4 replies to this topic

[Mogney]

I will try to be extremely brief.

Despite Pauls posted disdain for competitive players, they are what you have to look at in order to see what the current balance of the game is.

Balance in MWO has never been better than it is right now. The competition players have decks that work at short range, mid-range, and long-range. There are a huge number of mechs (relative to the past) that you see in competitive drops. So I am starting from the perspective that any balance changes need to actually improve balance because the current balance, while it could be improved through incremental tweaks is a far cry from being broken to the point that it needs to be rethought from the ground up.

As far as this attempt, it is a 4 pillars mentality of Firepower, Armor, Speed, and Infotech. This approach is fundamentally flawed based on the assumption that these 4 pillars are of equal value, they are not. Firepower is king, Speed is great, Armor is a good tie breaker, infotech is something that no serious player is going to look at in regards to competitive mechs.

What I am seeing on the PTS is unacceptable.

1. Clan vs IS balance is extremely broken.
2. The new Meta will be extremely narrow, it will consist of a few select clan mechs, and maybe a firestarter.
3. The clan omnipods are going to force those clan mechs into just a few builds
4. Most IS mechs will never see the light of day.
5. Looking at the quirks on just about any mech is a wall of text, this is way to complex. Forget laser vomit, we have quirk vomit here.
6. Some of the weakest mechs are getting nerfs. Any solution that will add negative quirks to the weakest chassis in the game (the Commando) is a complete and total fail. There is really no need to keep on testing.

When Russ said this would go in in Oct, I am hoping he meant Oct 2016 as it needs alot of work, but really since the base assumption about those four pillars is incorrect, there really isnt much to save this approach.

Please toss this entire idea out, and instead identify the weakest mechs in the game and work on improving those, and maybe scale back a few quirks on some of the top performers to achieve balance.

I dont see any point in providing feedback on individual mechs as the basic premise is too broken to waste any more time on.

Russ promised us no more pendulum swings, but gradual and incremental changes. This is a total reversal on that promise.

I love this game, but if what we have now in the PTS goes live in Oct, I for one will be shopping for a new game.

[Krivvan]

When people respond that it's just the first pass of testing and to stop being so negative, this is essentially my response. The whole direction of the approach is flawed and it's not a matter of tuning that is the problem. If it was just tuning, then I'd happily be in every single variant subforum listing the minor tweaks they need. As is, my feedback for every single variant would boil down to "remove 90% of these quirks and redo the mech valuing system that is not only flawed, but goes in the opposite direction when evaluating mechs than it should."

All the changes in the PTS that aren't mech balance related I do actually like though. Like the grid icons even if they're a bit messy right now.

Edited by Krivvan, 12 September 2015 - 01:39 PM.

[Andi Nagasia]

Russ and Paul have said that they are already working on (Tech Balance) and its coming soon,
the first 4 items on your list can be solved with this (Tech Balance) so that should Fix your Problems with it,

[Krivvan]

Andi Nagasia, on 12 September 2015 - 01:44 PM, said:

Russ and Paul have said that they are already working on (Tech Balance) and its coming soon,
the first 4 items on your list can be solved with this (Tech Balance) so that should Fix your Problems with it,

The last 2 points on the list are pretty huge as well and don't get fixed without going back on a very significant amount of what's on the PTS.

Edited by Krivvan, 12 September 2015 - 02:03 PM.

[KraftySOT]

Without a doubt this is not even remotely close to finished.

They literally deleted quirks. Added the sensor stuff. Put it on the PTS.

Its maybe, maybe 25% complete. Were going to have to do the testing, and have them reapply quirks and such to each mech. This is going to take months.