118 replies to this topic

[wanderer]

Ultimatum X, on 10 October 2015 - 06:13 AM, said:

The fun part is that aside from Fup, you'll notice no one has really answered my question yet.

Really depends. If you're talking two lances going at it hammer and tongs? You could well see a 'Mech go down in under a 30 seconds-minute in terms of game time of actual firing, especially post-3050. On the other hand, I've seen games where a 'Mech has lasted through three dozen turns+ with no signs of stopping. Random hit locations, cover, mobility etc. will do that.

[Davers]

Cementi, on 10 October 2015 - 04:53 PM, said:

cbill bonuses for lower tier mechs

They would have to be substantial bonuses to make up for lack of performance.

Not sure I want teammates who dropped in crappy mechs just to get personal Cbill bonuses at the expense of the team's chance to win.

[no one]

Davers, on 10 October 2015 - 05:11 PM, said:

They would have to be substantial bonuses to make up for lack of performance.

Not sure I want teammates who dropped in crappy mechs just to get personal Cbill bonuses at the expense of the team's chance to win.

I think they could just make your earnings per damage/kills a factor of the average damage/kills and so on for a particular chassis. If an average Dire pilot gets 500 damage and an average Treb pilot gets 250, just make the earnings per damage twice as high for Treb Pilots. That way people don't have to worry about taking a monster just to earn cash, only doing well in whatever they choose to pilot.

[Davers]

no one, on 10 October 2015 - 05:58 PM, said:

I think they could just make your earnings per damage/kills a factor of the average damage/kills and so on for a particular chassis. If an average Dire pilot gets 500 damage and an average Treb pilot gets 250, just make the earnings per damage twice as high for Treb Pilots. That way people don't have to worry about taking a monster just to earn cash, only doing well in whatever they choose to pilot.

But the point of calling them 'lower tier mechs' is because they do not perform as well as 'high tier mechs'. Thus giving bonuses rewards players for taking weak mechs, but doesn't increase the team's chance of winning- it only gives extra rewards to the player at the expense of the team.

Also this idea just defeats the whole purpose of balance. You will end up with mechs that are actually good in game, and mechs that are only good at making Cbills, even though they are not 'good mechs'. That means it is 100% OK for some mechs to be bad, because they give you extra Cbills. "No medium mechs as good as the Stormcrow? That's fine because the Stormcrow is a 'real mech' and the others are just Cbill boosters."

[Kraftwerkedup]

Johnny Z, on 09 October 2015 - 08:48 AM, said:

BOARD GAME MECHANICS CANNOT BE USED FOR A FPS SIM COMPUTER GAME BY DEFINITION.

Fallacy.

[no one]

Davers, on 10 October 2015 - 06:14 PM, said:

But the point of calling them 'lower tier mechs' is because they do not perform as well as 'high tier mechs'. Thus giving bonuses rewards players for taking weak mechs, but doesn't increase the team's chance of winning- it only gives extra rewards to the player at the expense of the team.

Also this idea just defeats the whole purpose of balance. You will end up with mechs that are actually good in game, and mechs that are only good at making Cbills, even though they are not 'good mechs'. That means it is 100% OK for some mechs to be bad, because they give you extra Cbills. "No medium mechs as good as the Stormcrow? That's fine because the Stormcrow is a 'real mech' and the others are just Cbill boosters."

I don't think I've ever seen someone miss the point quite so completely. If the point was a star eating black hole, you wouldn't be close enough for a gravitational assist.


'Mech Balance is not an issue in this discussion.

The point is not to make 'bad' 'Mechs better than 'good' 'Mechs for getting c-bills. The point is to make them not markedly worse for getting c-bills than better 'Mechs.

Edited by no one, 10 October 2015 - 08:44 PM.

[Davers]

no one, on 10 October 2015 - 08:28 PM, said:

I don't think I've ever seen someone miss the point quite so completely. If the point was a star eating black hole, you wouldn't even be close enough for a gravitational assist.

