57 replies to this topic

[Khereg]

My basic opinion is that arriving at an appropriate BV is so dependent on bringing an effective loadout that we would always be arguing over the relative BV's. Trying to come up with a scaling system based on weapon combinations would become so burdensome to administer that it wouldn't be practical.

Add into this that even bad laodouts in the hands of skilled players can wipe the floor with bad players in good builds, and you've got a real conundrum. The current Tier system being more of an experience bar than a true measure of skill isn't helpful, either. It's not entirely a skill bar, of course, but that's true enough that it affects the outcome (i.e. less skilled players can rise to max Tier 1 and throw off the measure of skill).

I like the general idea that you're trying to find an approach that balances "effectiveness" among teams, but effectiveness is a combination of skill, loadouts, and team tactics. We don't have any way that I'm aware of to even begin to talk about the tactics end of things, so I'm not sure how much improvement can be made by moving to BV over tonnage given the other influences.

[Leopardo]

BV! good idea! and how many mechs I can take? or still 4?

[Adamski]

Khereg, on 23 May 2016 - 06:41 AM, said:

My basic opinion is that arriving at an appropriate BV is so dependent on bringing an effective loadout that we would always be arguing over the relative BV's. Trying to come up with a scaling system based on weapon combinations would become so burdensome to administer that it wouldn't be practical.

Add into this that even bad laodouts in the hands of skilled players can wipe the floor with bad players in good builds, and you've got a real conundrum. The current Tier system being more of an experience bar than a true measure of skill isn't helpful, either. It's not entirely a skill bar, of course, but that's true enough that it affects the outcome (i.e. less skilled players can rise to max Tier 1 and throw off the measure of skill).

I like the general idea that you're trying to find an approach that balances "effectiveness" among teams, but effectiveness is a combination of skill, loadouts, and team tactics. We don't have any way that I'm aware of to even begin to talk about the tactics end of things, so I'm not sure how much improvement can be made by moving to BV over tonnage given the other influences.

Yep, BV isn't going to fix anything, and implementing it would just be another distraction for PGI while they ignore balance.

The ONLY reason BV exists, is because you admit that some items / mechs are better than others, and instead of bringing them into balance, you force players to bring less good mechs, and more bad ones.

So once the BV system is put into place, that means that either BV remains fixed, and PGI has to adjust the mechs and equipment into balance with its BV, or they have to constantly adjust BV to match the value of mechs & equipment. Either way, it distracts from balance mechs & equipment with each other by blinding the underhive with a shiny BV value.

Edited by Adamski, 23 May 2016 - 12:18 PM.

[vocifer]

Adamski, on 23 May 2016 - 12:14 PM, said:

The ONLY reason BV exists, is because you admit that some items / mechs are better than others, and instead of bringing them into balance, you force players to bring less good mechs, and more bad ones.

Yep. Everything has it's reason for existance. The BV is a TT system, where you can't really do anything else to balance mechs and uneven matchups. Having finite amount of roll options (2d6), finite speed values, accuracy and so on, you can't really do slight adjustments. "7.5% heat dissipation? - good luck with it".

And in MWO we can have slight adjustments via quirks and minmaxing. It's much simpler to balance but still PGI fails in it time after time.

[slide]

I like the idea of a BV system, however as many have said it would be difficult to have some one (a team) assign values to every aspect of the game and then arrive at some number that actually means anything.

However it could be figured out based on usage. Usage of weapons and usage of chassis. This value could then be assigned dynamically in game and the values would change over time as mechs fall in and out of favor depending on what other changes are made to the game. This would also avoid having to constantly revisit the values.

A mech or a weapon ends up being "meta" because it has some advantage over the others. Whether this be hardpoints (placement), hitboxes, quirks, tonnage or what ever. The players have a knack for figuring out what does and doesn't work. That is reflected on the battlefield every match. As people see how effective a build is they will try to emulate it. Over time specific builds become the meta until they become a problem or to prolific and are nerfed some how. We need to harness the creativity and opinions of every player and try to quantify that.

Mech BV.
Pretty much the more a variant gets used (because it has some advantage) the higher the BV will become. Arguably the number one heavy would be the Timber Wolf (the one with JJ, sorry can't remember which model that is). So we shall assign that a BV of 1000. All other heavies and their variants will get a value less than 1000 depending on how often they are fielded. Then do this for each class of mechs. If the TW falls out of favor it's replacement will eventually rise to a BV of 1000 and the TW will start to drop.

