145 replies to this topic

[Clownwarlord]

This is getting really old. Thread after thread about balancing and what is worse PGI's ability of vague nothingness.

What I mean is this:

May 2015 - mention of a re-balancing of every mech and aspect of the game from intel gathering to weapons.

July 2015 - Russ and NGNG mention the re-balancing in a town hall.

August 2015 - Asked Phil about the re-balancing and get "You guys are going to love it!"

September 2015 - some kind of re-balancing test server that still makes no since at what PGI was testing.

Current October 2015 - Nothing silent on all fronts and we are one patch down for the month leaving only 1 patch to go.

So yeah lack of information coupled with mech sales (for real money; Marauder, Warhammer, ...) what is going on? Is PGI even still working on this re-balancing that they talked about that any 75 ton should be able to compete with any other 75 tonner or 30 ton mech should be able to compete with any other 30 ton mech. Or did this all get filed away into a round filing bin?





Sadly though I doubt I will get any response from PGI or other facet with knowledgeable intel on the subject, but I sure hope I do.

Edited by clownwarlord, 07 October 2015 - 08:12 AM.

[FupDup]

I just hope that nearly all of the quirks we saw in the previous PTS session are wiped clean. They were so horribly borked on nearly everything, and not to mention extremely homogeneous (every single mech in the game had sensor, durability, and mobility quirks. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM).

[Mcgral18]

There's supposed to be another PTS session sometime this or next week.


Not sure what it's supposed to cover, but they will be listing what they want tested, unlike the last fustercluck.



Expect laughs to be had, and nothing of note to be pushed forward.

Edited by Mcgral18, 07 October 2015 - 08:16 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

From the Oct roadmap: "As to a live release date for the update, for now we are not making any estimates other than to say we will not release it without further PTS dates, and it will only be ready for live release if and when it constitutes a noticeable improvement over what is currently in the live environment"

The part in bold worries me a bit.... makes me want to suggest just sticking to the quirks we have and give it another thorough pass instead, and add whatever work they did on sensors in a way that doesn't greatly affect faction balance.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 07 October 2015 - 08:23 AM.

[Phlinger]

*Puts on tinfoil hat* /em hates self a little bit.....


What if the reason they are so silent is because what we saw was what they had intended for the entire thing and they are in the process of figuring something out that won't make the player base go nuts like they did last month?

What if they got nothing, and are swamped with trying to figure balancing out in a way that won't piss off their customers, but lack the experience to do so, so they are in 'hush hush' panic mode and pushing out sales before people realize what's behind the curtain?

*Takes off tinfoil hat*

[MechaBattler]

I don't like to call devs out. But it's a little funny that we had a persistent effort to balance things and some communication. Then Paul comes back from working on CW. And we start to get less and less communication on what the balancing plan is. They're keeping the changes and intentions of the balance very close to the chest. Like they used. Almost feel like they think we can't possibly understand the great vision that is Immorten Paul.

[FupDup]

MechaBattler, on 07 October 2015 - 08:37 AM, said:

I don't like to call devs out. But it's a little funny that we had a persistent effort to balance things and some communication. Then Paul comes back from working on CW. And we start to get less and less communication on what the balancing plan is. They're keeping the changes and intentions of the balance very close to the chest. Like they used. Almost feel like they think we can't possibly understand the great vision that is Immorten Paul.

Only the Silent Majority™ can truly understand the vision of the Paulconomist.

[Kodyn]

The thing that most scares me about what I think is going through the devs' heads, is role warfare.

Yeah, the quirk wipe was bad for the IS side, and I think they saw that, but I think they think they can shoehorn "role warfare" into the game forcefully, and I don't think it will work.

The biggest issue with their ideas for implementing sensors, etc, is assumption of teamwork. Say you bring an assault mech with short sensor range, long target acquisition time, etc. Now you're basically assuming that someone else on your team will be in a light getting locks for you, or you're just going to have to accept no locks or paper dolls.

