431 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

I'm teasing! Lighten up. If there are funny rumors about you I'm not cool enough to hear them.

We played the crap out of pts for a while. I dropped in it most the day with less wait than live server.

[MauttyKoray]

Alwrath, on 11 September 2015 - 08:13 PM, said:

Is this some kind of joke?

Id rather they keep the current system and just half any 50% weapon quirks on any mechs that have them then even entertain the notion that this new " balance pass " is even remotely addressing any of the games balance problems.

They gave up and threw the towel and are trying to come up with something that is just... complete and utter fail.

Jesus. This is bad. What a mess. If any of this crap makes it thru to a real patch im probably done.

Going to post my constructive feedback here because I actually care about this game :

Hey guys,

Most of you know who I am, some of you might not. Been playing since early beta, and have had a lot of great fun and fond memories of this game. That being said, I would like to try as hard as I can to give some feedback on hopefully helping this game reach a more balanced state while still being fun to play. Here are main points that I believe need to be in the game :

1 - Keep the current quirk system. It breathed new life into the game and made the IS able to stand up to the clans. All you have to do is keep up with more balance changes and further tweaks.

2 - Keep it simple. You want to keep things relatively simple especially since you guys are going to release on Steam. Armor and structure quirks need to be the same for every variant of a chassis for Inner Sphere Mechs. What gives them identity is the weapon/mobility quirks which are different for each variant. Some Clan armor / structure / weapon quirks need to be simplified and balanced across all omnnipods. CT's with armor and structure buffs on clan mechs need to be equal, otherwise people will pick 1 variant all the time because it is better.

3 - Mech identity. This is what makes this game fun and interesting. With the quirk system, mechs can have similar hardpoints and layouts and the same tonnage but still be very different to each other. Keep up this line of thinking its great work and makes mechs more unique.

4 - Increase armor and structure quirks on all IS mechs and lower some weapon quirks in the 25-50% range. You will almost have decent balance in the game if you can pull this one off, it needs to be done. Also, IS needs more range buffs to some mechs to stand up to the clans.

5 - Fix missiles. Increase damage on srms for IS to 2.5 and Clan to 2.2 and see how it goes. I want people to feel good about taking missles again. Increase dmg on IS streak 2's slightly as well.

I did my part for constructive feedback, here it is and there you go mwo community.

- Alwrath

1. There was a feedback topic for this ****, do you feel special or entitled spamming the general discussion with it?

2.The current quirk system ****** balance up so much worse than it was pre-balance. At the very least IS vs IS was fairly (yes there were outliers) balanced and so was Clan vs Clan. Some mechs were slightly better choices in the right hands, but you could still compete in most mechs during public drops. With the quirk system the 'Meta' has become a massively larger gap away from normal play and taking anything but will get you smacked harder than a post-quirk system locust pilot.

3. INCREASE ARMOR AND STRUCTURE?! Are you ******* insane?! Its already TWO TIMES the standard values and many mechs are quirked on TOP of that to provide bonuses. This goes back to balance, as even FEWER mechs would be viable since some just can't dish out the damage quick enough to viably get through another mech's armor let alone the internals if you raise it.

4. Then you want to raise SRM damage? FFS, this is called balance creep, its what ***** UP game balance. Soon we'll have values in the hundreds and **** will be so screwed up the game will die. You can't just keep bumping values up constantly and expect **** to work.

If you REALLY want the game balance, **** needs to be set back to beginning, default armor, weapon values, etc, and balanced from there. The problem is our current game is so overbalanced that the NORM is firing TEN ******* WEAPONS AT ONCE. That **** is called an Alpha strike and it was supposed to be a LAST RESORT. We need to stop thinking weapons need to be in groups of 3+ to be of any use in the game. Single weapons need to matter. A single PPC should HURT, a Gauss should HURT. 2 Medium lasers should peel some decent armor but generate some decent heat and take a bit to cool down.

Compared to any flavor text of any Battletech product, or any novel, this game is INSANELY fast paced and our mechs should be MELTING at the rate we're firing the masses of weapons crammed in our mechs.

After the fact, quirks could always be re-added to create varied roles between mech variants, or help some variants that have issues keeping up. But the current quirk system creates a bloated balance that is really screwing up this game as a band-aid on top of an already broken core balance.

Edited by MauttyKoray, 13 September 2015 - 05:00 PM.

