205 replies to this topic

[Sarlic]

ShinVector, on 15 September 2015 - 03:46 AM, said:

Some people also believe that an Atlas should be able to take and destroy hordes of lights and only sustain minimal damage. (A ridiculous lore thing, popular with the older generation. )

If you are buying mechs for META/P2W in mind. You may be doing it wrong.

Better to buy them because you really want them or to support the game maker.
This game is F2P model after all and they need to pay bills to keep the servers and content running.

Doesnt take away that PGI's free to play model is terrible.

[Errinovar]

ShinVector, on 15 September 2015 - 03:46 AM, said:

Some people also believe that an Atlas should be able to take and destroy hordes of lights and only sustain minimal damage. (A ridiculous lore thing, popular with the older generation. )

If you are buying mechs for META/P2W in mind. You may be doing it wrong.

Better to buy them because you really want them or to support the game maker.
This game is F2P model after all and they need to pay bills to keep the servers and content running.

At no point did I say anything about paying for META/P2W.. the point is if you buy a mech, and it becomes obsolete because newer mechs just flat out do it better or just sucks in comparison to other similar mechs, are you going to continue to buy anything. If nobody buys anything MWO dies, no money - no game.. And it begs the question about new players who don't know which mechs are notorious suck fests buying a package because they like the mech design and finding out that it sucks rocks (Dragons anyone?) Without the quirks, specifically weapon quirks a number of mechs simply cannot compete, hell even with quirks how often do you see Dragons or even better when was the last time you saw an X-5 in a match. My point is, if the various mechs in the game already aren't at a balance point where everyone is roughly at the same tier then there is no real balance and it is detrimental to the game in the long term, specifically in a business sense. What you seem to be advocating by suggesting a natural balance is that there exists a number of mechs that should be, by innate virtues, the best of the bunch and everything else filters down from good to crap, which is just another version of what we have now, except that it is a different and smaller group of mechs that round out the top spot and a much larger pool of mechs at the bottom.

Edited by Errinovar, 15 September 2015 - 04:06 AM.

[Apnu]

Appogee, on 14 September 2015 - 02:57 PM, said:

Draw your own conclusions. Either the earlier claims about a rebalancing on 22 September were just hype not grounded in actual progress of the rebalancing, or this revelation about a much larger rebalance is just spin to cover up for the disaster that unfolded on the PTS.

I go with the first notion.

Clearly, they looked at the re-balancing project and realized its deeper and wider than they thought, so they've thrown the dates out the window and are starting with baby steps. We'll have the current quirks for a long time yet. Also, there will be no launch on Steam until this is done (and probably a few other things on top of it).

I highly doubt any of this is spin. Looking at what they did in PTS, Sean Lang's story holds up.

If PGI is guilty of anything, they are guilty of not stating the goals of the PTS. Had they done that, the QQ on the forums and Twitter would have been much less and Phil wouldn't have needed to waste an hour of his life making a video explaining stuff.

A simple forum post about what and why the current build on PTS is happening would have sufficed.

[Livewyr]

I'm picturing 42 minutes and 32 seconds of Russ, in slow motion, diving away from the explosion of that PTS. (Considering it was announced as a balance patch, not a "testing info tech" pass.)

[AssaultPig]

the 'natural order' was that people only ever drove about six or eight IS mechs and everything else sat in the garage; I just can't believe anybody saying that kind of **** and meaning it was around in the pre-quirk days.

there are so, so many areas of the game that need work that it's really disappointing to see PGI walking back one of their rare unqualified successes. I realize that the PTS quirks were not final, but if the idea goes live with only balancing tweaks it's really hard for me to figure out why we wouldn't be right back to people driving six or eight IS mechs and nothing else. There isn't enough gameplay variation in MWO for a wide variety of sensor-related quirks to be applicable in different situations.

