Goombah, on 22 September 2015 - 02:30 AM, said:
They really could just do what every other company does and progressively buff them until people use them. Then nerf them back down if they went overboard. It seems to take about 8 months between balance passes, so any progress they make is glacial slow.
The silly thing is, every one of those mechs could be fixed with
More hardpoints
Rescaled smaller
Better hardpoints locations.
Victors with 3 functional guns just don't cut it any more. Same goes for a lot of chassis, cicada, lynx, cent, spider, dragon, atlas.
Some chasisi could actualy be functional if we had usable missile weapons. Srms and lrms are completely unreliable and needlessly difficult to use effectively compared to lasers and gauss. MRMs , and srms that actualy hit things would fix several chassis.
the buffing and nerfing approach will work with the chassis but it wont help with balancing the variants; and it would take longer as well.
you best consult with an expert who has an interest in keeping all the variants fresh because he cares about them
- hence my idea
and i am sure they'd provide their input for free as well
the srm and lrm thing is true though, but there is also the effect of making PPC shots really slow, making clans excel at laser range... there have been many steps to get to where we are
make a survey and send it to a few different players who specialize in these underused chassis and they will help you understand why the common player does not use them or just cannot build it properly.
let me ask you this now, when they tune up a mercedes do they do it all on paper or through increments?
they hand it to an expert test pilot who has worked with mercedes, and he puts it on the nurburgring.
what does lamborghini do when they are designing a brand new lambo? well they hand it over to a true pro like
valentino balboni
this is needed. hence why the automotive industry does it to make sure their cars stack up to other cars, and that someone who is intimate with each component is the one who will put it to the test to give a valid opinion
trying to tune any machine without the input of the driver, in a top down fashion is a bad idea, the pilot needs to be part of the process because it is he who is the user - in formula 1 all the teams gather data from the pilot and work with it, even senna the best of all times made most of the leg work crunching numbers and identifying and solving problems himself, this is why there is competition in this realm, otherwise there would not be any.
the idea of buffing the mech until people use it also has another unintended artifact to it that you are not factoring in; the players who already do decently with the mech will potentially start annihilating everybody, if you buff the mech to where the average player can use it - because the problem you are fixing might not be what you think and you end up making it not more easy to use but straight up more powerful, and there can be a misconception that the mech is OP and needs nerfbat. and you end up nerfing it not long after; this is like a pendulum effect that affects this game and it is surprising more people don't see it. this is why we take half steps there and we are getting infinitesimaly ever FURTHER from a good product.
the changes the mechs need are not as big as the average player thinks they need;
they are smaller. but they need to be done intelligently - the mechs could be made more user friendly or bumped up a tier or two if we asked the pilots why they think the current state of things is what it is and how we could nudge it around and make it click.
by the way, if you think my car manufacturer examples do not apply here then take capcom's hiring of combofiend from the top players to help with balance, and for the final iteration when he is part of it, it has become one of the most balanced games ever made. (ultra sf4)
so there is a precedent in games, as well.
and i bet all the car sim companies do this as well, in fact think the best sim - iracing was done with the help of a pro driver and he was a consultant not only on the initial driving physics but all through making the initial representations of real cars
Edited by Mazzyplz, 22 September 2015 - 10:35 PM.
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