[oldradagast]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 September 2015 - 03:52 PM, said:

just gonna quote myself from another post...hardly exhaustive, but at least it's objective, as opposed to most of the QQ in here

Ah, yes - your personal opinions are "objective," while everyone else's is QQ.

How do kids these days find room for their egos in their mechs? Lol... what a joke.

[Bishop Steiner]

oldradagast, on 13 September 2015 - 04:56 PM, said:

Ah, yes - your personal opinions are "objective," while everyone else's is QQ.

How do kids these days find room for their egos in their mechs? Lol... what a joke.

yes, yes you are.

I get you are being deliberately obtuse, as you think it somehow advances your argument (well, at least I will give you the benefit of the doubt as to it, by the general tone of your posts, you actually could be.) Since any semi-sentient simian would figure out that the point was not what I agreed or disagreed with, but that I was objective enough to acknowledge that PGI did take steps forward (even if they were not always the steps I or you or person X may have wanted), something you are singularly incapable of doing.

Thus I will leave you to it.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 13 September 2015 - 05:08 PM.

[Rakshasa]

MauttyKoray, on 13 September 2015 - 04:48 PM, said:

But the current quirk system creates a bloated balance that is really screwing up this game as a band-aid on top of an already broken core balance.

Raging aside, this I feel is one of the core problems facing any BattleTech game designers. The base mechanics the whole universe was built on are thirty years old and have never been seriously re-worked. There's a lot of bad maths and balancing intrinsic to the original system and it's still there decades later. MWO tries to adhere to those mechanics to a fair degree and it's consumed whole cycles of the games development trying to balance it for a modern audience.

Sometimes I wonder what MWO would look like if it wasn't wedded so much to the old system. It wouldn't be "pure" BattleTech sure, but there's something to be said for having the freedom to tweak and alter and craft new systems to reach the outcome the devs and playerbase want. Us BT fans remain strangely wedded to those old rules though. I think it's a nostalgia thing.

[Bishop Steiner]

Rakshasa, on 13 September 2015 - 05:10 PM, said:

Raging aside, this I feel is one of the core problems facing any BattleTech game designers. The base mechanics the whole universe was built on are thirty years old and have never been seriously re-worked. There's a lot of bad maths and balancing intrinsic to the original system and it's still there decades later. MWO tries to adhere to those mechanics to a fair degree and it's consumed whole cycles of the games development trying to balance it for a modern audience.

Sometimes I wonder what MWO would look like if it wasn't wedded so much to the old system. It wouldn't be "pure" BattleTech sure, but there's something to be said for having the freedom to tweak and alter and craft new systems to reach the outcome the devs and playerbase want. Us BT fans remain strangely wedded to those old rules though. I think it's a nostalgia thing.

Even as a purist, I do wonder what it would look like if CGL were to release a Btech 2.0 Beta where they took the basic core ideas and reworked it, including doing things like Randall Bills wanted like swapping out Heavy Lasers for ER LAsers' etc, on Clan Mech designs to represent their combat style (gladiatorial more than tactical), etc.

I had toyed with Home Rules before, where things like Actuators (hands, lower arms, etc) added to weight of Internal Structures, etc, and mechs like the Stalker removed ALL arms actuators, since they in truth, had none, etc.

Yes there are some who would never embrace it, but it might open up a whole new audience too. And since we already have "Classic Battletech" etc, I certainly would rather see them pursue it in parallel than Alpha Strike (which IMO is utter crap)

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 13 September 2015 - 05:16 PM.

[MischiefSC]

As a purist myself I admit the pts has been a real come-to-Stackpole moment for me. 3050 was the worst designed, worst balanced and most maligned Era in the games history. I've been at gaming cons where the devs apologized for how badly managed and balanced the Clan release was and how they were fixing that with future updates.

We are trying to preserve the worst facets of the game in the worst Era of the game. We should let go of that and just do what they did with dark ages and try to balance the tech. We can't just scrap the sum of content we have in game now and start over, so that means we need to move away from tt stats (which don't work for 3050) and just take some sweeping liberties to balance the game.

