77 replies to this topic

[Koshirou]

MischiefSC, on 13 September 2015 - 07:44 PM, said:

Tears aside everyone, let's step back from raging nuclear armegeddon and actually look at the PTS tests for what they are.

An implementation of terrible, poorly thought out ideas that PGI is now half-heartedly backpedaling from and that should ideally be completely scratched without further ado?

[oldradagast]

Koshirou, on 14 September 2015 - 01:48 AM, said:

An implementation of terrible, poorly thought out ideas that PGI is now half-heartedly backpedaling from and that should ideally be completely scratched without further ado?

Exactly.

Everyone who blasted the joke PTS data did so because of the facts. Everyone who supported it did so because of fantasies of "info wars, different radar types, and smoke grenades" based on absolutely no facts or data whatsoever. They support utter, unplayable trash based on groundless dreams of "what might be" when we're talking about a company that can't even program switchable ammo types... much less all the info wars "stuff" that some people think is coming Soon ™

[MischiefSC]

Go read Pauls post. We read our own fears into it. When I go back and read it in the context of what Russ tweeted (and had tweeted something similar earlier) it was a PTS thing, the idea being to get the whole rebalance done on PTS before it goes live.

I'm all for criticism. I criticize the crap of out PGI pretty regularly. However I appreciate that we're looking at doing a pretty much complete rebalance, even including hitboxes, resizing and the like, for the whole game and we're doing it on the PTS. They did a day or two, it's down for a couple days and will be up again to test today.

At some point you need to move forward. We've vented a good 50,000 angry, mostly incoherent and utterly unproductive posts on the subject. Time to walk it off and save further crying for your visit with the therapist.

Eyes on the prize people. Maddy. Whammy. They need a good game to play them in. I get that it's fun to have a sense of righteousness about unloading the sort of bitter vitrol you can't actually say to a human being in person but that's what we have reddit and 4chan for. Complaints of 'LOL PTS WUZ TERRIBLE PGI IS BAD FER DOIN IT I SAY SO CUZ NOBODY SAID SO YET' have sorta worn themselves out.

To re-state the thread title.
So, Moving Past The Original Freak-Out


My take-aways are

1. Need to balance weapons first or at least do IS vs IS and Clan vs Clan

2. Need to reweight the 4 pillars. Weapons and weapon deployment are orders of magnitude more important than sensors for example.

3. Sensors need more. Way, way more, to be really relevant. I'm strongly in favor of chucking lore here and just making stuff that's cool and works. If you want to have IW you're moving outside of the original BT scope anyway.

4. Need to reconsider 'role warfare'. It's 12v12 and ends with one side dead outside of cap rushes. The first role of every mech needs to be killing other mechs. Cutting a tiny slice out of that for a significant function is viable but it needs to be a tiny slice.

[Lily from animove]

MischiefSC, on 14 September 2015 - 08:24 AM, said:

Go read Pauls post. We read our own fears into it. When I go back and read it in the context of what Russ tweeted (and had tweeted something similar earlier) it was a PTS thing, the idea being to get the whole rebalance done on PTS before it goes live.

I'm all for criticism. I criticize the crap of out PGI pretty regularly. However I appreciate that we're looking at doing a pretty much complete rebalance, even including hitboxes, resizing and the like, for the whole game and we're doing it on the PTS. They did a day or two, it's down for a couple days and will be up again to test today.

At some point you need to move forward. We've vented a good 50,000 angry, mostly incoherent and utterly unproductive posts on the subject. Time to walk it off and save further crying for your visit with the therapist.

Eyes on the prize people. Maddy. Whammy. They need a good game to play them in. I get that it's fun to have a sense of righteousness about unloading the sort of bitter vitrol you can't actually say to a human being in person but that's what we have reddit and 4chan for. Complaints of 'LOL PTS WUZ TERRIBLE PGI IS BAD FER DOIN IT I SAY SO CUZ NOBODY SAID SO YET' have sorta worn themselves out.

