88 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Mister Blastman, on 26 April 2016 - 06:11 AM, said:

But MW 3 at least had other mechanics in the game to balance it out better than what we have here, such as a proper heatscale...

I don't get why people keep saying this. Mechwarrior 3 had an extremely lenient and forgiving heat system, perhaps the most lenient and forgiving in the entire franchise...including Mechassault. It was very, very easy to create mechs that were either heat neutral or very close to heat neutral. You pretty much never had to worry about overheating if you built your mech properly.

As one of the craziest examples, in MW3 I have a Daishi with 4 ERPPCs that can alpha strike back-to-back endlessly. It shuts down, then starts back up a split second later, and by the time my heat bar is down to zero my guns are reloaded. Then I fire again and repeat the process as needed. I also had a 2 LPL + 4 ERLL Annihilator that had better heat sustainability than the vast majority of mechs in MWO.

So really, MWO's heat system is actually much more harsh than MW3's because MWO forces nearly every build in the game to overheat. MW3 let you ignore heat entirely.

As an experiment, try to port over some of your MWO mech builds to MW3, with the same guns and heatsinks etc. Test them to see how long they take to overheat and how long they take to dissipate their heat buildup. I can assure you that the MW3 builds will be able to sustain their firing for much longer than the MWO versions.

Edited by FupDup, 26 April 2016 - 11:53 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

And they said MW4 fans had rose-tinted glasses, just lol.

[Red Shrike]

mekabuser, on 26 April 2016 - 11:41 AM, said:

Also , thank the gods for canyon, tourmaline, crimson and hpg.. Without them... idk..

Half those maps are like World of Tanks maps, clearly defined lanes which cost you the game if you deviate from them.

Another thing I keep noticing in MWO is the usual lack of music (I don't hear any) compared to a game like MW4:Mercs.

[Jack Spade Ward]

MW4, no doubt!

In all mechwarrior titles, Clan were Clan and IS was IS! In this game its the way around!

[Mister Blastman]

FupDup, on 26 April 2016 - 11:51 AM, said:

I don't get why people keep saying this. Mechwarrior 3 had an extremely lenient and forgiving heat system, perhaps the most lenient and forgiving in the entire franchise...including Mechassault. It was very, very easy to create mechs that were either heat neutral or very close to heat neutral. You pretty much never had to worry about overheating if you built your mech properly.

As one of the craziest examples, in MW3 I have a Daishi with 4 ERPPCs that can alpha strike back-to-back endlessly. It shuts down, then starts back up a split second later, and by the time my heat bar is down to zero my guns are reloaded. Then I fire again and repeat the process as needed. I also had a 2 LPL + 4 ERLL Annihilator that had better heat sustainability than the vast majority of mechs in MWO.

So really, MWO's heat system is actually much more harsh than MW3's because MWO forces nearly every build in the game to overheat. MW3 let you ignore heat entirely.

As an experiment, try to port over some of your MWO mech builds to MW3, with the same guns and heatsinks etc. Test them to see how long they take to overheat and how long they take to dissipate their heat buildup. I can assure you that the MW3 builds will be able to sustain their firing for much longer than the MWO versions.

Back when the HGN 733C ppc+uac meta was king, I did and found I was shutting down like mad in MW 3 but more importantly, had a ridiculously hard time hitting with PPCs because they inherited my 'mech velocity thus making them wonky to lead and aim with.

But I'll take your suggestion and try a few other builds.

[Mister Blastman]

pbiggz, on 26 April 2016 - 11:45 AM, said:

multiplayer was just an extra feature, not the core of the game. Mechwarrior 2,3 and 4 all had some serious balance issues, that said, 4 was the only one actually intended for frequent multiplayer.



Heresy

I'm not sure about the intended part... Activision hosted servers for MW2 Mercenaries -- MercNet and the Zone was integral to MW 3 (and even had neat stuff like mobile repair bases). Heck, Mechwarrior 2 Mercs had objective based multiplayer gameplay! I think users made something ridiculous like 50 - 100 maps for it (probably way more) and 70 - 80 additional 'mech chassis.

It was a big deal.

And yes, Betty in MW 3 was a butch monster.

