1017 replies to this topic

[Cy Mitchell]

wanderer, on 31 May 2016 - 10:07 PM, said:

I just happened to be around when McGraf18 happened to be working out with the KDK-3.



He was basically bending teams over and giving them autoloaded enemas. Carrying is a polite term, considering the one kill I got in those two games was so badly torn to shreds by UAC/10 quad fire that I ended up dinking it to death with medium laser fire. From two medium lasers.

Again, my opinion is to take the quirks the KDK-3 got and put them on one of the other models that didn't. Maybe the KDK-1.

I do not care whether the Kodiak 3 loses it quirks or not. As I have stated many times before I want all the quirks to be removed from all the Mechs with the re-scale. However, the logic in sighting McGral18's performance in the Kodiak as proof that it needs to be nerfed eludes me. Is he saying that he has never had a similar performance in any other Mech and that the Kodiak 3 is so much better than everything else that it has elevated his performance to unfair heights? Has he never done anything similar in an Atlas or Mauler or Oxide, et al? I see another Kodiak 3 user in that same game that may not have the same impression that the Mech is over powered based on his performance and score in the game.

Some players are just really good. Some players are just really good in a specific weight class. Sometimes a player just meshes really well with a certain Mech or play style that the Mech fits into perfectly. Saying that the outstanding performance of a few very good players proves that a Mech is over powered is questionable logic. Now if you took a broad sample of players across every skill levels and the Kodiak 3 allowed all of them to perform at a elevated level then I would say that you have proven that the Mech is too good for the games good. I have not seen that type of evidence presented anywhere yet.

But by all means, remove the quirks from the Kodiak 3,.....and the Oxide.......and the Nova......and the Atlas......and the Black Knight......and the Blackjack......and.... Ah, Hell, just remove all the darn quirks!

[Mcgral18]

Gyrok, on 01 June 2016 - 06:46 AM, said:

This is false logic.

Personal experience is an opinion, regardless of who it comes from.

Either they all weigh the same, or they all weigh nothing. Which is it?

Are we looking at this objectively, or with rose colored glasses trying to say "some opinions are ok, other opinions are worthless" as per the genetic fallacy?

You are seriously showing bias here mcgral. If you are going to continue to use special pleading and appeal to authority to backup your anecdotal flawed logic, you are not contributing to the discussion.

No, when it comes to Shooty Stompy Robots, some people understand it better than others. People not me, and not you

You sure are one to talk about bias, though. I'm the one using the robot to extraordinary effectiveness.
You can have your opinion, but much like "LRMs OP #PGIPLZNERF", not all opinions are factual.

My opinion is exclusive to the 3, that it is too good and should lose quirks.
Nothing more than that.

[Sjorpha]

Gyrok, on 01 June 2016 - 06:50 AM, said:

Ok, let me reiterate.

Opinions are anecdotal.

All opinions weigh the same, which is either nothing or something. If you say some weigh different than others, you are committing the genetic logical fallacy.

So, either you and mcgral's opinions weigh the same as everyone saying nothing is wrong with them (i.e. 2 vs 20), or no opinions count and the discussion is moot.

Which is it?

TL:DR: Gyrok is wrong again.

Genetic fallacies

You yourself are committing the fallacy fallacy here, you assume that if you can read a fallacy into someones post it automatically helps your case. Nope.

The genetic fallacy is to confuse the source of arguments with it's content, that is a wholly different thing than demanding everyone be regarded as equally right all the time. Actually it's the opposite if you think about it.

It's not a genetic fallacy to say that an opinion can be right or wrong, nor is it a genetic fallacy to note that some people tend to know a certain subject better than others.

The claim is not that McGral and Twinky are correct about the Kodiak because they're good, the claim is that being good is one of the reasons behind their analysis being correct more often than others.

It's true that the players being right more often than not aren't right because of who they are, but that doesn't change the fact that they are correct. An "argument from authority" is a fallacy only if the authority isn't real, it's not a fallacy to assume that people with a history of deep knowledge in a subject are most likely to be correct about it. It's often impossible to do the experiment yourself because you can't possibly achieve expertise in every subject, it would impossible to have any reasonably worldview at all if you made that demand. We have to trust authorities all the time, we assume doctors are more likely correct on medicine so we follow their prescriptions, we assume physicists are likely better suited to describe the quantum states of electrons that most people so we build our technology based on that.

In games, unless you can do the experiment yourself, and you can't unless you can maximize performance of a move, and you can only do that if you are one of the best. It follows that the better you are the more likely you are to correctly assess the strength of a given move. Exceptions are possible, for example a person without in game skills but sound head for analysis can correctly assess a move by looking at the results of the best players, he still has to use their results because his own results won't be important since they aren't representing the performance peak in question.

This is not an "argument from authority", because it's actually a well tested thesis in game theory. The facts are to be found either expressed by the best players or by someone analyzing their results, usually both, and if the opinion of the best line up with the opinion of those good at analyzing the best performance, well then it's as good as in can possibly get in terms of knowing something about a move in a game.

There is nothing about MWO that makes this different from other games, but it's a common thing that players get confused and think the specific game that they are playing somehow behaves differently. Nope, MWO is a relatively simple game, it behaves exactly as expected.

Opinions and anecdotal evidence.