Weapon BV
This is a little trickier as some weapons simply won't fit on some mechs so smaller weapons become the weapon of choice, small and medium lasers on light mechs for example. Usage is also somewhat dependent on hardpoints. However we can work out a basic value for weapons (example [dmg*rng/weight*heat*rof]) this can then be weighted by usage within a class of weapons (MPL V ML) or even within weapons type, all lasers, all ballistics etc.
-Special attention must be given to boating weapons. The ability to make super weapons out of smaller more numerous weapons needs to have an adjustment in the BV. As a starting point it would be (BV*1.[weapon number]). So a mech with 6 SPL would have each lasers BV multiplied by 1.6. This addresses the example mention earlier where the Firestarter would have a lower BV than a Cicada but yet is objectively better.

Other BV's
The above 2 are a simple start, similar calculations could be applied to HS, Omni Pods, Engines (a 300XL would have a higher BV than a 310 for example, forcing people to change up their builds a little bit). JJ, armor etc

Total BV
Sum all of the above.

In conclusion it is not so important what the numbers are as long as they are consistent and that they change dynamically with the game. Rather than having some committee decide what is good or bad and apply number, we have the system work it our based on what is used. That way every body who drops in a mech with a weapon attached has a say in what the BV is.

Perhaps more importantly we won't end up with static builds and drop decks like we do now as a specific build might just become to expensive (BV wise) to put on the field or in a drop deck. This would lead to constant change as people chase the next least worst option and put more variety on the field.

A thought on pilot BV. There aren't many metrics that can be used to measure a pilots worth that can't be tanked somehow. However if you use a simple metric such as K/D ratio or Win/Loss then apply as a modifier to each mech they pilot (new mechs/pilot start at 1). That way someone can't take out a locust and die/lose a lot and then come back in a fully meta TW and clean house with a BV (mech*pilot) derived from the Locust.

[MischiefSC]

BV didn't work in TT either.

Tonnage sorta works so I'd stick with it, it's better than trying to create a BV system that will in the end be more subject to min/max munchkin manipulation than tonnage is.

[Widowmaker1981]

Tangelis, on 22 May 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

Well that's kind of the whole point of BV. Everything has a rating. If done right...a 6 MG dire would take a lot of punishment but deliver none. It would be on par to say a medium that could deliver a lot of punishment but in turn be made of paper.

There lies the problem though, because a 6MG Dire would be literally the worst possible mech in MWO, worse than a 2xSRM4 locust, let alone a high firepower medium. Taking a while to kill (not that you would, because ... well, its easy to kill a dire that cant shoot back) is not relevant if no one needs to kill you because you are no threat to anyone, and can just be left until last.

I dont think a valid BV algorithm is possible.. some weapons are more valuable on certain mechs and in certain slots and combined with other weapons.. lets say for the sake of argument that the LPL, LL and ERLL are valued about the same.. so accoring to BV a mech with 1ERLL, 1LL and 1LPL would be worth the same as a mech with 3LPLs or 3ERLLs... anyone who understands the game knows thats clearly not the case... the only way a BV system could work would be looking at final builds and rating them, and that would mean programming in literally every possible build for every chassis.. which is impossible.

[Willard Phule]

MischiefSC, on 24 May 2016 - 12:36 AM, said:

BV didn't work in TT either.

Tonnage sorta works so I'd stick with it, it's better than trying to create a BV system that will in the end be more subject to min/max munchkin manipulation than tonnage is.

THIS RIGHT HERE!

Although, the TT BV system was a decent core to work with....you still had to tweak the units a bit to even them out.

I don't know about you, but most of the time, starting with the BV worked pretty well, but you had to add or subtract units to balance.

[Tangelis]

I would argue that an ignored 6 MG DW with what....8 million rounds of ammo would probably make a few dents! =) .

[Kin3ticX]

No thanks

Battle values are basically just assigning arbitrary point values which are added up like a bookkeeping problem.

The thing is, even something with a high battle value can actually be the dumbest most worthless mech.

What creates the value of a mech is a complicated mixture of qualitative and quantitative properties.

Battle Value is just never going to happen with all the fudge factors that would be needed and even if PGI tried, they would fail.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 27 May 2016 - 09:41 PM.

[Xiomburg]

I would embrace a BV sysyem if it incorporated point for the Mech, weapons, engines and items (heat sinks, modules, ect).

Better yet, make a standard balanced config for each 'Mechand play stock mode in CW. If a certain 'Mech is outperforming the others in its weight class...nerf it.

[Kin3ticX]

MechPorn, on 28 May 2016 - 12:36 AM, said:

I would embrace a BV sysyem if it incorporated point for the Mech, weapons, engines and items (heat sinks, modules, ect).