[AdamBaines]

Mazzyplz, on 12 September 2015 - 06:04 PM, said:

i'm getting there, i'm short of the built renderer and all of the netcode.
what you seem to imply though is that IT experience or programming = game design.

and this is a serious flaw of reasoning.

balancing a game has the same strategies on playing cards than in a game like this. (well at least for the initial design - minus tweaking and playtest cause this is what playtesting is for) and it is totally different than what you need to make the art or the engine or whatever else you have to do technically to make the game work

game design is it's own craft, separate from systems engineering/programming or drawing/animating/3dmodeling

you could easily excel at programming and fail to make a great game.
like what happened to john carmack. hes all about pushing the tech envelope, and his gameplay is always a corridor shooter, just looks increasingly better each year - this is just an example.

then you also have to realize there are TONS of game designers working and most of them fail to make good games, you just have to look at the range from all the throwaway mobile games that just sank (even put up by big companies like konami) and the usage of the same gameplay year after year (like call of duty)
or triple A games failing to make interesting or good gameplay like Ryse, or the order 1886 ETC... plenty of triple A blunders

I was not making a direct statement towards you Mazzy. It was a general statement about peoples general "expertise" here on the boards. And I am not equating dev skils to game design. Im not even defending PGI. I thought it was strange that they would start the PTS for re-balancing on the weekend of the anniversary.

And my statement can also be pointed toward those who are "expert" game designers as well. Design, at any level of life, is not easy. Id go as far as to say those who claim to have great design ideas would bork up MWO worse then most people think it is.

One thing I do know is that no one really knows the outcome of these changes until we try them out over a long period of time. I think they are on the right track. It might be a huge learning curve for most people, and people dont like change, even when its for the better. And the approach to the PTS is the perfect solution. We will see if it works (and of course everyone's definition of what works will be different).

I just hope they open it up again soon. But thats really up to us as a population. Prove to PGI that the cost of keeping it up is worth it to them data wise. Let give them results to say its bad or good one way or the other.

[TWIAFU]

Moldur, on 11 September 2015 - 08:28 PM, said:

What did people expect? People were always complaining about power struggle this, too powerful that, etc. etc.

And now look at them complain that their meta game has changed.

Can't do anything but laugh at them.

[Yokaiko]

TWIAFU, on 14 September 2015 - 04:52 AM, said:

And now look at them complain that their meta game has changed.

Can't do anything but laugh at them.

I've been through no less than 20 "metas" and own 133 mechs, pretty sure I can react to whatever stupidity PGI comes up with this go around.

[Johnny Z]

MischiefSC, on 13 September 2015 - 05:41 PM, said:

As a purist myself I admit the pts has been a real come-to-Stackpole moment for me. 3050 was the worst designed, worst balanced and most maligned Era in the games history. I've been at gaming cons where the devs apologized for how badly managed and balanced the Clan release was and how they were fixing that with future updates.

We are trying to preserve the worst facets of the game in the worst Era of the game. We should let go of that and just do what they did with dark ages and try to balance the tech. We can't just scrap the sum of content we have in game now and start over, so that means we need to move away from tt stats (which don't work for 3050) and just take some sweeping liberties to balance the game.

Agree, but to put it into further context. I will bring this up again. Star Wars the Old republic for example, is a Star Wars game that doesnt resemble a Star Wars movie in any way, and they didnt even try remotly to make it look like the movies. Its all green heal beams and obscene sparkling lights etc.

Point is this game is going through great pains to have the game play as close to the board game as possible and that deserves respect. If some numbers are needed to make it work but the game play and appearance is true to its origins then thats great.

Edited by Johnny Z, 14 September 2015 - 05:12 AM.

[Mawai]

FupDup, on 13 September 2015 - 12:11 PM, said:

Tell that to UI 2.0.

The truth of the matter is that these PTS sessions aren't for actually gathering feedback, contrary to their advertisement. Their actual purpose is merely to test hardware, to make sure that the game can start up successfully without crashing or having huge glitches/bugs. This is actually the same way that Blizzard uses their own public tests as well.

PS: Do you seriously think you need to gather weeks of "telemetry" to figure out the problem with the picture I'm pasting below?



Lastly, you're assuming that PGI even knows how to interpret their telemetry.

For example, remember when PGI wanted to buff LRMs, but then quickly dialed back the buff before even a week passed? They forgot that people will always flock to something new and shiny for the first few weeks, and thus inflate any data gathered about that item. If they had given it more time, it probably would have been just fine after people returned to their normal habits.

If the LRM change you are referring to is the one in which they changed the flight path by moving the last point in the trajectory calculation a little closer to the target then I would have to disagree. LRMageddon as it was called was a brutal travesty of a broken weapon system that appeared to have had no internal testing done whatsoever.

