118 replies to this topic

[Duke ramulots]

Ultimatum X, on 09 October 2015 - 09:19 AM, said:

DPS is too subjective.

In MWO, it's extremely rare for two teams to just square off in the open and let their guns rip until one side is gone.

That would be raw DPS, much like an MMO boss battle.



Average turns is the abstract - it's for movement, firing, etc.

We do that stuff too in MWO.


Just because my AC 20 recycles every 4s, doesn't mean I can always fire it every 4s. There's time spent taking cover, moving with the team, finding a target, aiming/leading, etc.


So just to put this in perspective, if the average battle tech battle of 12 mechs vs mechs lasted FIFTY turns, that is:


50 turns x 10s = 500s / 60s = 8.3 minutes spent in battle


Would a 12v12 BT game last 50 turns on average? (I don't know)

Most BT games are one lance per player at most. Games we play with three lances per side often result in countless turns or if we don't, nothing dies.

[Johnny Z]

KuroNyra, on 09 October 2015 - 10:35 AM, said:

Funny thing about 3PV.

That feature was present in MW2, and MW4, probably MW3 aswell.

When he said "Look this building is in my way, this game is to hard, better make it easier" is when I laugh so hard.

[meteorol]

RedMercury, on 09 October 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

Why are there so many gameplay problems with MWO?

FASA's Battletech was far from perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than the balance MWO has

And while even being far from perfect for tabletop (which it was created for), it's even worse for a real time first person shooter, a scenario for which those rules were simply not created.

[Burktross]

RedMercury, on 09 October 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

B. Heavies mechs are disadvantaged comapred to light

Pilot a commando. Pilot a thunderbolt. Which one performs better?

[TLBFestus]

Johnny Z, on 09 October 2015 - 08:52 AM, said:

This to.

Someone has an uncontrollable reflex that causes them to reject any criticism of "the game".

The majority of criticism of this game is;

1. Well intended
2. An attempt to improve it
3. Constructive
4. Considered (OK..that ones a bit thin).

[Duke ramulots]

meteorol, on 09 October 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

And while even being far from perfect for tabletop (which it was created for), it's even worse for a real time first person shooter, a scenario for which those rules were simply not created.

That's a deflection, not an argument. The balancing feature used can easily be ported over to a PC game.

[Y E O N N E]

This thread:

[wanderer]

Quote

1. Weapon cooldown. A standard Battletech round represents 10 seconds of real time. Movement, heat dissipation, and weapon recycling times are all based on this. By making weapons recycle in 2 to 4 seconds, the effective firing frequency was increased up to 4x, (to make the game more arcade-like, because MWO is a thinking man's shooter). This broke:

Partially correct. Standard TT rules simplify firing to a single shot per weapon per turn (barring Ultras/RACs, which still only roll once to hit per gun but can hit multiple times). Canonically (Solaris VII rulebook), many weapons can in fact fire multiple times in 10 second- some as many as 4 times in that space of time.

Quote

6. Shooting LRMs without line of sight, without needing a designated spotter who cannot fire otherwise

FFS, this hasn't been true for over a decade in tabletop. If you're gonna grognard, have a rulebook that doesn't date back to the Clinton administration, please.

Most of it makes sense, though I'd have given "ignoring the heat scale" it's own number.

Quote

Most BT games are one lance per player at most. Games we play with three lances per side often result in countless turns or if we don't, nothing dies.

Given, this is because of the sheer amount of dicerolling and the simple time spent moving units and thinking.

MWO does have the advantage of realtime calculations and movement in that regard.

[RoboPatton]

I can agree with much of what OP says, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed. This game is MWO, and all of those fun/good/bad BT elements us nostalgic dadbod-heavy metal listening-players have...

We just aint gonna get it.

[Johnny Z]

TLBFestus, on 09 October 2015 - 11:45 AM, said:

Someone has an uncontrollable reflex that causes them to reject any criticism of "the game".

