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After hours on the PTS playing as many different mechs and playstyles what follows is my impression. I will try to keep this as concise as possible to make the developer's jobs easier, but given the depth and interplay of the multiple layers to this game, it will be long winded at times.
High Level Overview and what happened on the PTS
1) The Fallacy of the new balancing model - There are not 4 pillars to mech balance in MWO
Let’s face it, this game is mech team deathmatch. You win by damaging and killing mechs. To that end the THREE things that allow a mech to do its job are a) mobility (top speed and accel/decel)
defense (armor and hitboxes) and c) firepower. Sensors are not important enough given the current map sizes, even on the bigger maps, to make up for any shortcoming in killing potential. We know based on spawns, generally where the enemy will approach from.Using sensors as a pillar of balance is just opens up the gap between the top performers and the bottom performers as the sensor “buffs” the bad mechs get or the sensor “nerfs” good mechs get don’t amount to much and presents an inaccurate picture of each mech’s combat potential. Information warfare is the icing on the cake to allows for an increased level of teamwork and strategy whilst allowing some underperforming mechs to contribute to their team in a way beyond combat potential. It is not a central pillar of mech balance in MWO.
Furthermore trying to balance a game off of numbers and metrics is a surefire way to lose perspective. Gameplay experience counts for so much more as there are a nearly infinite number of factors that go into a mech even how many variables exist in the game: pilot skill, mech chassis & build , map, teamwork. Trying to quantify all of these and balance off a spreadsheet is guaranteed to lead down the wrong path.
2) There will always be someone complaining about something – Is it worth listening to them?
Let’s really think about the state of the game on live. Is it really that bad? I don’t think so. People complain about TTK but try fighting a 1v1 (I would argue that most of the playerbase is too gunshy and sensitive about their ego to have ever done this). Even amongst comp players a 1v1 usually lasts about half a minute to 45 seconds. 30-35 full seconds! Count that out in your head; it’s an eternity. Double armor slows down the pace of the game a lot and frankly the only people that complain about low TTK are the ones that wander into enemy firing lines and eat damage from 6 mechs at once because they have poor situational awareness and/or their team did not scout or play their information warfare role correctly.
As far as the complaints about laser vomit goes, I believe that is a reflection of imbalances with other weapon systems rather than any fundamental flaw in the game. For example with the doubling of armor, ammo did not get doubled. This makes energy based weapons instantly more attractive in the public que to say nothing of CW. Couple the plight of ballistics with the way ECM hard counters LRMs and the weak state of SRMs and you unsurprisingly have a recipe for laser vomit meta.
The point I’m trying to make is that we can bring up underperforming weapons systems, adding variety and fun to the game with simple tweeks whilst weakening the meta and we don’t have to overhaul the entire game to do so.
3) IS vs Clan Balance
On the PTS IS mechs have enormous structure buffs. I think the idea behind this one was if I read it right: if clan mechs hit harder, just make the IS mechs tanker and it’s balanced! This simplified argument completely misses the nuances and reality of IS vs Clan tech and how the mechs perform in the battlefield.
Let’s really break down IS vs Clan tech. The first thing to understand, is that with certain exceptions (some lights and mediums) IS cannot make use of endo AND ferro due to them taking up 14 slots vs 7 for clans. Whilst on average this is only a 1-2 ton difference, it adds up. All ammo based IS weapons are heavier and the energy weapons do less dmg and have less range. And the biggest difference: IS XLs die with 1 side torso. This combination adds up to if IS mechs want to come anywhere near the firepower of Clan mechs, they have to run XL.
Now some IS mechs, given their current quirks can run STD engines and do quite well: Hunchback 4G comes to mind. Others need to run XL: Enforcer for example. One needs to consider if the mech is also XL friendly. In the previous case, the Enforcer is XL friendly (smaller profile, good humanoid hitboxes, fairly quick) whilst some mechs, like the Orion really require an XL to be competitive yet struggle even with an XL due to a combination of factors making them XL unfriendly (big profile, big by proportion side torso hitboxes, fairly slow) *VA SRM brawler notwithstanding. This is the perfect scenario in which to apply structure buffs (yes above and beyond what is on live servers atm).
Blanket buffing structure on all IS mechs does not bring them to parity with clan mechs as most of the time, when you take dmg in MWO, it is from multiple mechs so extra survivability does not amount to much when you don’t have the weapon quirks to effectively return fire with. I would also strongly argue that the short burn times on IS energy weapons and the 1 shot projectiles of IS ballistic weapons naturally allow IS mechs to roll damage better. I understand that in the lower tiers players facetank a lot more and this nuance of IS mechs is lost, but I also believe that the fastest way to kill a game is to pander to the lowest common denominator. This limited advantage IS mechs have can be covered, emphasized and drilled into both rookies and veterans alike in the Mechwarrior Academy however.