Your point seems to be 'Let's make bad mechs earn Cbills better rather than fix the bad mechs', which I disagree with.

Edited by Davers, 10 October 2015 - 08:36 PM.

[no one]

Davers, on 10 October 2015 - 08:31 PM, said:

Your point seems to be 'Let's make bad mechs earn Cbills better rather than fix the bad mechs', which I disagree with.

Ahh, I understand why you're having trouble. You keep assuming I made an argument I didn't make. Let me fix your misunderstanding.

SmarterDavers, on 10 October 2015 - 08:31 PM, said:

Your point seems to be 'Let's make the earnings for 'Mechs proportional to a pilots performance in a chassis relative to the average performance of that chassis, rather than relative to the performance of all other chassis.' none of which has anything to do with balancing 'Mechs.

Look, I don't actually care if you disagree with me. If you think that Maulers pilots should always average more than Commando pilots because 'they brought the better 'Mechs to support their team' then literally no argument I can make will penetrate the inky vacuum of your bias. You're welcome to your opinion.

Edited by no one, 10 October 2015 - 09:08 PM.

[InspectorG]

Ultimatum X, on 09 October 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

Can you be more specific than this?

All I need is an estimate, a number of turns for 4v4 is a starting point.

Konniving is the guy to ask. If i remember he ran matches from MegaMek, and i recall he said after doing the math, TTK in BT was less than HALF that of MWO. I think Engine crits, ammo explosions, and pilot death(dead pilot but mech ok) factored in way more than people realized.

[Davers]

no one, on 10 October 2015 - 09:07 PM, said:

Ahh, I understand why you're having trouble. You keep assuming I made an argument I didn't make. Let me fix your misunderstanding.

So you want Commando pilots who do 250 damage to make the same as Mauler pilots who do 500 damage, but this has nothing to do with balance between mechs (and weight classes) or the fact that the game rewards only one style of play. So, let's treat the symptoms and not the cause. Gotcha. I can see why we don't agree. But thanks for trying to be as condescending as possible.

[Lightfoot]

I agree with most of it except the weapon accuracy thing. PnP Battle tech used random dice rolls to infer inaccuracy of weapons (weapon damage spread) because the mechs on the hex board were not actually moving. In the interactive version, MechWarrior, the mechs do move at different speeds and the weapons travel at different speeds and this causes a great deal of dynamic weapon spread even though the weapons track to the two reticles.

If the weapons are going to recharge so fast the heatsinks need to work faster and the mechs need more than the 2x Armor as well as double structure or more. Frankly though, MW4 and MW3 were just as dynamic and exciting with the longer recharge times and close to normal armor. In those games it was much more important to calculate when your opponent was ready to re-fire their big guns and take the shot on an arm, an arm which you could also swivel to 80-90 degrees, or so, to fire any weapons in it.

I am more concerned with the huge balance breakers like the Gauss charge-up which PGI turned to out of desperation after giving it a 4 second recharge, ROFL!! We told them in Closed Beta it was wrong to give the Gauss and AC20 class the same recharge, but they seemed fine with it until it became apparent a 4 second Gauss was game-breaking. Well of course it was because longer recharge is how a long range accurate weapon is balanced against short range dps. Live and learn, but now we are stuck with the goofy-est Gauss Rifle in MechWarrior history that is still OP and channeled by the charge-up to the 2xGauss configs and almost worthless as a single Gauss.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

MWO is a Game ,who Kids packing one single large Laser in a Atlas, filling the Rest with Small Laser and SRM Missle ,and play only with the Large Laser from the last Position as Sniper ..Great Help for the team , thats not in TT, there thinks the dice with

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

wanderer, on 09 October 2015 - 08:58 PM, said:

Whatever they're paying Paul, it's too much for how much he's damaged the game in the name of "fixes" and "rebalancing". I admit to occasionally looking at PGI's job openings and hoping his is one of them.

Last time someone used similar sentences with alot more passion, his account received a perma forum bann. Paul is with russ and ekman since over 10 years. They are like buisness bros. He will allway be part of pgi.

