772 replies to this topic

[beerandasmoke]

MechWarrior James, on 11 September 2015 - 06:28 PM, said:

Aff, just like the previous Timber Wolf and Stormcrow nerfs.

Those nerfs were rolled back. So I take it you agree this balance pass is probably not a good idea?

[Richter Kerensky]

wanderer, on 11 September 2015 - 06:09 PM, said:

Sure they will.

Just not against Clantech.

Which, honestly is as it should be.

No, it isn't.

[MischiefSC]

How to make IW roles useful and viable:

1. They need to be game-altering effective. As in the presence or absence of a well managed IW presence can be a deciding factor (just like a well build direct fire combat mech) in a match, regardless of skill level of players or context of the match. As in pug queue, group or CW.

2. They need to be integrated into a useful combat mech. We are 12v12. Anything that requires a mech to either go off from its group or be significantly inferior to a combat mech is bad. Regardless of who detects who every match is decided by robbits shooting other robbits. It's going to be decided by fighting, not who detected who first.

3. It's a lot more than paperdolls and detection range. It's about actually useful intel and both identifying (and obscuring) the actually useful info on the field.

How that could look:

Give us new components. I get that it's not lore but if you want IW in a 12v12 moba game it needs to be in the context of being integrated into murderballs and combat-oriented. Maybe have them take up the ECM slot, or even AMS slot or something.

1. Detection Array: Have it weigh 2 tons per mech class, so 2 tons for lights and 8 for assaults. Individual mech quirks can change that. Detection Array automatically locks every mech in 360 degrees of LoS. It's like being a walking UAV. Have it counted by ECM to prevent missile locks but still provide doritos to their team. This would be an actually powerful and useful IW tool.

2. ECCM: If you have this loaded then it disables ECM or Detection Array or any other EW setup on whatever mech you have targeted. Give is a 400m range or the like.

3. Have mech quirks and modules that let mechs with Detection Array do things like provide their whole team bonuses on target retention as well as benefits to using TAG or NARC and such.

THAT would be IW tools that would be useful. That'd be worth sacrificing tonnage for and actually provide a relevant impact on a match to offset a reduction in firepower.

[Richter Kerensky]

"Targeting faster or slower" is made basically irrelevant in a world where ECM exists in its current form. Considering it as a major prong of balance considerations is very silly with the game as it is currently designed.

MischiefSC, on 11 September 2015 - 06:44 PM, said:

How to make IW roles useful and viable:

1. They need to be game-altering effective. As in the presence or absence of a well managed IW presence can be a deciding factor (just like a well build direct fire combat mech) in a match, regardless of skill level of players or context of the match. As in pug queue, group or CW.

2. They need to be integrated into a useful combat mech. We are 12v12. Anything that requires a mech to either go off from its group or be significantly inferior to a combat mech is bad. Regardless of who detects who every match is decided by robbits shooting other robbits. It's going to be decided by fighting, not who detected who first.

3. It's a lot more than paperdolls and detection range. It's about actually useful intel and both identifying (and obscuring) the actually useful info on the field.

How that could look:

Give us new components. I get that it's not lore but if you want IW in a 12v12 moba game it needs to be in the context of being integrated into murderballs and combat-oriented. Maybe have them take up the ECM slot, or even AMS slot or something.

1. Detection Array: Have it weigh 2 tons per mech class, so 2 tons for lights and 8 for assaults. Individual mech quirks can change that. Detection Array automatically locks every mech in 360 degrees of LoS. It's like being a walking UAV. Have it counted by ECM to prevent missile locks but still provide doritos to their team. This would be an actually powerful and useful IW tool.

2. ECCM: If you have this loaded then it disables ECM or Detection Array or any other EW setup on whatever mech you have targeted. Give is a 400m range or the like.

3. Have mech quirks and modules that let mechs with Detection Array do things like provide their whole team bonuses on target retention as well as benefits to using TAG or NARC and such.

THAT would be IW tools that would be useful. That'd be worth sacrificing tonnage for and actually provide a relevant impact on a match to offset a reduction in firepower.

This makes a fair bit of sense, the only way "information warfare" would make sense as any kind of balancing statistic is if the best enemy detection methods in the game weren't weightless modules any mech can equip.

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 11 September 2015 - 06:47 PM.