To re-state the thread title.
So, Moving Past The Original Freak-Out


My take-aways are

1. Need to balance weapons first or at least do IS vs IS and Clan vs Clan

2. Need to reweight the 4 pillars. Weapons and weapon deployment are orders of magnitude more important than sensors for example.

3. Sensors need more. Way, way more, to be really relevant. I'm strongly in favor of chucking lore here and just making stuff that's cool and works. If you want to have IW you're moving outside of the original BT scope anyway.

4. Need to reconsider 'role warfare'. It's 12v12 and ends with one side dead outside of cap rushes. The first role of every mech needs to be killing other mechs. Cutting a tiny slice out of that for a significant function is viable but it needs to be a tiny slice.

can sensors ever be relevant in a game where you just shoot on sight? sensors would only be relevant if they directly or indirectly affect damage or the accuracy of damage. Like in cone of fires accuracy dependend on the info gathered about a mech.

because if not taking onformation warfare to this step, Info will be 95% irrelevant.

[MischiefSC]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 08:34 AM, said:

can sensors ever be relevant in a game where you just shoot on sight? sensors would only be relevant if they directly or indirectly affect damage or the accuracy of damage. Like in cone of fires accuracy dependend on the info gathered about a mech.

because if not taking onformation warfare to this step, Info will be 95% irrelevant.

Sorta. My thought is that you need some *huge* sensor buff/debuffs, much like ECM for much the same weight that mechs can take.

Again, think about a mech locking every target in LoS. He'd be like a walking UAV. The ability to turn off enemy seismic and derp. Paperdolls are of minimal value. Knowing the position of most the enemy team? That I have use for.

There are some things you can do with sensors that absolutely would make them impactful and some IW stuff you could do. It just needs to be *big*. Much like ECM; it can affect the play of an entire match. You just need things on that scale. Paperdoll isn't enough, you need to be able to identify enemy positions and movement over a bigger area and deny them the same.

Think about something that's the opposite of ECM. You get red dorito of all enemies within X radius and share that info with all teammates within y Radius. If you have Tag any enemy you TAG for 7 consecutive seconds is 'locked in memory' of teammates so even if he's under ECM as soon as you get LoS every teammates targeting computer IDs him immediately.

ECCM stuff to go with ECM. It should take tonnage, possibly a hardpoint of some sort but IMO it could create a useful IW environment.

[Fate 6]

MischiefSC, on 14 September 2015 - 09:18 AM, said:

Sorta. My thought is that you need some *huge* sensor buff/debuffs, much like ECM for much the same weight that mechs can take.

Again, think about a mech locking every target in LoS. He'd be like a walking UAV. The ability to turn off enemy seismic and derp. Paperdolls are of minimal value. Knowing the position of most the enemy team? That I have use for.

There are some things you can do with sensors that absolutely would make them impactful and some IW stuff you could do. It just needs to be *big*. Much like ECM; it can affect the play of an entire match. You just need things on that scale. Paperdoll isn't enough, you need to be able to identify enemy positions and movement over a bigger area and deny them the same.

Think about something that's the opposite of ECM. You get red dorito of all enemies within X radius and share that info with all teammates within y Radius. If you have Tag any enemy you TAG for 7 consecutive seconds is 'locked in memory' of teammates so even if he's under ECM as soon as you get LoS every teammates targeting computer IDs him immediately.

ECCM stuff to go with ECM. It should take tonnage, possibly a hardpoint of some sort but IMO it could create a useful IW environment.

Pretty much this. I would argue that lights should be able to spot all mechs within LoS simultaneously without a specific piece of equipment if PGI doesn't want them to have weapon quirks.

