772 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

dario03, on 12 September 2015 - 08:47 PM, said:

Is this still going live on the 22nd patch or did it get pushed back?

According to Russ, this was just the first test, there'll be several iterations. There is no fixed date for when it goes live, and for that matter no certainty that it'll ever go live:

https://twitter.com/...519598827311104

[fuguzawaz]

SmokeJaguarSix, on 11 September 2015 - 10:15 PM, said:

While we all understand the desire to balance Inner Sphere Mechs against Clan Mechs, MechWarrior is based on Battletech is based on MechWarrior. PGI is always talking about Clan invasion and counterstriking etc etc etc.....the whole point of the Clan invasion is that the Mechs of the Inner Sphere are NOT balanced against the Clans. It took the Inner Sphere decades of Mech, engine, armor, cooling and weapons development to bring their Mechs up to par with Clan Tech in order to meet the threat and they had lots of help from Wolf's Dragoons and the Helm memory core not to mention Comstar. That is because the Inner Sphere had underwent 300 years of technological regression while the Clans had gone through 150+ years of progress based solely on the perfection of war.
In short, balancing Inner Sphere Mechs against Clan Mechs in the 3050-3054 era nullifies the entire point of the invasion! If you do that then why bother with the Clan invasion at all? You might as well go back to the 3025 era where all weapons are simplified and the Mech, pilot and tactics make all the difference and the tech level has nothing to do with it.
We understand that PGI wants MWO to be its own game and animal but you call this MechWarrior and its licensed under the MechWarrior theme. If you're going to use Battletech/MechWarrior canon then you cant just throw out the most important aspect of the Clan invasion and still call it such.
Clan Mechs are SUPPOSED to be outbalanced against Inner Sphere Mechs, not just a little bit but by a lot.
That said, there was balance in the way the Clans fought. They worked only loosely as a unit. They fought individual battles (duals) and were highly limited by Bachall and underbidding.
Rather than balance Clan Mechs with Inner Sphere Mechs and totally change the entire system which right now is working quite well, you should balance the pairings.
Instead of pairing similar tonnages and Mech Classes of Inner Sphere and Clan Mechs against each other, pair Inner Sphere Mechs against Clan Mechs, Clan vs Clan and Inner Sphere against Inner Sphere only. Don't mix tech types within teams.
Further, when Clan teams face Inner Sphere teams, base teams on the battle values of those Mechs with equal battle values per team. That way the pairings are evenly balanced, tactics matter, and Clan teams cant possibly be over-balanced because the Inner Sphere teams will be either heavier or the Clan teams will be lighter.
This is how it work in CBT gameplay and it works very well.
Clan Weapons are supposed to have longer ranges. The weapons are supposed to be lighter and hit harder. Clan Mechs are supposed to carry more weapons and do more damage. But Clan weapons also often have significantly higher heat levels, and Clan Mechs often have significant heat issues meaning they have to be managed much more carefully. A missed Alpha strike or an Alpha strike at the wrong time results in death by shutdown....
Inner Sphere Mechs do much better at close range than long range and brawl very well. I.S. Mechs also weather damage very well (fewer XL engines), are team centric and focused on EW, and use massed fires and ambushes to balance out battles. Missiles and Autocannon become more important for softening up mechs at long range. Clan get very limtied Artillery strikes and Aerospace strikes (while the Inner Sphere use them often).
Give Clan Mechs point penalties for massing fires on a single Mech while IS Mechs get bonus points for the very same tactic (or maybe not penalize Clans for that tactic but they cant earn "honor" points for those tactics. Clan Mechs could get bonus points (or maybe honor points) for duel (solo) kills, while Inner Sphere pilots gain factional or Merc points for ambush tactics, scouting, spotting, recon, back shots etc. Clans get penalized for Backstabbing (back shots) or ramming since those are dishonorable tactics (aka Dezgra).

