129 replies to this topic

[Sigmar Sich]

As i understand, rebalance does not use weapon quirks, only chassis quirks. Finally! I love it.
I think mech quirks for specific weapons - wrong way, because it reduces loadouts diversity and just hurts logic.
So i hope such rebalance will go live.

[IraqiWalker]

Kay Wolf, on 16 September 2015 - 05:52 AM, said:

Well, nooooo... I actually have experience. It might be tabletop experience, but according to the whole of the BattleTech community, the BV system not only works, it works extremely well. This is probably before your time, but I was right in the middle of all that.

Whose experience do you have that open system's won't work well in this particular game? Has there been an open system, or are you just parroting what everyone else has said? There has NEVER been an open system in MWO, and there was NO system before this one. Just from your writing, you still don't get what I'm talking about, and you don't actually know what you're talking about, as a result. You keep saying the system will be divisive, will split the community, absolutely has to have some controls because of the low population for this game, but you have not even given me any examples about why you have to have those controls in-place, why BV will split the community? You asked me to provide examples, and I'm asking you for the same, because I can't see the MWO-based BV system, or all of the game modes I'm so adamant about being anything but a means of gathering and focusing the community. Right now, the Elo/PSR system is heavily divisive, because there is NO freedom to what 'Mechs you can take compared to what BV would allow.

Right now, the system looks to match tonnage and PSR right out of the gate as solid numbers; however, within 30 seconds, so-called "relief valves" begin to open, beginning with tonnage, then PSR, then switching from tonnage to ton-groups (light, medium, heavy, assault), and then the "age" of the group (how long the individual or group has been in the match-maker), which means you could end up, and do end up having games that are still perfectly lopsided. With BV, you might still have ONE "relief valve" for the amount of BV opening up, though the MM would already be working to construct teams that are within 5% of one-another's total team BV. This BV can consist of the entire range of pilot types and 'Mechs. An Elite pilot who takes a crap 'Mech could fight a Green pilot in a pimped out 'Mech and have a relatively even chance against one another. The difference, now though, is that the Green pilot would be teamed with others who could actually help them, and more likely would be have between one and four additional 'Mechs on their side to help against that Elite pilot with the crap 'Mech. Now, alternately, say you have an Elite pilot with a very well-designed 'Mech; are they going to find their way into a game with lower level pilots? No, they won't... the quality of pilots on the opposing team are going to have to be higher, as will be the quality of their 'Mechs; will a Tier 5 pilot face off against a Tier 1? More often than not, no.

The experience I'm talking about is the last 3 years of MWO. We had an open system that matched by Elo, and it was hell on earth for new players, and many mediocre players. So that system is a failure.

The BV system works, cool. That's not what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with BV+matchmaker, and you need restrictions on it.

As I mentioned earlier. Tier 5 players shouldn't be in the same match as tier 1 players. Period. I'm also extremely aware of the iterations BT went through. That doesn't change the argument. You will need hardlocks on the system, and then it can work.

As I stated at least 5 times now. The cornerstones to make this system work, aren't here in MW:O, and so far we know at least one of them is not coming any time soon (Asymmetric teams). Those three I listed are mission critical. A BV system can't function without them.

Examples below

Kay Wolf, on 16 September 2015 - 05:52 AM, said:

Why? Provide examples of what you're talking about for #1 and #3, please?

Point 3 is simple, so I'll start with it

Spoiler

pilots have a BV (PSR rating for example), Pilot BV + Mech's BV (this calculates, weapons, equipment, ammo, armor, engine, quirks ... etc.) = their final BV that is used in the Matchmaker. We assemble teams of similar BV, and toss them against one another. Sounds fair. Until you realize that a good pilot, facing off against 4 bad pilots, is not really a fair fight. If he is actually worth 4 of those bads, they are dead. Also, you shouldn't allow teams below a certain number of mechs in the MM, otherwise, things can get very problematic. Meaning that the edge case of 2 v 12 should be an impossibility.

TL;DR: Tier 5 pilots shouldn't be in the same match as tier 1 pilots.

Point 1:

Spoiler

The game has multiple queues as it stands. Let's say we have a sample of 240 players online. Technically that should be 10 matches going on if we lose the (in my opinion idiotic) 3x3x3x3 lock. However, of those, a solid 40% (AT LEAST) are in group queue. Let's see how they're doing?

96 pilots in group queue. They are queued up form anywhere between 2 to 12 players, with the massive majority being in the 4-6 players. Group 1 is 4 players combined BV of around 12K, Group 2 is 6 players with a BV of 12 K too. Those two can match up against one another.

What about group 3? 7 players with a BV of 20K. Group 4 is 3 players, with a BV of 15K. Then there's group 5, 12 players with a BV of 43K, group 6 with 8 players and a BV of 25K ... etc. According to your system, they should all have matches, when in reality, you'll end up with about a third of the groups finding no matches, unless you put them up against teams that have different BV than them. Like matching a group with 5K BV against one with 6K.