Opinions are not necessarily anecdotal, those are different concepts. Opinions are subjective statements, if they are testable truth statements they can be right or wrong. It's entirely possible for a statement to be both a subjective opinion and objectively true at the same time.

Anecdotal evidence is often of limited use, that is true, but that is not the same as useless. Anecdotal evidence is actually used a lot in science, you just have to know what it can and cannot prove.

Two of the most useful applications of anecdotal evidence is demonstrating possibilities and refutation.

Let's start with "demonstrating possibilities", one example of that is the anecdotal fact of life existing on earth demonstrating the possibility of life on other planets, combined with statistical evidence of similar solar systems that anecdotal piece of evidence leads to a reasonable assumption that life on other planets exist. Voila, and that is one of many.

In game terms anecdotal evidence of extremely good results is evidence of a performance peak, that is extremely significant. For example Alex Valle only needed one match to prove the power of the "Valle CC" move in street fighter. Winning a tournament with a specific strategy is entirely anecdotal but still regarded as a very significant piece of evidence, for good reason.

In this case we have an unprecedented consistency of extreme performance in a top few players using the 3, that demonstrates two things in terms of performance peak for that move (using the 3). First the very high peak itself as demonstrated by the best matches, and second the "peak of consistency" shown by Twinkys collection of screens. It doesn't tell us what the average results across the player base is, but as explained above gaming is naturally a matter of peaks and peak consistency, the averages across less skilled players are simply not that interesting.

What IS useless is anecdotal evidence of low performance with a move, since the possibility to suck and /or fail with any strategy is already so well demonstrated it adds o information. So "I killed a Twinky in a Kodiak with a Hunchie" type anecdotes are indeed useless and have no application at all.

"Refutation" is when anecdotal evidence punches a hole in assumed generalities, for example the two slit experiment in quantum physics refuted the two general assumptions that the universe has a single history and that particles can only occupy one location at a given time. Both these assumptions had to be questioned as soon as they stopped being 100% general, because even when the experiment had only been done a few times (anecdotal stage) it still refuted these assumptions as general law. It takes a lot more to develop the alternative theory and prove it as law, since refuting old assumptions and replacing them with new ones have completely different burdens of proof, and in between those stages a honest person has to simply admit ignorance.

In MWO terms you can for example refute the assumption that UAC10 is necessarily inefficient damage with a single anecdote where it isn't. It could still be inefficient most of the time, but you have to abandon the idea that it always is. And since peaks are what counts in gaming, a single demonstration of precise damage application is all it takes to establish that high efficiency as the relevant one. Compare for example LRMS that have no demonstrations of high damage efficiency along with RNG spread, it's correct to say they are never efficient (they can still be effective, but that's different thing.)

Edit: Insulting paragraph removed.

Edited by Sjorpha, 01 June 2016 - 08:34 AM.

[1453 R]

Gyrok, on 01 June 2016 - 06:50 AM, said:

Ok, let me reiterate.

Opinions are anecdotal.

All opinions weigh the same, which is either nothing or something. If you say some weigh different than others, you are committing the genetic logical fallacy.

So, either you and mcgral's opinions weigh the same as everyone saying nothing is wrong with them (i.e. 2 vs 20), or no opinions count and the discussion is moot.

Which is it?

Asking a heart doctor his opinion on a possible heart condition, and accepting his ideas as more likely to be workable and valid than asking your barkeep his opinion on a possible heart condition, isn't a fallacy.

Now, I've never been one to say "Piranha needs to completely and utterly ignore absolutely everything that absolutely everyone who isn't on an ultracomp league-dominating competitive team says, because this game needs to be balanced solely and strictly for the 1%, by the 1%, and everyone else can either Git Amazeballs or GTFO", the way many ultracomps have often squawked. That is the sort of attitude that results in dead games - believe it or, Ultracomp Overlords, you do actually need the rest of the population to make your game a viable business product, and if the game is sheer, arduous, massively unbalanced torture until you have attained Zen-like True Mastery of it then your game is a bad game and it will fail.

That said...the heart doctor's opinion on heart conditions weighs more heavily than your barkeep's because they have a deep education on matters of the heart (THE PHYSICAL HEART YOU SCALAWAGS), experience with treating heart conditions, and a lot of scientific knowledge, backing, and evidence to present. Most of the ultracomp stuff I've seen consists of "I can take the KDK-3 and bend entire enemy teams in QP over a stool. That's bullscheiss. We need to nerfbomb this chassis with fire so it's consistent with other Clan assaults like the Whale and the Executioner and stuff."

That's bologna. A proper ultracomp can take anything north of sixty tons and a number of things south of there and do exactly the thing they're doing in the KDK-3 in Quick Play because that's what they do. Most ultracomps, if pressed, would also admit that all pre-Kodiak Clan assault 'mechs were/are deeply flawed and generally not competitive with Sphere insano-quirked GigAssaults...but they have no trouble whatsoever suggesting/pushing for/demanding that the Kodiak chassis - the entire chassis, not simply the KDK-3 - be reduced to the same effective level as machines like the Highlander-IIC. The KDK-4 and the Spirit Bear must also suffer immolation for the sins of the 3, and the 1, 2, and 5 don't even get a chance to live before they die.