Concrete Suggestions to Give the Developers a Direction to Go In
1) Balance underperforming weapons and systems.
a) The AC2 DPS/HPS is completely out of whack and makes was should be a solid suppressive weapon system unable to fulfill its primary role. Lower the heat.
SRMs are ineffective at anything other than extreme close range. Boost their flight speed to a point where they can make it to their 270 max range fast enough to actually be used at that range.c) Machine Guns need to do more baseline damage. Certain mechs, lights in particular are worthless atm because their primary weapon system is the machine gun. Locust 1V for example.
d) Flamers in my opinion actually serve their purpose and are vastly underrated by the community. I will offer an anecdote here. A few months ago my roommates and I dropped into a match vs a 4 man of CSJx. Now my friends are not comp level players, but we dropped on tourmaline on brawler mechs that had 1 flamer each. When the main fight started we rushed the CSJx players and since those guys push their mechs’ heat right to the limit, we were able to completely shut them down and kill them. Nonetheless I recognize that the flamer is still a very niche weapon and think it is worth looking into increasing their damage since they are extremely close range.
e) LRMs are probably the trickiest to get right and will require extensive gameplay testing since they have the potential to be completely cheese. LRM balance is intrinsically tied to ECM and I believe that is the real lynchpin in LRM balance. To that end I suggest that ECM hides mech radar signatures as it does now for a brief period (off hand first idea 2 seconds) at which time mechs will be targetable. Then I suggest ECM prolongs the time it takes to get a lock (say +1/2 seconds longer). Finally even after lock I suggest ECM decreases tracking strength of LRMs by say 35%). The idea being that ECM is no longer a hard counter to LRMs, but that even after lock is established ECM prevents LRMs from cheesing full damage onto players. I think keeping the range as it is on live would be good initially to make sure LRMs didn’t become too strong.
f) This is really geared more towards the CW side of things, but I believe that changing the command module to highlight an enemy mech for the entire team to focus (different Dorito shape and/or color or highlight the mech in all red like the spectator tool allows you to currently do) and having it be able to retain lock on target for +2 seconds or something like that would go a long way towards helping the IS overcome the Clan tech advantage as well as adding a flavor of lore when IS forces often won by focusing fire whilst the clans stuck to zellbrigen.
2) Information Warfare
a) Sensors on the PTS are just awful. No mech should be fighting blind and it left some builds like LRM fire support mechs unable to use their own weapons! Rather than nerfing sensors on some mechs, I suggest you take the positive elements of the PTS sensor change and apply them to light and medium mech chassis that via hardpoint type/location are naturally not as good as the knifefighting ala FS or AC so they can contribute to their team via providing information for fire support. Also the grid locations above friendly mechs was complete information overload and screen clutter. Please remove ASAP.
Incorporate areas into new maps where mechs can successfully power down and stage an ambush. This is a simple example but imagine that in caustic valley, there was a deep pool close to the caldera where 4 mechs could hide. Imagine how much more depth that map would have if one team decided to hide their assault lance in there and power up directly behind the enemy once the enemy team had nascar’d past them. Instantly scouting is even more important and BAP becomes something more than what streakcrows equip to kill lights.c) Incorporate a new consumable module that puts off ghost mech signatures. Have these ghosts be controlled by a rudimentary AI like the one in the Mechwarrior Academy. Allow certain mechs to cut through these ghost signatures with their sensor quirks.
Response to Phil “Sean Lang” Video on Balance Pass
I have a number of issues with the video Phil put out regarding this weekend’s balance test.
1) If you wanted to test the effect the sensor changes would have, why did you change durability values and weapon values on so many mechs? A basic tenet of any scientific or quantitative approach is that you only change one variable at a time. This was not a good approach for testing sensor changes.
2) Trying to find a niche of each mech chassis is a surefire way of pigeonholing players into a different meta and taking away choices as there will always be a variant that emerges as best. Furthermore Phil said that the 4G has movement buffs since it’s meant to work in close range and the Grid Iron is the most durable. What train of thought led you to make the mech that has a long range weapon, and thus can limit the number of fields of fire it exposes itself to the most durable, while the one that has to be in close range and thus exposes itself to multiple fields of fire just to bring its guns into play the one that is easier to destroy?
Closing Thoughts
One final thing to consider. There are a very minimal number of players that can really wring every bit of performance out of a mech. It is worth considering that trying to achieve perfect balance could lead to major problems and the goal should instead be to make mechs competitive with each other and being ok with minor shortcomings that a pilot can easily overcome if they make use of the tools at their disposal. Balance is pretty good right now and the game is FUN to play, despite the cries of the vocal minority. I believe small, well-thought out changes to the current state of the game would be a much better approach and much better received by the community than wholesale changes lest the game experiences a repeat of 2013.
I hope this has helped, good luck devs!
Edited by Kristian Radoulov, 14 September 2015 - 12:25 PM.
