88 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

Greetings Mechwarriors. Today I have a simple question. In your opinion which of the two games, MechWarrior 4:Mercenaries with the Mektek Patch and MechWarrior:Online have better balance if either did and why?

[thehiddenedge]

MW3


Nah, I'll be serious. It's been a while since I've played mercs multiplayer, but I'd have to say MW:O by far. Sure it's not perfect still, but it is far more balanced than the mekpaks ever were. I have fond memories of comp games with teams of nothing but poptarting, gauss/ppc carrying black knights and glad bags. Lights were kinda pointless for anything other than messing around. It did have sized hardpoints though, which would be interesting to see combined with the TT-like mechlab we have now. It was fun, but balanced it was not.

Mercs had far better maps though. There were tons of amazing community made map packs that were better than anything in vanilla mercs or MWO.

oh yeah, and Capture The Flag was a thing.

Edited by thehiddenedge, 21 April 2016 - 11:08 AM.

[Blue Boutique]

Both have the same problem, certain mechs are overpowered and if you brought anything else in a squad match, you gimped your team.

[Scout Derek]

thehiddenedge, on 21 April 2016 - 10:55 AM, said:

MW3

On the other hand, I asked about this a long time ago here: http://mwomercs.com/...rior-title-was/


In short from that topic, neither Mechwarrior title was balanced because of either it being tonnage power creep, or the fact that previous titles were single player.

[GreyNovember]

There has never really been a game where lights are effective before MWO.

I mean, sure, 2 ERPPC Adder back then. But that was probably it.

Cougar could ERLL the AI from afar.

Notice how it's always a tonnage creep?

[Death Proof]

I never played MW4 in multiplayer, so I can't say.

But I can guess if the balance in PvE of MW4 is any indicator, then MWO is far more balanced.

[Chimera_]

The previous games were (primarily) single-player experiences where you started with a light or medium and gradually got heavier, and thus had issues with lighter mechs not really being balanced well against heavier ones. MW4 w/ the MekTek pack (As well as MW3, to a lesser extent) also had many times the number of weapons currently in MWO, so that brings a whole other level of effort it would take to balance them all.

In general, MWO is better balanced because it needs to be. There was no great need of excellent balance in the previous games, but this is an entirely multiplayer shooter so it's necessary.

[KHETTI]

MW4 + mekteks work was easily way way better balanced than MWO.
The fact that the one button, one weapon group , poptarting tryhards ( collectively referred to as the "Old guard" by mektek), cryed hard about what Mektek had achieved proved they were on the right track.
I played with some of the "Old Guard", and after Mektek got done with introducing balance, most of these guys were outright found to be Sh!t pilots.
They killed a ton of balance exploits, and that didn't sit well with the crutch crowd, PGI should take note of Mektek's contributions to Mechwarrior, because like them or hate them, they were on the right path.

PS.Also note that Mektek only ever focused on PvP, and balancing was done primarily for that purpose.

Edited by KHETTI, 21 April 2016 - 12:17 PM.

[Brewmen]

MW4 for it's time was way more advanced and new. MWO is mostly a rinse and repeat with minor refresh of Maps and more so on the mechs.

MWO seems to have many more bugs, the click tab where the window moves nearly off screen is very annoying. I do like that MWO is trying recently to make some new improvements to CW but it still is not good for very small guilds or solo players. I have not tried the 4x4 yet but hear good things.

[FupDup]

MW4:
-Better mech differentiation (somewhat less redundancy)
-Better balanced mechlab (yeah I said it, sue me)
-Has campaign mode <3
-MOAR GUNZ!!!1!
-Better maps
-Better game modes

MWO:
-Better graphics
-Better overall art style
-Better controls and mech handling
-Better balance (e.g. weapons, weight classes)

Edited by FupDup, 21 April 2016 - 01:13 PM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

MWO is far better balanced- not only across the tonnage range, but also in terms of weapons and equipment.