[Overlord Neb]

We need weapons quirks too! That and the fact that most of these are actually nerfs for IS. This is in no way acceptable. You are removing most of the quirks that made some mechs unique! This needs to go back to the drawing board NOW.

Even though some things are nice like the Atlas Structure buffs. It's still not good enough! Even mechs that aren't supposed to be super weapon boats still need some weapon quirks. You were finally pushing the game the way we needed it to swing. But this undoes ALL OF THAT. It's unacceptable and needs to go in the other direction.

[Brazo Izquierdo de Muerte]

Sounds like to me in a way they are going with Battle values. And to the guy asking about the 40 to 45 ton mech advantage In most of the lore they figured up tonnage totals and then would figure who would win generally the force with the most tonnage won but not always. but yes a 45 ton should beat a 40 in most cases.

[wanderer]

MischiefSC, on 11 September 2015 - 06:34 PM, said:

In this thread we already see why in actual tabletop BT everyone really hated the Clan diehards. Clans were balanced for PvE, not PvP. Nobody ever took IS vs Clan seriously on TT for PvP. It was never balanced, ever. Use the magical Google and look at forums from 7-12 years ago when Battletech Tournaments were still a thing. It was always Clan players trying to justify having stupidly OP and unbalanced gear while playing against people to run suicide redshirts against them so they could be guaranteed a win and pretend it was them being good and not just utterly broken.

Actually, they're still a thing. It gradually got reined in between rules fixes and BV balancing to the point where only the most heinously broken (in IS or Clantech) stuff exists only in the realms of customizeable supercheese.

Quote

IS vs Clans worked as PvE. The GM would run the opposite side and use magic plot armor and artificial balancing to keep games fun and challenging. The Lore in no way, shape or form will ever work in that regard for a FPS PvP game. It's like saying you want a game where one group of players is playing members of the pre-Clone Wars Jedi Council and the other team is all supposed to play scrub tier battle-droids. 'No, that's fair and balanced, there's so many of you!' Everyone will want to play the Jedi and you'll never get the huge number of players willing to repeatedly play the battledroids being slaughtered in the hopes of scoring a lucky shot.

Oddly enough, I'm one of those IS vs Clan PvP types- usually on the IS side, though I did manage to end up in an epic act of up-yours many years ago just to show that no cheese is truly unbreakable, once they fixed a few rules. As it turns out, given a numerical advantage, Clanners showed a critical flaw- there's only so much damage any given chassis of X weight can take, and if your opponent can keep you pinned on the map, he'll smash your high-tech ubermech into scrap metal. If he gets in with that numerical advantage, odds are he'll even kill you and not be killed back if you were smart enough to use seriously damaged units as initiative sinks.

One vs. one, Clanners were (and are) superior by equivalent weight, and it took BV (and a little bit of tactics) to get things much more in shape. Modern TT is more a game of positioning- if the Clanner can engage opponents 1v1 and exploit his superior reach, he wins. If the IS player can get close enough to negate it, the odds slightly favor the Clanner. If the IS player can get 2+ units in reach of the Clanner and he can't get away, he loses.

The key is "numerical superiority", and it's something the MWO matchmaking system isn't doing. CW is 48vs48 rather than, say 30vs48.

Quote

That's never going to happen, should never happen and fortunately PGI has said it will never happen, because it's an idea that is not just bad but is embarrassing to see people suggest.

Clan vs. IS in TT is a wildcat vs. a brace of dogs. That cat will shred any given dog if given the chance, but if the dogs are packed up, it's a treed kitty or it's dogmeat.

[InRev]

Kmieciu, on 11 September 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

This guy has 20 forum posts, yet has better understanding of MWO's mechanics than the "so called" lead designer...

To be fair, at this point I think it's obvious that even a potato would have a better understanding of MWO's mechanics . . .

Edited by InRev, 11 September 2015 - 06:52 PM.

[Richter Kerensky]

On top of that, removing weapons quirks from the IS side just makes every single IS mech inferior to every single Clan mech in every way that matters. Did you guys bump your head? The whole reason you put in quirks in the first place was to make IS weapons, which on the whole, are heavier, take up more slots and deal less damage than their Clan counterparts, competitive with Clan weapons. No amount of saying a Spider has Five Stars In Infotech is going to make up for that.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

no clan mech can sow chaos like a spider

[beerandasmoke]

MischiefSC, on 11 September 2015 - 06:44 PM, said:

How to make IW roles useful and viable:

1. They need to be game-altering effective. As in the presence or absence of a well managed IW presence can be a deciding factor (just like a well build direct fire combat mech) in a match, regardless of skill level of players or context of the match. As in pug queue, group or CW.

