Widowmaker1981, on 23 August 2016 - 04:35 AM, said:
Because in a world where tightly focused, specialised builds are allowed, the special snowflake idiot lore builds with zero weapon synergy are way below par. They want the least efficient mech builds to be competitive, and that means preventing the efficient ways of building.
I wish it was easier to have a purely academic discussion about games, with no real world consequences or implications, just for fun, without people on the internet feeling the need to make these kinds of childish, derogatory remarks.
"Special snowflake idiot lore builds"? Really, guy?
Sjorpha, on 23 August 2016 - 04:29 AM, said:
Making up teams of different compositions of specialized builds, brawlers, snipers, jumpsnipers, laser vomit and so on requires different tactics and counter tactics depending on what the two teams bring, this way of creating strategies is the whole point of competitive play.
I can see how rewarding versatility at the expense of specialization seems like it would make the game less interesting. But I don't think it's necessarily the case. Indeed, if you take specialization too far, it can also lead to predictable gameplay.
If you look at a game like Starcraft, there are going to be some meat-and-potato units that are very versatile. And if you look at MMORPGs, you also have some characters that are versatile (like Paladins, Shamans, Jedi, etc). Their versatility does not subtract from the complexity of the game, in my opinion. If every unit in Starcraft was highly specialized, like if you only had Siege Tanks and Carriers and those kinds of units, it wouldn't necessarily make the game more interesting. Versatile units make the whole force more versatily and give it extra adaptability, which means you can adjust the plan on the spot according to enemy actions.
Or if you want to make comparisons with competitive sports instead of video games and tabletop games, look at MMA, for example. MMA fights aren't necessarily more complex when two fighters are specialists. It sometimes comes down to a grappling specialist trying to take his opponent down, while the opponent is a boxer who wants to stay on his feet and box. Those fights aren't necessarily more interesting than fights where both fighters have a number of different tools and have to figure out how to put them together.
Your national hero, Alexander Gustafsson fighting Jon Jones. Gustaffson was a boxer, everyone expected him to box with Jon Jones. But Gustafsson had worked on his wrestling, you see. He didn't have a lot of wrestling moves, but he knew how to get that high crotch single leg takedown that he learned from training with Phil Davis, the american wrestler. So when he fought Jon Jones, instead of just boxing, he actually took Jon Jones down (and was the first guy to do so, IIRC), and it made the whole fight not just more entertaining, but more complex. Gustafsson's versatility made the fight more interesting, because now Jon Jones suddenly had to worry about this unexpected threat.
I know, apples and oranges. But I feel like other games and sports have room for versatility without making the game bland and uninteresting, and so does MWO.
Sjorpha, on 23 August 2016 - 04:29 AM, said:
I don't understand why so many people treat this like it's a given fact that tightly focused builds are a bad thing.
If everyone had weapons to be effective at every range the game would be much more boring. That should not be promoted, it's much better that being competitive requires you to focus builds on a special range and role.
Specialization is naturally more competitive, that you can't change without ridiculously convoluted game rules (like the ones suggested in this OP). Look at animals, all specializing on their way to thrive. Look at humans specializing in different professions, the way to excel is to focus on being good at something. This competitive logic is the whole reason behind all the diversity we see in nature and society.
It's exactly the same in games, the way to create diversity and interesting strategy is precisely to embrace extreme specialization and competitive logic. Try to fight against it and you inevitably make you game bland and boring.
But I'm not suggesting that every mech in the game should be versatile. For example, the AWS-8Q is an iconic PPC carrier and nobody wants to change that. The Nova is a laserboat, and nobody is arguing that it should also carry LRMs and AC2s. Battletech has lots of specialist mechs, that are only good at one thing.
I'm just saying that versatile mechs with diverse builds should have a bigger place in the game. It's not a binary situation, it's a sliding scale. You can do well with somewhat versatile builds even in the current build of the game, sure. I just want more of that. The role of medium mechs in lore is often to be the potato of the battlefield, the mech that can lay down long range fire if necessary or support the main force in a push or a flanking maneuver as necessary. They provide versatility, which makes them unpredictable. Those are good elements for a game, if you combine versatile units with specialists. I think MWO needs both. And while it does have both, I wish it had more versatile, diverse mechs and fewer specialists. Again though, it's not either one or the other. It's a sliding scale.
(The argument about animals and humans is quite irrelevant, by the way. But I would also say that it's not particularly accurate. The most powerful of all animals is the human. And what animal is more versatile than the human? Is it not our versatiltiy as a race that makes us so powerful? That we can design rockets, climb mountains and build bridges with our two hands? But that's neither here nor there, it's not relevant to this discussion about games)
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