Suddenly, we're back to where we started with imbalanced teams. If you want BV to increase the chance of balanced matches, you need a large population to account for having many groups that could technically be matched, but simply will not, because of a difference in BV.

and that's still not the hardest part about making BV function. Because the lynch pin is still asymmetric teams which we're not getting.

If those 96 players were grouped up using BV, and still had the requirement of each match being 24 players, we'd have 96 players in the group queue, and maybe 1 match happening.

Kay Wolf, on 16 September 2015 - 05:52 AM, said:

Of course it can't work with the current system, but that just means the system NEEDS to be built, regardless.

Yes, the system needs to be built, and we don't have the building tools. So how about we build what we actually CAN build. Are you seeing the fundamental issue I'm trying to illuminate?

Humanity needed concrete ASAP. We didn't have the tools to make it, so we didn't just sit there going "Concrete would have made this bridge awesome", and not build it with the crappy lumber we had.

As it stands, PGI's last statement has been "we can't do asymmetric matches". So we either sit here twiddling our thumbs waiting for that to maybe happen sometime in the nebulous future, or we start working with what we have right now, and balance for what we have. Because we still need to cross that river, and a wooden bridge is better than no bridge.

Saying BV would work is not something many would disagree with, but we don't have the tools to make it work. So we should shelf that, for when we develop the tools to make it work. Trying to balance the game for a BV system that we don't have is like building a dam in the Mojave, for when it gets lakes. Accomplishes diddly for now.

Sigmar Sich, on 16 September 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

As i understand, rebalance does not use weapon quirks, only chassis quirks. Finally! I love it.
I think mech quirks for specific weapons - wrong way, because it reduces loadouts diversity and just hurts logic.
So i hope such rebalance will go live.

How many hunchback-Gs did you see before the quirks? How many hunchbacks did you see running AC10s? How many Hunchback-4SPs did you see before the quirks? How many did you see running SRMs?

Hate weapon quirks all you want, but they increased mech, and loadout diversity. 3 LPL TDR-9SEs were not a thing we saw before weapon quirks.

[NocturnalBeast]

If MWO is going to try to stay reasonably close to lore, then Clan mechs / weapons / equipment need to stop being nerfed and needs to remain superior to IS. To balance the superiority of Clans, IS mechs need to remain quirked, but these quirks need to be tailored to compliment the intended role of each mech. Also, PGI needs to make finding a way for asymmetric teams to work within the match maker one of their top priorities.

Edited by Ed Steele, 16 September 2015 - 03:41 PM.

[IraqiWalker]

Except clan tech, and mechs, haven't really been nerfed.

[NocturnalBeast]

IraqiWalker, on 16 September 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

Except clan tech, and mechs, haven't really been nerfed.

Let me see...Ghost heat (at lower thresholds than the IS) increased beam duration, stagger-firing A/Cs, LRMs that do not do full damage below 80 meters, no LB / AC toggle mode... and more, but I don't have time. And I play IS mechs almost exclusively.

[Tarl Cabot]

Ed Steele, on 16 September 2015 - 06:25 PM, said:

Let me see...Ghost heat (at lower thresholds than the IS) increased beam duration, stagger-firing A/Cs, LRMs that do not do full damage below 80 meters, no LB / AC toggle mode... and more, but I don't have time. And I play IS mechs almost exclusively.

And no real, functioning Heat Scale except when reaching/exceeding 100%, nothing to make continuous or large alpha firing mechs slow down and become less agile, at a minimum. Maybe one additional threshold for a possible shutdown. Atm I am okay with leaving out possible ammo explosions altogether..

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 17 September 2015 - 05:12 AM.

[NocturnalBeast]

Tarl Cabot, on 17 September 2015 - 05:12 AM, said:

And no real, functioning Heat Scale except when reaching/exceeding 100%, nothing to make continuous or large alpha firing mechs slow down and become less agile, at a minimum. Maybe one additional threshold for a possible shutdown. Atm I am okay with leaving out possible ammo explosions altogether..

I would like to see the heat scale have scaling negative effects like it does in tabletop, that would be good, but then DHS would have to actually have to be DHS.

[Tarl Cabot]

Ed Steele, on 17 September 2015 - 02:22 PM, said:

I would like to see the heat scale have scaling negative effects like it does in tabletop, that would be good, but then DHS would have to actually have to be DHS.

(nods) the current DHS that was set when we only had IS mechs, and at that time it was set at 1.4 so that the stock mechs would not immediately become obsolete, and that was before we had the new set of Champion mechs.

[Sigmar Sich]

IraqiWalker, on 16 September 2015 - 03:25 PM, said:

How many hunchback-Gs did you see before the quirks? How many hunchbacks did you see running AC10s? How many Hunchback-4SPs did you see before the quirks? How many did you see running SRMs?

Hate weapon quirks all you want, but they increased mech, and loadout diversity. 3 LPL TDR-9SEs were not a thing we saw before weapon quirks.

A few. But - crutch helps you walk, but does not make you healthy. To be honest - this game is very hard to balance. But it is not acceptable excuse to choose easy way.
And for moving forward, you have to do a first step. Let this rebalance be it.

[Manei Domini Krigg]

Some work with rebalance is continue?