Edited by AssaultPig, 15 September 2015 - 04:15 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

https://www.reddit.c..._pretest_video/

[ShinVector]

AssaultPig, on 15 September 2015 - 04:14 AM, said:

the 'natural order' was that people only ever drove about six or eight IS mechs and everything else sat in the garage; I just can't believe anybody saying that kind of **** and meaning it was around in the pre-quirk days.

there are so, so many areas of the game that need work that it's really disappointing to see PGI walking back one of their rare unqualified successes. I realize that the PTS quirks were not final, but if the idea goes live with only balancing tweaks it's really hard for me to figure out why we wouldn't be right back to people driving six or eight IS mechs and nothing else. There isn't enough gameplay variation in MWO for a wide variety of sensor-related quirks to be applicable in different situations.

Been driving lights with Asia ping since closed beta and they are are my preferred class still.
Believe what you wish. Some people like a challenge and bring out those mechs and make them work.

If unquirks ever come... True IS pilots will remain IS... Eg.. The only clan I have in this account are kit foxes.

Clanners and people want to win at all cost will naturally choose Clan mechs.

That's my opinion on the matter anyway...

[Mawai]

Sarlic, on 15 September 2015 - 03:49 AM, said:

Doesnt take away that PGI's free to play model is terrible.

A lot of folks say this but I question the validity.

- Free to play gives access to game content without having to pay money up front.
- In a free to play model money is paid to obtain content faster, obtain access to limited distribution or paywalled content, for disposable items and for cosmetic items

These are common across all free to play games. The developer requires a steady cash flow to pay salaries, purchase hardware, support data centers, and cover infrastructure costs.

So .. what is the basic UNIT of in game usage in MWO? As far as I am concerned it is the mech, You can try to separate weapons and loadouts but the basic unit of usage in MWO is a mech chassis. (In other free to play games based on other genres the IP and game itself can have a much finer resolution on what the basic items that can be used in the game are ... fantasy and science fiction based free to play games have weapons/armor/transportation/housing that can all be monetized .. but we are playing Battletech (or a variant there of) in individual mechs from a first person perspective. The base unit of "currency" in this design is the mech itself.

So ... PGI has to design their free to play model around selling mechs since that is the fundamental unit in MWO. They sell premium time that gives better in game rewards reducing time required to acquire new content as well as allowing access to customized private matches. They sell mechs. They sell hero mechs as limited access content. They sell consumables and they sell cosmetic items to decorate your mech.

This all perfectly fits the free to play model in the context of the Battletech/Mechwarrior IP.

So .. maybe folks aren't complaining about the free to play model used in MWO but rather the pricing. This is more difficult to judge but MWO is stuck with a base unit (the mech) that provides a significant amount of in game content by itself. With one mech you can essentially play all of the available MWO content (though you might need trials if you want to try CW).

In order to earn income, PGI has to set mech prices such that they earn a decent income. The higher prices are offset by fairly regular sales (35 to 50% at least once or twice a year typically) as well as package pricing and bundle pricing.

Someone who objects to a $20 mech is likely to also object to a $10 mech. Some folks feel that mechs should be priced at $2 each so that then they might buy some. The problem with this is that PGI would have to sell ten times as many mechs to get the SAME revenue selling $2 mechs as they receive selling $20 mechs ... never mind increase their income. PGI may have statistics already ... but lets say that 10% of MWO players spend some money on it. Will dropping the price get a 100% spend rate from the community ... not a chance. PGI is the only one with the actual numbers but based on the number of folks I see dropping in EVERY match with some sort of tag representing a significant package purchase ... it is probably closer to 25% of current MWO have spent a significant amount of money on the game. These folks are more likely to stay around, more likely to spend more and they are also the people that PGI needs to be keeping in mind when they make any changes since these are the folks that keep them in business.

Anyway, when you balance mech pricing and time required to earn in game currency to purchase mechs it is a fine balance. Earning needs to be slow to encourage purchases but not so slow as to discourage folks from playing altogether. PGI is the only one with the telemetry to judge the current situation but whether they have this data and are using it is anyone's guess.

One last comment, I don't know who PGI got to design their free to play model and pricing but I would have to guess that it was neither Russ nor Paul since I don't think they could do it. If I had to guess I would say maybe Bryan or perhaps an outside consulting firm on free to play design.

