49 replies to this topic

[Jables McBarty]

Captain Artemis, on 28 June 2016 - 12:29 PM, said:

Especially when Locust can charge into my legs, to the place where most of my weapons can't hit him, and I'm unable to for example - kick him? Punch him?

Here's how I responded to this in the The Epic Locust Hate Thread:

Jables McBarty, on 27 June 2016 - 09:07 AM, said:

"Bb-b-b-b-but Gman* tells me that the BNC-3M with all torso-mounted lazorbeams and the BLR-1G with only one arm-mounted ML are top-tier meta-mechs."

Welp, top-tier doesn't mean unbeatable. Sorry, but for every decision you make in MechWarrior there's both a benefit and a drawback.

Decision: Take an assault.
Benefit: Lots of armor, lots of weapons, ability to shred mediums and heavies.
Drawback: Very slow, dependent on other 'mechs to protect you from lights.

Decision: Mount all your weapons in the torso.
Benefit: Arms are purely for shield, strip armor to free tonnage for weapons/engines, only one reticule to worry about for targeting.
Drawback: Aiming is restricted to your torso Range-of-Movement.

So, I'm sorry, but if you take an assault with all high torso mounts, you are consciously making the decision to gimp yourself against lights.

If you are getting swarmed by locusts, then it is nobody's fault but your own.



*Read Gman's introductory paragraphs to his metamech tier lists, and beside acknowledging that he's human, he states that his tiers are based on aggregates--the "best and most consistent results"--and are not guarantees of a flawless, deathless victory.

Yes, we are talking about Black Knights/Grasshoppers and not "Tier 1" assaults, but the point stands--not every 'mech should be an effective counter to every other.

[Bud Crue]

Idealsuspect, on 28 June 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

PGI way to balance .. 2 steps forward 1 backward, 1 step forward 2 backward


Or balance with an hammer remove all quirks AND increase size in same time lol...

Like giving Victors 10 pts of extra st structure and saying "see they're fine now!". Balanced my a...

[C E Dwyer]

Bud Crue, on 26 June 2016 - 08:37 AM, said:

At least, maybe a couple of times.

Again though: we have three dimensions to work with here: Width (right to left), side profile (front to back), and height (top to bottom). So As to the Grasshopper it has extreme minimums on two of three (it has a very small width and very small side-profile), thus the third dimension (height) is going to be extreme.
BK is very similar though it has a less extreme width.

That's really all there is two it: VOLUMETRIC scaling.

This post made me wonder exactly how much of an advantage height as in looking down isn't.

Top elevation might well be used in the sizing but due to weapon mounts, e.g how many war hammers that are meta use arm mounts, and what elevations there are in the game, this gives chicken legs over humanoids a very big advantage.

Edited by Cathy, 28 June 2016 - 12:46 PM.

[Idealsuspect]

Victor the mech big and large as an increased mauler? xD
Well mauler is close than an atlas ...

Also we can write victor = atlas - 10% face volume ( but 20% less tonnage and 50% less structure quirks )


How much time victor quirks were only 17 poor structures points for legs, 1, 2 maybe 3 years?
Stupid when you know that old JJs nerf did kill all poptarts loadout for assauts also buff legs ...

[Lightfoot]

BigBenn, on 28 June 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

I am continuously amazed that people can't figure this new "volume" thing out.

When you see a 70 ton Grasshopper mech standing as tall or taller as an 100 ton Atlas, please stop and turn them both sideways and see the differences. Likewise, STUDY the width of the legs and arms. STUDY the differences in depth and girth.

For Montezuma's Revenge sake... stop and think!!!

But the Atlas gets about a hundred more points of torso armor plus structure and has a smaller CT hit-box than the Grasshopper unless it's changed. I am thinking you see. The re-scale should have been based on forward facing torso and CT sizes as well as volume. Nothing more vexing than facing an Atlas and then discovering they front-loaded all their armor points.

While we are on the subject of strict volumetric criteria, wouldn't the Thor be great if MWO actually had jump-jets for mechs?

Edited by Lightfoot, 28 June 2016 - 01:17 PM.

[Ultimax]

Bud Crue, on 28 June 2016 - 12:36 PM, said:

The OP's question was why is the Hopper and BK larger than assaults. We answered that. You are raising a whole 'nother topic. Balance of crappy mechs, or mechs that have been blatantly nerfed via the rescale, is something most of us HOPE that PGI will address, but it is a different topic than what the OP asked about.

They did address it, they nerfed BK & GRH quirks.

[SuomiWarder]

Frankly I think the volume approach is somewhat bunk to begin with. This approach assumes that the interiors of the mechs are all equally dense. Which is not born out by the franchise's lore. Some mechs had more empty space inside making them easier to work inside of. We might assume that the leg spares of a 30 tons mech are much smaller and require less volume than those of a 100 ton mech. Who knows what myomar weighs. That is the stuff the "muscles' that move a mech is made of. To assume that the amount needed to move different weight machines scales proportionally is not supported by anything official I can remember reading.

