772 replies to this topic

[CainenEX]

This is FANTASTIC! I've been waiting for this and its got me all excited. I'll have to go make room on my computer for the PTS.
Once again thank you so much PGI for your involved effort in this. Truly MWO is one of the best mech games yet!

I'll be more than happy to discuss and work with others in order to help flesh out this new system so that we can deliver the best feedback possible.

[Yokaiko]

CainenEX, on 12 September 2015 - 05:15 AM, said:

This is FANTASTIC! I've been waiting for this and its got me all excited. I'll have to go make room on my computer for the PTS.
Once again thank you so much PGI for your involved effort in this. Truly MWO is one of the best mech games yet!

I'll be more than happy to discuss and work with others in order to help flesh out this new system so that we can deliver the best feedback possible.

1) Good luck, there haven'y been enough on the PTS to lunch a game for the last 6 hours (that I can tell)
2) This "balance" pass basically returns MWO to June of 2014 at the Clan invasion.

[CainenEX]

Peiper, on 12 September 2015 - 01:33 AM, said:

Regarding my statement and IraqiWalker's reaction: OP HERE
Quirks should simply make crappy mechs playable, not make them equal.

Mech Value should replace tonnage in matchmaking and especially CW.



Sigh....

Is mech value that much different to calculate than tonnage? It is easy to calculate for community warfare, because there's no matchmaking: here's an example.

1. Every mech has a value of 200 - 400. Every drop deck is set at 800-1200. So, you could take two 400 value mechs and 2 crappy mechs, or you could take 4 average mechs. Is that really different from what we have now? This could also be used to de-segregate clan and inner sphere mechs for future factions like the Rasalhague Dominion and Nova Cat infested Draconis Combine - as well as allow for multi-tech groups like the Kell Hounds and Wolfs Dragoons.

2. In the case of lone wolf public matches, you're looking at a similar situation, but you add a value for the player's tier. So, make each tier worth 20 points. So, a top tier timberwolf would be worth 500 points, or the lowest tier commando would be 220 points. If you have 24 lone wolves it becomes easy to sort out who drops where. (You could do a two-part segregation if you have a big enough pool of players too. First, tier determines which bucket(s) you're eligible for, then mech value determines which team in that bucket you drop with. THIS IS NO DIFFERENT than what we have now, only tonnage determines a mechs value rather than the value of the mech itself.

3. The case of team queued public matches becomes muddier. Teams will have a totaled team mech value + pilot skill rating. Match them up with other teams so that to total ratings for both sides are roughly similar. Isn't that kind of what we do now?

RE: crappy mechs in public queues:

Now, if you want to encourage people to play crappy mechs in the public queues, simply adjust rewards accordingly. If you pilot a 400 rated Timber Wolf you get CBills at a .50 rate. If you pilot a 200 rated Commando, you get paid at a 1.5 rate. If you pilot a 300 rated Dragon, you'd get paid at a 1.0 rate. So, the Commando pilot would make 150% of their total C-bills at the end of the match, and the Timber Wolf pilot would get 50% of the normal total. The dead-center average mech - calling it a Dragon for now, debate all you want - would make 100% standard C-Bill reward rates. This is all before premium and hero mech bonuses, of course.

IraqiWalker, you're thinking IN the box. The box is not your friend, get outside!

From a developer perspective this just causes a headache and is a NIGHTMARE to make for a match maker. I'm going to say no to this. IraqiWalker has some SANE and SOLID points. Anyways PGIismoving in that direction for now. You can hop on the train or walk in the other direction. Your choice.

[Yokaiko]

CainenEX, on 12 September 2015 - 05:23 AM, said:

From a developer perspective this just causes a headache and is a NIGHTMARE to make for a match maker. I'm going to say no to this. IraqiWalker has some SANE and SOLID points. Anyways PGIismoving in that direction for now. You can hop on the train or walk in the other direction. Your choice.

I tend not to merrily hop into train wrecks.

[Naryck]

i suggest to make a new PTS where testers will be able to play team "information warfare" vs team "september 2015 quircks" with the same mechs on both side with just only difference - new quircks vs old quirks.
and let's see if new quircks will be able to win at least 10% of battles

hey, devs, i still want to duel (or even 1 vs 2) with you on my ballistic-quircked DRG-1N vs you 2 on information-warfare-quircked DRG-1Ns
then i can take my TBR-C vs 2 or even 3 of your unquircked DRG-1Ns

Edited by Naryck, 12 September 2015 - 05:43 AM.