In MW4, any laser that didn't have "large" in its name was terrible. Unlike in MWO, where the main tradeoff in tonnage is for range with the large lasers, the MW4 large lasers did 5, 6, 7 times the damage of the medium lasers... while maintaining their range advantage. If you had four energy slots, and only one hardpoint had a two-slot mount, you took CERLL on the two-slot and left the two single-slots empty. If you could fit a large, you took a large, end of story. CERLL was by far the best, followed by large X-pulse, then ISLL and the LPLs.

For ballistics, you took CGauss or LtGauss in preference to everything else if you wanted to be competitive. Way down at the next performance level, you had HGauss, CUAC 10 and 20, and CLBX10 and 20... all of which were good if you could get close enough to use them- but MW4 was a long-range game. IS Gauss and UAC/LBX were pointless because they had the same mechanics as Clantech but cost more tonnage. Every other ballistic weapon sucked. MGAs, UAC2/5, AC5, AC10, AC20... you had to be a masochist to try to use any of them.

Missiles? CLRM15/20, CSSRM4/6. That's it. You'd be a fool to take anything else. Up until Mercs, 2-tube SRMs and 5-tube LRMs were effectively useless because AMS was guaranteed to knock down the first cluster. Even after Mercs came out, small launchers were still not even remotely worth the tonnage. TBolt was fun, but not practical; likewise CSMRMs. ISSRM and ISMRM were useless because they didn't lock; ISLRM was useless because it cost too much tonnage.

Beyond that, you had PPCs, which were good, CERPPCs, which were very good, flamers, which were about as gimmicky as they are in MWO (and inexplicably required a 2-slot mount), and a range of support crap like flares, arty beacons, and NARC, all of which was pretty much useless because you had to run the gauntlet of PPFLD poptarts to get close enough to use it.

ECM? It turned your IFF off, increased the enemy's lock time, and decreased the range at which you could be detected with your active sensors on. Very good... but the IFF thing was pointless; friendly 'Mechs with ECM would still show up blue, and there were never any neutral 'Mechs, so your "neutral" IFF setting made you stick out like a sore thumb.

AMS? Basically mandatory before Mercs (at least in normal play). It was guaranteed to kill the first salvo of any incoming missile attack, which meant the first 5 LRMs, the first 10 MRMs, or the first 2 SRMs from each launcher firing on you. For 1.5 tons, you rendered every single LRM5, SRM2, and MRM10 on the field useless. Mercs changed the intercept mechanic to a dice roll, but the chance was still high enough that the tonnage cost was worthwhile (it still worked out badly for smaller launchers). 'Mechs without AMS mounts saw very little use.

Night vision was equipment only in MW4 and BK; Mercs made it an inbuilt feature on every chassis. Its usefulness was inversely proportional to your pixel-spotting ability.

BAP was mostly pointless because only one weapon could reach past 1000m anyway (LtGauss) and there was, for a very long time, a bug that even prevented that from doing damage beyond 1000m. It was usually better to rely on your eyes unless you were a missile boat, anyway; many folks ran passive sensors most of the time so that they'd be harder to target while poptarting. It reduced missile lock time... but also reduced the time it took for enemies to get lock on you. Not really worth the ton unless you were driving a LRM boat.

Enhanced zoom... situational. Laserboats and missileboats rarely needed it because they didn't need much more zoom window than it took to cover the enemy's 'Mech. It could be handy for Gauss/PPC 'tarts, though, because they actually had to lead their targets.

Armor types were good if you knew what you were facing in advance... and not great otherwise because the tonnage cost was too high (IMO) unless you had a low-tonnage build... and if that was the case, why not bring more big guns?

Engine upgrades... Everything could upgrade or downgrade, which let the most powerful Omnis get even better. There was no XL vs STD tradeoff; all engines behaved the same way when shot up, and Stackpoling happened even if you killed a 'Mech by legging.

Sinks... only one type, not much to say here. There was no choice to make between running cooler and optimizing your build; if you had the tonnage, you could mount more sinks, because they took up no space at all.

I loved MW4, but I contend that it was only regarded as a good 'Mech game because it was pretty much the only option on the table at the time. 80% of the game content being suicidally useless does not good balance make.

