364 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Lugh, on 18 November 2015 - 12:34 PM, said:

Top of head. Keep 12 v 12, restore clan strengths. The use algorithmics to apply respawns to teams as needed. Clan mech balance on a one to one basis.

Each team that has IS mechs gets 1.6 spawns per IS mech of IS origin, Round as needed. That value based on the 5 v 8 Star v 2 Lance configs most often in lore.

The respawns are only available for the IS. And are available for everyone. To prevent Leroy Jenkins abuse of respawns, the team needs to vote yes or no to allow an IS pilot to use the respawns when he attempts to spawn back. A glance at your score screen will tell you whether or not a yes vote should be allowed.

The message would read Lugh wishes to use an IS respawn ALLOW Yes | No .. If you glance at the screen and see 56 damage and a light mech you may vote no right way. Abstaining isn't counted in the tally. If Yes s > no then he's let back in.


This gives 19 spawns total for full IS teams. 18 for those that have 11 IS and so on.

This requires all clan nerfs get undone. Apply the same metric for CW.
Elegant. Interesting to code. Make it so.

That's an interesting solution that I don't think I have seen suggested yet.

In any case, it's not the pure 1-on-1 balance that people insist is the only thing that would work.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Take note future Battletech/Mechwarrior game developers....

If you are going to make a game that relies heavily on a multiplayer element, for the love of god, make it take purely IS vs IS (before Clan invasion) or purely Clan on Clan (the Refusal War like MW2).

Mixed tech will bring on hate for you by the community and arguments among your players like this 9 page monster. Just avoid it. Don't do it. The compromises are too great and causes fractures throughout your community.

Just don't to it...DON'T!

The new Battletech game has the right idea. Leave this Clan crap alone. 3025 FTW!

Too bad PGI had to be the guinea pig.

[Pjwned]

CoffiNail, on 18 November 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Yep you are a idiot. Thanks for letting us know.

It has nothing to do with boo boos alright. It is the fact that being a member of a loyalist faction, who does not play the other faction Mechs seeing as you are a loyalist. Someone who gives 0 flicks about unseen or inner sphere Mechs of any kind, I have known many people who have quit for the fact they see almost nothing but nerfs.

Would not expect you to understand being an idiot and a lone wolf.

You are just reinforcing that your point is about getting a boo-boo on your bum and you need a hug & kiss to make you feel all better with the big bad meanie IS loyalists/lone wolves bullying you.

When you can demonstrate that nerfs are un-necessary and un-fair then you have a valid point, but if all you're doing is crying about nerfs no matter how justified they may be then all you'll get from me is endless mocking.

[Pjwned]

Mystere, on 18 November 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

I've been hearing this for a while now and yet no one has given any definitive proof that it will not work. Care to take a stab at it?

I'm not a fan of doing something like 12v10, and while I don't have any definitive proof it wouldn't work, there are at least a few reasons against it.

A) It goes against what PGI had in mind for Clans from the beginning, and they were very clear about their intentions the entire time. I believe they did say that they considered the possibility of 12v10 (or something) at the start, but also said they wanted to avoid balancing by unequal numbers for multiple reasons and that their goal was to balance the factions with equal numbers.

B) It would be a lot of work to change things around now, especially since PGI has made numerous changes to at least try to keep factions balanced with equal numbers, and all that effort would be undone. The amount of work it would be is not a good enough reason alone to not change it, but it does add on to other reasons to not change it.

C) How would public queue work? If factions were to be balanced with unequal numbers then the public queue would need to always be 12 IS vs 10 clan, and that would be a nightmare to deal with; I believe this is a major reason that PGI didn't want to balance by unequal numbers as well.

Maybe if the public queue didn't exist and PGI somehow managed to make everything be tied in with community warfare then that could work, but obviously that's a rather large endeavor and that also seems to be outside the scope of what PGI has planned.

D) What benefit would it really have over the current system? You make all these big changes so that factions are balanced with unequal numbers for...what, so that people can get in mechs with flat out better technology? What's the benefit of that over just balancing both factions differently but equally?

There are also other uncertain factors to consider, like what would happen to faction population balance, but like I said even if there probably isn't definitive proof that balancing by unequal numbers wouldn't work, there still are a number of fairly obvious reasons against it.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Mystere, on 18 November 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

I've been hearing this for a while now and yet no one has given any definitive proof that it will not work. Care to take a stab at it?

I'll use the SC analogy.

We have zerglings vs zealots, where it takes four zerglings to equate to a single zealot. So imagine a PvP game where you control a single unit, be it a zergling or a zealot. You have one life in that round. I wouldn't find playing a zergling very fun and I imagine most players wouldn't


Now let's look at Natural Selection.