TL;DR

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with MWO free to play model that doesn't derive from the basic design of a mech based game.


P.S. There a number of additional things that PGI might be able to monetize but they haven't changed their monetization model since the game went live so my guess is that they no longer have the expertise in house to properly assess and make such updates. (The only change they made was requiring premium time to kick off customized private matches and that is just a band aid if I ever saw one ... almost all their monetization efforts focus on mech packs and always have).

Edited by Mawai, 15 September 2015 - 06:58 AM.

[WarHippy]

Kiiyor, on 13 September 2015 - 10:50 PM, said:

I just wish people would be able to exercise some patience. All these kneejerk reactions achieve exactly nothing, and people are treating the whole thing like it's going live tomorrow - whereas if you look at Russ' twitter:
He doesn't seem in a particular hurry to push anything through.

If anything, this appears to be a failure in communication more than anything (it would be nice to get info from the forums rather than Twitter - but i've made my peace with that) despite Paul's exhaustive command post about it all.

There needed to be more information from the get go - especially regarding the methodology of test - but we aren't helping things on the forums by rioting either.

I fully get what you are saying, and I would like to think I am remaining cautiously optimistic about these possible future changes, but there is valid reason for concern given past actions with regard to the pts. Several times in the past we have had things appear on the pts for a couple hours of testing where a lot of feedback and concerns are given only to have the new things in the pts go live unchanged the following Tuesday.

They really need to take their time with this and allow for ample testing, or this very easily and very quickly could end in disaster. The communication needs to be stellar as well, or they are going to get a lot of noise like they have been getting the past several days. We need to know what their goals are with the tests, what they are thinking about, and why they are doing certain things. Without proper context our imaginations are going to run amok when we see changes that look ridiculous without the proper context.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Livewyr, on 15 September 2015 - 04:10 AM, said:

I'm picturing 42 minutes and 32 seconds of Russ, in slow motion, diving away from the explosion of that PTS. (Considering it was announced as a balance patch, not a "testing info tech" pass.)

and calling in paid friends ngng to put out the fires

[Livewyr]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 15 September 2015 - 07:54 AM, said:

and calling in paid friends ngng to put out the fires

I wonder if Russ called them in, or if NGNG did that of their own accord. There is reasoning to both thoughts.

[WarHippy]

Mystere, on 14 September 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

Baseline. That's a word quite a number of people did not even think of while freaking out.

A baseline is important for future re-balancing of the weapons, but according to Sean this was about testing sensor related changes. Seems like a silly time to be messing with the weapon numbers and distracting their testers with those changes while trying to test something else.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Livewyr, on 15 September 2015 - 08:13 AM, said:

I wonder if Russ called them in, or if NGNG did that of their own accord. There is reasoning to both thoughts.

Them continuing to get a paycheck weighing in heavily

[Alexander Garden]

Need to move this over to the re-balance sub-forum.

[lsp]

Not about to watch a 40minute video, don't like this game that much.

[Krivvan]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 September 2015 - 10:49 PM, said:

But since they are the same people who have complained about EVERYTHING for 3 years? Why change now?

They're not. I was accused of white-knighting before, but I see problems when the original rhetoric was that they wanted weapon quirks out, and the only news we had before the PTS went live was about how it was going to be a comprehensive re-balance. I remember certain parties on stream talking about how they thought IS mechs were all pretty much balanced with each other on the PTS, which couldn't be further from the truth.

You can't say that people were just overreacting because this was just an infotech test when there was no information about how it was just an infotech test until the PTS went down. Paul's post makes it sound like things were at a great start and that they'd avoid weapon quirks if possible, which certainly doesn't sound like it was all an infotech test.

Edited by Krivvan, 15 September 2015 - 10:52 AM.

[Mogney]

I am sure that the ngng video accurately represents pgis position now. But its not what pauls post when the pts went up said. I believe this is damage control. BetTer to say "we meant it like this all along" than admit their rebalance was awful.

[Lily from animove]

Sry phil I don't get most explanations.

