108 replies to this topic

[KraftySOT]

Me either. But since I know they cant do more than one thing at a time without serious issues arising, I rather the focus on one thing at the time, and play test extensively until we got what we need.

It sucks that basically they should be managing two games right now, but thats what they need to do. Continue to support the live game obviously, but they really need to focus on this 'great rebalance' and its many aspects. Sensors is a part of it sure, so is weapons, but so is hardpoint placement and geometry and hitboxes. Engine caps. Hardpoints themselves.

Theres no reason to go through all this shabaz and not actually fix the game.

Theres a pilot skill that does nothing. We have lowered graphics quality. We lost our progressive convergence. Theres shadows with holes in them. A few weapons are totally useless. One is actually broken. Theres tons of rescaling to be done. If theyre even remotely serious about this....theres a hell of alot of stuff to fix.

Sadly...this is PGI so I know better...

Edited by KraftySOT, 12 September 2015 - 07:13 PM.

[East Indy]

coe7, on 12 September 2015 - 04:40 PM, said:

What is currently on PTS is a completely new game. Hunchback you got in 2013, played almost three years will feel nothing that you have used to feel. All the history of this game is being wiped in one swift swipe. The game you know right now as MWO, is not the game in PTS atm.

This can't be overstated. Instead of using months' worth of data to bring factions and chassis a little closer together with buffs and nerfs, the PTS's design injects this radical theory that superior weapons and silhouettes can be balanced with targeting information. Due to proliferation of ECM, players have been playing, and winning, without locks. The error is compounded by applying quirks in such an individualistic manner that variants within a chassis swing wildly between extremes, even compared to live. With the challenges of PTS testing for this population size it's worth asking why such a sweeping change with limited supporting data was considered.

Need to be a little less ambitious, PGI. The good news is that you've been on the right track on live; just that Clans are still ahead and because of that TTK is still low. Tighten that up, and then you can futz around with infotech.

Edited by East Indy, 12 September 2015 - 07:34 PM.

[Deathlike]

I read this, and this is what I heard... (warning: the man is unfiltered)

[Omaha]

I figured I would test stuff out, and well, connection failed. Was looking forward to seeing some changes.

[SkyHammyr]

Thanks for letting us take a look at it.
I was excited and downloaded the PTS the evening it was released. Video issues kept me from playing, but, I posted some quirk lists to the mech respective boards.

When you guys reevaluate this before putting it back up, please do consider these:
1) People hate negative stuff in their stuff. Nobody wants to see red. Please, get that out of here as much as possible.
2) K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid. Small, incremental buffs that are easy to understand and intuitive in their implementation.
3) We shouldn't be afraid of tuning systems (CXL engines, Lasers, Gauss, ect) if it means less quirks. Quirks are a bandaid, we really shouldn't rely on them.

Now, in the meantime, please tell me where to send my money for Marauder?

[Pjwned]

That's probably a good decision, and I just wanted to say for myself there are 3 main reasons why I didn't participate (yet) despite being interested in the outcomes from all this.

1. Like you said, there's a weekend event going on with double XP, which I've been taking advantage of a bit myself, and that kind of conflicts with public testing.

2. It's kind of a pain in the ass to be able to get in the public test; do we really need to install another copy of the game when considering that a company like Blizzard can set up their test servers without requiring people to do anything similar?

3. People are going APESHIT over all the quirks and sensor changes and everything so much that I don't feel like giving much detailed feedback until the noise dies down a bit.

Edited by Pjwned, 12 September 2015 - 11:06 PM.

[LennStar]

All you weapon-quirk ragers, please think a bit about a few very simple points:

1) Weapon quirks are a band-aid. If info warfare can get better results, its great! But for that to find out you need to remove weapon quirks.

2) After all the info stuff got finished (as far as you can do that) and "bad" variants got additional buffs for e.g. structure, you then

3) can add buffs for weapons, But they are the thing you can insert only LAST.

4) How many of you have actually given suggestion others then "give me back my weapon buffs"? How many of you have thought and worked out a concept how mechs could work with info stuff and perhaps even without weapon buffs?

Edited by LennStar, 12 September 2015 - 11:51 PM.

[Lily from animove]

sensor were not a bad idea at all. but they do not have the value you think they would have. For organised groups and very good palyers they are negliable. for newbies however they are very important. I think you changed and balanced amongst the wrong groups of players, those in the middle of the skill.

Surely, those players may be the majority in numbers, but balancing around them is a bad idea, because you gonna make a wide range of players prey of the real good ones. And if you want CW to be alive one day you need to make the top edge being a balance so that a medicore player bringing not the best min/max machine is at 95% of the belance level and not at felt like 70% as now.

Edited by Lily from animove, 13 September 2015 - 12:48 AM.

