776 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Yellonet, on 18 June 2016 - 02:51 AM, said:

Nothing has been nerfed by the rescale. This is how every mech should have been from the start! If anything this rescale is removing the unfair advantages that some mechs have had in the past.
I'm sure some pilots will have to change their play style a bit, but that's all good.

If something is more fragile because it's easier to hit, it's nerfed
If nothing is given to compensate (like GodQuirks), then it is nerfed


By changing style, you mean taking a better robot, yes, yes I will be doing that. Nova and Hunch 2C, mainly, with the SupaHunch as well.

[MrJeffers]

While I think the volumetric scaling was a good idea, I think they chose the wrong baseline value for volume.

Going through the scale comparison images It looks like more mechs have grown in size than have remained the same or shrunk.
This is bad for two reasons - bigger = lower TTK because it's easier to hit. Everyone should know this. Second is that the movement archetype are based on size so some mechs that have grown also get a mobility nerf.

So I expect TTK to go down across the board, and the complaints to be high. PGI really should have chosen a volume reference where less than 5% of the mechs would have grown in size and used that for the baseline.

Edited by MrJeffers, 18 June 2016 - 10:58 AM.

[MechaBattler]

Some of them got bigger that weren't really that good to begin with. I forget which ones in particular bugged me. But I don't play them much, so I'm not gonna throw a fit.

But I feel they didn't do enough with the Awesome. They did a whole remodel for the Catapult. But the Awesome basically only got it's torso shrunk all around. But it's still a wide barn of a mech. The pictures almost make it look like they pushed up the hardpoints just a tad, but it's quite small so I doubt it will a make difference. Was hoping they would reduce it's width and perhaps make it taller. But we'll see how much of a difference this makes. I noticed in the quirks they're giving it an additional -5% heat reduction to the 8Q, so that'll be fun. :3

[Raso]

Aetes Nakatomi, on 18 June 2016 - 07:30 AM, said:

As opposed to a 'pseudoscientific surface area' method or the rather fluffy 'feelsy' approach we are now leaving?

Yeah I will take Volume every time.

Taking mechs designed by engineers to fulfill specific battlefield role and then adjusting them by volume would be fantastic. This game does not have such mechs. The mech design in Battletech are designed to look cool (ironic considering how crummy the illustrations have been in source material). No one in their right mind would make a mech that's half the weight of an Atlas but stands a head taller while being nearly as wide. That's a horrible mech design.

The math was flawed from the beginning because they were trying to rationalize irrational mech designs. So instead of looking at a Griffin and saying "gee it's soo big maybe it should be smaller than an Atlas" they ran numbers and determined it wasn't tall enough. That defies all reason. I mistook a Trebuchet for an assault just this morning. That's a 50 ton medium! It should not be towering over heavies!

[Roosterfish]

Yeah but the Awesome will be a small barn now. More like a tool shed.

[Mavairo]

Raso, on 18 June 2016 - 11:04 AM, said:

Taking mechs designed by engineers to fulfill specific battlefield role and then adjusting them by volume would be fantastic. This game does not have such mechs. The mech design in Battletech are designed to look cool (ironic considering how crummy the illustrations have been in source material). No one in their right mind would make a mech that's half the weight of an Atlas but stands a head taller while being nearly as wide. That's a horrible mech design.

The math was flawed from the beginning because they were trying to rationalize irrational mech designs. So instead of looking at a Griffin and saying "gee it's soo big maybe it should be smaller than an Atlas" they ran numbers and determined it wasn't tall enough. That defies all reason. I mistook a Trebuchet for an assault just this morning. That's a 50 ton medium! It should not be towering over heavies!

This Rescale of 2016™ reeks of Paul.

Ie... bargain bin shovel ware grade development.
Last I checked no one was complaining about how hard it was to hit mechs like the Grasshopper. Yet some how PGI decided they needed to be bigger.

There was no reason what so ever for over half of these changes that make any sense. Most of the mechs whom weren't even worth a damn in the first place (Zeus, Grasshopper, and SO many others)..and now they get even Bigger and easier to hit.

Instead of going "Hey, this mech is already really ****Ing Tall, and no one's using anyway..not even in Quick Play..we should buff it, and maybe make it smaller"

they go "HURRRRR OUR MATH FLOW CHART SAYS IT MUST GET BIGGER HURRRR"
...and then they make it even more of a **** than it was to start with.

I'd swear this was a Cryptic Game...only the level of polish is too low.

Edited by Mavairo, 18 June 2016 - 11:15 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mavairo, on 18 June 2016 - 11:13 AM, said:

This Rescale of 2016™ reeks of Paul.

Ie... bargain bin shovel ware grade development.
Last I checked no one was complaining about how hard it was to hit mechs like the Grasshopper. Yet some how PGI decided they needed to be bigger.