I assume it was an attempt to pick a method considered "neutral" and "unbiased". I think they should have just scaled things by eye based on tonnage, role, and effectiveness. For example, Mechs of the same tonnage that have more hard points for weapons than the others would be slightly bigger targets.

[Jables McBarty]

SuomiWarder, on 28 June 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:

Frankly I think the volume approach is somewhat bunk to begin with. This approach assumes that the interiors of the mechs are all equally dense. Which is not born out by the franchise's lore. Some mechs had more empty space inside making them easier to work inside of. We might assume that the leg spares of a 30 tons mech are much smaller and require less volume than those of a 100 ton mech. Who knows what myomar weighs. That is the stuff the "muscles' that move a mech is made of. To assume that the amount needed to move different weight machines scales proportionally is not supported by anything official I can remember reading.

I assume it was an attempt to pick a method considered "neutral" and "unbiased". I think they should have just scaled things by eye based on tonnage, role, and effectiveness. For example, Mechs of the same tonnage that have more hard points for weapons than the others would be slightly bigger targets.

Sure.

Why don't you write up a counter-proposal based on scaling 'mechs "by eye" and see how well-received it is by the community?

[p4r4g0n]

Ultimax, on 28 June 2016 - 12:22 PM, said:

-snip-
Volume is not the answer to mech balance, many mechs are worse - not only did they NOT get buffs to compensate for their new, clearly worse, sizes they were actually double nerfed at the same time losing quirk values.

Re-scale =/= Mech balancing and no where has PGI ever stated that it was for mech balancing.

SuomiWarder, on 28 June 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:

-snip-
I think they should have just scaled things by eye based on tonnage, role, and effectiveness. For example, Mechs of the same tonnage that have more hard points for weapons than the others would be slightly bigger targets.

This makes it MORE difficult to balance the different mechs in game, not easier. We were already on this path before the re-scale.

By the way, 6 ballistic slots but only enough tonnage for 6 machine guns and a ton or two of ammo is not better than 2 ballistic slots with with 20 tons available so using hard points as a determinant of mech size is highly inappropriate.

On a related note, I would love if PGI would also normalize the number of module slots for all mechs. Trying to balance mechs with bonus / reduced mech module slots never worked and more importantly, is no longer being applied to the newer mechs. Be fair to your older mechs, they need love too.

[Ultimax]

p4r4g0n, on 28 June 2016 - 02:36 PM, said:

Re-scale =/= Mech balancing and no where has PGI ever stated that it was for mech balancing.

1) Mech size and scale, and the hitboxes they have because of it are one of the top factors of mech balance. Ignoring it is foolishness.

2) Players demanded rescale to mechs that due to their size, were easy to kill and therefore lower performers. What we have here is a swap of haves and have nots. In essence they robbed Peter to pay Paul.

[Lightfoot]

p4r4g0n, on 28 June 2016 - 02:36 PM, said:

Re-scale =/= Mech balancing and no where has PGI ever stated that it was for mech balancing.




This makes it MORE difficult to balance the different mechs in game, not easier. We were already on this path before the re-scale.

By the way, 6 ballistic slots but only enough tonnage for 6 machine guns and a ton or two of ammo is not better than 2 ballistic slots with with 20 tons available so using hard points as a determinant of mech size is highly inappropriate.

On a related note, I would love if PGI would also normalize the number of module slots for all mechs. Trying to balance mechs with bonus / reduced mech module slots never worked and more importantly, is no longer being applied to the newer mechs. Be fair to your older mechs, they need love too.

No I think the Nova should be visibly bigger than the Shadow Cat, not the other way around. That the Nova gets 16 hardpoints to the Shadow Cat's 3 to 5 and a smaller torso cross section is not logical. Where does the Nova store it's weapon's, same place as the Shadow Cat. Sorry this is where the logic PGI used fails and just due to design aesthetics of the two mechs. Should all the mechs look like cubes that scale with tonnage? No, that's silly, but that is how they were scaled.

[smokytehbear]

p4r4g0n, on 28 June 2016 - 02:36 PM, said:

On a related note, I would love if PGI would also normalize the number of module slots for all mechs. Trying to balance mechs with bonus / reduced mech module slots never worked and more importantly, is no longer being applied to the newer mechs. Be fair to your older mechs, they need love too.

Agreed. This has always been completely stupid. Using a totally unrelated facet to try and balance basic problems with the core of a mech is like deciding not to fix your brake pads but instead mount a couple of rockets on the front of your car facing you to help slow down. It'll definitely slow you down, but just... why?

[p4r4g0n]

Ultimax, on 28 June 2016 - 04:18 PM, said:

1) Mech size and scale, and the hitboxes they have because of it are one of the top factors of mech balance. Ignoring it is foolishness.