I don't get it. And yeah, it makes me mad because there's NOTHING FRIGGIN' WRONG with any of the other Kodiaks. I can get that the Ultracomp Consensus is that the KDK-3 is overperforming at the moment and thus needs to be hammered down, but what I just don't understand is this vengeful, highly disproportionate desire to obliterate the entire chassis because of the one misstep.

[Manei Domini Krigg]

Good players are OP! Nerf it!

They can make OP any mech that they drive!

[Mcgral18]

Rampage, on 01 June 2016 - 08:17 AM, said:

I do not care whether the Kodiak 3 loses it quirks or not. As I have stated many times before I want all the quirks to be removed from all the Mechs with the re-scale. However, the logic in sighting McGral18's performance in the Kodiak as proof that it needs to be nerfed eludes me. Is he saying that he has never had a similar performance in any other Mech and that the Kodiak 3 is so much better than everything else that it has elevated his performance to unfair heights? Has he never done anything similar in an Atlas or Mauler or Oxide, et al? I see another Kodiak 3 user in that same game that may not have the same impression that the Mech is over powered based on his performance and score in the game.

Some players are just really good. Some players are just really good in a specific weight class. Sometimes a player just meshes really well with a certain Mech or play style that the Mech fits into perfectly. Saying that the outstanding performance of a few very good players proves that a Mech is over powered is questionable logic. Now if you took a broad sample of players across every skill levels and the Kodiak 3 allowed all of them to perform at a elevated level then I would say that you have proven that the Mech is too good for the games good. I have not seen that type of evidence presented anywhere yet.

But by all means, remove the quirks from the Kodiak 3,.....and the Oxide.......and the Nova......and the Atlas......and the Black Knight......and the Blackjack......and.... Ah, Hell, just remove all the darn quirks!

It is the highest damage I've ever gotten with a mech, beaten by roughly 500 points.

One less kill than my record, a lowly Ace of Spades, but it is my most consistent damage dealer.


Tourney will tell how it fares in the grand scheme, head to head against the other Uberquirk mechs without an event.

[Cy Mitchell]

Mcgral18, on 01 June 2016 - 08:29 AM, said:

It is the highest damage I've ever gotten with a mech, beaten by roughly 500 points.

One less kill than my record, a lowly Ace of Spades, but it is my most consistent damage dealer.


Tourney will tell how it fares in the grand scheme, head to head against the other Uberquirk mechs without an event.

So, you have gotten more kills in other chassis. The higher damage stands to reason in that a heavy ballistic loadout will tend to chew through much more of the armor and components of enemy Mechs before the kill instead of the quicker kills of Gauss and Laser Alphas. Damage in itself does not necessarily make the Mech OP or all the LRM boats getting over 1000 points of damage a game would be OP and we all know that is not the case.

Yes, with the Tourney coming, I agree. Lets see if it is a major player in the Tournament or if it is even a factor. Then make a decision on it and many of the other Mechs that are pointed at with the OP finger. There are going to be players from a broad spectrum of skill levels competing but most of them will be relatively competent or they would not be trying to compete in the Tournament. (I said most).

After the performance data is gathered from that then make some decisions as to what to do with these seemingly over-quirked Mechs that are allegedly ruining the game.

Then remove all the quirks! End power creep! Power to the Mist Lynx and Vindicators of the world! Ooops sorry, I got carried away.

Edited by Rampage, 01 June 2016 - 08:48 AM.

[Roadkill]

MischiefSC, on 31 May 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

PGI doesn't have telemetry like you're talking about because there are no match environments conducive to accurate telemetry.

They have the telemetry. Your argument is that it isn't valid because there are too many scrubs playing the game and doing badly in the KDK-3. (Paraphrased/simplified.)

My argument is that many if not most of the Comp Tier players' opinions are derived from PUG-stomping with the KDK-3 in a perfect storm environment. Fat, juicy, generally incompetent pilots wandering around aimlessly for the Comp Tier players to harvest. (Ok I exaggerate... slightly.)

Ergo, we do not have sufficient, valid data yet.

I see fewer and fewer KDK-3s in QP as time passes. If it were really OP, people would still be playing it constantly. Winning is fun. Playing an OP Mech is fun. (Think back to the real Lurmageddon. All you saw were missile boats for those 3 days.) No one's going to stash it away hoping that PGI doesn't notice it's OP so that they can use it later... they're going to abuse the crap out of it while they can. But they're not.

Quote

QP matches are moderately accurate for identifying mech performance. The reason private matches between comp tier players is more reliable is that it eliminates the variables that makes QP matches less reliable.

QP matches are more reliable for determining balance in QP. Comp Tier matches are more reliable for determining balance during Comp Tier matches. Those may or may not be the same.

Balance is not absolute. Something can be balanced in QP and not balanced in Comp, and vice versa. Something (*cough*LRMs*cough*) can be OP in QP and UP in Comp. The reverse can theoretically also be true, but I can't think of an example in MWO.

The question then becomes, for which group do you balance the game?

Hint: Comp play has external controls that can be used to alter/fix game balance for comp play. QP has no such option.

[Gyrok]

Sjorpha, on 01 June 2016 - 08:20 AM, said:

TL:DR: Gyrok is wrong again.

Genetic fallacies

You yourself are committing the fallacy fallacy here, you assume that if you can read a fallacy into someones post it automatically helps your case. Nope.

The genetic fallacy is to confuse the source of arguments with it's content, that is a wholly different thing than demanding everyone be regarded as equally right all the time. Actually it's the opposite if you think about it.