In short, balancing Inner Sphere vs Clan as per lore and long established canon shouldn't be about nerfing Clan tech or beefing up IS tech, it should be done through Pair/team Balancing, rewards and tactics. Otherwise, you might as well just go back to the 3025 era or jump ahead to 3060 because during the first years of the Clan invasion Clan Mechs are supposed to be over-balanced. That's part of the fun of playing those years.

all of this... ALL of this...
if you don't do this, you should just rename the game to "Russ's Robot Rampage"
don't lie to us; this isn't mechwarrior

another issue with this game is that mechwarrior isn't just about mechs... its about tanks, footsoldiers, and airships. Unfortunately, we won't see these, but you could at least give us the bare minimum of correct mech gameplay...

as for the "forcing people to play the innersphere/destined to have lower k/d side" issue, why not pay innersphere players more? this way, people have to choose between making decent money and having a POTENTIALLY higher K/D (which in this game isn't really that important in the first place)? it would make sense canonically; clan was more about honor than money. Besides, its not like people can't own both types of mechs.

Edited by fuguzawaz, 13 September 2015 - 01:21 AM.

[Koshirou]

fuguzawaz, on 13 September 2015 - 12:39 AM, said:

as for the "forcing people to play the innersphere/destined to have lower k/d side" issue, why not pay innersphere players more?

Would you switch to the Inner Sphere - permanently, as a loyalist player - under the conditions you propose?

[Horothgar]

Just a thought-everyone is getting in an uproar about quirks and weapons and high alphas....any thought to reduce the available designs of the mechs to almost non-customization? If classic BT had a mech with a hard point with SRMs then why not just allow the change to that hardpoint be SRM 2,4,6 (not Streaks or LRMS)? An AC10 can upgrade or downgrade to an AC20 but then engine and armor and internals must go down-tradeoff alpha or speed. Focus on specific skill trees for the pilots-we have enough mechs available to keep near stock and learn to use them for what they are not what we can make them into. We have Achievements for having 10,000 headshots. Why not a module tree that you fire your Guass 10,000 times you have a skill that can unlock to make your guass better-aim/speed/internals/recharge rate ect). Continual pilot specialization on they style of gameplay that they like to use. The skill trees and what pilots can unlock for each type, and modules that can be loaded into them are the customization that need to be done-not how to make an alpha boat.

Beyond that quit making more and more mechs (but that is how you are making any money on anything) that leave the past ones in the dark as they wont get used. Make more maps, more variety in battle modes and let the pilots be pilots. Why always 12v12? scouts vs scouts? larger maps with 3 or 4 teams of 6 or 8 each. How about salvage and contracts payout instead of you played a match and here is your Cbills, rinse and repeat. Pug Matches should matter to something in the game, not just grinding mechs. We should have more versatility of maps than what we have. We all have the maps memorized within a week of gameplay, but why not have random map generators? If we dont know what the layout is, would not Information Warfare become more important?

Also people keep talking about information warfare and comparing it to the paper BT game. Paper BT you could think about your choices with the information. You do that in this game you would already be dead as you don't have time to take in and make notes to what information you have available. If that was true-when you spot a mech and it comes up on radar-you should be able to hit TAB and see what that mech is at any time with the pilot who is in it.

Just a couple thoughts that might improve the rinse wash repeat mentality that we are in right now-at least how I feel. It is time that all mechs matter, and that going to "metamechs" is not the standard to how to create a mech. And maybe a little AI maps where more random things happen out of no-where. All we have is a random Snake appearing. Why not an earthquake-hail, rain, asteroid hit something to change the battle being fought? Reinforcements from another map who are already damaged? more long term thoughts to make it a little more RP and not the same.

[ThunderTusk]

Who needs new (good) maps, new contents, new modes? who needs bug fixes?

just put 2/3 rounds of quirks/ nerfs in a year.


This is fraggin ridiculous, and this is a symptom of incompetence and lack of ideas

[Serpentbane]

Why so complicatded?

I have done som thinking on how MWO could evolve.
http://mwomercs.com/...-down-the-road/

Take a look for a better description, I dont want to write it all up again.