It was a simple change. PGI thought a little higher trajectory on LRMs would be a good thing. Missile trajectory is apparently calculated based on a small set of predefined points that save processor time. The missiles retarget at each of these points. This "small" change made almost all cover except a roof useless. LRMs could hit you behind even tall buildings on River City for example. Folks flocked to using LRMs not because they were new or shiny but because massed LRMs were by far the best weapon system for quickly and efficiently eliminating opposing mechs.

That is why they quite correctly hot fixed that particular issue in less than a week. What boggles the mind is that it ever made it on to the live servers.

As far as having and interpreting telemetry goes ... I seriously hope PGI is collecting the data and knows what to do with it but since their communications skills seem to have taken a hit since last fall (and they have never really shared this sort of data anyway) .. I am not sure whether they will be using it appropriately or not.

[Murphy7]

Quote

Do like the overall improvement to hitreg...don't like that it seems to be hit and miss

I LOL'd.

[FupDup]

Mawai, on 14 September 2015 - 05:49 AM, said:

If the LRM change you are referring to is the one in which they changed the flight path by moving the last point in the trajectory calculation a little closer to the target then I would have to disagree. LRMageddon as it was called was a brutal travesty of a broken weapon system that appeared to have had no internal testing done whatsoever.

It was a simple change. PGI thought a little higher trajectory on LRMs would be a good thing. Missile trajectory is apparently calculated based on a small set of predefined points that save processor time. The missiles retarget at each of these points. This "small" change made almost all cover except a roof useless. LRMs could hit you behind even tall buildings on River City for example. Folks flocked to using LRMs not because they were new or shiny but because massed LRMs were by far the best weapon system for quickly and efficiently eliminating opposing mechs.

That is why they quite correctly hot fixed that particular issue in less than a week. What boggles the mind is that it ever made it on to the live servers.

As far as having and interpreting telemetry goes ... I seriously hope PGI is collecting the data and knows what to do with it but since their communications skills seem to have taken a hit since last fall (and they have never really shared this sort of data anyway) .. I am not sure whether they will be using it appropriately or not.

No, I was referring to the velocity buff.

[Summon3r]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 September 2015 - 03:42 PM, said:

Yeah, but how many of them left because their precious Clan Mechs weren't uber OP anymore? Seems like the biggest exodus was back when they dialed back the TBR and SCR a tiny bit. It would be easier to take seriously if so many Deltas hadn't been so overreactionary about that.

lol ok? thats the problem with folks like you bishop is your so anti clan you cant even see past it... our precious clan mechs? the ones the guys that i drop with play SMN's GAR's WHK's NVA's, why? cuz its fun and not boring meta.

actually not one left on that account. long before there was even any talk of the SCR or TBR getting nerfed in any way shape or form most people i know from my unit and many MANY others in the game were long tired of empty promises non stop patches that brought more and more bugs maps with atrocious terrain clipping (not to mention 1980's pixelated trees), the utter and complete failure of CW to show any sign of progress.

now we are down the odd log in maybe once a week. dont blame that on the players blame that on the game dev not keeping players hooked and engaged.

Edited by Summon3r, 14 September 2015 - 07:43 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Summon3r, on 14 September 2015 - 07:43 AM, said:

lol ok? thats the problem with folks like you bishop is your so anti clan you cant even see past it... our precious clan mechs? the ones the guys that i drop with play SMN's GAR's WHK's NVA's, why? cuz its fun and not boring meta.

actually not one left on that account. long before there was even any talk of the SCR or TBR getting nerfed in any way shape or form most people i know from my unit and many MANY others in the game were long tired of empty promises non stop patches that brought more and more bugs maps with atrocious terrain clipping (not to mention 1980's pixelated trees), the utter and complete failure of CW to show any sign of progress.

now we are down the odd log in maybe once a week. dont blame that on the players blame that on the game dev not keeping players hooked and engaged.

So anti Clan that I run a second, dedicated Clan account with CGBI. And the guy who has been the forefront of pushing for things like unlocking Endo for clan mechs, etc. http://mwomercs.com/...-or-storm-crow/

But don't let facts slow ya or anything....you Deltas rarely do....... (OMG!!! THE TIMBERWOLF IS WORTHLESS NOW!!!!)