It's not a genetic fallacy to say that an opinion can be right or wrong, nor is it a genetic fallacy to note that some people tend to know a certain subject better than others.

The claim is not that McGral and Twinky are correct about the Kodiak because they're good, the claim is that being good is one of the reasons behind their analysis being correct more often than others.

It's true that the players being right more often than not aren't right because of who they are, but that doesn't change the fact that they are correct. An "argument from authority" is a fallacy only if the authority isn't real, it's not a fallacy to assume that people with a history of deep knowledge in a subject are most likely to be correct about it. It's often impossible to do the experiment yourself because you can't possibly achieve expertise in every subject, it would impossible to have any reasonably worldview at all if you made that demand. We have to trust authorities all the time, we assume doctors are more likely correct on medicine so we follow their prescriptions, we assume physicists are likely better suited to describe the quantum states of electrons that most people so we build our technology based on that.

In games, unless you can do the experiment yourself, and you can't unless you can maximize performance of a move, and you can only do that if you are one of the best. It follows that the better you are the more likely you are to correctly assess the strength of a given move. Exceptions are possible, for example a person without in game skills but sound head for analysis can correctly assess a move by looking at the results of the best players, he still has to use their results because his own results won't be important since they aren't representing the performance peak in question.

This is not an "argument from authority", because it's actually a well tested thesis in game theory. The facts are to be found either expressed by the best players or by someone analyzing their results, usually both, and if the opinion of the best line up with the opinion of those good at analyzing the best performance, well then it's as good as in can possibly get in terms of knowing something about a move in a game.

There is nothing about MWO that makes this different from other games, but it's a common thing that players get confused and think the specific game that they are playing somehow behaves differently. Nope, MWO is a relatively simple game, it behaves exactly as expected.

Actually, the genetic fallacy is true here.

The argument is that the skill level those players possess makes their opinion more valuable than other opinions not coming from them.

By default, that argument is set to assume that the players who are not as skilled at the game have less fundamental understanding. The reality is, skill at playing the game only comes from understanding the victory conditions and how to best achieve them. It means little, or, often times, nothing about how the mechanics of a game work or function.

In a body of peers, with all players having roughly equal exposure to the back end (read: inner workings) of any given game, skill at playing the game is not the same as skill at understanding how the game works, or the mechanics. Since most players have the same knowledge of MWO (read: no experience with the source code to this specific game, the netcode, or the mechanics hard wired into it), all opinions are equally valid.

Quote

Opinions and anecdotal evidence.

Opinions are not necessarily anecdotal, those are different concepts. Opinions are subjective statements, if they are testable truth statements they can be right or wrong. It's entirely possible for a statement to be both a subjective opinion and objectively true at the same time.

Anecdotal evidence is often of limited use, that is true, but that is not the same as useless. Anecdotal evidence is actually used a lot in science, you just have to know what it can and cannot prove.

Two of the most useful applications of anecdotal evidence is demonstrating possibilities and refutation.

Let's start with "demonstrating possibilities", one example of that is the anecdotal fact of life existing on earth demonstrating the possibility of life on other planets, combined with statistical evidence of similar solar systems that anecdotal piece of evidence leads to a reasonable assumption that life on other planets exist. Voila, and that is one of many.

In game terms anecdotal evidence of extremely good results is evidence of a performance peak, that is extremely significant. For example Alex Valle only needed one match to prove the power of the "Valle CC" move in street fighter. Winning a tournament with a specific strategy is entirely anecdotal but still regarded as a very significant piece of evidence, for good reason.

In this case we have an unprecedented consistency of extreme performance in a top few players using the 3, that demonstrates two things in terms of performance peak for that move (using the 3). First the very high peak itself as demonstrated by the best matches, and second the "peak of consistency" shown by Twinkys collection of screens. It doesn't tell us what the average results across the player base is, but as explained above gaming is naturally a matter of peaks and peak consistency, the averages across less skilled players are simply not that interesting.

What IS useless is anecdotal evidence of low performance with a move, since the possibility to suck and /or fail with any strategy is already so well demonstrated it adds o information. So "I killed a Twinky in a Kodiak with a Hunchie" type anecdotes are indeed useless and have no application at all.

"Refutation" is when anecdotal evidence punches a hole in assumed generalities, for example the two slit experiment in quantum physics refuted the two general assumptions that the universe has a single history and that particles can only occupy one location at a given time. Both these assumptions had to be questioned as soon as they stopped being 100% general, because even when the experiment had only been done a few times (anecdotal stage) it still refuted these assumptions as general law. It takes a lot more to develop the alternative theory and prove it as law, since refuting old assumptions and replacing them with new ones have completely different burdens of proof, and in between those stages a honest person has to simply admit ignorance.

In MWO terms you can for example refute the assumption that UAC10 is necessarily inefficient damage with a single anecdote where it isn't. It could still be inefficient most of the time, but you have to abandon the idea that it always is. And since peaks are what counts in gaming, a single demonstration of precise damage application is all it takes to establish that high efficiency as the relevant one. Compare for example LRMS that have no demonstrations of high damage efficiency along with RNG spread, it's correct to say they are never efficient (they can still be effective, but that's different thing.)

Edit: Insulting paragraph removed.

