ one balence metric into the other type of game you are going to have a bad experience.

[Slepnir]

Sorry void I don't see it that way especially in MWO, striding the battlefield as a demigod with clantech, has alot less appeal when your getting your butt kicked in by superior numbers more often than not.

I trust the lore players balancing more than the casuals if they had done it right and not chased the majority of the founders away.

Especially with MWO being down 3 mechs and having heavier assets on the enemy team is a struggle to come back from even with superior clan weapons, which is what 8v5 would have been if implemented correctly.

It is also why I still find MWLL gameplay much better with the inclusion of no mechlab for balance.

[Nightshade24]

InRev, on 10 September 2015 - 07:29 AM, said:

Minor thread-jack, but for the love of Christ, stop repeating this damn myth! It has absolutely no basis in reality and yet still won't die. Inform yourselves, please! http://ftr.wot-news....1-panther-myth/ http://ftr.wot-news....-at-statistics/ Back on topic, the frustrating part of MWO is the fact that, at any given point, it's usually only a few minor adjustments away from being in a good state of balance. Maybe drop a weapon's heat by one or two here, increase projectile velocity by 10% there. That kind of thing. What tends to happen, however, is instead of frequent, iterative, and intuitive slight changes, we get infrequent but giant swings of the nerf or buff hammer which just throws everything out of whack. In other words, balance could approach perfection with tinkering, not massive meta shifts. (ofc, this ignores the state of LRMs which are just awful due to their current implementation, along with the binary nature of ECM)

Tagging along as well...

That example of the "5 sherman vs 1 panther" idealology and myth is actually a better example of the games state then you may think...

because 5 stock centurions up against 1 stock timberwolf is very harsh for the clan side... or more BT-esque, 1 star vs 2 lances (5 vs 8) or 1 star vs 3 lances/ company (5 vs 12) is also odds that may look good on paper but not practical at all... Especially in MW: O, even 2 stars and 3 lances may not work well at all (10 vs 12) as the clans are already struggling to get an edge over the IS... being out numbered may be a nail in a coffin...
One thing to mention is the TT... which at first was rought at introduction but later ironed out. IS mechs however when equipped with DHS and endo are nearly on par with clans as in some cases can annihilate clanners depending on situation... this makes MW: O complicated as all IS players stuff the best equipment on but majority of clanners do not (ie nova).

That out of the way. I should say it's an interesting read... I never bought the whole 10 vs 1 tiger situation. But I never knew the source of it all..


Also the problem with small changes is a lot of forum people are complaining that it was bad and they needed to do more per patch and that "why bother doing it 1 by 1?" like comments as these would often take slightly more time then doing whole bunch of changes... I personally wish that PGI looks around on the forums more a bit more BUT I wish more that players are more co operative and are not crying doom or bloody marry at everything and at times very toxic as the forumers often forget PGI are people too and that people have different opinions- for instance you say LRM's are bad weapons atm but every 4-6 games i have at least 1 person crying it's OP... if we buff LRM's a little bit to much (emphasis on "little") then people will cry PGI is stupid, shouldn't listen to X people or that who the hell thought it was a good idea and then we will get into a nerf/ buff swing all over again... I personally quite like LRM's but I wish clanners are more focused on direct fire then indirect to differentiate it more to IS. Cut down the arc a lot more and slightly increase speed... So the problem with doing for eg some changes you suggested is it's very hard to know what is bad or good unless it's clearly obvious it is... but then learning why it is like that is also good... for eg ithere is no doubt about it that the flamer is virutally useless. but it's very hard to point the finger and say the AC 5 is to powerful, the AC 20 is bad. or the Clan ER large laser is bad... because more or less- other people already claim it's UP or OP... or just right. That or a weapon may be rare because of ghost heat instead of it's poor range or fire rate... or maybe it's because not many mechs can use the weapon effectively (ie: not much clan mechs can be a dedicated LRM boat... or a dakka boat)