776 replies to this topic

[Triordinant]

Arctic Cheaters FTW!

[Aetes Nakatomi]

PGI cannot win.

When they made the Mechs the size they 'felt' they should be player were constantly moaning about the 'dart board' and how PGI should not use scale to balance.

Now they have normalised the size of Mechs we have pretty much the same people complaining that PGI have ruined their favourite rides and how they should have left Chassis X,Y and Z alone as they were in a sweet spot for balance.

I for one am happy that we have a normalisation by weight. It means there will not such a huge gulf between the size of a 35 ton mech and a 40 ton mech... Or as we had, a 35 ton mech (Raven) and a 35 ton mech (Firestarter).

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Aetes Nakatomi, on 18 June 2016 - 05:47 AM, said:

PGI cannot win.

When they made the Mechs the size they 'felt' they should be player were constantly moaning about the 'dart board' and how PGI should not use scale to balance.

Now they have normalised the size of Mechs we have pretty much the same people complaining that PGI have ruined their favourite rides and how they should have left Chassis X,Y and Z alone as they were in a sweet spot for balance.

I for one am happy that we have a normalisation by weight. It means there will not such a huge gulf between the size of a 35 ton mech and a 40 ton mech... Or as we had, a 35 ton mech (Raven) and a 35 ton mech (Firestarter).

This is a very fair statement.

I, too, am very happy with the normalized approach; I love fair and equal application!

If this means that some of my favorite 'Mechs might be different (objectively worse?) I will adapt and realize that while my EXE is bigger, so is that dang Jenner trying to sneak up behind me!!!

[oldradagast]

Kanil, on 17 June 2016 - 05:21 PM, said:

Aesthetically, it looks a lot better. Gameplay might be thrown out of whack for a bit, though...

If only it were out of whack for just a bit... This is PGI, the same group that waited well over a year and a half to buff useless PPC's by giving them a small velocity boost and small reduction in heat generation; they still won't do something useful about the idiotic 0 damage minimum range on the IS PPC despite it not matching Lore and keeping the weapon inferior to the large pulse laser.

That method of balancing - huge random swings followed by months of doing nothing topped off with a few minor, random changes is my concern here. Yes, now all the mechs are the right size, and while that IS good, what is going to be done to make them all about equally viable in this new paradigm? Waiting 3 to 6 months to shuffle some quirks around isn't going to cut it, and the quirks changes we've seen so far are dismal and including nerfing quirks on now bloated mechs, etc.

[Hit the Deck]

Aetes Nakatomi, on 18 June 2016 - 05:47 AM, said:

PGI cannot win.

When they made the Mechs the size they 'felt' they should be player were constantly moaning about the 'dart board' and how PGI should not use scale to balance.

Now they have normalised the size of Mechs we have pretty much the same people complaining that PGI have ruined their favourite rides and how they should have left Chassis X,Y and Z alone as they were in a sweet spot for balance.

I for one am happy that we have a normalisation by weight. It means there will not such a huge gulf between the size of a 35 ton mech and a 40 ton mech... Or as we had, a 35 ton mech (Raven) and a 35 ton mech (Firestarter).

Just for scaling, it seems that the majority of players (from the sample aka the repliers in my thread below) indeed wanted PGI to use more pragmatism or methods in determining a particular 'Mech size rather than just a cold mathematical volumetric scaling: http://mwomercs.com/...-scaling-method

[Alistair Winter]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 18 June 2016 - 05:37 AM, said:

Just had an off-hand idea, they could take this whole normalized scale (normalization, in and of itself, is good) and reduce ALL 'Mech by 10%
Smaller targets = harder to hit = increased TTK!!!

I would be in favour of this. Not so much because of the TTK argument, but because mechs aren't supposed to be giant Warhammer 40,000-esque Titans anyway. They're not supposed to squash tanks like they were tiny bugs. As far as I know, most of the mechs in MWO are way too big compared to canon, so I'd like to see them reduced for this reason.

oldradagast, on 18 June 2016 - 05:33 AM, said:

Except the only reason those mechs were so popular is because of Quirks, and quirks change more often than the mech's model changes (unless we've entered a horrible new world where mech's size may change as often as quirks.) In other words, when PGI finally gets around to nerfing those mechs' quirks, they'll be double-nerfing them because they also bloated up in size.

This is true. But I just can't summon the enthusiasm to care about the Oxide, specifically. Most IS light mechs are worse off, in my opinion. The Huginn got nerfed yet again, the Ember still has terrible MGs, the Death's Knell is one of the cheapest hero mechs in the game and you still don't see it on the battlefield more than once a month. I haven't enough tears to weep for the Oxide over all the different light mechs.