I agree with your point about being able to use opinions to refute blanket statements. That is a point where anecdotal evidence *can* refute something.

Having said that, your assertion that the results from a weekend event, with a queue filled full of returning players who were higher tier and not performing at their best (because of long breaks), as well as other potatoes from tier 2 and tier 3 who were playing their "new shiny" assaults, and likely never played assaults prior to that (or very little), as having more than an anecdotal impact (at best) on the evidence is a complete misstep. The reality is that the conditions were rife with the perfect storm of results. The players who formed opinions of it being overly strong were assessing the mech based on criteria that will likely never again be fulfilled. The case that it is a strong PUG mech is one thing (it is strong in the PUG queue), the case that it is overly strong is another.

Case and point: The mech does not produce 1000 damage matches consistently across all pilots. Some pilots have shown that their performance in the KDK3 is less than their performance in other assaults as well.

This anecdotal evidence refutes the idea that the KDK3 is so strong that it outperforms all other mechs in the same weight class.

Some people have playstyles that mesh well with specific mechs/builds. Players who mesh well with ballistic builds will probably do similar things as they would with the MX90. Players who play laser builds, or other sorts best, will likely not perform as well in the KDK3 as they would the BNC-3M.

That argument completely refutes any attempt to justify the argument that personal opinion about the mech being too strong is valid.

1453 R, on 01 June 2016 - 08:21 AM, said:

Asking a heart doctor his opinion on a possible heart condition, and accepting his ideas as more likely to be workable and valid than asking your barkeep his opinion on a possible heart condition, isn't a fallacy.

Now, I've never been one to say "Piranha needs to completely and utterly ignore absolutely everything that absolutely everyone who isn't on an ultracomp league-dominating competitive team says, because this game needs to be balanced solely and strictly for the 1%, by the 1%, and everyone else can either Git Amazeballs or GTFO", the way many ultracomps have often squawked. That is the sort of attitude that results in dead games - believe it or, Ultracomp Overlords, you do actually need the rest of the population to make your game a viable business product, and if the game is sheer, arduous, massively unbalanced torture until you have attained Zen-like True Mastery of it then your game is a bad game and it will fail.

That said...the heart doctor's opinion on heart conditions weighs more heavily than your barkeep's because they have a deep education on matters of the heart (THE PHYSICAL HEART YOU SCALAWAGS), experience with treating heart conditions, and a lot of scientific knowledge, backing, and evidence to present. Most of the ultracomp stuff I've seen consists of "I can take the KDK-3 and bend entire enemy teams in QP over a stool. That's bullscheiss. We need to nerfbomb this chassis with fire so it's consistent with other Clan assaults like the Whale and the Executioner and stuff."

That's bologna. A proper ultracomp can take anything north of sixty tons and a number of things south of there and do exactly the thing they're doing in the KDK-3 in Quick Play because that's what they do. Most ultracomps, if pressed, would also admit that all pre-Kodiak Clan assault 'mechs were/are deeply flawed and generally not competitive with Sphere insano-quirked GigAssaults...but they have no trouble whatsoever suggesting/pushing for/demanding that the Kodiak chassis - the entire chassis, not simply the KDK-3 - be reduced to the same effective level as machines like the Highlander-IIC. The KDK-4 and the Spirit Bear must also suffer immolation for the sins of the 3, and the 1, 2, and 5 don't even get a chance to live before they die.

I don't get it. And yeah, it makes me mad because there's NOTHING FRIGGIN' WRONG with any of the other Kodiaks. I can get that the Ultracomp Consensus is that the KDK-3 is overperforming at the moment and thus needs to be hammered down, but what I just don't understand is this vengeful, highly disproportionate desire to obliterate the entire chassis because of the one misstep.

My point relates to a body of peers.

Gamers are all gamers, they all do the same things, albeit at different skill levels.

The primary difference here, is discerning the reality that we need to divorce skill at playing a game from knowledge of how said game works.

A player who is great at a game, is great at the game because they understand how to best achieve the required results for victory.

The same player, if asked how to resolve issues with the netcode, will typically have no clue, and resort to google searches where someone with more knowledge has discussed some situation in another game, that, due to their own misunderstanding, has no relevance on the current game for various reasons.

This is not because the gamer is stupid, or incompetent, as their intelligence is not the issue. You can take a nobel prize winning quantum physicist and put him behind the yoke of a plane without any knowledge of planes, and he will be unable to do even the most minute of tasks because of the lack of knowledge.

The reality is, people here profess to be experts about game design, engines, and all sorts of other things. Things which are common in gaming communities around the world because people think a basic grasp of a mechanic is the same as complex understanding when reality is vastly different.

The same analogy can be applied to professional sports. For example, Bobby Cox, had a hall of fame career managing baseball teams. His playing career was not hall of fame worthy, as he spent 2 years playing for 2 different teams, never started, and only spent 30% of those 2 years at the major league level. Bobby Cox was excellent at managing the game, selecting talent, and using that talent to the best possible outcome. He was a very average, at best, third baseman. By the same token, not all great players become good coaches or managers for the same reasons. For example, Billy Wagner was a gifted closer, but he is not coaching or managing any team.

Mcgral18, on 01 June 2016 - 08:20 AM, said:

No, when it comes to Shooty Stompy Robots, some people understand it better than others. People not me, and not you

You sure are one to talk about bias, though. I'm the one using the robot to extraordinary effectiveness.
You can have your opinion, but much like "LRMs OP #PGIPLZNERF", not all opinions are factual.