That said, lights should also NEVER have negative sensor quirks unless they very massive bonuses elsewhere

[Xavier]

Just gonna leave this here for people to think about....This is the way role warfare should be achieved let the pilots select the role they want for each mech through the mech skill tree. Pleae see the image below.

for a larger image please click this link

https://pbs.twimg.co...AV-Zb.png:large

Edited by Xavier, 14 September 2015 - 11:13 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Xavier, on 14 September 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

Just gonna leave this here for people to think about....This is the way role warfare should be achieved let the pilots select the role they want for each mech through the mech skill tree. Pleae see the image below.

for a larger image please click this link

https://pbs.twimg.co...AV-Zb.png:large

It's a good concept but the problem is they all need to be able to fight well, all the time. That's the game. In your model I'd just take whatever was the best all-around mech and roll in a team of 12, with one guy with ECM. That would be the meta.

[Xavier]

MischiefSC, on 14 September 2015 - 01:54 PM, said:

It's a good concept but the problem is they all need to be able to fight well, all the time. That's the game. In your model I'd just take whatever was the best all-around mech and roll in a team of 12, with one guy with ECM. That would be the meta.

Not if you incorporated aspects of information warfare into the scout tree so that other mechs don't have it. The idea is the special roles would do things that other mechs can't.

[oldradagast]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 08:34 AM, said:

can sensors ever be relevant in a game where you just shoot on sight? sensors would only be relevant if they directly or indirectly affect damage or the accuracy of damage. Like in cone of fires accuracy dependend on the info gathered about a mech.

because if not taking onformation warfare to this step, Info will be 95% irrelevant.

If they affected cone of fire in a non-binary way, possibly. But we don't want nonsense like "I have a lock, so I can pinpoint kill you, and you don't have a lock on me, so you're weapons all shoot wild for some dumb reason even though you can clearly see me." We also really don't want effectively invisible mechs killing people from outside their sensor range.

It probably could be done... but can it be done with the resources we have?

[Fate 6]

Xavier, on 14 September 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

Not if you incorporated aspects of information warfare into the scout tree so that other mechs don't have it. The idea is the special roles would do things that other mechs can't.

His point is that you'd have 11 weapon focused mechs and 1 scout mech with as many weapons as they can carry. Literally exactly what happened when the HBR came out in comp matches: 3FS9s, 3SCRs, 2TBRs, 1HBR, 3DWFs. Sacrifice the one TBR to take a HBR with ECM, and rest of mechs stay exactly the same.

[beerandasmoke]

MischiefSC, on 14 September 2015 - 09:18 AM, said:

Sorta. My thought is that you need some *huge* sensor buff/debuffs, much like ECM for much the same weight that mechs can take.

Again, think about a mech locking every target in LoS. He'd be like a walking UAV. The ability to turn off enemy seismic and derp. Paperdolls are of minimal value. Knowing the position of most the enemy team? That I have use for.

There are some things you can do with sensors that absolutely would make them impactful and some IW stuff you could do. It just needs to be *big*. Much like ECM; it can affect the play of an entire match. You just need things on that scale. Paperdoll isn't enough, you need to be able to identify enemy positions and movement over a bigger area and deny them the same.

Think about something that's the opposite of ECM. You get red dorito of all enemies within X radius and share that info with all teammates within y Radius. If you have Tag any enemy you TAG for 7 consecutive seconds is 'locked in memory' of teammates so even if he's under ECM as soon as you get LoS every teammates targeting computer IDs him immediately.

ECCM stuff to go with ECM. It should take tonnage, possibly a hardpoint of some sort but IMO it could create a useful IW environment.

Mischief youve had some great ideas in this thread but I think your missing one of the major points that is throwing off balance in the game right now. Russ has a huge problem in that he cannot balance clanweapons and mechs in any significant way without a large protion of his PAYING playerbase erupting in outright rebellion. Think back to everytime hes tried to nerf clan weapons or mechs. People raging on the forums and demanding paybacks on preordered clanpacks. People invested a crapton of money and they want those mechs too stay exactly as they are. Balance aside hes got a business to run and the bottomline to think about. I think this whole infowar balance is just a desperate endaround too try and balance the game without significantly pissing off his paying playerbase. Hopefully if I nerf everything they wont complain as much. I myself take a longterm view on the balancing. I got $600 invested in clanmechs but I know with the low TTK we have now that you cant retain new players. The learning curve is just too steep and punishing. However after looking at some of what they had on test I just dont feel like this will significantly impact balance. What it boils down too is clanmechs and how PGI are going to deal with them. Its like I said in an earlier thread they are trying to balance a musket against an AK47. Introduce new tech and give the IS an M16 too fight back with.