[Yokaiko]

Naryck, on 12 September 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

hey, devs, i still want to duel (or even 1 vs 2) with you on my ballistic-quircked DRG-1N vs you 2 on information-warfare-quircked DRG-1Ns

lol

[Voodle]

My findings so far:
The RVN-H is terrible again, no firepower, no info gathering, just slightly more tanky than other mechs

The buffs are rather random, from my PoV, there are mechs that I would say are equally not great, like Shadowhawks for instance, but some get notable structure quirks while others don't, the 5M gets barely anything.

[Peiper]

CainenEX, on 12 September 2015 - 05:23 AM, said:

From a developer perspective this just causes a headache and is a NIGHTMARE to make for a match maker. I'm going to say no to this. IraqiWalker has some SANE and SOLID points. Anyways PGIismoving in that direction for now. You can hop on the train or walk in the other direction. Your choice.

If mech value replaces tonnage, how is it any different for matchmaker? It just replaces one value with another. As far as mech value, they have already figured it out - at least in draft form.

As far as choice, I don't have one if I want to play, so the snide comment that translates roughly to 'You're wrong. Don't agree with me? Well, go away.' is sort of passive aggressive, don't you think? Anyway, I didn't write my posts to argue with mouth breathers. I wrote them for Paul - who WANTS feedback. If I spend time defending my points, I'm doing so for those who want to debate or simply to understand, not merely make up excuses why something can't work when most of the work is already complete. Just needs some testing to see if it has merit.

So, let's do it! Proaction is better than reaction.

[luigi256]

The rebalance is trash. I just got onto the PTS to check it out and it essentially makes the bad IS mechs useless and the good ones worse. I really don't think that if it stays the way it is IS has a chance against Clan.

I will give the already unpopular Awesomes as an example. I have the Pretty Baby loaded out with 2 Large Lasers and 3 SRM 4s, with the Large Laser quirks I am able to at least hold my ground and fire semi rapidly making the underweight oversized assault mech semi usable. With the loss of it's quirks I can't see myself ever using it ever again.

The same goes for the 8Q. With the weapon quirks I was able to use a triple PPC build, you know what it comes with stock, fairly well. Without the quirks firing the PPCs is too hot and the velocity/range decrease did not help either. This one I will also most likely never use again either.

What this balance pass does not affect are Timberwolves, Direwolves, and Stormcrows, you know the holy Clan trinity. They are all pretty much unaffected and I would say buffed from this pass, after looking at it it looks like they all have their negative weapon quirks removed. I know it is just a build of the game and they said changes could happen but come on.

The only way I would like it this new way is if they put IS vs Clan at 12 vs 10. I would then be happy with the superior clan tech vs crappy IS mechs.

[Veev]

[Croaker Munin]

long story short. i dont like the new system.
i like the sensor range stuff. ok.

but removing all weapon quirks form IS Mechs? CW will be dead for IS UNITS. RIP balance

[kka]

Paul Inouye, on 11 September 2015 - 01:04 PM, said:

Once the variants have been balanced and made unique, each chassis within the same weight class is then investigated and rebalanced. It is only after all of this happens that we look at the final balance gap between IS and Clan technology.

To some people here: Why complain why IS and clan are not balanced in PTS?

For now, you should be testing whether the variants of the same chassis are balanced.

[Legend_]

The huge thing for me is the whole InfoTech thing.

You cannot have one of the pillars of balance as a null factor, aka sensors and stuff.

That's like building a house on 3 concrete blocks and a wedge of cheese. It doesn't end well.

The big failing, as I see it, is PGI's seeming reluctance and hesitation to consult and talk with the competitive scene/top players on a skills basis. These are the people who can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't, where your game needs balance, where your game can be exploited and abused.

It reminds me of a something that happened a long time back. In discussion on drop decks for competitive matches, a DC was basing a lot of decisions in regards to chosen 'mechs in accordance to stats on paper, having worked out crit chances and all that sort of stuff. It was a method I disagreed with, and my reasoning was simple;

It might look better on paper but you cannot compare to how a weapon system simply feels to use

PGI is trying to use formulae, based on stats and numbers, to balance the game. By not talking with the people at the top of the game, the ones that know the weapon systems and 'mechs and how they actually perform rather than how they appear on paper, PGI is opening up the pandora's box of balancing fails and setting themselves up for a fallout similar to 3rd person, or something to that degree.

I can't help but wonder if there's a bit too much pride going on here. PGI are too reluctant to consult with others because they're determined to show they're not amateurs in the dev world, which they honestly are.

I know this is early days in the BV thing but regarding promising starts, this is not one of those.

[Yokaiko]

kka, on 12 September 2015 - 06:04 AM, said:

To some people here: Why complain why IS and clan are not balanced in PTS?