PGI needs to make some global changes to help light mechs and stop messing around with quirks.

[Alistair Winter]

Aetes Nakatomi, on 18 June 2016 - 05:47 AM, said:

PGI cannot win.

When they made the Mechs the size they 'felt' they should be player were constantly moaning about the 'dart board' and how PGI should not use scale to balance.

Now they have normalised the size of Mechs we have pretty much the same people complaining that PGI have ruined their favourite rides and how they should have left Chassis X,Y and Z alone as they were in a sweet spot for balance.

I for one am happy that we have a normalisation by weight. It means there will not such a huge gulf between the size of a 35 ton mech and a 40 ton mech... Or as we had, a 35 ton mech (Raven) and a 35 ton mech (Firestarter).

I'd say they're winning.

Overall, this is a step in the right direction. Now they just need to give light mechs some help and the game will be in a better place than ever, probably.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Hit the Deck, on 18 June 2016 - 05:55 AM, said:

Just for scaling, it seems that the majority of players (from the sample aka the repliers in my thread below) indeed wanted PGI to use more pragmatism or methods in determining a particular 'Mech size rather than just a cold mathematical volumetric scaling: http://mwomercs.com/...-scaling-method

There's one serious problem with that approach:

It's largely subjective and arbitrary.

Therefore, it can't be considered fair and opens the door to all kinds of further problems and more accusations of the "dart board" approach.

[Hit the Deck]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 18 June 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

There's one serious problem with that approach:

It's largely subjective and arbitrary.

Therefore, it can't be considered fair and opens the door to all kinds of further problems and more accusations of the "dart board" approach.

Yeah, I was just pointing that out (people's opinion on how PGI should have handled the rescaling).

EDIT: Sjorpha's method with its increasing density as the tonnage gets smaller does seem interesting.

Edited by Hit the Deck, 18 June 2016 - 06:05 AM.

[NoiseCrypt]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 18 June 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

There's one serious problem with that approach:

It's largely subjective and arbitrary.

Therefore, it can't be considered fair and opens the door to all kinds of further problems and more accusations of the "dart board" approach.

But what are those poor people going to do as the game balance gets better, meanwhile the basis for subjective crying and complaints are being removed...

[Aetes Nakatomi]

Hit the Deck, on 18 June 2016 - 05:55 AM, said:

Just for scaling, it seems that the majority of players (from the sample aka the repliers in my thread below) indeed wanted PGI to use more pragmatism or methods in determining a particular 'Mech size rather than just a cold mathematical volumetric scaling: http://mwomercs.com/...-scaling-method

But when you use scale as a balance crutch you end up with people crying foul over OP Mechs whenever they get ganked by one.

• Take the Marauder, when that came out, lots of people noticed it was out of whack and was too small. But the people using it defended it to the hilt. I remember the angry threads about it.
  
• The Firestarter was the same, people complaining about not being able to hit it and claiming the hit boxes were wonky and it was too small.
  
• The Oxide, again, everyone knew it was tiny for it's weight and with the structure quirks it had made it damn hard to kill.
  
• Spiders, I think everyone has had a moan about that last Spider running around dodging bullets like Neo from the Matrix.

There are more I could I list, but whether the people moaning above were right or wrong, good or bad pilots with the rescale all past Mechs have been normalised and all future Mechs will be too. It is one less thing for people to call foul on.

If your baby sucks for four weeks until they re-quirk to fix the giant Spiders and the fat Firestarters or the King Kong Executioners just think of me... I have been a Nova and Catapult pilot for years... So suck it up Buttercup, dry those weeping eyes and get on with it. Report issues that you encounter and have a little faith they will be addressed. After all we not only asked for this, as a community we begged for it. Is it the exact thing that makes your favourite Mech better? Maybe not, but on the whole it is a damn sight better than what we had.

Edited by Aetes Nakatomi, 18 June 2016 - 06:12 AM.

[Mystere]

TheCharlatan, on 18 June 2016 - 03:53 AM, said:

We will have to see.
For example, the Cicada has always been a viable "light" even if it was sized as a medium mech, Now all 35 tonners are scaled to be closer to it than to the Locust. We will have to see how much of a nerf it will actually be, but i expect it to be not as big as some believe (i doubt it will be the end of light mechs).

I saw the Light Mech queue yesterday at 9%. I predict that to stabilize down to 5-6% once people have tested the new sizes.

May people enjoy facing more heavy and assault mechs.

Edited by Mystere, 18 June 2016 - 06:27 AM.