[Mister Blastman]

Scout Derek, on 26 April 2016 - 07:07 AM, said:

The description of here made me laugh too hard!

So.... what would that make MW4 Betty then? Shy? the opposite of MW3 but not similar to MW2?

Unremarkable. And I say that because I don't remember her at all.

MW 2 Mercs' betty was hot sexiness. I love how she was so soft and long in her pronunciation of words... almost like she was moaning as you flogged the controls...

[ElKatazTrofiko]

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

... 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 Kalasa, on 21 April 2016 - 01:53 PM, said:

... Compared to my preferred mod NBT:HC though, I prefer the weapon balance from that mod over MWO up until they overbuffed UACs.

ADL was the league I moved to after I basically lost my temper at NBT. Some of the imbalances going on, atop the absolute rampancy of the cheating among certain teams (not all the best were modem-popping aimbot clan twinklings, but a couple notable ones were) just pushed me out. Well, that and I named and shamed incessantly and even popped into a few sessions under a pseudonym (against the rules, but I was past caring). I heard it somewhat became deserted not long after, anyways.

As for balance in the planetary league, nope nope nope. The released, non-canon clan Ares was a hitbox black box, apparently. It took a lot more damage than it should have and was a favorite. The disallowing of x-teching was not much of a burden for DC, EK or MH, all units I flew with. We were all good shots.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 April 2016 - 07:16 PM, said:

You realize large lasers were one of THE strongest weapons in that game in a similar environment (FFP/LH/LA) right?
I still remember all the stories of the catnapping days and the 6-gun Timmy.

There was a place for brawling in NBT, and generally IS did that with ECM heavies and mediums with big ballistics and flamers sneaking in under cover when the pop-tart/hill-hump festival had become pitched. Also, Long Toms were great for clearing out poptarts -- there was some kind of heat artillery shell, too. The ER Large was always a favorite, but not many clan mechs fell into IS hands in general, and the IS tech base was slowly shittied up by the NBT boss caste as new weapons were added in Mektek paks and generally got worked over before they were in the league.

Final point to make... we knew who gave the most money to the league and that was the source of a lot of the so-called balance changes. NBT-HC mod was not balanced at all. It was closer to canon in some ways, but in many others was a very obvious donor-feedback clan-fanboy BS. Witness to this is the gelding of the X-pulses... and the number of strangely invulnerable donor clan members and their mysterious 500-m warping abilities.

MWO may cost money and I may not have much of the content, or even want the best meta, but NBT? Pfft. It was fun, it was good, but its flaws were obvious, defended, seemingly paid for and imbalanced.

Edited by ElKatazTrofiko, 17 July 2016 - 01:05 AM.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

In context to their time periods - MW4 all the way

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ElKatazTrofiko, on 17 July 2016 - 12:30 AM, said:

Final point to make... we knew who gave the most money to the league and that was the source of a lot of the so-called balance changes. NBT-HC mod was not balanced at all. It was closer to canon in some ways, but in many others was a very obvious donor-feedback clan-fanboy BS.

Dude, wtf are you even talking about, IS had the advantage up until things like the Hellfire were added and the Light Gauss was nerfed. The Clan CapERPPC and UAC buffs is what made things finally shift towards the Clans, but that was near the end of development anyway. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised given your below statement, when you make such a broad sweeping hackusation, generally its a good indication of how you didn't fully understand the game (especially since lag shooting was important back in those days).

ElKatazTrofiko, on 17 July 2016 - 12:30 AM, said:

ADL was the league I moved to after I basically lost my temper at NBT. Some of the imbalances going on, atop the absolute rampancy of the cheating among certain teams (not all the best were modem-popping aimbot clan twinklings, but a couple notable ones were)

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

As much as we talk about our balance overlords and high alpha strikes in this game, its nothing compared to MW4.

You could effectively setup a poptart with enough firepower to two shot a full HP Atlas and have just enough heat efficiency to fire the second shot right as the guns cooled down.

Light mechs and even mediums were pretty bad because of one shot death potential on CT and just because they couldn't bring the firepower of heavies or assaults or their armor. Clan tech was basically completely superior to IS, no form of balancing for that, just any mech could use any tech, though this left many weapons in the garbage bin.