The two base units on each side play differently, and the Marines are noticeably more powerful than the Kharaa. The Kharaa make up for this with both individual unit speed and a simulated numerical advantage by a more efficient resource use. Both sides are equal, yet wildly different. The average marine is noticeably more powerful than a Skulk (if the marine can shoot straight) but waves of skulks will eventually wear down the TSF through attrition based warfare.

Another thing of note about Natural Selection is that the TSF plays like the typical FPS game and the Kharaa play wildly different, and I don't know how to really describe it if you've never played it or watched videos of it. And NS1 and NS2 have strategic elements to balance the two sides, and victory comes down to which side had the better commander.


Then we have the wildly lauded MWLL, which used a respawn/resource based system. IS mechs were generally cheaper while Clan mechs generally were better, which was a strategic choice for a player "Take a cheaper mech or a better mech for this base assault?" Which made you assess the situation: how likely are you to die in this assault, how important is it that I draw multiple cheaper vehicles and wear them down with numbers, would it serve to put all my eggs into one basket and draw a single extremely power vehicle? So MWLL has a strategic element to the meta to balance sides.

And yet, even MWLL threw large volumes of the TT out the window and vastly closed the gaps between the tech levels. Which is conveniently ignored.


If PGI allowed the clans to be TT levels of powerful and used BV 2.0, and each player had only one life per round, it wouldn't take very long to leave the IS queues pretty empty. While if they made CW into a no quirks, no nerfed clans, but added the strategic element of resource efficiency with RnR, cost of lost units, used a BV, etc.

Think for a moment, if instead of 240 tons split among 4 mechs, you just had 240 tons. That means a player could take a pair of Direwhales and a Cheeto, or they could take eight Cheetos, or three Novas and three Cheetos. And taking quirks away, the IS were given 400 tons to work with (which is about how equal they were in TT on a tonnage to BV ratio). Imagine how many Locusts an IS player could take, or how many Blackjacks, Jenners, Cents, Hunchies, Catapults, etc you could fit into a dropship.

I'd play that. But the regular queues of mix tech with unnerfed Clans or unquirked IS? Hell no... I wouldn't touch that and from gathering what people on r/outreach, r/mwo, and here say, I imagine it wouldn't be a terribly popular idea.

If they made the regular queues unquirked IS v unquirked IS, unnerfed Clan vs unnerfed Clan, or nerfed Clan vs buffed IS (current format); but if PGI turned CW into the no-nerf, no-quirk zone with a strategic meta of logistics, funding, strategically important planets, RnR, then the idea of asymmetry in this game would likely be far more successful than the current iteration of CW.

But this is an arena shooter like the previous titles, and in those titles, the stock PvP that came with the game, the Clans shat all over the IS. It was only in player created leagues like NBT that added a strategic meta element to the game that gave parity to the IS.

[Gas Guzzler]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 18 November 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

I'll use the SC analogy.

I must be the only gamer ever who has never played StarCraft.

[Mystere]

MeiSooHaityu, on 18 November 2015 - 01:02 PM, said:

Take note future Battletech/Mechwarrior game developers....

If you are going to make a game that relies heavily on a multiplayer element, for the love of god, make it take purely IS vs IS (before Clan invasion) or purely Clan on Clan (the Refusal War like MW2).

Mixed tech will bring on hate for you by the community and arguments among your players like this 9 page monster. Just avoid it. Don't do it. The compromises are too great and causes fractures throughout your community.

Just don't to it...DON'T!

The new Battletech game has the right idea. Leave this Clan crap alone. 3025 FTW!

Too bad PGI had to be the guinea pig.

Getting both of these as gifts, among other things, says a lot about what I think about your warning:



...

Edited by Mystere, 18 November 2015 - 02:44 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Almond Brown, on 18 November 2015 - 10:44 AM, said:

Why do people who obviously dislike the game hang around the Forums ******** on the Developers? Is it some form of new 21st century therapy or something. It is getting to be quite rampant. Especially in the Gaming Communities it seems.

why do peoppe get emo dramatic an dmake things black and white? Being critical means you dislike something now?

Very poor reasoning.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Bishop Steiner, on 18 November 2015 - 03:00 PM, said:

why do peoppe get emo dramatic an dmake things black and white? Being critical means you dislike something now?

Very poor reasoning.

In America, yes, that is exactly the reasoning.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Well they removed the line where it said it was a first person simulator when that was no longer convenient.

Then again, arent petitions bannable?