The majority of criticism of this game is;

1. Well intended
2. An attempt to improve it
3. Constructive
4. Considered (OK..that ones a bit thin).

I was agreeing with you....

[Ultimax]

Duke ramulots, on 09 October 2015 - 10:40 AM, said:

Most BT games are one lance per player at most. Games we play with three lances per side often result in countless turns or if we don't, nothing dies.

Can you be more specific than this?

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

[TLBFestus]

Johnny Z, on 09 October 2015 - 01:14 PM, said:

I was agreeing with you....

In which case I read your post incorrectly.

[kilgor]

MWO is based on the rules that were closest to real time, which are the Solaris VII rules.

The lack of a heat scale makes energy weapons better than they should be.

Extra ammo makes ballistics and missiles better than they should be and allow people to boat instead of diversifying weaponry for when they run out of ammo.

UACs should be primarily single fire and only potentially jam on double tap with the potential of them being disabled for the match. That's always been the catch with the benefit being of extra range and potentially extra damage when the situation demanded it.

I think it would be interesting that when you bought a 'Mech, you got a random quirk, such as an arm might lock temporarily if you aim too high or even some positive quirks we like extra ammo per ton for missile or ballistic only 'Mechs.

[wanderer]

Considering the greatly increased number of shots per game, UAC's actually lost the perm-jam they had when they were originally added to MWO.

Also, please no random quirks/penalties. We don't need people having to buy a chassis repeatedly to get a "decent" quirk or be stuck with a "lemon" because they're spacepoors.

[Impyrium]

Alistair Winter, on 09 October 2015 - 10:40 AM, said:

8- In Battletech, some mechs are inherently more valuable than others and in fair matches you won't see Dire Wolves matched up against an equal number of Awesomes, you won't see upgraded mechs with XL engines, Endo and DHS matched on even terms with cheaper tech variants, etc.

In other games, there's a risk-reward calculation based on things such as repair & rearm, but we no longer have that in MWO. 99% of the MWO population considered R&R a bad thing and 99% of the MWO population were dead wrong. IMHO

I completely agree, but it seems both PGI and 99% of this community want some kind of competitive class based shooter where everything is 100% balanced against one another in a straight up fight. Having single-life death matches where the objective is nothing but to kill other 'mechs doesn't help.

Personally I'd love to be incentivised to bring lower-tech 'mechs. Or some kind of (small?) penalty for bringing max-tech into a game.

[Alistair Winter]

Dingo Red, on 09 October 2015 - 04:00 PM, said:

I completely agree, but it seems both PGI and 99% of this community want some kind of competitive class based shooter where everything is 100% balanced against one another in a straight up fight. Having single-life death matches where the objective is nothing but to kill other 'mechs doesn't help.

Personally I'd love to be incentivised to bring lower-tech 'mechs. Or some kind of (small?) penalty for bringing max-tech into a game.

In retrospect, I think making a strictly PVP version of Battletech was way too ambitious and they made the "mistake" of trying to compromise between the hardcore fans and the e-sport crowd. A pure e-sport (i.e. PVP with focus on competition rather than immersion) Mechwarrior game would probably have been the only thing that PGI could have handled, but it would probably have been a financial disaster. They needed to attempt a compromise to get the money from the hardcore Battletech fans, but their compromise was doomed to fail from the beginning.

To really do justice to their original vision, I think their budget would have needed to be ten times bigger. And they would have have needed people with more experience and skills, both in regards to balancing, map design, game mode design, programming UI, you name it. In retrospect, it's hard to be bitter about the overall direction MWO has taken. Sure, it could have had better balance, it could have had role warfare, etc. But realistically, they had 3 options.
1- Single player game. This could have been great, but I doubt I would have played a single player game for thousands of hours.
2- Strictly competitie PVP game. No CW. No real immersion or depth, just team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.
3- A compromise between 1 and 2.