Edited by ThisMachineKillsFascists, 10 October 2015 - 11:36 PM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

in tabletop decide the dice, if someone hits something in 20 or 1000m, the player's decisions affect only the simplest Movement and weapon selection, the player must not evade, aiming to Hitzonen, pay attention to team members ... the comparison BT TT and MWO / MW games is bad, like the chess with Chivalry: Medieval Warfare or a Single Infantry Platoon in the turnbased Strategical "Panzer General" and a Player in Battlefield 1942/2/3/4

Sorry English is not my Mother Language ;)Google Translator help me

Edited by CSJ Ranger, 11 October 2015 - 12:43 PM.

[Slepnir]

Ultimatum X, on 09 October 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

Can you be more specific than this?

All I need is an estimate, a number of turns for 4v4 is a starting point.

Generally a pick up game of Btech is lance on lance(4) or star v star (5) mechs for a 2 player game, lasting from 2-4 hours.
If you decide to do a clan v IS match the easy and balanced rule of thumb is a 1.6 to 1 ratio without resorting to scenarios or battle value. which translates into a 5 v 8 (star v. 2 lances) game-

It takes a little longer to play on TT but it is balanced, it's a fair fight either side can win.

Without nerfing or quirks. .

MWO should be that way, but PGI underestimated the loyalties of people to play their faction, worrying about players jumping all over to clans. so they decided to go the weapon balance route instead with an unrestricted mechlab. these two things combined are at the root of game imbalance in MWO.

Edited by Slepnir, 10 October 2015 - 11:47 PM.

[Sarlic]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 10 October 2015 - 11:18 PM, said:

Last time someone used similar sentences with alot more passion, his account received a perma forum bann. Paul is with russ and ekman since over 10 years. They are like buisness bros. He will allway be part of pgi.

I believe that post came from Reddit?

https://www.reddit.c...ef=search_posts

[AssaultPig]

said it before, will say it again: you cannot reconcile a ruleset intended for turn based tabletop play with one used in an FPS (no matter how 'slow' it plays.)

Jump sniping is a perfect example: a nonissue in tabletop, but completely dominant in MWO until heavy/assault jets got substantially nerfed.

A tabletop game with one 'commander' surveying the whole field also devalues speed and agility compared to the FPS environment.

The way hits are rolled is another; I realize convergence is everybody's favorite bugaboo but if it worked the way people seem to want (and apparently the way PGI originally intended), would it actually be fun? I don't really think it would be, and I also think it would just shift the metagame toward mechs with fixed torso hardpoints that are essentially pre-converged.

And that doesn't even touch matchmaking issues; symmetric vs asymmetric games, how in the hell you implement BV, etc (people talk as though this is particularly well balanced in BT anyway.)

They would've been much better off to abandon the TT as anything but a loose guideline from the get go and just balance around the game environment, but I guess that ship has sailed

Edited by AssaultPig, 11 October 2015 - 12:34 AM.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

Sarlic, on 10 October 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

I believe that post came from Reddit?

https://www.reddit.c...ef=search_posts

Nah the post has been written here on the forum. it was reasonbly colourful. No insult per se but a bit outta control. he accused paul to have brain cancer

Thankfully the stasi 3rd party post banns dont appear since niko has been fired

Edited by ThisMachineKillsFascists, 11 October 2015 - 01:37 AM.

[Alex Morgaine]

CSJ Ranger, on 10 October 2015 - 11:27 PM, said:

in tabletop decide the dice, if someone hits something in 20 or 1000m, the player's decisions affect only the simplest Movement and weapon selection, the player must not evade, aiming to Hitzonen, pay attention to team members ... the comparison BT TT and MWO / MW games is bad, like the chess with Chivalry: Medieval Warfare or a Single Infantry Platoon in the turnbased Strategical "Panzer General" and a Player in Battlefield 1942/2/3/4

Sorry English is not my Mothe Language ;)Google Translator help me

Still made more sense then some people on these forums. Our or my phone's auto correct.