[oldradagast]

Aetes Nakatomi, on 18 June 2016 - 06:10 AM, said:

If your baby sucks for four weeks until they re-quirk to fix the giant Spiders and the fat Firestarters or the King Kong Executioners just think of me... I have been a Nova and Catapult pilot for years... So suck it up Buttercup, dry those weeping eyes and get on with it. Report issues that you encounter and have a little faith they will be addressed. After all we not only asked for this, as a community we begged for it. Is it the exact thing that makes your favourite Mech better? Maybe not, but on the whole it is a damn sight better than what we had.

I've never been a fan of "my life sucks, so your's should, too" lines of reasoning. That just turns into a downward spiral. And I piloted Awesomes, so I know of what I speak.

As for having faith that PGI will fix things quickly and logically... well, it took 3 years to get the mech sizes right and make flamers maybe useful now and then, I'm still waiting for IS PPC's to lose that stupid 0-damage minimum range limit, and how about that Pinpoint skill?

Sure, maybe this time PGI will amaze us all and keep careful track of stats and roll out new quirk changes once a week to every other week to try to achieve balance. Or, maybe we'll see more darts tossed at a dartboard in 2 to 3 months and that'll be it for a while. I know where I have my money based on past experiences.

[jss78]

IMO the rescale was a good thing. Considering that they were normalizing volume-vs-mass and not height, I'm not surprised by any of the results. Some of the lankily built humanoids are really, really tall, and this shouldn't come as a surprise.

Now as far as game balance there are some unfortunate results such as the Spider getting much bigger. It WAS ridiculously undersized for its tonnage (when I started MWO I assumed it must be a 20 tonner), but then it was hardly OP.

But ultimately scale shouldn't be used as a balancing factor, IMO, and the results look good to me. Now requirk some 'mechs if necessary, but this is a good place to start.

[NoiseCrypt]

Mystere, on 18 June 2016 - 06:27 AM, said:

I saw the Light Mech queue yesterday at 9%. I predict that to stabilize down to 5-6% once people have tested the new sizes.

May people enjoy facing more heavy and assault mechs.

Like voting you can't force the playe base into specific mech classes.
I don't see it as a problem if pug matches are 6 heavies and 3 assaults. As long as the teams are equally tonned.
On the contrary I love that light mechs probably will be the most difficult class from now on.
In my opinion, the only people getting hurt are the easy mode crowd, which will probably migrate to heavies.

[Aetes Nakatomi]

oldradagast, on 18 June 2016 - 06:30 AM, said:

I've never been a fan of "my life sucks, so your's should, too" lines of reasoning. That just turns into a downward spiral. And I piloted Awesomes, so I know of what I speak.

As for having faith that PGI will fix things quickly and logically... well, it took 3 years to get the mech sizes right and make flamers maybe useful now and then, I'm still waiting for IS PPC's to lose that stupid 0-damage minimum range limit, and how about that Pinpoint skill?

Sure, maybe this time PGI will amaze us all and keep careful track of stats and roll out new quirk changes once a week to every other week to try to achieve balance. Or, maybe we'll see more darts tossed at a dartboard in 2 to 3 months and that'll be it for a while. I know where I have my money based on past experiences.

Wasn't meant to look like a 'suffer how I have suffered' my point should have been that the re-scale is not the be all and end all (i was attempting to inject a little humour, which evidently failed). But it is a start to a more fair balance. Over my two accounts I own every single Chassis, this hits me just like it hits everyone else.

Edited by Aetes Nakatomi, 18 June 2016 - 06:49 AM.

[Soku Yamashita]

just hope you guys realize how much fun it would be to be a locust zipping around an executioner...... wish you could step on small mechs though.

[Tarl Cabot]

My google search is out of wack ( meaning too many threads to review).

Concerning rescaling, was it done so that, based on volume and tonnage, a jenner would percentage scale to an atlas? Or was it perform per weight class?

I guess my issue is that the bulkiest part of a mech will be its engine/gyro assembly. And that is why, at least canon-wise, that was not a huge difference in sizes. The mechs should be closer in size than they currently are, before and after rescale. The volume should have taken into consideration that engine+heatsinks/gyro would only have a mild fluctuation in size.

Or, to turn it around, have lights set the scale then work up. From a cockpit viewpoint scaling of an Atlas, be it 18m or 12m tall, it will not affect how it targets a light. But turn that around, from a light's viewpoint the bigger the target, the easier it is to hit.

Even though the resizing was to standardize volume between mechs, it needed to be (if it wasn't) within the weight class itself.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 18 June 2016 - 07:09 AM.

[SpiralFace]

That locust looks like it would be able to dive between that EXE's legs its so small.

[LT. HARDCASE]

Soku Yamashita, on 18 June 2016 - 07:00 AM, said:

just hope you guys realize how much fun it would be to be a locust zipping around an executioner...... wish you could step on small mechs though.

35 tonners, bigger than the Nova. Logical.