My opinion is exclusive to the 3, that it is too good and should lose quirks.
Nothing more than that.

Your opinion is your opinion, and you have no relevant expertise as to make your opinion weigh more than any other gamer.

Edited by Gyrok, 01 June 2016 - 09:55 AM.

[meteorol]

Wtf is going on in here

[Roadkill]

meteorol, on 01 June 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

Wtf is going on in here

The question was posed as to whether or not the KDK-3 is unbalanced. So we put our top men on it to debate.

Top.

Men.

[1453 R]

meteorol, on 01 June 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

Wtf is going on in here

Basically, three* different general viewpoints clashing.

The first, backed by a majority of Ultracomps, is that the KDK-3 is overpowered/unbalanced/Too Good™, and needs to be swatted down for the overall health of the game. This side doesn't particularly care what happens to the rest of the chassis and feels that the primary problem - the KDK-3's overperformance - is a bigger issue than any of the related problems and needs to be addressed as swiftly as is reasonably possible.

The second, backed primarily by Roadkill, Gyrok, and a few others, posits that the KDK-3 is not necessarily any more overpowered/unbalanced/Too Good™ than many existing Inner Sphere assaults. The weekend tournament results are badly skewed by the sheer newness and rampant overpopulation of Kodiaks in the event, with a huge population of bad assault pilots in every match enabling good assault pilots to farm damage to heretofore-unprecedented levels. Namely, this side is saying "It's too soon to know if the KDK-3 is honestly a balance problem or just the first actually really good Clan assault 'Mech."

The third viewpoint, upheld mostly by Bishop and myself, doesn't really care what happens to the KDK-3 but are extremely concerned that the first group's driving desire to remove the KDK-3 from competitive play will, in classic Piranha style, splash over onto the rest of the chassis and render otherwise perfectly acceptable and fun 'Mechs like the Spirit Bear and KDK-4 largely unplayable. Piranha is not particularly known for their deft hand with the Balance Mallet, and with so many players holding up the KDK-3 as an example of why no Clan 'Mech should ever have any quirks EVARZ, it is increasingly likely that the entire Kodiak chassis will be stripped of its quirks, thus rendering most of them sub-par at best and outright bad at worst (as is currently demonstrated by the Outright Bad KDK1 and KDK-5).

As this is a MWO forum thread, opinions are heated and heavily entrenched, harsh words have been exchanged, and accusations of bias, agendas, idiocy, and lack of skill are quite rampant. So...basically the usual thing. It's just twenty pages long because it's a Bishop thread, and has also become more or less the standardized 'discussion' thread for people with an axe to grind where the Kodiak is concerned.

[Weeny Machine]

1453 R, on 01 June 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

Basically, three* different general viewpoints clashing.

The first, backed by a majority of Ultracomps, is that the KDK-3 is overpowered/unbalanced/Too Good™, and needs to be swatted down for the overall health of the game. This side doesn't particularly care what happens to the rest of the chassis and feels that the primary problem - the KDK-3's overperformance - is a bigger issue than any of the related problems and needs to be addressed as swiftly as is reasonably possible.

The second, backed primarily by Roadkill, Gyrok, and a few others, posits that the KDK-3 is not necessarily any more overpowered/unbalanced/Too Good™ than many existing Inner Sphere assaults. The weekend tournament results are badly skewed by the sheer newness and rampant overpopulation of Kodiaks in the event, with a huge population of bad assault pilots in every match enabling good assault pilots to farm damage to heretofore-unprecedented levels. Namely, this side is saying "It's too soon to know if the KDK-3 is honestly a balance problem or just the first actually really good Clan assault 'Mech."

You can express that much shorter: You are afraid the mech gets "Huginnized" by PGI

[1453 R]

Bush Hopper, on 01 June 2016 - 12:26 PM, said:

You can express that much shorter: You are afraid the mech gets "Huginnized" by PGI

That would be the third viewpoint I mentioned, yes. Save that everyone has a different 'Mech they think of whenever the idea of Piranha smashing an existing Good 'Mech into rotting oblivion comes up. For me, it's not Huginnizing, it's VTR Giganerfing. I'm certain other folks could come up with a number of other similar examples. Including, in a few weeks' time, the "Kodiak Overreaction" example.

[Bishop Steiner]

Bush Hopper, on 01 June 2016 - 12:26 PM, said:

You can express that much shorter: You are afraid the mech gets "Huginnized" by PGI

or worse... Urbanized.

Because Urbies were so OP they needed their quirks nerfed... just like every KDK not ending in 3. *rolls eyes*

PGI... Paul Going Insane.

[MischiefSC]

Gyrok, on 01 June 2016 - 06:46 AM, said:

This is false logic.

Personal experience is an opinion, regardless of who it comes from.

Either they all weigh the same, or they all weigh nothing. Which is it?

Are we looking at this objectively, or with rose colored glasses trying to say "some opinions are ok, other opinions are worthless" as per the genetic fallacy?

You are seriously showing bias here mcgral. If you are going to continue to use special pleading and appeal to authority to backup your anecdotal flawed logic, you are not contributing to the discussion.

You're not getting how statistical analysis works.