For now, you should be testing whether the variants of the same chassis are balanced.

Get on the PTS then I spent over an hour waiting on a game to start.

[Chef Kerensky]

Yokaiko, on 12 September 2015 - 03:56 AM, said:

Do you understand that traditionally whatever makes it to the Test Server goes live?

It's almost as though the test servers are as transparently worthless as these feedback threads. Personally though I'm going to keep shouting at the wall and hope something good happens.

Honestly I fully anticipate having half of my posts removed within a few hours for trolling or whatever despite offering exactly the feedback this thread and many others were expressly made for.

[TorinZ]

I don't really mind the removal of the weapon quirks, I still think moving the timeline further so the IS can get the weapons that they are specifically developing to counter the "clan advantages". Weapon choices should be dictated by the player for a chassis, not the quirks. I like the quirks revolving around structure, sensor, etc to show differences in mechs. Though still wondering why the Enforcer 5D didn't get the structure bonuses the others did, was it just because it can get a bigger engine...
What they should do though is take some of those weapon quirks they had developed and turn them into weapon modules. That would make them all a standard ##% boost for all, and provide a player of more choices in how to tweak their given mech. And then the player has to decide when building their mech what modules to take with the limited weapon slots they have. Do you take the range and cool down module for your UAC5, or do you swap one of those with a reduced jam module for example.
Frankly what made bad mechs "bad" was how easy it may be to kill them, not that the weapons didn't work. Dragon CT was why people stayed away from them. Awesome's torsos were barn shaped. So the quirks for structure/armor will help them. They didn't really need weapon quirks to make them better. And don't argue that the Awesome 8Q needed the quirks to be viable to use it's PPC's, that is a PPC heat issue not a Mech issue. Some of the older MWO mechs probably need more slot inflation from the stock builds to allow for more options compared to newer mech slot options possibly.
I say just bump up to 3058 and get the rest of the Er lasers, X-Pulses, MRMs, Streaks and the rest of the Ultra ACs for IS. Give us new weapon modules to spend GXP on that are based on the old weapon quirks for more player choice. Am I far off thinking this would work? IDK, but think of that fast moving Dragon with the structure/armor buffs running with a new IS UAC-10. Or the Wolverine 6K running 3 Large X-Pulses.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

IraqiWalker, on 11 September 2015 - 10:43 PM, said:

No quirks should actually make them equal.
You seem to forget something VERY important about BV matching. We had ASYMMETRICAL teams in TT. So BV worked because your OP mech allows me to field 2 or 3 mechs against it.

How are you going to do that in a 12 v 12 game, where quirks make bad mechs "usable" instead of "on equal footing"?

As much I would prefer the straight 10v16 formula.
Even 12v12 can be fixed to asymmetrical flavor, giving IS just more respawns.

[Yokaiko]

TorinZ, on 12 September 2015 - 07:23 AM, said:

Awesome's torsos were barn shaped. So the quirks for structure/armor will help them. They didn't really need weapon quirks to make them better. And don't argue that the Awesome 8Q needed the quirks to be viable to use it's PPC's, that is a PPC heat issue not a Mech issue. Some of the older MWO mechs probably need more slot inflation from the stock builds to allow for more options compared to newer mech slot options possibly.
I say just bump up to 3058 and get the rest of the Er lasers, X-Pulses, MRMs, Streaks and the rest of the Ultra ACs for IS. Give us new weapon modules to spend GXP on that are based on the old weapon quirks for more player choice. Am I far off thinking this would work? IDK, but think of that fast moving Dragon with the structure/armor buffs running with a new IS UAC-10. Or the Wolverine 6K running 3 Large X-Pulses.

That is a MWO issue, and its systemic, the(stock) -8Q wasn't a hot mech in TT, but when you have PPC firing at 2.5 times the rate against the same 10 second heat cycle, AND nerfed DHS, yeah reach an un-tenable level of heat generation, this is actually worse on the clan side.

Our laser vommit Timber in MWO would be HEAT NEUTRAL in TT, this is a mech that shuts down on the third alpha.

Edited by Yokaiko, 12 September 2015 - 07:28 AM.

[TorinZ]

I would agree that some weapons need longer cool downs, PPCs being one of them. That would help the heat issues we see with some weapon systems and mechs.

[Yokaiko]

TorinZ, on 12 September 2015 - 07:42 AM, said:

I would agree that some weapons need longer cool downs, PPCs being one of them. That would help the heat issues we see with some weapon systems and mechs.

It still won't matter as long as I can put every weapon on a mech in one spot.

Those massive quirks in the Atlas -D? Yeah still takes all of two shots to take off that torso from most heavies.