People in this game got upset over poptarts having just enough damage to rip the armor off a light medium's side torso so the nerfinator was created and thus ended that, then eventually the quirkinator was built to add even more structure to things, and decrease cooldowns and ghost heat got thrown in to make people who try to shoot alphas like MW4 die.

Right now just imagine MW4 as a bunch of people in Dire Stars but with full armor and enough cooling to fire twice in a row and jump jets as good as our current medium mechs. That's about what I remember.

[ElKatazTrofiko]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 17 July 2016 - 01:07 AM, said:

Dude, wtf are you even talking about, IS had the advantage up until things like the Hellfire were added and the Light Gauss was nerfed. The Clan CapERPPC and UAC buffs is what made things finally shift towards the Clans, but that was near the end of development anyway. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised given your below statement, when you make such a broad sweeping hackusation, generally its a good indication of how you didn't fully understand the game (especially since lag shooting was important back in those days).

I am not talking about lag leading, which my lbx, ppc and heavy/lt gauss skills back then would tell you I was good at. I am taking about the person you catch behind a hill and smack once, who then stands still for 3 seconds and warps to a position several hundred meters away. showing only the damage from the first shot. Oddly enough, they managed usually to get a shot off after that before their connection had 'issues" and warped them away in a different direction.

In fact, that was how I would hunt them. I would wait until they were turning to fire, then lead them, then change direction and slow down to see where they warped back in from after they got their very accurate trade in. Shooting their frozen 'mech was a waste of time and ammo. Long-distance rubber banding on demand is not a lag leading issue.

Also, I did not name names. There's no need to jump up and lower your shining visor to sally forth here.

[Nightshade24]

cazidin, on 21 April 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

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?

Now MW4 and MW: O have different parts to balance on.

The goal of MW4 is to constantly improve your equipment and weapons as you progress through.
All clan weapons are superior to the IS counterpart in vanilla and mektek. The only acceptations is when clans do not have that weapon in IS like a heavy gauss rifle, etc... which you can easily smash that onto your mech with dozens of clan lasers.
However this is not only weapons and tech, it extends also into mechs... Clan and IS mechs do not vary much. Endo steel is present on both mechs, all mechs have DHS even when they shouldn't. IS got omnimechs, etc. so there's balance here. BUT the weight classes are not.
You do not want to pilot the flea or owens or wasp after the first 4 missions. By at least 20 or 30 in you want to outfit your 2 lances with assaults, by the end you should have strictly 100 tonners besides the occasional 95'er.

There's no reason to use a light mech. Speed can't help you and that speed doesn't help you to much.

So far we got IS tech < Clan Tech. However both mechs can equip either tech and mix it up, it's a shame that about 50% of the weapons are just obsolete to the other 50%. In MW: O it's a point to argue, however each weapon has a valid advantage that makes it not obsolete. In MW the advantage may be a 15 second cooldown went down to a 14 second cooldown in exchange for being 4 tonnes heavier. Not the best trade off.

Now in the Meta gameplay in a match? Sure, you playing with randoms and friends is alright, MW4 matches is commonly like tier 3 in MW: O with hints of tier 4 and 5.
But when you play with people who want to win you see 100 tonne poptarting assaults with paper thin armour with 5+ PPC's, ER large lasers, ER PPC's, Gauss rifles, Light PPC's, Light Gauss rifles, etc. "Ghost snipers" or "jump snipers" was the MW4 terms for these. Quite often they use ECM if possible and the firepower of these is along the lines of 50-70 damage. Remember, MW4 uses BT armour values, aka 50% of MW: O's, so 1 shot of these guys is enough to core a max armour atlas CT immediately and cripple it, why not 1 shot kill? MW4 had a mechanic (or bug?) which you can't 1 shot kill/ 1 alpha kill anyone,. as soon as they get damaged to the point of 1 point of health, it stays there until the next shot hits. so basically it's a 2 alpha kill for any mech, best you can get it.


MW4 has many balancing problems. Another thing is there's not even a match maker, nothing stops a team of 20 atlases go against your urbanmech.