We are not running an opinion polls. The objective is not to get a random sample of opinions or even a random sample of performance. We are not asking "how fast does the average driver drive this car". We are asking "how fast can you effectively drive this car compared to other cars".

Big difference and all experience is NOT equal. The point is to eliminate the player skill variance as much as possible.

[Gyrok]

MischiefSC, on 01 June 2016 - 12:38 PM, said:

Big difference and all experience is NOT equal. The point is to eliminate the player skill variance as much as possible.

I understand completely...

My point is, you cannot eliminate player skill as a variable.

You also cannot eliminate the subjectivity of people's opinions.

The reality is that the mech is not clearly over powered. The only situation where I could see that being the case, would be a scenario where IS assaults were not clearly on equal footing with such a mech.

If other mechs are performing on par, then you cannot say one mech is overpowered, and the others are not.

So, which is it? All the tier 1 assaults are OP and need quirks removed, or none of them?

[MischiefSC]

Gyrok, on 01 June 2016 - 12:46 PM, said:

I understand completely...

My point is, you cannot eliminate player skill as a variable.

You also cannot eliminate the subjectivity of people's opinions.

The reality is that the mech is not clearly over powered. The only situation where I could see that being the case, would be a scenario where IS assaults were not clearly on equal footing with such a mech.

If other mechs are performing on par, then you cannot say one mech is overpowered, and the others are not.

So, which is it? All the tier 1 assaults are OP and need quirks removed, or none of them?

I'm not going to get into the 'logical fallacy' Magic the Gathering game with you and slap down names of logical fallacies like you're playing cards.

So I'll stick with 'no, that's not correct' and 'trying to equate one mech being OP with any mech that isn't terrible as OP' is also not correct.

It's really simple, which is why you're having to do all these argument gymnastics to try and make it complex. Using the successful standard we've used in the past to identify relative value and balance of mechs the KDK3 is OP, a bit. Needs the quirks removed. Established the same way we've identified every real balance issue we've had since the game came out of closed beta.

No, all opinions on balance are not equal. Not even close. All experiences on game balance are not equal, not even close. You and me arguing the relative merits of a new sniper setup weapon system for use in the US military is of middling value - not that we couldn't identify useful data but we're not the best people to ask. Top performing active US military sniper teams can make those sorts of judgements and if you get pretty much every to performing active US military sniper team together and they come to a basic consensus on the relative merits of the new weapon you have a very reliable, actionable set of data to act from.

Same sort of concept here. The people who are the most focused on the details of mech performance and who play at a high enough level to actively exploit the performance of those mechs are best able to make accurate judgements. That's not new, it's not surprising and it's sane and reasonable.

Conversely we have the opinions of middling performers and people with an absolute bias for factions and other things than 'will this help me win more than this other thing and do I want to play against it competitively' in various anecdotal examples. There is some value in that; you can get some general ideals overall from that, consistent themes, etc. Not the same value though. Not even close.

[Gyrok]

MischiefSC, on 01 June 2016 - 01:18 PM, said:

I'm not going to get into the 'logical fallacy' Magic the Gathering game with you and slap down names of logical fallacies like you're playing cards.

So I'll stick with 'no, that's not correct' and 'trying to equate one mech being OP with any mech that isn't terrible as OP' is also not correct.

It's really simple, which is why you're having to do all these argument gymnastics to try and make it complex. Using the successful standard we've used in the past to identify relative value and balance of mechs the KDK3 is OP, a bit. Needs the quirks removed. Established the same way we've identified every real balance issue we've had since the game came out of closed beta.

No, all opinions on balance are not equal. Not even close. All experiences on game balance are not equal, not even close. You and me arguing the relative merits of a new sniper setup weapon system for use in the US military is of middling value - not that we couldn't identify useful data but we're not the best people to ask. Top performing active US military sniper teams can make those sorts of judgements and if you get pretty much every to performing active US military sniper team together and they come to a basic consensus on the relative merits of the new weapon you have a very reliable, actionable set of data to act from.

Same sort of concept here. The people who are the most focused on the details of mech performance and who play at a high enough level to actively exploit the performance of those mechs are best able to make accurate judgements. That's not new, it's not surprising and it's sane and reasonable.

Conversely we have the opinions of middling performers and people with an absolute bias for factions and other things than 'will this help me win more than this other thing and do I want to play against it competitively' in various anecdotal examples. There is some value in that; you can get some general ideals overall from that, consistent themes, etc. Not the same value though. Not even close.

You have to take into consideration that personal bias plays into this equation.

I, personally, do not think those IS assaults are overpowered, but, I also do not think the KDK3 is overpowered.

I think more data needs to be gathered to determine that actual place of that mech as a whole, and I think once we see it get into comp in current format, it will really show what the actual relevance of that mech is going to be. I think changing it now is premature, as there *are* valid counters to that mech. How effective those counters end up being will dictate, in my mind, if there is actually any merit. If it comes out in comp and falls flat...then it may even need some structure buffs; on the other hand, if it comes out in comp and dominates beyond anything seen in the assault class with no peer, then certainly, removing quirks would be a valid proposal. As it stands, we do not have enough information to be able to point to objective evidence and determine the truth.

Edited by Gyrok, 01 June 2016 - 01:40 PM.