Say you bring a missile boat. Same situation. The issue with PGI assigning "roles" to mechs via negative and positive quirks, etc, is that if you play that mech, and your team doesn't all work perfectly together based on individual roles, you're at a huge disadvantage.

Since pugs, new players, the influx of steam players, etc, will not be likely at all to be familiar with or good enough to stick to these roles and work perfectly together, most teams will be at a disadvantage at pretty much all times, at least outside 8-12 man groups.

To get around this, I think you're going to see an extreme lack of mech variety, as everyone finds the few mechs that are least affected by having roles forced upon them, be they clan or the few IS chassis that have only moderate negative quirks.

It's really a bit late to force everyone to relearn how to play the game from the ground up, and instituting an overly-complicated system that new players won't be interested in learning, because vet players just circumvent this system, seems a massive waste of resources.

They need to just find a way to balance the weapons properly, tweak the existing quirks, keep future quirks mild but useful, and avoid thinking so far outside the box that we're suddenly playing another game.

[Deathlike]

The only thing I can be assured of is that it will be bad, but the man responsible won't feel bad.

I expect nothing.

[Khobai]

Quote

The only thing I can be assured of is that it will be bad, but the man responsible won't feel bad.

it will be bad. paul wont feel bad. the rest of us will feel bad.

[Duke Nedo]

What I read between the lines is that Russ thought Paul had it more under control and made promises, and probably wasn't quite prepared for the reaction on the PTS test... That he now writes that there is no release-date and no guarantee that it will ever reach the live servers tell me that he has much less faith in the great rebalance now than he had a few months back.

If things were going as planned he would have been confident and would have been able to point out the road ahead. I don't need any hat to conclude that I don't think they are on top of this big rebalance thing... at all.

So, while we wait, can you, PGI, please make a quirk pass and patch up all the broken mechs out there? Give me xml access and I'd do it in 8 hours. Not everyone would love it but I would guarantee that everyone would think it was an improvement to what we have now. It's not hard... Someone at PGI must be able to do that.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 07 October 2015 - 09:41 AM.

[Tyler Valentine]

Ronyn, on 07 October 2015 - 08:30 AM, said:

*Puts on tinfoil hat* /em hates self a little bit.....


What if the reason they are so silent is because what we saw was what they had intended for the entire thing and they are in the process of figuring something out that won't make the player base go nuts like they did last month?

What if they got nothing, and are swamped with trying to figure balancing out in a way that won't piss off their customers, but lack the experience to do so, so they are in 'hush hush' panic mode and pushing out sales before people realize what's behind the curtain?

*Takes off tinfoil hat*

This is what I've been thinking too. That PTS debacle we saw was the basic gist of the re-balance. Everybody freaked out about how bad it was and PGI was like... "uh oh, back to the drawing board. Better tell them that wasn't the real thing and it's coming Soon™".

Duke Nedo, on 07 October 2015 - 08:22 AM, said:

...and it will only be ready for live release if and when it constitutes a noticeable improvement over what is currently in the live environment"

That kinda backs it up too. backpedalling. "if and when"? in other words the balance pass might not even happen now? that's convenient.

*Disengage tinfoil hat*

[Khobai]

Paul obviously doesnt know what hes doing. Or we wouldnt have dire wolves doing 70 point alphas in the first place.

There was a time when they had to nerf 35 point alphas for being too strong.

And then with the addition of clan mechs they allowed 50-70 point laser alphas and somehow thought it would be balanced lolol

Quote

So, while we wait, can you, PGI, please make a quirk pass and patch up all the broken mechs out there? Give me xml access and I'd do it in 8 hours. Not everyone would love it but I would guarantee that everyone would think it was an improvement to what we have now. It's not hard... Someone at PGI must be able to do that.

Unfortunately thats not how industry works. The best person doesnt always get the job. People who are good at their job tend to be bad at job politics because they never had a reason to develop those skills to mask their incompetence. While people that are incompetent at their jobs tend to be much better politicians because they had to learn to lie to their bosses and scapegoat their failures onto others. Thats why people who politick their way into management or lead positions are generally incapable of doing their jobs... thats how its been at every place ive ever worked.