@around 1:40
So because not giving other mechs an "ecm" by limiting heavies and assaults to 500m you give nearly every mech a temorary ecm of around 3 seconds? Thats even worse than limiting specific weight classes to specifc ranges.
Especially in MWO's heavy pop-battles this is more of a disadvantage vs a limited ranged instanttargeting. because then there are at leats many situations and locations a assault and ehavy could still get a fast lock. Especially at brawl range.

Thanks for takign the time to explain the stuff, it is and was rather clear where PGI wanted to go, but in fact it looks like PGI actually doesn't know where they are (or where MWO is) and so if you don't know your location, you won't be bale to reach a goal, only because you know where it is. And without knowing truly what matters at MWO, they just kept judging the values they have chosen wrong. They applied changes they hoped they would change the world they are in. But in fact most wouldn't. Tell me how much informationwarfare does a premade group in teamspeak need? if they are decent players, they need none. They need to know the map and all the informationarfare is communicating with each other. They can identify a mech by its shape, they knwo what location to shoot. acquisition and scanning is meanignless. Especially since maps are not random enough or teir spawns to make scanning important.

At this point PGI has at least 3 changes:

Either they choose values so that quirks will have impact on the world we play in.

Or they change the world we play in.
Lets say they woudl add a cone of fire, convergence or damage/critvalue depending on how a mech is targeted or scanned. That would directly influence firepower or the efficiency of applying damage. THAT would make people consider taking informationwarfare serious.

The third one would be informationwarfare givign a strategical advantage. But this would require maps with various randomised elements where scanning actively helps you achieve and reach the goal. But we do not have this at all. And this would mean a laod of recreation before somethign like this could go alive.

But when I come across a mech, I will need X damage to kill it. No matter if I just see ith wothotu targetting, with targetting or even scanned. Scanning may matter in the later course of a battle to identify a weakspot given a component is cored already. But this is a situational advantage and Firepower always works. Esepcially when every mech starts at full health.

What I also see, is that PGI hardly knos how good builds look like, and by this have not given out quirks ith this in mind. Thats why Pilots who know what to build instantly knew which variants and pods were just "dead choices". But you can't blame PGI for this they program and design the game and this is extremely complex, so I doubt they cann truly get in such depth into ALL THEIR MECHS. But for balance this is needed. Actually, using good players feedback would help, but then too many do actually not judge objectively, they push their opinion with a mix of their needs and favours into this. And this makes too many feedback biased.

So a very tough thing PGI has to balance here.

And you talk about the "system" and the PTS, it's nonsense, because all you did is formign nice words.

because truth is, that giving people what they got on PTS to judge without knwing the system. or what its purpose is. But that make 0 sense, because thats liek saying, we gonna make a race, here get a F1 racers or a Bobbycart, now gimme feedback. But probably someone didn't said we gonna hev to race ona afield where the F1 racer just breaks after 10m.?
Sry but thsi explanation makes no sense together with the PTS values they gave us. Much further is there for some of the values soem clear losers, no matter what the "system" woudl look like. Except PGI wants to redefine ANYTHING in the coregamplay of MWO, wich is clearly not possible.

Your talk about the Phracts for example, yes sounds nie, sounds logic, yet outvoem of th realisation is far away from the logic. It's like soemoen ahs an idea of a theory to balance, but executes it toally wrong. So the design itself has logical flaws countering its idea. You think the system fixed the phract balance and its discussion about it's engines? I wonder how many good palyers actually agree with that. or how many would declare the same phract variant as "obsolete". Epecialyl those, one gets turnrate, one gets acc/deccrate. This seems to never have been given out in consideration of what style people paly on these mechs. acc/decc? for poking, Turnrate for probably brawling. But it seems more random than actually fitting to the style people used those mechs. That i oen part of hwo they were given. The second is, WHAT IT matters. Especially condsiering the delta. And so amongst all the maneuvers on the battlefield, the true "benefit" of turning 20% faster than the other variant HARDLY or rarely has a REAL impact.
Thats the issue, because good players think in costs of opportunaties. What does it cost me to gain those 20%, or what do get when dropping those 20%. And in fact many changes are nt significant. Tbh some get to a ridiculous "too high" or "too low" state where the amount past this break even point hardly matters anymore.
I am not sure how that "master list" or System did the judgement here, but I am sure it was not very accurately. On a fast twistig emch like the SCR 20% less is not much of a loss. Especially not with those Hitboxes.