There was no reason what so ever for over half of these changes that make any sense. Most of the mechs whom weren't even worth a damn in the first place (Zeus, Grasshopper, and SO many others)..and now they get even Bigger and easier to hit.

because unilateral across the board scale means just that, bro?

It's called forming a baseline. The less varaibles, the better chance someday we might see something like balance. But using "dude it's not meta, why scale it correctly" reasoning leaves a huge reeking mess.

[Major Tomm]

Seems like they were re-scaled based on lack of popularity vs popularity rather than tonnage. Shadow Cat is bigger than the Nova now if you look at the front-on torso target and it's taller. I guess the Nova's extra five tons are in it's arms where each one contains more hardpoints than the entire Shadow Cat.

Warhammer has a bigger torso section than the Warhawk and Stalker and is taller, but somehow it's 15 tons lighter. Not even going to get into the Grasshopper, but it's bigger still.

I guess you want all the mechs to be used, but popularity does not equate battle viability. Popularity of a mech is based on it's popular lore + load-out variety + battle viability. To be fair the Shadow Cat would be visibly smaller than the Nova, and the Warhammer and Grasshopper smaller than the Warhawk and Stalker. Then you just let the chips fall as they may and allow the mechs to have unique character to utilize.

Edited by Major Tomm, 18 June 2016 - 11:17 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

Major Tomm, on 18 June 2016 - 11:17 AM, said:

Seems like they were re-scaled based on lack of popularity vs popularity rather than tonnage. Shadow Cat is bigger than the Nova now if you look at the front-on torso target and it's taller. I guess the Nova's extra five tons are in it's arms where each one contains more hardpoints than the entire Shadow Cat.

Warhammer has a bigger torso section than the Warhawk and Stalker and is taller, but somehow it's 15 tons lighter. Not even going to get into the Grasshopper, but it's bigger still.

I guess you want all the mechs to be used, but popularity does not equate battle viability. Popularity of a mech is based on it's popular lore + load-out variety + battle viability. To be fair the Shadow Cat would be visibly smaller than the Nova, and the Warhammer and Grasshopper smaller than the Warhawk and Stalker. Then you just let the chips fall as they may and allow the mechs to have unique character to utilize.

You're talking about all kinds of random things here... balance, hardpoint availability, viability... height.

The only thing the rescale process concerned itself over is overall mech size, which is a function of volume.

You mention the Shadowcat vs Nova. The Shadowcat SHOULD be taller, because of how its configured. Height does not equal size.

Same with the Warhammer vs Warhawk. Look at them from the side, and you'll see why the Warhammer is taller.

You can't just look at a frontal shot of mechs, ignore anything but their height, and make a judgement on their scale. Some folks are quick to point out we shoot at pixels on a screen, and that's fair... but you still have to note that you can view mechs from more angles than just front-on, and there's more that makes up a profile than height alone.

[Bishop Steiner]

My verdict is it seems to be pissing off all the "right" people for me to think it has a chance to be successful.

[MrJeffers]

Bishop Steiner, on 18 June 2016 - 11:26 AM, said:

My verdict is it seems to be pissing off all the "right" people for me to think it has a chance to be successful.

Successful how? Lowering TTK? If so it's going to be a resounding success.

[Mavairo]

Bishop Steiner, on 18 June 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

because unilateral across the board scale means just that, bro?

It's called forming a baseline. The less varaibles, the better chance someday we might see something like balance. But using "dude it's not meta, why scale it correctly" reasoning leaves a huge reeking mess.

Too bad that mechs already don't make a whole lot of sense in scale either.
Base Geometry matters more in most cases than the out right size of the battlemech. However stretching mechs, which were already Too Freaking Tall (like the Grass Hopper) Too Freaking Wide (Awesome), they plug it into some bull**** equation that has no basis in reality either, and either make them even worse and even MORE grossly oversized, or continue making it be a fat tub of lard that has no meaningful change.

The chips fell where they were. The Grass hopper is STILL WAY bigger than the Warhammer inspite of being the same freaking tonnage. It's STILL WAY bigger than a Cataphract.
It's the size of the Freaking Black Knight, WAY bigger than the Timberwolf which is HEAVIER.

The freaking thing is the size of a Battlemaster, at least.

What baseline?
There IS no baseline with this change Bishop. The only thing they did right, was make the Catapult smaller...and that I suspect is more because of the legion of whales that would /uninstall MWO if it some how remained stalker size (which some how got SMALLER?).

There is no consistency to this change. You and PGI can claim it falls into some formula all you want... but first off, that formula has no basis in reality what so ever so the "Realism of scale!" argument goes right out the freakin window" and second, there are MANY mechs, that are HEAVIER that came out smaller than others which are lighter in mass, and still bigger.