Edited by Khobai, 07 October 2015 - 11:12 AM.

[Lyoto Machida]

Whoa...was reading all these comments about Paul and then my phone rang. I looked over at the display and it was from a guy named Paul (not Inouye). Kinda eerie...

[Khobai]

If you say paul three times while looking in a mirror an apparition of paul will appear youll get paid less and every part of your life will become unbalanced.

[LordNothing]

i think pgi's main problem is that they are hand tweaking the values. its a slow drawn out process based on anecdotal evidence at best.

what they need is to come up with an automatic balancing algorithm that analyses data from actual game play. look at what mechs what weapons are used. identify weak/strong points and then buff/nerf them slowly over time until their overall effectiveness is about level. break it up, one week do weapons, next week do lights. pgi can provide feedback about which mechs/weapons/loadouts they need data for so players can run those builds.

[Dimento Graven]

The whole process of attempting to balance a chassis within that model and that model within the class, was completely f'ing stupid.

Seriously you had IS 'mechs that were quirked so incredibly differently from one variant to the next that the differences were absolutely ridiculous, and considering that MOST of the quirks were NEGATIVE in nature (at least on the 'mechs I was able to examine in detail before they brought the PST down), and the fact that Clan 'mechs could ABSOLUTELY game their quirks by switching out Omni pods, PGI was setting us up for an EXTREME imbalance in Clan v IS.

In my mind it was going to be a MONUMENTAL failure if they had continued in the direction they were going, to the point of making the game, for IS 'mechs, absolutely NOT worth playing.

Let's hope they take a more 'reasoned' approach to the matter.

First and foremost, Heat Affects Table. This game lacks one, could easily support one, and it could be used to balance Clan vs. IS, and increase TTK, encourage non-alpha centric play, allow the removal of the stupidly unintuitive 'ghost heat', and overall, improve the game tremendously.

Why the **** PGI has got to be so goddamned hard headed about it I dunno, but it seems they're intentionally cramming their heads up their butts avoiding it in an attempt to make it go away.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 07 October 2015 - 01:07 PM.

[LordNothing]

its like what test pilots call a pilot induced oscillation. you pull up but nothing happens, so you pull up more. you lurch up into the air and stall. then to correct it you try to put the nose down, but nothing happens, so you push harder on the stick, then your plane noses into the dirt and you die.

this is what i imagine is going on when pgi attempts to balence the game. there is a huge tendency for overcompensation. a small number of very large tweaks. what is needed is a large number of small adjustments over time. say you want to balence the machine gun, so you collect say a thousand datapoints on machine gun usage, if the weapon appears weak you do a tiny buf to it and gather another thousand data points. you do this until it starts looking op. at this point you will have found the threshold between up and op and have a balanced value to use in game.

[Dimento Graven]

LordNothing, on 07 October 2015 - 01:47 PM, said:

...

say you want to balence the machine gun, so you collect say a thousand datapoints on machine gun usage, if the weapon appears weak you do a tiny buf to it and gather another thousand data points. you do this until it starts looking op. at this point you will have found the threshold between up and op and have a balanced value to use in game.

Y'know... Not to sidetrack your valid point there, but... I think the MG is balanced fine just where it's at.

Sure, sure, you won't find many viable builds boating the weapon, but, I see plenty of decent builds that INCLUDE the MG and plenty of people doing reasonable damage and getting kills while firing it.

So... GOOD JOB ON THE MG, IT'S BALANCED!

Anyway...

[Mcgral18]

Dimento Graven, on 07 October 2015 - 02:15 PM, said:

Y'know... Not to sidetrack your valid point there, but... I think the MG is balanced fine just where it's at.

Sure, sure, you won't find many viable builds boating the weapon, but, I see plenty of decent builds that INCLUDE the MG and plenty of people doing reasonable damage and getting kills while firing it.

So... GOOD JOB ON THE MG, IT'S BALANCED!

Anyway...

You are a minority there, it seems.


Uncalled for 20% nerf.

Unneeded 3M CoF