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 18 November 2015 - 04:23 PM.

[MauttyKoray]

Gyrok, on 16 November 2015 - 02:19 PM, said:

I would like to start a petition to have "A BattleTech Game" removed from the title of MechWarrior Online.

Frankly, I would also like to see the game renamed to "generic robot arena shooter from PGI"...however...I doubt that will fly.

At least we can bring the truth out, and hopefully they remove the association to BT from the title.

With the changes that are coming to this game, this is no longer "A BattleTech Game"

There are myriad ways to accomplish "different but equal"...all we are getting here is "reskinned but equal".

What happens when T3/T4 IS tech comes and completely flattens the T3/T4 clan tech out now because nerfed into freaking oblivion?

Can we not just advance the timeline to bring about IS tech that is actually equivalent to the Clan Tech out now?

3055-3060 would get you there...

After having spent over $2k on this game, I am legitimately considering cancelling all my outstanding pre-orders at this point and dropping MWO completely...which is sad because I really never thought the day would come a diehard grognard like me would ever give in...but...this may be the last straw...

1. Why would you spend 2 grand on this game if you didn't like it?

2. Tabletop =/= Realtime Game (EVER...)

3. PGI admitted they've been focused on content release and the balancing they've done have been fairly unsuccesful bandages that less balanced the game and more so just mitigated the full extent of the damage the content and balance was doing. That's why we have the PTS sessions now, and everyone going nuts over the changes are being idiots. It was stated the PTS balance sessions have NO END predetermined. They will be done until the game reaches a better balance, but every cries and ******* like whatever PTS is running will be the next patch. -rolls eyes-

4a. This is a Battletech based game. The lore, mechs, weapons, setting, etc are all from Battletech and that does not change. Also Single and Multi oriented games are not the same as balancing a multi-focused game. Balancing Clan and IS has to happen, otherwise who would ever play IS when Clan were far superior? Answer? No one.

4b. Does the current balance suck, yes and quite hard too. It was closer to the battletech lore but even Jordan has said it was actually pretty ridiculous looking back on it. Even he stated that balancing a single player campaign/story oriented game was far easier than multi because you could limit players with progression or even fudge stats for enemies and other variables to tailor the SP experience.

5. Advancing the timeline won't fix the problem. It will simply create the issue we have with SHS and DHS. SHS are seen as something you have to suffer through until you have the CBills to convert them to DHS. IS UACs and ER Lasers would completely eliminate their standard counterparts. What's the point of running an inferior version? What needs to be done, before ANY new tech is added, is balance what we have and make the game better.

6. Hell, plenty of things are actually going BACK to being more like battletech. Remember that Jesus Box we call ECM? In the PTS its finally like actual ECM, not the AOE info cloak it has been all this time. Your argument that things are moving even further away from Battletech is invalid.

Lastly, if you REALLY want to leave that bad, the door is right there and no one is stopping you. You can either choose to walk out now (and its no ones fault but your own for spending the money, you can't blame PGI on that, this is an online only game and it would be no different than spending it on any other freemium game)...

OR, you can choose to stay here and help give feedback on the PTS sessions being done to rebalance the game finally.

Edited by MauttyKoray, 18 November 2015 - 05:06 PM.

[FupDup]

Gas Guzzler, on 18 November 2015 - 02:43 PM, said:

I must be the only gamer ever who has never played StarCraft.

TL;DR: It's an RTS game where one of the factions is mostly about spamming lots of low-cost units (Zerg) and another is about using a smaller number of elite units (Protoss), and the third faction being sort of in the middle (Terran).

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Gas Guzzler, on 18 November 2015 - 02:43 PM, said:

I must be the only gamer ever who has never played StarCraft.

FupDup, on 18 November 2015 - 07:22 PM, said:

TL;DR: It's an RTS game where one of the factions is mostly about spamming lots of low-cost units (Zerg) and another is about using a smaller number of elite units (Protoss), and the third faction being sort of in the middle (Terran).

What he said. It's the game that gave us the term "zerging."

[Praehotec8]

Unfortunately, it feels like the clans and IS are really just too unbalanced to fix easily, regardless of the method chosen. Most TT players generally feel that they broke the core game in half when they were released there. It really is an unenviable task that PGI has taken on to attempt some semblance of balance.

Aside from making the technologies the same with different skins, true balance may actually not be achievable. Even all the people on these forums cannot agree on how it should be done, so how would PGI make the, "correct," decision? Adding even more unbalanced tech would at best simply invalidate all lower tier IS tech, and at worst greatly magnify the balancing quandary.