And when I had a look at the TBR laservomit, SCR laservomit nd NVA laservomit, I can tell you that this "list" absolutely failed to properly value all the characteristics as you told in the video. becaue those PTS quirks if based ion that list just widened the gaps. I would love to see this List/System and how the mechs were judged in those characteristics and how multipliers were chosen for these characteristics.
Further I would love to know, what juges the changes as "ready"? When the list says so? when people stop "complaining" when a specifc circle of insiders say "it's fine" ?

and the same as above counts for the Module discussion, the amount of different weapons probably decides the amount of wepaonmodule slots? This is weird, because it actually means you expect a pilot using the full scale of all those different wepaons, whcih eh porbably may not. When the bets build for both hunches would be an Ac 20 and 4ML, then it does not care if the one had 1M s hardpoint more or not.
The same goes for the omnimech Moduleslots, they were nothing like a mess, or probably judged by the stock loadout? because mechs with identically CT's have totally gotten messy Modules in a messy mix of quirks. While in fact all ahrdpoints on such a mech can be replaced. The logic you explain, is fine, the logic excuted, (again) did not followed that.

P.S. give hill climb module 50% and you se it on more mechs, rdarderp and seismic are the most sued because they are the only one that have a proepr effect. The others are too weak to change much to be significant wanted choices.

I also don't like the entire way hwo you talk about clanwepaons being inherently better, the ES/FS discussion and such, because there was plainly much wrong from a real objective jugements. If that is what PGI also thinks and values it in this way as well, I do not wonder why overquirked IS mechs happened or why this PTS mess happened. There was just too much wrong here.

Whatever the "bigger picture" is that PGI sees and priduces that list of, it is not the picture of the true MWO we fight. and when PGI wants to balance we need to help them seeing the real picture first.

I don't want this post to be such a superlong wall'o'text, So I break here, because the line of what I said above carries over to the rest.

tl:dr

Currently PGI thinks we are in washington and knows and walks the route to New York.
While in fact we are in Madrid

[Kiiyor]

WarHippy, on 15 September 2015 - 07:49 AM, said:

I fully get what you are saying, and I would like to think I am remaining cautiously optimistic about these possible future changes, but there is valid reason for concern given past actions with regard to the pts. Several times in the past we have had things appear on the pts for a couple hours of testing where a lot of feedback and concerns are given only to have the new things in the pts go live unchanged the following Tuesday.

They really need to take their time with this and allow for ample testing, or this very easily and very quickly could end in disaster. The communication needs to be stellar as well, or they are going to get a lot of noise like they have been getting the past several days. We need to know what their goals are with the tests, what they are thinking about, and why they are doing certain things. Without proper context our imaginations are going to run amok when we see changes that look ridiculous without the proper context.

I'm with you.

There's a different feeling with this PTS though. They're never really promoted caution like this before. Usually, when something was going on test, they were putting it up as more of an advisory - whereas they were very specific about their uncertainty with this one.

It really does come down to communication. Though there was a command post and a few other tidbits, the actual specifics were lacking. And it only takes a little lack to incite the forums to uproar - we're a twitchy and volatile bunch

Seems as though PGI and the NGNG peeps have at least learned from the destruction over the last few days though, and there's going to be a pre-PTS video going up from now on. I'm again cautiously optimistic. Russ appears to be responding to feedback and taking it on board (on Twitter at any rate), and they seem to be committed to managing community expectations with this more than they have with other tests in the past.

[oldradagast]

If they wanted just to see if stuff was "working," that's fine, though it in no way explains the rest of the insanity, unless the folks there get their kicks out of randomly changing XML files and this one was the only one that happened to be "close enough" to show off.

Or, if this is actually back-pedaling away from attempts to balance the game one element at a time, they should know better. One can't tell if "info-tech" is working "well-enough" if the rest of the test game is an unbalanced wreck.