Wanna know how much Mass, and size really have to do with each other?
Displacement: 32,600 long tons Length: 624 ft 3 in (190.27 m)
Colorado Battleship

Displacement:

• 17,255 long tons (17,532 t) (standard)
  
• 20,933 long tons (21,269 t) (full load)

Length: 716 ft 6 in (218.39 m)

Des Moines Cruiser.

So what basis in reality?

Now... for mechanical base line for pure game balance reasons? Then why are there mechs which are the SAME WEIGHT OR HEAVIER THAT ARE DRAMATICALLY SMALLER?

There is nothing unilateral about this. There is nothing consistent in the mech sizes in this OR the "old system".

Mech Sizing, should vary chassis to chassis. There is no such thing as a Universal Size Equation that will dictate a "Base line" to balance from, with the DRAMATICALLY different shapes of battle mechs in this game.

And in the "realism!!!!" department, there is no warmachine on the planet that follows some "Universal Size Equation" for a given mass, beyond it's Freaking Mass.

All this was, was a tremendous waste of PGI's resources, to change effectively Nothing, aside from making most of the bad mechs even worse.

Edited by Mavairo, 18 June 2016 - 11:32 AM.

[Bluefalcon13]

MrJeffers, on 18 June 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

While I think the volumetric scaling was a good idea, I think they chose the wrong baseline value for volume.

Going through the scale comparison images It looks like more mechs have grown in size than have remained the same or shrunk.
This is bad for two reasons - bigger = lower TTK because it's easier to hit. Everyone should know this. Second is that the movement archetype are based on size so some mechs that have grown also get a mobility nerf.

I don't understand what you are say with regards to the baseline. If they had taken all the changes and based them off .5m vs 1m they only thing that suffers is map scale. Ultimately, our point of view would change and that would be it(compared to the changes that go live next week). How would setting the baseline differently effect things such as the awesome? Or the Jenner?

[NoiseCrypt]

Mavairo, on 18 June 2016 - 11:31 AM, said:

Too bad that mechs already don't make a whole lot of sense in scale either.
Base Geometry matters more in most cases than the out right size of the battlemech. However stretching mechs, which were already Too Freaking Tall (like the Grass Hopper) Too Freaking Wide (Awesome), they plug it into some bull**** equation that has no basis in reality either, and either make them even worse and even MORE grossly oversized, or continue making it be a fat tub of lard that has no meaningful change.

The chips fell where they were. The Grass hopper is STILL WAY bigger than the Warhammer inspite of being the same freaking tonnage. It's STILL WAY bigger than a Cataphract.
It's the size of the Freaking Black Knight, WAY bigger than the Timberwolf which is HEAVIER.

The freaking thing is the size of a Battlemaster, at least.

What baseline?
There IS no baseline with this change Bishop. The only thing they did right, was make the Catapult smaller...and that I suspect is more because of the legion of whales that would /uninstall MWO if it some how remained stalker size (which some how got SMALLER?).

There is no consistency to this change. You and PGI can claim it falls into some formula all you want... but first off, that formula has no basis in reality what so ever so the "Realism of scale!" argument goes right out the freakin window" and second, there are MANY mechs, that are HEAVIER that came out smaller than others which are lighter in mass, and still bigger.

Wanna know how much Mass, and size really have to do with each other?
Displacement: 32,600 long tons Length: 624 ft 3 in (190.27 m)
Colorado Battleship

Displacement:

• 17,255 long tons (17,532 t) (standard)
  
• 20,933 long tons (21,269 t) (full load)

Length: 716 ft 6 in (218.39 m)

Des Moines Cruiser.

So what basis in reality?

Now... for mechanical base line for pure game balance reasons? Then why are there mechs which are the SAME WEIGHT OR HEAVIER THAT ARE DRAMATICALLY SMALLER?

There is nothing unilateral about this. There is nothing consistent in the mech sizes in this OR the "old system".

Mech Sizing, should vary chassis to chassis. There is no such thing as a Universal Size Equation that will dictate a "Base line" to balance from, with the DRAMATICALLY different shapes of battle mechs in this game.

And in the "realism!!!!" department, there is no warmachine on the planet that follows some "Universal Size Equation" for a given mass, beyond it's Freaking Mass.

All this was, was a tremendous waste of PGI's resources, to change effectively Nothing, aside from making most of the bad mechs even worse.

Please provide a sample of two mechs of same tonnage but with different volume after the rescale.

[ScarecrowES]

Bluefalcon13, on 18 June 2016 - 11:33 AM, said:

I don't understand what you are say with regards to the baseline. If they had taken all the changes and based them off .5m vs 1m they only thing that suffers is map scale. Ultimately, our point of view would change and that would be it(compared to the changes that go live next week). How would setting the baseline differently effect things such as the awesome? Or the Jenner?