[Iqfish]

InRev, on 12 September 2015 - 06:07 PM, said:

The sick thing is, I'm actually cautiously optimistic that the nuclear meltdown that has taken place over the past 48 hours may result in some much needed eye-opening and necessary revisions to their plans.

BAHAHAHA You've been here long enough to know that your Feedback is completely irrelevant regarding balance decisions. They may have a good laugh over it.

[Anunknownlurker]

So, basically, the PTS has served a purpose, it has stimulated discussion created by the introduction of a new system for balancing mechs, it has brought up a number of points which may, or may not, have been considered by the game designers and it has given some (although too few) of us the opportunity to try out the new system with varying degrees of success and happiness.

So, in short, the PTS has worked and it is now up to PGI to respond.

[Astarte]

coe7, on 12 September 2015 - 04:02 PM, said:

Playing with that joke of balance pass looming over us is going to kill this game. It was a travesty. Who would want to invest RL money or time with INFOTEK changes looming on top of us?

You are doing Star Wars Galaxies NGE full speed in anticipation of your steam launch. Lets throw half of your playerbase under the bus and think steam will replace it if we just make the game simplified.

Years worth of your own finetuning of chassis, builds and systems are being tossed away on imagery benefits of targeting boxes that will result in total baldness of IS mechs. Its back to 2013 where hardpoints were only thing that mattered, IS had very few good chassis and alot of crap.

You cannot have one of the pillars of balance as a null factor, aka sensors and stuff.

Worst is that most mechs feel and play totally different than people who have grown to like them. You are already old game, making this drastic changes and removing alot of flavor aquired over the years is going to be undoing of MWO.

No longer there is JJ-DDs with brutal and fun dakka, no longer there is Wolverines with lasers, no longer there is GI's or any hunchbacks worth playing. Lights are muddled roles of nothing because rudder and pedals crowd cant keep up with fundamentals of FPS shooters, aka aiming. Where is the lore of longer range ravens, knifefighting firestarters or zooming locusts? IS lost all of its flavor gathered over years for absolutely nothing.

We are way past the point where you can say look at this great INFOTEK and think people will buy it. Game is pretty damn fun right now with live balance, all we wanted was slight reductions on clan weapon balance, notably medium clan laser and even more fun, playable IS chassis via quirks to those with low hardpoints getting HP boosts.

Every major game is balanced by ex pro's / highend players or people deep in the scene being responsible for balance. Watch examples of SC2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. Your personal ability to play this game is visible to everyone in your twitch channel. Flat out I will say this, if you need a red box around mechs and have problems with people flanking you as you do on your twitch stream, or have issues shooting arm of a wolverine or dragon, it is not a reason to balance the whole game based on your individual skill level.

Truth thurts. You hurt this community. With this balance failure of an idea looming over to completely overhaul the game, how do you think active units will keep their players intersted and paying to upkeep this game?

Quoting this, because it's pretty much what I thought

[stjobe]

ilKhan Judge Dreddrensky, on 12 September 2015 - 06:20 PM, said:

Methinks that the original publisher of the game was not the heart of bad decisions, but the developers

Also, from checking glassdoor, I hope the exodus of staff isnt putting too much pressure on Russ and Paul to come up with great creative ideas like this PTS rebalance

Never heard of glassdoor, so of course I googled it. Whoa.

Seems the rumours about PGI's management at least has some basis in reality...

Edit: Heh, from 2008 already:
"Advice to Management
Stop trying to design games or manage production when you can't do either. Hire a designer. Hire qualified production leads. Stop trying to do those things."

Edited by stjobe, 13 September 2015 - 04:54 AM.

[Appogee]

Like a favoured aunt on life support, I don't know whether to be sad or grateful that you pulled the plug.

On the one hand, it's sad to see it go. On the other hand, you've mitigated countless hours of pain and anguish.

[KhanJames]

Well i understand why they took PTS down since i tried about 4 times to get on it and find a game and after over 10 min of searchinhg for a match i went to play on the regular one.

Personally im not as concerned as some of yall are about InfoWar. it makes sense that a light (scouts) would have better sensors than an assault (mainline battler). Although i would say some of the sensor nerfs seem crazy. the Assaults should have good SR sensors because many are IMO brawler or tank style but most had the most significant nerfs to sensors at close range.

I do like the idea of sensors being based off "job" as well not just weight class. Mad Dog/Vulture getting long range sensor boosts seeing as its a LRM boat, King Crab getting short/mid range boosts reflecting a more Camper (again IMO there more slow defensive powerhouses although like atlases used to be they can be great for breaking a opposing mech line). etc....

At the same time they need to do the stuff with Tcomp and CConsole at the same/similar time frames to give players the ability to compensate (assuming they inted to do stuff like that (Scout to (assuming it doesnt have one) CConsole mech who relays targets to LRM/Support mech etc) thus giving players the ability to actually play the role warefare rather than getting to see the nerfs but not the rewards. IMO that would "calm" some of the people who are complaining.