Better yet, make a standard balanced config for each 'Mechand play stock mode in CW. If a certain 'Mech is outperforming the others in its weight class...nerf it.

nobody wants to drive stock mechs except for a tiny minority of hardcore lore conformists


mechwarrior and the mechlab are attached at the hip


Besides, PGI doesnt sell mechs based on the stock loadout, they sell based on what the stock specs allow the chassis to be modified from stock

[Helsbane]

You're basically suggesting, simply by posing this question, that Paul, who can't even figure out how to balance based solely on weight, could wrap his head around a system based on how effective a mech is. Yeah, that'll go well....

[Kael Posavatz]

One of the inherent problems with balance in MWO is how closely PGI adhered to tabletop rules when it came to weapon bulk, mass, heat, and damage.

In tabletop one of the balancing features is actions. Each weapon system, whether it be an ultra-AC-20 or a small laser, can only fire once per turn. You didn't have to worry about people customizing mechs with lighter weapons to maximize damage over time since all weapons had the same firing rate (save the ultra/rotary autocannons, but that is a different topic).

But...say PGI implements some kind of battlevalue. It isn't just the weapons that would need to be factored. First you'd need to come up with a base value for each mech (to account for quirks), values would need to be added for armor, type of heatsinks (there are some mech-builds that work much better with singles), type of structure, speed, etc. And that's before getting to weapons. Maybe tossing in some type of curve so that a streakcrow would use up more BV than 5 streak-6 alone would account for (this would almost make it worthwhile to get rid of ghost-heat).

Say for some reason this happens. Here is the problematical part. Once you have BV, how long will it be before people demand that Quick Play games be sorted by both player skill and BV?

It's a neat idea, and if PGI had started on it 2-3 years ago as part of the conception of MWO, I'd have been all for it. But this would be a rather extensive rework of the game. At this point I'd much rather they sit down, take an honest look at why many players prefer Quick Play to FW, and see what they have in QP that can be implemented in FW. As it is, the April patch came down to a map reset and a coat paint, rather than addressing the structural defects in FW. It's a nice coat of paint, but a coat of paint nonetheless.

[Davers]

Hornviech, on 23 May 2016 - 01:17 AM, said:

I also think that the BV System is the Best way to Balance MWO becaue every Item, weapon, equiptment or Chassis has its own BV.
PGI has to use the original BVs from the Books and not a new invented one.
Also I think, when you have this System implemented Quirks, Ghost heat and Long Laser burn times are obsolete.
In Faction Warfare the Battlevalue has to be fixed and due to the higher BVs of Clantech the Battles are more balanced then now and its possible that the variations of mechs you see on the battlefield are greater because you have to choose youre Chassis and your equiptment that suits YOU best and fits into the BV Limit.
This System is forcing the Player to deal with the Mechs and equiptment much more then just putting as much as lasers in a mech as there are energypoints, they have to choose between the BV of the lasers if this suits the System.

Using the BT BV system is a horrible idea guaranteed to fail in MWO.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

We need more forward momentum with the game and not this constant treading water on features already in the game.

[50 50]

Unfortunately, a single battlevalue numeric for each mech will not make any difference to a single value tonnage value in terms of what can be included in a drop deck or the group limits.
In terms of limiting or forcing variation in drop decks and groups the tonnage system works well enough.

HOWEVER.... A battlevalue is still worth looking at as a way to determine individual mech optimisation and effectiveness that can be displayed alongside a mech and averaged out for a drop deck, lances and group.
We already have the values we need and just need to have a matrix for it to determine this battle value.
Instead of a numeric rating.... which is a little dull.... it would be nice to see this as a rank from 'trial' up to 'elite'.
Consider the values we can see in the mech summaries for:
Armour
Mobility
Firepower
Heat Management
... add in an Information warfare stat or two as well.
Should be easy to look at the percentage each value is of it's maximum, find the average and give it a 'Battlevalue Title'.
This can be averaged over a group, lance, drop deck, company etc.
Display this in the matches.

BUT what does this do for balance?
Not a damn thing while we rely on a match maker to try and bring it together.
Bring in a lobby.
Display each lance according to it's weight class.
Show the Battlevalue for each lance.
Display the Unit tag for the lance.
Display the average tier of the lance.
Let players pick the battles they want to go into and accept the challenges and consequences of their choice.

You know... I'm sure I've written about this somewhere else....

[nehebkau]

@ OP

I have always maintained that the quality of a mech should be taken into consideration as well as the quality of the pilot. I see no difference between group, quick and FW in regards to this.

Having said that, in FW I don't believe that BV matters since skill/coms/teamwork between 12-man attackers and PUG defenders trump any technological advantage that is currently in the game.