They don't. The relative sizes of mechs would be the same regardless of which density number PGI chose. People are struggling to understand this, sadly.

[MrJeffers]

Bluefalcon13, on 18 June 2016 - 11:33 AM, said:

I don't understand what you are say with regards to the baseline. If they had taken all the changes and based them off .5m vs 1m they only thing that suffers is map scale. Ultimately, our point of view would change and that would be it(compared to the changes that go live next week). How would setting the baseline differently effect things such as the awesome? Or the Jenner?

Its about the density or the weight of volume. Lets say they choose 1 cubic foot = 100 pounds (a completely made up number just to have a value). That would mean a 35 ton mech has a volume of 700 cubic feet (35 * 2000lbs/ 1cf @ 100 lbs). If they choose 1 CF = 200 lbs that would mean the volume is 350 CF ((35 * 2000)/200). They chose a number that is too large and so the volume on too many mechs was too small on their scale so they had to grow in volume to account for their weight.
The Awesome would be 1600 CF at 1CF=100 or 800CF at 200. And so on it's scaled exactly the same way as a 35 tonner, (~2.28 ratio between them).

It has nothing to do with map scale or size measurements, its about density or the weight of each cubic foot or cubic meter used to determine the volume.

Edited by MrJeffers, 18 June 2016 - 11:45 AM.

[TheMadTypist]

People asked for things like the catapult and AWS to get rescaled so that more machines would be worth using. So PGI went and rescaled everything to create yet another new "baseline", which will take more chassis out of play than it adds back in, and requires a whole new round of rebalancing that we'll almost certainly have to wait months for as we "test" what got broken.

The game has been released for ages. The game is overall functional. There's your ******* baseline, let's make more things functional within that existing context, not redevelop every damn thing for a consistency that has to be retested and requirked and remolded again and again. The game is years old. The game works. I'm tired of the redesigning of fully functional features, and being expected to slog through the retesting of the "new" game for months before things can be tweaked just to get back to where we were.

What we had was fine. There were minor things that needed fixing. we could have just fixed those and moved on. Now we have to chase our tails through another complete rebalance. And they've announced a "skill tree" update that will do the exact same thing down the line. It never stops.

I wish PGI would stop treating MWO like it's in beta and just start acting like this is a finished product. Sand the rough edges instead of tearing everything out to start over again and again.

[ScarecrowES]

MrJeffers, on 18 June 2016 - 11:40 AM, said:

Its about the density or the weight of volume. Lets say they choose 1 cubic foot = 100 pounds. That would mean a 35 ton mech has a volume of 700 cubic feet (35 * 2000lbs/ 1cf = 100 lbs). If they choose 1 CF = 200 lbs that would mean the volume is 350 CF ((35 * 2000)/200). They chose a number that is too large and so the volume on too many mechs was too small on their scale so they had to grow in volume to account for their weight.

It has nothing to do with map scale or size measurements, its about density or the weight of each cubic foot or cubic meter used to determine the volume.

Still doesn't matter what value they picked. Relative scale would be the same. Absolute scale (scale in relation to the game world) would change... that's it. So the Jenner would still have gotten scaled larger in proportion to the Nova being scaled smaller - and in the end they'd still look the same when set side-by-side as the do now, regardless of your choice of density.

[Valdarion Silarius]

I'm crossing my fingers that the rescale will fix the ****** hitboxes on the executioner and gargles. They really need more love.

Edited by Arnold The Governator, 18 June 2016 - 11:48 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

TheMadTypist, on 18 June 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

People asked for things like the catapult and AWS to get rescaled so that more machines would be worth using. So PGI went and rescaled everything to create yet another new "baseline", which will take more chassis out of play than it adds back in, and requires a whole new round of rebalancing that we'll almost certainly have to wait months for as we "test" what got broken.

The game has been released for ages. The game is overall functional. There's your ******* baseline, let's make more things functional within that existing context, not redevelop every damn thing for a consistency that has to be retested and requirked and remolded again and again. The game is years old. The game works. I'm tired of the redesigning of fully functional features, and being expected to slog through the retesting of the "new" game for months before things can be tweaked just to get back to where we were.

What we had was fine. There were minor things that needed fixing. we could have just fixed those and moved on. Now we have to chase our tails through another complete rebalance. And they've announced a "skill tree" update that will do the exact same thing down the line. It never stops.

I wish PGI would stop treating MWO like it's in beta and just start acting like this is a finished product. Sand the rough edges instead of tearing everything out to start over again and again.

The complaint here is... I dunno... kinda silly. By your same argument, most AAA developers that build games in active multiplayer game worlds are treating their games like betas... because all of them do the exact same thing. There is a constant shuffle going on to adjust balance and fix core issues. This is the norm in modern gaming.