DerMaulwurf, on 03 March 2016 - 01:31 AM, said:
Normalization is also predictable and logical. Doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea. Actually, doing something in a procedural way is only superior over a case-by-case treatment if your judgment of cases is flawed. And even if you consider that to be the case, the quality of an algorithmic adjustment is 100% dependent on which variable you chose to base your algorithm on. Why is volume an important variable? Why chose it over alternatives? Over which alternative?
The 'proper' size is influenced by lots of factors. Is the shape of the arms sutiable to shielding components? If yes, from which angles. Is the absolute size really that important in a specific case? (Don't tell me that your ability to hit a Dire Whale will be influenced if it was 20% shorter).
Just changing to a procedural approach changes absolutely NOTHING. You're still dependent on how well the procedure accounts and which variables were decided to be factored in.
Which variables are factored in? It's volume. That's it.
This isn't a Magic Rebalancing. It's bringing all the mechs to a proper overall size for their weight - something people screamed about for
years as there were so many gross inconsistencies. Now there will be zero inconsistencies.
But my point stands: If you have any belief that PGI would have done it by hand and ended up with something somehow better, you are flatly crazy. Again, this isn't a balancing centered move, though it should generally improve balance. It's one to remove gross inconsistencies.
Mechs are not going to be perfectly balanced afterwards. Of course not. Nobody is claiming they will be, least of all PGI. But what they WILL be is sized consistently.
Alistair Winter, on 03 March 2016 - 02:33 AM, said:
Most of the balancing of MWO is done by what you call 'feel'. How do they determine module slots? Max engine size? Agility stats, like torso twist. Hardpoints, jump jets, even the mech models themselves are designed and balanced arbitrarily. So suddenly applying one logical element isn't necessarily going to solve anything. For example, the shape of the Awesome is probably the least ideal for MWO. A big flat front profile. Would you really design a mech like that, if you were designing the ideal mech?
And their balancing "by what I call 'feel'" is
terrible. Really bad.
They are manually altering the Awesome as well (not just an equal xyz rescale, it'll get some manual resizing - and this is something that Russ has said is applying to some of the more serious problem mechs. Catapult as well. But it will still be in terms of volume:mass consistent with every other mech.
Alister. You've been here a long time, you've seen these projects before. They
NEVER get finished. They never even do a very good job. If they did this entirely by hand without using a calculated target volume, we'd see a couple mechs resized, some would work out, others would be wonky, and at the end of the day most mechs would be untouched and may would still be wildly inconsistent.
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As others have pointed out, they will need to compensate for the consistent rescaling with inconsistent quirks anyway.
Of course they will. Why wouldn't they?
Davegt27, on 03 March 2016 - 06:50 AM, said:
The whole scale thing is hilarious
Since the whole thing is based on pure fiction
How do you know how big is big
... really?
They measure the volume of the mechs, and their tonnage, and adjust each mech relative to the rest. "How big is big" is irrelevant, what matters is that mechs are physically consistently sized vs other mechs as per tonnage. Where the nomalization point is doesn't really matter, because all the mechs will be sized off that. Unless that point was arbitrarily chosen and silly (like really big, or really small) but Russ's numbers have shown that they're using the net average size of mechs to determine the target volume:mass, so that all the changes are as small as possible. Essentially, except for mechs of really wonky volume:mass, mechs are going to remain roughly the size they are now.
Making all mechs a consistent volume per mass is not a panacea of balance, nor is it intended to be. It will, however, remove an aspect of "unfairness"; with some mechs being wildly too big or too small vs. their tonnage. Quirks are still going to be needed, but they'd
always still be needed. But at least there will be one less complaint.
And yes, particularly egregious offenders are getting non-linear scaling, so they can correct some model issues while their at it. I don't know how many - only the Awesome, Catapult, and Locust have been named thus far.
But frankly, with PGI's track record? I'm VERY glad that, at the end of the day, all mechs will be a consistent volume according to their tonnage.
FupDup, on 03 March 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:
Just randomly rescaling mechs just for the only sake of rescaling without any regard for how game balance is impacted is extremely shortsighted and misguided.
They'd **** it up way more if they tried to do it For Balance. No doubt at all. I can't believe you of all people think they'd do it better by hand.
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