In that link I have a few sugestions on how electronic warfare could work with radar and targeting data sharing.

Also, blending some CW features in the loop, you could have several drops per match, based on tonage and perhaps IS vs Clan mech. Every player have a tonage/mech score limit with the posibility to drop a asymetric number of mechs, up to a sertain number of mechs. A player could choose to drop with a few powerfull mechs, or a higer number of less powerfull mechs. And every drop would alow the player to select from the mech bays.

THis way Clan mechs woulde be more powerfull, but fewer in numbers, as was in the BT univerce. Also, Assaults could be really devestating, but with larger maps and more teamplay, they would also fit into their respective roles.

Only downside would be longer rounds, but I'd survive that.

[Gordon Gecko]

I think there is an underlying reason for the new balance system. Especially since balance was said to be in a good state several times over the last year by PGI. Yes certain meta builds do abuse the quirks but there will always be a meta and abuse and min/max. PGI knows this, their bigger concern is the elephant in the room. They have a business flaw, too many products (mechs) and the fact that some of those products offer too much value for a freemium game. Why buy new mechs when my older mechs can compete? Especially since they're quirked to compete with newer product. WVR-6K, STK-4N come to mind first. Its not really hard to grind c-bills for those either especially since PGI is forced to give away so much of its content via weekend events etc to keep the small player base interested.

Essentially what's going on here is the phasing out of old products to make or force customers want to buy new ones. The role warfare quirks we are getting, is the Kool-Aid to drink with the medicine. It will be interesting but wont be enough to keep players interested in older products. The current quirk system is fine for the game, just bad for business.

[Kristen Redmond]

Going to log in to PTS and look at this, but, and I'm sorry to say, it sounds like junk.

[AgentHarbinger]

A lot of interesting discussions here.

My concern, that I share with several other posters, not all aspects of the mech balance are equal. At the end of the day the ability to deal damage is by far the most critical aspect of any mech build. Not sure how you change that by simply changing mechs alone.

Adding to the complexity of the types of game play could certainly make this difference. There needs to be a need or reason or game objectives that to include the smaller mechs.

Some additional TLDR points:

• Its in the test server, let them gather data. Play there to help them with the game.
  
• They will make changes
  
• No one likes change, its okay, you can deal. If you can't.....

]-[

[Chados]

Paul,

The way I read this is that you all are concentrating on IS v. IS balance and haven't got to IS v. Clan balance. I think that a lot of the anger on the main forum now is there for two reasons; first, a lot of people including myself are addicted to the weapon quirks on a particular chassis, and second, folks aren't seeing a point of reference to measure the nerfs and buffs against-they see red and green, and become upset.

For example, I love the Catapults and UrbanMechs, and when I first saw a screenshot of the current quirks I was upset about it, until I looked closer and saw the structure buffs all the Cats get, and that the base UM-R60 gets. I do wonder why the R60L and R63 don't get the same structure buffs-they should. And looking closer at them, I find that I simply don't understand what I'm reading.

I've done a lot of beta testing in commercial simulation games, and my name is in credits for several classic combat flight titles. As it stands, the public beta you're doing doesn't have much in the way of meaningful information for the testers. They can't understand precisely what the dev team is trying to get from them, and what those red and green numbers truly represent. You're not going to get valid feedback unless the testers have a solid idea of what you're looking for-what you will get is complaints that a player's favorite play style (chiefly, long range meta sniping in the current state of the game) is no longer viable. I think that your post here is a very good first step, but you have to read the whole thing and think about it before it gels. I also think I can see the broad outlines of what you are trying to accomplish, and it's good. The problem right now is that as you recognize, Clan tech is at base level better all the way around than the IS equivalents. It's not going to be possible to balance 3052 tech in the way you want, between the Clans and the IS. To equalize Clan/IS balance without IS 'mech weapon quirks, in the end you either will have to (1) make Clan weapons available to the IS through salvage (MechCommander's fix for this), or (2) advance the timeline to "Operation Serpent," and introduce IS equalizers such as the rotary Autocannon and X-pulse lasers through "lostech" recovery. But I think that you're trying to overall move in a good direction.

