The following is an unloved post from Reddit. having discussed this article with a few friends who are more experienced with MMO's than I they and I think the author is onto something. PLease read at your own peril and terror:
My thoughts on the matter,
What we are seeing in PTS is not a rebalance. It is launch of Mechwarrior 2.0 and the reason is upcoming Steam release. Everything we know about mechs and how they play or any experience we gathered as players does not matter after this PTS stuff is pushed to live servers. The game has been fundamentally changed into a role based system, that no longer relies on the mech itself, rather what role is the variant of each mech slotted into.
They are generetic 5 to 8 basic mech classes within the game, depending on the way you want to count it up. These basic classes are such as:
brawler long range fire support medium range pushtype ecm support scout with "infotek" LRM support etc.
How they are achiving this is by taking a mech and its variant and slotting it to a role, lets use Thunderbolt as an example:
Thunderbolt TDR-5SS
https://dl.dropboxus...7115/tdr5ss.png
Tonnage 65 Max Engine 315
Quickdraw QKD-5K
https://dl.dropboxus...quickdraw5k.png
Tonnage 60 Max Engine 360
As you can see, these two variants are extremely similar. You can't realistically bolt 360 engine to the quickdraw, but you can bolt bigger than the normal STD300 ran by TDR-5SS, hence PGI equals out these engine differences on these two variants by boosting acceleration rates of the 5SS. Quickdraw gets addition structure points to make up the tonnage difference between these mechs in terms of pure HP survivability.
When you pilot either of these two mechs in Play Test Server (PTS) you can hardly feel any difference between the two mechs. They have been equalized to the point where they are the same in feel and performance while piloting. They have been slotted into a ROLE. Most likely, role of these two mechs is long to medium range firesupport platforms, as they get very little long range scan time penalty and have quit big target ACQ delay in seconds.
There is no longer Thunderbolt 5SS, its medium range fire support variant 5SS that plays the same as 4 other fire support variants in 4 different mechhulls and if we took the cockpit away, you would not know what mech you were piloting.
When you look at another thunderbolt variant, the 9SE, you notice that it has -15% turn rate and no mobility quirks, making it feel more like an assault than 5SS. It just looks like the same mech, but runs and acts like a completely different mech. 9SE has been quirked to be a sniper. It will feel like other heavy snipers.
You can find these combos all over the PTS hull quirks. Its is a massive equlization project where loser is the mechs and winner is the new steamy player, who ca now choose what mech pleases him asthetically the best, as it will have a variant that performs each of these pre-determinated gameplay roles in similar fashion.
This trend goes thru every mech and every variant of each mech. We are not being balanced by chassis, we are being balanced thru variants. You might be piloting a Quickdraw, Jeagar, Thunderbolt, or any other ~60 tonner and if that particular variant is long to medium range firesupport, it will survive, play, turn, shoot, feel and act almost EXACTLY the same.
When Russ Bullock claimed, that they have failed with rebalance if there is META after the rebalance, he really ment that. There will be no meta, there will be selection of variants from same tonnage (+10/-10 tons) that play in a role.
They want to get rid of distinct feeling of different mechs and replace that with roles and single role will include several different mechs with balanced out variants. This will level the playing field and make it easier for new player to come into the game, as there is no best mech or best build, there is just roles that mech can do. Its easier to grasp than current system, where normally a long range firesupport mech has a brawling variant that is not really any good at its brawling job.
For example, Stalkers. If we leave Misery out of the picture, Stalkers are hillbumping medium range support assaults. Their best role is shooting lasors peaking a hill, however only few variants do this well and rest of the variants are being played in sub optimal roles of LRM platforms or make-up brawlers outside Stalkers performance envelope. This is apparently seen as very confusing and makes some of the variants hard to play and hard to use.
Now, if they balance via mobility, survivability and firepower the brawler Stalker to act like Awesome AWS-8T that is 5 tonns lighter... like they have now done in PTS:
Stalker STK-3H
https://dl.dropboxus...5/stalker3h.png
Awesome AWS-8T
https://dl.dropboxus...5/Awesome8t.png
It is now the same mech, moves the same, has the same HP and acts exactly the same in the intended role, only model is completely different, but they do the same ROLE.
Want more mechs slotted into this role? Here you go BLR-1D:
Battlemaster BLR-1D
https://dl.dropboxus...lemaster-1D.png
As you can see, these 3 mechs and their variants are actually the same mech, with different profile. They will move, feel and act completely different than other variants in their family of mech, but feel same between different chassis.
This it not MWO the game we play now, This is MWO 2.0, the relaunch.
They are now attempting to go this route, instead of doing what alot of us wanted them to do:
Update balance and quirks often, even every two weeks with small balance fixed, iterating the process and listening to feedback.
Reduce the clan weapon systems, such as Clan Medium Laser a bit to bring clan and IS more together.
Do not for a second believe quirk system is "too hard" to balance, such systems have been used successfully in many modern games with vastly bigger playerbase and more complexity. We are only talking about ~200 mechs here.
Some of you claimed that weapon quirks "hurt" your ability to decide what to put on a mech and that weapon quirks gave too much soul to each mech.
I welcome you to your dream then, where it does not matter what mech you pilot, only thing that matters is what role it got quirked into. But hey, now you can slap what ever weapons on it and feel free like a bird..
I find this hugely distrubing. I liked my wolverines, the Dakka and Laser variant where good medium range platforms and it was always bit goofy to play the brawler wolverine with SRM's, because the platform was made to engange in medium range.
But I had no issues with this, mech can not be good outside its intended best envolope. For the community, this seemed to be too much, all variants had to be "good" and "atleast in top tier".
This is in the end result of you all not being able to accept the fact, that some variants and some playstyles just can not meet.
I personally like how MWO is right now alot. I have no desire to even see further what this equalized role warfare platforms bring. This is a bad idea. Its not Mechwarrior. No amount of power creep or PGIs choice of not doing constant incremental balance updates justifies this dumbing down of the game. They could control power creep with quirks&variants and leveling out the weapon differences between clan and IS. It just required more work and you can't put the game on autopilot like you can with this class system by applying minimum upkeep and manpower.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, when I say I did not want balance thru variants, and I did not want slotted role warfare where different mechs feel and do the same in similar fashion. Look at the quirks in PTS, connect the mechs in to their roles, try them out and notice how they run, turn and move the same when built up. It's very sad indeed.
The final GG takes place 10/6/15
Edited by VorpalAnvil, 16 September 2015 - 05:25 PM.
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oldradagast, on 16 September 2015 - 03:11 AM, said:
