12 replies to this topic

[grayson marik]

Hi, I link this topic to a suggestion I made in feature suggestions as I see it fits in here much better. so here it is:

http://mwomercs.com/...actually-works/

grayson marik, on 15 September 2015 - 10:24 PM, said:

Dear PGI, fellow players,

during the last month's years we have seen multiple approaches to balance weapons, mechs and equipment to each other and then balance CLAN vs IS.
The newest iteration is currently running on PTS.

Many of you and also some of PGI staff have noted multiple times, that a real balance can never be achieved and that it will be an ongoing process with ever ongoing changes.

Now, let's put this number crunching to an end and finally balance the game with an auto scaling, self controlling system, that gives the player just one value to play with: Mech Battle Value.

Big words you say? Here is how it works:

Every Chassis, Weapon, Equipment, Module, Consumeable gets assigned a base BV value.
So the BV of a Mech is the sum of all those values.

Now here comes the candy:

All those values change dynamicly based on how often and how successful a wepon, chassis or any other equipment is used. PGI already collects all these data so there is no barrier to use it.

If something is used because its OP, the BV for it will rise. If something i.e. Urban Mech, Highlander, Awesome, Centurion, Single Heatsinks etc. is not used often, BV values would fall for this equipment. ( Even the skill tree and player rating system could be part of this system, as a very good player would also have a BV he adds to his Mech and thus would be challenged to use even more bad equipment in order to keep BV limits )

Now, if we go to matchmaking, we simply replace the weight based 3/3/3/3 for groups with a simple BV limit to keep. Or a BV limit for CW Dropdecks.

If you now want to field a very good Mech with a high BV, you will have to use some junk Mechs also in order to keep the limit.

The system would control and scale itself and PGI would be able to control it by the parameters:
Base BV, rate of BV rising and rate of BV falling.


Even the BV limit for matchmaking could be calculated dynamicly. MWO would simply calculate the "Average Joe BV" of all mech currently owned by players and would mutiply this with the number of mechs nedded. 4* Average Joe BV in CW and 12 * Average Joe BV in public queue.


What changes for the player?

• The Mechlab skill changes from " How to stuff as much current Meta Wepons into my Meta Chassis " to " How to build an efficient Mech, with as low BV value as possible"
  
• "Junk" Mechs and equipment would be used not only in beginners Matches but also in more competitive fields like CW
  
• With the more mixed equipment used, complete new tactics and roles would evolve and would bring more depth to the game
  
• beginners would not face the uber Meta Mechs all the time

What changes for PGI?

• The system is self scaling
  
• The system is dynamic
  
• The system provides balance without punishing Meta Configs at all
  
• Role warfare (or whatever other goals PGI has) can be promoted by PGI by changing base BV, rise and fall values for certein equipments

Approach used:




This system does not try to balance everything to each other it does NOT nerv any weapon or META config.It does not nerv CLANS. It does not limit players choice in Mechlab.
It only gives high META equipment a price in relation to not used equipment and finally ends the arms race wich happens after every balance pass. It consequently follows the high demand = high price, low demand = low price paradigm of economy.

And the very best of it all:
We could kick Ghost Heat, DHS with 1.4 and 2.0 values and set all weapons back to TT values the dynamic BV will balance all this stuff automaticly.


Where i got my inspiration from:
A similar system runs the economy on innerspherewars.eu.
For almost 8 month's now we use it to balance the troops you can buy/ build in the league by such a system and you know what?
Since the system started and the numbers regulated themselves from start values after the first 4 weeks, we have had not a single one complaint about equipment being to cheap/expensive used to often etc etc etc.

All the horrors of balancing a league wide economy have gone!
Only difference to this BV system is, that we also have maintenance consts of 5% of the units value. And as unit values rise and fall based on demand, maintenance consts also rise and fall...

[DivineEvil]

Rebalancing by ignoring the balance... you're in support of that?

[grayson marik]

DivineEvil, on 17 September 2015 - 12:23 AM, said:

Rebalancing by ignoring the balance... you're in support of that?

Hihi, the point is this: There are always Mechs that have more value on the battlefield than others. But if you don't have any advantage by using the Mechs that dont have the same high Battle Value, you simply dont use them. This is waht happens for years now and which will stay this way, without the BV system I suggested.

Only change will be, this month it is a Thunderbold, after next Patch it might be a Centurion that is the Mech with the highest usage because of its value on the battlefield.

Now, with the BV system, you simply reflect this value to the actual Mechs and achieve balance by managing the added battle value that is on the field, instead of managing the weight, that is on the field.

The BV is much more exact to the true value of a Mech and with the dynamic calculation, new equipment, Mechs and skill tree items can flow in easily without leading to the next balancing marathon nightmare.

Edited by grayson marik, 17 September 2015 - 08:17 AM.

[Mystere]

Why should I even give a damn about the changing BV value of a highly effective configuration I am currently using? Why should I even gimp myself just to follow something that has zero effect on my performance?

I'm just going to stick to using what works and works very well, thank you very much, most especially if I'm not dipping into CW.

[Khobai]

Quote

Why should I even give a damn about the changing BV value of a highly effective configuration I am currently using?

because teams would be balanced based on BV as well as player skill. so if your mech has an inflated BV than its going to drag down your teams overall BV.

Presumably the way it would work is matchmaker would combine your player tier with your mech tier (in whatever proportion is appropriate since skill is obviously worth more than what mech you bring) to get your total number of tier points that your skill/mech combination are worth. Your mech tier would be determined by the overall battle value of your mech. Certain battlevalue ranges would correspond to certain mech tiers.

When matchmaker matches teams it would try to put an equal amount of tier points on each team. It would be a crude system but at least it would be able to differentiate a locust from an arctic cheetah unlike the current system.

Edited by Khobai, 17 September 2015 - 01:21 PM.

[Mystere]

Khobai, on 17 September 2015 - 01:08 PM, said:

because teams would be balanced based on BV as well as player skill. so if your mech has an inflated BV than its going to drag down your teams overall BV.

Presumably the way it would work is matchmaker would combine your player tier with your mech tier (in whatever proportion is appropriate since skill is obviously worth more than what mech you bring) to get your total number of tier points that your skill/mech combination are worth. Your mech tier would be determined by the overall battle value of your mech. Certain battlevalue ranges would correspond to certain mech tiers.

When matchmaker matches teams it would try to put an equal amount of tier points on each team. It would be a crude system but at least it would be able to differentiate a locust from an arctic cheetah unlike the current system.

When has any incarnation of MWO's matchmaker ever worked, and by that I mean the release valves were never significantly loosened?

With that kind of past knowledge, I highly doubt I and many others would decide to gimp ourselves by changing Mech configurations.

Edited by Mystere, 17 September 2015 - 02:01 PM.

[grayson marik]

Mystere, on 17 September 2015 - 02:00 PM, said:

When has any incarnation of MWO's matchmaker ever worked, and by that I mean the release valves were never significantly loosened?

With that kind of past knowledge, I highly doubt I and many others would decide to gimp ourselves by changing Mech configurations.

Current stuff has never worked, because a Centurion Medium Mech is not a Hunchback Medium Mech but for MM it was all the same, just tonnage numbers + ELO and now tonnage numbers + PSR, no matter what configuration or Mech is used by the players.
So the MM leaves out one of the most important things: how Battle Valuable my Mech is!

By combing Mech BV with PSR to a Player BV, the MM would have left only this one varibale to work with and to build 2 teams with equal or almost equal BV.

Thats why the system is good. And the dynamic BV change will make integration of new Mechs and equipment easy, without another thousend balancing passes.



Alright then, here it comes. I have made up a testing line with 3 different mech types and rising mech population as BV making variable I used the number of times the mech was used in battle.
Of course, PGI could and should use more variables, as I described in my initial post.
What I did to calculate it, so that a rare mech cannot be used to ride the meta according to your examples is the following:
I calculate the average mech number per mech type. Then I calculate the gap between the current mech model and that average number. If the gap is positive - means the mech type is only available in small numbers, this gap will be used to calculate the usage number up to how many times would the mech have been used, if it were of average mech type population.
If the gap was negative, I also toned the usage numbers down as if the mech type was of average mech population.
The result is of course that the BV level could not spike out for example gold mechs used obsessively by their owners.
ok, enough text, here are the numbers: http://innerspherewa.../isw2/mechs.htm
And here you can produce test data on your own: http://innerspherewa...VStatistics.php
Enjoy.

[Bigbacon]

in the end though it will still be laser vomit alpha blast warrior online and the mechs that can deal the most DPM will continue to be used and not be hindered at all by the changes.

[grayson marik]

Bigbacon, on 18 September 2015 - 10:25 AM, said:

in the end though it will still be laser vomit alpha blast warrior online and the mechs that can deal the most DPM will continue to be used and not be hindered at all by the changes.

Yeah but you will not find 12 of them anymore in a match but maybe 3 or 4 and the rest more average mechs.

[Bigbacon]

grayson marik, on 18 September 2015 - 11:27 AM, said:

Yeah but you will not find 12 of them anymore in a match but maybe 3 or 4 and the rest more average mechs.

Why? if people can play what they want, they are still going to seek out the most powerful build/mech for that level.

[Andi Nagasia]

Bigbacon, on 19 September 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

Why? if people can play what they want, they are still going to seek out the most powerful build/mech for that level.

just this, think about the problems with your system,

lets assume that a MetaTBR 1Gauss 5ER-ML(than Smurfy's is telling me is popular right now)
Lets say its too powerful, and as it gets a stupid high BV Score, now because of the MM taking this into account,
the MM it has to pair this Players MetaMech with other Players NonMetaMechs for balance(see the problem)?
this effectivly says that this TBR is worth more than a non MetaMech x2-x3-x4 or so on,

if im a noob or if im trying out a new mech or build for Fun, the MM says my mech sucks,
and will pair me with a MetaTBR who is much better at doing Everything better than me,

current in 12v12 each player counts for 8.33% of the total Team(8.33x12=99.96),
with this System the MM forces MetaMechs to count for more than the 8.33%,
so a Player in a MetaMech is more Important to the team, and to the match,

in the end everyone wants to be the deciding factor in a match,
no one wants to be segregated to Cannon Fodder because of their build,
in the end you would see more MetaMechs and less mechs that are Fun Builds,
because those Fun builds woundnt matter as much and so not gain as much,
the Meta becomes Stronger and the nonMeta dies off, hence the problem,

[Davers]

Battletech's BV system doesn't work in MWO.

PGI is currently balancing the game off the data they have collected. if you don't like it now, how will you when they just add BV values to it?

[grayson marik]

Andi Nagasia, on 19 September 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

just this, think about the problems with your system,

lets assume that a MetaTBR 1Gauss 5ER-ML(than Smurfy's is telling me is popular right now)
Lets say its too powerful, and as it gets a stupid high BV Score, now because of the MM taking this into account,
the MM it has to pair this Players MetaMech with other Players NonMetaMechs for balance(see the problem)?
this effectivly says that this TBR is worth more than a non MetaMech x2-x3-x4 or so on,

if im a noob or if im trying out a new mech or build for Fun, the MM says my mech sucks,
and will pair me with a MetaTBR who is much better at doing Everything better than me,

current in 12v12 each player counts for 8.33% of the total Team(8.33x12=99.96),
with this System the MM forces MetaMechs to count for more than the 8.33%,
so a Player in a MetaMech is more Important to the team, and to the match,

in the end everyone wants to be the deciding factor in a match,
no one wants to be segregated to Cannon Fodder because of their build,
in the end you would see more MetaMechs and less mechs that are Fun Builds,
because those Fun builds woundnt matter as much and so not gain as much,
the Meta becomes Stronger and the nonMeta dies off, hence the problem,

Doh, ok I will try to explain differently:

Yes, in principle, you can ride whatever you want to.

BUT: every match will have a BV limit.

So you will not be able to pilot 12 Mechs with a BV of 3000, when the limit for the drop is just 9000 BV.

So unlike it is now, you would not be limited to 3/3/3/3 or 4/4/4 but to a single BV value per Match / Drop Deck.

So, you would see teams of maybe 2-4 Meta Mechs and 8 NonMeta Mechs. Also BV would be combined with PSR, which would give a much better and more exact Combat Value estimate of a Pilot with his PSR rating + the BV rating of his Mech. hence, better balanced teams and so better matches.

Also, to stick with your example: currently you might see 1 or 2 "fun" or suboptimal builds per Match. At least as soon as you leave the lower PSR ratings. with BV you would have 8 at least, which gives more value to such Mechs than now.

Your equalisation of 8.33% per Mech is just plain wrong as right now, a Jenner is also not as valuable as a King Crab in most cases. Still, the MM does not reflect this. With BV it does.


BV can and already does work. it runs on my planetary league and currently controls 136 attackable Star Systems, 36 different factions with currently 15200 Mechs. Complete with economy, maintenance costs, salvage, planetary income.

I am not talking of xmas or santa clause here. This thing is tested and working properly already.

Edited by grayson marik, 21 September 2015 - 12:49 AM.