I honestly wish in some ways for someone to come along and vastly revise all of the rules for clan and IS mechs in BT, while keeping the lore as similar as possible. If nothing else, it has always bugged me that the clans, with their honor duels and elite warrior mentality, have the tech that allows them to largely vaporize any opponent before said opponent can engage with their own weaponry...

[MeiSooHaityu]

Mystere, on 18 November 2015 - 02:43 PM, said:

Getting both of these as gifts, among other things, says a lot about what I think about your warning:



...

I like them . I always liked Clan designed mechs.

My point was more about mixed tech in multiplayer. I think PGI has shown that you aren't going to make it work well or people happy because the tech is too disparate.

The whole "The new Battletech game has the right idea. Leave this Clan crap alone. 3025 FTW!" is more about them concentrating on a timeline where they can keep it IS vs IS. It makes the PvP portion more easier to balance. If they go forward in the timeline to Clan (in a DLC or sequel, which I would like to play), it would be nice if PvP was Clan vs Clan (like trials for ranks or skirmishes) and IS vs IS.

Who know though, maybe in a turn based environment balance would be possible to player's satisfaction vs a FPS.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 19 November 2015 - 03:28 AM.

[Sjorpha]

MeiSooHaityu, on 19 November 2015 - 03:27 AM, said:

I like them . I always liked Clan designed mechs.

My point was more about mixed tech in multiplayer. I think PGI has shown that you aren't going to make it work well or people happy because the tech is too disparate.

The whole "The new Battletech game has the right idea. Leave this Clan crap alone. 3025 FTW!" is more about them concentrating on a timeline where they can keep it IS vs IS. It makes the PvP portion more easier to balance. If they go forward in the timeline to Clan (in a DLC or sequel, which I would like to play), it would be nice if PvP was Clan vs Clan (like trials for ranks or skirmishes) and IS vs IS.

Who know though, maybe in a turn based environment balance would be possible to player's satisfaction vs a FPS.

In a turn based strategy game there is no problem, you just give the IS player more mechs until the match is fair.

The problems with balance by numbers only arises when you have 1 mech = 1 player like in MWO, because you won't find enough players wanting to be on the side with weaker mechs.

The problem is not unsolvable, Natural Selection was brought up earlier and is an excellent example. MWLL made it work too. As soon as you introduce resource management and respawns into the match itself you can manage unbalanced units by resource cost and respawn timer etc.

The issue is rather that MWO is not going that way, it would need a complete redesign and it's not happening.

We're stuck with 1 - 1 mech balancing and everyone just has to get over it and accept that reality whether they like it or not.

Edited by Sjorpha, 19 November 2015 - 04:32 AM.

[Dracol]

I wonder what would be considered more anti lore:
A) clan and IS mechs equal but differantly balanced
B ) a pilot getting their mech destroyed, warping back to start area, getting in a second mech, and rejoining the fight

There are stories in lore, although rare, of IS pilots taking down a clan mech 1v1 in nearly equal tonnage. I can not recall a lore story where pilots kept getting new mechs throughout a battle.

Edited by Dracol, 19 November 2015 - 05:37 AM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Dracol, on 19 November 2015 - 05:36 AM, said:

I wonder what would be considered more anti lore:
A) clan and IS mechs equal but differantly balanced
B ) a pilot getting their mech destroyed, warping back to start area, getting in a second mech, and rejoining the fight

There are stories in lore, although rare, of IS pilots taking down a clan mech 1v1 in nearly equal tonnage. I can not recall a lore story where pilots kept getting new mechs throughout a battle.

I'm guessing you don't play CW because when your mech goes down you wait before rejoining the battle in a new mech.

[Davers]

Bishop Steiner, on 17 November 2015 - 10:54 AM, said:

cuz there is no reason one can't have a simlite immersive First Person Btech experience...other than Russ got the big eyes and delusions of Esportdom?

You mention Esport like it's a bad thing. At it's core Esports are a balanced, skill based game. We saw more different meta in LoL last season than MWO has had in it's entire game life. We saw 74 unique champions used at Worlds out of 126- can MWO claim that half the mechs are useful in competitive play?

[Mystere]

Davers, on 19 November 2015 - 09:54 AM, said:

You mention Esport like it's a bad thing. At it's core Esports are a balanced, skill based game. We saw more different meta in LoL last season than MWO has had in it's entire game life. We saw 74 unique champions used at Worlds out of 126- can MWO claim that half the mechs are useful in competitive play?

BattleTech post 3050 was designed to be asymmetric. As such, eSports should have been the last thing on PGI's mind.