In my view, the biggest flaw in this game is simply the lack of ground level information. There is no manual or strategy guide for the game, which hurts new players trying to learn it. You have to figure it out as you go along; it's like a treasure hunt to find out, for example, how to use an air strike or where module slots are.

Edited by Chados, 13 September 2015 - 03:59 AM.

[Nightshade24]

Gleech, on 12 September 2015 - 10:09 PM, said:

PGI boldly decides the IS-vs-IS balance isn't good enough, and removes a popular feature that made some IS mechs playable!

Meanwhile, in the actual game:

the clans continue to conquer everything.

you say that but all clans put together is just the same territory as Davion at the momment.
"not talking about critical mass, just talking about how it keeps growing!"

Clan ghost bear would like to have a word with you, Clan smoke jaguars progress is haulting and Clan wolf is shrinking steadily but still holding to terra just to rub it in everyones face that clan wolf technically won the 2nd CW 'universe'.
Only falcon is doing well and I must say other IS factions are also doing well as well

[SteelTantrum]

Much needed balance

'If the Clans were 100% over-powered, this change brought them down to about 70% over-powered. Slight changes were being introduced at this point to try to bring that down even further.'

It is as I have always thought, I mostly play IS as playing clan feels like cheating (or after a bad run of IS games to cheer me up). Lets hope the community gives PGI the chance to try this new balancing technique. I would like some kind of remuneration as I have purchased Mechs to take advantage of the quirks to try and compete with the clanners and if they lose all the weapon quirks they become pointless purchases.

Well done PGI for admitting that the clan tech is overpowered and I welcome anything that helps my beloved IS mechs the opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

GLHF

[James Wirth]

Quote

Problem is in MWO there is no way on Earth to make Clan drivers act like true Clanners. Clanners in MWO are not going to bid, they are never going to follow Zellbrigen, there is no way to use such concepts to bring balance to MWO like they did in the original source material.

Now, I realize that it may sound like I'm ripping into PGI and Clan players, but I'm really not. I am just trying to illustrate the inescapable fact that trying to balance the game on a mech to mech level isn't going work. You're either going to get mega-buffed IS mechs or uber-nerfed Clan mechs which will result in cheers from us IS guys, Clanners walking away from the game, and new players wondering why they would ever pay so much more c-bills and/or REAL MONEY for Clan Mechs with no demonstrable advantage.

Now this whole sensor quirk thing is kinda pointless in my view. If my enemy can outrange me by a fair margin and has the tech by way of targeting computers and buff modules to put said advantage to effective use, then no amount of sensor quirkery is going to help me. If dude can SEE my RT or LL smoking from all the way across the map, tell all his laser sniper buddies to focus on said component at ranges I can do nothing about, then a fraction of a second's difference in targeting info is really the least of my concerns. But, gimme my Thumper Cannon and I can DO something about him.

This re-balancing thing is being looked at from the wrong angle IMO. I think the mechs we use to play the game are fine as-is. What is needed is more options in strategy and tactics available as to HOW we can play, not this nerf/buff cold war we've contending with. We need new weapon options, new game modes - particularly in CW - and (I know this is a pipe dream) modifiable terrain - again mostly for defensive CW play.

Lastly, and this is just me talking here, I have put over $700 into this game so far, and I made those purchases based on the abilities of mechs in question, both in fitting with my playstyle and the expectation of how much enjoyment I would receive for my investment. If said purchases are to be neutered of the very characteristics that I paid REAL money to enjoy, then that reeks of bait and switch and I want my MC back.

Well, said, sir! You just summed up the "balance" dilemma perfectly.