-snip-

Size and shape of a mech are the factors you are looking for. Scale and size are basically the same thing. In addition, since this is not a 2D platform game, cognizance has to be taken of height, width and depth.

So unless we are running mechs that are all of a single shape where size is the only critical factor, there needs to be a way to standardize the dimensions of the various mech classes and shapes in relation to their tonnage.

Once you have a system to standardize the dimensions, only then do you really get into mech balancing by quirkening, tweaking the dimensions, altering movement archetypes, etc. PGI has already stated there will likely be quirk changes in July once they have gathered data on the re-scale.

Having said that, I do think that some of the re-scaled mechs need some tweaking and even some that were not.

However, I just wish people would stop saying that PGI's mech balancing effort via re-scaled has failed as it is just flat out wrong since it was not intended to.

Lightfoot, on 28 June 2016 - 07:08 PM, said:

No I think the Nova should be visibly bigger than the Shadow Cat, not the other way around. That the Nova gets 16 hardpoints to the Shadow Cat's 3 to 5 and a smaller torso cross section is not logical. Where does the Nova store it's weapon's, same place as the Shadow Cat. Sorry this is where the logic PGI used fails and just due to design aesthetics of the two mechs. Should all the mechs look like cubes that scale with tonnage? No, that's silly, but that is how they were scaled.

How does this size correlation to hardpoint numbers system work exactly particularly on Clan Omnimechs? Do they shrink if they use pods with less hard points? Or are the pods with more hard points bigger than those with less?

What about IS mechs where one variant has less hardpoints than another? Are they of different sizes?

Edited by p4r4g0n, 28 June 2016 - 09:57 PM.

[Hit the Deck]

Night Gyr will join the tall bots squad when it arrives :3

[MeiSooHaityu]

Cathy, on 28 June 2016 - 12:44 PM, said:

Top elevation might well be used in the sizing but due to weapon mounts, e.g how many war hammers that are meta use arm mounts, and what elevations there are in the game, this gives chicken legs over humanoids a very big advantage.

From dead on straight ahead, sure. Once that chicken-walker mech turns (even a bit), not so much.

This isn't even bringing up how often chicken-walkers are notoriously difficult to design hitboxes for. They either have too big CTs (old Catapult or Ebon Jaguar) or frail side torsos that make the use of XLs very VERY risky (Marauder and even in some cases the new Catapult).

There are trade-offs to each design.

[FuzzyNova]

I have always stuck with my Ebon Jags. It's my go to. And finding a new mech that I like to pilot is tough. But I have been piloting the Grasshopper now for a few weeks and I really enjoy it. As for Black Knight I have never tried to pilot it. But Grasshopper is awesome. Yeh it's pretty tall. But it also looks really cool. Cant say the same for the Ebon Jag. It may be my favorite mech to pilot but it just looks goofy.

[Lehmund]

Lightfoot, on 28 June 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

The only size that matters are the torso sections, but these change shape per mech design and have different borders for the hit-boxes therein. Then you still get throwback mechs like the Orion that have weird missile count limits applied to each launcher while new shiney mechs like the Marauder, Archer (except the CT is 10 duh), and Warhammer do not. Maybe no one is supposed to use the Orion anymore?

So I don't agree with PGI's premise for the re-scale that volume alone equals tonnage. But since PGI does then mechs like the Stalker, Marauder, Nova, Catapult, etc. are all benefiting from their oblong torsos or oversized arms or both. Maybe not much, but more than a mech with a humanoid torso and thin limbs, Grasshopper for instance.

I don't see how an oblong torso or thick arms actually gives net benefits to a mech.

Oblong torso may be a smaller target from the front, but it makes the mech way easier to hit from the sides.
Large arms do make for nice side shields, but most mechs carry loads of weapons in the arms. Losing your shields = losing your main weapons.

This eval should be done case by case.

Grasshoppers and Black Knights have small hitboxes as it is, and most of their weapon mounts used are in their torsos. Still great mechs even though your enemies have a couple pixels more to hit on average.

Try for a moment to shield your vitals while driving an Ebon Jaguar or a Warhawk, see if you like the "big arms" and oblong torsos. I'm sure you'll love your Grasshopper again.

[Captain Artemis]

Jables McBarty, on 28 June 2016 - 12:40 PM, said:

Here's how I responded to this in the The Epic Locust Hate Thread:




Yes, we are talking about Black Knights/Grasshoppers and not "Tier 1" assaults, but the point stands--not every 'mech should be an effective counter to every other.

Yes, truly what this game needs is to even more reduce TTK.

[Phra]

Alistair Winter, on 26 June 2016 - 08:39 AM, said:

PGI did not consider balancing at all when they rescaled the mechs.

They did.

[TercieI]

Phra, on 29 June 2016 - 08:39 AM, said:

They did.

You realize that that's actually a more damning accusation, right?

Edited by TercieI, 29 June 2016 - 08:46 AM.