Edited by WrathOfDeadguy, 21 April 2016 - 01:19 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Scout Derek, on 21 April 2016 - 11:02 AM, said:

In short from that topic, neither Mechwarrior title was balanced because of either it being tonnage power creep, or the fact that previous titles were single player.

Single player? Every Mechwarrior title has been multiplayer except the first... and multiplayer was kind of a big deal.

[Scout Derek]

Mister Blastman, on 21 April 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

Single player? Every Mechwarrior title has been multiplayer except the first... and multiplayer was kind of a big deal.

But that wasn't what they were mainly based upon, they were mainly based upon a single player campaign going against AI, not other people online, the multiplayer was just a fluff function if you wanted to test your mettle against other people.

[Mister Blastman]

Scout Derek, on 21 April 2016 - 01:46 PM, said:

But that wasn't what they were mainly based upon, they were mainly based upon a single player campaign going against AI, not other people online, the multiplayer was just a fluff function if you wanted to test your mettle against other people.

It wasn't fluff though, it was huge. We had some really big leagues built up around the games with prestigious names and histories such as Astral Dominion League and Net BattleTech. And much of the balance changes to the games were based on multiplayer feedback.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Speaking of strictly balance, weapon-wise the current balance of MWO was better than MP3.x and MP2.1a.
Compared to my preferred mod NBT:HC though, I prefer the weapon balance from that mod over MWO up until they overbuffed UACs.

I think MW4 had the better mechlab and maps, but MWO mechs "feel" better than they did in MW4, outside of JJs.
The game mechanics of MW4 (radar, knockdowns on damage, missile behavior, how AMS worked for the most part) were far better and the physics were better (despite blimp jets) because they actually allowed DFAs and collisions with terrain and other mechs was incredibly less buggy.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 April 2016 - 01:53 PM.

[MaximusPayne]

MWO easily has a more balanced design that MW4, but in order to make the game truly balanced PGI needs to look beyond the TT restrictions. I know all the BT zealots are rolling their eyes at me right now but if going against canon makes for a better product that will appeal to a bigger audience, then it should be considered. Have a stock-only game mode for the traditionalists and then open the customization floodgates for everyone else. The size-vs-speed, armor-vs-firepower, heat-vs-damage mechanics can be a helluvalot easier to balance with a level starting point in the mechlab.

[AztecD]

The thing that made MW4 better was NBT planetary league, it has the proper logistics and amount of maps needed for an actual war, you dropped what you had available and if it the enemy was good or your field commander was crap, you where left defending the planets with garbage stock mechs.

here you can scout/invade at will, like you own a damm mech factory, this is why the CW mechanic is broken, not because of the balance of power, but because you have unlimited mechs at your disposal.

[Scout Derek]

Mister Blastman, on 21 April 2016 - 01:49 PM, said:

It wasn't fluff though, it was huge. We had some really big leagues built up around the games with prestigious names and histories such as Astral Dominion League and Net BattleTech. And much of the balance changes to the games were based on multiplayer feedback.

TBH I never got into that stuff until late MW4.

As well as that, regardless, the games were based on a single player game, all were up until MWLL and MWO.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Mister Blastman, on 21 April 2016 - 01:49 PM, said:

It wasn't fluff though, it was huge. We had some really big leagues built up around the games with prestigious names and histories such as Astral Dominion League and Net BattleTech. And much of the balance changes to the games were based on multiplayer feedback.

Except the game's initial builds, and even subsequent patches, while they would address major glairing issues like MW3's build rules and all... were just not primarily focused on the multiplayer portion of the game.

As was said, until MWLL/MWO, Mechwarrior Multiplayer was a secondary thought [excluding the Multiplayer battletech games on Kesami]

MWO is the only main line Mechwarrior game where Multiplayer is the focus.

[2fast2stompy]

AztecD, on 21 April 2016 - 02:00 PM, said:

if it the enemy was good or your field commander was crap, you where left defending the planets with garbage stock mechs.

here you can scout/invade at will, like you own a damm mech factory

Now I want to invade some ****** backwater planet garrisoned by vindicators and spiders with kitfoxes and summoners