[Josef Koba]

Something I didn't mention in yesterday's Wall of Text that I posted: Modules. I noticed that quite a few mechs had their module slots revised, some dramatically so. I thought that most were of the opinion that we'd finally found a Module Sweet Spot. Or at least I haven't seen/read a lot of negative press about modules since they're numbers were revised a while back. Are modules, the numbers of slots that is, still considered a problem? This is another aspect, like the weapons quirks I mentioned yesterday, that I really enjoy and feel gives me more customization options. I can put the Koba flavor on my rides. There are enough that I can do a lot of things, but few enough that I have to make choices like whether or not to take TIG, or Radar Derp, or Adv Target Decay. I thought we'd finally gotten the module aspect just about right. But it seems like I was wrong and that some mechs needed far fewer (though if I recall the DWF got MORE module slots on the PTS than before).

Edit: The poster above just reminded me of another thing. Why couldn't we have some sort of bidding system in place in which the clan factions bid on attacks? Keep in mind, I virtually never play CW and when I do I'm a Davion guy, so I could be way off base. But it would be a pretty interesting feature (though if that WERE the case I suppose that clan tech would almost NEED to be quantifiably "better" as lore dictated). It would also be very cool to see more role playing behavior, though I'm not remotely sure how that would be accomplished or encouraged.

Edited by Josef Koba, 13 September 2015 - 04:50 AM.

[Bidetlol]

So basically you take 4months to generate random quirk on all mech ...... Right.

the best part is: quirk on mech that doesn't deserve it, and put bad quirk on terrible mech like sumonner, awesome, etc... Seriously: jumpjet quirk for timberwolf but not for sumonner ??????!!!


nice procedural quirk

Edited by Bidetlol, 13 September 2015 - 04:51 AM.

[Appogee]

[hercules1981]

I'm just gonna add this statement again and probably say it again in a few more days just so there is a better chance of people reading it on the newest page if they r not scimming the whole subject. Incorporate a 9 vs 12 system so IS will have superior numbers and then clan mechs can be better like there r supposed to be . Screw this going through another poorly thought of balance scheme. There can be a clan vs clan 12 vs 12 or an IS vs IS 12 vs 12. Clan vs IS 9vs 12.

Edited by hercules1981, 13 September 2015 - 05:39 AM.

[Pz_DC]

Its all good Paul, but keep in mind - every mech has its own "unique" role, so force players to play that roles! You need to limit "customization madness" same time make all variants enjoable and customizable. Easy to say but hard to do, i know. But "LRM AS-7s" and "ac20 RVNs" should be less playable then it is for now. Thx.

P.S.
Keep in mind:
1)Weapon stats
2)Economy
3)Upcoming changes
4)Things that are out of "field of view" (like radar) for now
5)Pilot and mech experience - its totally useless after some point and too effective before it..

Edited by MGA121285, 13 September 2015 - 06:04 AM.

[M T]

Keep it up PGI!

Honestly whatever you guys will do this game will be the same at the end of the day.

But right on, this game needs a serious balance pass. Jenner used to be my favorite mech, and its still good but not as good compared to other lights in example. Lately i wanted to buy a Kit Fox but people did not recommend to me because its simply not that good. There is actually no light for me at this point which is both powerful and aesthetically pleasing (personally)


Anyway, you got my full support. Just dont let things like LURM Warrior Online seep back into the game unnoticed because it drove me, and will drive other players away again.

Also dont take away the build tweaking, combinations, etc. because it has proven again and again this is no solution to balancing.

Edited by MTs Cavia Porcellus, 13 September 2015 - 06:10 AM.

[CANCERBERO]

first of all...pgi must do something...when crate an account you must select clan or is...nothing of is mechs and clan mechs CHOOSE YOUR SIDE!!! AND PLAY THERE!!!.
Then the qwirks i dont care if the take them or leave them but for those who bought hero mechs cos the qwirks and other stuff is not fair to take the qwirks now and make those make just a piece of garbage (for ex. the iron grid).
Economy: WHY U DONT LET US CHANGE MECHS OR SALE THEM BETWEEN OUR FACTION GROUP? we bought lot of mechs..build them..then we have to sale them again cos they touch things and made them unusless. let us make money between us...to "REBALANCE ECONOMY" TOO