[Wayreth]

Beer and Smoke raises interesting points; however, Is not the current rating system suppose to flush out the new people into lower tiers thus taking away some of the steep and punishing learning curve? I know I am no where near tier 1 or 2, its how I play. I am a tier 3 kinda of guy (without actually seeing the data here) Yet I am seeing new people constantly in my games. So one of two things are happening. 1, the rating systems are not working as intended (which is the more likely result) 2. their are not enough people pugging outside of warfare. I find the second of the 2 less likely since we have more European and Asian players on the NA circuit now.

We all knew what a mess clans were going to bring. Added to that are all the nerfs beforehand to the ac/2's, ghost heat ect ect. Yet they kept all the old nerfs in place and re-nerfed right on top of them. The only way to fix this is to remove all the nerfs and start from the beginning. Use empirical data and do it the right way.

Some of the ideas here are novel and should be implemented at a time the MWO can support a population more that 2000 or so people from anyone region. But their are other issues too that are needing attention; the random disconnects that have dropped off of everyone's radar, invisible walls are still there. I know I am here for the ride but this truly concerns me about a game that has a spotty track record.

[Xavier]

Fate 6, on 14 September 2015 - 04:55 PM, said:

His point is that you'd have 11 weapon focused mechs and 1 scout mech with as many weapons as they can carry. Literally exactly what happened when the HBR came out in comp matches: 3FS9s, 3SCRs, 2TBRs, 1HBR, 3DWFs. Sacrifice the one TBR to take a HBR with ECM, and rest of mechs stay exactly the same.

Make it so that ECM only works for the mech selected until scout role is selected and lock ECM down to 45 meters than it won't have that much if an effect. My system doesn't make anything worse than the system that is already in place I am suggesting that someone would have to commit to a certain role and give up on other enhancements and choose their role. Min maxing will always occur in group competitions you will never stop that but you can make people choose their own role in public queues

[beerandasmoke]

Wayreth, on 14 September 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

Beer and Smoke raises interesting points; however, Is not the current rating system suppose to flush out the new people into lower tiers thus taking away some of the steep and punishing learning curve? I know I am no where near tier 1 or 2, its how I play. I am a tier 3 kinda of guy (without actually seeing the data here) Yet I am seeing new people constantly in my games. So one of two things are happening. 1, the rating systems are not working as intended (which is the more likely result) 2. their are not enough people pugging outside of warfare. I find the second of the 2 less likely since we have more European and Asian players on the NA circuit now.

We all knew what a mess clans were going to bring. Added to that are all the nerfs beforehand to the ac/2's, ghost heat ect ect. Yet they kept all the old nerfs in place and re-nerfed right on top of them. The only way to fix this is to remove all the nerfs and start from the beginning. Use empirical data and do it the right way.

Some of the ideas here are novel and should be implemented at a time the MWO can support a population more that 2000 or so people from anyone region. But their are other issues too that are needing attention; the random disconnects that have dropped off of everyone's radar, invisible walls are still there. I know I am here for the ride but this truly concerns me about a game that has a spotty track record.

I agree that theres not enough of a population right now too implement any kind of ELO. That was pretty much confirmed for me last weekend. In the previous ELO enviroment I very rarely seen people lurming. Since the new pass however Im seeing them every game. I dropped a half dozen times with and against Jaeger last week when he was leveling his Mauler and the Lurms were pretty thick even in those games. That tells me that the matchmaker is being stretched too the limit or is broken. In an enviroment like that where new players are not only up against Lurms but also the top players ingame they just arent going to last long even in the soloque. Balancing the matchmaker and raising TTK should be a top priority in preparation for a steamlaunch which will make or break this game.