[1453 R]

MischiefSC, on 01 June 2016 - 01:18 PM, said:

I'm not going to get into the 'logical fallacy' Magic the Gathering game with you and slap down names of logical fallacies like you're playing cards.

So I'll stick with 'no, that's not correct' and 'trying to equate one mech being OP with any mech that isn't terrible as OP' is also not correct.

It's really simple, which is why you're having to do all these argument gymnastics to try and make it complex. Using the successful standard we've used in the past to identify relative value and balance of mechs the KDK3 is OP, a bit. Needs the quirks removed. Established the same way we've identified every real balance issue we've had since the game came out of closed beta.

No, all opinions on balance are not equal. Not even close. All experiences on game balance are not equal, not even close. You and me arguing the relative merits of a new sniper setup weapon system for use in the US military is of middling value - not that we couldn't identify useful data but we're not the best people to ask. Top performing active US military sniper teams can make those sorts of judgements and if you get pretty much every to performing active US military sniper team together and they come to a basic consensus on the relative merits of the new weapon you have a very reliable, actionable set of data to act from.

Same sort of concept here. The people who are the most focused on the details of mech performance and who play at a high enough level to actively exploit the performance of those mechs are best able to make accurate judgements. That's not new, it's not surprising and it's sane and reasonable.

Conversely we have the opinions of middling performers and people with an absolute bias for factions and other things than 'will this help me win more than this other thing and do I want to play against it competitively' in various anecdotal examples. There is some value in that; you can get some general ideals overall from that, consistent themes, etc. Not the same value though. Not even close.

Mischief, you're starting to sound an awful lot like those 'Top-Down/Trickle-Down' balance folks who insist that everyone who hasn't personally won a comp league should mostly just shut up and let The Real MWO Players handle any/all decision-making and discussion in the forums. Ultracomp players are not above self-serving biases or agendas. Hell, Gyrok is a competitive player who regularly shows up in comp leagues and he's synonymous with 'biased agenda'.

Everybody knows how an unquirked 100-ton 'Mech handles - we have the Dire Whale providing an example of the sort of land-bargery you wind up with when your fattest of fatbros has no assistance whatsoever. On some machines that's fair and acceptable - Maulers were never known for being agile, King Crabs were specifically designed to sit in a chokepoint and repel the thousand nations of the Persian Empire anything and everything that dares come within its pinchy reach, Dire Whales..are Dire Whales.

On some machines, it's not quite so cool. The Kodiak is intended in virtually all variants to be a close-in scrapper - a role the Spirit Bear and the Spirit Bear alone is currently able to make a go of. Ultracomps all agree that the KDK-3 is overdone - but as I recall, they also all agree that the KDK-1 and KDK-5 are thoroughly mediocre, if not outright bad. They're lousy as the close-range hammers they're supposed to be due to massive, incurable overheating issues, they're equally lousy as midrange Laser Vomiteers due to low-slung, widespread arm hardpoints, and the entire chassis is incredibly vulnerable to CT coring and thus is fragile at any range in any role.

Besides! What would stripping the quirks off the entire chassis do? The KDK-3 is a problem primarily because of its high-mounted quartet of ballistic hardpoints - it's a set-and-punch machine principally used to impregnate ridges, not a mobile brawler or striker. The KDK-3's mobility or lack thereof doesn't matter to it because the thing that has everybody's jimmies a'rustlin' is the fact that it has JagerMech ballistic hardpoints and the tonnage to pack them with more artillery than anything short of a Dire Whale or a Mauler. Destroy the KDK-3's mobility and it will be largely unaffected - it's not a 'Mech that makes use of higher-than-normal mobility for its tonnage as it is.

Destroy the Spirit Bear's mobility? Or the KDK-4's mobility? Those 'Mechs will be devastated. The KDK-4 will be forced to fall back onto being half of a KDK-3, as it will no longer possess either the agility or the durability to last any meaningful amount of time in the scrum. However overpowered you or anyone else may think the KDK-3 is, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that half of a KDK-3 is not going to be giving anyone the heebie-jeebies any time soon. And the Spirit Bear? The Spirit Bear would just vanish outright. it has one meaningful configuration - AC/20&cASRM murderbrawler. A job the Fatlass required enough overquirk insanity to constitute an entire 50-ton 'Mech by itself to become proficient in given its immense target profile and lack of concentrated firepower - disadvantages the Kodiak shares.

I get that the cXL is a big edge. That is an undeniable fact, and one that has stuck in the craw of the vast majority of the playerbase for quite some time. But when your AS7-S is faster and more agile than your Spirit Bear (discounting M.A.S.C.), as well as arguably better armed and possessed of 150 tons' worth of durability, on top of six weapon modules' worth of weapon overquirks...well, who's ever going to run the Spirit Bear again, cXL or no cXL?

Seriously, Mischief. Telling everybody who isn't a World Tournament player to shut their gobs and listen to their betters is not conducive to any sort of proper argument, and I have yet to hear from anyone in the Ultracomp brackets why the entire Kodiak chassis needs to be destroyed due to the KDK-3's arguable overperformance issues.

Has anyone asked McGral or Twinky why the Kodiak as a whole needs to be destroyed? They keep pointing to those guys as reasons why the KDK-3 can't stand as it is, but the rest of the Kodiak variants sitting there in the guillotine next to the 3 would really, really like to know why they're slated for execution for crimes they explicitly didn't commit.