2. They need to be integrated into a useful combat mech. We are 12v12. Anything that requires a mech to either go off from its group or be significantly inferior to a combat mech is bad. Regardless of who detects who every match is decided by robbits shooting other robbits. It's going to be decided by fighting, not who detected who first.

3. It's a lot more than paperdolls and detection range. It's about actually useful intel and both identifying (and obscuring) the actually useful info on the field.

How that could look:

Give us new components. I get that it's not lore but if you want IW in a 12v12 moba game it needs to be in the context of being integrated into murderballs and combat-oriented. Maybe have them take up the ECM slot, or even AMS slot or something.

1. Detection Array: Have it weigh 2 tons per mech class, so 2 tons for lights and 8 for assaults. Individual mech quirks can change that. Detection Array automatically locks every mech in 360 degrees of LoS. It's like being a walking UAV. Have it counted by ECM to prevent missile locks but still provide doritos to their team. This would be an actually powerful and useful IW tool.

2. ECCM: If you have this loaded then it disables ECM or Detection Array or any other EW setup on whatever mech you have targeted. Give is a 400m range or the like.

3. Have mech quirks and modules that let mechs with Detection Array do things like provide their whole team bonuses on target retention as well as benefits to using TAG or NARC and such.

THAT would be IW tools that would be useful. That'd be worth sacrificing tonnage for and actually provide a relevant impact on a match to offset a reduction in firepower.

Im on board with the whole Light thing. However you would have to seperate the brawlers from the scouts. Firestarters and Cheetahs would not get a bonus but a Raven or MistLynx would. Otherwise no one would take either of those mechs since they could have more firepower with a starter or cheetah.

[wanderer]

Richter Kerensky, on 11 September 2015 - 06:44 PM, said:

No, it isn't.

Yes, it is. Clantech should never have been "balanced" 1:1 with IS 'Mechs to begin with. From the ground up, Clan 'Mechs in TT were meant to be superior.

Short of turning them into Inner Sphere designs with fancy new skins, you'll never properly balance them that way short of destroying them entirely. Clan 'Mechs should be considered worth more for purposes of the matchmaker or CW than their raw weight and the game adjusted accordingly.

[Kiiyor]

MechaNagato, on 11 September 2015 - 06:54 PM, said:

no clan mech can sow chaos like a spider

Er... there's an Arctic Cheetah raising it's robot eyebrow at you quizzically from atop a pile of eviscerated Spiders.

[MischiefSC]

Richter Kerensky, on 11 September 2015 - 06:50 PM, said:

"Targeting faster or slower" is made basically irrelevant in a world where ECM exists in its current form. Considering it as a major prong of balance considerations is very silly with the game as it is currently designed.



This makes a fair bit of sense, the only way "information warfare" would make sense as any kind of balancing statistic is if the best enemy detection methods in the game weren't weightless modules any mech can equip.

OH. A new component -

There needs to be a component (not module, tonnage based component) that lets you lock a target and eliminate the benefits of Radar Derp. There needs to be a component light mechs can take that blocks Seismic if the mech also has ECM equipped. So your Commando 2D could give up 2 or 3 tons, a painful sacrifice, but auto-target-lock everything in LoS and remove the benfits of ECM, Seismic and Radar Derp on anything they have target locked or is within its ECM bubble (which maybe gets a range buff with certain modules).

So in context of a drop deck you have a couple people with Raven 'IW' or take a Commando IW build and take a Marauder (oh so sexeh) instead of a Thudder in their deck. Something like that would be *worth* the reduction in firepower.

The current stuff? No. Not even close.

[beerandasmoke]

wanderer, on 11 September 2015 - 06:56 PM, said:

Yes, it is. Clantech should never have been "balanced" 1:1 with IS 'Mechs to begin with. From the ground up, Clan 'Mechs in TT were meant to be superior.

Short of turning them into Inner Sphere designs with fancy new skins, you'll never properly balance them that way short of destroying them entirely. Clan 'Mechs should be considered worth more for purposes of the matchmaker or CW than their raw weight and the game adjusted accordingly.