[MischiefSC]

@beerandsmoke;

the fundamental issue is that the segment you're talking about wants an unbalanced game. They do not want fair or balanced - they want it skewed in their favor and everyone else to group up in large numbers of inferior mechs, so they can pretend it's their skill and not broken balance scoring all those kills.

Those people are toxic to the game, especially after steam. They need to adjust or go. Every mech can get nerfed and from day 1 of Clan release discussion the goal was 1 to 1. At no point has PGI said it will be otherwise. I bought the over quirked ERPPC Thudder when it was op as hell. It got nerfed and I didn't sob like a surly child, I adjusted and still use it from time to time.

We need to pull the bandaid off. You can't balance IS up or ttk goes down. We are bringing ttk down so balance needs to skew that way. There are always outliers and people who only want a broken game. Their money isn't worth losing every new player we have lost and would lose who want a skill based, balanced game.

[Ano]

beerandasmoke, on 14 September 2015 - 06:33 PM, said:

I dropped a half dozen times with and against Jaeger last week when he was leveling his Mauler and the Lurms were pretty thick even in those games. That tells me that the matchmaker is being stretched too the limit or is broken. In an enviroment like that where new players are not only up against Lurms but also the top players ingame they just arent going to last long even in the soloque.

Two quick thoughts about this:

1. Right now, I'm not sure that the presence of LRMs in your matches is *necessarily* an indicator of broken matchmaking -- given the default load out of the Maulers, I'd guess that a fair few of those LRM carriers are people trying almost-stock builds on their new toys, or at least experimenting before they settle in on the inevitable dakka or gauss builds.

2. LRMs are in a really interesting place, when you think about it. *Most* experienced players seem to prefer direct fire weapons at range (and from what I've seen in streamed comp matches/read on forums, they're practically nonexistent in comp team play), but they're pretty deadly for inexperienced players who don't know where to find cover/break locks/have radar derp, and even more experienced players can get caught out.

[oldradagast]

MischiefSC, on 15 September 2015 - 01:58 PM, said:

@beerandsmoke;

the fundamental issue is that the segment you're talking about wants an unbalanced game. They do not want fair or balanced - they want it skewed in their favor and everyone else to group up in large numbers of inferior mechs, so they can pretend it's their skill and not broken balance scoring all those kills.

Those people are toxic to the game, especially after steam. They need to adjust or go. Every mech can get nerfed and from day 1 of Clan release discussion the goal was 1 to 1. At no point has PGI said it will be otherwise. I bought the over quirked ERPPC Thudder when it was op as hell. It got nerfed and I didn't sob like a surly child, I adjusted and still use it from time to time.

We need to pull the bandaid off. You can't balance IS up or ttk goes down. We are bringing ttk down so balance needs to skew that way. There are always outliers and people who only want a broken game. Their money isn't worth losing every new player we have lost and would lose who want a skill based, balanced game.

With all due respect, PGI has shown zero skill at balancing much of anything so far. They can't even fix the pinpoint damage problem, and now they want to introduce another whole "pillar" into the game and convince us that playing a mech with "good sensors!" is as fun as playing one with good guns... which is BS. So, they are going to FORCE us to play their silly vision by vastly changing mechs we've already purchased.

That's what this outage is about. It's not about people crying that their Direwolf might not be unstoppable anymore, or that their Grid Iron's Gauss quirks may be trimmed back a bit. It's about people's favorite mechs that they've bought and grinded out changing into something that plays totally different because PGI thinks it's a good idea to change everything for "balance."

Vastly changing things your customers have already bought is a great way to lose future business, and if anyone things the insane quirk mess on the PTS was going to attract new players they are fooling themselves.

Edited by oldradagast, 16 September 2015 - 03:17 AM.