MW4 multiplayer relied much more heavily on player co operation to balance the game out, not spamming paper thin ghost snipers and having even teams and stuff.

The only way MW4 beats MW: O in balancing is allowing both tech sides use mixed tech. That's it.

[Aiden Skye]

Haven't played MW4 online, didn't get the mektek packs but I had all the expansions. I loved the single player campaign and got many hours of fun out of it. It was my first Mechwarrior game as my PC was at the lower end of the potato spectrum at a whopping 150mhz with integrated graphics back in the days of mw2 and 3. I'd imagine Mw4 had it's own set of issues with all weapons basically being hitscan.

[Skoll]

Remember how people complained about poptarting in MWO? How that was the meta for awhile? Well, MP in MW4, it was all poptart all the time. As much as they bungle it, at least PGI does try to do some semblance of balance. MW4 was pretty much just launch and have fun except for the expansions, which I don't remember changing "balance" all that drasically. Each iteration of the MW games had their metas in multiplayer but MW4 was probably by far the most annoying.

[Mister Blastman]

ElKatazTrofiko, on 17 July 2016 - 12:30 AM, said:

ADL was the league I moved to after I basically lost my temper at NBT. Some of the imbalances going on, atop the absolute rampancy of the cheating among certain teams (not all the best were modem-popping aimbot clan twinklings, but a couple notable ones were) just pushed me out. Well, that and I named and shamed incessantly and even popped into a few sessions under a pseudonym (against the rules, but I was past caring). I heard it somewhat became deserted not long after, anyways.

There wasn't much cheating in MW 4. It was just a dumb game that was easy to be good at. The mechanics and balance were terrible--aside from looking left or right and shooting sideways. I wish we had that mechanic in MWO.

What was (were) your MW 4 callsign(s)?

[Stone Wall]

MWO is more balanced towards making the game easier for new people. MW3 and MW4's learning curves were like falling off a cliff. You either knew what was good and how to use it, or you died in 2 shots.

[Xocoyol Zaraoul]

Stone Wall, on 17 July 2016 - 07:32 AM, said:

MWO is more balanced towards making the game easier for new people. MW3 and MW4's learning curves were like falling off a cliff. You either knew what was good and how to use it, or you died in 2 shots.

It was an extremely "short" learning curve though. After a single day in Multiplayer you knew exactly what to use.

[ElKatazTrofiko]

Mister Blastman, on 17 July 2016 - 06:51 AM, said:

What was (were) your MW 4 callsign(s)?

This was one, as were DC_Kataz, MH_Kataz, UH_EKataz, EK_Disasterman and in ADL and MWL Disasterman (RWL).

Like I said, most good players were not cheats, but a select few definitely were, and the teams they were on did not dissuade them. I head a lot of excuses about laggy connections, but I had played with some of them in other units and in practice sessions under other names not listed here (after some pug drops got me recruited) and some pieces came together.

The much more diverse pilots in the other leagues never had the magical lag I saw that select few using. Like I said before, I won't name names, but it was there and mostly in high-level matches, which is odd, since it could not be random if they were able to maintain performance under such sub-optimal conditions.

On the other hand, nothing felt better than coring out a known unicorn lag beneficiary. I just got tired of decisive battles with that phenomenon showing up. AND, like I said, I did appreciate some of the changes NBT HC paks made to cleave more closely to canon. The admins had certain limits on what they could do about cheating, and I was not going to FRAPS myself to a lower level of play to catch it real time, as it didn't matter when a couple people did.

I want to make sure I make mention here that some of the best online buddies I played alongside were in DC. Nasu, Kurosawa, DeGauss, TrentHowell and a few others come to mind. We handed out beatings and took them, too.

[Mister Blastman]

Stone Wall, on 17 July 2016 - 07:32 AM, said:

MWO is more balanced towards making the game easier for new people. MW3 and MW4's learning curves were like falling off a cliff. You either knew what was good and how to use it, or you died in 2 shots.

MW4 didn't have much of a learning curve at all. The gameplay was shallow and bad. I grew bored of it after only a year and went on to play other games.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 17 July 2016 - 07:55 AM.