So what do we do in the current system? Possibly bump people up running the unholy trinity a tier perhaps? Then again if a guys already tier1 what would he care. Maybe assign a value too him in the matchmaker where he has to carry harder if he runs a timber?

Edited by beerandasmoke, 11 September 2015 - 07:02 PM.

[MischiefSC]

wanderer, on 11 September 2015 - 06:51 PM, said:

Actually, they're still a thing. It gradually got reined in between rules fixes and BV balancing to the point where only the most heinously broken (in IS or Clantech) stuff exists only in the realms of customizeable supercheese.



Oddly enough, I'm one of those IS vs Clan PvP types- usually on the IS side, though I did manage to end up in an epic act of up-yours many years ago just to show that no cheese is truly unbreakable, once they fixed a few rules. As it turns out, given a numerical advantage, Clanners showed a critical flaw- there's only so much damage any given chassis of X weight can take, and if your opponent can keep you pinned on the map, he'll smash your high-tech ubermech into scrap metal. If he gets in with that numerical advantage, odds are he'll even kill you and not be killed back if you were smart enough to use seriously damaged units as initiative sinks.

One vs. one, Clanners were (and are) superior by equivalent weight, and it took BV (and a little bit of tactics) to get things much more in shape. Modern TT is more a game of positioning- if the Clanner can engage opponents 1v1 and exploit his superior reach, he wins. If the IS player can get close enough to negate it, the odds slightly favor the Clanner. If the IS player can get 2+ units in reach of the Clanner and he can't get away, he loses.

The key is "numerical superiority", and it's something the MWO matchmaking system isn't doing. CW is 48vs48 rather than, say 30vs48.



Clan vs. IS in TT is a wildcat vs. a brace of dogs. That cat will shred any given dog if given the chance, but if the dogs are packed up, it's a treed kitty or it's dogmeat.

None of which translates to FPS PvP MOBA sort of environment. Plus that only worked with pre-measured drop-decks between people who knew each other and were playing for fun. It never worked in tournaments. You couldn't/wouldn't skew matches when playing with your friends or they wouldn't play with you. You got balanced matches if everyone involved agreed on all the rules and you trusted the other people were playing for fun with you. Never worked in tournaments and it would never, ever work in this sort of environment.

You're never, ever going to get the significant majority of players to want to play the redshirt scrubs. If you're going to match 12v10 or 12v8 then you need 20-40% more players queuing up for IS than Clans. Will never happen. Second there would be no way to get skill level parity, everyone would be working their way into Clan mechs so they could be the OP side crushing scrubs and not the scrubs being crushed.

You'd need 70% of players at any given time being the inferior IS tech being stomped (even if they manage to win in the end with greater losses). That or Clan players only get to take lights and mediums, since if you're keeping 12v12 but balancing by 'value' (related to tonnage) all IS players need to take heavies/assaults and Clans all lights/mediums.

The idea is terrible for this sort of environment. It was terrible for BT PvP and catered to the worst sort of PvE mentality ('I'm teh uber heroz, only hordes of enemies bring me down!') and is even worse for this sort of environment.

[TLBFestus]

Information warefare getting nearly anything like equal importance is a waste of time, given the map sizes, deathball tactics, and Time to Kill as it exists now.

Look at it this way;

Speed: dozens of engines to choose from and mech chasis
Firepower: literally hundreds of options and thousands of combinations
Movement: many engines, multiple amounts of torso twist and twist speeds.

Information Warfare: ECM, ECM jamming, BAP, TAGm UAV. That's it.

Information Warfare has been ignored for so long that it's now rather pointless except for ECM coverage.

Too little, too late.

[Elizander]

Unless high levels of sensors can target and get info on ECM-protected mechs at certain ranges then I don't think the sensor changes will do much.

[Brazo Izquierdo de Muerte]

The thing is most people don't understand is there is really no good way to balance Clan with IS in a game and not piss some ppl off. The easiest option would be to just wipe the IS out . Or run 8 on 12 matches with the clan being the 8.

How ever with that being said, mech warrior always has been a simulator, to many play this like its an FPS and they are about to get a rude awakening.

Edited by Alisyn Chaynes, 11 September 2015 - 07:09 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

The Summoner Prime -30% torso twist speed is bogus and unwarranted. It needs to be revoked, immediately. If anything, it deserves a BUFF to twist speed.