With Battletech being a relatively obscure franchise with a small demographic, I doubt this game would have been alive if they'd gone for option 1 or 2 right away. It would have been a better game, but a lot narrower, with fewer players. They went with option 3, which was way too ambitious, but at least the game is still alive after 3 years.

[RedComet1]

Everyone is a critic. I've played a lot of games. Never had as much fun as MWO in any game.

[oldradagast]

I still don't get this fascination with table-top balance.

Table top had piles of junk mechs and piles of good ones. Some weapons were trash, some weapons were good. Heck, from what I've heard, the Gauss Rifle was stupid-good in table-top, too. And Clans were completely broken.

The only table-top idea that makes any sense to add, IMHO, in some way into the combat is a small cone of fire to break up the idiotic pinpoint alphas to one component at 500+ meters, but that's about it. All the other stuff seems to come down to people whining that Clan mechs aren't "win buttons," light mechs pose a threat, crap mechs in table-top may not be useless here (some guy on another thread was actually spouting off about how the game "needs useless mechs" - why? So he can use his table-top knowledge to kill the poor sods that made the mistake of buying those mechs?) and so on. And that doesn't even count the nuttier ideas, like forcing all weapons to have the same rate of fire... because I'm sure people would like an AC 5 if it had 1/4 the DPS of an AC 20... ugh!

Edited by oldradagast, 09 October 2015 - 05:20 PM.

[Impyrium]

Alistair Winter, on 09 October 2015 - 04:32 PM, said:

In retrospect, I think making a strictly PVP version of Battletech was way too ambitious and they made the "mistake" of trying to compromise between the hardcore fans and the e-sport crowd. A pure e-sport (i.e. PVP with focus on competition rather than immersion) Mechwarrior game would probably have been the only thing that PGI could have handled, but it would probably have been a financial disaster. They needed to attempt a compromise to get the money from the hardcore Battletech fans, but their compromise was doomed to fail from the beginning.

To really do justice to their original vision, I think their budget would have needed to be ten times bigger. And they would have have needed people with more experience and skills, both in regards to balancing, map design, game mode design, programming UI, you name it. In retrospect, it's hard to be bitter about the overall direction MWO has taken. Sure, it could have had better balance, it could have had role warfare, etc. But realistically, they had 3 options.
1- Single player game. This could have been great, but I doubt I would have played a single player game for thousands of hours.
2- Strictly competitie PVP game. No CW. No real immersion or depth, just team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.
3- A compromise between 1 and 2.

With Battletech being a relatively obscure franchise with a small demographic, I doubt this game would have been alive if they'd gone for option 1 or 2 right away. It would have been a better game, but a lot narrower, with fewer players. They went with option 3, which was way too ambitious, but at least the game is still alive after 3 years.

I still think that they could have done a fair deal better if they had have treated the game like a MechWarrior spin-off set in Solaris or something. Would help them better focus the towards what they seem to want to create and just give a lot of framework towards traditional PvP features.

But you're correct, very big, very ambitious project for a relatively small and inexperienced developer to take on, and even harder since they've had to try and blend everything in with F2P elements so they can actually get revenue from it.

[Adiuvo]

Alistair Winter, on 09 October 2015 - 04:32 PM, said:

In retrospect, I think making a strictly PVP version of Battletech was way too ambitious and they made the "mistake" of trying to compromise between the hardcore fans and the e-sport crowd. A pure e-sport (i.e. PVP with focus on competition rather than immersion) Mechwarrior game would probably have been the only thing that PGI could have handled, but it would probably have been a financial disaster. They needed to attempt a compromise to get the money from the hardcore Battletech fans, but their compromise was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Eh, I think you're giving PGI too much credit here. The game could be so much better if they just played with their XML files more than once every 6 months. The basic gameplay is good, as it always has been, but everything is marred by the poor balance. The PTS rebalance was somehow a step in the entirely wrong direction too.