28 replies to this topic

[Luca M Pryde]

1453 R, on 28 December 2016 - 02:16 AM, said:

Sized hardpoints worked in MW4 because there was vastly less variation in weapon sizes in that game due to Microsoft throwing out any and all TT build rules and redesigning the entire 'MechLab based around this sized-hardpoint principle - something Piranha specifically set out to not do. Your AC/20s in MW4 were 4-slot weapons, not 10-slot weapons, and even then many 'Mechs had slot count inflation (effectively the same thing as MWO's hardpoint inflation) over their stock limitations to allow for improved customization of the machine.

Trying to shoehorn size limitations into MWO at this point, without any of the other supporting design decisions MW4 made, would do nothing positive. The fact that AC/20 Ravens offend your sensibilities is irrelevant. Light 'Mechs with AC/20s existed in the tabletop canon; they even had light 'Mechs with the even heavier Gauss Rifle. They all suffered from exactly the drawbacks Yeonne mentioned - they were slow, they carried very limited ammunition, they generally had nothing or less in the way of supporting weaponry, and they were often poorly armored, as well. These were very special use-case 'Mechs with specific, narrow niches in the tabletop game.

In MWO, they're gags more than anything else.

This is a 'solution' for a problem that doesn't really exist.


MechWarrior is traditionally a deeper and more complex game than your modern Call of Duty. Anyone familiar with the franchise at all is expecting it to be less forgiving than other games, and the sheer existence of Dark Souls proves that you can be a game that actively hates everyone that plays it and still be massively popular. And unlike Dark Souls, you can correct mistakes you make in the MechLab given enough time investment.

I started the game in Dragons, way back when, on the assumption that taking a bigger-engine'd heavy would let me pull the ol' classic "outrun whatever you can't outgun" saw that had gotten me through several previous MechWarrior games as well as many other games of other types. We all know how that worked out, ne? But that's okay. It's just what happens.

The trap with New Player Retention ideas is getting stuck on the idea that it's possible to retain everyone who plays your game. It isn't. What's more important is making a game that strongly retains the specific audience you're trying to market to, which first of all requires you to pick an audience, then requires you to have a strong vision that audience can get behind and help you push. This is where MWO has stumbled, not in the 'MechLab.

Nobody really cares that the MechLab can confuse new people; the sort of people who'd get turned off and walk away after one bad run in the 'Lab are the people we weren't going to keep anyways.

That's true, that MWO caters for a specific market making it a niche game. However, the mechlab is strongly related to performance in the game as this is largely a multiplayer game! If you keep losing its unlikely you will continue playing if you can't win. I haven't met a person who plays video games and consistently likes to lose.

I guess players can see what other players use and that turns out to be their salvation. If they couldn't see I believe things would be a lot different and there would be far more complaining than what we see now. In short, people who start to play this game start for different reasons and also have different expectations based on other experiences in other battletech / mechwarrior games.

When I played table top I never customised any mech. The game took way too long as it is. I forget how much customisation was available in MW2. I don't think much.

Anyhow what I would like to see is a way to label your variants or mechs as opposed to giving them a name. Then show all mechs with the same label in a dropdown. Then we could choose a brawling build or LRM build or sniper build much easier from a list.

[Aetes Nakatomi]

Didn't work in MW4... you just ended up with totally dead chassis. Unless you could fit PPC and Gauss with JJ you lost before you even dropped.

In the single player it was fine, but in pvp it was a God awful system that didn't work at all.

[QuantumButler]

That ship has long sailed brother, no sense crying over it now. PGI isn't going to rework the game to accommodate sized hardpoints at this stage.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Hardpoint sizing would help give each mech more character and give them more "personality" per se.

It would not create balance though and it would still require quirks (or a lot of points dedicated to the new skill tree) to make some models even remotely viable. One thing the current system does (like it or not) is it allows certain mechs with limited hardpoints (quantity wise) to boat bigger weapons to TRY an compete with newer mechs with more harpoints (design power creep of newer mechs).

That's also not even counting the fact that certain mechs would be steered towards less than effective weapons systems.

Harpoint size restrictions essentially creates better mech character and differentiation, but creates new balancing issues and I could see it making more mechs even less desirable (at least without a lot of quirk/skill tree help).

Maybe it would still be worth pursuing, but I wouldn't expect it to fix issues as much as just change them into new ones.

[Almond Brown]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 December 2016 - 05:59 PM, said:

Maybe I'm just a special snowflake, but when I started MWO and made stupid builds, I wasn't discouraged by the cost. I said "maybe I should actually look at the stats on these items" and then proceeded to play around with it until I got something that worked. Then I discovered Smurfy and the process accelerated.

And no, I didn't learn how to MWO back when C-bill payouts were high. This was post-Paulconomy, Feb 2014. And you know what my first purchase was? A Locust 1V. I bought it thinking I could mount AC/2 on it, and then discovered that "tonnage" was a thing and went with MGs. C'est la vie!

And in all fairness, the Locust 1V with 2 AC2's is a blast to play, if you can get passed the fact you don't have an engine. LOL!

Sized Hard Points... LOL!

P.S. MW4 was a SP game title with Online play tacked on the arse end. MWO is a Online game, pure and simple. The 2 do not compare at all. We will see what MW5 (PvE) actually looks like when it launches.

[1453 R]

Luca M Pryde, on 28 December 2016 - 02:51 AM, said:

...
When I played table top I never customised any mech. The game took way too long as it is. I forget how much customisation was available in MW2. I don't think much.
...