And again I prefer they do this sorta thing "crazy" stuff in PTS to see how it affects gameplay rather than constantly having a bunch of minor changes in regular. And again I support Role warfare so people who want to do everything/anything in any mech will have problems with this sorta thing but i think role warfare may take getting used to but could (if implemented properly) make MWO a much more Rewarding(?) and immersive game.

Edited by KhanJames, 13 September 2015 - 05:32 AM.

[Appogee]

[Anunknownlurker]

Completely agree with SkyHmmr; get rid of red for negative quirks and just use a neutral colour for both relying on the player to recognise the difference between + & -

In modern teaching practice, red is discouraged for marking as it holds too many negative connotations in western culture.

On a further note - would it be possible to simply show max/min values e.g. sensor range 550m,time to acquire target 2.5 seconds rather than a difference between base and actual value?

[KhanJames]

And I also support weapon quirks but i feel they should be minor (20 max and that only rarely). like warhawk/masakari should get a PPC boost but like 10 percent range, 5 velocity, maybe 5 cooldown. The way it is now where Mechs are dependant on quirks or in the case of the clans they dont always make sense atleast to me (how does the number of laser hardpoint on an arm make the CT/Torso rotate less?) definately needs work.

Another thing i Know people would hate but i would like would be mech usage based off of affiliation. Kurita gets to use dragons. everyone else either can use but no quirks or maybe even nerfs on it (since saying no other factions could use a mech except teh creator would likely never happen). Clan remains clan only and IS remains IS only but since no faction support (And since we dont do repairs on mech, which would make it much easier to say hey imported parts cost more sucker) MINOR quirk/nerfs would IMO be a viable alternative.

[Kinski Orlawisch]

September 22nd

Mech rebalance - Not to be confused with Table top battle value but think of it as an all inclusive new balance pass on the game. In short it includes putting every mech in the game into a new document. Analyzing all aspects of that mech from it's geometry shape, placement of hard points, number of hard points and assigning a value. The resulting value is then used in a balancing matrix which focuses on 4 key properties of a 'Mech; firepower, mobility, protection and sensors. With this information we work on quirks and other aspects of the mechs to attempt to achieve the best balance possible. We expect to have a public test or two with the full pass in early September.

I hope that these things you did on the PTS will NEVER go live and you FOCUS on the CW problems. Implant economics and a lot more there.

I will never talk about overquircked Thunderbolts again.

[InRev]

Iqfish, on 13 September 2015 - 03:04 AM, said:

BAHAHAHA You've been here long enough to know that your Feedback is completely irrelevant regarding balance decisions. They may have a good laugh over it.

I know

A part of me just remembers with fondness the uproar over the original plan for consumables and the back-peddling that took place after the forums melted down.

Good times.

[Outcast1six]

This whole forum makes me sad. I have been playing a long time, not as long as some of you, but pretty long.

I have a significant investment in money and TIME. Like a lot of you.

I agree with aspects of the re balance, but I think there has been more of an emotional response to this as opposed to an objective one.

I dislike the sensor nerfs. I don't play missile mechs as often as before, but I do have my favorites and I have watched my damage and scores plummet as ECM is on almost every chassis and people have gotten enough c-bills to run endless radar dep. Also, LRMs is one of the most viable options for the new player to get into the game and still put up some points. That is WAY less of an option now. My 8 year old plays and my computer is slow, so I have started him off with LRM mechs while he learns the game. Imagine how frustrating playing for some new players that die within 30 seconds of starting the game.

I would LOVE to see role warfare. But until the mentality of highest damage and match score based on damage changes you will never see it. How many of you are running TAG and NARC on your 3L Ravens? Very few I would guess. How many are running LL or ERLL? The majority. The premier electronic warfare mech is relegated to a laser sniper. Why? No points or c-bills for that role.

There should be almost NO chance for a light mech or 2 to kill heavy or assault mechs. That's a joke. Assaults are literally the biggest joke in the game. Torn apart by a firestarter and an ACH. It isn't even 4, 5 or 6 lights, which I can expect to kill heavier machines, but one or 2. There is no fear of an assault mech, unless you are in something else that is too slow to get out of the way. People will master their maulers and then you will see them disappear, like the atlas, victor, awesome, highlander. Oh you see gargoyles and executioners, loaded with what? Pulse lasers. They can still close quickly enough to use mass pulse vomit.

I love playing this game and I love the community and we have a good time. I hold no ill will for PGI or anyone working there. Would I personally change things? Hell yes. Are there things I hate? SPL arctic cheetahs and quirked Dragons. I don't do game design. I fix Helicopters. So I appreciate the game and the people that made it. Do I think it needs work? See above.

I thank PGI for the game, I would like this to be a great game. I believe it can be.

"Steps off soapbox"