That's your issue .....uninformed, or selective with details.

(also, not trying to be a **** (that just seems to come naturally), but calling me anti clan is pretty frigging funny)

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 14 September 2015 - 07:52 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Johnny Z, on 14 September 2015 - 05:11 AM, said:

Agree, but to put it into further context. I will bring this up again. Star Wars the Old republic for example, is a Star Wars game that doesnt resemble a Star Wars movie in any way, and they didnt even try remotly to make it look like the movies. Its all green heal beams and obscene sparkling lights etc.

Point is this game is going through great pains to have the game play as close to the board game as possible and that deserves respect. If some numbers are needed to make it work but the game play and appearance is true to its origins then thats great.

Same problem.

The movies would only make a great single player game, because they are hero myth stories. You can't have a story where everyone is the hero. When you turn it into a multiplayer game you have to use the flavor of the universe but get out of the hero myth setup.

The best option would be to move to Dark Ages, where Clan/IS are pretty well balanced. The tabletop game created Dark Ages specifically because 3050 was absolutely unabashedly terrible for PvP. It was a PvE design. I can't overstate how much damage it did to the franchise. Devs were apologizing at gaming cons for it. That's how bad it was. We are recreating the worst balanced, most problematic point in the games whole design history. While we can't just chuck every single art asset and 90% of equipment and rebuild it all from scratch we can adopt the same balance concepts that Battletech moved to in order to be fun for PvP but using 3050 assets.

That's exactly what rebalancing IS and Clan tech 1 to 1 is; it's replicating with the 3050 assets we've got the game balance of Dark Ages (which is, visually, a pretty silly game environment). Dark Ages was created to balance the utter crap that was the 3050 balance failure.

[Mazzyplz]

ok now that they have announced the pts is all garbage, let me address what's been said in sean lang's video.

they want to force our mechs into specific roles; which means the aws 8r WILL keep the negative quirks and move like a dire wolf;
which means no honey badger any more. nerfed out of the game. why?
NO REASON.

rebalance will add fun? no.
they are looking to force me into using lrm with this particular variant and removing my favorite loadout from the game basically (you could still mount weapons but it's nerfed beyond belief)

even sean lang admits to this in his video, he says they are looking at variants and thinking OK, this will be used more as a brawler so what can we buff and nerf?

this is terrible. - the way they balanced it is to make it work for LRM but srm can just go $^@&$ itself.

they are not balancing your missile hardpoint mech to use missile hardpoints; they are balancing your missile hardpoint mech to use the weapon they feel like you should use

even after sean lang's video this is awful for the game IMO.


i wish they'd just stop,
after they are done here MANY variants will end up being a single boring thing or just go unused

Edited by Mazzyplz, 14 September 2015 - 08:52 AM.

[FupDup]

Mazzyplz, on 14 September 2015 - 08:45 AM, said:

ok now that they have announced the pts is all garbage, let me address what's been said in sean lang's video.

they want to force our mechs into specific roles; which means the aws 8r WILL keep the negative quirks and move like a dire wolf;
which means no honey badger any more. nerfed out of the game. why?
NO REASON.

rebalance will add fun? no.
they are looking to force me into using lrm with this particular variant and removing my favorite loadout from the game basically (you could still mount weapons but it's nerfed beyond belief)

I think a huge part of the issue is that they are forgetting about the "natural" role that each chassis fulfills based on their innate design qualities.

For example, there probably isn't supposed to be a "scout Atlas" variant, despite jokes about Steiner Scout Lances. Every Atlas variant should be defensive/tanky primarily, with some weapon quirks sprinkled in to balance them against each other. The only variant that should get agility buffs should be the Boar's Head, because that variant was specifically designed to be way faster (XL400 stock engine).

They also aren't accounting for a mech's innate weaknesses when they create their "balance diamond" diagram. For example, a Kit Fox is going to have low mobility by its very nature of having a tiny XL180 engine. Negative agility quirks to create low mobility are entirely unnecessary in that case, and overkill for a mech that is already sub-par as it is.

[Mazzyplz]

this is like weapon quirks reloaded;

except now instead of giving me LRM quirks for my mech;

they are making me slow as a 100 tonner so that my only hope is use auto-aiming weapons.


BRAVO.

something to applaud. truly.


i will miss my honey badger when they nerf it out of existance for no good reason; in the meantime i'll drive it as often as i can