MechWarrior 2 allowed full Tabletop rules customization, if not more, of its machines. I don't recall exactly what MW2 straight did, but I distinctly recall Mercs allowing you to do whatever you liked, without hardpoint number or size restrictions and including Mixtech. I know because I beat that game once in a Quickdraw...with six Inferno SRM-2 launchers, with Clan Endo, FF, and medium pulse lasers.

Older MechWarrior games had more freeform customization than MWO does, not less. MW4 was an aberration in the trend, with MWo being the first game with TT-style build sheets to try and exert any control over players' ability to build 'Mechs.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Same old story with the sized hardpoint proposals... with the same old problems. Many forum members, myself included, have been over this in excruciating detail in the past, and nobody has ever come up with satisfactory answers to their various proposals' shortcomings. Instead, they start bending and contorting the rules to fit what they consider acceptable and in so doing make it perfectly clear that their objective isn't balance at all, but rather to eliminate builds they don't like.

No, sized hardpoints did not work in MW4. The system resulted in a small handful of good 'Mechs and a whole lot that couldn't shoot their way out of a wet paper bag. MekTek's mod fixed some of those issues, but that was only after introducing entirely new hardpoint types to enable underperforming 'Mechs to take a much-needed Gauss rifle, or a third or fourth ERLL... thus completely defeating the entire reason for having sized hardpoints in the first place. Even then, some 'Mechs just never could take enough of the right weapons to compete, and sized hardpoints prevented them from taking alternative loadouts to have at least a fighting chance.

As for the OP... the AC20 Raven? Seriously? That's your example of a 'problem' sized hardpoints are meant to fix? That alone makes this thread a joke. That build is so far below optimal it isn't even a particularly funny joke. For the same tonnage as just the AC20, you can have dual PPC or dual LPL for the same or greater damage at longer range. The sacrifices you have to make to mount a big gun on a light 'Mech already more than balance it out. The 'Mechs which present a balance issue with big guns, for the most part, already mounted them stock, which totally defeats any attempt to use sized hardpoints for balance.

It's a silly idea, and it's always been a silly idea. As others have said already, the way to achieve weapon balance is to balance the damn weapons.

[L3mming2]

Jack Spade Ward, on 27 December 2016 - 04:49 PM, said:

Sorry, i do not agree with you!
It worked pretty well in MW4 series. Over here, critical slots does not give you what is intended in my suggestion.
Ive been playing MW4 latelly, and that system still works well. It can give you alot of custumization, not as much ridiculous as you can see in MWO. Raven carrying an AC20...
With this system, no more 4 LPL where ML used to be, you had to compromise! And this game is all about compromise, isnt it?

what has the AC20 raven ever done to you?? its a bad build, the only thing going for it is that its fun, if annything the AC20 raven is one of the reasons why sized hardpoints is a bad idea, it would eliminate a load of fun builds that are not even close to competitive...
and it will make the few builds that are competitive and dont get affected utterly OP...

on top of that i buy my mechs (often for real monney) cos i want to run a spesific build on them. if PGI disides i cant run those builds anny more i will be very pissed off, and i dont think they will be verry willing to refund close to a 1000$ so i can start over...

[Lykaon]

Jack Spade Ward, on 27 December 2016 - 12:56 PM, said:

And the solution is... wait for it...

HARDPOINT SIZE!!!!!

Yes boys and girls, hardpoint size! I mean, MW4 Mercs had it. And the ideia was amazing.
I adressed to this problem whe i saw, in closed beta, Ravens with AC20???!!!!!

Yes people, and this aplies for all mechs!

IS mechs would have more builds apropriate for them. A hardpoint would not only be limited for what type of weapon it is, but also in size! Being the greater size the AC20 (logic) for ACs for example. So, no Ravens carrying a weapon wich is bigger than the mech itself!

Clan Omni mechs would NOT need omni pods or the like, the hardpoint they come with, would act as omni, but with the hardpoint limited in size. That means, that if the omnimech comes with a medium laser hardpoint (size 1), you cant put a CERPPC there. But sinse its only 1 size slot, and since its an omni hardpoint, you could only fit weapons with 1 size slot! Makes sense actually.

Clan battlemechs would suffer the same way as IS battlemechs, with the diference that they use clan weapons.

Having a hardpoint have a fixed size based upon the orriginal item mounted presents a lot of potential issues with customizing.

For example your medium laser hardpoint only accomidating a single crit slot item. This means you have fewer options for what can fit there (I get it sorta the whole point) but you also get stuck with a narrower set of options for weight. This leaves the highly likely event of filling the hardpoints but having tons of weight left over.

A mech with misslie hardpoints with fixed crit slots based upon the origin equipment would be largely incapable of upgrading to artemis without downgrading the launchers significantly and basicly negating the advantage of artemis or leaving the mech severely under weight with no available slots to place items.

And then we have the issue with this idea essentially being another advantage to exploit as a clan player.

1 crit slot missile hardpoint for the clans means any non artemis SRM launcher LRM5 and LRM 10 streak 2s and 4s
Meanwhile 1 crit slot missile hardpoint for I.S. is SRM2 or 4 LRM5 or streak 2

2 crit slot energy hardpoint...Any and all clan energy weapons will fit
2 crit slot energy hardpoint for I.S. means no PPC or ER-PPC

Ballistics? yeah you see where I'm going with this.